People Before Profit blog

Economic Crisis, Financialization, and a New Model of Governance

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:29:00 +0000

The economic crisis is more than two years old. I like to call it the Second Great Contraction, to borrow a term from a mainstream economist, to distinguish it from other postwar economic downturns.

Notwithstanding the "good" reports on GDP, employment and personal consumption growth, there is plenty of reason to be uneasy about the economy.

Investment is sluggish, trillions of dollars in real and fictitious capital have disappeared and will not return, and exploitation increases and wages fall. The housing crisis has eased a bit, but the foreclosure rate and the number of houses underwater are still enormous. Consumer spending remains low as households begin to work off their debt. State and local government spending is declining, even though it should be increasing to counter downward economic pressures. Income inequality is worsening, debt levels remain enormous, manufacturing is limping along; export growth is weak and poverty is ratcheting up, particularly in the racially oppressed communities and among single moms.

And no one should expect China to become a buyer of last resort in global markets.

The one indicator that shows some rebound is – you guessed it – corporate profits, especially in the financial sector. With no shame, management committees at the biggest financial institutions are awarding themselves a huge payout in salary and bonuses. Just when you thought the criminals on Wall Street might lie low, they come out in the open and flaunt their new wealth with supreme arrogance.

By most standards, the recovery falls somewhere between modest and stalled. To say the economy is getting back on its feet is to look at the economic indicators selectively.

Many mainstream economists fail to appreciate that the Second Great Contraction is different in its origins, magnitude and resistance to quick fixes, compared to earlier crises.

If history is any guide, the return to normality following a crisis of this kind will be slow. And still within the realm of possibility is not only a new downturn – a double dip, as it is called.

Furthermore, because of the hyper-connectivity of global markets, the power of bondholders/finance capital, the socialization by taxpayers of losses of "too big to fail financial institutions," and the buildup of external and internal debt in most countries prior to and after the crisis, one can't rule out a financial crisis breaking out in one or a few countries and potentially spreading worldwide.

Capitalism, says David Harvey, doesn't resolve crises so much as it moves them around.

So far the financial crisis has been contained here, but no one should sleep soundly. The notion that it "can't happen here" has been pulverized by events.

Even if it is contained, the mushrooming of debt is becoming the new instrument to bludgeon working people worldwide, as is evident in Greece. "Tighten your belt and rein in your expectations" are the new clarion calls of deficit hawks worldwide. As if it didn't get enough, the investor/finance class wants more surplus value from the working class and people in the form of lower living standards and fewer social benefits.

Here there is talk of social security and Medicare reform. And the current budget gives the green light to discretionary spending cuts. What is missing in the dialogue is any talk of a deep going change in the tax structure, reductions in the military budget, and a debt moratorium for ordinary Americans and state and local government.

As long as this out of the conversation, the solution to indebtedness will fall on working people and the poor.

To make matters worse, the endless talk of fiscal responsibility conceals the underlying causes of the crisis: income inequality, the rise of finance and financial liberalization, the hollowing-out of the manufacturing sector, the undermining of working-class power, the entry of new competitors in the global economy, and chronic overproduction in world commodity markets.

No solution to the nation's economic and financial woes that doesn't address these fundamental causes of the dire economic situation stands "a snowball's chance in hell" of succeeding.

Financialization

From the standpoint of the top layers of financial institutions – Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo – the current legislative struggle over financial regulation is but one battle, albeit a crucial one, in an ongoing struggle to fully restore themselves to the preeminent position they occupied in the global economy for the past three decades.

After sitting at the pinnacle of power, seeing their wealth multiply exponentially, and shaping the dynamics and contours of the world economy, they are not about to easily yield – or even slightly diminish – their power and privileged position.

Call the financial czars here and elsewhere whatever you like, but they are well aware of their class interests. What is more, they are mindful that the New Deal hemmed them in for roughly four decades. Admittedly none of them starved, but neither did they enjoy the nearly unchallenged political and economic sway as they have in recent decades.

If finance capital is able to reconstitute its power, the prospects of working people here and elsewhere are bleak. If, on the other hand, its power is progressively curbed, as it can be in the course of successive and contentious struggles, the future of the multiracial working class and its allies is far brighter.

Tough regulation and reduction in bank size are critical, but not enough.

In a larger sense the struggle is to change the whole social structure of governance and process of accumulation. For more than three decades, the main contours, dynamics and interrelations of the U.S. economy were shaped by finance capital and an exploding and nearly autonomous financial sector.

In previous periods of capitalist development, financial bubbles occurred at the peak of the business cycle. Today, however, financial bubbles are better seen "as manifestations of a longer-term process of financialization, feeding on stagnation rather than prosperity."

In contrast to conventional wisdom, the severe erosion of the manufacturing sector was not a product of financialization, but the other way around in the early going. New conditions and contradictions – intense price competition, entry of new producers in the global marketplace, high unit labor costs in American manufacturing relative to their counterparts elsewhere, and the consequent difficulty of maintaining adequate levels of profitability in the 1970s – combined with de-regulation and a recession (engineered by the Reagan administration) to stimulate the flight of capital out of the manufacturing and other sectors of the real economy.

Most of it ended up in speculative channels, while some went to plant relocation in countries abroad where costs were cheaper. The center of economic gravity shifted from industry to finance and over time the wheels of financialization, greased by both parties, brought the country to ruin, the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Depression.

Much of what is now taking place in the political arena is driven by the battle to reconstitute the economy and along what lines - labor or capital. Or said another way, the corporations or the people.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed; that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor! (Abraham Lincoln)

A New New Deal

The Obama administration's immediate challenge will be to revive the economy. The question is how? Where will economic dynamism come from in the near term? What change in political and economic structures and property relations are necessary?

Part of the answer is massive fiscal expansion, that is, large injections of money from the federal government into the is no answer to growing joblessness.

According to conventional wisdom and mainstream economists, near-full employment and healthy profit rates are the normal condition of a capitalist economy. Perhaps that was the case at an earlier stage of capitalism's development, but not now. Indeed, one has to wonder what the long-run prospects of U.S. and world capitalism are.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near meltdown of the financial system announced the death knell of capitalism, as we know it. What the future holds no one knows for sure, but it does look dim for working people if the economy is allowed to run its course.

It is hard to draw any other conclusion, given the fragility of the world economy, the incredible debt that has built up worldwide, overcrowded and hypercompetitive world markets, the emergence of the Asian tigers and now the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and particularly China, the entry of hundreds of millions of people into the workforce, and the resistance of many sections of the capitalist class to structural economic change.

New model of economic governance

What is needed is a new model of political-economic governance at the state and corporate level that favors working people, the racially and nationally oppressed, women, youth, seniors, small business people and other social groupings.

This new model of governance won't be socialist, but like the New Deal, it would make substantial inroads into corporate power, profits and prerogatives; democratize state and quasi-state structures like the Federal Reserve; give communities, workers and small businesspeople a say in corporate decision-making, encourage small and medium size businesses and new forms of social property such as cooperatives; place energy, finance and transportation in the public domain; demilitarize and green the economy; deepen and extend equality, and reconfigure our government and nation's role in world affairs.

Furthermore, militarism and militarization of the economy are incompatible to a peaceful world and a people friendly economy.

Yes terrorism is a problem, but projecting U.S. military power overseas and frightening the American people is no solution; its solution requires police action, intelligence sharing, and a more just world.

In any event, class and democratic struggles over the direction of the economy will intensify and will be resolved ultimately in the political arena. These struggles and capitalism's growing incompatibility with human aspirations and the future of the planet will reveal the new necessity of socialism.

Socialism

Socialism has its material roots in the inability of capitalism to solve humanity's problems. Working people gravitate toward a radical critique of society out of necessity, out of a sense that the existing arrangements of society fail to fulfill their material and spiritual needs.

Thus, the gravitation towards socialism expressed in public opinion polls is closely connected to the end of an era in which U.S. capitalism was relatively stable and provided reasonable economic security.

Economic crises alone, however, do not prepare the soil for revolutionary change, though they're important. The soil is prepared via the cumulative impact of a series of crises (economic, political, social, cultural, and moral) taking place over time that together erode people's confidence in capitalism's capacity to meet humanity's needs and sustain life on our planet.

Our vision of socialism is a work in progress.

At the end of his life, Engels wrote, "To my mind, the 'so called socialist society' is not anything immutable. Like all social formations, it should be conceived in a state of flux and change."

We should take this to heart. Our socialist vision should have a contemporary and dynamic feel; it should be rooted in today's conditions and experience. It should be brought in line with current realities, trends, and sensibilities. It should reflect our values, traditions, and culture. It should be multi-racial, multi-national, and multi-lingual. It should welcome immigrants.

If it has an "old or foreign" feel, people will reject it.

In the 20th century the Soviet Union became the universal model of socialism. This universalization came at a price – it narrowed down our ability to think creatively and "outside the box."

The transition to socialism will mark an end to one stage of struggle and the beginning of a new one, distinguished a qualitative expansion and deepening of economic security, working class and people's democracy, egalitarian relations in every sphere of life, and human freedom in both a collective and individual sense.

I don't frame the matter in this way to replace the more traditional notion, in which the transition to socialism is distinguished by a revolutionary shift of class power from the capitalist class to the working class and democratic movement. What I want to do is to correct one-sidedness in our thinking.

A transfer in class power – which will more likely be a series of contested moments during which qualitative changes in power relations in favor of the working class and its allies take place rather than "the great revolutionary/to the barricades day" – is absolutely necessary, but it is not a sufficient condition for a successful transition to and consolidation of socialism.

In fact, a singular emphasis on the question of class power (a means), at the expense of social processes and social aims (economic improvement in people's lives, working class and people's democracy, rough equality, and freedom and solidarity), can lead – did lead – to distortions in socialist societies.

Socialism fully develops only to the degree that working people are empowered and participate in every aspect of society. Working class initiative, a sense of real ownership of social property, and a democratic and participatory socialist state are foundational aspects of socialism.

Lenin wrote,

... socialism cannot be reduced to economics alone. A foundation – socialist production – is essential for the abolition of national oppression (in our context racial and national oppression), but this foundation must also carry a democratically organized state, a democratic army, etc. By transforming capitalism into socialism the proletariat (working class – SW) creates the possibility of abolishing national oppression; the possibility becomes reality "only" – "only!" – with the establishment of full democracy in all spheres.

Note the weight that Lenin attaches to democracy and working class initiative. Do we share his view? To a degree, but I would argue that re-centering working class and people's initiative, democracy, and needs at the core of our socialist vision is a necessary corrective.

While the political leadership of communist, socialist and left parties and social movements is indispensable, in the past, our understanding of our leading role came close to substituting ourselves for the wide-ranging participation and leadership of masses of people and for a vibrant public space in which these same people gather, compare ideas, and take action.

The struggle for socialism will bring a broad and diverse coalition with varied outlooks and interests into motion. And while we fight for the leadership of the multi-racial, multi-national working class in this coalition and for its deep imprint on the political process, we also combine that with the search for broad strategic and tactical alliances. At times this dual task will cause tensions, sometimes strongly felt ones, but the resolution of these tensions is condition for radical change.

Finally, the socialist economy of the 21st century should give priority to sustainability, not growth without limits. Socialist production can't be narrowly focused on inputs and outputs, nor should purely quantitative criteria be used to measure efficiency and determine economic costs. New socialist production (and consumption) models are imperative. Both must economize on natural resources and protect the planet and its various ecological systems. The future of living things that inhabit this earth will depend on it.

Environment

That said, we cannot wait for socialism to address the dangers of climate change and environmental degradation. That must be done now. We are approaching tipping points that if reached will give global warming a momentum that human actions will have little or no control over.

The planet is now warmer than it has been since the end of the last glacial age roughly 12,000 years ago, and if this pattern continues it will result in catastrophe for humanity. Both governments and peoples must take emergency measures now or the planet's future is in doubt. It is easy to make a case that climate change is the preeminent challenge to humankind in the 21st century.

Global warming is not new. In 1750, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – the main cause of the rise in global temperatures – measured 280 molecules of carbon dioxide for every one million molecules in the air. Today, it is 387 parts per million (ppm), largely because of industrialization, urbanization and consumerism – all of which were cradled and shaped by capitalism.

The quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increased gradually since 1750, but it spiked upward in recent decades as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases poured into the atmosphere at a feverish pace as a result of "human forcing," which are human activities that "affect the energy balance and temperature of the Earth," as opposed to natural forcing (volcanoes, change in the sun's radiation, etc,).

At one time the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believed that carbon dioxide could rise to 450 ppm in the atmosphere (roughly increasing average global temperature by 2 degrees Celsius) without doing significant harm. New research suggests that this is far too optimistic. A rise of carbon dioxide to 350 ppm in the atmosphere brings us into the danger zone. But, as mentioned, we are already at 387 ppm.

The old calculation failed to take account of amplifying feedback factors. An increase in the earth's temperature, for example, causes the melting of ice and snow, which in turn results in less reflection of sunlight back into space and, instead, its absorption by the land and ocean and, consequently a further rise in the average global temperature.

This new scientific finding, says climate scientist James Hansan, makes it imperative to "immediately recognize the need to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 ppm in order to avoid disasters for coming generations."

If we continue to produce and consume as we have over decades (business as usual), the Earth will be warmer than it has been since 3 million years ago.

So what's the big deal? The great ice sheets will melt and eventually sea levels could rise as much as 80 feet. The frozen northern tundra will thaw and release tons of methane into the atmosphere. Whole ecological systems will collapse and species, unable to migrate or adapt to new conditions fast enough, will become extinct. Violent storms will become commonplace. Water vapor (a major cause climate change feedback) will increase. And more.

At some point, human intervention will be unable to slow down and stop this process. Obviously civilization as we know it will change drastically.

While responsibility rests on every nation, for each contributes to the planet's warning, it doesn't rest equally. The main polluters of the atmosphere as well as the land and water are the core capitalist countries.

China issues more carbon into the atmosphere now in absolute numbers. But when measured on a per capita basis the United States is still the main culprit.

Moreover, when considered as a cumulative process (which most people fail to consider) over nearly three centuries, the leading polluters are the United Kingdom and the United States.

These findings argue for an accelerated transition to new energy sources and sustainable development. We could begin with an immediate carbon tax that would penalize those with the largest carbon footprint – big corporations – while also making a case for the elimination of coal production and expansion of alternative energy sources.

More fundamentally, global warming and the various forms of environmental degradation are a compelling argument for the new urgency of socialism – a society that privileges people and nature.

Photo by AFL-CIO, courtesy Flickr

Skewed Wealth Distribution and the Roots of the Economic Crisis

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:28:00 +0000

Original source: History News Network

Recently, Robert Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale University, penned a New York Times article warning that the fear of a double dip recession might actually bring on the dreaded event. “Ultimately,” Professor Shiller warned, “the risk resides largely in social psychology.”

As someone who is not a professional economist I do not know whether Professor Shiller’s views are typical of his field. What I do know is that while “social psychology” may have had some small role as a causal factor in the Crash of ’08, it was the actual structure of the American and world economies which brought on the crisis. And if in fact we enter a second round of this Crash, it will not stem from what Dr. Shiller calls a “weakness and vulnerability of confidence,” but will result from the same structural elements of our economy as those that brought on the “first dip.”

American society’s fantastically skewed distribution of wealth stands as one of the main structural fault lines underpinning the Crash. America’s richest one percent of the population own over forty percent of America’s wealth—exclusive of home ownership—in this, the most opulent society history has ever known. On the other hand, the bottom sixty percent of Americans own approximately one percent of all of America’s wealth.

That is, if we picture an auditorium with one hundred people and one hundred seats, the single richest person would be able to spread out smartly over nearly forty-three seats. The poorest sixty people in the auditorium would have to make due squeezing into a single seat.

This mal-distribution of wealth does not bode well for a society based on the buying and selling of goods. Our super-rich plutocrats, after all, do not need more than five or ten automobiles or five or ten homes each. This top one percent—3 million people—certainly cannot purchase all the goods that the poorest 180 million Americans would be capable of purchasing had our society a more equal distribution of wealth.

And so debt has had to sustain our market economy: the more skewed the distribution of wealth has grown over time, the more frantically has the economy been forced to create a growing array of consumer debt mechanisms—subprime mortgages, payday loans, more and more intricately structured credit card debt—in order simply to maintain its functioning.

When a critical mass of poor and working class Americans could no longer pay their fabulously expensive subprime mortgages and usurious credit card bills, this house of cards collapsed. A number of the financial institutions built on this consumer debt foundered and the remainder required unprecedented injections of federal funds to remain afloat. The housing market and new residential construction, the market for consumer goods—automobiles, appliances, electronics—all crumbled, taking down with them the jobs and retirement savings of millions of Americans.

The Crash, in short, was not an episode of mass hysteria or panic; it represented a structural crisis in part rooted in the grossly unequal distribution of wealth in this society. When millions of Americans could no longer buy goods, industry had to stomp on the brakes.

And what is true in the United States of the unequal distribution of wealth, and of the consequences of that unequal distribution, is true again on a world scale. Nearly half the world’s population lives on $2 per day or less. This super-poor mass of humanity, from whose soil is ripped vast amounts of mineral and agricultural wealth, and out of whose labor the world’s manufactured goods increasingly come, are almost wholly excluded from participating in the world’s market economy.

These people, too, must depend upon debt, public debt in this case. More importantly, the survival of our world’s economic system, as it is currently configured, depends upon these people being both poor and indebted. But it is both the poverty and the debt which lead inexorably to the Crash.

It appears to me that Professor Shiller’s antidote to a second dip economic crisis lies in our all feeling better about the world economic system. Even before the Crash of 2008, however, that system self-evidently had failed the great majority of people on this planet. I would suggest that the real preventative to an extension or deepening of this crisis, and the only answer to the ongoing crisis which has been confronting poor people for a very long time, lies in a more equitable national and international distribution of wealth.

Photo: Bill Burke, courtesy AFL-CIO, Flickr, cc by 2.0

The New/Old Dismal Science: An Investigation into Recent US Economic Development

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:27:00 +0000

[Chart 1]

Recent performance by the US economy is dismally poor. Our experience in the last decade is similar to Japan's "lost" decade. A bellwether of the American economy illustrates how bad things are: the Standard and Poor's price index of 500 large-cap US stocks is down 18 percent this decade (2001-2010), even when unadjusted for inflation. The causes of this development follow below, but lie ultimately in the pursuit of economic policies since the early 1980s that derive from a selfish distortion of classically liberal (i.e., free-market, capitalist) economic theory.

After World War 2, economic policymakers used Keynesian tools to moderate market volatility. These appeared to generate stability and growth until the 1970s, when inflation and low economic growth occurred simultaneously. Initially, in response to stagflation, policymakers continued to pursue Keynesian policies, evidenced by President Nixon's statement that "I am now a Keynesian in economics." However, reactionary ideologues used the crisis of stagflation to usher in a new-old age of laissez-faire economics under President Reagan. These policies served the richest of Americans very well, but left ruin in the wider economy and for many Americans.

Beginning in 1981-82, the share of value added in the business sector, net of capital consumption, received by American workers drastically declined (see chart #1,) even as more Americans entered the workforce (see chart #2.) These two trends are the origin of enormous profits earned during the last three decades by wealthy elites – through greater labor participation and much lower sharing of production with workers.

Increasing volatility and crises have occurred because of a return to distorted, classically liberal economic policy. Economic depression, once regarded as a vanquished demon, has again raised its head high. One measure of increased volatility, the standard deviation in the S&P 500 price index, is 15 times greater for the period 1981-2010 than 1950-1980. Growing instability, rising inequality, and economic crisis are the direct fruits of our economic zeitgeist.

An important question is why a selective reading of classical economics was misapplied to conditions in the late-Twentieth Century. When Adam Smith, regarded by many as the founder of classical economics, presented his analysis in 1776, his ideas were progressive, even ideologically revolutionary, in a discipline dominated by mercantilist thinking. His prescriptions for the economy were poison to the old aristocracy and merchant classes throughout Europe. His analysis heralded a freer era to what came before. In the second half of the Twentieth Century, however, a revival of a very narrow and crude interpretation of his work brought back economic diseases that were for a time seemingly cured.

The answer to the riddle, "Why discredited economic policy became fashionable?” lies in the motivation for creating a new economic dogma. On the one hand, during the decades following World War 2, most Americans achieved a measure of prosperity they never thought possible during the Great Depression and Second World War; on the other hand, the wealthiest Americans did not see their relative wealth and power grow abundantly, even though in both absolute and relative terms it was overwhelmingly preponderant. As tyranny cannot tolerate anything but its own growth in power, the modern US economic aristocracy subsidized intellectual and political reaction to achieve greater power and status. What began among intellectuals in academia became political action in the '70s and '80s through generous funding by wealthy elites. The sole economic policy tool for this movement is lower tax rates for the wealthiest minority of Americans. This should surprise few, considering its paymasters.

The new economic ideology, like all dogmas an extremely narrow reading of texts, is ostensibly grounded in classic liberalism. Yet Adam Smith in his lifetime foresaw many problems that economically powerful groups could create in a liberal society. In addition, he specifically identified the source of prosperity and profits as labor, like most, if not all, classical economists. His recommendation for government revenue was a progressive tax on those most able to pay (the wealthy), since they received the most benefit from a well-governed society. Obviously, these are not ideas cited by the creators of the currently reigning economic dogma.

[Chart 2]

Most supporters of this recent reaction advocate policies that provide them no benefit. As the economic theory behind reaction escapes all but a few of its supporters, a plebian myth of social Darwinism generates mass appeal and electoral success: the (white, Anglo-Saxon, male) Protestant work ethic. This myth requires very selective readings from traditions in the early Christian church because these traditions overwhelmingly supported the poorest in Jewish, Greek, or Roman society against their wealthy elites. Ironically, the Roman state executed the purported source of much tradition in Western civilization, Jesus of Nazareth, for political reasons (sedition against Rome and the interests of its power elites.) To those who support the current economic dogma in the erroneous belief that it is somehow religiously ordained, a closer reading of Christian texts with an open mind might set you free.

In short, pursuit of economic policies in support of a very small minority has reduced many to misery. History may not be doomed to repeat itself, but resurrected policies that proved to be failures in the 1920s and '30s have produced the same results again in recent decades. It is important to remember this because the economic aristocracy will always be willing to throw its wealth and power behind these same, dismal policies. For it is only through continued, misplaced belief by many in a manufactured, reactionary ideology that these ruinous economic policies can continue. The plain truth is that dangerous inequality in wealth will grow more unequal given exponential growth left under minority control. Economic data show the big lie of trickle-down economics for what it is: a policy generated by economic elites to increase their economic power. Until the American people awaken from their complacent, coma-like slumber, little will change. Sweet dreams to the wealthy.

Book Review: Getting America Back to Work

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:26:00 +0000

Getting America Back to Work
by Stewart Acuff and Richard A. Levins
Featuring the Editorial Cartoons of Steve Sack
Tasora Books, Minneapolis, 2010

The authors of Getting America Back to Work do more than explain how to create jobs. They also propose some basic reforms that would fundamentally alter how America works, greatly improve the standard of living of working families, and shift power and privilege from what they call the financial elite to the vast majority of working families.

Stewart Acuff is the former national organizing director for the AFL-CIO and currently works as chief of staff for the Utility Workers Union of America. Richard A. Levins is a professional economist. Their book is concise and readable. It explains the causes of the Great Recession that began in 2007 and provides a clear road map to a better working economy and a more democratic society. Though brief, it is an excellent guide to strategic thinking about practical solutions for the current economic crisis.

The authors show, step by step, how the financial elite and their corporate-funded political allies caused the Great Recession. First, beginning in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan, there came the drive to weaken unions, push down wages, and roll back worker protections and benefits, all of which created serious financial and political problems for the working class. To boost profit margins, company executives fought to shift costs to workers, to make taxpayers bear the risks and costs of crisis and privatize profit and benefits.

Working families found themselves increasingly struggling to make ends meet. But now when they were forced to turn to the public sector in search of a safety net, they found that anti-government politicians were working to unravel that as well. Under the guise of relieving the "tax burden," right-wing politicians pushed for cuts in public education, health care funding, job-training and other basic necessities that have traditionally kept working families from hitting rock bottom in times of trouble.

In describing this course of events, Acuff and Levins effectively debunk the claim that reducing taxes for the richest Americans leads to greater investment in the economy. It simply doesn't happen. Tax breaks for big corporations and the wealthy just give them more money to hoard or pay out in dividends to shareholders.

In addition, the financial elite pushed a so called "free trade" agenda that opened the flood gates for the flight of manufacturing jobs out of the country in pursuit of the cheapest labor markets. While supporters of the move insisted this plan was good for business and therefore good for America, they cannot provide a satisfactory defense for the devastating harm it has caused working families and the thousands of communities that depend for their survival on a strong manufacturing sector.

Meanwhile, corporate executives and the very wealthy have gotten even richer. Their incomes have grown, while their share of taxes has fallen and their influence over government has increased. Today, a veritable army of lobbyists swarms over Capitol Hill to protect their interests against the very different needs of working families. As a result, even though productivity and profits have soared in the decades following the Reagan years, wages and benefits have flat-lined. In fact, since 2000, most working families saw losses in their take-home pay.

Anti-government, pro-big-business politicians, almost exclusively Republicans, have fought to dismantle the regulatory power of government as well. Under the Bush administration the general rule was to put former corporate executives in charge of the very agencies that regulate their industries – and then look the other way. Financial deregulation has allowed the big banks and brokerage firms to swindle working Americans out of their homes and retirement savings for years. Environmental and safety deregulation facilitated the corporate crimes that caused the loss of life at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine and BP's Deepwater Horizon rig, followed by the unprecedented ecological and economic catastrophe that has struck the Gulf States. There are countless other examples of what deregulation has wrought in terms of food safety, clean water standards, and workplace accidents and deaths.

Only when the crash of 2007 hit, sounding the death knell for the Bush regime and Reaganomics, did the government finally move into action. Not for working families, of course, but to help prop up the banks and financial institutions that had caused the disaster in the first place. Meanwhile, the needs of the millions of workers who had lost their jobs in the previous seven years were ignored.

This underscores one of the biggest ironies – hypocrisies really – of the right-wing ideological machine. Its theorists demand that the federal government refrain from any interference in the economy and keep out of people's affairs. But when big banks or big oil companies are in trouble, they are the first to demand that taxpayers foot the bill for a big government role in solving the crisis. But when the crisis has abated (for the banks and big corporations, at least) they act as if neither they nor the American people have learned anything from their reckless and criminal practices, and quickly revert to demanding that the government stay out of their affairs.

Simply put, they want "government socialism" to protect them when they are in trouble, and unrestrained capitalism when times are good. As for working families, they're always on their own.

Acuff and Levins offer a realistic alternative to this schizophrenic system. Instead of "free trade" policies, they say, let's invest in manufacturing in the US, especially in the emerging "green economy," to build the products and create the jobs we desperately need here at home. Millions of jobs could be created and many communities revitalized by such a simple step. Instead of viewing taxes as a "burden," they add, we should view them as the best means to provide meaningful and useful public services – things like affordable health and educational systems, infrastructure repair, environmental defense, workplace safety, and police and fire protection. The rich, especially, have a responsibility to pay their fair share.

Above all, as Acuff and Levins point out, building a bigger and stronger labor movement is essential to improving the lives of working families. Laws that protect the right of workers to join or organize unions and win better wages and benefits need to be on the books and actively enforced. Congress therefore needs to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. When it becomes the law of the land, EFCA will give workers the power to decide which organizations they want to join and reduce the illegal interference and harassment employers use to block unionization.

As Acuff and Levins note, from the 1950s to the late 1970s, about one-in-three workers were unionized. This meant that working people held more power in the workplace, in their communities, and in the country at large. During this period the economy, for the most part, was robust, and American workers made the things we used – and there was no NAFTA to promote the shipping of American jobs to cheap-labor markets overseas. In those days, when economic crises occurred, most union working families had some savings, the prospect of returning to work, good pension plans, quality health benefits, and a strong social safety net to fall back on in tough times. Today, as 90 percent of workers lack union protections and the safety net has been gutted, when the latest crisis struck on Bush's watch in 2007, it quickly became the worst recession since the Great Depression.

We have a choice. We can continue to submit to the will of the financial elite and their political allies in a long and steady decline, or, as Acuff and Levins write, "we can bargain our way out of poverty, we can bargain the meanness out of work, we can bargain for wages that restore our buying power, and we can once again have an economy that works for ordinary Americans."

Such a change requires a major shift in values, so that "our values, not the values of greed and short-term profits, can once again guide our country."

The Political Activism of Karl Marx

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:25:00 +0000

Mention the name Karl Marx and most people will conjure an imagine a gray long-haired, bearded man hunched over piles of books and papers in the London Library. This is, of course, an accurate image of much of what occupied Karl Marx’s life, not only the writing of his masterwork “Capital” but a body of work which was to become the basis for a global movement for socialism. Yet Marx was more than just a specter haunting the reading rooms of the London library. He was also actively engaged in many of the earliest struggles of the communist movement in which he played such a vital role.

One of his earliest forays into political activity was as a radical journalist. In 1842, at the age of 24 Marx became the editor of Neue Rheinische Zeitung, As a result of Marx’s fiery articles opposing Prussian authoritarianism the paper was suppressed by the authorities. After the closing of NRZ Marx made his way to Paris in 1843 where he edited Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher. He hoped to open up new lines of communication between French Communists and the German left Hegelians with this new effort. The publication did not last long, however. Only one issue appeared ,and it failed to open the lines of communication Marx had hoped to develop.

It was also during this time in Paris that Marx made what would become his lifelong friendship with Friedrich Engels. Engels would become Marx’s closest collaborator and confidant. Engles would also financially support Marx and his family through much of the rest of their lives.

For his journalism and political activism, Marx was expelled from Paris in 1844. He spent the next three years in Brussels. During this time he became a member of the Communist League. It was during a conference of the Communist League in 1847 that Marx and Engels were appointed to write a short and accessible document stating the Position of the CL. The resulting work appeared in 1848 when Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto. “The Manifesto” would become the most popular exposition of the principles of socialism as developed by Marx and Engels during their time in the Communist League. It remains a statement of the core principles of socialism to this day.

In 1848 Marx found himself, once again, in Paris. There he attempted to revive Neue Rheinische Zeitung. The Communist League by this time had all but collapsed allowing Marx to devote his full attention to the publication of the new NRZ. It was also during this period that Marx began a newly intensified study of political economy which would lead ultimately to “Capital,” Marx’s masterwork and, arguably, the best exposition on the nature and function of capitalism ever penned.

It would seem clear from this brief survey of Marx’s early political activity that he was anything but an isolated academic. His work on Neue Rheinische Zeitung and Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher represented more than simple radical journalism. At the age of 24 Marx had managed to intimidate and politically unnerve some of the most powerful and reactionary people and institutions in Europe. This lead to repeated expulsions from France and German. Finally, he found himself exiled in London. He would spend the rest of his life there. He died on March 14, 1883 at the age of 64.

It is interesting to note that early in his career, even with the multiple pressures of his radical journalistic projects, the constant expulsions and uprooting of his life Marx managed to pen one of his most important contributions to socialist theory; “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844." Even work on “Capital” which is generally considered his magnum opus was repeatedly interrupted and delayed because of his work in the First International. The first volume of Capital would not see publication until 1867. The latter two volumes would be published by Engels after his death.

Marx was elected to the general council of the first international in 1864. He became especially active in preparing for the International’s annual congresses as well as leading the struggle against Mikail Bakunin who was the leading political and theoretical voice of the Anarchists within the International.

Even in the final years of his life with his health failing and unable to do the kind of sustained work that characterized his life up until then he remained active in contemporary politics. He wrote “A Critique of the Gotha Program” which started out as a letter to Eisenach faction of the German social democratic movement (Which Marx and Engels supported) in 1875. The critique was a polemic against Wilhelm Liebknect and August Bebel, both of whom considered themselves followers of Marx. In the Critique Marx attacks their position of compromise with Ferdinand Lasalle Lassalle was an advocate of state socialism and Liebknect and Bebel felt without a compromise the socialist party would be unable to maintain unity. Critique of the Gotha program is thought by many to be Marx’s clearest exposition on practical politics.

Marx’s life and work serves as an example to both activists and theoreticians. He showed that in the pursuit of radical political change both action and theory depend on each other in their mutual attempts to understand and change the world. Marx was a living embodiment of revolutionary praxis.

Contradiction as Source of Structure and Development in Nature, Society, and Thought

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:23:00 +0000

In developing the dialectical- and historical-materialist worldview, Marx and Engels found it necessary to test its appropriateness as a universally scientific methodology in the spheres of nature, society, and thought:

The fact that our subjective thought and the objective world are subject to the same laws, and, hence, too, that in the final analysis they cannot contradict each other in their results, but must coincide, governs absolutely our whole theoretical thought. It is the unconscious and unconditional premise for theoretical thought (Engels 1987b, 544).

Scientific activity represents the dialectical unity of theory and practice. One aspect of this activity is the theoretical description of the structural development of material systems (in the social, biological, and physical spheres). This, of course, includes the investigation of the laws governing the motion and development of the system on specific levels of organization. In their intensive research activities, scientists often introduce fundamental concepts intuitively, without the conscious appreciation of their dialectical nature. This paper will explore the various ways in which dialectical oppositions, for which we have the philosophical term contradictions, form the basis for the existence of structures and the processes of development that these structures undergo. Familiarity with the various ways in which contradictions enter into the stability and development of material systems can serve as an important methodological tool for further scientific investigation.

To discuss contradictions as a source of structure and development, it will be useful to start with a few comments about the relationships expressed by the term structure. According to Hörz et al. (1980, 47), by structure we understand the totality of essential and nonessential, general and particular, necessary and contingent relations among the elements of a system in a definite interval of time. The term structure is generally used to denote the stable aspect of a system. The stability is always relative, determined by the time interval over which the system’s elements and relations show no significant qualitative change. [1]

The formulation of Hörz et al. is by no means exhaustive, as is the case with any statement about philosophical categories. For example, there is a hierarchical aspect implicit in every material structure, and the theoretical description of structures must also embrace this aspect. Analysis, however, must start at some level of organization and integration of a material system, so that we can include among “elements” the various hierarchically organized substructures. Then we can say that systems are characterized by the complex of elements and the relations among them. Thus, fundamental to the characterization of a system is the characterization of its elements and the relations among them. The elements and relations are examined first in terms appropriate to a given level. The connections to higher and lower levels of organization then also have to be examined to extract the fuller essence of the relations.

The need to examine the dialectical interconnections that unite elements and relations is readily seen when one tries to probe the content of fundamental concepts. In Newtonian mechanics, the principal elements to which the laws of motion refer are approximations of physical bodies; in particular, they are point masses (or mass points). This reduction of physical bodies to point masses was not postulated explicitly by Newton, but follows from his laws of motion. Newton’s first law (the law of inertia) did not allow for a body wobbling or twisting as it underwent inertial motion. Newton’s law of inertia postulates certain space and time relations for these bodies. Newton accepted the a priori existence of absolute space and time independently of these bodies or elements. We know today that these postulations about space and time are devoid of physical content. Nevertheless, Newton’s laws of motion were of great scientific importance and are still an adequate representation of the behavior of physical systems for a wide range of practical situations. Therefore the space and time of Newtonian mechanics must have had a physical content that had not been recognized by Newton. Since these laws involve the concepts of space and time, which cannot have an a priori meaning, the physical basis of these concepts is established by the manner in which they enter the laws and the way the laws appropriate the properties of the physical world. In other words, the nature of the elements of a system and the relations among them cannot at all be embraced independently of one another. When we say that “a” stands in some relation to “b” (symbolically aRb), we are introducing two “objects” – the elements and the relations—neither of which can arise as concepts independently, that is, without one another. Elements are distinct from relations; but the concept elements cannot arise without the existence of relations. The existence of elements is conditioned by the existence of relations and conversely. Elements and relations are therefore mutually exclusive and mutually conditioning. Hence they constitute a dialectical unity. This unity arises on both the logical and material levels. The deeper logical and material content of the elements and the relations is expressed through the laws that embrace them. The fundamental laws of the natural and social sciences bring out the material content of the elements and relations when the laws are associated structurally with material systems in nature and society.

Consider, for example, the physical property mass. In Newton’s laws, the magnitude of the mass is specified as the relationship between a force and the acceleration that results from the application of that force; but force, in turn, is that which causes a change in velocity. [2] Accelerated motion is thus placed in contrast with inertial (unaccelerated) motion, neither of which can be comprehended without the other, nor independently of the concepts of force and mass. Mass, therefore, enters Newtonian mechanics in the form of a dialectical unity of accelerated and unaccelerated motion as expressed in the first law (law of inertia) and the second law (force equals the product of mass and acceleration). Mass, force, uniform motion, and accelerated motion are thus found to be specialized categories of mechanics, and, as is the case with all philosophical categories, none of them can be defined independently of the other categories. As categories, these physical concepts and properties can only be understood through their mutually conditioned and mutually exclusive relationships to one another, which are disclosed in the process of investigation of the laws embracing them—and these laws not only embrace them, but arise together with them. In the case of mechanics, it was only after the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry by Lobachevsky and, independently of him, by Bolyai that it became apparent that Newton’s a priori notions of space and time had to be abandoned, and that, as Riemann’s work suggested, a physical basis for establishing an appropriate geometry is needed. Newtonian mechanics was a logically consistent theory because Newton, unknowingly, gave us the physical basis for a straight line: a straight line is the trajectory of a physical body produced by inertial motion (Marquit 1990b, 869). To the extent that Newtonian mechanics is an adequate approximation of physical reality, this criterion of straightness is also adequate. We have here an example of the deeply dialectical content of Newton’s laws, although Newton, despite his genius, was unable to recognize this content.

In political economy, Marx unraveled the mystery of the exchange value of a commodity. Here we have a case in which dialectical thinking was consciously applied in research and the clarity that resulted from this consciously dialectical approach is so remarkable that Marx’s Capital is still regarded as contemporary, and not simply historical, scientific literature. According to the law of value discovered by Marx, the exchange value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labor time embodied in its production. Marx pointed out that while a commodity is a product of the concrete labor of its producer, this concrete labor “ranks as, and is directly identified with, undifferentiated human labour,” and it therefore ranks as identical to any other sort of labor.

Consequently, although, like all other commodity-producing labour it is the labour of private individuals, yet at the same time, it ranks as labour directly social in character.... [T]he labour of private individuals takes the form of its opposite, labour directly social in form. (Marx 1996, 69)

The exchange value of a commodity finds its quantitative expression through the law of value. Its qualitative side finds expression both through the law of value and through its dialectical opposite, use value, without which no object can be a commodity. A commodity is produced because it can be exchanged. It is exchanged for other commodities because of its use value. In Marx’s words: “use value becomes the form of manifestation, the phenomenal form of its opposite exchange value” (1996, 66). At this stage of his exposition, Marx had not yet come to the discussion of the relationship between price and value. Actually it is not value, but price that is the phenomenal expression of exchange value. While price can be measured directly – by direct observation in the marketplace—exchange value, which, in general, is different from price, cannot be measured directly. What is being said here is in sharp contrast with various empiricist views asserting that fundamental properties are first established by observation (for example, in the form of operational definitions denoting the procedures by which the observation is to be carried out) and that the laws describing the relationships among these properties are then established by further observation and theoretical deduction.

At the basis of the usual logical structure of a hypothetico-deductive system is the postulation of the existence of elements and categories of relations among them. These are the fundamental notions or concepts of the system. The elements and relations are then combined in more specific form as axioms (or laws) from which the theorems are derived. When we are dealing with objectively existing material systems, or generalizations of them, the elements, relations, and axioms are not the result of arbitrary mental activity, but are reflections of the material characteristics of the system. Although in the logical structure of the system, the elements, relations, and the axioms embracing them form a hierarchy in that order, ontologically and epistemologically they are mutually conditioning, as our examples have shown, and therefore they arise together, as if lifting themselves together by a common bootstrap, rather than arising one after the other. Moreover, as we pass from one level to another, elements can go over into their dialectical opposites—that is, into relations—just as relations can pass over into elements (Uemov 1963, ch. 4). For example, in physics the field concept was introduced to describe a relationship between an object and the space in which it is located. Thus an electric field represents the force on a charged particle at a given spatial position. On another level, the field acquires all the attributes of physical matter: mass, momentum, relative localization, and so on—that is, it becomes a physical object.

The recognition that categories become transformed into their opposites as we go from one structural level to another is essential for the recognition of the hierarchical structure of systems. The role played by the economic basis of society in Marx’s basic law of social development cannot be understood without this recognition. Thus the level of development of the forces of production is the essential content of the stage of development of a given socioeconomic formation. The relations of production represent the form in which this content is put to work. This form, however, becomes the content in relation to the superstructure, the latter being the form in which the relations of production are maintained relatively stable as the productive forces develop. Marx used the term economic basis of society to distinguish the different categorical role of the relations of production in relation to the superstructure from their role in relation to the forces of production.

With this brief discussion about the role of dialectical processes in the emergence of fundamental concepts associated with a system (or its reflection in theory), I can now proceed to questions related to stability and development. In particular, I shall consider the role of contradictions in the moments of motion, stability, growth, and transformation of a system. At first glance, it might seem that stability should precede motion in this discussion. It can be argued, however, that stability is subsumed under the concept of law-governed change (motion), just as rest in Newtonian mechanics is subsumed under the concept of uniform motion (constant velocity). Therefore stability and motion are not properly a set of objectively occurring dialectical opposites when we are dealing with the overall process of development. On the other hand, at a particular stage in the development of the system, stability and change do confront each other as opposites and their interpenetration must be examined dialectically.

Motion in physics

Aristotle expressed motion in its most general terms as the realization of the potential, that is, as the dialectical transition of the potential into the actual. Motion is thus seen in two different dialectical aspects: as the transition from a potential state of being into an actual state and as the passage from one state of being into another state of being. The latter can also be formulated as the leaving of one state and the entering into another. Here we face a new opposition, one between the existence of states and the transition between them. Fundamental to the dialectical worldview is the recognition that everything is in a continuing state of flux. Thus the dialectical view gives primacy to motion (that is, to transition), and looks upon states as being of a transitory nature. The dialectical view allows us to deal conceptually with the transitions between discretely separated states and still preserve the continuity of motion—for example, in the case of the radioactive decay of one isotope into another (Marquit 1978–79). The dialectical view contrasts sharply with the reductionist description of motion as a succession of states of rest (Salmon 1975, 41), the view, for example, held by Russell in his solution of Zeno’s paradox of the arrow. For the mathematization of certain motions such as a simple change of position in space, a view that reduces motion to a succession of positions (in essence, a succession of states of rest), gave us a powerful tool for the further study of motion of mechanical systems, but the recognition of its approximate character forced itself upon us as we descended into the microworld, where the quantum-mechanical representation of motion became necessary. The nature of the approximation embodied in motion as a succession of states of rest was, in effect, pointed out by Hegel when he wrote:

The difficulty is to overcome thought, for what makes the difficulty is always thought alone, since it keeps apart the moments of an object which in their separation are really united. (Hegel 1892, 274) [3]

Stability

The stability of a system is both absolute and relative, just as the boundary of a system is both relative and absolute. A system can be considered stable even when essential qualitative changes take place within it. In other words, some aspects of a system can remain stable while other aspects undergo transformation. A given chemical atom maintains its integrity even while taking part in various chemical reactions. A family retains its identity even with the birth and death of some of its members. The concept system is meaningless without the relative and absolute characters of the stability and boundaries of the system. If the relations among elements of the system had no stability whatsoever, then the elements would not have any relationship to one another at all, and one would be left with pure chaos – that is, elements without interconnections, the existence of which would violate the basic dialectical-materialist principle of universal interconnection. Stability is characterized by the essential structural elements remaining in qualitatively constant relations. The relative constancy of the relationship is what makes reduction possible as an approximation, that is, the separation of the system into parts for more detailed study. Every interconnection implies a relative separateness, for the very term interconnection denotes a bond between things that are separate. The nucleus of a cell has a stable relationship to the rest of the cell and, as a result, its characteristics can be studied, in part, separately from the cell as a whole. At the same time, a deeper comprehension of the nucleus requires restoration of its bonds with the rest of the cell so that its function in relation to the entire cell can be understood. The qualitative constancy of the relations does not imply quantitative constancy. Systems can have stability with or without quantitative change or relative motion. Systems that are stable without qualitative change are often said to be in equilibrium. Such equilibrium can have a relatively static character, such as a weight hanging motionless at the end of a spring. The sharing of state power by groups of finance capital in a given country, despite the conflict of interest among them, takes on the character of a static equilibrium over certain periods of time. Another type of equilibrium involves an oscillatory motion, such as a weight bobbing up and down at the end of a spring. Here we are dealing with motion without any qualitative change. This motion is not usually characterized as a state of equilibrium, but it is intermediate between static equilibrium and dynamic equilibrium. The latter occurs, for example, in the case of the population of a country when the number of deaths equals the number of births in, say, one year. Any system which repeatedly passes through the same state cannot be considered as undergoing growth or development over a period that goes beyond one cycle. Thus, concepts of qualitative change, growth, and development can have a relative character. In the life cycle of plants, the seeds germinate, the stalks grow, flower, and produce new seeds, yet unless the plant undergoes genetic change, we cannot speak of qualitative change (assuming constant environmental conditions) from generation to generation.

Since systems are always confronted by some state of motion, externally and internally, stability can never be understood in isolation from change, but must be comprehended as stability in face of change. The stability of a system has to be investigated by considering the opposite tendencies at work that give rise to the stability while tending to disrupt it. In fact, a frequently used method to investigate the stability of a system is to introduce a disturbance and examine its consequence. In the absence of qualitative change, the result is often an oscillation, which is another reason for considering an oscillating system to be in equilibrium.

In the general case, the condition of equilibrium resulting in stability is generally not an equal balance of opposites in every sense. It is not unusual for one tendency to play the qualitatively decisive role, even though the quantitative equality necessary for equilibrium implies a qualitative equality in some sense. For example, in the case of a mass suspended motionless from the end of a spring the active role in establishing the equilibrium is the force of gravity pulling downward on the mass, while the opposing tendency is the elastic force upward that arises from the stretching of the spring. As mechanical forces, both tendencies are quantitatively and qualitatively equal, while as elastic and gravitational forces they are qualitatively different. The possibility of a dominance of one tendency in an equilibrium situation is strikingly clear when one considers the capitalist socioeconomic formation. The dominance of the capitalist class over the working class in the superstructure ensures the relative stability of the capitalist relations of production. It may be argued that this illustration is not a suitable one, since we are in reality dealing with a system undergoing development. However, the fact that the system is undergoing development does not imply the absence of equilibria responsible for stability. I have already stressed that some aspects of every system remain stable as the system changes; otherwise there would be no sense in speaking about structure.

Growth

In considering the growth of a system, we can immediately discern two characteristic situations. In the first we are dealing with a system in which the relative strength of the principal contradictions that ultimately constitute the basis for the existence of the system changes quantitatively with a general unidirectional tendency. Hydrogen and helium stand in opposition to each other in the process of thermonuclear combustion that occurs in the sun. The hydrogen fuel is consumed in the production of helium. The combustion process results in the release of radiative energy that exerts sufficient outward pressure to prevent the inward collapse of the sun under the influence of the gravitational forces. In the maintenance of this equilibrium, the hydrogen is steadily depleted until a point is reached where the attractive gravitational forces become stronger than the repulsive forces and the system rapidly collapses—that is, it undergoes a rapid qualitative transformation. The unidirectional character of growth processes is also relative, and one or more reversals are possible at various stages of development. For example, in the case of the formation of the sun, the gravitational forces are believed responsible for the initial accretion of hydrogen in sufficient quantity for the thermonuclear combustion process to begin. Similarly, the accumulation of capital provides the material basis for the use of force by a capitalist state to preserve capitalist relations of production in the face of the resistance of workers to these relations. As capital accumulates, the relative strength of the working class also undergoes change and eventually becomes powerful enough to effect a change in the relations of production despite zigzags in the course of historical development and fluctuations in the relative strength of contradictions. Superimposed on these fluctuations are law-governed tendencies of quantitative changes that arise from the character of development of the system. These are the changes that lead to qualitative transformation of the system.

A second situation arises in which a secondary contradiction grows quantitatively to the point where it comes into conflict with the primary contradiction. In this case the further development of the system takes place as a result of the quantitative development of the new struggle of opposites. Under feudalism, the principal contradiction was between feudal lord and serf. It was not, however, the superior strength of the serfs in Europe that led to the breakup of the feudal order, but the strength of the growing capitalist sector, which, in turn, came into class conflict with the feudal sector.

The alliance between the bourgeoisie, the working class, and the feudal peasantry under the leadership of the bourgeoisie increased the strength of the antifeudal forces to the point where successful revolutions against feudalism were possible. In the formation of the chemical molecules the principal opposition arises between the negative charge of the electrons and the positive charge of the nucleus, mediated by the laws of quantum mechanics. Moving electric charges always give rise to magnetic fields, but these magnetic fields play a minor role in determining the structure of the lighter chemical atoms and molecules. As we build up atoms of increasing complexity, we reach a stage where the magnetic interactions resulting from certain electron configurations in the atoms become strong enough to be decisive for the molecular structures formed from the atoms. In other words, the interactions between opposite electric charges give rise to interactions between opposite magnetic polarities. These latter can grow in significance and finally dominate the behavior of the molecular system.

Transformation

Quantitative changes in processes of growth eventually lead to qualitative changes. In fact, any quantitative change is capable of producing a qualitative change. For example, a control system with a sufficiently sensitive detector can be triggered to produce a certain sequence of events that changes the quality of systems for any arbitrarily chosen quantitative change. Every qualitative change is a negation of the previous state – that is, what existed before exists no longer. Yet since we are not dealing with pure chaos, some connection remains between the old and new states. In other words, a thread of continuity unites the old with the new. We thus have a system transformed, that is, some degree of integrity is preserved, while its quality is negated. Hegel used the German term aufheben to describe this process of dialectical negation. In English we generally translate this as sublate, which in its Latin origin denotes both lift up and take away or annul, as does the German expression aufheben. Every qualitative change, therefore, has the character of sublation. The character of the negation can, of course, be quite different from case to case. As we go from the level of a gas as a system of molecules to the thermodynamic level, we go from a discrete structure to that of a continuous medium. The physical processes responsible for this transition are, of course, the proper subject matter of physics.

In the transition from capitalism to socialism, the dominance of the bourgeoisie over the working class is negated by the dominance of the working class over the bourgeoisie. The relations of domination and subordination are replaced by relations of cooperation and mutual assistance, again a clear negation into opposites. On the other hand, in the transition from feudalism to capitalism the relations of domination and subordination persist, since this transition is between one form of exploitative relations of production and another. It is not always the quantitative changes associated with one side of the principal contradiction characterizing a system during its entire existence that determine the further course of development. New contradictions can emerge and grow in significance, as I have already discussed in connection with the transition from feudalism to capitalism. What is obviously involved here is a change in the identity of the principal contradiction – from that between lord and serf to that between the capitalist mode of production and the feudal mode of production. The former contradiction remains important for the characterization and very existence of the socioeconomic formation, but it is no longer the contradiction that determines the nature of the qualitative changes that will follow. For this reason, the law of spiral development cannot be considered to be a unique consequence of the law of the negation of the negation. The negation of the negation does not always lead to the reappearance on a higher level of characteristics that occurred previously.

The nonexploitative relations of production in early communal societies were indeed negated by the emergence of exploitative relations of production. With the transition to socialism the nonexploitative relations emerge on a higher level. Here we are dealing with spiral development. This does not mean, however, that society is then doomed to the reemergence of exploitative relations. With the vanishing of the exploitative relations on a level of high technological development, the basis is laid for the vanishing of the very institution of private property. Although relations between people will continue to develop new forms, these developments will not involve property relations as such. The reemergence of previously occurring characteristics cannot be asserted as a general philosophical principle. Whether or not such reemergence occurs must be investigated within the individual sciences. This is what Marx did when he investigated the process of transition from capitalism to socialism, the results of which he then cited in his well-known passage in Capital:

Centralisation of the means of production and socialization of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of the negation. (Marx 1996, 751)

As another example of a succession of negations, let us consider the cooling of a gas, first, to the liquid phase and then cooled further until it forms a solid. In the first (or gas) phase, the individual molecules interact with each other during the brief moments of collision and otherwise move about independently of one another, although they are affected as a whole by the results of the numerous collisions, in the sense that the energy is distributed among the molecules in accordance with well-known statistical laws. In the liquid phase, the interaction with neighboring molecules dominates the physical behavior of the system, negating the relative independence of the molecules of the gaseous phase. The molecules, however, are not constrained to a fixed range of spatial relationships with their neighbors, and neighbors continually change partners. In the solid phase, the behavior is still largely conditioned by the interaction with neighbors, but the freedom of motion relative to the neighbors is negated and replaced by fixed spatial relationships to neighbors. The invoking of spiral development here is not appropriate. What then is the significance of the concept of spiral development in connection with the law of the negation of the negation? The concept of spiral development is a means of stressing that in the process of development of a system, certain essential characteristics, including the principal contradictions, can reappear; this reappearance does not indicate a circular process, but a process of progressive development in which the characteristic features of the system reemerge on a qualitatively different level. The law of the negation of the negation is the assertion of directional, that is, progressive, development. Spiral development, on the other hand, describes some processes, but does not have universal applicability and therefore should not be considered to be a law.

Processes of qualitative change have minor, as well as major, consequences for the system as a whole. A qualitative change can even result in the necessity for a redefinition of the system. A geological formation in a plain can grow and become, for example, a mountain range. Another formation can grow and then later erode, literally vanishing as a system in the rain and wind. Both processes are forms of dialectical negation. In the latter case, however, the boundaries of the system require modification if the continuing progress of development is to be followed. One part of the eroded formation, for example, could have been transformed into sediment in a riverbed and another part into desert sand, each, in turn, entering new geological systems. A proton and antiproton can give rise to the atom-like system called protonium. But instead of being stable like the hydrogen atom formed by a proton and an electron, this system is very short-lived, for in some fraction of a second the proton and antiproton annihilate each other and the products of the annihilation are radiated in different directions. Although the law of conservation of energy is not violated in the process, so that the energy of the system before annihilation is equal to the energy of the system immediately after annihilation, it makes no sense to speak of a system once the products of the annihilation are absorbed into other systems. History is full of examples where nation-states have been absorbed into other states and the populations assimilated or single states divided into two or more states that then follow separate historical paths.

In Marxist literature dealing with the social sphere, the terms antagonistic and nonantagonistic contradictions are often encountered. The contradiction between capitalists and workers is characterized as an antagonistic contradiction, since the resolution of the contradiction takes place through the destruction of the capitalist relations of production and therefore the capitalists vanish as a class. The contradiction between the peasantry and the workers is characterized as a nonantagonistic contradiction, since the resolution of the contradiction is not through the elimination of the peasantry as a class, but through the formation of a class alliance between the peasantry and the working class. The private property of the peasantry is gradually transformed into the property of the people as a whole through a number of intermediary stages (which can vary from country to country), but sooner or later through the formation of cooperatives or state farms. The distinction between antagonistic and nonantagonisitic contradictions in the social sphere can serve as a guide in the formation of social policies.

It is tempting to try to apply these concepts to the physical world, say, by treating the electron’s negative charge and the proton’s positive charge as a nonantagonistic contradiction – leading to the formation of chemical atoms—while treating the proton – antiproton contradiction as an antagonistic contradiction, since it leads to the annihilation of both (that is, to the transformation of both into something entirely different). This distinction adds nothing to our scientific knowledge but can only be made on the basis of knowledge already acquired. Similarly, the philosophical characterization of the relationship between certain biological species as antagonistic and nonantagonistic would be of no epistemological value. One could be tempted to apply these terms to symbiotic and parasitic relationships. The difference between the two relationships is more clearly expressed by the biological terms and with greater subtlety than the terms antagonistic and nonantagonistic. Thus the characterization of contradictions as antagonistic and nonantagonistic is not a distinction that carries over to the general philosophical level, but is specific to a specialized science.

In the foregoing discussion on transformation we see that we are dealing with a wide range of qualitative changes, some of which can have a minor effect on further development of the system and others that affect the deepest foundations of the system structure, even to the point of forcing a redefinition of the system. There have been proposals by Kharin to divide these into three groups: sublation, transformation, and destructive negation. (1981, 155–58) In the discussion above, arguments were made that all processes of dialectical negation have to be considered as sublation. Nevertheless, it could be useful to pursue Kharin’s attempts to develop further a classification of qualitative changes.

The value of dialectical materialism as a methodological tool in the individual sciences is not only that it provides a consistent philosophical framework for the formulation of scientific theory, but also that it stimulates the investigator to ask what processes might occur. These questions have to be given specific form within the particular field, based on extensive knowledge of that field. A philosophical characterization of processes of qualitative change can then be an initial, and important, step in the lengthy and detailed process of scientific investigation.

NOTES

1. For more detailed discussion, see Marquit 1980.
2. See Definition IV in Newton 1934, 2.
3. Engels’s paraphrasing in Anti-Dühring (1987a, 111) of Hegel’s “resolution” of Zeno’s paradox of the arrow led to a long-lasting, still persevering, and ideologically damaging illusion among many Marxists that dialectical contradictions could also be logical contradictions. See detailed discussion of this in Marquit 1990a.

REFERENCES

Engels, Frederick. 1987a. Anti-Dühring. In vol. 25 of Collected Works by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1–309.
———. 1987b. Dialectics of Nature. In vol. 25 of Collected Works, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 311–588. New York: International Publishers.
Hörz, Herbert et al., 1980. Philosophical Problems in Physical Science. Minneapolis: Marxist Educational Press, 1980.
Hegel, G. W. F. 1892. Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Vol. 1. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner,
Kharin, Yu. A. 1981. Fundamentals of Dialectics. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Marquit, Erwin. 1978–79. “Dialectics of Motion in Continuous and Discrete Spaces,” Science & Society 2, no. 4:410–25.
———. 1980. “Physical Systems, Structures, and Properties,” Science &Society 44, no. 2:15–76.
———. 1990a. “ Materialist Critique of Hegel’s Concept of Identity of Opposites. Science & Society 54, no. 2, 147–66.
———. 1990b. “A Plea for a Correct Translation of Newton’s Law of Inertia.” American Journal of Physics 58, no. 9:867–70.
Marx, Karl. 1996. Capital.Vol. I. Vol. 35 of Collected Works, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. New York: International Publishers.
Newton, Isaac, 1934. Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, edited by Florian Cajori. Vol. 1. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Uemov, A. I.. 1963. Veshchi, svoistva i otnosheniia [Things, Properties, and Relations]. Moscow: Izd. Akademii nauk SSSR. 1963. In Russian.
Salmon, Wesley C. 1975. Space, Time and Motion. Encino, CA: Dickenson.

Working-class Intellectuals

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:20:00 +0000

Editor's note: We have to take every opportunity to oppose what may be called the Sarah Palinization of working-class politics, that is the reduction of politics to sound bites, appeals to wedge issues and hate, and promotion of the idea that working people can't think for themselves. To help, here is an excerpted and slightly edited version of an article that originally appeared in Political Affairs, April 1977. Additional editor's comments appear in the text for definitions and additional context for today's reader. The purpose of republishing this article is to open a discussion on theory, what it is, why it is and must be rooted in our experiences within historically specific social relations, who is capable of developing it, and why it must have a working-class basis.

The Party has already entered the straight road of leadership of the working masses by advancing "intellectuals" drawn from the ranks of the workers themselves. -- Lenin

Many working people, especially in the capitalist world, go through life in the belief that the world of ideas, of theory and science, is beyond their ability to understand. They believe theory and science have very little to do with their everyday lives or activities. They accept the idea that the world of ideas, the realm of thought, is for intellectuals and professionals.

That, of course, is how the ruling class of all past and present exploitative societies have wanted it. They know that a class that thinks will not long accept exploitation or slavery. In all past exploitative societies book and schools were for the ruling-class elite. These elites were "ordained" to do the thinking for the working people. Such concepts, of course, reflect reality in societies where there is a sharp division between physical and mental labor.

U.S. capitalism has always promoted the concept that thinking should be limited to the chosen few. The capitalist class fought against the establishment of the public education system. They lost the battle but never gave up. They have continued their attempts to limit the number of students and as much as possible to limit the scope of education only to satisfying industry's technological requirements.

Educational restrictions have always been aimed against working-class youth. And there have always been special racist restrictions against Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano and other racially oppressed young people. The stubborn resistance to bilingual education is one current instance of this resistance. [Editor's note: Education activists, such as Jonathan Kozol, have long noted the class and racial divides in America that persist today. Though Hall wrote this in 1977, the battle to protect or extend bilingual education persists.]

After World War II, the government's education program for veterans opened the door to higher education to tens of millions of young working people. Now, however, it is attempting to close that door again. Today, state monopoly capitalism is continuing to enforce the policy of limiting the scope of education for the working class. [Editor's note: Hall's argument holds true for the 1970s as the Nixon administration repeatedly blocked efforts to boost GI Bill benefits for veterans of the Vietnam War. Congressional Democrats, along with strong support from veterans' organizations and the labor movement, in 2008 won a huge victory by overcoming Republican opposition to the expansion of college benefits for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with passage of the Post 9/11 GI Bill. Expansions of the bill's programs in 2009 under President Obama's economic recovery act also passed over Republican opposition. Obviously, these changes will prove to be a big step forward for hundreds of thousands of working-class men and women.]

But that is not the whole story. Because of the internal contradictions of capitalism, the advance of science and technology, and because of strong public demand, capitalism has not been able to keep the realms of thought, science and theory closed in the same way previous exploitative societies did. In this sense reality has changed. But many old notions and prejudices stubbornly resist the new reality. [Editor's note: The development of the Internet and new information technologies have proven these remarks ever more true today.]

This is an important question because a historic truth is being used by many to put over ideas that are not true, including the anti-working-class concept that working people are not able to think. For many the reflection of past realities has become the basis for a timeless, anti-working-class dogma.

One does not have to be a professional historian to realize that important changes have taken place which have their effects on the working class, such as the availability of mass public education and higher education, the higher rates of literacy in the industrialized countries and the mass publication of basic books. Even winning the eight-hour day has given workers more time for studying and thinking. The new level of mass communication, of science and technology has created new relationships between the broad masses and the world of theory and thought.

Many still hold to outdated and very narrow notions of what intellectuality is and who intellectuals are. Many cling to the old, elitist concept that only those who "think full-time" qualify. That, of course, conveniently disqualifies all who work with their hands.

Many intellectuals use the past reality to justify and sustain their prejudices that workers are not able to think. Even in some of the best circles this erroneous concept gives rise to attitudes of intellectual snobbishness or elitism. In many instances it gives rise to ideas that only people with professional training, or middle-class intellectuals, can or should lead working-class organizations.

This problem is not limited to the U.S., or to capitalist countries in general. There are reflections of this in the world Communist movement and it occasionally appears in Marxist-Leninist literature. However, it is necessary to state that, while not he surface the problem appears the same, in essence there is a difference.

In the non-capitalist world it is a leftover of old ideas. The following is a rather typical example of this kind of statement appearing in Marxist literature. As a rule it seems to appear without much thought. It is not defended, discussed or elaborated upon:

It must be borne in mind that in an exploitative society, where there is an impassable gulf between mental and manual labor, the classes whose lot is manual labor are unable as a rule to advance ideologists from their own ranks. Their ideologists most often are members of other classes who have enough time and money to get an education, and at the same time are capable of understanding in what direction history is moving.

Such a formulation, while having an element of historical truth, leaves the door wide open to all kinds of misinterpretations. It certainly does not indicate that there are and have been changes in class relationships and in the role of classes in society.

When referring to the working class, phrases like "are unable," combined with the implication that other classes "are capable of understanding in what direction history is moving," are unacceptable. If the working class is not "able" to provide people "from its own ranks" who "are capable of understanding in what direction history is moving," then it is not capable of providing people who are "capable" of understanding Marxism-Leninism. However, life proves otherwise every day.

With the advent of capitalism there emerged a new class – the working class, which in many ways is unique and to which history has assigned the unique task of the final elimination of all classes, including itself. A class that is capable of carrying out such a monumental task is more than capable of making contributions in the field of thought.

Even in the last century when the educational gap between manual workers and intellectuals was much greater, the advantage in grasping complicated ideas was not always on the side of intellectuals. For example, as Engels noted in his Introduction to Marx's Wage Labor and Capital: "The uneducated workers, who can be easily made to grasp the most difficult economic analyses, excel our supercilious 'cultured' folk, for whom such ticklish problems remain insoluble for their whole life long."

The question of theory/science and its relationship to the working class must be dealt with in present-day terms. It can not be approached as a timeless cliche.

As the working class matures and develops and as it fulfills its historic assignment, two processes take place. The first is that the class struggle and the working class become increasingly greater influences in molding a new type of intellectual: an intellectual who, although not of working-class background, is a working-class partisan. An outstanding example of this kind of intellectual is John Reed, a founder of our Party, who was described by Mike Gold in these words: "He identified himself so completely with the working class. He undertook every danger for the revolution. He forgot his Harvard education, his genius, his popularity, his gifted body and mind, so completely that no one else remembered them anymore. There is no gap between Jack Reed and the workers any longer."

The second process is that the working class is increasingly producing new working-class intellectuals from among its own ranks.

It must be kept in mind not to confuse the role of the intellectual with the role of a vanguard working-class revolutionary party. The task of such a party was defined clearly by Lenin: "The task of the proletarian party is to introduce socialist consciousness into the spontaneous working-class movement, to impart to it a conscious nature."[Editor's note: The concept of "vanguard role" is a complicated one. It deserves new thinking. We do not adhere – and never did – to the pseudo-political idea that a small group of people who hold some special insights into the nature of society will cause some revolutionary break with capitalism. Change will come when tens of millions of people vote in new ways, build the power of the labor movement and working class, and create new or renew existing democratic institutions that shift power away from banks, oil companies, military contractors, etc. to working families.]

How well the Communist Party fulfills this task in a planned, organized way is a very basic measure of how it fulfills its vanguard role and how well it helps to prepare the working class for more advanced struggles. This task is fulfilled by parties in which the cadre who come from working-class backgrounds and those whom from non-working-class backgrounds blend into one Communist, working-class revolutionary/intellectual collective.

Therefore, the concept of introducing class and socialist consciousness "not the spontaneous working-class movement" must not be interpreted to mean that this can be done only by intellectuals of non-working-class origins and status.

There are many significant changes that must be taken into consideration when dealing with the questions of intellectuals and the working class.

The birth and building of socialism in the world has added a new – a qualitatively new – element to this question, because the working class in socialist societies is the dominant influence, not only in everyday political affairs but also in the development of theory and science. As socialism does away with differences between mental and physical activities, it is also removing the barriers which have prevented worker from making their full contribution int he field of thought and ideas.

In the socialist countries the working class is doing what Karl Marx and Frederick Engels said, in The Holy Family it would be forced to do. The working class "cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of society today which is summed up in its own situation."

The effects of the changes in the socialist countries are felt worldwide. This is a very important new factor, a new influence on the development of intellectuals from the ranks of the working class. The example of the historic achievements of societies where the working class is the leading force acts as a source of confidence for workers, a stimulant to enter the area of ideas, of theory and of science.

The Communist parties have made unique and historic contributions to opening up the world of thought, the world of theory and science, to workers. The Communist parties are themselves schools for the development of intellectuals with a partisan class viewpoint.

As capitalism decays, the capitalist class becomes less and less the basis for the development of intellectuals with a healthy social consciousness, and even less so for intellectuals with a partisan working-class consciousness. Life has shifted that historic responsibility to the working class.

As working-class parties, Communists parties are a factor in helping the working class carry out that responsibility.

The idea that the working class is not able to develop intellectuals from its own ranks is turned into a coverup for anti-working-class concepts.

In some cases this weakness leads to situations where middle-class, professional intellectuals tend to take over and hog the leadership of Communist parties in capitalist countries. Often they use the words "class struggle" and "the working class" as cliches, but take not steps to make it possible for the working-class cadre of these parties to be a factor in policy decisions. [Editor's note: "cadre" refers to party activists.]

Such leaders are not willing to accept the leading role of the working class in the field of thought or in their parties. They dilute the concept of class struggle. They downgrade the historic role of the working class. They eliminate the working class in the struggle for socialism and they do not think the working class is able to produce an intellectual.

The time has come to bury the idea that the working class is unable to think. In fact, Marxism-Leninism is a science so closely related to the rise of the working-class movement that eliminate the working class as a basic influence and participant in the further development of the science is like eliminating the heart in a living being.

The historic role of the working class was clearly placed by Marx and Engels: "Before the proletariat fights out its victories on the barricades and in the lines of battle, it gives notice of its impending rule with a series of intellectual victories."

Many errors in the history of our Party can be traced to periods when there was a lack of working-class participation in the leadership of the Party. The history of the world Communist movement argues for greater participation of workers in the field of theory and science. It is time to drop concepts and cliches that do not correspond to the new realities of this period of history.

Photo by Bill Burke, courtesy AFL-CIO, Flickr, cc by 2.0

Art on the Frontline: Mandate for a People's Culture

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:17:00 +0000

Editor's note: The following originally appeared in Political Affairs, March 1985. It is intended as part of an ongoing discussion of theory. Here the author addresses some aspects of this question through the lens of culture.

In 1951, Paul Robeson made the following declaration at a conference in New York organized around the theme of equal rights of Negroes in the arts, sciences and professions:

There are despoilers abroad in our land, akin to those who attempted to throttle our Republic at its birth. Despoilers who would have kept my beloved people in unending serfdom, a powerful few who blessed Hitler as he destroyed a large segment of a great people….

All [the] millions of the world stand aghast at the sight and the name of America – but they love us; they look to us to help create a world where we can all live in peace and friendship, where we can exchange the excellence of our various arts and crafts, the manifold wonders of our mutual scientific creations, a world where we can rejoice at the unleashed power of our innermost selves, of the potential of great masses of people. To them we are the real America. Let us remember that.

And let us learn how to bring to the great masses of the American pope our culture and our art. For in the end, what are we talking about when we talk about American culture today? We are talking about a culture that is restricted to the very, very few. How many workers ever get to the theatre? I was in concerts for 20 years, subscription concerts, the two thousand seats gone before any Negro in the community, and workers, could even hear about a seat….Only by going into the trade unions and singing on the picket lines and in the struggles for the freedom of our people – only in this way could the workers of this land hear me. [1]

More than three decades later, this problem articulated by Paul Robeson still remains one of the main challenges facing progressive artists and political activists: How do we collectively acknowledge our popular cultural legacy and communicate it to the masses of our people, most of whom have been denied access to the social spaces reserved for art and culture? In the United States, a rich and vibrant tradition of people's art has emerged from the history of labor militancy and the struggles of Afro-Americans, women and peace activists. It is essential that we explore that tradition, understand it, reclaim it, and glean from it the cultural nourishment that can assist us in preparing a political and cultural counteroffensive against the regressive institutions and ideas spawned by advanced monopoly capitalism.

As Marx and Engels long ago observed, art is a form of social consciousness – a special form of social consciousness that can potentially awaken an urge in those effected by it to creatively transform their oppressive environments. Art can function as a sanitizer and a catalyst, propelling people toward involvement in organized movements seeking to effect radical social change. Art is special because of its ability to influence feelings as well as knowledge. Christopher Caudwell, the British Communist who wrote extensively on aesthetics, once defined the function of art a the socializing of the human instincts and the education of the human emotions:

Emotion, in all its vivid coloring, is the creation of ages of culture acting on the blind, unfeeling instincts. All art, all education, all day-to-day social experience, draw it out … and direct and shape its myriad phenomena. [2]

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation. While not all progressive art need be concerned with explicitly political problems – indeed, a love song can be progressive if it incorporates a sensitivity toward the lives of working-class women and men – I want to specifically explore overt sociopolitical meanings in art with the purpose of defining the role art can play in hastening social progress.

Because the history of Afro-American culture reveals strong bonds between art and the struggle for Black liberation, it holds important lessons for those who are interested in strengthening the bridges between art and people's movements today. Of all the art forms historically associated with Afro-American culture, music has played the greatest catalytic role in awakening social consciousness in the community. During the era of slavery, Black people were victims of a conscious strategy of cultural genocide, which proscribed the practice of virtually all African customs with the exception of music. If slaves were permitted to sing as they toiled in the fields and to incorporate music into their religious services, it was because the slaveocracy failed to grasp the social function of music in general and particularly the central role music played in all aspects of life in West African society. As a result, Black people were able to create with their music an aesthetic community of resistance, which in turn encouraged and nurtured a political community of active struggle for freedom. This continuum of struggle, which is at once aesthetic and political, has extended from Harriet Tubman's and Nat Turner's spirituals through Bessie Smith's "Poor Man's Blues" and Billie Holliday's "Strange Fruit," through Max Roach's "Freedom Suite," and even to the progressive raps on the popular music scene of the 1980's.

With the Afro-American spiritual, a language of struggle was forged that was easily understood by the slaves as it was misinterpreted by the slaveholders. While the slaveocracy attempted to establish absolute authority over the slaves' individual and communal lives, the spirituals were both causes and evidence of an autonomous political consciousness. These songs formed the complex language that both incorporated and called forth a deep yearning for freedom. When the slaves sang, "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel and Why Not Every Man?", the utilized religious themes to symbolize their own concrete predicament and their own worldly desire to be free. When they sang "Sampson Tore the Building Down," they made symbolic reference to their desire to see the oppressive edifice of slavery come crashing down.

If I had my way,
O Lordy, Lordy,
If I had my way;
If I had my way,
I would tear this building down.

Oftentimes the religious music of the slaves played real and instrumental roles in the operation of the underground railroad and in the organization of antislavery insurrections. The lyrics of "Follow the Drinking Gourd," for example, literally provided a map of one section of the underground railroad, and "Steal Away to Jesus" was a coded song rallying together those engaged in the organization of Nat Turner's rebellion. But even when the spirituals were not linked to specific actions in the freedom struggle, they always served, epistemologically and psychologically, to shape the consciousness of the masses of Black people, guaranteeing that the fires of freedom would burn within them. As Sidney Finkelstein pointed out,

The antislavery struggle was the core of the truffle for democracy, so spirituals embodied in their music and poetry the affirmation of an unbreakable demand for freedom. [3]

The spirituals have directly influenced the music associated with other people's movements at various moments in the history of the United States. Many songs of the labor and peace movements have their origins in the religious music of slaves, and the "freedom songs" of the Civil Rights Movement were spirituals whose lyrics were sometimes slightly altered in order to reflect more concretely the realities of that struggle.

Even the blues, frequently misrepresented as a music form focusing on trivial aspects of sexual love, are closely tied to Black people's strivings for freedom. In the words of James Cone:

For many people, a blues song is about sex or a lonely woman longing for her rambling man. However, the blues are more than that. To be sure, the blues involve sex and what that means for human bodily expression, but on a much deeper level … the express a black perspective on the incongruity of life and the attempt to achieve meaning in a situation fraught with contradictions. As Aunt Molly Jackson of Kentucky put it: "The blues are made by working people … when they have a lot of problems to solve about their work, when their wages are low … and they don't know which way to turn and what to do. [4]

And, indeed Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, reached the apex of her career when she composed and recorded a song transmitting an unmistakable political message, entitled "Poor Man's Blues." This song evoked the exploitation and manipulation of working people by the wealthy and portrayed the rich as parasites accumulating their wealth and fighting wars with the labor of the poor.

Another pinnacle in the evolution of Afro-American music was Billie Holiday's incorporation of the political anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit" into her regular repertoire. Throughout Lady Day's career, thousands of people were compelled to confront the brutal realities of southern racism, even as they sought to escape the problems of everyday life through music alcohol, and the ambiance of smoke-filled nightclubs. Undoubtedly, some went on to actively participate in the antilynching movement of that era.

That Billie Holiday recorded "Strange Fruit" in 1939 was no accident. Neither was the fact that the lyrics of this song were composed by progressive poet Lewis Allan, who was associated with activist struggles of the 1930s. The thirties remain the most exciting and exuberant period in the evolution of American cultural history. The process of developing a mature people's art movement today can be facilitated by a serious examination of that era's achievements. As Phillip Bonosky points out in a 1959 Political Affairs article entitled "The Thirties in American Culture":

There is every reason in the world why official reaction should want the thirties to be forgotten as if they never existed. For that period remains the watershed in the American democratic traditions. It is a period which will continue to serve both the present and the future as a reminder and as an example of how an aroused people, led and spurred on by the working class, can change the entire complexion of the culture of a nation. [5]

Bourgeois ideologists have consequently attempted to

…misrepresent and burn out the consciousness of the American people, and first of all the artists and intellectuals, the fact that the making of a people's culture once did exist in the United States and was inspired, to a large degree, by the working class, often led, and largely influenced, by the Communist Party. [6]

Answering the charges leveled against the Communist Party that it "belittles and vulgarizes the rule of culture," Bonosky argues that no other political party in the entire history of this country had ever manifested such a serious concern for art. The Communist Party was involved, for example, in the 1935 Call for an American Writers' Congress – which claimed Langston Hughes, Theodore Dreiser, Richard Wright, and Erskine Caldwell among its signers. As a result of the work of the Communist Party and other progressive forces, artists won the right to work as artists in projects under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration. What the WPA artists accomplished was an unprecedented achievement in the history of the United States: Art was brought to the people on a truly massive scale. It could no longer be confined to the private domain, monopolized by those whose class background made galleries, the first time, American art became public art. This meant, for example, that working-class people utilizing the services of the post office could simultaneously appreciate the public murals painted there. Sculpture, music, and theater were among the other arts directly taken to the people during that era. Moreover, to quote Bonosky once more, when these programs were threatened with dissolution,

…it was the Communist Party that struggled to heroically to save the art projects and with them of course the theory that art was responsible to the people of which these projects were the living embodiment. For the first time in American history artists and writers walked the picket lines in the name of and in the defense of the right of artists to be artists. [7]

The radical approach to art and culture inspired by the Communist Party and other Left forces during the Great Depression involved more than the forging of an art that was publicly accessible to the masses. Much of the art of that period was people's art in the sense that artists learned how to pay attention to the material and emotional lives of working people in America in the pores of working out the content of their aesthetic creations. Meridel LeSeuer explored the lives of working people in her literature as Woody Guthrie composed songs about their lives and struggles. This emerging people's art was therefore a challenge to the dominant bourgeois culture. Artists not only felt compelled to defend their right to communicate the real pains, joys, and aspirations of the working class through their art, but many went on to become activists in the labor struggles and in the fight for the rights of the unemployed and especially of Black people. In the process, of course, new artists were summoned up from the ranks of these struggles.

Bourgeois aesthetics has always sought to situate art in a transcendent realm, beyond ideology, beyond socioeconomic realities, and certainly beyond the class struggle. In an infinite variety of ways, art has been represented as the pure subjective product of individual creativity. Lenin's 1905 article "Party Organization and Party Literature" challenged this vision of art and developed the principle of partisanship in art and literature – a principle with which many progressive artists of the 1930s were, at least implicitly in agreement. Lenin made it absolutely clear that in insisting that aesthetic creations be partisan, he was not advocating the dictatorship of the party over art and literature.

There is not question that literature is least of all subjects to mechanical adjustment or leveling to the rule of the majority over the minority. There is no question either that in this field greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed for personal initiative, individual inclination, thought and fantasy, form and content. [8]

He pointed out, however, that the bourgeois demand for abstract subjective freedom in art was actually a stifling of the freedom of creativity. Literature and art, he said, must be free not only from police censorship,

…but from capital, from careerism, and … bourgeois anarchist individualism. Partisan literature and art will be truly free, because it will further the freedom of millions of people. [9]

What are the current prospects for the further expansion of an art that is not afraid to declare its partisan relationship to people's struggles for economic, racial, and sexual equality? Not only must we acknowledge and defend the cultural legacy that has been transmitted to us over the decades, but we must also be in a position to recognize the overt as well as subtle hints of progressive developments in popular art forms today. Over the last several years, for example, such partisan films as Silkwood and Missing have emerged as beacons amid the routinely mediocre, sexist, violent, and generally antihuman values characterizing most producers of the Hollywood cinema industry.

To consider another art form, some of the superstars of popular-musical culture today are unquestionable musical geniuses, but they have distorted the Black music tradition by brilliantly developing its form while ignoring its content of struggle and freedom. Nonetheless, there is illumination to be found in contemporary Black music in the works of such artists as Stevie Wonder and Gil Scott-Heron, who have acknowledged the legacy of Black music in form and content alike. Their individual creations have awakened in their audiences a true sense of the dignity of human freedom.

Stevie Wonder's tune "Happy Birthday" touched the hearts of hundreds of thousands of young people mobilized them in support of the movement to declare Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday. That Reagan was forced to sign the bill enacting that law, despite his openly articulated opposition, demonstrated that popular sentiment could prevail over the most intransigent official racism this country has known in many years.

Gil Scott-Heron's immensely popular son "B-Movie," released shortly after Reagan was elected to his first term, mobilized strong anti-Reagan sentiments in young Black public opinion. The song-poem particularly exposed the efforts of the Reagan propagandists to declare that he had received a "mandate" from the people.

The first thin I want to say is "mandate" my ass
Because it seems as though we've been convinced
That 26% of the registered voters
No even 26% of the American people
Form a mandate or a landslide…
But, oh yeah, I remember…
I remember what I said about Reagan
Acted like an actor/Hollyweird
Acted like a liberal
Acted like General Franco
When he acted like governor of California
Then he acted like a Republican
Then he acted like somebody was going to vote for him for president
And now he acts like 26% of the registered voters
Is actually a mandate
We're all actors in this, actually

Bruce Springsteen's album Born in the USA was lauded by Reagan, who praised "the message of hope in the songs…of New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen" as he campaigned in that state for the presidency in 1984. However, Reagan's aides more than likely simply assumed that Springsteen's red, white, and blue album cover indicated acceptance of the fraudulent patriotism promoted by the Reagan administration. Two days after Reagan's remarks, Springsteen introduced a song entitled "Johnny 99" by saying, "I don't think the president was listening to this one," going on to sing about a desperate, debt-ridden, unemployed autoworkers who landed on death row after killing someone in the course of a robbery. Another one of his songs, "My Hometown," is about the devastation wrought by plant shutdowns:

Now Mainstreet's whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going, boys, and they ain't coming back
To your hometown…

A new genre of music with roots in the age-old tradition of storytelling has gained increasing popularity among the youth of today. Rap music clearly reflects the daily live of working-class people particularly urban Afro-American and Latino youth. Many rap songs incorporate a progressive consciousness of current political affairs as revealed, for example, by the following rap by Grand Master Flash and Melle Mel which calls upon youth to associate themselves with the Reverend Jesse Jackson's 1984 campaign for the presidency:

Oh beautiful for spacious skies
And your amber waves of untold lies
Look at the politicians trying to do a job
But they can't help but look like the mob
Get a big kickback, put it away
Watch the FBI watch the CIA
They want a bigger missile and a faster jet
But yet they forgot to hire the vets

Hypocrites and Uncle Toms are talking trash
Let's talk about Jesse
Liberty and Justice are a thing of the past
Let's talk about Jesse
They want a stronger national at any cost
Let's talk about Jesse
Even if it means that everything will soon be lost
Let's talk about Jesse
He started on the bottom, now he's on the top
Let's talk about Jesse
He proved that he can make it, so don't ever stop

Now let's stand together and let the whole world see
Our brother Jesse Jackson go down in history
So vote, vote, vote
Everybody get up and vote….

Young people are becoming more and more conscious of the need to oppose the nuclear-arms race. A rap tune popularized by Harry Belafonte's film Beat Street contains the following warning:

A newspaper burns in the sand
And the headlines say man the story's bad
Extra extra read all the bad news
On the war or peace
That everybody would lose
The rise and fall of the last great empire
The sound of the whole world caught on fire
The ruthless struggle the desperate gamble
The games that left the whole world in shambles
The cheats the lies the alibis
And the foolish attempt to conquer the skies
Lost in space and what is it worth
The president just forgot about earth
Spending all time billions and maybe even trillions
Because the weapons ran in the zillions…
A fight for power a nuclear shower
The people shout out in the darkest hour
It's sights unseen and voices unheard
And finally the bomb gets the last word…
…We've got to suffer when things get rougher
And that's the reason why we've got to get tougher
So learn from the past and work for the future
Don't be a slave to no computer
'Cause the children of man inherit the land
And the future of the world is in your hands.

While numerous examples of progressive trends in contemporary popular music might be proposed, it would be a gross misconception of the music industry to argue that such songs are representative of what young people are hearing on the airwaves today. In general, the popular-musical culture that greets young people has been rigorously molded by the demands of the capitalistic marketplace, which measures its products according to their profit-making potential. While progressive messages sometimes manage to slip through the net of capitalist production, by and large the musical culture it advances promotes reified sexuality, crass individualism, and often violent, sexist, antiworking-class values. Many talented musicians ultimately destroy their artistic potential as they attempt to create music that conforms to what is deemed salable by the market. As Marx pointed out long ago in Theories of Surplus Value, "capitalist production is hostile to certain branches of spiritual production namely poetry and art." [10]

We cannot expect mass popular art to express stronger and more efficacious progressive themes without the further development of an art movement philosophically and organizationally allied with the people's struggles. In recent years, conscious political art has become increasingly evident. The importance of the Chicago Peace Museum, for example, should not be underestimated. Nor should the development of the national movement Artists' Call Against Intervention in Central America. This mobilization, which spread to twenty-five cities across the country, came as a response to an appeal from the Sandinista Cultural Workers' Association:

May it go down in the history of humanity that one day during the twentieth century, in the face of the gigantic aggression that one of the smallest countries in the world, Nicaragua, was about to suffer, artists and intellectuals of different nationalities and generations raised align with us the banner of fraternity, in order to prevent our total destruction. [11]

In San Francisco alone, over two hundred artists participated in three major exhibitions. Funds collected nationwide by this movement were donated to the Association of Cultural Workers in Nicaragua, the University of El Salvador, a labor union in El Salvador, and to Guatemalan refugees. Another artists' movement in solidarity with Central America that emerged in the San Francisco Bay area chose the name PLACA, which means to make a mark, to leave a sign. They dedicated an entire street of murals with the theme of opposition to U.S. intervention in Central America. In their manifesto, the artists and muralists proclaim:

PLACA members do not ally themselves with this Administration's policy that has created death and war and despair, and that threatens more lives daily. We aim to demonstrate in visual/environmental terms our solidarity, our respect, for the people of Central America. [12]

Similar to Artists' Call, a cultural movement in opposition to U.S. support for the racist and fascist policies of the South African government declared October 1984 Art Against Apartheid month. Exhibitions and cultural events advocating involvement in the campaign to free Nelson Mandela and all political prisoners in South Africa and Namibia were held throughout the New York City area and in other cities across the country. At the San Francisco Art Institute, a group of artists associated with the Art Against Apartheid movement organized a month-long festival in the spring of 1985 in solidarity with the people of South Africa.

One of the most exciting progressive cultural developments is the smog movement, which has built musical bridges between the labor movement, Afro-American movement, the solidarity struggles with Central America and South Africa, and the peace movement. Such politically committed musicians as Sweet Honey in the Rock, Holly Near, and Casselberry-Dupree, have brought a keen awareness of these struggles into the women's movement. Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweet Honey in the Rock has published numerous articles and delivered speeches appealing to those who support women's music to associate themselves with working-class struggles, antiracist movements, peace struggles and solidarity work. And anyone familiar with Sweet Honey's songs can attest to the fact that they effectively and poignantly promote these coalition politics. Occupational health hazards – asbestosis, silicosis, brown-lung and black-lung disease – are the enemies of "More Than a Paycheck," for example. In other songs, Sweet Honey evokes the civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer and the murdered South African activist Steven Biko, and Mexican immigrants who fall prey to the repressive immigration laws of the United States.

Sisterfire, the annual women's music festival in which Sweet Honey in the Rock has played an instrumental role, attempts to actualize the concept of coalitions politics through cultural vehicles. In one of its manifestoes, Sisterfire was described as

a salutation to all women, working people, minorities and the poor who stand fast against dehumanizing political and economic systems. [13]

Moreover,

culture, in its most valid form, expresses a mass or popular character. It must not be defined and perpetuated by an elite few for the benefit of a few. Culture must, of necessity, reflect and chart humanity's attempt to live in harmony with itself and nature…. We are building bridges between the women's movement and other movements for progressive soil change. We are playing with fire, and we want nothing less from this event than to set loose the creative, fierce and awesome energies in all of you. [14]

Holly Near, who has been associated for many year with the women's music movement as well as with many other people's struggles, continues to encourage musicians to move beyond narrow social and political concerns and to promote justice for women and men of all races and nationalities. In 1984, she and Ronnie Gilbert did a "Dump Reagan" tour, which took them to 25 cities where they sang to over 25,000 people. Another exemplary action in the bridge-building effort undertaken by the women's music movement was the song written by Betsy Rose for the mayoral campaign of Black activist Mel King in Boston, entitled "We May Have Come Here on Different Ships, but We're in the Same Boat Now."

Within the development of this song movement, Communists have played important roles. The Ad Hoc Singers, for example, who first came together during the 1980 presidential campaign, have brought to the movement songs that deepen the class consciousness of those who experiences them. Their "People Before Profits," introduced during the first anti-Reagan campaign, is a virtual anthem of people's struggles. What is perhaps most important about the Ad Hoc Singers is that they bring to the song movement a dimension of concrete, activist experience in these struggles.

And, indeed, if we can anticipate the further expansion of people's culture today, it will be a direct function of the deepening and growing influence of mass movements. Progressive and revolutionary art is inconceivable outside of the context of political movements for radical change. If bold new art forms emerged with the Russian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, and more recently the Sandinista and Grenada Revolutions, then we can be certain that if we accomplish the task before us today of strengthening and uniting our mass movements, our cultural life will flourish. Cultural workers must thus be concerned not only with the creation of progressive art, but must be actively involved in the organization of people's political movements. An exemplary relationship between art and struggle has been at the very core of the journal Freedomways – not only does it serve as a vehicle for the dissemination of progressive Black literature, but it actively participates in the political struggles of Afro-Americans and their allies.

If cultural workers utilize their talents on an ever-increasing scale to accomplish the task of awakening and sensitizing people to the need for the a mass challenge to the ultraright, the prospects for strengthening and further uniting the antimonopoly movement, bringing together labor, Afro-Americans, women, an peace activists will greatly increase. As the movement wins victories, existing artists will draw inspiration format he creative energy of this process, and new artists will emerge as a result. If we are able to see this dynamic in motion, we will begin to move securely in the direction of economic, racial, and sexual emancipation – indeed, toward the ultimate goal of socialism – and we will be able to anticipate a peaceful future, free of the threat of nuclear war.

Notes:

1. Paul Robeson, Paul Robeson Speaks, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1978, 3030-304.
2. Christopher Caudwell, Studies in a Dying Culture, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971, 183.
3. Sidney Finkelstein, How Music Expresses Ideas, New York: International Publishers, 1971, 118.
4. James Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues, New York: Seabury Press, 1972, 115-116.
5. Phillip Bonosky, "The Thirties," Political Affairs, January 1959.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. V.I. Lenin, "Party Organization and Party Literature," in Lenin on Literature and Art, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970, 24.
9. Ibid.
10. Marx and Engels on Literature and Art, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1976, 141.
11. "Artists call Against Intervention in Central America, brochure, San Francisco, 1984.
12. PLACA Mural Group: General Statement, brochure, San Francisco, 1985.
13. "Sisterfire: Statement of Purpose," leaflet, Washington, 1982.
14 Ibid.

You Might Be a Marxist If ... You Want to End the Exploitation of Workers

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:14:00 +0000

Capitalism exploits workers. Since the vast majority of people in our capitalist society have to work for a living, it’s no exaggeration to say that the majority of people in our country, and throughout the world, are exploited workers.

What does it mean to say that workers are exploited? In Marxist theory, exploitation means that workers are literally robbed by capitalists. Of course the capitalists never admit this. They claim that they pay their workers a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, that you’re paid for what you produce, no less and no more. But Marxists say that’s not what really happens.

The capitalists have set up a system in which they (the minority) own the machinery, factories, farms and other means of production needed to produce the necessities of life such as food, clothing, and shelter. The workers (the majority) usually have no other way to make a living than to sell but their ability to work. They have to sell this ability (their labor power) to the capitalists in order to earn wages. In other words, they have to get jobs. Wages are then used by workers to buy the products necessary to sustain their lives.

What is the value of your ability to labor? According to Marx, your labor power is worth whatever amount of money (or commodities) is necessary to keep you alive and working. That doesn’t sound like much of a life, but let’s go with that assumption and see what happens.

Imagine that you need to make $50 per day in order to feed, house, and clothe your-self. You find a job at an auto parts factory owned by a capitalist who agrees to pay you $50 per 8-hour day, or $6.25 an hour. Your day is spent making parts that the capitalist sells to one of the big automakers for $100 a piece, and you manage to produce 100 parts per day. Think about it – you are producing $1,250 worth of product per hour, $10,000 worth per day and $80,000 worth in a 40-hour week! Amazing isn’t it? You, the worker, have the ability to create a tremendous amount of value where there was none before. And it’s in the capitalist’s interest to get you to produce as much as humanly possible either by forcing you to work more hours in a day or making you work faster – preferably, for the capitalist, both.

But we need to get clear about something you might not have noticed. Remember that you are producing $1,250 worth of value every hour, which boils down to about $20.83 cents per minute. Is it really important to know that? Absolutely.

Here’s why it’s important. At $20.83 per minute, it takes about 2 minutes and 40 seconds for you to produce $50 worth of value. In other words, you have to work less than 3 minutes to produce the $50 that covers your salary. At this point, everything seems fair and square. You do $50 worth of work, and that’s exactly what you’re going to be paid. But don’t forget that you have to work 8 hours to get the $50 that it takes you less than 3 minutes to produce. That’s the catch, and that’s how you get robbed. In order for the privilege of working in that capitalist’s factory to get a measly $50, you have to agree to stay 8 hours and produce over $1000 worth of value, value that is stolen from you by the capitalist – literally stolen because the capitalist takes it without paying for it.

Capitalists constantly tell you that you’re getting paid for what you produce, that you’re compensated fairly for the time you put in, but in reality the capitalist can pay you for less than 3 minutes of work and force you to work over 7 hours of unpaid labor just to get that tiny paycheck. In our example, if you had been paid for what you produced, you would have made $1250 that day. Think about your own situation at work and how it fits this example.

That 7-plus hours of unpaid labor time is called surplus labor, and it produced $1200 in surplus value—surplus for the capitalist, not the worker! It’s as if you are paying the capitalist more than the capitalist is paying you. You are giving him un-paid labor time. The entire capitalist society is set up to make this look normal and fair, and the police, courts, and army set up to enforce capitalists’ ability to exploit labor. Surplus labor, and the surplus value that it produces, is the source of capitalist profit. Thus the wealth of capitalist societies is based on the robbery of workers through forced, surplus labor.

Here’s a brief look at how exploitation was explained in some of the Marxist classics, which are still the best sources to read for a deeper understanding of this issue and other aspects of the conflict between capitalism and socialism. In Chapter II of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Frederick Engels wrote:

the appropriation of unpaid labor is the basis of the capitalist mode of production and of the exploitation of the worker that occurs under it; that even if the capitalist buys the labour power of his labourer at its full value as a commodity on the market, he yet extracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in the ultimate analysis this surplus value forms those sums of value from which are heaped up the constantly increasing masses of capital in the hands of the possessing classes.

Karl Marx’s Capital is the best source for an in-depth, technical explanation of labor exploitation under capitalism. In Capital, v. 1, chapter 9, Marx used the term “necessary labour-time” to designate the part of day during which workers labor to cover their own wages. He called the rest of the day, “the second period of the labour process,” in which the worker produces:

surplus-value which, for the capitalist, has all the charms of something created out of nothing. This part of the working day I call surplus labourtime, and to the labour expended during that time I give the name of surplus labour.... What distinguishes the various economic formations of society—the distinction between for example a society based on slave-labour and a society based on wage-labour—is the form in which this surplus labour is in each case extorted from the immediate producer, the worker.

Outraged by this extortion and want to put an end to it? Sounds like you’re a Marxist. Are you unconvinced and thinking of all kind of questions and objections? Stay tuned. They’ll be dealt with next month.

Garment workers in Los Angeles. (Photo by alossix, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0)

Resistance is Not Futile – Labor vs. the Cold War

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:10:00 +0000

Editor's note: Ben Sears is teacher, a labor movement activist and leader, a contributing editor of Political Affairs and a trained historian. In what follows he discusses his new book on the electrical workers unions during the Cold War, Generation of Resistance. Listen to this interview here.

PA: What inspired you to write about the history of the UE during the Cold War period?

BEN SEARS: As a young teacher in the AFT (American Federation of Teachers) I was starting to get active. We had a long winter strike in 1973 - in January and February – and one of the unions that came around and supported us was the United Electrical Workers. One guy in particular, a UE staffer who was assigned to help us, came around and I saw him at the picket lines and support activities. In fact, Jack Hart ended marrying one of my good teacher friends who was on the picket line as well. He was a UE staffer and I started to learn about things from him I knew nothing about before. During that strike one big question was why there was never any money for public education, while the big military budget was constantly being fed. It was a question of starving public services and feeding the military, and what the labor movement had to do with all this was on my mind a lot, on everybody’s mind. That I happened to meet Jack Hart of the UE at that point in my life was, I think, fortuitous. That is how I became fascinated by this issue.

PA: Could you give some background information about the UE?

BEN SEARS: The UE was one of the original CIO unions. It was, in fact, one of the Big Three at the core of the CIO, along with the Autoworkers and the Steelworkers, and was recognized as such. And I think it is fair to say that it was organized from the ground up, because it was really various local or regional groupings that came together, including workers in the radio industry (they organized, for example, RCA in Camden, New Jersey and Philco in Philadelphia). One of their goals, which they ended up doing, was organizing the big electrical manufacturing plants, GE and Westinghouse, and also industrial machinists.

So in a way the union was built from the ground up, and among the activists who helped to build it were Communists and others on the left. Therefore it was sort of natural that they would become influential in the leadership. The UE had the reputation of being a militant up-front union, and while some people characterize it as a “left-led” organization, I would argue that it is more accurate to say that it was led by a left-center coalition. Of course, they were also among the leaders in supporting the war effort during World War II, and were looking forward to an opportunity to really make progress when the war was over in the newly strengthened and hopefully unified Congress of Industrial Organizations, the CIO. That was what they were looking forward to in 1945 to 1946. But things didn’t work out that way.

PA: The successful organizing drives, I think, were the result of something that a lot of people today don’t really understand. Back then, one of the big aids to labor organizing was the Wagner Act and the role of the federal government in helping unions to organize. What effect did the Wagner Act have on the labor movement?

BEN SEARS: The Wagner Act was the result of struggle and it opened the door for future struggles. Both the Trade Union Unity League and the Trade Union Educational League had been active in the early 1930s trying to build consciousness and unity in the basic industries. So when the Wagner Act was passed in 1935 it created the conditions for really successful struggle, and that’s when CIO organizing really took off – from 1936-1939.

PA: Wasn’t the Wagner Act similar to the Employee Free Choice Act?

BEN SEARS: You’re right. Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act may indeed have a similar impact on the lives of workers in this country today. It will, of course, take a struggle to get the Employee Free Choice Act through, but once it is passed it will create new conditions. Part of what EFCA would do would be to restore some of the things that Wagner Act originally put in place. For example, the big issue now is majority sign-up or card check, and that was something that could happen under the Wagner Act. That provision was whittled away by later court decisions and legislation, Taft-Hartley and so on. So getting back to what is now called majority sign-up would be a big deal. On the other hand it would also be restoring a right that workers have had in the past.

PA: You mentioned that the leadership of the UE was a left-center coalition. Could you describe what that was and how it worked?

BEN SEARS: For example, the long-time president of the UE was Albert Fitzgerald, who was never identified with the left. The other two top officers originally – James Matles, director of organization and Julius Emspak, the secretary-treasurer – were identified as having come from left backgrounds, although exactly what their politics were was not considered anybody’s business really. But they were identified with the left. Matles, for instance, had been active in the Trade Union Unity League. The three top leaders of the UE sort of represent the idea of a left-center coalition. In later years, during the late 40s and 50s, both in public and if you look at the FBI files now available, there were a lot of opponents of the labor movement who couldn’t understand why Fitzgerald and some other folks in the leadership were standing so tough and refusing to be intimidated into attacking the left. That shows what a strong left-center coalition can do.

PA: In addition to the successful labor organizing drives, what were some of the other accomplishments of left-led or left-center led unions?

BEN SEARS: Essentially the CIO and the three core industrial unions, along with others like the West Coast longshore workers and the Southwestern miners, all had their struggles and all had enormous obstacles to overcome, but they all succeeded in winning industry-wide contracts, and the left played a big part in that. So the accomplishments of the industrial unions were very important, and the left played a significant part in helping them achieve that success and providing leadership.

PA: How does your book counter traditional Cold-War-era labor histories of the CIO industrial unions?

BEN SEARS: The mainstream narrative of US labor history after World War II goes something like this: After the war the United States faced the Soviet threat. The dominant leaders of American labor, in the first place the AFL, fell in line behind US imperial foreign policy to prove their patriotism. The CIO was a little bit harder to bring in line, but in the end Walter Reuther (president of the UAW) came in, and by the mid-50s the AFL and CIO joined together in an alliance that they made sure was seen as patriotic – and that was the character of the American labor movement. Mainstream historians go on to say that whoever didn’t go along – the small sliver of left-wingers who opposed this policy – were pushed aside, shoved out, and were no longer relevant. I argue in the book that, in fact, that was not the case.

My book focuses on workers in one industry, but I think that it has broader relevance for the labor movement as a whole. It’s like studying the ecology of a little piece of a lake, thinking that we can learn something about the whole lake by studying this little area. The fact is that when the Cold War hit and the argument intensified about how to confront the attack on labor, the left and their allies in the center commanded considerable support. So the attempt by the right-wingers in the AFL and the CIO to bring their organizations into line required them to kick out some of their best organizers. It also required them to support US foreign policy abroad, that is, US Cold War imperial foreign policy.

The left-center coalition represented by the electrical union leaders argued from the beginning that this was a devil’s bargain – that maybe it would bring short-term gains and purchase a certain degree of acceptance for the labor movement, with the US government saying, “Look, we’re not going to bust up your meetings anymore. All you have to do is agree to support our drive for world domination.” There was an intense debate about this that went on for years in the labor movement, and some people would argue that it was settled in a way by the mid-50s when the AFL and CIO came together. But in fact it became an issue again when the Vietnam War heated up. So this a story that we should know, and it is worth telling and talking about as labor debates its future today.

I would further suggest that the question of labor’s international stance has been one of the most difficult nuts to crack for the labor movement, because the dominant AFL-CIO leaders always saw it as crucial to prove their patriotism. But the left-center coalition that led the Electrical Workers, and others, argued that this was not true patriotism, that you’d end up weakening the movement at home, and that American workers did not want to endlessly see their sons and daughters sent off to die in imperial wars. So it’s a very interesting debate.

Another other part of the book, which was the most interesting for me to research, was how the internal debates went on inside the Electrical Workers, because they debated vigorously how you confront a situation like this, where labor is under attack and the left is under attack. How do we put forward our viewpoint without being disruptive? We have always been for building unity. How do you do that, when, to get into the AFL-CIO, the price is to kick out the communists and anybody who might be a communist? These were hard questions and I think they are relevant for us today.

PA: You cite the Autoworkers as an example of how a left-led union was brought into the corral by kicking out its Communist and leftists members. The UE story is a bit different, isn’t it?

BEN SEARS: The UE story is different, but it requires some digging beneath the surface. If you look at the surface numbers, the UE, which had half-a-million members between 1947 and 1949, lost a lot of members and by the late 50s was a much smaller organization. It is easy for people to argue that they tried to take this rigid position which resulted, depending on how you look at it, in their leaders being attacked either as unpatriotic and traitors to the country, or, on the other hand, as being pie-in-the-sky dreamers who were trying to do something that was out of their reach. But, in fact, the evidence is that people left the UE under the most difficult circumstances, frequently not because they disagreed with its program. The UE program continued to have considerable support in the Electrical Union and in other industries, and this became clear in the late 60s when the Cold War leadership of the AFL-CIO suffered intense stresses and strains, and the rigid support that the Meany leadership gave to the Vietnam War, for instance, caused a lot of trouble. In fact the Autoworkers, left the AFL-CIO at that point and started the Alliance for Labor Action with the Teamsters. But the story in the Autoworkers in the early 50s was also one of intense debate and conflict over political questions. The Reuther leadership had to, in fact, forcibly remove members of its own Executive Board to bring the Executive Board into line behind the Cold War.

PA: The UE was essentially replaced by a competing union supportive of Cold War policies?

BEN SEARS: That’s correct. The IUE, the International Union of Electrical Workers, was chartered by the CIO in 1950 to replace the UE, and they must have known that it was going to be a big project and that it was going to be difficult, but they persisted and the IUE became a member union of the CIO. It organized in part by raiding UE shops and also did some organizing on its own. James Carey, who became president of the IUE – he wasn’t elected president right away because there really wasn’t a union right away; they had a charter but they had no members – led the union through the 1950s and brought it into the AFL-CIO. Carey was very active in anti-communist endeavors around the world in the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, but he was much less successful in his own union domestically. He led, for example a disastrous strike against General Electric in 1960, which started the process which led to his defeat and removal from the union presidency by 1965. That is what opened the door for cooperation in collective bargaining between the UE and the IUE.

PA: The UE still exists today, and we have heard about some of its recent successes, such as the sit-in at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. Could you give us a sketch of what the UE looks like today?

BEN SEARS: The UE is not the big union it once was, but it retains some its characteristics. As you note, we all remember the wide support and the national media coverage accorded the members of UE Local 1110 in Chicago when they staged a sit-in in their factory, Republic Windows and Doors, in December, 2008, demanding that they their employer make good on their agreed upon severance pay, when the factory was abruptly closed. The UE is also involved in contacts with workers in other countries, for instance in Mexico, and now the idea that labor has to join hands with workers in other countries is catching on in the labor movement generally, which I think is encouraging.

PA: Is it overstating the case to claim that the move to expel the left-center coalition leadership of some of these unions led, in turn, to some of the problems labor now faces, such as the recent decline in union membership?

BEN SEARS: There are a couple of aspects to this. First of all, kicking out seasoned, proven, talented organizers was not a good thing to do. But in the larger picture the argument goes something like this. By actively supporting US foreign policy, the labor movement (and Meany and Kirkland are associated with this especially – which is part of the reason why Reuther didn’t want to stay around) helped open up areas of the globe to US capital penetration and thereby created places where low-wage workers are put in competition with American workers. And I wonder how all of this is going to play out. For example, there are two recent books that both have a good deal to recommend them (one is A Country that Works by Andy Stern, the former President of the SEIU; the other is State of the Unions by Philip Dine, which is a very good book in many ways). But both books mention that US labor should get credit for bringing down socialism, for helping to bring down socialism in Eastern Europe, and that this was in some way a victory for American workers. I think we are finding out that in fact this is not the case, because opening up the globe to US capital penetration and domination is, in fact, intensifying the problems of US workers, and the response to that is part of what we need to work on – that is, building unity with workers in other countries.

PA: In addition to that, would you say that right-leaning political support by labor actually led to more direct attacks on the labor movement. For example, the support of some in labor for Ronald Reagan quickly turned into fierce attacks on union,s such as the destruction of the air traffic controllers union?

BEN SEARS: That is certainly true. What we are talking about here is developing a class outlook. As long as you put nationalism, jingoism and national chauvinism first, as long as that trumps a class outlook, then workers’ organizations are going to put themselves in a position where they are always swimming upstream or running in place. Workers’ organizations have enough problems and challenges as it is without buying into this false patriotism. It’s like trying to promote your interests in a way that can’t be done in the long term.

The idea that working people, the men and women who do the work of the country, are not interested in, or are not capable of being interested in and understanding international matters and foreign policy, is what was hammered home during the Cold War. Leave foreign policy to the so-called experts, they said. Leave it to the properly educated, frequently Ivy League-educated, State Department officials who have connections with US capital and so on, and they will take care of the country’s interests around the world. I would suggest that the experience of workers, especially the Electrical Workers during the Cold War, puts the lie to that. In fact, the most articulate and principled critics of US Cold War policy were people in the labor movement at that time, and that is a part of this story that needs to be told.

Imprisoned Future: Mass Incarceration and the "New Jim Crow," an Interview with Michelle Alexander

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:03:00 +0000

Editor's note: Listen to the two-part audio podcast of this interview here and here. Preview the book, The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander here. (This interview was trasncribed by Peter Zerner.)

PA: What inspired you to undertake your investigation of the mass incarceration of people of color in the United States?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: I was deeply concerned about the lack of attention being paid to mass incarceration in communities of color by traditional civil rights organizations and African American leaders. I myself didn’t fully appreciate the magnitude of the harm caused by the war on drugs and mass incarceration until I began working in communities of color representing victims of racial profiling and police brutality, and working with people who were struggling to “re-enter” society after being branded a felon. I had a series of experiences working on behalf of people struggling within the new caste system before I had my awakening, and, once I did, I began to see and understand, and to listen more carefully to the stories of the people who are cycling in and out of the criminal justice system. I then began a journey of research and study, of trying to understand better what was actually happening in ghetto communities as a result of our criminal justice policies, and what I found astounded me. Today there are more African Americans under correctional control, in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850 a decade before the Civil War began. There are more African Americans disenfranchised today than in 1870, the year the 15th Amendment was ratified explicitly prohibiting laws that deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

In major American cities today, cities like Chicago, the majority of working age African American men have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to public education, and food stamps. So many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind are suddenly legal again once you’ve been branded a felon. So really quite belatedly I came to see that despite all the fanfare over the election of Barack Obama and our so-called color blind society, we have not ended racial caste in America – we’ve merely redesigned it – and the relative silence, the eerie quiet from the civil rights community, including folks like me, who, as I said, didn’t get it at first and African American leaders motivated me to write this book. It’s an effort to kind of ring the alarm bell, which has been rung by others before, but I fear has not been rung loudly enough. It is my hope to spark more discussion and dialogue and hopefully contribute to the building of a mass movement to end mass incarceration.

PA: Your title, The New Jim Crow, suggests a systematic implementation of this caste system, as you call it. What do you see as the relationship between the purpose and function of the old Jim Crow and this new system?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: As I describe in the book, I believe that every caste system in the United States has been deeply linked to the economic structure of our society at the time. Slavery was primarily a system of exploitation where black labor was stolen for profit. Jim Crow was a system primarily of subordination, in which African Americans were permanently locked into a lower tier of jobs, unable to compete or obtain the skills necessary to obtain higher-status jobs and higher-wage jobs. But mass incarceration isn’t primarily about exploitation or subordination, it’s about marginalization and elimination, the disposal of a group of people who are no longer viewed as essential to the functioning of our economy. Now that we have transitioned from a more agrarian economy to an industrial one, to what is now a globalized service-based economy, unskilled black labor is no longer viewed as essential to the functioning of the US economy – it’s no longer needed to pick cotton in the fields or labor in factories. African American men, and increasingly Latinos, are rounded up in droves and warehoused, put in cages.

As I discuss a fair amount in the book, the war on drugs really could not have come at a worse time for the African American community. At the time the war on drugs was declared, inner city black communities across the United States were suffering from economic collapse as a result of the disappearance of industrial jobs from urban centers across America. As recently as 1970 in cities like Chicago, about 70 percent of Black men had industrial employment. By the early and mid-1980s, as the drug war was kicking off, that figure had plummeted to below 30 percent. So hundreds of thousands of people were suddenly out of work as factories closed down and moved overseas. We could have responded to this crisis in our inner city communities – and so many of these factories had been located in the inner cities in order to have quick access to cheap black labor. We could have responded to this crisis with an outpouring of support. Stimulus packages and bailout plans could have been devised to help ensure that black youth in particular would have been able to make the rough transition from an industrial to a service-based economy, but no – instead we ended welfare as we knew it and declared the war on drugs.

PA: You mention the role of major economic shifts. Another thing that was happening in the 1990s was a decline in state budgets and a push for privatization, even of prisons. What is the role of the profit motive and its impact on the rise of this new era of Jim Crow?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: I do not believe that the get tough movement and the war on drugs itself was inspired by profit motives. Quite the contrary, I think the war on drugs and the get tough movement were traceable to racial politics. The war on drugs was launched in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan at a time when drug crime was actually on the decline, not on the rise. It was an effort to appeal to poor and working class white voters who were resentful of and disaffected by many of the gains of the civil rights movement, especially busing, desegregation and affirmative action. Those racial politics gave birth to mass incarceration.

Now it became readily apparent to many that large profits could be made from caging human beings, and so there are of course the private prison corporations that are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and profit quite directly from mass incarceration. But there is are also a whole host of other corporate interests that benefit from warehousing millions of people behind bars – corporations like AT&T that gouge prisoners families in the rates charged to call people behind bars. There are the private health care providers who provide typically abysmal health care but make millions of dollars providing that care to prisoners. There are the manufacturers of taser guns and all of the military-like equipment that is provided not only to prison personnel but also to law enforcement, those charged with waging this literal war against communities of color. Then there are the prison guard unions. Prison guard unions have become the largest and most powerful political lobbying organizations in many states, and they don’t lobby just for higher wages, they also lobby for three-strike laws and harsh mandatory minimum drug sentences. Because as long as there is a high demand for their services, they are guaranteed employment and good pay. So there is a wide array of individuals, organizations, and corporate interests that now benefit financially from this system of control and can be counted on to resist quite fiercely any significant downsizing of this system.

As you mentioned, states are facing budget crises, and we are seeing some moves to release some nonviolent offenders early and that sort of thing. I think we will see what has been consistent growth in the prison system leveling off and in some places declining a bit. But if we were to return the rates of incarceration we had just back in the 1970s, at a time when many civil rights organizations thought that rates of incarceration were just egregiously high, if we were just to go back to the bad old days of the 1970s, we would have to release 4-out-of-5 people who are in prison today. More than a million people employed by the criminal justice system would lose their jobs, and many rural communities that now host large prisons would be especially hard hit. So in building a movement to end mass incarceration, we have to take into account the wide range of interests that would be affected and insure that people who are living in rural communities are given the opportunity to have decent jobs and aren’t left jobless in the transition away from mass incarceration, so that they are turned into allies rather than adversaries in the process of ending caste in America.

PA: You mentioned the impact of mass incarceration on African American working families and workers as a way of marginalizing them, as well as the massive amount of public tax dollars spent on warehousing prisoners. What about the exploitation of prison labor? Is that still an issue today?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: It definitely is still an issue, but I don’t want to mislead people into thinking that in most prisons prisoners are laboring away for corporations for profit. The typical experience of someone in prison is idleness, which I think in many ways is even worse than having the opportunity to do something with yourself during the day. So while I think it is unconscionable that there are corporations who are avoiding paying minimum wage, providing decent benefits, and all of that by employing prison labor, the experience of being behind bars, locked in a cage day after day and absolutely idle – so many people find themselves in solitary confinement for large stretches things like insubordination to a prison guard – that form of suffering, I think, is as bad or worse than being required to labor without pay.

PA: What happens to a person in society when they have been marked as a convict or having had some other interaction with the criminal justice system?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Often someone is branded a felon even for a crime as minor as being caught with marijuana – which is a felony in most states or at least can be charged as a felony. Prosecutors frequently have the discretion to charge drug possession as either a misdemeanor or as a felony, and prosecutors exercise that discretion in a racially-biased manner. Then when you are released from prison with a relatively minor, nonviolent felony or drug offense, you are subject to a whole host of legalized discrimination that mirrors in remarkable ways the forms of discrimination that were legal during Jim Crow.

The most obvious is denial of the right to vote. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia deny prisoners the right to vote, but that is just the tip of the iceberg, because once you are released from prison you may be denied the right to vote for a period of years or the rest of your life. Nationwide about one-in-seven or eight African Americans are denied the right to vote permanently or temporarily, and in some states the rate is as high as one-in-three or four Black men. Most people think it is normal to deny the right to vote to people in prison, but in most Western democracies prisoners are encouraged to vote, and every effort is made to insure that they have the opportunity to vote, but not here in the United States. In other democracies it is unheard of for people to be denied the right to vote once they are released from prison. But again the mentality here in the United States is that once you have committed a crime you may forfeit your right to vote for the rest of your life.

Felons are deemed ineligible for jury service. As a result, all-white juries have made a roaring comeback in many areas in the country, where a third or more of African American men have felonies and are deemed ineligible for jury service. But it is worse than that – because anyone who has ever had a negative experience with law enforcement can be stricken from a jury for cause, on the grounds that they are unlikely to be fair and impartial in a criminal case. So good luck finding someone in a poor community of color, in a poor Black community, who has not yet had a negative experience with law enforcement to justify their exclusion from a jury for cause.

There is denial of the right to vote, exclusion from juries, and legalized discrimination in employment. It is perfectly legal to discriminate against people with criminal records in employment. Virtually every application has a box you have to check if you have ever been convicted of a felony. It doesn’t matter if your felony happened yesterday, last week, or 30 years ago, for the rest of your life you have to check that box, virtually guaranteeing that your application will be thrown in the trash. Studies have shown that about 70 percent of employers won’t even consider hiring a drug felon, never mind that most Americans violate drug laws in their lifetime. But if you are caught and you have that “F”, that felony label, your hopes of getting employment diminish to the vanishing point.

Housing discrimination is perfectly legal in both public and private housing markets. In fact, if you are branded a felon you are barred from public housing for a minimum of 5 years, and HUD regulations encourage discrimination against people with criminal records for their entire lives. If you are released from prison and stay with a family member in public housing, they risk eviction, the whole family risks eviction, as a result of having a “criminal” staying with them. Growing numbers of homeless shelters also screen for criminal convictions.

Here you are, newly released from prison, with no job, no housing – you can’t even stay with your relatives in public housing – so what are you expected to do? Well, if you’ve been convicted of a drug felony don’t expect to get food stamps, because thanks to President Clinton people convicted of drug felonies are barred from food stamps for the rest of their lives. They are permanently ineligible for food stamps – pregnant women, people with HIV and AIDS, not even food stamps are available to you. So what are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to feed yourself? What you are expected to do typically is to pay back thousands of dollars in fees, fines, court costs, and accumulated back child support. In a growing number of states you are actually expected to pay back the cost of your imprisonment. People released from prison are saddled with thousands of dollars in debt, and then up to 100 percent of their wages can be garnished to pay back all these fees, fines, court costs and accumulated back child support, and the cost of their imprisonment.

So here you are, one of the lucky few who actually manage to get a job in the legal economy – and up to 100 percent of your wages can be garnished? What does the system seem designed to do? I argue it’s designed to send you right back to prison, which is what in fact happens about 70 percent of the time. About 70 percent of released prisoners return to jail within three years, and the majority of those who do return in a matter of months, because the challenges associated with just surviving on the outside are so immense.

Then, of course, there is the stigma as well. In many respects the stigma of being branded a criminal or a felon is as severe and damaging as the stigma of race during the Jim Crow era. Many people branded felons try to pass. During the Jim Crow area, light-skinned Blacks would try to pass as white to avoid the shame and stigma associated with race and all the forms of discrimination associated with race. Today people branded felons try to pass, not just by lying to employers or housing officials, or failing to check the box on loan applications, but by lying to their friends, family members and co-workers, trying to hide their criminal status because of the shame and stigma of having to admit, “Yeah, I did time, I was in prison for 5 years.” So this shame and stigma has created a real silence even in the communities hardest hit by mass incarceration, one that makes political action, collective political action to resist this new system of control, extremely difficult if not impossible.

PA: In your subtitle you use the term “color-blindness.” I think a lot of people want that word to be a positive word. You know, “If we’re just color blind we can get past these problems.” Why do you think that might be more harmful than positive?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Most people, it seems, now think that we as a nation have finally triumphed over race, particularly since the election of Barack Obama. There is a lot of talk about post-racialism and how most Americans are now color blind. Much of my book reveals that it isn’t the case that we are color blind. I argue that the goal should not be color blindness, that the goal of colorblindness is deeply misguided. It has the effect of making us blind not so much to race, but to the existence of racial bias and severe racial disparities and the suffering of people of other races. I argue that rather than aspiring to be color blind, we should aspire to see and appreciate people of all colors, recognize potential differences, cultural differences, racial differences, to see each other as we are but still care for one another.

The problem isn’t seeing race, it’s failing to care as much for people of another race as we care for our own, and that, I believe, that failure to care, the indifference to the experience of people of other races, is what lies at the foundation of every caste system that has ever existed in the United States or anywhere else in the world. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke frequently about this, particularly near the end of his life, where he would remind audiences that slavery and Jim Crow were not systems supported primarily by racial hostility or open bigotry. Rather those systems emerged and endured because of so much indifference, so much indifference by most to the plight of people who were perceived as different, perceived as being fundamentally different than themselves. Colorblindness really is our enemy, and that we as a nation would be much better off if we openly talked about race, openly acknowledged race, and really strove to care more for people of other races.

PA: Finally, you hinted at the need for reinvigorating a reform movement, a civil rights movement that really looks closely at these issues. What do you see as drawbacks or problems with building that movement, and what do you see as possibilities and hopeful signs for building it?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Right now I think the biggest barriers to the building of that movement are silence and denial. As I mentioned earlier, there is a tremendous amount of silence about this system even in the communities most impacted. I think the major exception is in hip-hop music, which is one form of political expression that has been consistently critical of the role of our criminal justice system in poor communities of color. Hip-hop artists frequently express love, care and concern for people who are behind bars and recognize that their fathers, brothers, mothers, their loved ones, have been taken away and often brutally mistreated by this system, but that they still care and still feel deep connection to them, whether they have committed a crime or not. But in general in our society there is relatively little discussion about mass incarceration or the devastation caused by the drug war in communities of color. That silence absolutely has to be broken, and we must move out of denial.

I think one of the reasons we have been in such deep denial about the existence of racial caste in America is because, on the surface, on the shiny surface of things, it appears that we have made great progress. Affirmative action has allowed for a handful of African Americans to be sprinkled through elite universities and corporations and government as well, and this has created a veneer, the appearance of much more progress than has actually occurred, and masks the severity of racial inequality in this country.

It is also the case that the erasure of prisoners from poverty statistics and unemployment data also helps to mask the severity of the problem. If you take into account prisoners, the standard rate of black unemployment underestimates true black unemployment by as much as 24 percentage points. Whatever you read in the newspaper as the black unemployment rate today, you can add 15-20 percentage points to that figure to account for all the black people warehoused in prisons. Today the poverty rate and the unemployment rate is not better than it was in 1968 when Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were assassinated and cities across America lit up in flames. The unemployment rate is actually worse today than it was back then, rivaling third-world countries.

I think we have been in deep denial about the extent of racial progress that has been made, and the silence amongst those hardest hit has made it possible for us to ignore it. In building a movement I think the first and most important thing that must be done is consciousness-raising, truth-telling – and in the communities hardest hit by mass incarceration by encouraging people to move beyond the shame and stigma and break the silence, to do the healing that is necessary to bring these communities shattered by the drug war together, but also to have consciousness-raising among all those who claim to care about social, economic and racial justice in the United States. I find again and again that people like myself who have cared about social and racial justice are stunned when they actually see the data and learn how the US Supreme Court has granted license to law enforcement to create this new racial under-caste. We need to know the truth and break the silence, and then meaningful political action will be possible.

Photo: Michelle Alexander

Health Reform IS Change We Can Believe In

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:59:00 +0000

The President's health reform represents the biggest regulation of a runaway, unchecked industry since the health insurance monopolies came into existence in the mid-20th century. Since that time, they have used their financial and political power to block efforts to include them in the federal government's anti-monopoly laws let alone create a single, rational health insurance program.

The result? Huge profits. Sky-rocketing costs. Unchecked greed. Exclusion of almost 50 million Americans and set of practices that force even the insured to pay for medical care when insurance companies deem the costs too high for their profit margins.

When President Obama signed health reform into law, the era of unregulated insurance monopoly began to end.

Goodbye coverage denial

Healthcare is too important to leave in the hands of private corporations. For example, in 2007 some 12 million insured people were denied coverage for some medical care because their insurance company deemed them to have some preexisting condition. In other words, when these people went to the doctor and made a claim for coverage, the insurance company made a special effort to find any reason no matter how small to refuse to pay the expenses.

They made the effort because the profit margin is higher if the company insures the healthiest people and can find ways to exclude or deny coverage to the sick – you know, the people that need insurance.

As many former insurance industry workers have told Congress and the media, practices of denial of coverage, raising rates for women simply because they're women, rescission, and so on are ways to guarantee not high quality healthcare but rather large profits for the insurance company.

In 2007 and 2008, even with a deepening recession, major insurance monopolies like Aetna, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealthGroup, and WellPoint saw combined profits of close to $20 billion, according to their own filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That's profits. Only five companies. In just two years.

Meanwhile most working Americans have seen their premiums climb three, four, five, sometimes even six times faster than the annual rate of inflation.

There are basically three reasons for such high profits in an industry that by global standards does so poorly in accomplishing its industry objectives. In addition to denial of coverage combined with high premiums, insurance companies have fought to maintain local monopolies, and get government money.

Goodbye Monopolies

According to statistics compiled by the Department of Health and Human Services last summer, the insurance companies had carved out virtual monopolies in a number of states. For example, two companies in Montana control at least 85 percent of the market in that state. In Michigan, a single company controls almost two-thirds of the market. In South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri and several other states, insurance companies have carved out about half of the market. This situation allows them to control prices, politicians, and hog public dollars for healthcare.

Already, monopoly control of local markets is being eroded. This week the federal government launched Healthcare.gov, an interactive website that let's employers and consumers find the healthcare coverage that best suits themselves, their families or their business. With just a few clicks of the mouse, the website allows you to compare prices and coverage, and even to determine your eligibility for public programs like Medicare, Medicaid, or VA benefits.

Browsing Healthcare.gov is almost an enjoyable experience – completely unlike standing in line at the DMV or the Social Security office or even your local bank.

In four years, state "exchanges" will be implemented that bring this virtual marketplace to a whole new level. Health insurance companies that want to participate in those exchanges will have to demonstrate they abide by basic mandated coverage guidelines and costs. They will face increased competition and strong regulatory oversight.

New regulations will force insurance to provide real services and fair prices. If they want to earn profits on sickness and disease, they will do so only if they treat each person fairly and provide the promised coverage.

While this round of health reform did not include a "public option," ideally in the future such an insurance program would further intensify the competition among insurance plans. With little or no profit motive, a public program would keep overhead low, premium growth at a minimum, and provide a meaningful alternative for working families unable or unwilling to afford private insurance.

Goodbye insurance company subsidies

Another financial gift to the health insurance companies comes from the Medicare Advantage plan. Medicare Advantage was created by Bush and the Republicans in 2005 in order to begin to chip away at Medicare and privatize the popular program. In addition, the Republicans created a big taxpayer benefit for the the insurance companies in exchange for their financial support in the elections. Between 1996 and 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the insurance industry gave Republicans more than $142 million dollars, essentially twice the amount they gave Democrats.

Medicare Advantage basically provides tax dollars to insurance companies to provide insurance to retirees above what Medicare pays. The program provides no better services than Medicare does and isn't any cheaper; it represents little more than a massive federal government pay out of close to $20 billion each year to the insurance companies.

Consider Humana. In the middle of 2009 it reported having close to 1.5 million enrollees in its Medicare Advantage plan. The company's total revenue for just the second quarter of 2009 was almost $8 billion (remember that is only a three month period). It took in more than half that through Medicare Advantage, or $4.15 billion – in just three months.

One of the biggest cost saving measures in health reform will prove to be the scaling back and eventual elimination of government subsidies to the health insurance companies for Medicare Advantage.

Health reform's advantages

Most importantly, once all aspects of the law are put into place, various studies show that the total package will add 32 million to the health insurance rolls. Most of these folks will be low-income wage earners who cannot afford premiums, such as the 13 million employees or owners of small businesses who lack coverage now.

Subsidies to lower- and middle-income wage earners and small business owners through tax credits and expanded eligibility for Medicaid and scaled subsidies for private insurance will cover millions of families.

Reduced costs for businesses will contribute to new job growth, as much as 2.5 to 4 million jobs over the next 10 years, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Experts believe that savings on health benefits will also put some upward pressure on wages as employers find themselves better able to manage healthcare costs.

It is vital to note that this shift in health policy represents an end to taxpayer subsidies to massive and highly profitable insurance companies in favor of working families.

Some critics charge that health reform creates just a big pay out to make people buy insurance products. While this claim is basically true, for most of the currently uninsured it will be at little added cost, will provide them access to affordable healthcare they previously lacked, and will improve the quality of their lives.

Consider what it will mean to a person or a family in the long-run to have regular check-ups, preventive care, and to not have to make choices between buying food or going to the doctor. A number of studies have shown that as many as 22,000 people die annually because they lack care. They don't die because they have a catastrophic event and some hospital refuses them care when they don't produce an insurance card. They die because the lack of insurance forces them to delay or go without basic care. This pattern builds up over years. Suddenly the high blood pressure you've had for 30 years but didn't know about or do anything about because of high medical costs leads to heart disease or death.

For those folks who worry about new big government spending, health reform will reduce the federal deficit by $143 billion in the next 10 years, and by and addition $1.2 trillion in the following decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Regrettably the failure to implement a relatively inexpensive public option will actually cost taxpayers more in the long run. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a public option along the lines proposed by the President and actually passed by the House of Representatives would have reduced the federal debt by $400 billion all by itself. (While health reform as it is will control cost growth and save money, a public option would have done better on this score by reducing the number and amount of government subsidies for families and individuals to buy into the more expensive private market and by keeping the private market in line.)

It's time to get on board

For those people who are justifiably disappointed that a more comprehensive or universal health reform program wasn't put into place, it is time to get on board. With Republicans threatening crazy lawsuits and repeal campaigns, it is time to claim this victory and move forward.

Yes, as long as the private insurance companies dominate the marketplace and long as reform is limited to regulation rather than structural change, there will be abuses. But the meaningful change in how healthcare is done in this country is self-evident.

As the new system unfolds, supporters of truly universal and free healthcare will have to study the best methods for moving forward. Piece by piece a truly universal system can be put in place. A public insurance program, expanded Medicare for preretirement workers, expanded public coverage for different types of care all could build momentum for a more fundamental change in the structure of the system.

President Obama's role in winning this victory should be commended. His leadership role ensured that the combined efforts of millions of Americans who joined with labor and numerous progressive organizations and coalitions would not go unrewarded. He staked his political fortunes on the passage of this law, saying at one point that he deemed his own reelection far less important than successfully making healthcare a basic right.

On a final note, ethically challenged, right-wing ideologue Grover Norquist is famous for having said that he'd like to see public programs slashed until they were small enough to "drown in a bath tub." Those of us who want to advance meaningful health reform to take up a similar slogan aimed at health insurance companies. This victory was a first step in doing so.

Photo by Joe Mabel, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Strenski on the Subway

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:37:00 +0000

He stood quietly, very quietly, looking upward the whole time, straining to elevate his head until the neck began to tighten and hurt. Avoiding the eyes of those immediately in his space, Strenski looked long and hard into the ceiling light fixture, the one that intermittently blinked on and off the entire route from Brooklyn into Union Square. It wasn’t such a long ride, but the vacuum-tight crowd of bodies squeezed into the subway car created a sensation of timelessness, and he froze in this thicket of human experience, just short of numb. It went on like this each day, to and from the office, with that damned light arhythmically flickering overhead dominating his view.

Attempting to release some of the tension from his neck now, Strenski slowly turned and tried to roll his shoulders back, to no avail. As he did, the backpack on the guy behind him struck him square in the spine, causing him to move quickly up against the long silver pole he held with white knuckles, and it was then that he realized his face had gotten much too close to the heavy-set woman standing to his right. Sucking her teeth annoyedly, she leered at him from the corner of her eye, attempting to ward him off from her personal space, whatever personal space one could find in this rush-hour ride through the fifth circle. Strenski’s eyes shot back up at the light, which blinked twice just as he caught glimpse of it, momentarily throwing the rumbling car from bright light to blackness and back. Now Strenski just focused on the metallic pole, chilled from air-conditioning, which stood inches away from the bridge of his nose. Should the car come to a sudden halt, he considered, he’d probably crack his nose and forehead right into the thing. Gazing deep into the convex image in front of him, Strenski saw his side-show distortion laughing back at the sardine can which encircled it, but mostly right back into his own eyes. It was a discomforting view to go perfectly with just such an occasion.

Little by little, Strenski snuck little glances at the people in his purview. The heavy-set woman lurched forward each time the car rocked, so she was most obvious. The pudgy alabaster face under thick eyeglasses rippled with each jolt of the train. She was a woman perhaps in her late 50s but with freshly dyed and teased reddish hair attempting to blur the years. She watched Strenski carefully through smudged lenses encased in a gold-turning-green metal frame, vigilant of the possible sexual predator the automated announcements warn travelers about (lately this announcement competes with “If You See Something-- Say Something”, replacing the old standby “Keep Your Hands Off the Doors”). She wore a strangely green dress with a frilly yellow collar and, as she suspiciously looked over at another man, Strenski spied on her fingernails, painted in the same odd green shade, albeit in a sparkling finish, and the handbag wrapped tightly around her forearm. It was of a shiny fire engine red. The woman, whose ruby-painted lips had remained sealed in an angry grimace the whole ride, did all of her shouting through her wardrobe, it would seem. But her guttural garment-hollers were enough to make Strenski wince. He felt, right then and there, that as they were sharing a moment, she at least deserved a name within this imaginary cocktail party from hell, and declared that she’d be known as “Martha My Dear,” after the regal Beatles song. Warily, Martha leered back at him and Strenski tried to suppress a laugh, imagining the conversation they’d have in response to this. He looked away, swallowing a violent chuckle.

Just beyond Martha stood a round-faced Asian man with thick, sweeping black hair. Disregarding all that went on around him, the man’s arm craned around the bodies in his path, protruding uncomfortably from his short-sleeved white dress shirt. He grappled with the pole, holding on for dear life, but his face only reflected solemnity, his gaze frozen. The man’s shoulder bag, with the initials “K. J.” embossed in gold along the front pocket, hung loosely around his chest and Strenski tried to imagine what his name could be. With little thought, it was decided that the man’s initials and appearance indicated Kim Jong Il just enough to make it impossible to pass up this moniker. Strenski noted that from deep within Kim Jong’s bag came a white cord, snaking out into a bifurcated end, and culminating in a pair of ear phones placed within the confines of his smallish ears. Kim Jong appeared transfixed on his music, only occasionally reaching into the bag to fetch the listening device and seek out another favorite song. Then he’d go right back into the realm. Strenski wondered what it was he could be listening to that pulled him so deeply into his own sphere; something soft, maybe a mellow Chet Baker vocal? Hmmmm, “Let’s Get Lost”. No. Strenski decided upon something very avant garde, like a Xenakis piece, or maybe something by Frank Zappa. The blank, detached look on Kim Jong’s face made this idea that much more bizarre--so then of course the music could only be the squealing attack of Anthony Braxton’s saxophonic death blows. Yeah, that’s it: an atonal plain of frenetic primal screams for our Kim Jong.

Strenski noted, though, that each time Jong let go of the pole to segue over to another musical selection, Martha—resenting his steadfast reach—would move a little further over, into his path, causing Jong to have to struggle anew in his quest for the pole’s stability. When the train would take some dangerous curves, Kim Jong’s fingers worked furiously to maintain hold of the aluminum pole which seemed to slip further away from him with each rock of the car. But he never blinked.

Now over to Strenski’s left side was a couple, a youngish couple, who couldn’t seem to keep their hands off one another. “Bob and Carol,” apparently trying to hunt down a Ted and Alice of their own, looked deeply into one another’s eyes, laughing lovers’ laughs and telling private stories no one else could hear, alone in the world. That Martha, at a three-quarter angle, resentfully huffed each time Bob nuzzled Carol’s ear meant nothing to them and while Strenski desperately tried to keep his eyes off the pair in heat, he was repeatedly pulled into their love scene, a self-conscious voyeur.

Carol placed a soft kiss on Bob’s lips as the train’s metallic wheels suddenly screeched to a high-pitched stop in the tunnel between 36th and Pacific Streets. As the light fixture flickered on in Morse code the moments of darkness were enough for the couple’s soft giggling to get a little bit louder, their embrace bolder and bolder. They were becoming the main attraction for all of the crushed, exhausted commuters with nothing better to look at. Those around them included “Langston”, a tall, slim African-American man with a bored expression and an intellectual air. His black tee shirt displayed a red circle containing a Black liberation image in the center, shouting down the Man. Tiny, black shades covered Langston’s eyes just enough for near anonymity, and his earphones sought to close out everything about him. But as the train sat in morbid stillness for what felt like an eternity, the only sounds in evidence (besides radiator-like hissing grumbles from some of the dispirited travelers) was the throbbing overspill of Langston’s music: bombastic bass and a cutting, electronic backbeat supported some kind of Hip Hop vocal, but no one could really hear the words, just their skimmering, rhythmic attack and the occasional curse.

Martha’s eyes rolled upward and to the side as her lips curled distastefully. Bob and Carol now stood wordless, finally aware of the crowd in their immediate grasp, and Kim Jong fiddled emotionless with his iPod. Over beyond him, Strenski observed a very tall middle-aged man in a rumpled suit speaking buoyantly to the short woman in turban and sari, perhaps a co-worker or maybe a building neighbor he’d found on the train that day. Would they retain this friendship or was it just one of those things momentarily constructed in these settings? And opposite this pair were three young Mexican men carrying guitars, speaking in soft Spanish as they anxiously peered through the windows to the underground darkness beyond. Subway performers, maybe on the way to Times Square to challenge that Peruvian band that seems to be at every major stop. And whatever happened to that crazy guy who used to sing and play the washtub bass?, Strenski wondered , taking note of Martha who again leered at him with untrusting eyes. She pulled at her blouse’s ruffles, making certain that there was nothing exposed as Strenski again focused on the now static light fixture. And then, from the depths of discomforting silence, the train began to move as mysteriously as it had stopped, barreling out of the tunnel and landing at the next stop. God, are we still in Brooklyn?

Strenski let out a gentle sigh as the train pulled into the Pacific Street/Atlantic Avenue Station. The multiple doors of the subway car were simultaneously thrown open and out poured a bevy of passengers, each racing the other to be the first out, as if there was a prize given to the first fifty to emerge. Strenski watched the push and pull from the safety of his pole. People raced about the car, heading for the doors, a swollen horde seeking escape, only to be replaced by another thicket of humanity, charging in, seeking out any open seat or even a much sought-after door to lean on (these are especially good when reading a rather unwieldy book). Coming in from the rear of this new crowd, Strenski noticed a dignified older woman, almost certainly a European immigrant in her fashionably old world widow’s black. “Mama Celeste” carried one of those silver canes with the four little rubber feet at the bottom and moved slowly, in a dictated fashion into the center of the car and then veered off to one side towards the bench-like seat which lined the length of the vehicle’s wall. The passengers who’d claimed these seats had been alert all ride along, reading the newspaper or a book, chatting or gazing blankly at no one in particular, but now, without warning, each was immediately thrust into a deep, unshakeable sleep. Each of them, meekly peeking out of mostly-shut eyes, hoped that the next person would offer the elderly woman a seat. Strenski watched as they squirmed while trying to maintain the sedated act, inwardly cursing their own sense of guilt. Finally, a large man wearing a tool belt jumped up and surrendered his seat to her, just moments before she was to plunge the prongs of her cane into his booted foot. Strenski thought that it had all worked out well enough. Martha, still to his right, didn’t seem to agree as she watched the scene and huffed in annoyance, shaking her head from side to side. Strenski knew not to look directly at her, watching instead from the far corner of his eye. By this time Bob and Carol had gone off to a romantic getaway and Kim Jong was last seen running off for the number 5 Train, heading for points east. Langston held ground, as did the tremors of the Rap that leaked out of his headphones.

Packed anew, the train groaned and forced its way through a series of intricate tunnels. Emerging finally into the bright daylight illuminating the Brooklyn Bridge, it touched the face of Manhattan before plummeting again into the clockwork web far beneath the City.

Farsick

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:34:00 +0000

“The esoteric knowledge will always be esoteric, since knowledge is an experience, not a formula” – D. H. Lawrence.

In the summer you could go up in the cable car to escape the crucible of heat that the village had become. Because Bolzano nestled at the end of the valley it could be the hottest place in Italy, even though it was its northernmost province. The sides of the mountains which circled around behind the old town collected this heat, which it absorbed into its rocky depths and then seemed to radiate with a suffuse golden haze over the town. I always thought of Bolzano as a golden place, especially when arriving from out of the mountains; and when I got off the train and stepped down onto those ever circling roman cobbles. In one place by the old path that led up to ‘Peter Ploner’ (a nice hut where, after a short hike up you could have a beer) there grew juicy cactuses, yet the wind up the top would make the pines sway, producing that lonesome mountain sigh that meant your transit to a different, snowy, alpine world, with that added hint of natural danger.

Surrounding the old town on the lower slopes of the mountains were the vineyards and the white modernist Italian type villas of the rich nestling alongside ancient stone vineyard farmhouses. Bolzano had recently been encouraged, ordered perhaps, to transform itself from a rather insulated, snobbish, quiet place into a cultural centre, especially the old village, which was really a separate entity this side of the river. Restaurants and cafes had been opened and there was a nightlife that poured onto the little streets in the evening. But it all still had a sense of this being stage managed a little bit.

For someone from my background, my new job was a kind of dream and at the same time it seemed sort of ridiculous. One minute I was down the Jobcentre in Putney, with all the charming stuff that entails, and the next minute up in a jet, commuting to work in the Italian Alps to be a professor. Sometimes I felt like an impostor; that the University had made a terrible mistake (maybe they really had) and that the Dean must have got me mixed up with someone else. My life seemed to be full of this kind of sudden alteration of status; I was familiar with it but it sometimes drove other people nuts, especially the ‘jobsworths’ of you find in authority.

At first, my route to work went from Heathrow to Munich and then by bus to Munich central station, then the train through the Alps to the Italian side of the mountains and the South Tyrol. The trains that went from Munich through the Alps were named after artists, which I thought was nice and made a change (almost everything in the United Kingdom being named after royalty). They were Italian carriages but at first they were pulled by German engines, which were red and looked like a Teutonic helmet.

It was a long train journey that, after some quite ordinary urban sprawl and some fields and dark German forests, began to engage with the smaller mountains and snake through the lower passes. Soon you could sense the scale from the parallax as the different sized mountains moved apart and away from each other so that you could see the bigger peaks that were looming behind, with snow on them.

From the aircraft before coming into land at Munich I think I saw these mountains on the horizon poking through the clouds, it made your heart ache badly. They seemed to call to me. I know it is crazy but I really had a premonition about what was going to happen, both then and earlier in my life.

Soon I was in amongst those mountains. When I was a kid I had one of those stereoscope viewers with circular slides which I loved to look through, one was of the mountains of the Alps. I remember the viewer was made of a kind of plastic that had a nice smell something like bubble gum. This was the real thing. The detail and the parallax as you glided with the train and watched the peaks shift slowly aside was awesome, but I fancied I could smell that same aroma of plastic from my childhood.

It was after a little halt called Brenner, where they changed the engine, that you noticed a subtle difference in the atmosphere and the light that meant the south.

I liked Brenner. It was so obviously a kind of outpost, a border place. Mountains were all round it ringing the tracks where, in the winter, long low carriages would stand with lorry containers on them, all with their adverts on their flat sides like some kind of big open air modern art exhibition. There was a little café on the platform with a yellow film half over its window which I always wanted to go into but never did because the stop was not long enough and I was afraid the train would leave without me. I hardly ever had any spare money on these trips, given I always had to pay in advance and claim it back as expenses, and you do not feel you can take chances like that.

The German or Austrian students spoke English as if they were born there, while the Italians spoke it haltingly, and some not at all, although they were supposed to. I didn’t speak Italian or German. I thought I would learn one or the other if I kept coming to Bolzano, but that was vanity. I had an office which I could use and which had my name on the door, though I noted this could be easily removed.

The job was apparently ‘hot-desking’ as I imagined; this meant that when I was gone someone else would be using the same office and would log-on to the same computer. These offices were like something out of James Bond, the windows had large slatted outside Venetian type shutters that could deflect the sun and worked by remote touch controls. The view was over the flat valley to the distant snow capped mountains that defined where it eventually curved off to the left. The computers were state of the art. My last teaching post had been in North London University and us ‘visiting lecturers’ (a euphemism for the academic proletariat) were lucky to share a tiny windowless office and old computer.

My first bit of teaching did not go so well, I was too nervous, and tried too hard. This was usual for me and I knew I would get better. Afterwards, after meeting some fellow colleagues who were quite impressive, I went back out through the foyer and down past the sun drenched bustling vegetable market and back to the hotel. I tried to fathom the differences, the world that my students inhabited, to work out what they meant; I needed to ‘click’ with the students and so I needed to ‘get’ this culture better than I was doing. In London all this was easy, I didn’t even have to try, even though the students were from all over the world and London was as varied as a world itself. But this was different. I was the alien here.

On my last trip abroad, to a conference at Massachusetts, I had a similar feeling. Nobody could sense that you were an alien from another world, so they responded to you normally, which was normal for them of course, but not you. Throughout the whole conference, where I wanted to sparkle with my intelligence, I acted like an idiot. I never used to believe much in let lag, thinking it was a fashionable moan of those who wanted to boast about flying, but it affected me badly, though it took me a while to realize it. There was a feeling of being detached. I was constantly tired but not sleepy. I was confused, but about what? My thoughts would not add up, like I was during the second part of a migraine, when I knew the words but couldn’t attach any important sense to them. And in America they spoke English of course, and that should have been ok, but it seemed to make it even weirder because, while I understood what they said, I obviously didn’t understand their real meaning. Maybe you could get drunk on that feeling, get addicted to it, it wasn’t altogether unpleasant, or not always, except when I met Cornel West and I wanted to impress him and all I could say was some inane gibberish about everything being because of ‘power’. It was a bit like sleepwalking.

Sleepwalking runs (I should say walks) in my family. I used to find my brother trying to climb into the fridge at night and help him back to bed. There is this feeling that you have after you have sleepwalked that you know something has happened different but still you cannot remember it and in fact of course you do not try to remember it because it is not in your conscious. The somnambulist is a strange creature, a kind of zombie, not entirely living in this world but nevertheless able to negotiate it. You are living out a dream and dreams are put together by your unconscious desires or repressions to fit with certain bits of reality that impinge on you but which you might wish were different. But in a world of zombies the zombie zombies are the sanest ones perhaps, though they don’t seem it; if you are at all sensitive to these things, as artists are supposed to be. It could I suppose be mistaken as a sign for being anti-materialist, for being a ‘cloudmonger’, but it isn’t, it is the opposite of that.

It was one of my German students who mentioned the term ‘farsick’ in a seminar I led about, if I remember rightly, things they personally liked and disliked. In German you can more easily put together words for different things, amalgamate them into a new entity with a new and different meaning, and this was acceptable practice and could enter into the language quite easily, apparently. Being ‘farsick’ is the opposite of being homesick: it is that longing to be in the distance, on the horizon, looking at another landscape, being away from the too familiar and homespun. The term resonated in my brain. When I was a boy I would stare at the jets flying over my council house garden and daydream that I was on them, going far away to a place for some kind of work (never a holiday).

But recently for a long time I had had a dream where I could not find my way home. I might get off a train at a station which seemed somehow familiar, and start to go home, only to realize that my home was not there anymore, or that I could not find my way. I think this is because it is true, both of my parents died (effects of asbestos) when I was a young man and so I and my brothers and sisters lost that central base which parents make and are. On the positive side, if there can be one to this, in my waking life I don’t feel so attached to anywhere in particular after that, and I want to feel that my home is with myself, wherever I am, or where my family is and the people I love. But this strategy never really works fully; there is always that residual feeling of abandonment.

Europe feels for me both distant and familiar, a strange home, especially now I have worked truly ‘in Europe’, Bozen-Bolzano being such a crossroads of European cultures. At the same time ‘hotdesking’ and contract working, being a ‘temp’, is a transient life, to the personality it is essentially like multiple redundancy and has the same effect on the soul, though incrementally perhaps. It is the result of this pan-European positivist philosophy that has been so popular since the bourgeoisie tried to have some Marxism in their social theory (in ‘sociology’) but without Marx and revolution (naturally). For me it is no wonder that it was a part of the problem that has led, these days, to such a huge crisis. When you are a flexible worker able to be ‘hired and fired’ at will, but living in a system with totally inflexible banks. My repayments were regular, my employment was not. I was also only paid (albeit a generous amount at Bolzano) in lump sums, which was awkward.

But of course nobody talked much about these sorts of problems in life, even my fellow workers in the same position. Everyone must act as if they were the sons and daughters of the rich (maybe all of them were) without a care for mere monetary problems, lest you lose your social and affective ‘credit rating’. Some of my fellow temps obviously weighed you up first as competition as if they were mini ratings agencies on legs themselves. You could tell when the sentiment was at work, that slight tone of bitterness, that very carefulness not to be controversial in any ‘bad’ way, the snide. Could you blame them? They must have been worried about their livelihood like me I supposed, but it made for a rather lonely working existence, separated from that camaraderie work could give you, which is one of the last best aspects of being an exploited worker. And the funny thing was in amongst all this you were supposed to deal with the ‘pastoral’ matters of the students, to care about their lives. How was it really possible not to pass on all these problems, how could ‘transference’ not take place, at least secretly, against your will?