People Before Profit blog

Obama's Response to the Jobs Crisis is Still Too Lame

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 06:09:00 +0000

Quite often, media reports and commentaries about the rising tide of unemployment - especially amongst young people - in other parts of the world are accompanied by warning of dire consequences if the trend continues. Images of major social protests and even acts of violence are evoked. Take, for
instance, Europe. The highest youth jobless rates on the continent are reported to be 50.5 percent in Spain, 51 percent in Greece and over 30 percent in Ireland, Italy, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Portugal.

Sometimes this situation is described as a ticking time bomb, sometimes not. In Greece where "young bear the harshest burden of the economic crisis," wrote Randall Fuller in the New York Times last week, "they do so with a mix of denial, frantic exuberance and a debilitating sense of the absurd."

We repeat figures as if this were the natural order of things

As I read those words, I sat back and wondered what could be said of the response in the African American communities where jobless rates for young people have been just as high for decades.

The seasonally adjusted jobless rate for African Americans between 16 and 19 years old now stands at 35.5 percent, up from about 27 percent when the crisis began five years ago. What's more, the youth jobless rate in some inner city communities is about 50 percent and has been for some time.

Economist Dean Baker points out that "By demographic group, the worst story is among black men and black teens. The former has an EPOP [employment-to-population ratio] that is 6.5 percentage points below its pre- recession level. Black teens have an EPOP of 15.5 percent, down 9.0 percentage points from the 2006 level. The EPOP for black women is down 3.7 percentage points from its pre-recession level, but has risen 3.2 percentage points from lows hit last summer."

We repeat figures such as these regularly, and often perfunctorily, as if this were the natural order of things.The alarm bells being set off over the number of young people out of work in Europe should remind us it is not.

Living at home with one's parents because they cannot afford live elsewhere - or living in the streets - is nothing new for millions of African American and Latino youth.

Lay off austerity, which is only exacerbating the problem, and act now to stimulate their economies

"The recent developments are indeed a disaster and you might also call the situation a political scandal," writes Henning Meyer in Social Europe Journal May 22. "How is it possible that more than one in five young people in Europe have no job and so many more are working in precarious circumstances?" How often is such a question raised around here?

"We cannot afford a lost generation in Europe," concluded Meyer. "We must tackle and solve the problem now!"

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., the richest and most powerful nation on the planet, the prospects for a solution remain remote.

"Everyone is talking jobs but saying nothing," wrote Robert Borosage, president of the Institute for America's Future, recently. "The inadequate recovery is sputtering and no one is doing anything." "In the phony war on unemployment, no one has picked up a gun. We're going through the motions, waiting for the misery to ratchet up, the cities to blow and corporate profits to tank before getting serious."

"But if Republicans have nothing to say about jobs, neither do Democrats," continued Borosage. "They are terrified by polls that say voters are concerned about deficits. So every jobs program has to be `paid for' - and, almost by definition, small. Obama issues a `to do list' for Congress that even his aides have a hard time pretending to be excited about."

However, the President does have a job plan. It's hardly up to the challenge facing us but it's a start. The problem is, after presenting it a few months ago, it dropped pretty much out of sight. Last week he brought it up again at a press briefing and in the process, created a muddle. It's one thing to blame the Republicans for refusing to act on the jobs crisis (what else is new?) and another to inform the nation of the seriousness of the situation and rally the
people for action, something he and the Administration appear loathe to do.

The question is not simply whether or not new jobs are being produced. In a capitalist economy jobs are constantly being created, sometimes in large numbers. The question is whether enough are coming on line to meet the population increase and make up for the positions lost due to things like
technological innovation or the effects of globalization. If not, there will be more people without jobs. When the President says that the policies being pursued by his Republican opponents would only increase the discrepancy, he has a point. And yes, the situation in Europe exerts a somewhat negative effect on the economic prospects here. But to say, as he did last week, that "the private sector is doing fine" at creating jobs is just plain wrong.

The President later appeared to backtrack somewhat, saying, "I think if you look at what I said this morning, what I've been saying consistently over the last year, we've actually seen some good momentum in the private sector." "There's been 4.3 million jobs created, 800,000 this year alone, record corporate profits." He added: "And so that has not been the biggest drag on the economy." It causes one to wonder just who is advising the President these days and why he continues to avoid the advice of the "Keynesians" who have left the White House inner circle or those who were never invited in.

There will never be a better time for the `internal improvements' that we need to make

But it's going to take more than the President's current plan to really meet the jobs crisis. Proposals for meaningful action do exist. For one thing, as Borosage notes, current low interest rates "offer the U.S. a remarkable opportunity to rebuild the country. There will never be a better time for the `internal improvements' that we need to make - rebuilding roads, bridges, mass transit, sewers, fast trains, airports, retrofitting public buildings, building up renewable energy and more."

Liberal economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman have been calling for such a step for years now, but to no avail.

The International Labor Organization says almost 75 million, or 12.6% of the young people across the globe were jobless lasts year, an increase of over than 4 million since the current economic crisis began. Dr. Ekkehard Ernst, head of the ILO's Employment Trends Unit, has called upon
governments to lay off austerity, which is only exacerbating the problem, and act now to stimulate their economies. "What is quite obvious with youth unemployment rates of over 50 per cent in these countries is the first thing that needs to be done is get jobs back . and that can only be done if you
stimulate the economy, for instance through infrastructure programs, which are very job rich," he said.

The group Our Time - Standing Up for Young Americans is circulating an online petition addressed to President Obama and Governor Romney that reads:

"Our country needs nurses, teachers, disaster relief, park restoration, infrastructure repair, and more. Yet 1 in 2 young Americans are currently jobless or underemployed.

"A generation is a terrible thing to waste. Pledge to create one million new public service positions by expanding programs such as AmeriCorps, CitiYear, Habitat for Humanity, Teach for America, and others so we can rebuild our country now."

"The only question is how deep the crisis must go and how crippling the pain must be before action is taken," says Borosage.

[BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. Carl is one of the moderators of
Portside.]

European Elections in a Time of Crisis

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:41:00 +0000

The financial and economic crisis in Europe that has many wondering about the future of the Euro currency zone has not ended. Spain has now been sucked into the vortex and has been forced to go hat in hand, asking for a bailout loan. Italy may not be far behind. The “Troika” of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, plus the conservative governments of Germany and the United Kingdom are holding fast so far to an austerity strategy, but the European grassroots is rebelling against this. This rebellion is reflected in electoral results across the continent.

The purpose of this article is simply to survey recent election results in a number of European countries without getting into either too much detail or any complex analysis of their economic roots and implications. While the corporate media have concentrated on Western Europe, interesting things have been happening in the former socialist countries too. The overall pattern, continent wide, is of a mass rebellion against austerity policies imposed by the ruling class as their solution to the crisis. But this does not add up to a radical lurch to the Marxist left. And while the left made advances, a disturbing trend in some countries is the rise of extreme right wing and even neo-fascist parties who seek to blame the crisis on scapegoats such as immigrants and foreign countries.

Iceland: This tiny country (320,000 souls), not as of now a member of the European Union, was the first country to meet disaster because of the world financial crisis, when all three of its major banks collapsed. Amid massive street protests, in the 2009 parliamentary elections the Icelandic voters severely punished the government of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and elected a new majority of Social Democrats and Greens, headed by Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir. There will be new elections for President on June 30 of 2012 and for parliament in 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_parliamentary_election,_2012. Meanwhile, a large proportion of the Icelandic public has been involved in consultations toward constitutional changes.

Portugal. Portugal is the “P” in the insulting anagram “PIIGS”, the Western European countries lately in greatest financial trouble. The Socialist Party government of Jose Socrates, which had worked to implement austerity measures dictated by the “Troika” consisting of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, was severely punished by voters in the elections of 2011, losing 23 parliamentary seats and thus being ousted from power. The new right wing government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho (of the misleadingly named Social Democratic Party, a right wing party in Portugal) has, of course, not been able to find a solution either, other than more austerity. In the elections, the dynamic Portuguese Communist Party, the PCP, and its “Green” allies, picked up a little strength, with 7.9 percent of the vote, but not enough to come into power. The PCP had previously offered a united front to the Socialist Party on an anti-austerity program, but Prime Minister Jose Socrates refused this.

Spain: The government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) also found itself in the uncomfortable position of having to implement austerity measures, and out of any alternative ideas. In the elections of 2011, it was ousted from power and replaced by the right wing People's Party (PP) of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. The United Left, (IU, or Izquierda Unida, which incorporates the Spanish Communist Party), with its Green allies, picked up strength to win 6.9 percent of the popular vote, their best total since the 1990s. Rajoy, like Passos Coelho in Portugal, simply piled on more austerity, leading to very large scale protest demonstrations. In 2012, there are signs that the Spanish electorate is feeling great buyer's remorse with Mr. Rajoy: On March 26, in regional elections in Andalusia in the South, both the Socialist Party and the United Left made electoral gains in this region hard hit by unemployment, ousting the PP from power. . The United Left also advanced in elections in the mining region of Asturias, on the Cantabrian Coast in the North of Spain, though the PP ousted the Socialists from power there also. Since then, the Rajoy government has announced the closing of Asturian coal mines, which has led to a very large scale miners' rebellion, with a general strike scheduled for June 18, and anti-austerity protests and strikes in all major cities continue to give the government headaches.

Slovakia: Legislative lections were held on March 10 in Slovakia, again in the midst of turmoil about austerity measures. In this case, the center-left Socialist Party, which is headed by the new Prime Minister, Robert Fico, and which combines social democrats with former communists, did well, taking over the government from the conservative coalition of Iveta Radicova with an absolute majority and promising to back away from austerity policies, but to keep Slovakia within the European Union and the Euro zone. The Slovak Communist Party did not win any parliamentary seats.

France. France is by far the biggest of the European countries to hold national elections in the recent period. The right-wing former president, Nicolas Sarkozy (of the UMP, or Movement for a Popular Majority, the successor to General deGaul's old Rally for the Republic) had been working in tandem with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to tamp down any efforts to get away from the austerity program. So the French elections are particularly important. On April 22, 2012 France held the first round of its presidential elections, which showed an advance for the Socialist Party's candidate, Francois Hollande, and for the Left Front (Front Gauche) which is built around the French Communist Party, and its charismatic candidate, Jean Luc Melenchon. However, the extreme right wing, in the form of the anti-immigrant National Front's poisonous but very effective candidate, Marine LePen, got a shocking 18% of the vote. In the second round of the presidentials on May 6, Hollande won by 51.64 to 48.36 percent over Sarkozy, a solid win but hardly a crushing one. In the second round, it was also evident that to compete for Marine LePen's voters, Sarkozy and, to a lesser extent, Hollande, were not above adopting some of her anti-foreign rhetoric.

In the first round of the legislative elections, the left advanced more and the right retreated more. . The socialists may be able to form a parliamentary majority with their votes alone once the second round is finished on June 17. Certainly, they will have a majority in combination with the Greens and the Left Front. This will give President Hollande the ability to push through changes both in domestic and international policy. The big question is whether he will try to moderate the pro-austerity positions of Germany's Chancellor Merkel, the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, or if he tries, can succeed.

United Kingdom. The British did not hold a national election this year, but the results of local elections on May 3 should serve as a warning to the right wing coalition of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party and Nick Clegg's Liberal Democratic Party of trouble ahead. The Coalition swept into power in May 2010 after inflicting a stunning defeat on Gordon Brown' government, ending 13 years of Labour rule under Brown and his predecessor, Tony Blair. But this year's local elections show that the tide may be turning. In a context of widespread street demonstrations against the government's right wing policies, the Conservative Party registered slight losses, while Labour and the Liberal Democrats had slight gains. Looking at results by region, very striking were major losses for the Conservatives in Scotland, where there was also a remarkable increase in the vote for the Scottish National Party, many of whose members advocate independence of Scotland from the United Kingdom. Labor also advanced in Scotland. However, London's Conservative Party Mayor, Boris Johnson, defeated former Mayor Ken Livingston, an iconic figure of the left of the Labour Party.

Ireland: Ireland rapidly moved from “Celtic Tiger” in which everyone wanted to invest, to economic basket case, due to a mortgage bust which led to a bank crisis and then a government funding crisis, when the government of Brian Cowen moved massively to bail out the banks. The governing coalition, of Fine Gael and the Greens was severely chastised by voters in the elections of February 25, 2011. The left parties, consisting of the Socialist Party, Sinn Fein and the Trotskyite People before Profit all picked up support, but not enough to enter government. The Communist Party of Ireland did not enter parliament either. The new government is an incoherent coalition of the Fianna Fail party of Prime Minister Enda Kenny and the Labor Party. This has led to more stalemate, and no big changes in policy. On May 31, there was a plebiscite in Ireland on the issue of the European Fiscal Compact, the European Union's proposed enforcement mechanism for the austerity policy. The left (Communists, Socialists and Sinn Fein) all urged a “no” vote, while the government made dire predictions of disaster if the treaty were not approved. The result was a victory for the “yes” option, but hardly an enthusiastic one.

Greece: All eyes have been on Greece for the last couple of years, as a massive government accounting scandal was accompanied by a financial crisis, and two highly controversial negotiated bailouts for the country. In exchange for the bailouts, the Greek government had agreed to some of the most extreme austerity measures on the continent, which are being felt very sharply by the Greek workers and masses, and which have produced militant demonstrations and strikes on an ongoing basis. In an attempt to placate creditors, the Pan Hellenic Socialist Party (PASOK) government of Prime Minister George Papandreou the younger stepped down and was replaced by a three party left-right-far right coalition of PASOK, New Democracy (Nea Demokratia) and LAOS (Popular Orthodox Rally), headed by PASOK's Evangelos Venezelos.

Parliamentary elections were held on May 6. The result was a parliament from which no governing coalition could be created. The three coalition parties: PASOK, New Democracy and LAOS all lost heavily. Even though it had pulled out of the coalition before the election and denounced the austerity measures, LAOS was completely wiped out, losing all its parliamentary seats. The left, however, advanced briskly. The Greek Communist Party (KKE) advanced slightly in parliamentary representation, picking up five parliamentary seats to a total of 26, but the Syriza Party, composed of former KKE people with some former Trotskyites and others rose to the position of becoming the second largest party in Parliament, zooming past PASOK. The disappearance of LAOS was more than compensated for, on the ultra right, by the appearance in parliament for the first time of a frankly neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi). It became quickly evident that no majority coalition could be made out of the results of this election, so a new election has been scheduled for Sunday June 17, in which the most likely result is that Syriza will pick up more parliamentary seats. But there is no knowing if a coalition government will be possible after the new election, either. The head of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, is a frightening figure to the Greek right and the European ruling class, because he and his party won't commit to maintaining the agreement on austerity that was part of the bailout agreement, though Tsipras says he wants to stay in the Euro zone and the European Union.

A quirk of the Greek electoral system is that the party which receives the largest vote gets to name 50 extra members to Parliament, so the race between Syriza and the PP as to who will be the first party is a serious matter.

Germany. In provincial elections in the states of Schleswig-Holstein and Nordrhein Westfalen the national right wing governing coalition, composed of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Free Democratic Party suffered significant defeats at the hands of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). The party to the left of the Social Democratic Party, the Left (Die Linke) did not do well, probably due to internal problems. A new populist formation, the Pirate Party, did well in several areas, but its ideology is not yet clear. Die Linke is a combination of members of the former Communist Party of the German Democratic Republic and people who have exited the SPD “stage left”.

Italy. Local elections on May 6 and 7, with a runoff on May 20-21, saw the right wing parties that had backed former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (Berlusconi's own People of Freedom Party and the Northern Leagues) punished with advances for the left and also the centrist Democratic Party. In the cities of Genoa, in the Northwest and Palermo, in Sicily, communists advanced but in coalition with more centrist parties such as “Italy of Values”. A new populist party, the Five Star Movement, founded by comedian Beppe Grillo, also did well, especially in Parma. As is the case with the German “Pirates”, the direction in which the Five Star Movement will now head is by no means clear, although it tends to take an anti-Euro stand. But its growth is clearly a rebuke against tax increases, labor law “flexibility” reform measures and other austerity related measures of the current technocratic government of Prime Minister Mario Monti, as well as the past scandals of the former Berlusconi regime.

Romania: On February 6, 2012, the right wing government of Romania, headed by the Emil Boc of the Democratic Liberal Party, fell on the issue of public discontent about austerity measures. Mihai Ungureanu, an independent politician, was named to replace Boc, but he lost a “no confidence” vote in parliament. On May 6, a new coalition government was put together by Victor Ponta of the Social Democratic Party, to prepare for new parliamentary elections to be held on November 25. On June 10, local elections showed a distinct movement leftwards, with Ponta's forces gaining 47 percent of municipal council seats, and the former rightist government forces only 14.5 percent. Efforts by the right wing government in Hungary to meddle in Romanian elections by trying to mobilize the large Magyar (ethnic Hungarian) minority in Romania's Transylvania area behind the right were a flop. A leftist was elected mayor of Bucharest. This seems to augur well for the center-left in the parliamentary elections.

Serbia: The one country that so far this year has bucked the trend has been Serbia. On May 6, parliamentary elections showed a gain for the Socialist Party, but a larger one for Tomislav Nikolic's “Progressive” Party, which is actually well to the right. These gains came at the expense of the centrist Democratic Party of former President Boris Tadic. A presidential election was also held on May 6 with a second round on May 20, in which Nikolic beat Tadic by a narrow margin, 51.12 percent against 48.88 percent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Tadi%C4%87 Nikolic is considered a right wing nationalist, but he is also “pro Europe”.

In addition, there are some parliamentary elections coming up which bear watching:

Netherlands. On April 23 of this year, the conservative government of the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte's coalition of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy and the Christian Democratic Appeal fell, again on the issue of austerity and the economic crisis. Although the government was brought down by the defection of one of its outside-the-cabinet supporters, Geert Wilders of the extreme right wing and populist-nationalist Party For Freedom, the left may benefit in the end. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for September 12. Early polling is mixed; it shows Rutte's coalition parties losing strength, Wilders' ultra right party holding steady, the Socialist Party (to the left of the Labor Party) gaining strength quickly, but the Labor Party (PvdA) and Green Left (Groenlinks, a combination of the old Communist Party and the Greens) both also losing strength.

Czech Republic. The leaders of the current right wing coalition in the Czech Republic admit that the austerity measures that they have been imposing are likely to bring retribution from the voters. At first, it appeared that the ruling coalition was falling apart which would have brought about new parliamentary elections, but this is now not certain. If current polling results hold and elections were held this year, the gainers would not only be the Social Democrats, but also the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, who are likely to have a parliamentary majority between them. This is a most interesting development, not least because the Czech government parties have been doing all they can to make the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia and its youth league illegal and therefore ineligible to run candidates for office (similar things have been happening in other Eastern European countries). In the past, the social democrats have refused to consider a coalition government with the communists. This could change.

There are also elections of one kind or another this year in the following European countries: Austria, Slovenia, Ukraine, Kosovo and Belarus. In addition, new parliamentary elections could be called in a number of countries if coalition governments fall apart or if the government loses a vote of confidence.

Overview of the dynamics

When the crisis hit Europe, starting with the Icelandic bank collapse, the initial reaction was to blame governments in power, whether of right or center-left, and “throw the rascals out”. Those social democratic governments, in Portugal and Spain, who had felt powerless to fight against the austerity measures which were imposed by the International Monetary Fund, the central Bank of Europe and the European Commission, went down, as did Greece's PASOK later. Both the communist left and its allies and the far right advanced. However, the voters did not give enough support to the communist and other left wing parties to move the governments farther to the left. Rather, the first result was to bring to power right-wing governments in some countries, and in others, coalitions which could not take decisive measures to deal with the crisis (Ireland).

The second stage of the electoral reaction to the crisis has been moving things more to the left, but except for Greece, not to the communist or left-socialist left. The presidential and legislative elections in France mostly posted gains for the Socialist Party, though the Front Gauche did advance in comparison to the last elections. In Italy, communists got their foot in the door in the local elections, but in united front tickets with other parties. In Germany, die Linke, to the right of the German Communist Party but to the left of the Social Democrats, has not done well this year so far, so gains have gone to the German Social Democratic Party. In Ireland, the communists have not been able to run candidates but the left wing nationalist Sin Fein and the socialists have posted gains, though the whole of the left was defeated in the referendum on the European Fiscal Compact. In Slovakia, the party which won the election is a combination of social democrats and former communists, and seems likely to really move things to the left.

The elections so far have not expressed a mass or working class eagerness to get out of the Euro Zone, let alone the European Union. This was shown in the Greek elections, in which the KKE (Greek Communist Party) only advanced a small amount in parliamentary seats, while Syriza moved sharply forward, and the social democratic PASOK was severely mauled.

And the fascist threat represented by groups like the National Front in France and Golden Dawn in Greece is very real, though at present far from being on the point of taking power.

What lessons do these elections bear for us in the United States?

At one level, the situations of these countries are very different from those of the United States, due to different electoral systems. They have parliamentary systems in which the executive branch of government is wholly or in part (France, Germany) determined by the coalitions that can be built within their national legislatures. Some have runoff elections, and/or proportional representation systems. Therefore for the communists and other left parties to run their own candidates against both center and left does not present as much of a danger of offering an opening to the extreme right as here (though such a scenario did arise in the French elections of 2002, when the National Front outpolled the Socialists in the first round of the presidentials, and everybody else was forced to support Chirac of the right wing Rally for the Republic in the second round to keep the fascists from taking power ). As we see now in the second round of legislative elections in France, the left can run its own candidates and forthrightly present its unadulterated program in the first stage, and then swivel around to support centrist forces in the second stage. That the European parties and voters are more disciplined than ours also helps.

But there are important parallels also, intrinsic to the fundamental nature of capitalism. We will see continued crises and intensified class struggle, born of the general systemic crisis of capitalism. The left can grow in these circumstances but so can the far right: The lessons of Germany and Italy between the World Wars should not be forgotten. Part of the struggle will continue to be over the interpretation of the reasons for economic crises. We will put forth our Marxist interpretations, while the extremist right will put for theirs: Foreign plots, immigrants, the godless, the Jews, the Muslims, and all the rest. The history of right-wing populism in this country creates the danger that as the crisis deepens, these kinds of interpretations, with corporate money backing them, gain increased credence at a mass level. We have to carry out all our tasks with this in mind.

This is serious business.

China's "peaceful rising"-A Marxist Historian's View

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 19:25:00 +0000

The following is an edited and expanded version of a presentation at this years Left Forum at Pace University

First let me say that while I am an historian of U.S. history, not of Asia and China, I did study Chinese East Asian history at City College with Conrad Schirokauer, whom I remember very fondly, and as a minor field at the University of Michigan with Albert Feuerwerker and Samuel Chu.

Memories of the "old normal" on China

In those days, Chinese history, or rather the history we studied ,ended in 1949. The Cultural Revolution was raging in China and it was being hailed by anarchist oriented New Left radicals and those I today call kindergarten "Communists" who formed groups to rival the CPUSA as they identified subjectively and selectively with Mao Tse-tung-the Progressive Labor Party,(PL) the Revolutionary Communist Party(RCP), and the Communist Party-Marxist Leninist(CPML)t#

But much of the scholarship of the time on China was liberal-in the tradition of John Fairbank, Benjamin Schwartz, and of course, Owen Lattimore, who continued in academia the thinking of the "old China hands" who had been purged in the state department and Foreign Service after World War II#

While one could not clearly identify with the Chinese Communist party (I was occasionally warned about that in a gentle way) the achievements of the CCP in winning over masses of people, the corrupt and reactionary nature of the Kuomintang regime, and the exploitation and oppression of the Chinese people were at the center of understanding modern Chinese history.

In the study of the Soviet Union, of course it was very different. Joseph Stalin was the ecumenical devil; the Bolshevik revolution was a "coup" against the real February Revolution. Everything the Soviets did was cynical, ruthless, and the opposite of what they said.

Today, things have changed in academic scholarship and popular media. Since the Soviet Union was destroyed a generation ago, Mao Tse-tung is no longer played against Joseph Stalin; he has joined
Joseph Stalin asa "co-devil" in the upper echelons of capitalist demonology, ironically as the defenders of the Vietnam War sought unsuccessssfully to portray him nearly a half century ago.

The New Portrayals of China-Capitalist Surrealism or Schizophrenia?

Since Deng Shao-p'ing, whatever one may think of his policies, did not become a Chinese Gorbachev (and there have been no Chinese Yeltsins and Putins to overthrow the Chinese Communist party and lead a new class of compradors and regional warlord bosses comparable to the former Soviet Republics tied to the major capitalist states, and this shows no sign of happening), the relationship of the capitalist world system and capitalist states toward the Peoples Republic remains very contradictory.

Some may nervously remember what is believed to be an old Chinese proverb-"be careful what you wish for; it may come true". The capitalist world did get from Deng the opening up of China to capitalist investment and significant trade (the latter not quite what they expected). They also gained an informal but significant strategic alliance from Deng against the Soviet Union in its last period-an alliance which increased divisions within Soviet leadership and may have contributed to the Gorbachev forces gaining power.#

They, the defenders of the capitalist path and their pundits both in the world of academic work (what sadly is often what the great social scientist Thorstein Veblen called the higher superstition) and mass media(what is often propaganda aka spin), are still looking for Chinese Gorbachevs to be followed by Chinese Yeltsins and Putins to give them what they want and have wanted since the Opium wars,--that is a weak China that they can control and use for their own profits.

Capitalists however clever they may be are compelled by the system in which they maneuver to act out the old definition of reactionary-to learn nothing and forget nothing. Even though they today trade with China, export capital to China under conditions that they are not completely happy about, and accept Chinese credit for their own debt ridden economies, they still cheer on the Dalai Lama and all Chinese at home and abroad who appear to be enemies of the CCP. Since capitalists by nature are anti-intellectual (too much time thinking is bad for business and scholars are servants they employ) they do not stop to wonder why the China market they dreamed of in the past has become China's market.

China as "New Russia" is still their dream of a "free China"-Russia except for its nuclear weapons is back to some extent where it was in world affairs in the Czarist period-dismembered, its anti-Communist government weak, the major capitalist syndicates coveting its natural resources, trying to tie it to them, and succeeding in tying former Soviet Republics to them with loans and even military bases.

China's mixed economy path on the other hand has in the larger sense worked; it has since the revolution and particularly since it adopted its mixed economy path over the last three decades lifted more people out of poverty than any nation in human history. #

Just as politicians like Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the U.S. and others through the world adopted policies taken from the socialist movement to both save and reform capitalism, especially state investment based on Keynesian economic theory, Chinese leaders have adopted policies taken from capitalists, the use of markets and private investment for profit, along with a great deal of Keynesian economic theory, to develop socialism in China.

In the U.S, the political organizations and mass media of the right seventy five years ago and forever after accused Roosevelt's government of advancing socialism and Communism. In the U.S. and in the world, many on the non and anti-Communist left who have no real power or access media except when they criticize mainline Communists ,(the capitalists have always understood the value of having enemies of their main enemy)have written off China as a capitalist country.

China today is made a scapegoat for both the "evils" of Communism as seen by anti-Communists and also the "evils" of capitalism as seen by much of the non and anti-Communist left, what I call the lone ranger left, those who go from situation to situation, country to country, striking blows in the abstract for the working class, for revolution, and then marching off to the next demonstration for the next country-attacking sweatshops in China while the cities of the U.S. team with sweatshops. Condemning Chinese unions and labor laws while we in the U.S. have the worst labor laws for workers and just about the weakest trade union movement in the developed. World. Condemning "genocidal" policies against a Tibet about which they know nothing while keeping silent largely about the conditions of life in the slum ghettoes of the U.S. (where millions of people of color face daily dehumanization) about which they want to know nothing.

This lone ranger left, even when it rides into China, is sort of the reverse of Norman Thomas famous comment about liberals-that is they are more sympathetic to socialism the further away it is from the United States.

The groups of the lone ranger left are more critical and hostile to attempts to construct socialism in ways different from their views the further away it is from the United States and their abstract criticisms, sometimes for criticisms, sake means that the they nothing to contribute to the construction of socialism with American characteristics. It is easy after all to fight for Chinese workers at Apple Plants in New York, when less than one out of ten private sector workers in the U.S. are unionized, and millions of undocumented workers line up in front of supermarkets as day laborers with no protections of any kind.

What is China Today?

As I see it, it is the world's greatest experiment in social construction and no one can say with any certainty where that great social experiment will lead to? But we can sympathize and empathize with the Chinese people and those of us who are for socialism can and must struggle for Sino-American friendship and cooperation, struggle to learn from and help each other.
Let me look briefly at Chinese history, a history which means little to capitalists or to the lone ranger left, These are my views based on my past study and analysis, not necessarily the views of my comrades in the CPUSA
Chinese feudalism, with its landlord-scholar bureaucrat economic political power structure interacting dialectically with its rationalist-idealist Confucian ideology, existed for millennia in large part because it as it developed became the most advanced feudal system in the world, absorbing conquerors expanding without over extending itself, keeping merchant capitalists and others who might threaten it at bay.
But the landlord class, its mandarin state machine and its Confucian ideology, could not withstand the assault of industrial capitalism, which in the name of "civilization and progress" free markets" and" the rule of law" fought wars to sell opium that destroyed the bodies and minds of millions of Chinese people; seized Chinese territories; looted and burned the emperor's summer palace in 1860; established unequal treaties and extraterritoriality for its agents, largely turning the Chinese people into servants in their own homes.

And then of course, for the Chinese, there was Japanese imperialism's annexations and its master plan to gain complete control of China as the foundation for its becoming the great Empire of Asia, removing and supplanting all of the European imperial powers and the U.S.

Where were the capitalist states and their agents when it came to preserving the human rights and civil liberties of Chinese people, not to mention their right to food, clothing, shelter, without which all other human rights are cruel jokes, before the Chinese revolution?

In reality the capitalist imperialist states mission of "civilization and progress" was to wait like vultures for Chinese division, weakness, and then to take more and more from the crumbling feudal empire; to carry forward the savage suppression of what capitalists call the Boxer Rebellion; to hypocritically refuse to support the people's democratic reformer Sun Yat-sen and instead support the warlord of warlords, Yuan Shih K'ai ,as he betrayed the Chinese anti-feudal revolution of 1911 . Why? Yuan would give the consortium of capitalist banker and traders the economic concessions that they wanted and that was all they cared about in China in 1913 or for the U.S. in the Caribbean and Central America at the same time.

As Franklin Roosevelt would say in the late 1930s about the military strongman of a Carribean country owned largely by U.S. interests and backed by U.S. marines, he was a "son of a bitch but our son of bitch." Yuan, like Ch'iang Kai-shek a decade later and many others through the world, was "our son of a bitch" who would protect U.S. capitalist economic and later military interests, and that was the real meaning of "freedom and democracy" for the colonial and semi colonial regions as all of the capitalist powers practiced it.

And for China that was only the beginning. When the Soviet Union and the Comintern made anti-imperialism a foundation of world Communist policy and helped to craft a united front of the Chinese Communist party and Sun's KMT, all of the major capitalist powers opposed Sun, continuing their internecine rivalries, supporting their warlord stooges.
What a difference a month makes. March, 1927, Nanking, while the United Front under Chiang Kai-shek is still in existence, British, U.S. and Japanese ships bombard KMT outposts.

In April, when Chiang turned on Communists, workers and students in the bloody Shanghai massacre, betraying both the united front and the policies and legacy of Sun Yat-sen and claiming tens of thousands of lives, then all of the major capitalist states threw him their support as he became the "strong man" all of them except the Japanese wanted, since the Japanese did not want to "share" China with other imperialist states

The issue then became the battle over China, with Japanese imperialism by far, quantitatively and qualitatively ,the greatest evil, engaging in its aggressions , annexing Manchuria, bombing Shanghai and eventually, after a second United Front was established, launching a full scale war in 1937---the real beginnings of WWII, in which the people of China would be subject to war crimes and crimes against humanity on a scale comparable to what the Soviet people and the people of the Jewish religion in Europe were subject to at the hands of Hitler fascism and its fascist allies#

As for the U.S, the New Deal government eventually stood with Chiang's regime against the Japanese imperialists and also allied itself with the Soviet Union and the beleaguered British Empire to fight against the fascist German-Japanese axis, even though U.S. oil companies from 1937 to June 1941 continued to supply with oil and other goods the Japanese war machine as it carried out its atrocities in China. Fortunately, for the world's people, New Deal policy was not too little too late.

One can only imagine what a Republican government, following the dictates of former President Herbert Hoover, who rejected this policy in favor a "fortress America" isolationist approach(expanding U.S. power in the Western Hemisphere and continuing to maintain economic and political relationships with both Axis and Allied powers) would have meant for the eventual outcome of the war had it been in power.

Under the heroic, and no one can seriously call it anything different, leadership of Mao-tse tung, Chou En lai,, Chu-te-#, Deng Shao -ping and the revolutionary vanguard of the Chinese Communist party, the Chinese people fought back against Japanese imperialism, tying down millions of Japanese troops in a war of national liberation and social revolution which continued after the war as the Kuomintang with the support of the Truman administration sought to restore the prewar regime, to return to landlord rule with Chiang K'ai-shek as the warlord of warlords. #

However, short of a U.S. invasion on the scale of the Japanese, this was impossible and such an invasion was of course impossible, given both U.S. public opinion, geopolitical realities, and the overall commitment of U.S. cold war policy planners to "save" Western Europe and Japan, the devastated but developed capitalist regions, from socialist revolutions.

At the height of their arrogance, though, postwar reactionaries used the cold war political climate in the U.S. to carry out sweeping purges of those New Deal and progressive elements in the U.S. government who sought a peace policy with the new Peoples Republic of China . They were able successfully to contend that the U.S. had "lost China," thanks to Soviet agents and Communist spies in the U.S. government, as if China somehow was U.S. territory like Hawaii and such momentous events in history could be reduced to this espionage fairy tale.

The Days of McCarthy, the "Old Nixon", and a small Island called "free China".

Americans whatever their political views are not the people to judge the Peoples Republic of China. Before 1945, the U.S of the major imperialist powers had been the least of China's enemies. From 1946 to the rapprochement of the 1970s it became the greatest of China's enemies. Influenced by the development of the cold war and the postwar purges it brought about in the U.S., particularly, the hysteria fomented by Senator Joseph McCarthy, an alcoholic sociopath who, the support of big capital, used the Chinese revolution as a point of departure to accuse the Truman administration of being under the control of Communist agents who orchestrated the "Red Chinese takeover" successive U.S administrations did the following;

Intervened in the Chinese Civil War to permit the Kuomintang to establish a fraudulent Republic of China on Taiwan in 1950;
Blocked the seating of the peoples Republic in the United Nations until 1971;
Threatened China's borders in the Korean War, leading to Chinese intervention and then engaged in nuclear threats or brinkmanship at a time that China had no nuclear weapons;
had the CIA work with feudal religious elements in Tibet to foment an uprising against the peoples republic;
aided Kuomintang commandos in various provocations and assaults on Chinese territory ;
refused to recognize the Peoples Republic of China fully for 30 years;
used its influence under the Truman and especially Eisenhower administrations to try to encourage other nations not to recognize or trade with China; engaged under the Eisenhower -Dulles administration in confrontations in the Formosa Straight that almost led to full scale war.
Some Lessons for Today, Or History Does Matter Unless One Wishes to Be Run Over By It
But that's old history you say. Who cares? What about labor conditions in Chinese factories. Chinese trade policies costing American jobs. Chinese pollution. The Chinese military buildup? The Dalai Lama, the second coming of Mahatma Gandhi supported today by the forces who never supported Ghandi. That is all that matters
What do we care about Opium Wars, Taiping and Boxer Rebellions, tens of millions perishing in famine and war, American oil companies and other firms helping to arm Japan in the late 1930s while they engaged in mass murder in China, the loose John Foster Dulles talk about the use of nuclear weapons against China . Besides the moral and ethical questions involved, and the colossal hypocrisy of our ruling class's present position, we must both understand and care if we, meaning labor and the broad left, are not to become the "useful idiots" of those who provoke Sino-U.S. conflict in ways that can only strengthen reactionary forces.

We indeed, all of the major capitalist nations should be "thankful" that the Communist Party of China continues to lead the Chinese people-were any narrow national party committed to capitalist development in power in China, a party like our own Republicans, they would certainly seek revenge for the abuse that China as a nation and its people have suffered over the last 170 years.

A rational China policy that a serious left seeking to represent the American working class should endorse as I see it is can and must include the following
First, a commitment not to use China as an excuse for the U.S. military industrial complex. Chinese military spending is second to the U.S. in the world, but we should remember that China, with four times the population of the U.S. is currently spending in U.S. dollars 1/6 of what the U.S. is spending for all the propaganda about increasing Chinese military spending and the really absurd revival of the containment doctrine against China in Asia
Second, a commitment not to use China as an excuse for the loss of u.s. jobs and labor's decline and the development of an economic policy that benefits both peoples.

Raising the living standards of Chinese people in terms of their money incomes and of American people in terms largely of their social incomes will increase the mass purchasing power of both people, enabling them to purchase each other's goods without costing each other jobs as is currently the case.

Third we should stand for , a clear commitment to socialism with intellectual and cultural freedom, a version ofwhat the CPUSA here has long called "Bill of Rights Socialism." I would say to my Chinese, American and international friends and comrades that intellectual and cultural freedom is not only precious but much more necessary under socialism than under capitalism.

Under socialism political and economic leadership is united, not separated institutionally as it is under capitalism. Open discussion and debate does not prevent large errors, but it does prevent the establishment of bureaucratic cliques who treat ideas and policies the way capitalists treat stocks and bonds-as their investments to be protected regardless of the consequences. And a society where intellectual freedom reigns is a healthy society and one that fosters loyalty among the masses to the socialist system.

It was the Marxist movement which advanced the struggle for democracy through the world. And in the Communist wing of that movement, democracy for the people, not only inside political parties, is too important to be left to social democrats, who often see the protection of democratic rights as a tradeoff with the acceptance of capitalist institutions and political economy

And there is much that we can learn from China today First, we can learn from China's mixed economy forms of planning, its control of state finance, and its advances in alternative energy development.

We can and must work together to create the foundation for economic cooperation that will greatly lesson the power if not eliminate entirely the transnational energy corporations who in alliance with feudal regimes in Western Asia hold both the developed and developing world hostage to their price fixing policies; to the IMF world bank system which channels the flow of investment capital to undermine the sort of public sector mixed economy that China is developing and advance free market "jungle" capitalism.

The Chinese have never said nor would they say that they would remake the U.S. in their image.
We must stop trying to remake China in our image, real or imagined. Not only because it wrong, but because it is absurd and impossible
In that sense we can begin to seriously advance with our friends and comrades in China and through the world a genuine policy of "civilization and progress" based on developing socialist economic forms, cooperative development, and international peace.

Poem of the Week - Purvi Shah

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 18:18:00 +0000

Loss is an art, traversing one world to the next

"One wonders if Gwen Stefani of the band No Doubt

and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince know the meaning

behind their freshly minted body hennas...While hennas may

be all the rage, the meaning beyond the tradition goes much

deeper. The ancient Indian art of body painting called Mehndi

(actually Persian in origin), initially reserved for bridal ceremonies

and spiritual occasions, has become the hot new way to adorn

oneself without committing to a permanent tattoo or wearing jewelry."

-Aura Project ad

The mehndi is leaving my hands,

brown swirls dissolving into brown skin.

Somewhere you are traveling

through new architecture, celebrating

a companionate life in new cities.



If blind, you could see through your hands,

a universe etched in your palms. Your ankles

are rust, vines of buds and leaves. I envision

him leaning to the hotel tub, washing

the grime of the city from your feet, soap

separated from the stencil. Love's imprint

lasts long when the fingers

rejoice, when the body's art is treasure.



Sap travels beyond root, cones

can be rolled here or there, a technology.

Here West Village women henna

their breasts before marriage, etching

coarse veins onto skins, parlors

painting commerce from the sacred.



Riding the train in America, the thrush emerges

from water pools, orange chaff unconnected to the earth

growing, as if, without umbilical soils.

Do the roots dissolve through inebriation

like my henna lines growing wild flowers

at the tub? The mark of family is on the body

not the engagement ring suddenly removed at the sink

not in the route the scent of perfume takes to leave the.....day's sweat

but in the designs which intimate bequeathed blood.



When the liquid paint

hits skin, it is a cold

separation, the memory of hundreds

of daughters walking towards a foreign

house, parents looking askance, blurred.



They say: absence is a color, the deep

brown of life which is always receding.

-Purvi Shah

Photo credit: Willi Wong

Used by permission.

From Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press, 2006)

Purvi Shah's Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press, 2006), which explores migration as potential and loss, won the Many Voices Project prize and was nominated for the Asian American Writers' Workshop Members' Choice Award. Her work fighting violence against women earned her the inaugural SONY South Asian Social Services Award in 2008. In 2011, she served as Artistic Director for Together We Are New York, a community-based poetry project to highlight the voices of Asian Americans during the 10th anniversary of 9/11. She believes in the miracle of poetry and the beauty of change.

Check out more of her work at http://purvipoets.net or@PurviPoets on Twitter.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Weekwidely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

"Civil society"...or democratic popular power?

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:53:00 +0000

South African Communist Party Deputy General Secretary Jeremy Cronin questions the notion of "civil society".

The dominance of neo-liberal economic ideology over the past three decades has had its counterpart in the re-emergence of liberal socio-political categories. Generally, the left has mounted a sustained critique of neo-liberal economic ideology - privatization, liberalization, and punitive macro-economic policies. But the re-emergent use of liberal socio-political categories has received less sustained critical attention.

It was with this in mind that, in the last issue of Umsebenzi Online, we published a short intervention by the Brazilian Emir Sader ("Civil Society, NGOs, and the Public Sphere"). Those who read Sader`s article will remember that he notes that in Brazil (just as in SA), over the past few decades the concept of "civil society" has been widely espoused. Yet, as Sader notes, Marx himself only became a Marxist for the first time when he began to critique the liberal notion of society as being constituted by two realms - the "state" on the one hand, and a distinct "civil society", on the other.

This idea of a realm standing outside the "state", immediately places us onto the terrain of liberalism, the state starts to become a "necessary evil", at best confined to certain technocratic tasks and to limited welfare delivery. By contrast, "civil society" is conjured up as a positive realm of freedom, whose job it is to check, balance and generally hold accountable a state that is always hovering on the brink of authoritarianism.

But "civil society" is really a wide range of different things - including social movements, diverse NGOs, business associations, media corporations, and even organized crime syndicates. To lump these all together behind the fig-leaf of "civil society" and to contrast them with "the state" obscures many things. In the first place, note how whatever the real challenges in government might be, just how unaccountable civil society formations themselves are - and yet they are those who gift themselves with the task of holding the state to account. As Sader neatly puts it: "they proclaim themselves to be representatives of civil society, but they tend not to be transparent in elections of their leaders, origins of their funds, and forms of their decision-making." This would apply to Standard Bank, to Paul Hoffmann`s self-styled Southern African Accountability Foundation, or the Mail & Guardian.

But what is especially hidden in the notion of "civil society" is the fact that, in a basically progressive, democratic but capitalist society like SA (or Brazil), real power within "civil society" is vested in the market (or rather in the dominant corporations). A progressive agenda cannot be about pitting "civil society" in general against the "state" in general. A progressive agenda has to be about building democratic popular power within and beyond the state in order to roll back the unelected, undemocratic power of the "market". The class struggle cuts across both the state and broader society.
The relevance of all this to some of the contemporary challenges we have in SA should now be more apparent.

In first place, it helps to ground our own SACP "deployment" strategies, which some forces have tried unsuccessfully to turn into a question of personal venality. As our medium term vision clearly notes, it is important for the working class to contest all key sites of power - the point of production, the economy at large, communities, the ideological front, internationally, and the state. Which is also why we should endeavor to create a communist presence in all of these sites - after all, as Sader following Marx asserts, the class struggle itself is everywhere.

In the second place, and these things are all linked, interrogating the concept of "civil society" helps to ground our critique of the current anti-majoritarian constitutionalism. This anti-majoritarian liberalism treats rights almost entirely as rights of citizens/civil society AGAINST the state - and not, for instance, the right of a democratic state (and the right of a democratic majority to actively HELP that state) to vigorously implement an electoral mandate in the face of equally vigorous opposition from powerful class forces lurking behind the fig-leave of "civil society".

In the third place, it helps to ground our engagement with a variety of workerist and leftist tendencies. As Sader correctly puts it: "This negative conception of the state abandons the path of democratization of the state." This calls to mind a debate I had a few years back with one comrade. He was arguing that the present state was a "bourgeois state", finish-and-klaar, (because it was clearly not the "dictatorship of the proletariat"). In essence this is a view that sees class struggle as being waged only in "civil society" - and whoever "wins" this struggle, then gets to run the state. This amounts to abandoning the path of democratisation of the present democratic (but class contested, of course) state in favour of a vacuous strategy of "smashing it". The bankruptcy of this perspective became all too apparent last year when the same comrade accepted a senior economic governmental deployment in a particularly corruption-prone province. When challenged, he shrugged his shoulders and said: "What can you expect? It`s a bourgeois state."

But, on a less personal note, the critique of the liberal "state versus civil society" paradigm also helps to ground the concerns that the SACP raised last year with our comrades in COSATU around the "Civil Society Conference". Obviously, the SACP expressed support for COSATU`s right to convene a conference that mobilized a range of social movements and NGOs to address, amongst other things, corruption in the state. However, we believed then, and we still believe now, that it was a mistake to exclude COSATU`s own party political alliance partners - as if there were something inherently pure about supposedly non-political "civil society" formations, and something inherently predatory about those more directly engaged with the state. It was a confusion that reflects the hegemony within our society of the liberal "civil society vs. the state" paradigm.

In the fourth place, note that Sader`s (and Marx`s) critique of civil society is ALSO a critique of a particular conception of the state as standing above and outside of "society". To subvert this false dichotomy, Sader uses the concept of the "public sphere" and of "popular participatory" activism. As he writes: "To democratize is to decommodify, to affirm the public sphere to the detriment of the commercial sphere. To democratize is to strengthen the role of citizens to the detriment of the role of consumers."

Again, this touches upon many issues that we have been raising. In the first place, the liberal version of the state standing outside of society becomes (apart from a "necessary evil") a "bureaucracy" that, at best, must "deliver" to otherwise passive "voters-consumers". This mistaken notion of the state also connects up with the SACP`s "nationalisation of the mines" interventions. We correctly pointed out that it was a debate driven, at least initially, by indebted BEE mining investors seeking a bail-out. But (related to this) it was also based on a particular version of the state - a bureaucracy that could be factionally and parasitically captured in order to advance specific private accumulation agendas. This is why "socialisation" of all key resources and means of production (including socialisation of the state) is a better concept and a better objective. The idea of "socialization" emphasises the need for popular/working class power and activism in and outside of the state, versus an obsession with bureaucratic power (and bureaucratic ownership).

P.S. On a wider note - notice how the dominance of the (neo-)liberal paradigm of "democracy" as "civil society" protected from undue state interference, and the state, at best, as a technical bureaucracy, has enabled a current European scandal to pass largely beneath the radar-screen of our local media`s attention, let alone outrage. While we are constantly told that democracy is "under threat" here in SA - how about what has happened in recent months in both Greece and Italy?

There, elected governments have been dissolved and replaced, without any election, by technocrats from the financial milieu. These regime changes were brought by "civil society", that is, in reality, by the European Central Bank, and German and French banking interests, in opposition to "civil society" in the shape of many popular movements opposed to the stringency measures designed to rescue capitalist banks guilty of extravagant lending behavior. Former Greek Prime Minister, Papandreou`s brief flirtation with the idea of a popular referendum to test support for the stringency measures (in what is supposed to be the home of "Western democracy" after all) was greeted with outrage in the business media, including our own.

*Jeremy Cronin is the SACP deputy general secretary

Civil Society, NGOs, and the Public Sphere

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:46:00 +0000

via Monthly Review

The great turning point in Marx's work is his discovery that class relations traverse the whole capitalist society. After working with categories he inherited from liberalism, such as the state and civil society, he made what he called an "anatomy of civil society" and therein encountered classes and class struggle.

In the last several decades, as democratic struggle gained weight again -- after being underestimated, generally speaking, by the Left -- the category of civil society reappeared. By its very nature, it is opposed to the state and displaces class relations. It is a return to classical liberalism, in parallel to the turn to liberalism on the economic front under the name of neoliberalism.

In the framework of this category, organizations of a distinct type came to take shelter, ranging from those closely tied to social movements and other forms of resistance to military dictatorship, to others that are very much ambiguous. This amalgamation is possible because the category of civil society lends itself to it. It means "what is not the state," including, under this broad umbrella, agribusiness associations and rural workers' associations, bank owners' associations and bank employees' associations, private school operators' associations and student associations -- even aside from other yet more problematic expressions of "civil society," like drug traffickers, militias, etc., all of whom belong to "civil society."

What all of them have in common is the lack of transparency: they proclaim themselves to be representatives of civil society, but they tend not to be transparent in elections of their leaders, origins of their funds, and forms of their decision-making. Suffice it to see how easy it is to found one or more NGOs and file applications to receive public funds or simply to cover up shady business deals.

Besides ambiguity -- not to mention bad faith -- the definition of "non-governmental" is itself a problem. This anti-government position easily joins neoliberal positions. It has no limits in relation to "partnerships" with major private corporations and their foundations, while defining its frontier limits against the state.

With the reappearance of liberalism came the powerful resurgence of its vision of democracy and the state. Democracy came to mean the limitation of and external control over actions of the state, which was said to be, by definition, the central enemy of democracy, whose constitutive elements were made out to be individuals congregated in civil society.

Then the question would be how to control the state by civil society, to guarantee democracy. The more state, the less democracy, which is how neoliberalism sells its theory of the minimal state. Limit the state, so that the market may assume centrality. In theory, the central role would be played by civil society, which, in reality, barely masks the market.

This negative conception of the state abandons the path of democratization of the state. It is a liberal conception, reactivated by the idea of control over the state by civil society -- represented by NGOs and other associations that seek to play the role of representing it.

The most advanced policy for democracy building in Brazil was participatory budgeting, which strengthened the public sphere from within the state itself, to the detriment of commercial interests. Democratic struggle is not external to the state but traverses it. Within the state, distinct, even contradictory, interests are represented, the same contradictory interests that cut across society.

Separating the two, in liberal fashion, misses this fundamental aspect of the reality: everything is traversed by social determinations. Civil society is a fiction, just as the state that is put in opposition to it -- all without class determinations in liberal theory.

To democratize is to decommodify, to affirm the public sphere to the detriment of the commercial sphere. To democratize is to strengthen the role of citizens to the detriment of the role of consumers. To democratize is to bring democratization into the very heart of the state.

Looking forward to a new Japan beyond the crisis

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:20:00 +0000

Disaster, nuclear power plants, and Japan’s future

Commemorative speech by Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo on the 89^th anniversary of the founding of the JCP

August 1, 2011

Public coming closer to JCP position

To everyone in the hall and to everyone watching the live internet broadcast, I am Shii Kazuo, Japanese Communist Party Chair.

We mark the 89^th anniversary of the founding of the JCP amid the worst postwar disaster with the nuclear power plant accident.

Nearly five months have passed since the triple disaster struck, and fresh moves toward reconstruction are seen in many places thanks to the tremendous efforts of people in the disaster-hit area. For example, fishing operations have resumed and fish markets have been reopened.

However, more than 90,000 people are still having to stay in temporary shelters, and are suffering from anxieties about their uncertain future. The dangers associated with the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident are far from over. Rather, serious dangers are spreading nationwide.

I extend my deepest condolences to all the people who lost loved ones and express my sincere sympathies to the people continuing to suffer from the disaster.

The JCP is determined to do the utmost in supporting victims and promoting reconstruction, so that everyone in the affected areas can resume a safe and secure daily lives as soon as possible.

Disaster Brought Solidarity among People and Appreciation for JCP’s Relief Efforts Based on its Founding Principle of Social Solidarity

People are seeking stronger social ties, breaking from individual “self-responsibility” argument

Today I want to talk about major changes which are taking place among the public at large, triggered by the March 11 disaster. The disaster has reshaped their views on politics and society, and the ways in which they lead their lives. The JCP is responding to this worst postwar disaster in Japan guided by its founding principle that the party must dedicate itself to give relief and help provide security to the people. These efforts have aroused a sympathetic response from the general public and this has generated increased cooperation between the general public and the JCP.

In what way has this disaster changed people’s political consciousness?

The NHK program “Asaichi (The first thing in the morning)” on May 30 featured the changes in women’s ways of living after the disaster. The program reported that the Great East Japan Disaster caused a change in women’s lifestyles and values not only among female victims in disaster-hit areas but also among women in the rest of Japan. These are some of the salient features of the changes brought about:

Views on marriage are changing. In Osaka, far removed from the disaster-hit area, people who signed up at marriage agencies to be married sharply increased. A woman in her thirties explained how her views on marriage changed. “Before the disaster, I was kind of seeking protection and comfort in marriage. But since I saw the people in the disaster area thinking of others first, I want to become someone who can protect others, not one who only waits to be protected.”

There is more eagerness to help others. The program interviewed a woman who took part in volunteer activities for the first time in her life. Although she was a very reclusive person since early childhood, the images she saw of the disaster-hit area motivated her to take action. Together with her friends, she organized sending dry ice to the damaged area. She said, “Before, I was very passive and thought I couldn't make a difference, but now I believe it's important to take action.”

There is more openness towards neighbors. A resident in Urayasu City in Chiba Prefecture told the reporter that for seven years since she moved there, she had not been very friendly with her neighbors. But the earthquake changed her greatly. On the day the earthquake struck, the elderly woman nextdoor helped her and her small child. Since that day, she came to think that mutual help among neighbors was essential to help assure the safety and well being of children. She began to take part in activities organized by the neighborhood association. Now, she is aware of the people who live near her. The earthquake changed her views about and relations with her neighbors.

A common thread that runs through these experiences is that we are finding the importance of establishing bonds with others. I am sure a similar change is seen where you live.

For a long time, people have been made to think that they are responsible for causing the social problems they are facing. This so-called “self-responsibility” argument has divided them into becoming isolated individuals. After they saw people in Tohoku lose their family members, houses, and communities because of the earthquake and tsunami, it dawned on them what a humane society should look like. Even though a person alone is powerless, we can get together to help each other. Many people donate money to fund-raising campaigns for relief and reconstruction or even go and work as volunteers in the disaster-hit areas. Isn’t this an indication that the nation is overcoming the false perception that people are individually responsible for their circumstances, and that we are witnessing a great change in the ways in which people are now yearning for social ties of solidarity?

Where people suffer, JCP acts out of empathy

Among the people whose perception is rapidly changing, the Japanese Communist Party is receiving wider support for its activities helping the victims that are being conducted out of genuine concern to relieve their sufferings.

First, let me talk about the struggles of those JCP members who are themselves disaster victims. I have been to the disaster-hit areas several times. I was moved by many JCP members everywhere involved in rescue and reconstruction efforts in spite of the agonizing loss of their own family members, friends and homes.

In the disaster, we lost 49 members, and ten are still missing. Many JCP supporters and Akahata subscribers were also killed. Oikawa Ichiro, a JCP assembly member of Rikuzentakata City in Iwate Prefecture perished in the tsunami. JCP Iwate Prefectural Committee Chair Sugawara Norikatsu reported on Oikawa’s final moments. I quote:

“On March 11, Mr. Oikawa was taking part in a rally and a demonstration opposing increased tax burden on the general public when the earthquake struck. After that, we lost contact with him. Later, we came to know about his final hours from an unexpected source. In Morioka City, the capital of Iwate Prefecture, when some JCP city assembly members and other activists were engaged in a fund raising campaign for disaster relief, a person from Rikuzentakata City said that Mr. Oikawa was heard repeatedly crying out ‘A tsunami is coming. Everyone run!’ He was helping people to evacuate till the last moment. To our great regret, his body was later discovered under the rubble of a shopping center. He, as the head of the JCP city assembly members group, provided great support to the progressive city administration of Mayor Nakazato for 8 years, and played a major part in the election victory of Mayor Toba this past February. Local people fondly remember him, saying, ‘He was always smiling, willing to listen to our problems, and kindly gave a helping hand to us whenever needed.’ As a JCP member, he was undaunted by indifference or hostility, energetic, and always caring. He apparently acted in character during the last moments of his life.”

Let us remember deep in our hearts Comrade Oikawa’s last effort to help others.

JCP members in the disaster-hit areas are working hard at evacuation centers, temporary housing facilities, damaged fishing ports, or in local assemblies. They are spearheading many relief efforts, encouraging local administrations to respond to victims’ keen demands, and winning peoples’ trust and respect. This is but a manifestation of the JCP founding spirit that we should devote ourselves to relieving people’s sufferings.

Members in branches and local organizations of the JCP have been engaging in fund raising campaigns and volunteer activities in the disaster areas, working together with many people with other organizations.

The amount of donations entrusted to the JCP for disaster relief has exceeded 880 million yen, an unprecedented amount, with an additional 220 million yen specifically donated to support and rebuild the JCP local organizations devastated by the disaster.

We have delivered this donation fund to the affected municipalities, agricultural and fishery cooperatives, chambers of commerce and industry, as well as commerce and industry associations. They appreciated it, but sometimes they were surprised. They told us that all they knew were political parties asking for money but for the first time they met with a party bringing them money.

Donations sent to the Central Committee’s Relief Fund are often accompanied by heartfelt comments, telling us about their feelings for victims. One Akahata reader has sent us total sum of 41, 208 yen in small increments, such as 420 yen or 520 yen, 62 times. These donations were the remaining amount of his daily expenses, including food, for which he budgeted 1,000 yen. He said, “I made up my mind to donate whatever I can. The JCP I know will without fail see to it that the money will actually be used for relief.” He still continues sending money to us.

A total of 11,000 volunteers from across the country responded to the JCP call to work for the relief of victims in collaboration with volunteers from various democratic organizations.

Two young sisters living in Miyazaki Prefecture of southern Japan went all the way to Ishinomaki City in Miyagi Prefecture to help deliver relief supplies, serve at soup kitchens, and scoop mud out from tsunami-hit houses and fields. But they felt strongly that their support was still insufficient.

After going back home, they met with their hometown mayor to plead for immediate aid to the victims, telling him about their experiences as volunteers and the difficulties facing residents in the disaster-hit areas. He readily agreed because he remembered the town had received aid from all over Japan when the foot-and-mouth disease had broke out in the town.

The town administration listed the items that disaster affected residents needed most and that were in short supply based on information obtained from JCP district committees in the disaster-hit areas. They sent ten boxes of relief supplies. Isn’t it delightful that the tie between JCP volunteers and people in a disaster-hit area grew into solidarity between two distant municipalities?

We are happy knowing that the JCP is given strength by its members always willing to help others in distress. While expressing my gratitude for your cooperation in the fund raising efforts and volunteer activities, I appeal to you to make further efforts in helping the people in the disaster-hit areas.

JCP defends people’s lives from natural disasters – history of unrelenting struggle under duress

Great Kanto Earthquake – Kyosei’s first chair risked his life to rescue victims

It has been 89 years since our party was founded. Throughout the years, JCP members have always devoted themselves to protect citizens’ lives whenever they have encountered natural calamities. Today I would like to introduce our predecessors’ activities even facing the fierce persecution during the prewar imperial system.

One year after the JCP was founded on July 15, 1922, the Great Kanto Earthquake hit Japan on September 1, 1923, with nearly 105,000 people killed or unaccounted for. Shortly before that, in the first major oppression against the JCP in June 1923, about 80 leaders and members of the party were arrested and put in prison. However, other JCP members and unionists who had escaped the oppression risked their lives to rescue quake victims. Among them was Kawai Yoshitora, the first chair of the Communist Youth League of Japan (now the Democratic Youth League of Japan), which was founded in April 1923 under JCP guidance.

Being involved in the “Nankatsu Labor Association” based in Tokyo’s Minamikatsushika district (ed. “Nankatsu”), Kawai was leading the militant labor movement there. Its militancy was proudly dubbed the “Nankatsu spirit,” a phrase which has been passed down to this day.

In the wake of the Great Kanto Earthquake, Kawai strived to save people’s lives. He rescued three infants from a furious fire. He bought powdered milk to feed a baby, gave biscuits to children, and then stayed one night in Ueno Park holding them under his arms inside his jacket before being able to take them to a safer place. Later, his worried mother was overjoyed to hear that he had been giving such tender care to orphans in such dangerous circumstances.

However, Kawai was arrested and beaten to death at the Kameido police station (Kameido Incident). He was only 21 years old. His mother went to the police station to protest against this brutality. She confronted the chief of the police station in a tearful rage, asking him, “For what crime was my son killed!?”

The fledgling party and youth league undauntedly carried out such activities to help others even when they were in danger of losing their lives.

The Kameido police station chief justified this lawless atrocity against Kawai as a “necessary action.” His remark was prompted by Shoriki Matsutaro, Chief Secretary of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s Office, who later became the owner of Yomiuri Shimbun. Please keep his name in mind as he was heavily involved in my later topic regarding nuclear energy issues.

1933 Showa Sanriku Tsunami – rescue operations amid fierce repression

Our predecessors also organized a relief operation when the catastrophic Showa Sanriku Tsunami hit Aomori, Iwate, and Miyagi Prefectures on March 3, 1933, with 3,064 people killed or left missing. The JCP was at that time under severe government repression. A revolutionary writer and a JCP member, Kobayashi Takiji had been killed by the Tokko, Special Political Police, on February 22, shortly before the tsunami hit. In spite of the government repression, the party called on readers to organize nation-wide relief efforts.

Here I have a copy of the Sekki (Red Flag), the then JCP organ paper, published on March 10, 1933. On the front page was a call to organize a labor-farmer funeral for Kobayashi. The second page carried an appeal with big headlines that read, “The massive tsunami, starvation, and a bad harvest hit the Sanriku coastal region in Tohoku. How can revolutionary workers help to assist and rescue disaster victims?” It explained how badly the area was damaged and listed the following demands:

1. Rice, clothes, fuel, and housing materials must be swiftly and directly given to the victims for free by the government and the capitalists/landlords!;

2. Forgive farm rent, taxes and debts owed by the afflicted peasants; and,

3. Government should freely provide victims with fishing gear, boats, farming gear, seeds, fertilizer and all the equipment necessary for their work;

Raising such demands, the article called on the readers, “Direct to the suffering brothers in Tohoku, send relief money and goods containing the genuine workers spirit!”

The JCP and the Workers and Farmers Relief Society made all-out relief efforts, including sending medical teams to the disaster-stricken area. However, the Imperial government carried out a major crackdown even on such relief efforts and arrested nearly 300 activists involved in the relief work.

One of them was Sunama Akiko, who was working as a nurse at Tokyo’s Osaki proletarian clinic, where the current Min-iren (Japan Federation of Democratic Medical Institutions) movement was born. Her husband Ichiro was in jail at that time, but he was elected as a JCP Diet member of the House of Representatives later after the war.

Akiko and her colleagues went to Taro Village (Iwate Pref.), the most devastated locality. To evade police surveillance, they walked 100 km from Morioka to Miyako in the snow. Then they took an hour-and-half boat ride to get to the village. They delivered relief money and medicines to the village office and immediately started treating patients. Long queues of people formed in front of them. However, hardly three hours passed before they were arrested by the Special Political Police. Based on the police announcement, the headlines of a local paper said alarmingly, “Red menace in disaster area/ Three arrested/ Organizing while giving medical care.” The Imperial government put saving its own skin above saving victims’ lives.

This spirit of our predecessors of saving peoples’ lives during times of natural disasters in spite of life-threatening repression has been passed down to our post-war relief efforts, such as after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake.

Our present efforts in the disaster hit areas are a continuation of the JCP’s indomitable tradition of devoting itself to the service of people in need. I would like to stress this in connection with heartfelt respect for our forerunners.

‘Top-down reconstruction imposed by business circles’ or ‘reconstruction from below respecting local consensus’

Politics moved forward to solve ‘double loan’ problem

Reconstruction from the March 11 disaster is a long-term national project.

The JCP has stood firm in making joint efforts to address the urgent task of helping disaster victims by putting political difference aside. This JCP stance toward post-disaster reconstruction efforts is making possible positive changes in the political situation.

We can see this through the efforts made to solve the so-called “double loan” problem. The JCP in its second policy proposal regarding post-disaster recovery proposed that the government establish a body which would buy up debts from financial institutions in order to reduce the amount of debt owed by the disaster victims, who often must borrow money to restart their businesses or various livelihoods in addition to the debt incurred before the disaster. The JCP Dietmembers’ repeated questioning on this issue paved the way to cooperation among the opposition parties. As a result, a bill to solve the “double loan” problem was passed through the House of Councilors. The JCP will do its utmost to get this bill passed in the House of Representatives and help establish a system that provides support to all disaster-affected business owners.

Cowardly attempt to cut ties among fisherfolk – oppose plan to establish ‘special fishery restoration zone’

On the other hand, a fierce struggle is still going on between the opposing models of “top-down reconstruction imposed by business circles” and “reconstruction from below respecting local consensus.” Even though people began to have a stronger sense of solidarity since the disaster, putting more value on people-to-people ties, the government and big corporations are intent on trampling upon such people’s initiatives.

In line with a blueprint drawn up by a think tank affiliated with the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren), the government and the Miyagi Prefecture government came up with the idea of establishing a “special fishery zone” where big companies would be allowed free entry into the coastal fishery industry (hitherto restricted to fishery cooperatives -ed.). At present, fisherfolk and people in the associated industries are struggling to rebuild their livelihoods after losing their boats, ports, food processing plants, and distribution facilities. However, what the administrations are doing is, in addition to neglecting reconstruction, driving fishermen into a corner, cutting ties among fishery people, and above all else, giving large corporations a chance to make inroads to increase their profits. This is despicable and totally unacceptable!

Fisherfolk are putting up strong opposition. I took part in an emergency rally organized by the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations (JF, Zengyoren). They demanded to not have the present order established in the fishing industry destroyed by the incorporation of the proposed “special fishery zone.” Fisherfolk from all the corners of Japan gathered to express their deep anger.

Head of Miyagi Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Association Abe Rikitaro spoke at the rally: “Fisherfolk lost their homes, boats, and fishing equipment. But they are trying hard to bounce back even while they are living in temporary shelters. In these hard times, why on earth do they have to create special fishery zones that would give away traditional fishing grounds to corporations?”

Ooi Seji, chair of the Iwate Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives Association said: “We shed tears three times: we wept when we were devastated by the tsunami. We shed tears of joy when we received encouragement and support from many people. Now we have tears of anger in our eyes because the ‘special fishery zone’ scheme is causing anxiety and confusion.”

Later in the rally, political parties’ representatives made speeches. I said; “The JCP opposes the special fishery zone scheme. It will destroy the traditional bond among people in the local fishing industries. It will encourage big businesses to muscle in on coastal fishing.” The participants gave me a warm applause. It was the first time that a JCP leader made a speech at a fisherfolks’ national gathering. At the beginning, they looked uncertain. However, at the end, I felt a good rapport was established with them by what I had to say.

We will fight against this outrage in order to defend local fishery in Tohoku and throughout Japan by joining hands with fisherfolk and the Japanese people.

Sony’s lawless downsizing plan – big corporations must repay their obligation to society especially at a time of disaster

Another serious problem in the disaster-hit region is Sony’s job-cut plan at the Sendai Technology Center (Sendai Tech.) in Miyagi Prefecture.

Using the disaster as an excuse, Sony announced a plan to transfer 280 full-time workers at the plant to outside the prefecture and fire all 150 fixed-term contract workers at the end of their terms of contracts. Even more unconscionable, Sony’s Vice Chairman Chubachi Ryoji has joined the government’s Disaster Design Council as a representative of the business circles’ interests.

JCP member of the House of Councilors Yamashita Yoshiki recently questioned the Prime Minister in a House Budget Committee meeting, asking whether he would leave the situation as it is. The Prime Minister could only come up with an incoherent reply. Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers jeered the PM, saying, “It is the Disaster Design Council you should fire!” Yamashita’s question received a very favorable response from many people, especially in regard to the following two points.

One is that those young, fixed-term contract workers were among those who rushed to their factory to engage in repair work and shoveling out the tsunami mud even though they themselves were severely affected by the disaster. They are professional and dedicated workers, proud of working at Sony, no matter what their employment status may be. How dare you to talk about reconstruction if you make these young workers redundant amid the aftermath of the disaster?

Another point that struck a chord is the stark contrast between the local small businesses and Sony in terms of maintaining employment. In Miyagi’s Kesennuma City, there is a marine product processing company that has refused to fire any of its 800 employees even though eight out of its nine factories were completely destroyed by the tsunami. It is the employer’s belief that maintaining jobs is important in preserving the bond of solidarity in local communities. How dare the big corporation take to its heels when local small companies are struggling to avoid dismissing their workers?

We cannot forgive such large corporations’ atrocious and irresponsible behavior. It is on such an occasion as when a massive disaster occurs that major companies with their huge amounts of internal capital reserve should repay their obligation to society by maintaining the workforce.

Economic society governed by rules –call for a Japan in which people support each other based on need for social solidarity

The struggle over the course of post-disaster reconstruction is a part and parcel of our efforts towards creating an “economy governed by rules” as is envisioned in the JCP Program. Let us make rules and regulations by which the government is made responsible for rebuilding people’s lives and livelihoods destroyed by the disaster through making nation-wide efforts to overcome this crisis. Let us make strict rules requiring large corporations to fulfill their social responsibility to maintaining employment and the economic vitality of local communities through combating their actions based on greed.

We need to have a deep trust in the ability of the public to change their hearts and minds. They are now much more eager to cherish people-to-people ties after having experienced the disaster. Let us build upon these forward-looking changes to create a new Japan where people support each other based on a strong belief in the need for social solidarity!

Nuclear crisis – collapse of ‘safety myth’ and renewed attention to JCP

People yearn for the truth amid exposure of ‘political lies’ regarding NPPs

Now I move on to the question of nuclear power plants and the JCP position.

It has been five months since the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant operated by TEPCO. The situation continues to be critical.

First of all, the government should stop spreading false optimism by repeating its groundless claim that the path to containing the crisis is in sight. What I strongly demand is that the government should grasp the matter objectively and take every possible measure to contain the nuclear disaster by preparing for the worst case scenario.

I also demand that the government and TEPCO swiftly pay the victims compensation for all the costs incurred due to the nuclear plant accident in addition to doing the utmost to protect people’s health and lives from radioactive contamination.

Public opinion regarding nuclear power generation has dramatically changed. As the seriousness of the damage has become known, opinion polls show that 70-80% of respondents are in favor of the reduction or abolition of nuclear power plants. The nuclear “safety myth” has completely collapsed. The more the “political lies” regarding NPPs are exposed, the more eager people become to know the truth. This situation has led to renewed attention to the JCP position that has long been warning about the dangers associated with NPPs.

A recently published booklet titled “Think about Nuclear Power Plant Disaster through Scientific Eyes” written by JCP Social and Sciences Institute Director Fuwa Tetsuzo is getting good reception. It is based on his lecture on the topic that is a part of the ongoing lecture series on the JCP Program and scientific socialism organized by our Central Committee.

I brought along a copy of the journal of the Hyogo Medical Association. It reports on the board meeting held on June 1 which includes a statement by the Association President Dr. Kawashima Ryuichi. He began by saying, “Although I’m not a JCP member,” and talked at length about what he learned from the booklet by Fuwa Tetsuzo. His accurate and detailed introduction of the booklet took up two thirds of his entire statement. He must have read it thoroughly. He concluded his remarks by saying, “Our association as a whole should fundamentally rethink the question of nuclear power generation.” Later at the general assembly of the lobby group of Hyogo doctors, Kawashima also said, “One opposition party has consistently been opposed to nuclear power generation. We did not listen to this party’s opinion at all because of our ideological differences. Reflecting on that, I’d now like to have a relationship with all the parties across the board and present them with our opinion on medical issues.”

They hardly had anything to do with the JCP before. But now that the nuclear “safety myth” has collapsed, they have found the JCP’s argument to be sound. This is another example of a convergence of views between various sectors of society and the JCP.

Public pressure begins moving politics – on the question of resumption of off-line reactors and manipulation of public opinions

Public pressure is now beginning to move politics in a new direction.

In May, Chubu Electric Power Company’s Hamaoka nuclear power plant suspended its operation. The plant is precariously located just above the assumed focal region of a major Tokai Earthquake. What brought it to a halt? It was not Prime Minister Kan’s decision. It was due to pressure from a local citizens’ movement consistently opposing the NPP since its construction plan was announced in 1967. This temporary suspension is a step forward to achieving total victory. We have to proceed to get this plant permanently shut down. I renewed this conviction when I attended a rally held in Shizuoka City the other day where 5,000 people were gathered demanding the decommissioning of the Hamaoka NPP.

If the Hamaoka NPP is extremely dangerous, how about other NPPs? There is a grave concern on whether or not to allow the resumption of nuclear reactors temporarily suspended due to regular inspections. The government hastily announced that it is safe to resume operation of those NPPs and requested power companies to resume operations of those reactors after taking makeshift “safety” measures. These so-called “safety” measures were simply absurd. I will give you one example. In order to prevent hydrogen explosions, they now prepare electric drills to make openings in the walls of reactor buildings. But who on earth could climb up and drill a hole in a reactor building which is about to blow up after a meltdown of its reactor core?

After their “safety declaration” was exposed to be useless, the government began talking about a “stress test” as an additional safety check. But who is conducting this test? None other than the power companies, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), and the Nuclear Safety Commission. However, these three entities are already proven to be unqualified and indeed incompetent because it was they that caused the accident at Fukushima in the first place and it was they that are unable to stabilize the situation. They should rather be tested themselves than conducting the test, shouldn’t they?

We should not allow such an irresponsible rush to the resumption of the suspended NPPs.

Moreover, another scandal recently came to surface. Kyushu Electric Power Corporation (Kyuden) was caught using dirty tricks to prepare for a government TV program broadcast live regarding the resumption of the Genkai NPP operated by Kyuden. Kyuden sent e-mails that asked its employees and others to send to the program via e-mail opinions in favor of the resumption of operations at the NPP. This instruction was even attached with a set of example comments like this: “If electricity is in short supply, I really fear having a ‘heat stroke’ in the summer. Victims are always children and elderly people…” It was hypocritical and contemptible for the power company to pretend to be on the side of the weak.

An employee of Kyuden’ associated company was so indignant at this e-mail messaging scheme that he informed the JCP Fukuoka Prefectural Committee of the action. The Akahata newspaper then made an exclusive report on this after careful confirmation of the facts. Other media also received similar information, but they refrained from reporting it in the face of Kyuden’s denial. Following the Akahata report, JCP Dietmember Kasai Akira took up the issue at a Diet session. Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Kaieda Banri said to Kasai, “If true, it is not permissible.” On that night, Kyuden held a press conference and admitted to having e-mails sent in order to manipulate public opinion. We were able block resumption of the Genkai NPP from the grassroots up all the way to sitting Diet members working in tandem, the JCP strength in moving politics in the interest of the people.

More instances of public opinion manipulation are now being disclosed. Next in line was the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) that was caught. It had requested Chubu and Shikoku Electric Power Companies to organize people to express pro-NPP opinions at government symposiums. It is abhorrent for the NISA, supposedly an organization that regulates the nuclear energy administration, to have asked the nuclear power operators to become involved in manipulation of public opinion. The undeniably corrupt NISA should be abolished at once. An independent nuclear watchdog agency should be immediately set up outside of the nuclear power promoting Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI). This is an urgent need that must be met.

They are no longer able to convince local residents about the “safety” of NPPs, so they have to resort to underhanded manipulation. This itself is an testimony to how dangerous nuclear power plants really are.

We should be proud of the fact that public pressure and the JCP activities drove the government and power companies into a corner. Let us further strengthen our struggle.

What is the nature of NPPs’ danger – Now is the Time for shutting down all the NPPs in Japan

“JCP Policy Proposal” shows way to immediately break with nuclear power

The Fukushima nuclear meltdown disaster posed an important question: Can we co-exist with the Nuclear Power Plants? To answer this question, the JCP published the “JCP Policy Proposal for an Immediate Break with Nuclear Power and Toward All-out Promotion of Renewable Energy - Need for national discussion to build consensus.” It reexamined the intrinsic nature of the danger of NPPs, clearly and concisely presenting reasons for getting rid of nuclear power plants.

First, nuclear power plant accidents pose hazards of an extraordinary nature not like other types of man-made disasters. Once a serious accident occurs at a nuclear power plant and radioactive material is released into the environment, there is no technological means to stop it from spreading.

The damage spreads geographically without limit. Radioactive contamination has resulted in serious contamination in many parts of Japan.

As for the duration of effects, radioactive contamination lasts for generations. Especially, the most serious concern is about the effect on children’s health. We demand the government take every possible measure to protect the lives and health of younger generations.

As for social consequences, the nuclear accident has put local communities in peril. I visited three municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture after the accident – Kawamata Town, Iitate Village, and Minami-Soma City. With flowers blooming and hills covered with green, I found it to be an area of spectacular natural beauty. I can only imagine the sorrow and anger of the local people who were forced to evacuate the area because of radioactive clouds coming over the horizon.

There are no other accidents as dangerous as ones at nuclear plants. After the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant was destroyed, former Premier Nakasone Yasuhiro said “Even an airplane sometimes crashes.” Of course, plane crashes should never happen. But nobody asks for eliminating airplanes only because they might crash. NPPs accidents are totally different from car accidents or plane crashes. They are hazardous in such an extraordinary and incomparable way that the total shutdown of all NPPs is the only way to avoid such possibilities.

Second, what is the root cause of this extraordinary danger? It is because the present state of nuclear power generation is based on intrinsically flawed and hazardous technology.

NPPs, whether existing or under development, are dangerous because they produce massive amount of radioactive “wastes” in the process of extracting nuclear energy. We, human beings, do not have any means available to contain these deadly wastes nor to render them harmless. We have tried to keep them isolated. But we have failed in such attempts, as demonstrated in the Three Mile Island, the Chernobyl, and the Fukushima accidents.

For the deadly wastes to become non-toxic, we have to wait as long as one million years! One million years before us, even Homo erectus pekinensis had not appeared on the earth. It is ludicrous to think that we can store those nuclear wastes safely for a million years to come.

It is reported that an international nuclear waste dump is planned in Mongolia by Japan and the United States. This project is unconscionable. I want to emphasize that developed countries should never force the dangers of their nuclear wastes onto the shoulders of the future generations in developing countries.

These are the root dangers associated with NPPs. There is no such thing as a safe NPP. There’s only one way to make NPPs safe: abolish them.

Third, based on these observations, the JCP proposal calls for the immediate shutdown of all the NPPs and a full scale introduction of renewable energy at the same time. Renewable energy generation in Japan has great potential. The Ministry of Environment estimates the amount of renewable energy which we can utilize on a practical basis is 40 times more than the presently installed capacity of all the NPPs in Japan.

The other day, I had a chance to speak at the foreign correspondents’ club on this subject. During the question and answer session, some reporters told me that they agreed with our proposal.

Concluding the press conference, the moderator made this remark: “Thank you for elaborating the JCP’s policy. He told us that the renewable energy potential was 40 times larger than the capacity of the NPPs. This fact sticks in the mind. Please come again after you successfully shut down all the NPPs. We, the members of the club, are eager to hear from you about how you accomplished this task.”

I am really looking forward to talking about that achievement as soon as possible.

Let us unite in our efforts to create a NPP-free Japan through national discussions and consensus-building.

Government hid from public a terrifying damage estimate

Then, does the government have prior knowledge about the “extraordinary hazard” of a NPP accident?

The answer is “yes.” In 1960, the government conducted a damage estimate for a simulated severe accident at a nuclear reactor at Tokai Village in Ibaraki Prefecture with a 500,000 kilowatts of core thermal power (one third of which is electrical output). I brought it with me today. It is a thick, 244-page report entitled “The theoretical possibility and the public damage estimate of a large-scale reactor accident” (written by the Atomic Industrial Forum at the request of the Science and Technology Agency). The conclusion was dreadful.

At the end of the report was attached a table of the possible human carnage. Hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries and 4 million people who would need medical follow-ups! The cost assessment of the damage was estimated to be twice the national budget at that time, running up to 3 trillion 730 billion yen. This is the only damage estimate ever conducted by the government concerning a serious nuclear reactor accident.

The government was so frightened by this devastatingly incriminating study that they swept it under the carpet. Only a portion of it was reported to the Diet and the general public was not informed of the damage estimate itself. Nineteen years later, the report was unearthed by the JCP. On April 9, 1979, AKAHATA ran a scoop on the report, but the government continued to deny that there had ever been any damage estimates conducted. In 1999, 20 year later, the government finally admitted that the report actually existed.

If the government had disclosed the study honestly in 1960, the number of nuclear reactors built could not have increased to 54. The successive governments were guilty on many counts. They concealed the frightening damage estimate from the public. They continued to spew out the nuclear “safety myth” to lull the public into accepting the NPPs. We have to eliminate the NPPs that have been built with the use of cover-ups, lies and false assumptions.

JCP’s 50 year struggle against hazardous NPPs

From earliest stage, JCP warns of NPPs’ danger and fights together with opponents

Let me touch on the 50 year struggle of the Japanese Communist Party against the NPPs’ inherent danger.

In December, 1953, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower made an “Atoms for Peace” speech in the United Nations, calling for peaceful uses of atomic energy. His grand strategy was that by supplying enriched uranium worldwide to selected nations, the U.S. would be able to control the global nuclear industry. Japan was one of the targets of this strategy.

In 1955, Japan and the U.S. concluded the first agreement on nuclear cooperation. After the Atomic Energy Basic Act was enacted, Mr. Shoriki Matsutaro was appointed as the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. He was the person who had cracked down on relief activities in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake. In the Diet, only the JCP, which at that time formed a parliamentary group with the Labor and Peasant Party opposed the act, while the LDP and the Socialist Party supported it.

In the 1950s, immediately after the Basic Act came into force, projects were started to build a research reactor in the Kansai area and a commercial reactor in Tokai Village in Ibaraki Prefecture. In both projects, residents stood up in opposition. The JCP was at the forefront of these protests, located in the eastern and the western parts of Japan.

Taking these experiences into account, the Party adopted a Resolution on the Atomic Energy Question at the Central Committee Plenum in July 1961, which was held shortly before the Party program was adopted. It clearly stated as follows: “Given the present phase of development in technology and energy generation potential, there is no need to build high risk nuclear power plants in Japan. We demand that the construction of the Tokai Nuclear Power Plant be stopped.”

The JCP warned about NPPs’ danger from the very beginning of their introduction to Japan, waging joint struggles with residents to nearby plants.

Plan to build total 100 million kW NPPs halved due to public opposition

Since the 1960s, power companies disclosed their plans to build NPPs one after another. The Party opposed every proposed NPP project, helping to organize movements with local people. In Diet debates, we exposed the false myth regarding the safety of NPPs, pointing out their danger and accusing the government of inadequate regulation and lax supervision.

It was the grass-root struggles and the Diet deliberations that prevented the government and the power companies from building the number of nuclear power plants originally planned.

To the present, 54 reactors at 17 NPPs have been built with a total generating capacity of 48 million kilowatts, which accounts for one quarter of all the electrical power generation in Japan. All 17 NPPs, however, were either planned by power corporations or invited by local governments before the 1960s or during the 1960s. Ever since 1970, no planned NPPs have been able to commence operations.

Looking back at the history of struggles jointly fought by local residents and the JCP, there were numerous cases in which we foiled the NPP construction plans. Now, I will read out the names of those 25 localities where planned construction was halted. Some of the names of the localities may have disappeared because of mergers and annexations of municipalities:

Maki Town in Niigata Prefecture; Suzu City in Ishikawa Prefecture; Obama City and Sanrihama beach of Kawanishi Town, both in Fukui Prefecture; Kumihama Town, Maizuru City, and Miyazu City, in Kyoto Prefecture; Mitsu Town and Kasumi Town in Hyogo Prefecture; Ashihama beach cutting across Kisei and Nanto Towns in Mie Prefecture, Jonohama beach of Kiinagashima Town, Ojirohama beach of Miyama Town, Ichiura bay of Kumano City, also in Mie Prefecture; three towns of Hikigawa, Hidaka, and Koza in Wakayama Prefecture; Kakui Island of Hinase Town in Okayama Prefecture; Hohoku Town and Hagi City in Yamaguchi Prefecture; Kainan Town and Anan City in Tokushima Prefecture; Tsushima Town in Ehime Prefecture; the towns of Kubokawa and Saga in Kochi Prefecture; and Kushima City in Miyazaki Prefecture.

In all these municipalities, we helped quash attempts to construct NPPs with the power of citizens united that were expressed in referendums or mayoral elections.

The government and power corporations had planned to build scores of NPPs. In 1972, the government drew up a long term plan to increase output of nuclear power generation to “100 million kilowatts” from 1.82 million kilowatts being produced at that time. If this appalling ambition had materialized, one half of Japan’s electricity generation would have been supplied by nuclear power plants. Such a serious addiction to nuclear power generation would have caused irreparable damage to Japan’s healthy and safe development.

Peoples’ movements along with the JCP’s struggles, however, cut back on the planned aggressive build-up of NPPs to about 48 million kilowatts, less than half of the level they originally planned to reach. We feel proud of this achievement of our grass-root struggles.

People continued to oppose NPPs even after their installation

Even in the areas where the NPPs were forcibly installed, people living there continued to engage in spirited opposition to their hazardous existence.

In regard to the Fukushima NPPs, there has been a protracted struggle opposing them by local residents and the JCP.

The other day, Mr. Sato Noriyasu, chairman of the Fukushima Prefectural Assembly, came to the JCP offices during his lobbying activities while in Tokyo. He said to me:

“I still remember what Ms. Miyakawa Emiko (JCP member of the prefectural assembly) said at the consultative meeting of the prefectural assembly members on energy policy. She said, ‘The Fukushima NPPs have taken no preventive measures against possible earthquakes or tsunami. What might occur if they cause NPP accidents?’ If we had taken her remark seriously last year, the ongoing crisis could possibly have been averted. I regret our refusal to heed her warning. The Fukushima Prefectural Assembly has now agreed to move toward the shutdown of all the NPPs. We have been responsible for cooperating with the NPPs in the past, so we felt morally obliged to take actions to rectify our past misjudgments.”

I told him that I was really impressed by his attitude of remorse and moral indignation.

It was of course unfortunate that such a serious accident occured at the Fukushima Dai-ichi NPP. However, our activities that constantly warned of the NPPs’ dangers were not in vain. Rather, they are playing a part in helping to induce much needed changes.

The JCP is the only party that has been consistently opposed to the dangerous NPPs, working with local residents for more than half a century. Our policy proposal on total withdrawal from nuclear power generation is based on these struggles. On this occasion, I salute all those who have waged grass-root struggles to protect people’s lives and health against the continued presence of NPPs.

Struggle to rectify political distortion and change our society

‘NPP community of interest’ — ‘Pentagon in Nuclear Village’

Why does Japan, one of the world’s most earthquake- and tsunami-prone countries, have so many NPPs across the nation? This is because of two aberrations that distort the very structure of Japanese politics.

First, nuclear power generation has been promoted by a group unified by greed, the so-called “NPP community of interest,” in which Nippon Keidanren is deeply immersed.

The very construction of a nuclear plant is a huge project, which costs as much as 500 billion yen per reactor. Among those who benefit from this are large corporations consisting of financial institutions, electric power corporations, nuclear reactor manufacturers, major construction firms, steel and cement manufacturers, and big banks. These corporations and financial circles make donations to political parties and politicians, turning them into proponents of nuclear power generation. This group has a cozy relationship with privileged top government bureaucrats. Those monied interests put bureaucrats under their thumb, and those bureaucrats are rehired by the electricity generating companies after retirement, receiving a tremendous amount in remuneration. The large corporations have also made substantial donations to research programs in some of the most prestigious universities to create opportunistic scholars who will support these corporations whatever they do. Even after the Fukushima nuclear accident occurred, these scholars appeared on TV repeatedly making irresponsible comments such as “We believe that there will be no immediate health risk,” and “We consider that the soundness of the reactor containment vessels is maintained.” And these electric companies got the mainstream media to support their views with large amounts paid for advertisements, winning them over to the corrupt and immoral “community of interest.”

The “NPP community of interest” created a tight-knit society called the “nuclear village” which excludes any dissenting voices. It has profited greatly from the promotion of nuclear power plants, while manufacturing the nuclear “safety myth” to deceive the general public. When I talked at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, I referred to it as the “Pentagon of the nuclear village.” A pentagon has five angles. This translates into a group of five, consisting of the financial circle, politicians, bureaucrats, opportunist scholars, and the major media. This is why a pentagon-shaped design is used on the cover of our booklet titled, “Japan without NPPs.”

I strongly demand that the members of the “community,” who have deceived the general public and made a vast amount of profits deeply reflect on their past wrongdoings. They must then take joint responsibility for the nuclear disaster, and fulfill their collective obligation to pay for damages and provide full compensation to those individuals and localities that have been adversely affected by the nuclear disaster.

Serious reflection is called for by all the major newspapers bought out with ‘NPP money’

What I think we must consider is the fact that the major media corporations are an integral part of this interest group.

Here is a copy of a memoir written by Suzuki Tatsuru, former publicity department director at the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC), consisting of 10 electric companies. Its title is “New challenge for power industry—beyond a turbulent decade” (Nihon Kogyo Shinbunsha, 1983). Based on his own experience, Suzuki is forthright about how, in the 1970s, the electric power industry bought out major newspapers one after another through providing huge amount for advertising fees to promote nuclear power.

This started with the Asahi Shimbun. From August 1974, the electric power industry started running a monthly ten-column (2/3 page) advertisement in the Asahi newspaper to promote nuclear power generation.

“Soon after, the Yomiuri Shimbun came rushing over to me,” writes Suzuki. According to him, the public relation officer of the Yomiuri Shimbun insisted, “Nuclear power generation was introduced by our late President, Shoriki Matsutaro. With our rival Asahi exclusively carrying the ads, we are losing face.” Then, the FEPC started to place its ads in the Yomiuri Shimbun as well.

Following the lead of the two major papers, “The Mainichi Shimbun also hastened to join in,” says Suzuki. At that time, the Mainichi, the third largest circulation newspaper in Japan, was running a series of articles opposing NPPs. So Suzuki made a cutting retort to a representative from the Mainichi: “Your company is campaigning against nuclear power generation. You are free to do that. If you think you are opposing (nuclear energy) for the benefit of society, go ahead and stick to your position. You shouldn’t care about a petty thing like revenues from advertisements.” After Mainichi agreed to “report cautiously” on nuclear power plants issues, the FEPC began to place its ads in it as well.

Thus, “NPP money” was used to corrupt all the major newspapers.

When I spoke about this at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, foreign journalists were very interested in this historical overview. The first question to me was, “Why did the electric power industry first target to the Asahi Shimbun to be an ally? We thought it was considered a liberal newspaper.” I responded by saying that I believe their large advertisements were first placed in the Asahi precisely because it was widely regarded as liberal.

Today I brought copies of some advertisements for NPPs carried by the major newspapers at the time. This ad appeared in the Asahi Shimbun on August 27, 1975. As you can see, it's a big 10-column ad. Its headline reads, “Why don’t nuclear reactors explode?” The text reads like this: “A nuclear reactor is fundamentally different from an atomic bomb. A nuclear reactor is so securely designed that its safety measures are even said to be excessive. Even if the entire reactor control system stopped working, a serious accident could never happen.”

After carrying such ads, the Asahi started its own campaign to promote nuclear power generation. The paper ran a pro-nuclear power serial in 48 installments entitled, “Nuclear fuel—from exploration to waste disposal,” and the serial was later compiled into a book with the same title (by Okuma Yukiko and the Science Department of the Asahi Simbun, 1977). The book repeats the nuclear “safety myth” ad nauseam, which I found sickening to read.

Since the Fukushima accident, some of the major newspapers began to report on the dangers of nuclear power plant to some extent. There is nothing bad about that in itself. However, they also need to seriously reflect on their past deeds of complicity. These papers should stop ignoring rallies against NPPs such as one that was attended by 20,000 people in Tokyo and another with 5,000 participants in Shizuoka. If media expect to gain the public trust, they must report facts fairly and accurately.

End Japan’s subservience to the U.S. - Enriched uranium and reactors from U.S. are basis of Japan’s dependence on nuclear power generation

The second aberration of the structure of Japanese politics related to NPPs is that Japan’s nuclear energy policy has been subservient to that of the U.S. It is not the Japanese people that have determined the policy. The U.S. used the carrot of enriched uranium, the fuel essential to power a nuclear reactor, as a tool of influence.

The governments of Japan and the United States concluded the first agreement on civil nuclear research in 1955. Under the agreement, the U.S. first gave Japan six kilograms of enriched uranium. And then in order to burn the fuel, Japan imported a research reactor made in U.S.A. Japan’s initiation into the realm of nuclear research was in effect putting the cart before the horse, unlike other counties countries that entered this realm.

The next agreement on civil nuclear cooperation between Japan and the U.S. was signed in 1958 and Japan received 2.7 tons of enriched uranium. Coupled with this, Japan imported an experimental reactor from the U.S.

Then in 1968, the Japan-U.S. Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement was revised. Under the new agreement, the U.S. provided Japan with a massive 154 tons of enriched uranium. This was followed by the fierce competition over contracts for nuclear reactor procurement by Japan between the two major U.S. nuclear reactor manufacturers, General Electric (GE) and Westinghouse Electric (WH). To the present day, the agreement has been revised several times and at present 73 % of the enriched uranium used in Japan’s NPPs comes from the U.S.

Nuclear reactors in Japan are just carbon copies of those in the U.S., and are not reactors developed by ourselves. For example, reactor 1 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was built exactly as GE had originally designed. And this brought about farcical but serious consequences. Reactor 1 had its backup power generator built underground as it would be in the U.S., the place most vulnerable to tsunami. How could this kind of stupidity be allowed? In the U.S., the greatest natural threats are posed by hurricanes and tornados, therefore underground is the safest place to build emergency power sources. Reproducing the U.S. designed nuclear reactor lead to this terrible disaster we are now experiencing.

Nuclear reactors build later were also based on U.S. technology. Therefore, Japanese nuclear operators cannot manage serious accidents on their own. They need U.S. technical support. Among the countries with major nuclear power generation, Japan is the only country depending on reactors copied from another country without having developed its own.

Japan relies on the United States for enriched uranium as well as nuclear reactors, with no technical expertise to deal with accidents. We must get rid of such dependence on U.S. energy policy and make full use of domestically produced natural energy.

With a vision for a society where people can live a decent life

The effort to totally break with nuclear power is also a struggle to demolish the “NPP community of interest” and to establish an “economy with rules” which protects the lives and livelihoods of the general public. It is also part of a struggle to shed Japan’s dependence on U.S. energy policy. In fact, this is a struggle to change the shape of Japanese society and overcome the “two political aberrations” by which Japan always acts at the U.S. beck and call and in the interests of large corporations.

We envisage that through the full-scale introduction of natural and renewable energy sources and the shift to a low-energy consumption society, we can establish a society where everybody can live a safe and humane life and every worker is guaranteed decent working conditions.

Friends, with this long-term vision, let us forge a national consensus on the single goal of totally breaking away from nuclear power generation.

Eve of historic changes in politics: Join us in the JCP

The move toward a two-party system falters and public perceptions are changing

I have talked at length about the “changes in values and social assumptions

among the people and the JCP.” Lastly, I would like to examine these changes in a larger political context.

The large scale attempts to create a “two-party political system” started in 2003 and was led by the business circles. It has been the most powerful anti-communist campaign to limit the public choice to either the LDP or the DPJ with the intent to exclude the JCP as an option. This created adverse conditions for the JCP, including difficulties in winning in various elections.

When was the peak of this campaign? It was at the time when the much awaited change of government took place in the general election held in August 2009. However, as soon as the tail wind for this campaign reached its maximum velocity, the move towards establishing a robust two-party system came to a serious deadlock.

The public had placed hopes on the new government to change away from the old style of LDP politics. But the reality was different than expected. The DPJ government steadily went back to the same old LDP politics - from relocating the Futenma Air Station in Okinawa and imposing a consumption tax increase to participation in the TPP negotiations. Look at what is happening in the Diet sessions. The people are completely turned off by the partisan squabbles between the DPJ and the LDP. They are increasingly filled with despair and anger.

This backhanded anti-JCP campaign revealed its true characters within two years, much faster than the ruling circles had anticipated. The general public is searching for a new and different direction in politics and is beginning to rediscover the relevance of the JCP in various fields in spite of the ruling circles’ efforts to remove the JCP from people’s options.

The great earthquake and tsunami on March 11 and the nuclear disaster following that are still causing untold suffering to many people. At the same time, this crisis has also marked a major turning point in accelerating the emerging changes in public perception. We see far-reaching changes going on in people’s views on politics and society and in their values. There is more common ground between public perception and the JCP’s and greater cooperation in various fields.

Why doesn’t the world of Japan’s politics change even if there is a change of government? It is because there are two aberrations in the world of Japanese politics, subservience to both the United States and to Japan’s business circles. If the public can understand this, and see prospects for breaking the present gridlock, Japan’s politics will experience a sea change. We are on the eve of witnessing historic changes. With this perspective in mind, let us make every effort to bring forth a transformation at the structural level.

Profound changes among workers in the big private companies

In addition, among workers in the big private corporations, profound changes are also taking place. Let me relate two recent episodes that illustrate this.

A JCP member who had persevered in the face of anti-communist discrimination at a big company for a long time was approaching his retirement age. One day, his boss asked him to make a farewell speech if he liked. He then spoke boldly about his political beliefs and the way he had lived:

“In the face of tough discrimination under the anti-communist labor management here, I have never compromised my political conviction during the last 41 years. I have never received due promotions or substantial pay raises, but I have lived with a clear conscience. I have lived up to my ideals. As a parent, I am a happy man because I have had nothing to be ashamed of before my children throughout my life.” From the next day, more people at the workplace greeted him. Then, his boss requested him to stay on at his job. He explained the reason, saying, “There’s no end to people who suffer mental illnesses. I want you to look around and talk to those who look like they may be experiencing emotional turmoil. Take care of them so that they won’t have to suffer from mental illnesses.” Even his boss had rediscovered the value of the JCP member with strong principles.

Another episode is about an annual event to award the “employee of the year” honors held at another private company. This year, the management conducted an internal vote to choose an employee who was thought to be the best while doing a thankless task. Believe it or not, a JCP member who had waged uncompromising struggles as a member of the militant first union came in as the unrivalled first. The management gave him a gift of money. He said, “I have been discriminated against and excluded on a number of occasions, but I have always tried my best to get my job done efficiently and flawlessly. I did not hesitate to talk with workers from a pro-management second union when they came to me for advice.”

Friends, the JCP member in the big private corporations have been working under adverse conditions of discrimination and exclusion. But their co-workers have come to respect them for their sincere attitudes toward work assignments and for their ways of living up to their ideals. Even the management counts on them for their compassion for co-workers and their recognized capacity to save colleagues from mental turmoil. We can see marked changes taking place even deep inside of large corporations.

For a new Japan beyond the crisis—Let us work together to meet this challenge

This is my last appeal to you.

We are witnessing deep-rooted changes appearing among wide sections of society. These are positive changes in the right direction, but won’t automatically lead to a progressive transformation of Japanese society. Only with the JCP getting bigger and stronger will such a transformation at the structural level come to fruition. I just talked about being at the “eve of historic transformation.” Morning dawns even if you are sleeping, but a new society does not dawn unless we work together.

Please join us in the JCP struggles, if you feel that what I had to say today was reasonable.

And please subscribe to the Akahata newspaper, the newspaper famous for its series of scoops based on true investigative reporting. A foreign reporter asked me at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club what was the secret behind the Akahata scoops. My answer was that the Akahata could obtain hidden information because it had the trust of the people at the grass roots level.

Friends, JCP members’ lives are not judged by worldly promotions and successes. Being a member has nothing to do with moneymaking. On the contrary, we have to ask you to pay fees according to your capacity. But if you stand firm on your political belief and conscience without yielding to unjust oppression, you would be living a life worthy of humanity experiencing the true happiness of life. I give you my word on that.

Japan is experiencing a critical situation following the earthquake and the nuclear power plant disaster. But if we join hands in overcoming the crisis, we can certainly arrive at a new Japan. In concluding my speech, I would like to call on all of you to work together as members of the JCP to rise to this challenge.

Viva, the 89th anniversary of the founding of the JCP!

US Diktat to Pakistan Not Working

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 16:59:00 +0000

The US is having more problems with its "ally" Pakistan according to a recent article in the New York Times ("Frustrations Grow as US and Pakistan Fail to Mend Ties" NYT 5/28/2012"). After summoning the President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari to the NATO conclave in Chicago last week and then berating and humiliating him in the best traditions of Imperial arrogance towards the lesser breeds without the law the US is frustrated because Pakistan has not capitulated to the dictates of the Obama administration. If we look at the Times article we can understand why.

Public opinion in Pakistan is decidedly anti-American and the US drone strikes in the country as well as the killing of 24 Pakistani troops by US-NATO forces by "mistake" hasn't helped the situation. How did the US respond when President Zardari brought up Pakistan's concerns about the relationship with the US-- reasonable concerns that could be easily solved if the US showed some good will and respect for the Pakistani people.

The situation is critical. Pakistan has closed the supply route US forces have been using in that country to transmit its war supplies to Afghanistan. The US wants this route opened up and thinks the best way to do that is not to address the concerns brought up by President Zardari but to browbeat him and demand that he shape up to US expectations. This is not a tactic designed to win the good will of the people of Pakistan-- no matter what they may ultimately think of their own political class.

When Zardari arrived in the windy city he found out that he would not be meeting with President Obama (a sign of imperial displeasure) but would have to endure a lot of hot air blowing his way from the Secretary of State Mrs. Clinton who was, as the NYT puts it "nothing if not blunt." She told a "subdued" Zardari "It's going to take leadership from you and others" to solve Pakistan's problems (many of which seem to be the US's problems in trying to "win" the war in Afghanistan or least tamp it down so that an inglorious exit can be pulled off). It seems that the US's inability to be militarily successful in the region is due to Zardari's lack of leadership skills rather than the ineptitude and stupidity of US policy makers.

Take for instance the case of the 24 Pakistani soldiers recently killed by "mistake" on the border of Afghanistan. Zardari says Pakistan lacks the resources to control all the troublesome insurgent groups in its border area, and his government needs to get maximum cooperation with other political parties and groups to carry out an effective policy, he told Mrs. Clinton, that "We're backed into a corner because you haven't apologized" for the killing of the soldiers (which has outraged Pakistani public opinion).

There is a simple solution to this major contentious issue between the two countries. US forces (NATO is just a cover for the US) "accidentally" kill a large number of our ally's troops and a simple apology to the Pakistanis would go a long way to relieving tensions, except the imperial pretensions of the US won't allow it to apologize. The NYT times even reports that US election year politics may be involved. Since this involves US military supply lines being disrupted the US's own troops could be adversely affected, and all because of the pride or perceived political expediency of politicians in Washington.

The NYT reports that our "alliance" with Pakistan "is central to the Obama administration's plan to end the war in Afghanistan." But the Obama administration treats Pakistan and its president with unconcealed contempt and will assuredly cause a complete rupture of relations if it does not stop its bullying and high handed actions. Another example is the continuing drone attacks that the US makes in Pakistan despite the fact that the Pakistani Parliament and government objects to them. Here we have a sovereign country telling us to stop bombing its people and we completely ignore it and continue bombing. The US is shooting itself in the foot and blaming others for its self inflicted wounds.

The Parliament is democratically elected, as is the president of Pakistan (Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy so the role of the president is not the same as in the US) and the demands that they have made of the US can be seen as a democratic expression of the will of the Pakistani people. But what the people of Pakistan think or want is the last thing on the mind of Mrs. Clinton who used her time in Chicago to lecture Zardari on how to carry out the plans the US wants to see Pakistan adopt, and, as the NYT says, "to sell them to politicians in Pakistan." It may be the politicians in Pakistan are more interested in doing what their people want them to do rather than what Mrs. Clinton wants them to do.

But it is a brave new world gradually coming into existence outside of the US, one that increasingly refuses to bow to the imperial diktat and to accede unquestioningly to the demands of US imperialism and its corporate masters. People everywhere are becoming more insistent on their democratic rights, even in the US itself. Let us have the audacity to hope the Obama administration gets the message.

Austerity and the Economic Crisis

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:32:00 +0000

This article reflects notes from a report on the economic situation to the National Board, CPUSA June 7, 2012. Includes contributions from Greg Rose and Emile Schepers.

Introduction -- Summary of Economic Situation

We meet as the European economy is spiraling down into chaos. The devastation in Greece has been likened to living under occupation in WWII. Spain and Italy are heading toward financial crisis. Increasingly, the question is not whether, but how long until the Euro and the European Union collapse or are significantly weakened.

In the US, after 4 months of modest but real job growth over the winter, we have now had 3 months of jobs barely keeping up with population growth. (March, April, May). Projections for the next few months vary, and economic indicators are contradictory. EG, Retail sales up. Business investment slowing.

IMO, the best possible scenario is continued sluggish growth through the elections, with a modest pickup in employment. Even with best case scenario, excessive "happy talk" from the administration could lead millions to think Obama is disconnected from the reality they see every day.

Weighing against a robust recovery, or even continued slow growth, are the economic boat anchors that have been blocking recovery for four years.

deep burden of unpayable household debt from home mortgages, credit cards and student loans
low household consuming power due to high unemployment and stagnant wages
global economic crisis, especially in Europe and now threatening in China
continued instability and threat of crisis in the financial system, exemplified in the recent JP Morgan Chase losses
austerity policies enacted at state, local, and increasingly federal government levels.

It is the last factor -- government austerity policies, that I will deal with in this report. These are the policies by which government have the most direct, immediate influence on the economy, and which are at the center of this year's elections.

In the short term, progressive Keynsian policies (like expanded spending for infrastructure and social needs) are necessary, especially in the US and Europe. In the longer term, capitalism -- even with Keynsian policies -- is proving increasingly incapable of dealing with human and environmental problems. Marx noted the contradiction between the social nature of production under capitalism, and the private ownership and control. You can't go back, he said, to small scale local production. The way to resolve this problem is to socialize ownership and control, as well as production. The social nature of production has multiplied a thousand times since Marx's day. This means that social -- and socialist -- solutions are increasingly necessary.

But I will not address the limits of Keynsian economics here. Because the main capitalist centers of Europe and the United States are increasingly enacting anti-Keynsian policies of austerity, and reversing those policies is the main task of this moment.

The balance of this report has seven sections:

What is austerity
Austerity and the 99%
Austerity and the broader economy
Class essence of austerity
Austerity and the current state of global capitalism
Fightback against austerity
Austerity and the elections

1. What is austerity?

Dictionary definitions: "Austerity" was named the word of the year by Merriam-Webster in 2010. Wikipedia: In economics, austerity refers to a policy of deficit-cutting by lowering spending often via a reduction in the amount of benefits and public services provided...

In the United States, the term "austerity" is used in more sophisticated op-eds and business reporting. But the popular term is belt-tightening. As in, "After all, small businesses and families are tightening their belts. Their government should, too."

These definitions of austerity imply that it is a legitimate response to a crisis, a response to a budgetary problem. This is the implication:

We have been spending too much. We are not working hard enough. We are enjoying too many entitlements. We have to cut back. We have to tighten our belts. There is not enough to go around, so we have to consume less. And note that we is undefined.

But are we consuming too much? That is not the case. Whether we are talking about Europe, or the US, or Japan, behind all the facade of financial crisis, and with all the changes that 150 years have brought, we are talking about a capitalist crisis of overproduction as described by Marx -- a crisis of plethora.

Nonetheless, it is a commonplace, accepted by almost all, that some elements of an austerity program are necessary. News stories refer to European countries hit by the crisis as "profligate", or warn of "the burgeoning costs of Medicare and Social Security" when the facts show something entirely different. This inaccurate characterization is typical in virtually all media reporting and political discourse. ".

*[ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/merkel-is-target-of-calls-for-drastic-measures-by-germany-to-save-euro-zone/2012/06/02/gJQAN6hM9U_story.html]

*[incorrect: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/germanys-neighbors-were-not-more-profligate]

*[http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/cnn-forget-to-look-at-its-chart-when-warning-of-the-qburgeoning-costq-of-social-security]

Thus, Thomas Friedman, the liberal propagandist for U.S. imperialism, stated that we are in a new era "in which to be a president, a governor, a mayor or a college president will be, on balance, to take things away from people." It is stated as an established fact, like the law of gravity. [ NYT May 20. He says our cuts must be smart, we must preserve education, but does not say how or what to cut instead].

2. Direct effects of austerity on the 99% -- mass impoverishment and unemployment

Austerity policies include:

cutting public (government) investment and privatizing existing government assets (like public utilities, roads, even parking meters).
cutting and/or privatizing public services like education, public health
cutting public safety net and insurance programs like retirement, welfare, jobless benefits, youth and senior programs, housing subsidies.
reducing and cutting the pay of public sector workers.
direct intervention to enable private employers to fire workers and cut pay and benefits.
raising taxes and fees, especially on the 99%

In Europe, where austerity policy is explicit, these policies have been implemented almost universally in varying degrees. E.G. in Portugal, the austerity program has included cuts in pay, vacation, job security, and union rights. In other words, as one commentator puts it, "workers must work longer and harder for less money and with less rights and a higher risk of being sacked." Greek Archbishop Ieronymos described the situation in his country as a "reminder of WWII conditions" and said, "the homeless increase by the thousands everyday, while small and medium-sized enterprises are forced to go out of business. Young people, the country's best minds, choose to emigrate, while our fathers are unable to live after the dramatic cuts in pensions."

In the U.S., the response to the economic crisis was more complex. A series of anti-austerity measures at the federal level, enacted in the first days of the Obama administration, cushioned the effects of the crisis. Most notably, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA), commonly known simply as "the stimulus," was passed in February 2009. It included extended and increased unemployment insurance, subsidized health coverage for laid-off workers, increased food stamp and other safety net benefits, payroll tax reduction, support for city and state governments and investment in transportation and infrastructure programs. Although inadequate to the extent of the economic crisis, these measures provided real relief for millions.

But the economic crisis has also exposed the consequences of earlier austerity measures. Since welfare "reform" was enacted in 1996, the percent of families with children in poverty receiving benefits has declined to 27% [in 2010, from 68% ]. "Under TANF, federal funding does not rise when caseloads increase in hard economic times... many states' TANF programs have responded inadequately - or not at all - to the large rise in unemployment during this very deep recession, leaving large numbers of families in severe hardship." In fact, thanks to the 1996 welfare reform, TANF funding has been reduced in the face of growing need. [ CBPP 7/14/2011] Republicans are now trying to do the same to Medicaid.

State and local governments have been enacting increasingly severe austerity measures. Unlike most developed countries, a large part of public services, starting with education, is provided and funded at the state and local level. When the economic crisis caused a sharp drop in revenues, state and local governments responded by cutting services. These cuts were partly offset by federal stimulus funds, but by 2011 the stimulus funds had mostly ended.

The resulting austerity measures have included cuts in education, health care, social services and other areas. Education has sustained some of the heaviest blows, with cuts in programs on one hand, and steep increases in tuition and fees in higher education. EG, "the cost of a college education continues to increase faster than inflation, and state and local spending per college student continues to drop - this year reaching a 25-year low." . And "From coast to coast, mayors and city councils are hacking away at firefighters' ranks in desperate attempts to cut budgets and save cash by cutting workers... In February, Kansas City, Mo., city manager Troy Schulte said he wanted to cut 162 city workers to close a budget gap, and 105 would be in the fire department." a story that could be told in countless cities and towns of all sizes. Summer jobs for youth cut in half since 2010.

Some states have enacted broad fee and tax increases, including on low- and middle-income working people. The heaviest burden has been born by public workers in layoffs, wage freezes, and benefit cuts. Since the 1960s, "the state and local public sectors have provided more equitable opportunities for women and people of color. As a result, women and African Americans constitute a disproportionately large share of the state and local public-sector workforce." The 765,000 public-sector job losses have fallen 70% on women and 20% on African Americans, far in excess of their share in the labor force..

With the expiration of many of the measures in the 2009 stimulus act, and the Republican victories in the 2010 elections, anti-austerity measures at the federal level have been weakened, and state- and local level austerity is getting worse. By some measures, despite the absence of a formal austerity policy in the US, austerity in the US has been as sharp or sharper than in Europe. [Krugman blog, 5/1, Coordinated Austerity] Despite the need for more stimulus and strengthened public services, total government spending (all levels) has been shrinking for the last year [Krugman blog, 6/3/2012, "1937" ]. And even worse looms on the horizon.

Even after severe belt-tightening, cities and states still face deficits and are cutting even more. PeoplesWorld.org reports that in California, "Governor Jerry Brown delivered a revised 2012-13 budget projection doubling the already-deep cuts he called for in January.." For the year beginning July 1, 30 states have projected shortfalls totaling $54 billion. "Many of these shortfalls have been closed through spending cuts and other measures scheduled to take effect in the next fiscal year." [CBPP]Federal policy has also been shifting toward tightening. The deals enacted last year to prevent a government shut-down and to allow some anti-austerity measures (unemployment insurance, payroll tax cut) to continue had future austerity built in to them. That bill is already coming due. EG, 200,000 people cut off unemployment May 13. More than 400,000 people have now lost benefits as EB (Federal Extended Benefit unemployment insurance) payments have ended in 25 high-unemployment states since the beginning of the year. Including California, despite unemployment rate of more than 10%. . And that is only the start.

The debt ceiling deal reached last summer calls for more than $100Bn in automatic custs starting in January, 2013[Robert Reich]. The payroll tax cut expires at the end of this year, as do all federal unemployment extensions. The debt ceiling deal reached last summer calls for more than $100B in automatic cuts starting in January . Under this deal, safeguarding one program will come at the expense of deeper cuts in another. There is increasing talk of a "grand bargain" during the lame duck session after the elections, that will save the military from automatic cuts while cutting Social Security and Medicare. We can be sure that any agreement reached, however bad, will be broken by Republicans in favor of even more cuts for the 99%, even more rewards for the 1%.

3) Economic effect of Austerity -- Recession

So, we have seen that the human costs of austerity are high. But, we are told by economists and columnists with 6-figure paychecks, this is pain that must be endured to get the economy back on track. So we have to ask, how's that working?

It's not. Europe Most of Europe has openly and thoroughly enacted austerity as the official policy, and is plunging back into recession. Those countries that have implemented the most severe austerity -- Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland -- have experienced devastating contraction and soaring unemployment -- more than 20% in Greece and Spain.. Outside the Euro zone, and with a range of alternate policy choices available, Britain's conservative government also chose austerity -- and got recession and rising unemployment.

For the U.S., austerity measures so far, mainly at the state and local level, have acted as a drag on the recovery. Even the establishment Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warns that the train wreck looming after the elections -- payroll tax cuts expire, mandatory budget cuts, and a new debt ceiling vote -- could throw the US back into recession.

Is this the price that must be paid to get budget deficits under control? Wrong question, as I'll discuss later. But here's the answer.

The huge deficits, in the main, are caused by the economic crisis and the resulting recession and depressed economy. In Europe, most of the hardest-hit countries, including Spain, Portugal and Ireland, had budget surpluses before the crisis hit. The crisis caused a sharp drop in government revenue, and a rise in expenses (for unemployment insurance and other safety net programs, and for bailing out banks). Austerity cuts expenses by removing the slender lifeline from the victims of the crisis. But austerity can do little to increase government revenue, which depends on a thriving economy. The result is a downward spiral, in which:

austerity depresses the economy,
which causes government revenue to fall,
which makes deficits bigger,
which results in more austerity,
which depresses the economy even more...

This is the situation in Europe as well as here. In the US, before the crisis, the federal government ran an unnecessary but manageable deficit that resulted from a big expansion of the military budget, as well as tax cuts which favored the wealthy. When the economy collapsed in 2008, safety-net spending increased, and the 2009 stimulus added to the deficit for a couple of years. But the biggest contributor to the deficit today is the continued depressed state of the economy. The federal austerity measures scheduled for the end of this year, added to the continuing state and local level austerity, will reduce government revenue threatening a new downward spiral.

Britain is the European economy most similar to the US. As Krugman points out, we should learn from their experience: "Britain's unnecessary turn to premature austerity is becoming a historic policy and political disaster that will haunt the country for years." -- [Krugman 5/19 Cameron to critics 5/19]

In summary: austerity policies are a disaster for the people and for the broad economy, and have even failed in the stated goal of controlling government deficits. This begs an obvious question, to be addressed in the next section.

4. The Class Essence of Austerity

If austerity is such a disaster, why is this failed policy being pursued? If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing after it has proven to be a failure, does that mean the pro-austerity forces are insane? Why does the ruling class, and particularly its financial sector, insist on a policy which undermines economic growth? This is one of those examples where a Marxist world view provides more clarity than the sophisticated analyses of the most brilliant economists. Austerity can be understood most clearly in the context of the class struggle in the current stage of global capitalism. It is the policy and the weapon of the most powerful, ruling sections of the capitalist class.

Speeding recovery from depression is not necessarily foremost in the interest of the ruling class. Austerity is ultimately a policy of class warfare by the ruling class against the working class, and against small business and weaker capitalists.

It means breaking unions and destroying the social safety net. In the United States this has been particularly evident in Republican pursuit of austerity policies at the state level. The first victims of virulent austerity have been public employee unions against which an extraordinary campaign of economic terror has been launched. This campaign, including layoff of a half-millio750,000 public employees (so far), is an attempt to destroy these unions and end their right to collectively bargain. In the guise of budget cutting the ruling class' intention is to use austerity to (undermine) at the least severely damage and if possible destroy institutions vital to the ability of the working class to defend itself in the future. This attack is extended to trade unions generally. and The unfunding of the social safety network contributes to the growing mass of the reserve army of labor and the permanently underemployed who, becoming more economically precarious, become further available to lower wages and benefits and put a constant pressure on labor to curtail its demands. The result tends toward a working class whose only rights are to compete for jobs at any pay, to starve when there is no work, and to die when they can't work.

Other reasons dominant sections of the ruling class pursue austerity:

To guarantee that the debt is paid. Whether in Greece or in Benton Harbor, Michigan, the measures include putting representatives of big finance in charge of the treasury to make sure banks are paid before anything else.
To preserve the value of their debt. Mild inflation would stimulate the economy and make it easier for governments (and ordinary people) to repay their debts. But inflation makes the debt less valuable to the investors who hold the bonds. So they pursue policies that have resulted in near-zero inflation. This is even more true in Europe than the US, where the Fed has followed a mildly stimulative policy (and been attacked by the right for doing so).

Austerity is not a new policy - it was the main ruling class response to the global crisis of 1929, with the disastrous results we see being repeated today. But the current stage of development of global capitalism increases its drive toward austerity.

5. How austerity fits with the current stage of global capitalism.

From a forthcoming article by Greg Rose in PA.

What Marx described as "fictitious capital" has become a key element in the ruling class' preference for austerity policies. Interest, other forms of debt service, and land rents constitute some of the various forms of fictitious capital... Austerity policies are precisely designed to guarantee that such forms of fictitious capital are privileged over productive capital and that value from productive capital is extracted from the economy to meet obligations to fictitious capital. Reduction of deficits, realization of "sound" deficit-to-GDP ratios, privileging income flows to creditors over other spending priorities, privitization of public assets to extract value for private interests - all of these characteristics of austerity are designed to ensure the flow of rents to the rentier subsector and to make the state and the national economy a more reliable source of such rents.

In short -- capitalism is becoming more parasitic -- more and more of the surplus value created by workers is going, not to productive reinvestment, but to the unproductive and sometimes destructive financial sector. Austerity for the 99% is the guarantee of the continued wealth and power of this sector.

6. Global and US fightback against austerity (and some limitations)

If 2011 was the year of the Arab Spring, 2012 is the year of the European Spring, where austerity is being rejected in the streets and at the ballot box. Huge anti-austerity demonstrations and occupations in many countries. In recent elections: A brief list of recent election results:

France: Right-wing president Sarkozy replaced by Socialist Francois Hollande; Left gains in 1st round parliamentary elections.
Greece -- huge gains for anti-austerity parties in May; new round of elections in June
Slovakia--left wins elections.
Netherlands: Government defeated partly on austerity issue.
Czech Republic: The foreign minister says that the current right wing government can probably not survive public dissent against austerity policies.
Romania: RW govt defeated by center-left with elections to parliament still to come
Britain: pro-austerity Tories suffer big losses in local elections
Italy: left posts big gains in local elections
Germany: SD knocks out pro-austerity CDU in several important states.

These election victories are only the start of the anti-austerity struggle in Europe. The victorious center and left forces are anti-austerity, but it remains to be seen if they can develop an effective alternative against the entrenched power of finance capital and the potential divisions within the extremely diverse anti-austerity coalitions. Partly because the opposition cannot always offer a convincing anti-austerity alternative, there will be election losses. EG, in light turnout, Irish voters on May 31 approved 60-40 the European fiscal treaty which binds European countries to an austerity policy. (Ireland was the only country where the people actually have the chance to vote on this treaty.)

The recent anti-austerity electoral results gain strength from successful anti-austerity governments in other countries. Ten years ago, Argentina rejected austerity, repudiated much of its debt, and embarked on an anti-austerity program that brought impressive economic growth and big reductions in poverty and unemployment. Since then, most of South America has elected left or left-center governments which have successfully promoted economic development, expanded public services like education and health care, raised living standards and reduced inequality. At least In Argentina and Bolivia, the electoral victories (by anti-austerity governments) followed a huge popular upsurge with marches, demonstrations and strikes against austerity policies.

Another example is Iceland, which suffered a banking crisis and collapse about the same time as Ireland. Ireland's government embraced austerity in order to pay the bad debts of the private banks at the expense of the Irish people, and unemployment is now just under 15%. Iceland refused to bail out the banks -- their unemployment rate is 7%.

Most European countries cannot adopt exactly the same anti-austerity strategies successfully used in Argentina or Iceland, because of differing economic, political and geographic factors. But the message is important -- embracing austerity is an economic disaster first of all for the working class and the 99%, but also for the whole economy. Fighting back against austerity is not easy, but it is possible, and can achieve real gains.

North of us, student and other struggles in Quebec.

Of course, in the USA we have our own example in the Great Depression of the 1930s, when a combination of militant, radical mass action, union organizing and electoral struggle replaced the austerity policies of the Hoover administration with the New Deal of Roosevelt, bringing hope and real gains to the working class, many of which we are now fighting to hold on to.

The struggle against austerity in the US has exploded since the 2010 elections. Beyond Wisconsin and Ohio, there were struggles in almost every state. Occupy struck a national cord. Despite mixed results, the recall election in Wisconsin last Tuesday, culminating an 18-month battle for democracy, is emblematic of a popular movement struggling to move to the next level. It is more diffused than the struggle in Europe, partly because the austerity agenda in the US is not implemented as a single package (so far), but as hundreds of separate measures at different levels of government with program cuts here, tuition increases there, and assaults on unions and public workers every where.

7. Battle over austerity in the 2012 elections

The outcome of the elections depends on the economy. And the outcome of the economy depends on the elections. The elections are not only about the economy -- they are about how we look at the economy.

Republican program and austerity

Romney tells young people, concerned about the lack of jobs, borrow $20K from your parents and start your own business. That reflects his world view -- after all, he, and probably everyone he associated with, could borrow $20K or even $200K to start a business. (It also reflects his ignorance of the economics of small business. For $20K, in all but the luckiest and most exceptional cases, you can start a small business which is under-capitalized and doomed to failure within a year, losing your parents' money and leaving you even deeper in debt).

The Republican Ryan budget passed this year by the House, and endorsed by candidate Romney, implements extreme austerity, but does not reduce the deficit. In an exaggerated replay of the Bush-II budgets, it would almost eliminate non-military programs of the federal government while increasing military, further cutting taxes for the rich... and increasing the deficit.

Republican program is not to cut the deficit but to cut useful government and promote plunder. We see this in states with Republican-dominated governments. E.G. Kansas under Republican rule has increased taxes on poor people to cut taxes for rich people.

Democratic program

The programs put forward by Obama and Democratic leadership are inconsistent and contradictory.

Not just the national level. How do we deal with a situation where Democratic governors and mayors are enacting austerity programs, including attacks on pensions, cuts to social programs, privatization, etc. Recently, a state worker and union leader in CT said to me, "Our membership really mobilized to elect Democratic governor Dannel Malloy. He balanced the state budget on our backs. Our members feel betrayed, and are in no mood to work for the Democrats in this election." The fact that the Republican candidate for governor would have been far worse is recognized by these state workers, but doesn't change their bitterness. And Governor Malloy in CT is one of the better Democratic governors in dealing with the state budget crisis.

At the national level, on one hand, mainstream Democrats accept the basic premise of the austerians -- that the deficit should be controlled right now, and that it is urgent that steps be taken now to deal with long-term budget problems. This is seen partly in rhetoric. The quote used at the beginning of this report -- "... Small businesses and families are tightening their belts. Their government should, too." -- that quote came from President Obama.

The Democratic Congress enacted paygo in its first 100 days, forcing it to find offsetting savings or revenue for any new expenditures. The administration embraces the concept of shared sacrifice. On one hand, this may give more power to their efforts to win modest tax hikes for the rich, to close corporate loopholes, to tax financial institutions and to enact the Buffett rule -- efforts which have so far failed. On the other hand, they have accepted that workers must share the sacrifice, starting with Federal workers who have had 2 years of pay freezes. After a strong start, Obama ended his first year in office by creating the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission. This enabled a shift in focus from job creation and constructive economic policy to the no-win debates about long-term deficits. In the past year, President Obama and Congressional Democrats have wavered on preserving Social Security and Medicare. And recently, Nancy Pelosi indicated she may accept revoking the Bush tax cuts only for income over $1M, leaving the tax cut for income between $250K and $1M (although Obama has since rejected this approach). This would lose half the potential revenue and with existing budget rules, it means cuts would have to be made from other spending to preserve tax breaks worth $10K to $40K each for rich people.

So -- is the Obama administration is just another front for Wall Street? Not so fast. The Obama administration enacted, over Wall Street and near-unanimous Republican opposition: Student loan deprivatization; Health reform; Dodd-Frank; And of course, ARRA. But even with momentum and 60 seats in Senate in 2009, mild restriction on financial sector was blocked by the Republicans and blue dogs. Obama introduced American Jobs Act (AJA) last September -- and being locked into paygo framework, proposed progressive taxation to pay for it. In order to get essential immediate anti-austerity legislation passed (unemployment insurance, payroll tax cut) the Democrats had to agree to austerity measures that were not immediate.

We have to ask, if Obama is simply a creature of Wall Street, Why is Wall Street supporting Romney by at least 2-1, reversing its 2008 position?

At his best, Obama frames issue in a way that provides a clear contrast with the Republicans. If his program does not always live up to his rhetoric, he provides a framework within which peoples forces can organize and fight for a real, anti-austerity, pro-people economic program.

With Obama, a big enough, strong enough movement can win victories against big capital. With Romney, the banksters know they have a firewall against the 99%.

Right wing and fascist alternatives

Europe -- rise of right wing anti-austerity. In France right-wing, anti-immigrant Le Pen did better than the united left. In Greece the semi-fascist Golden Dawn got a big increase on an anti-immigrant, anti-austerity platform. In US, T-Party is not anti-austerity, but uses similar rhetoric when talking about Wall Street bailouts.

Martin Wolf in the Financial Times

Before now, I had never really understood how the 1930s could happen. Now I do. All one needs are fragile economies, a rigid monetary regime, intense debate over what must be done, widespread belief that suffering is good, myopic politicians, an inability to co-operate and failure to stay ahead of events. (referring to depression, not to rise of fascism).

Wolf is referring to economic stagnation and depression, not explicitly to the rise of fascism. But we can extend the comparison. Fascism thrives on instability and chaos. If the left cannot provide an alternative to the growing dysfunction in Europe, the right surely will. This is what is so dangerous about the hard-line Tea Party Republicans in Congress. Their goal is to create economic chaos - from which they and their corporate sponsors hope to gain power.

Progressive alternatives

It is easy to conclude that European anti-austerity election results mean that Obama and the Democrats have only to make the case against austerity to win. For example, one blogger writes:

"in Europe, the lines between political parties are widely understood. Here, the Democrats are so connected to Wall Street and the 1% that many voters see the Party as equally unwilling to battle for their interests... Europe's lesson is that Obama should far more aggressively promote public investment, job creation, and other economically populist - and popular - measures. If he and the Democrats do this, their success in 2008 could be repeated in 2012."

There is more than a grain of truth in this. But the criticism ignores some realities, including some recent primary losses by Progressive Democrats. The Democratic Party and Obama administrations are coalitions in which genuinely popular forces are at best junior partners. But the pro-austerity economic narrative has virtually total control of the mainstream media. Obama tried to change the narrative with the AJA last September. It went nowhere. Congressional Black Caucus, Progressive Caucus, labor movement have presented alternatives, but have unable to break through the media's wall of silence.

I think the reports by Sam Webb, Jarvis Tyner and Joelle Fishman at the April conference of the CPUSA don't require further elaboration by me. The recent AFL-CIO video "Meet Mr. 1%" at makes a strong case for re-electing President Obama, in the context of building independent labor-based political action.

There are no shortcuts. A recent letter from Ucubed -- the machinist Unions' unemployed committee -- stated that "white jobless voters give Mitt Romney a 24 point advantage over President Barack Obama...the fault lies not with those mostly working class voters... And if the Democrats showed even the slightest inclination to fight for JOBS for them - to really fight, not just shadowbox with the GOP - they'd fight like hell for them... The jobless are looking for jobs, not the austerity, tax cuts and trickle-down policies that GOP leaders demand. But Democrats have to go after the jobless households with an intensity they have yet to demonstrate... Get us jobs and you've got our votes. Don't and you won't."

Ucubed speaks to real frustration, and recognizes that Romney would be a disaster. But last Fall, when Obama introduced a real jobs bill, there was deafening silence. Did the 100,000 Ucubed activists hold demonstrations in every city in the country. Have they been in the face of every member of congress in support of the Rebuild America Act this Spring? Maybe he is not consistent enough, but Obama has tried, and is trying to put jobs on the agenda. But he can't substitute for the movement. Just as 50 years ago it was the mass movement that put civil rights on the national agenda, it is the job of Ucubed, and of us, to put jobs on the agenda. Don't blame Obama for the movement's weakness.

I want close by returning to a question from section 3. I asked if austerity was the price that must be paid to get budget deficits under control, and said it was the wrong question. What's that about?

JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BP, Chevron, WalMart, and billionaires Charles and David Koch are launching a multi-million dollar TV ad buy Tuesday blasting President Obama over the national debt. This is only the latest of a decades-long barage by corporate-sponsored institutions to make present and future deficits the top discussion, and usually to blame "tax and spend" Democrats in the bargain.

There is a certain unreality in this deficit obsession with abstract numbers in some virtual account book. The wealth of our country is in our natural resources, our people, and in the physical and social institutions, enterprises and infrastructure. In this ongoing depression, our collective wealth is being squandered and destroyed. Unemployed older workers lose skills and contact with the labor force, and society loses their experience and productive capacity. Youth receive inadequate education and are frozen out of jobs, making it much harder for them to realize their potential to contribute to the nation's wealth now and in the future.

Last Labor Day, Obama said, "We've got roads and bridges across this country that need rebuilding. We've got private companies with the equipment and the manpower to do the building. We've got more than one million unemployed construction workers ready to get dirty right now. There is work to be done and there are workers ready to do it."

Matching resources -- including human resources -- with the real needs of the country. That is the task before us. The only rational justification for an economic system is the efficient accomplishment of this task. Government budget policy is also supposed to be predicated on the public good. [Of course, that is simply justification. Actually financial system grows to siphon profits off from productive sectors. Budgets reflect contending interests within framework of ruling class.] But at this point, the U.S. financial system, and in particular the focus on budget deficits, is the main obstacle to meeting our real needs.

To paraphrase the Declaration of Independence, when financial and budgetary systems become destructive to the needs of the economy and the people, it is the right of the people to alter or eliminate them. In the 1930s, much simpler financial systems and government structures were altered, eliminated, and innovated by the New Deal, where the watchword was pragmatism. Within months of taking office, the Roosevelt administration passed all sorts of measures. The most useful and popular directly employed millions of people on much-needed and widely supported infrastructure, education and cultural projects. They provided safe loans to homeowners and farmers. The government stepped in to match real needs with real human and other resources, and where necessary changed or created the financial mechanisms necessary. Of course, Roosevelt could do this because Congress passed most of the bills he submitted -- a situation that does not exist today.

Solutions to the crisis today will not be easy to construct in US or in Europe, both because problems are not simple, and because of opposition of ruling class. But we must fight for the guiding principal that matching human and material resources with human and environmental needs takes priority over the rights of the 1%, and over balanced budgets. And by the way, such a policy could result in balanced budgets and reduced public debt.

Conclusion.

We should think about ways of popularizing the class essence of austerity, along the lines of ask not for whom the belt tightens... I am picturing a cartoon of a Wall Street bankster preaching about the need for us all to tighten our belts, while he is tightening a belt wrapped around a squeezing the life out of workers, seniors, youth, etc. This report quotes several of the excellent articles from the PW on local effects of austerity. I think it is important to emphasize that in fighting against austerity, we are not robbing our grandchildren: we are fighting for a decent country for our grandchildren.

Review of The Price of Inequality

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 18:38:00 +0000

In his new book, The Price of Inequality, Nobel Prize-winning economist and former Chief Economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz provides one of the most thoughtful repudiations of austerity economics. In addition he offers some profound thinking on why reversing current and corrosive trends of greater social and economic inequality is the most important remedy to the depression now in its fifth year with no end in sight, while literally billions around the world suffer at the same time the rich are doing better than ever.

In a recent essay summarizing the arguments of his book, he opens with the subject of markets.

Markets have clearly not been working in the way that their boosters claim. Markets are supposed to be stable, but the global financial crisis showed that they could be very unstable, with devastating consequences. The bankers had taken bets that, without government assistance, would have brought them and the entire economy down. But a closer look at the system showed that this was not an accident; the bankers had incentives to behave this way.

The virtue of the market is supposed to be its efficiency. But the market obviously is not efficient. The most basic law of economics - necessary if the economy is to be efficient - is that demand equals supply. But we have a world in which there are huge unmet needs - investments to bring the poor out of poverty, to promote development in less developed countries in Africa and other continents around the world, to retrofit the global economy to face the challenges of global warming. At the same time, we have vast underutilized resources - workers and machines that are idle or are not producing up to their potential. Unemployment - the inability of the market to generate jobs for so many citizens - is the worst failure of the market, the greatest source of inefficiency, and a major cause of inequality.

As of March 2012, some 24 million Americans who would have liked a full-time job couldn't get one.

In the United States, we are throwing millions out of their homes. We have empty homes and homeless people.

But even before the crisis, the American economy had not been delivering what had been promised. Since 1975 disposable income for workers has gone down or remained flat in all but a couple of years in the tech boom of the 90's. GDP was growing, but American workers were no longer getting their share, or any share of the increase. For most American families, even before the onset of recession, incomes adjusted for inflation were lower than they had been a decade earlierr.

Stiglitz describes the purpose of his book:

This book is about why our economic system is failing for most Americans, why inequality is growing to the extent it is, and what the consequences are. The underlying thesis is that we are paying a high price for our inequality - an economic system that is less stable and less efficient, with less growth, and a democracy that has been put into peril. But even more is at stake: as our economic system is seen to fail for most citizens, and as our political system seems to be captured by moneyed interests, confidence in our democracy and in our market economy will erode along with our global influence. As the reality sinks in that we are no longer a country of opportunity and that even our long-vaunted rule of law and system of justice have been compromised, even our sense of national identity may be put into jeopardy.

The problem is global, not just a US phenomenon. In some countries the Occupy Wall Street movement has become closely allied with the antiglobalization movement. Stiglitz has long held that the problem is not that globalization is bad or wrong but that "...governments are managing it so poorly - largely for the benefit of special interests. The interconnectedness of peoples, countries, and economies around the globe is a development that can be used as effectively to promote prosperity as to spread greed and misery."

Stiglitz has the same basic attitude toward markets as globalization: "...the power of markets is enormous, but they have no inherent moral character. We have to decide how to manage them. At their best, markets have played a central role in the stunning increases in productivity and standards of living in the past two hundred years - increases that far exceeded those of the previous two millennia."

However government has played no less a role in these advances, a fact that free-market advocates without exception fail to acknowledge. Alongside tremendous advances in productivity, markets have also "concentrate[d] wealth, pass[ed] environmental costs on to society, and abuse[d] workers and consumers. For all these reasons, it is plain that markets must be tamed and tempered to make sure they work to the benefit of most citizens. And that has to be done repeatedly, to ensure that they continue to do so. That happened in the United States in the Progressive Era, when competition laws were passed for the first time. It happened in the New Deal, when Social Security, employment, and minimum-wage laws were passed."

Of course it was never rational or moral capitalists or business interests that drove either of these reform eras. It was the rise of the multitudes of millions of working and oppressed peoples that compelled the economy, markets and governance to adjust and redress inequality.

The message of Occupy Wall Street - and of so many other protesters around the world - is that markets once again must be tamed and tempered, regulated and, in some cases, with respect to goods such as health care and other human rights, they must be removed from markets. The consequences of doing otherwise can be no meaningful democracy, where the voices of ordinary citizens are not heard; whereas in fact those voices must not only be heard, but must indeed rule. If the system year after year makes citizens worse-off, one or the other will have to give - either democracy, or inequality.

Inequality and Unfairness

The promise of equal opportunity, embedded in the founding documents of our nation, and in two and a half centuries of struggle, is often betrayed by markets, even when they are stable. "More than anything else, a sense that the economic and political systems were unfair is what motivates the protests around the world. In Tunisia and Egypt and other parts of the Middle East, it wasn't merely that jobs were hard to come by but that those jobs that were available went to those with connections."

In the United States and Europe, things seemed more fair, but only superficially so. Those who graduated from the best schools with the best grades had a better chance at the good jobs. But the system was stacked because wealthy parents sent their children to the best kindergartens, grade schools, and high schools, and those students had a far better chance of getting into the elite universities.

The financial crisis has unleashed a new realization that our economic system is not only inefficient and unstable but also fundamentally unfair. Many in the financial sector -- the bankers -- walked off with outsize bonuses, while those who suffered from the crisis brought on by these bankers went without a job. Government bailed out the banks, but was dragged kicking and screaming to even extend unemployment insurance for those who could not get employment after searching for months and months. Government failed to provide anything except token help to the millions who were losing their homes.

On Opportunity to Revisit the notion of CLASS

One aspect of fairness that is deeply ingrained in American values is opportunity. America has always thought of itself as a land of opportunity. Horatio Alger stories, of individuals who made it from the bottom to the top, are part of American folklore. But, increasingly, the American dream that saw the country as a land of opportunity began to seem just that: a dream, a myth reinforced by anecdotes and stories, but not supported by the data. The chances of an American citizen making his way from the bottom to the top are less than those of citizens in other advanced industrial countries.

There is a corresponding myth - rags to riches in three generations - suggesting that those at the top have to work hard to stay there; if they don't, they (or their descendants) quickly move down. But this too is largely a myth, for the children of those at the top will, more likely than not, remain there.

If President Obama and our court system had found those who brought the economy to the brink of ruin "guilty" of some malfeasance, then perhaps it would have been possible to say that the system was functioning. There was at least some sense of accountability. In fact, however, those who should have been so convicted were often not charged, and when they were charged, they were typically found innocent or at least not convicted. A few in the hedge fund industry have been convicted subsequently of insider trading, but this is a sideshow, almost a distraction. The hedge fund industry did not cause the crisis. It was the banks. And it is the bankers who have gone, almost to a person, free.

If no one is accountable, if no individual can be blamed for what has happened, it means that the problem lies in the economic and political system.

The slogan "we are the 99 percent" may have marked an important turning point in the debate about inequality in the United States. Americans have always shied away from class analysis; America, we liked to believe, is a middle-class country, and that belief helps bind us together. There should be no divisions between the upper and the lower classes, between the bourgeoisie and the workers. But if by a class-based society we mean one in which the prospects of those at the bottom to move up are low, America may have become even more class-based than old Europe, and our divisions have now become even greater than those there. Those in the 99 percent are continuing with the "we're all middle class" tradition, with one slight modification: they recognize that we're actually not all moving up together. The vast majority is suffering together, and the very top - the 1 percent - is living a different life. The "99 percent" marks an attempt to forge a new coalition - a new sense of national identity, based not on the fiction of a universal middle-class but on the reality of the economic divides within our economy and our society.

It warms my heart to finally hear a major US economist address the concept of class. The weakness of a class approach to social and political life may be the strongest ideological barrier to overcoming the the political divide between the left and mainstream politics in the US. Typical macroeconomic analysis asserts "the rational consumer", or the "rational producer" individual as the elementary actor in economic life. Thus, even Paul Krugman -- the most important voice "walking point every day" in the ideological battle against austerity -- is compelled to reduce the most important economic fallacy behind austerity to a paradox -- the paradox of thrift. Simply stated, this paradox says: When an individual is in debt, it is rational for him to reduce his spending; but when a society is in debt in a depression, reducing spending leads to greater debt, and prolonged depression. In a social context, my spending is your income, and vice versa. The head-scratching "paradox" arises from making an individual, rather than a class, the elementary component in analysis. I am not saying looking at economic activity from an individual point of view is of no value; but -- it tends to make political economy more of a mystery than it really is.

Stiglitz goes deeper yet. He questions the capitalist system itself, at least in the form it has acquired in recent decades.

Is our market system eroding fundamental values?

While this book focuses on equality and fairness, there is another fundamental value that our system seems to be undermining - a sense of fair play. A basic sense of values should, for instance, have led to guilt feelings on the part of those who were engaged in predatory lending, who provided mortgages to poor people that were ticking time bombs, or who were designing the "programs" that led to excessive charges for overdrafts in the billions of dollars. What is remarkable is how few seemed - and still seem - to feel guilty, and how few were the whistleblowers. Something has happened to our sense of values, when the end of making more money justifies the means, which in the U.S. subprime crisis meant exploiting the poorest and least-educated among us.

Much of what has gone on can only be described by the words "moral deprivation." Something wrong happened to the moral compass of so many of the people working in the financial sector and elsewhere. When the norms of a society change in a way that so many have lost their moral compass, it says something significant about the society.

Capitalism seems to have changed the people who were ensnared by it. The brightest of the bright who went to work on Wall Street were like most other Americans except that they did better in their schools. They put on hold their dreams of making a lifesaving discovery, of building a new industry, of helping the poorest out of poverty, as they reached out for salaries that seemed beyond belief, often in return for work that (in its number of hours) seemed beyond belief. But then, too often, something happened: it wasn't that the dreams were put on hold; they were forgotten.

If markets had actually delivered on the promises of improving the standards of living of most citizens, then all of the sins of corporations, all the seeming social injustices, the insults to our environment, the exploitation of the poor, might have been forgiven. But to the young indignados and protestors elsewhere in the world, capitalism is failing to produce what was promised, but is delivering on what was not promised - inequality, pollution, unemployment, and, most important of all, the degradation of values to the point where everything is acceptable and no one is accountable.

Failure of Political System

One thesis of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson's important book "Why Nations Fail" is the negative impact of inequality on democratic institutions around the world. Over time they are captured by the rich and powerful and the voices of the working and middle classes are nullified. Government's important role in insuring that rising economic activity lifts all boats is replaced with a growing corporate or military dictatorship that transfers even greater wealth to the 1%. Stiglitz amplifies this critique:

The political system seems to be failing as much as the economic system. Given the high level of youth unemployment around the world - near 50 percent in Spain and 18 percent in the United States - it was perhaps more surprising that it took so long for the protest movements to begin than that protests eventually broke out. The unemployed, including young people who had studied hard and done everything that they were supposed to do ("played by the rules," as some politicians are wont to say), faced a stark choice: remaining unemployed or accepting a job far below that for which they were qualified. In many cases there was not even a choice: there simply were no jobs, and hadn't been for years.

One interpretation of the long delay in the arrival of mass protests was that, in the aftermath of the crisis, there was hope in democracy, faith that the political system would work, that it would hold accountable those who had brought on the crisis and quickly repair the economic system. But years after the breaking of the bubble, it became clear that our political system had failed, just as it had failed to prevent the crisis, to check the growing inequality, to protect those at the bottom, to prevent the corporate abuses. It was only then that protesters turned to the streets.

Americans, Europeans and people in other democracies around the world take great pride in their democratic institutions. But the protesters have called into question whether there is a real democracy. Real democracy is more than the right to vote once every two or four years. The choices have to be meaningful. The politicians have to listen to the voices of the citizens. But increasingly, and especially in the United States, it seems that the political system is more akin to "one dollar one vote" than to "one person one vote." Rather than correcting the market's failures, the political system was reinforcing them.

This brings me to one of the central theses of [my] book: while there may be underlying economic forces at play, politics have shaped it in ways that advantage the top at the expense of the rest. Any economic system has to have rules and regulations; it has to operate within a legal framework. There are many different such frameworks, and each has consequences for distribution as well as growth, efficiency, and stability. The economic elite have pushed for a framework that benefits them at the expense of the rest, but it is an economic system that is neither efficient nor fair. I explain how our inequality gets reflected in every important decision that we make as a nation - from our budget to our monetary policy, even to our system of justice - and show how these decisions themselves help perpetuate and exacerbate this inequality.

Stiglitz concludes with alternative frameworks which reinforce and preserve the key role of government in guaranteeing effective redistribution of wealth arising out of the chaos of commodity markets.

The picture I paint today is bleak: we are only just beginning to grasp how far our country has deviated from our aspirations. But there is also a message of hope. There are alternative frameworks that will work better for the economy as a whole and, most importantly, for the vast majority of citizens. Part of this alternative framework entails a better balance between markets and the state - a perspective that is supported, as I shall explain, both by modern economic theory and by historical evidence. In these alternative frameworks, one of the roles that the government undertakes is to redistribute income, especially if the outcomes of market processes are too disparate.

I have no argument with this. However, there is a missing piece. Recovery from the depression indeed requires a new framework of government that insures, fundamentally, that popular "wealth" rises proportionately with productivity. But it is also true that a rising proportion of that "wealth" must be in public goods, not commodities. Food, water, clean air, and many other environmental issues in a dense society mandate some serious changes in transportation, housing, education, retirement and health care. That means some serious lifestyle changes. It means, among other things, more socialism and less capitalism.