People Before Profit blog

Radical Ideas, Real Politics: Some Thoughts on the Coming Period

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 09:16:00 +0000

Due to the economic crisis, rapid technological developments, globalization, and the new political terrain that has emerged as a result of the election of Barack Obama, the present moment is quite unlike any other. Because it is so different, we require a new understanding of the moment, as well as a theoretical agenda that matches this new reality.

This brief essay does not pretend to be a comprehensive discussion of the changed political and economic terrain or a detailed policy road map. Rather, it is intended to launch a discussion in the web pages of Political Affairs of why Marxism remains an essential, objective, and working-class-based theoretical process for meeting the challenges that lie ahead.

Our aim is to develop a focus on the key questions related to social progress and working-class empowerment, a focus centered on building and strengthening a broad people's coalition, like the movement that brought Barack Obama into office, and a sober assessment of reality in its present form, and the potential for creating a new world: an economy, society and system of values that reflect the basic interests of the American people and its working families.

To do so, the theoretical basis of our work, the presentation of our view of the world and society, must accurately reflect the new objective reality, the economic and political crisis faced by working men and women, and the hundreds of millions of marginalized human beings who currently are excluded from the Wall-Street-ravaged global economy.

No one can deny the intensity of the economic oppression that the working class today confronts. We offer a theory of society and a political method that provides the working class, broadly conceived, with essential tools for understanding, joining together with its allies, and confronting the forces that now control most of the wealth and power, America's plutocracy. Our task is to develop the critical weaponry they need to resist and open a pathway to a new kind of society focused on meeting the needs of the people: good paying jobs, affordable housing and health care, universal access to education, racial, ethnic, gender and LGBT equality, and the establishment of a truly democratic political system.

We begin with thoughts on some central features of the present moment and the struggles arising from them.

The Economy

With more than 15 million people out of work, and millions more underemployed, creating good-paying jobs should be the top priority of America's political leaders. It is time to put the needs of working families on Main Street ahead of the profits of Wall Street. Today too much is at stake for too many to continue to wander blindly down the path of endless bank bailouts devoid of any oversight and a government by and for the wealthiest, the richest 2-3 percent of Americans.

Battered by the economic crisis, working families are joining everyday with the activist organizations and coalitions spearheaded by a revitalized labor movement to demand good-paying jobs and an economic recovery that won't settle for permanently high unemployment rates as the new reality.

Under Bush and the Republicans, Wall Street got the keys to the store (not to mention the bank) and created the economic disaster we're living with today. Because of their reckless and criminal behavior, they have proven themselves incapable of knowing what is best "for the rest of us." It is obvious, from their huge bailout bonuses and continued record profits, that the rich and powerful care only about what is best for themselves.

Given this reality, we urge democratization of the financial sector of the economy, the banks, the insurance companies, and the brokerage firms. The creators of the economic crisis did their utmost to maximize their profits by concocting criminal schemes that exploited the desire of "ordinary Americans" for a home of their own. The banks and brokerage houses bundled up sub-prime loans in a labyrinthine web, and when the housing bubble popped it resulted in a tidal wave of economic ruin on a scale unprecedented since the Great Depression. To avoid repeating the same mistakes, fundamental changes and genuine regulation of the financial industry are absolutely necessary. Alternative models for democratization of the financial services sectors already; see for example North Dakota's public banking option.

The deregulation of the financial services sector and the Bush administration's laissez-faire anti-regulation policies sparked the financial meltdown which caused the Great Recession of 2007, and we are by no means out of the woods yet. Without financial regulation and democratic oversight of the banks and Wall Street, the horizon that marks the end of the Great Recession will continue to recede.

Signs of Recovery?

Although we have started to see the first fruits of Obama's Recovery Act, with over 500,000 jobs created in the past three months, the economy must do much more to meet the needs of all working families. While few working families are out of the woods, unemployment remains disproportionately high for African American and Latino workers, who face home foreclosures, school closings, and declining public services. Congress needs to pass a comprehensive jobs bill in proportion to the size of the unemployment crisis, such as the Local Jobs for America Act authored by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. The push to create jobs should contain four essential features:

1) affirmative action principles are needed to ensure new federal investments flow to the communities hardest hit by the economic crisis;

2) special funds must be set aside to protect the jobs of teachers (and other school staff) threatened by state-level budget cuts that promise nothing but further economic harm in the near future and long-term difficulties for the country's youth;

3) conversion to a green economy that produces alternative energy and builds a public infrastructure using renewable and recyclable materials will create about 5 million new jobs with a sustainable future;

4) and, meaningful investments in our country's vital social infrastructure - schools, hospitals, libraries, universities, and public transportation – would create 20 million jobs, starting immediately.

People are justifiably worried about the rising federal deficit, but we can pay for a proportionate jobs bill, our schools, health reform, and environmental improvements by bringing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a quick end and shifting federal budget priorities from militarism to people's needs. Further tax code fixes should require the rich to pay their fair share, end revenue-draining loopholes that allow corporations to avoid paying taxes by moving offshore, and force Wall Street pay for its corrupt practices and failures by taxing, for example, the billions made each day by means of lightning-fast electronic transactions.

The Cost of War

A recent study by the National Priorities Project shows that the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds $1 trillion, and some 58 percent of the federal budget annually is consumed by the Pentagon. An economic recovery for Main Street is directly linked to reducing military spending. Opponents of spending cuts for the military often insist military contracts create jobs. But the evidence of the past nine years of war shows the bloated military budget has proven inadequate to stave off massive unemployment. War has made working families poorer.

Today, the US is number one in military spending, accounting for 45 percent of the entire world's military spending. Reducing militarism means putting an end to foreign interventionism and bringing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to an end.

In addition to the cost of war, a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute reveals that the richest Americans have greatly benefited from the carefully-targeted Bush tax cuts, which resulted in the 400 richest families averaging $345 million in annual income seeing their effective rate fall from 26 percent in 1992 to 16 percent in 2007. At the same time, working families saw their tax rate virtually unchanged. Robbed of tax revenue from the wealthiest Americans and drained by payments for Bush's war of choice in Iraq, the federal deficit skyrocketed.

There will be a true economic recovery only when working families have good-paying jobs, comprehensive benefits, and the guaranteed right to join a union. President Obama's staunch defense of workers' rights deserves wide support and applause, but the labor movement has vowed to intensify its fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. EFCA would make it far easier for workers to form unions and win the right to collectively bargain for a decent standard of living and safe working conditions. As an example of the safer conditions provided by union representation, the non-union miners who perished at Massey Coal would not have been bullied and intimidated into working in an unsafe mine for fear of losing their jobs if they had had a union. UMW safety teams would have quickly reported the methane danger, and workers would have had the union-guaranteed right of refusing to work in the hazardous conditions that took their lives.

The Tea Party

The Tea Party is a well-financed, corporate-backed movement that exploits the real anxieties and fears of working Americans about the economic crisis in order to promote a right-wing agenda that has nothing to do with meeting the needs of working families. The Tea Party uses inflammatory racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric to exploit anxieties and promote divisions.

In fact, the new darling of the Tea Party, Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul, stated recently that he opposes the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and clarified his statement by insisting that businesses should have been allowed to continue to discriminate against African Americans. Right-wing media personalities at Fox News and other outlets fuel an atmosphere of hate, violence, and even sedition. For example, Fox News commentator Jon Stossel defended Paul, telling his viewers that white people should be allowed to be racist, and we shouldn't think badly of them for it.

Rand Paul also called the Americans with Disabilities Act an infringement on the basic freedoms of Americans, and rails at the Obama administration for stomping on the neck of oil-giant BP with "its jack boots," observing that "accidents will happen." However, it is interesting to note that in his practice as an ophthalmologist Rand derives 50 percent of his income from Medicare reimbursements. Perhaps he would consider replacing that cash with bartered chickens, as the wacky Tea Party Senate Republican candidate in Nevada has suggested as a way for hard-up patients to pay for their doctor visits.

In sharp contrast to the Tea Party, the labor and people's movements (including civil rights, women's, environmental, and gay rights organizations) represent the real interests of working families. Together with coalitions like the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which includes a broad array of civil rights and democratic organizations, labor has in recent years played a central role at the forefront of the people's movement in the fight for jobs and economic recovery, as well as for civil rights and equality. For example, at the eloquent urging of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the labor movement took the lead in fighting racist influences in the working class that the Republicans were actively fomenting during the 2008 election campaign. The struggle against racism and its divisive influence remains a top priority of the labor movement. Racism has long been a key weapon in the arsenal of capitalism to divide working people, thereby allowing the ruling class, the arch-enemies of real democracy, to conquer.

In addition, the labor movement, along with civil right organizations such as the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, is leading the legal challenges in the courts against the new Tea Party-backed, anti-immigrant laws in Arizona. Increasingly people in Arizona and around the country are realizing that the right-wing's racist anti-immigrant onslaught offers no solution to the economic crisis. According to the Immigration Policy Center, unauthorized immigrants add some $25 billion a year to Arizona's economy. The right-wing drive to force immigrants out will not only destroy immigrant families, many of whom have lived, worked and paid taxes in this country for decades, it will hurt all working families.

Every person and family – regardless of political leanings – who have been hurt by the economic crisis, those who want real solutions, and reject divisive and racist anti-immigrant campaigns like those of the Tea Party and the Arizona Republicans, have a home in the labor movement. They are the natural allies of the groups and organizations that promote equality, fairness, unity, and workers' rights. United action, democracy, and common solutions to social problems, like health reform, are the best ways to overcome the problems at the root of today's crisis.

The organizations that make up the People's Movement offer real solutions for working families, not just corporate-sponsored soundbites that appeal to people's basest instincts by promoting racism and reaction. Unlike the Tea Party, America's broad coalition of progressive forces has the potential of returning American democracy to its revolutionary roots. The recent union-led rallies that confronted the big banks and Wall Street, along with the massive rallies against racist anti-immigrant legislation around the country on May 1, equaled the passion of the Tea Party, exceeded them in numbers, and far surpassed the enemies of progress in the soundness and rationality of their political message.

Health care reform

Providing affordable access to universal healthcare is one area to which our country's resources should be shifted to improve the lives of working families. The passage of meaningful health reform in March was a major victory for America's working families, and all the cynical and anti-family efforts by the Republicans to block and weaken reform are contemptible, since they serve only the interests of the health insurance monopolies. Labor and democratic-minded organizations that support health reform are now working to educate the public about their new rights and benefits under the Affordable Care Act, as well as those areas that need further improvement. Here are some of its benefits:

1) Starting immediately, insurance companies will be required to stop the profit-motivated practices of denying coverage based on gender, preexisting conditions, or the high cost of chronic diseases.

2) America's lowest income families will soon receive subsidies to cover all or part of the cost of insurance.

3) Small business owners are already seeing a new tax credit to help them provide insurance for their employees and themselves.

4) Seniors have begun to see the prescription drug "donut hole" that required them to pay high out-of-pocket expenses, immediately begin to shrink significantly, and soon it will be completely eliminated.

5) There are also huge benefits for young people under the new health law:

According to the New York Times, "Almost one-third of the 46 million uninsured in the United States are 18-29 - the age group that is most likely to be without coverage, since so many work in part-time or entry level jobs." The Times cites a new report by the Commonwealth Fund that finds that "most of the 13.7 million young adults who are uninsured could gain coverage when the act goes into full force in 2014, either through public programs like Medicaid or by buying private policies on competitive insurance exchanges established by the law." And beginning in late September the law mandates that the 1.2 million young people who were dropped from their parents' policies when they graduated from high school or college, will now remain covered by family plans through age 25. In many ways, says the Commonwealth Fund, "the affordable health care act is a graduation gift to young adults," a gift which is especially appropriate because of the enthusiastic support shown by young people for Obama's politics of change during the election campaign.

According to a number of public opinion polls conducted before final passage of health reform, more than six in 10 Americans wanted a public insurance option to provide more competition, control the costs of care, and improve quality of healthcare. Ongoing efforts to create a public option should be vigorously supported, because everyone in this country has a human right to affordable, comprehensive health care. It is also clear that the best and most efficient way to reform the health care system and provide comprehensive care for everyone would be the creation of a Medicare-for-all program.

The struggle for health care reform has shown progressive forces what they could accomplish when they helped to build a broad, multi-class coalition that challenged the power of the health insurance industry, the greedy giant that has for far too long dominated and reaped enormous profits from our broken health care system. The struggle for health care reform can also serve as a valuable model for the future struggles that must be waged to achieve other vital democratic and structural reforms, such as civil rights protections, climate change legislation, ending the wars, passage of stronger labor union protections, and even socialism itself.

The Environment

Without quick and comprehensive controls on global warming-causing pollution, there will be no democracy, socialism, freedom, capitalism, or even cockroaches on a dead planet. All humans beings share a common stake, regardless of class or geography, in a healthy environment. Unfortunately, we do not all share a common vision of how to attain that goal. Some do not even agree about how serious the problems are. The different ways we assess the environmental threat do not result from differences of social class or geography alone, whether we are rich or poor, residents of the developed North or the underdeveloped South.

For example, some capitalists, such as venture capitalists trying to launch the alternative energy industry, have a special, profit-driven interest in solving the planet's climate crisis, while some working-class people, especially those in countries where the demand for development and daily survival often seems to contradict global concerns about the climate. Other capitalists are hell-bent on exploitation of the environment for profit regardless of the dangers and disasters they create. And still yet others workers, scientists, and environmentalists are urgently calling for a swift transition to a green economy where renewable resources are produced, used and distributed – a new energy model that will provide millions of green jobs and a healthier, wealthier, more sustainable future.

Bringing these competing and contradictory interests into constructive alignment is no easy task, but it is a basic prerequisite for human survival and social progress.

Socialism

Socialism is a scary word for some people; for others it offers a glimmer of hope. But one thing everyone now understands and can agree upon is that the collapse of the global financial system in 2007 resulted from greed, corruption, and the capitalist imperative to maximize profits. The collapse proved that capitalism can never be self-regulating and that in times of crisis massive government intervention is required just to keep the system afloat. Unfortunately (although perhaps not unexpectedly) the victims of the crisis, which includes everyone but the wealthiest Americans, are now confronted with corporate efforts (backed by the politicians they control) to make working families pay the cost of the government intervention precipitated by the financial sector's own criminal misdeeds.

Increasing numbers of people now recognize that there are fundamental flaws inherent in the capitalist system. As recent polls demonstrate, more and more Americans do not believe that capitalism offers the best answers to society's problems. A significant percentage of people in the United States view socialism favorably or see it as a better alternative to the present system, and the percentage is even higher among younger Americans. (Rasmussen, 2009; Gallup, Feb. 2010; Pew Research Center, May 2010) Indeed, younger adults increasingly tend to view socialism positively.

At Political Affairs, we totally agree with this part of the population, and we encourage them to help us develop an idea of socialism rooted in the American experience, its culture and traditions. There are no past experiences in other societies which can serve as models for today's complexities, contradictions, and possibilities. Although we seek alliances with working people all over the world to develop joint solutions to the plethora of common problems we face, no other country or historical model can provide us with a road map to a fully democratic, socialist United States. We ourselves can best discern the problems we face, why they exist, and how we can solve them.

Theory going forward

Given this fact, our basic theoretical task is to carefully articulate the special conditions we face in the United States. In order to accomplish this, we need to develop a careful understanding of how we can best build local and global coalitions, alliances, movements, and forms of political activism that take full advantage of 21st century technologies. We also need to develop ways of communicating our message that are familiar and comprehensible to the audience we are trying to reach – America's working people. This is our constituency, and to get the American people to listen to our views, we need to express them in a way that helps to create a new coalition, a commonality of shared interests and goals. To succeed in this effort we need to jettison outmoded ways of expression that emphasize sectarian differences. To reach the people we need to reach, we must articulate an agenda for change that matches the complex reality of the present.

This means we must be actively engaged with all possible allies in the center and on the left, helping to build and develop the range and depth of the emerging coalition of working-class people and organizations, along with the wide range of groups, representing every segment of US society, that has emerged in recent decades, organizing around issues such as the environment, peace, civil rights, health care, and gender equality. We should have no qualms about engaging with the political center as if social progress depended on it (because it does). We need to engage with the political center in order to revive, improve upon, and modernize the democratic traditions envisaged by our country's founders, traditions which have been built on and expanded by working-class and democratic-minded Americans for the past 200 years.

On a final note, socialism cannot be won because the Communist Party decides it should. It will be won when tens of millions of Americans join together and choose to democratize the economy, when we develop the institutions that will give us a greater measure of control in the workplace, a direct influence on decisions made in corporate boardrooms, and far greater control of our government.

This goal can only be achieved by winning democratically-based political power at all levels of government – local, state and federal. We can already see the broad outlines of a new, more democratic form of government and a different economic system – by and for the people – slowly but steadily taking shape. We see it in the fightback for jobs and racial and gender equality, in the campaign for a cleaner environment, in the struggle for human rights for all who live and work in this country. We can see it in the mobilizations for peace and in the calls for a re-focused foreign policy that emphasizes multilateralism, non-intervention, diplomacy, fair trade practices, and economic development. We will begin to see it even more fully materialize when we we attain the strength necessary to take back our government at every level and make it our natural ally in improving the lives of working people on the job and in the community.

The power to do so lies in the hundreds of millions of working people, the "ordinary" Americans who constitute the vast majority in this country. A key to making this dream a reality is the creation of a new green economy that no longer depends on foreign oil or the catastrophic results of "drill, baby, drill" off our coasts. By striving to implement a 21st century green vision of democracy we can build a new America based on a different vision of society, and an economic structure that is capable of providing a safe and nurturing environment where everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender, age, religion, or national origin can fully achieve their human potential. The vision will become a reality when we, as a united people, share the belief that individual liberty and personal happiness are directly linked to the general welfare, development, and social progress of the communities in which we live.

In order to successfully achieve this goal, we – as a 21st century Communist Party – must carefully refine and polish the ideological tools that are necessary to win people over to an American vision of socialism, a vision that is both deeply rooted in the revolutionary traditions of American democracy and finely attuned to the challenges the American people face in the complexity of the present. We must rise to this challenge, because the future is at stake.

Photo: Erica Joy, Flickr, cc by 2.0

A Real Solution: Replace SB 1070 with Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:59:00 +0000

Mobilized to overturn Arizona's anti-immigrant law (SB 1070), an amazing coalition of labor, civil rights organizations, students, recording artists, healthcare professionals, faith-based groups, professional athletes, Arizona elected officials, city governments around the country, and police groups want swift federal action. Critics charge the law is a draconian legalization of racial profiling to target people who appear to be Latinos. Police organizations have slammed the authors of the law as "fear mongering" and as pushing for ineffective local enforcement of federal laws that will overwhelm police agencies. A combination of education on the law's racist effects and its negative impact on public safety can build pressure on federal authorities to replace SB 1070 (and other laws like it) with comprehensive immigration reform.

Public opinion is complex

While a number of public opinion polls show some six in 10 Americans support SB 1070, additional analysis of the data reveals that only a small portion of that support comes out of right-wing or racist hostility towards immigrants. Xenophobia and racism are palpably dangerous in the current climate, and right-wing leaders of the Republican Party and Tea Party use these influences to promote and cover for their discredited policies. Key portions of their program and ideology are built with the planks of racism.

At the present moment these influences may not and need not be the dominant ideas and forces at work on this issue, however. It is important to avoid the mainstream media's error of attributing support for the law solely to xenophobic or racist sentiments. If the mud of hate can be cleared, we may discover an important chance for the country to move in a new direction on immigration.

Most sentiments about the law seem to center on a desire for urgent federal action on immigration reform. A poll conducted by Lake Research Partners and Public Opinion Strategies in May found that while supporters of the Arizona law are most likely Republicans and supporters of the Tea Party, a significant number do not fit these categories and say they support the law only out of frustration with the lack of federal action on comprehensive reform.

In fact, more than three in four Americans from both major parties and in all geographic regions of the country support comprehensive immigration reform. People view the Arizona law as an unfortunate reaction to decades of federal foot-dragging on reform. Instead of the punitive or enforcement-only responses to immigration on the state or local level favored by the Republican Party, Americans, including a significant majority of Latinos, want comprehensive federal action with four basic parts:

1) Increased security at the border
2) Crack down on employers who knowingly hire unauthorized workers
3) Require unauthorized workers to register, undergo background checks and learn English
4) Unauthorized immigrants should get in line for citizenship

Simply put, Americans agree with the immigration reform agenda the Obama administration has repeatedly called for.

David Mermin, a pollster with Lake Research Partners, explained apart from extremist anti-immigrant sentiments, "the sense that the system is out of control and that there isn't a legal orderly process by which people are immigrating" drives most attitudes about immigration reform.

"The vast majority of Americans think we should still be welcoming immigrants," he said, "but they want that done in a legal way."

"Folks don't want some sort of draconian enforcement effort where you try to round up millions of people," Mermin added, "they want people to register, to get in line, to pay taxes, to learn English, to become American."

"People aren't angry at immigrants," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigration reform group America's Voice, in a recent conference call with reporters. He noted that the polling data proves that instead "they are frustrated that the government hasn't solved the problem." He warned that Congress should not use the fallout from SB 1070 as an excuse to avoid dealing with comprehensive immigration reform.

The evidence suggests that most Americans sharply break with Republican Party and extremist views on immigration. They do not support right-wing hostility towards inclusiveness or provision of legal status and eventual citizenship for new immigrants.

False claims

Shifting the terms of debate away from draconian and racist proposals toward inclusive solutions will marginalize extremist voices. Right now, without momentum towards comprehensive reform, far-right hysteria seems to dominate public discourse. As part of their scare tactics, these voices promote at least three major falsehoods about immigrants: they cause an economic drain, they steal jobs, and they increase crime rates.

According to recent analysis published by the Immigration Policy Center, the economic contributions of undocumented immigrants far outweigh perceived costs of illegal immigration. In the state of Arizona alone, unauthorized immigrants add some $26.4 billion each year to the state's economy, including at least $1.5 billion in added state revenues. Significant parts of this added economic activity results in purchases from local businesses that create jobs. A number of other states share similar experiences.

Economists also point out claims that immigrants "steal" jobs from citizens haven't been substantiated. In fact, current enforcement-only measures add to the federal deficit and will reduce the GDP by $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years, a new study from the Center for American Progress Action Fund found. Under the broken immigration system, wages across the board are depressed. Comprehensive reform that allows immigrants to gain legal status without fear of punishment would see improvements in their wages and increase their consumption, helping to expand economic activity. In the middle of an economic crisis, an anti-immigrant policy that depresses wages and reduces economic activity seems at best stupid, at worst destructive.

Exaggeration and promotion of public fears about the link between crime and immigration has also driven much support for local enforcement of immigration laws - the main goal of SB 1070. These fears, however, have no basis in reality. A number of studies of federal crime statistics in the past few years have repeatedly shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born population. According to a study from the University of North Carolina this year, for example, a dramatic reduction in crime in North Carolina over the past 14 years coincided with that state's largest growth in numbers of unauthorized immigrants in its history. Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank echoed this point and called the promotion of anxiety about crime "fear mongering." "[Salt Lake City's] Latino population and even the undocumented Latino population," he pointed out, "are not committing crimes at a higher rate."

Most police chiefs agree the demand for local enforcement of immigration laws would force the police to divert attention from the "criminal element" to a "civil enforcement role." Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck explained bluntly, "Crime is not on the rise in Arizona or anywhere else."

Response and resistance

The labor movement immediately and unequivocally rejected the Arizona anti-immigrant law and has urged its members and supporters to join protests against the law. Describing the law as a violation of civil rights and the legalization of racial profiling, the AFL-CIO and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCR) earlier this month jointly called on the Obama administration to terminate federal relationships with Arizona's law enforcement agencies for immigration enforcement through the so-called 287(g) program. Right now, the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency operates what is called the 287(g) ACCESS program, which authorizes local police departments to enforce immigration laws. (The odd name for this program comes from section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act passed by Congressional Republicans in 1995 as part of welfare "reform.")

The AFL-CIO/LCCR letter pointedly stated:

Unless DHS terminates all 287(g) program agreements in Arizona, the federal government will be complicit in the racial profiling that lies at the heart of the Arizona law. Such a result would place the DHS at odds with this administration's stated views on SB 1070, and at odds with basic American values of tolerance and non-discrimination.

It is important to note 287(g) programs carry a number of other hidden problems. The North Carolina study found that they bring additional financial burdens to state and local communities from more "litigation fees, reduction in local business revenue, lower sales tax revenue, and higher costs of services and goods." On top of these new expenses, the program seems ineffective in curbing violent crime as traffic violations and DWI were the main charges filed under the program. In fact, only about 13 percent of all charges filed were felonies. The report concluded, "[t]he focus on detaining and deporting immigrants for driving related incidences and misdemeanors suggest that the program is not prioritizing high risk criminal aliens, as outlined in its stated goals." Simply put, local enforcement of federal immigration is expensive and ineffective. SB 1070 is only the latest incarnation of this failed direction on immigration enforcement.

Labor and civil rights groups have emphasized the harmful impact the law will have on working families. Both the United Food and Commercial Workers union and the Service Employees International Union have joined several civil rights organizations, including the ACLU, the National Immigration Law center, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, and the NAACP, in a lawsuit seeking to strike down SB 1070.

"Arizona's legislation is unworkable, it is unconstitutional and it undermines our nation's rich immigrant history and heritage. It is a recipe for racial profiling and a marked retreat from the values and ideals that make America strong," UFCW President Joe Hansen told one reporter. "We are filing this suit to protect the rights of our members and all workers in Arizona – and to uphold the values and ideals that make our nation strong."

The Women's Emergency Human Rights Delegation, a coalition of labor organizations for women workers that includes National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the National Domestic Worker Alliance, and Jobs with Justice, met in Phoenix in early May to denounce SB 1070. The coalition found that the law will have a special impact on women workers. SB 1070 "constitutes a violation of every principle we hold dear to safeguard women as mothers, workers and leaders," the group stated. The law will "rip families apart," expose women to humiliation by enforcement agents, permanent scar children whose families encounter police due to the laws provisions, and will instill "terror" in the families and communities impacted by the law. "We are humans. We are not animals. We are not criminals," the coalition's statement concluded.

The Major League Baseball Players' Association, the union for professional baseball players, slammed the law for its potential impact on its members who come from other countries. In a statement, it suggested immigrants are a much a part of our common American life and culture as citizens:

These international players are very much a part of our national pastime and are important members of our Association. Their contributions to our sport have been invaluable, and their exploits have been witnessed, enjoyed and applauded by millions of Americans. All of them, as well as the clubs for whom they play, have gone to great lengths to ensure full compliance with federal immigration law.

The Phoenix Suns basketball team joined protests of the law by wearing "Los Suns" on their team jerseys during a recent playoff game.

A new coalition of recording artists have joined the boycott against Arizona's anti-immigrant law. The "Sound Strike" includes hip hop artist such as Cypress Hill, Kanye West, and Streetsweeper Social Club and rock acts like Sonic Youth, Tenacious D, and Billy Bragg and Serj Tankian of System of a Down. In a statement, the group described opposition to the law as a civil rights struggle. "We are asking artists the world over to stand with us, and not allow our collective economic power to be used to aid and abet civil and human rights violations that will be caused by Arizona's odious law," the artists said.

Faith-based organizations have also expressed opposition to SB 1070-type laws and are calling for comprehensive reform. In a press statement, Ian Danley, a youth pastor with the Evangelical organization Neighborhood Ministries in Phoenix, said, "The local community here feels under attack. People talk about leaving but most have nowhere to go. They've lived here for so long and everything they have is here in Arizona. People in faith communities here in Arizona are calling for real political leadership that goes past border showmanship and calls for real change."

Rev. Sam Rodriguez of the conservative National Hispanic Christian Leadership Coalition added, "We have reached a point of crisis in Arizona and across the nation as other states seek to fill the void left by Congress' inaction. Until we see leadership from Republicans in the Senate and the President, the chaos of piecemeal laws and families torn apart will only get worse."

Police chiefs slam SB 1070

Late last month 10 police chiefs from major U.S. cities across the country, including Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., expressed strong disapproval of Arizona's anti-immigrant law in a meeting with US Attorney General Eric Holder. Representing the Police Executive Research Forum, the police chiefs explained they told Attorney General Holder that Arizona's immigration law will drive a "wedge between police and the communities they serve."

Tucson Chief of Police Roberto Villaseñor, an outspoken critic of the law, said, "We have all expressed concern that this will cause a divide between our communities and our agencies." Recent declines in crime, he explained, have resulted from hard-won close relations between the community and the police. Police are more successful in protecting communities from crime when they have good communication and meaningful ties to the people they protect.

When those relations are disrupted, as SB 1070 will cause, policing becomes far more difficult. "What we feel will happen with this legislation is it will put a level of mistrust and will break down the relationships we have worked so hard to establish over the last several years," he said.

"We're concerned that it will increase crime as opposed to reduce crime," the 30-year Tucson police veteran added.

If people believe that they or a loved one may be deported if they report a crime to the police, they may not come forward to report crimes. Because of this, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck explained, a law like SB 1070 would be "dangerous." "It inhibits people from coming forward as victims. It inhibits people not only coming forward as a witness but also testifying and going through the extensive process that is required in the legal system," he said. If people are afraid to come forward, crimes will go unsolved and "we're doomed to failure."

Because of this the law will have a special impact on women, said National Organization for Women President Terry O'Neill in a recent press statement. It could pressure women who are victims of criminal violence from seeking help, from medical care to police protection. "By deterring immigrant women from seeking help, SB 1070 would increase the risk of violence to them and their children, often with tragic consequences. Additionally, when husbands and fathers are deported, many families lose their primary means of support and are left destitute, with no access to social services or public assistance," O'Neill said.

Such a punitive approach to immigration policy will not have the desired impact on controlling the flow of people across the border, the police chiefs pointed out. Arizona Association Chiefs of Police President John Harris pointed out the law won't change the immigration issue. "(SB 1070) when it goes into effect, it still will have not the impact that we want to have on the border."

Echoing this statement, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey noted that forcing police to divert resources to immigration enforcement will not improve border control as claimed by supporters of SB 1070. "It will not stop the flow of illegal immigrants across our borders," he predicted. "It will only strain relationships."

"The immigration system is broken right now, and it it needs to be fixed. But it needs to be fixed at a federal level not a local law enforcement level," Villaseñor remarked.

After passage of the bill, Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., urged a boycott of the state. At least a dozen U.S. cities, from Los Angeles to Boston, followed suit, announcing boycotts on travel and business dealings with Arizona. Four major organizations who had planned to hold their annual conventions in Arizona moved their meeting elsewhere, costing the state an estimated $90 million dollars.

Needed: federal action

It is clear that the passage of SB 1070 by Arizona Republicans served as a distraction. Though they have dominated that state's politics for several years, their fiscal policies failed to prevent and probably will worsen the state's serious economic crisis. Without meaningful solutions for balancing their budget, paying for public services and reducing unemployment, they turned to a traditional right-wing stand-by: bashing immigrants. They successfully created this uproar to give a false impression that their policies are popular, to shift their increasingly discontented political base's (the Tea Party) attention from jobs to immigrants, and to mobilize sympathy by presenting themselves as victims of outside pressure.

Attacks on immigrants have never provided meaningful solutions to economic crisis. Take, for example, the Hoover administration's mass deportations of Latinos after the onset of the Great Depression. In 1931, federal authorities used military personnel to forcibly deport some 500,000 immigrants from Mexico. After this, the unemployment rate worsened. Only until serious government intervention began to put people back to work under the New Deal did American workers find relief.

Today, right-wing media personalities lash out at Democratic proposals for reform as "amnesty" and are demanding more enforcement-only responses to immigration. Republican lawmakers want to throw more money at the broken immigration system, which already consumes $20 billion annually for the Border Patrol and ICE combined, rather than find a comprehensive solution that keeps families together, reduces exploitation, enables police to protect communities, and improves views of the U.S. held by the rest of the world. Congressional Republicans want to spend more taxpayer dollars on a border wall and thousands of more troops, both of which have proven wasteful and ineffective in solving the problem. From a nation of immigrants, they want America to become a fortress of exclusion.

President Obama tried to preempt Republican demands on this point late last month by announcing plans to move 1,200 National Guard troops to the border. But without legislative action on the other three parts of reform Americans say they want, he pointed out in a May news conference, militarization will fail to provide a meaningful solution. President Obama expressed opposition to SB 1070 on civil rights lines, adding, it encourages "a patchwork of 50 different immigration laws around the country in an area that is inherently the job of the federal government."

"We have to have a comprehensive approach to immigration reform," the president said. "We're not going to solve the problem just solely as a consequence of sending National Guard troops down there. We're going to solve this problem because we have created an orderly, fair, humane immigration framework in which people are able to immigrate to this country in a legal fashion; employers are held accountable for hiring legally present workers."

Early media reports say Attorney General Eric Holder's office is writing legal briefs in preparation for challenging SB 1070 in federal court. But congressional Democrats seem less than anxious to answer the President's call for comprehensive reform. They have done little more than outline some basic proposals for reform similar to the four basic areas listed above.

Congressional Democrats have a big opportunity to pass legislation that protects families, improves the immigration system, enables people to gain legal status, along with its rights and responsibilities, and reverses the mistaken notion that civil rights abuses and racism offer the best ways to handle immigration. Leadership on this question could eliminate the issue as a wedge and force Republicans to run on their "party of no" slogan. Taking the correct action could also give immigrant working families a chance at fair and equitable treatment in a nation of immigrants.

Photo by Arasmus photo, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

The Fight Against Racism: New Challenges, Features, and Possibilities

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:54:00 +0000

Editor's note: The following is an excerpted and slightly edited version of the speech delivered by CPUSA Executive Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner to the CPUSA National Convention, held May 21-22, 2010.

This convention of the Communist Party gives us the basic framework to help move the struggle for democracy and socialism forward in this complex period. It will also inspire our party and YCL, elevate our consciousness and confidence that a larger and stronger Communist Party and YCL is within our grasp. It is because we believed in the policies we formulated. We believed that an African American could be elected President. We have confidence that the people would do the right thing. So we hit the streets, the union halls, door to door. We phone banked and canvassed, we held house parties.

We contributed to the historic victory that broke the three decades-long stranglehold of the extreme right. I know some thought that we were reformist. But I think they missed the boat.

As a result of that struggle, things have changed. The trade union movement was transformed and so was the civil rights and peace movement. The immigration rights movement has reach a new level, and so has the environmental movement. Our party has also been transformed. It is in a better position to fight and grow than before the great victories of 2006 and 2008. It goes with out saying that the American people have changed, too. All of this is better then it was before. I don't know about you, but that whole experience deepened my revolutionary commitment.

Racist reaction

In his report to the convention Sam Webb mentioned the new racist counteroffensive. The right considers the election of Obama and the new Congress to be a fundamental challenge to their very existence. They are out to reverse things. That is what I want to talk about this morning. What the right is doing is a major threat to everything that was won and could be won in this period if it is not checked. Shortly after Obama took office these fanatics declared war on his administration. The Republican Party assumed the title of the party of no, later the party of Hell NO, and it proceeded to sabotage any way out of the economic crisis.

The election of Obama did not eliminate structural racism, which operates in the economic base of capitalism; at the point of production, super exploitation, racist pay rates, job classifications, benefits, who's the last hired and first fired. It also operates in the super structure; courts, legislative bodies, schools, public services, etc.

Structural racism remains a part of the basic function of US capitalism, but with the election of Obama and the new Congress, the prospects of weakening structural racism are better, certainly, than it was under George Bush.

Once a Black President and a reformer was elected and presented his program, the fight against racism assumed an even greater importance because it (along with anti-communism) is the main weapon the right is using to try to defeat the possibility for progressive change.

Every time Sarah Palin speaks she says that the Tea Party is not racist. "The people with the racist signs, why, they're not racist they're just angry," they say. So they're just angry? Have you ever met a racist that wasn't angry?

But what are they angry about?

They don't like these immigrants coming across our border. (They're not talking about Canada.) And Obama is giving away too much to Black folks, brown folks and poor folks so the tea baggers, want to "take their government back." They want to take their country back from the first black President.

Now this is coming from a group that is just about all white. In fact you can say that they are mobilizing whites, some armed and dangerous, to take back the government from the first Black president. What do you think the subtext of that is? Is there racism there? You betcha!

Or take the guy who just won the Republican nomination for US Senate in Kentucky, Rand Paul, Ron Paul's Tea Party-libertarian son. He admitted that he was opposed to civil right enforcement when it comes to privately own companies. He says it's alright for the government to outlaw discrimination in the public sector but if it's done against privately owned companies, it violates their First Amendment rights.

But wait a minute, did I miss something? I thought libertarians want to eliminate the federal government's power per se, so if that's so, how are civil rights going to be enforced anywhere?

Then Paul went on to compare barring Black people from a business to barring people with guns.

On election night he repeated the tea party slogan, that his victory was the beginning of, "taking our government back."

This is the racist mentality we are dealing with. They are to the right of George Bush and they aren't kidding.

And they are behind the Arizona racial profiling law and the law that eliminates ethnic studies in the public schools of that state. In the Texas public school curriculum the US is described as not a democracy.

Recently, Rand Paul added to his problems when he said that we shouldn't play the "blame game" when it comes to BP's oil spill.

If you don't smell the stench of fascism with these people you may need some aroma therapy.

This is what we are dealing with. And we must not allow "criticisms" of Obama get in the way of dealing with this right danger. That's what Rev. Joe Lowry was talking about in Detroit when he warned that the progressive forces not miss the opportunities to advance the struggle that the election of Obama and the whole period offers.

But it's also why the November elections are so important. These racist fanatics must be defeated.

And this is why what happened on May Day was so important. The rise of the immigrant rights/jobs movement all across this country and the growth of Black, Brown, white unity is the most powerful weapon against the racist danger.

The May Day marches were a powerful answer to the Tea Party racists. This movement must continue until the Arizona law is repealed and some form of amnesty and a democratic path to citizenship is won.

The election of Obama and the new congress has opened the door for a new offensive against systemic racism. We can now talk about a Marshall plan.

And we would be making a big mistake if we ignored Leo Gerard's proposal to launch a jobs for youth civil rights like crusade with the support of the Steelworkers.

Something drastic must be done to ease the unemployment situation in the communities of color. The labor movement is making new efforts to build alliances with civil rights and other groups to initiate and support the fight for jobs in communities of color.

Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, continues to be a strong voice against racism. Recently he made another effective statement against racism. He said, "there are forces in our country that are working hard to convert justifiable anger about an economy that only seems to work for a few of us into racist and homophobic hate and violence directed at our president and heroes like Rep. John Lewis. Most of all, those forces of hat seek to divide working people – to turn our anger against each other." He goes on to say, "I believe the only way to fight the forces of hatred is with a strong progressive tradition that includes working people in action."

The fight against racism has always played a central role in the overall struggle for unity; defeating racism has always been key to advancing the class struggle. Our nation is going through a major transition politically and as we have been saying, through struggle a new era of progressive reform is possible, but the fight against racism and for unity is decisive.

The fight against racism has to include a united struggle against the especially severe effects of the current economic crisis on the racially oppressed. Make no mistake about it, the economic and social conditions faced by racial minorities in our country can be described as "catastrophic."

We see the role of racism in unemployment rates double that of whites. Poverty rates in some communities are on the level of a developing country with Black and brown children reaching towards the 50 percent mark. Our schools are collapsing because of decades of budget cuts and neglect. And now the new round of cuts is like a knife in the heart for our public schools especially in the Black and brown communities. People are losing their jobs, their homes, they savings, their pensions at rates two and three times the national average. The crisis among youth is appalling; among non-white youth it is catastrophic. Over 65 percent jobless rates among youth in communities of color will destroy those communities.

The key to meeting the crisis of drugs, high murder rates and the collapse of families is jobs, jobs, jobs... I would add, good jobs with strong affirmative action are needed so that Black, brown, Native American Indian, Asian Pacific people are not left in the crisis phase of the depression while others are recovering. That's been the pattern in the past.

The jobs fight and the immigrant rights fight are both key to defeating racism and the right danger.

Georgia Rep. John Lewis said, on election night, that this election shows that we can become a truly integrated society. Our party has long held that estimate. There is a multiracial, anti-racist majority that can be organized and mobilized to defeat the racism. And that is a good thing. When you look at the trends among youth who today have a wonderful vision of a future of social justice (including a growing pro-socialist attitude) that is a good thing. It also demands a larger and more multiracial YCL.

The elimination of structural racism is key to creating a more perfect union and raising the standard of living and democratic rights of all working people. The main beneficiary of racial discrimination is the capitalist class. Where discrimination is the highest, unionization is the lowest and so are the wages of all workers. A divided working class does not have the fighting capacity it needs to improve its life especially in times of economic crisis. The fight against the racism of the Tea Party fanatics has to be the highest priority for our party.

We must build our party and the YCL all across this country among the racially oppressed. Without that we cannot play our role as a party.

Sam mentioned the role of white communists in the fight against racism. White comrades have a tremendous role in the struggle to convince white workers and people to reject racism. Gus's book Fighting Racism is a must read in that regard. But we also have the wonderful life examples of comrades like George Meyers a southerner born into rural poverty who became outstanding leader of the CIO and our party's labor secretary for many years. George was very effective in convincing white workers to reject racism.

I remember back in the 60's when comrade Debbie Amis was arrested in Georgia for her SNCC civil rights activities. When the national leadership got the word that a young black women comrade was in a southern Jim Crow jail it was George Meyer who made an emergency trip to get Debbie out. And Debbie tells the story of how wonderful it was to see big George come into that southern jail to get her out. George was the Party's Southern Organizer at the time, and he had built a network of contacts throughout the South. And when I had to go South in 1964 to organize for the W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs founding convention, it was George that supplied me with a list of contacts in several states that I could talk too. George was a model communist.

This is the kind of leadership in the fight against racism that we have to emulate.

Population trends

Racial minorities are now over one third of our population. By 2042 they will make up more than 50 percent of the U.S. population. By 2050 the overall population is projected to be 439 million what we call racial minorities today will reach the 54 percent majority mark. Structural racism must be defeated. What kind of society will this be when the majority are subjected to severe racial oppression. If things don't change that is what we face.

Make no mistake; much of the panic that the right wing promotes over immigration is about a deep-seated fear that we are becoming a fully integrated multi racial democracy. The election of the first African American President shows that a majority can be won to reject racism. With united struggle that is where we are headed.

We are hopeful comrades. The broad democratic alliance that won in 2008 is back on its feet and is becoming more united in struggle. Racism can be defeated and that is what we intend to do.

Photo: Courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Determining Your Philosophy Dialectically

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:49:00 +0000

Philosophy, as it exists officially (academic and institutional), has a professional relationship to the sciences: it defends them, elucidates them, and provides a framework through which we can think them, especially in their combination. It tries to tell us what they mean, in human terms: how should we live our lives, according to science? You might say this is the function or purpose of philosophy today, it is its job.

Philosophy as we know it comes in two main strands, materialism and idealism.

Materialism is opposed to Idealism in the "theory of knowledge" – in the theory of how knowledge is derived. In the jargon, the "theory of knowledge" is called epistemology. For a Materialist, being (existence) comes before thought: you must be, first, in order to think. Idealists hold the contrary view: ideas come before existence. Note that we must not confuse the strict philosophical meaning of materialism with the casual sense of love of money and the things it can buy.

Marxism is essentially a materialist theory, but added to its theory of knowledge is always the dialectic, which furnishes the conception of development and change. This idea of development is known in philosophy as ontology, the theory of being or existence. So we have epistemology and ontology: materialism + dialectics, or dialectical materialism.

The dialectic was initially taken over by Marx from Hegel, the great idealist philosopher, but in a transformed way. To put it very schematically, Marx brought this process down to earth so that, afterwards, material (economic) factors determined social change in history, and not the human spirit or ideas. The resultant philosophy is materially "determinist," in that material factors cause events.

Determinism is the philosophical principle that material events that take place (in time) are caused by material events that happened previously, hence the simple idea of cause and effect in history. These causes can be worked out empirically, studied, tested, and in some cases reproduced, and so can also be predicted. This is a fundamental procedure of science (e.g. it leads to advances in technological products).

Determinism is a component of classical Materialism. If we do not accept that things are determined, materialism loses its material content. A materialist theory of knowledge without material events has no cause and effect and is unable to explain the scientific process (for instance Newtonian theory).

Marxian determinism is not classical materialist determinism. It is dialectical determinism, or, as we have said, its ontology is dialectical. Although it includes cause and effect, it is not only mechanistic cause and effect that is meant by its dialectic. I will come back to this point in a moment.

Dialectical materialism puts forward the concept of materialist dialectics. If DiaMat is the name of the philosophy, materialist dialectics is its method. This method is as a tool of thought that enables understanding and clarification in the sciences and it competes with other philosophies to represent science in this way (though it has only a few footholds in the actual academic establishment, for the following reasons). The stake in this competition is a political one. Official philosophy stands in relation to the sciences in a way that is nothing if not political.

For example, Darwin’s evolutionary theory is accepted as a scientific paradigm for the sciences of natural history and biology, but there is a battle over the broader philosophical meaning and relevance of his theory. The same is of course true of Marx (indeed, even more so), and of Freud. Their sciences conflict with certain ideologies (treating the term ideology as a system of illusionary ideas) of the ruling class: for example, ideologies perhaps justifying exploitation by reference to racial or sexual innate inferiority of a certain category of human being, or ideologies of individual responsibility as "free subject."

This is the conflict between science and ideology. In the long run science (which is merely another way of saying the truth) stands opposed to ideology. But philosophy determines what will be generally accepted, in everyday terms, as genuine scientific knowledge. It represents essentially the class struggle in this field, and it means the consensus scientific knowledge is sometimes compromised.

Dialectical materialism is the philosophical method by which Marxism has traditionally distinguished between science and ideology. All Marxists know this.

However, there is some doubt expressed in Marxism over whether Marxists should call DiaMat, a philosophy as such. This is because, strictly speaking, Marxists can and often do understand all official, professional philosophy to be ideology (in the above sense, without necessarily being dismissive of the insights that may still be found therein). That is, while the official function of philosophy is to interpret science in a way that enables the defense and promotion of ruling-class values and attitudes (while at the same time using and exploiting its technological advances), DiaMat, in contrast, understands science according to a "straight" extrapolation of its truths and according to the logic inherent in all scientific phenomena: its material dialectics.

These material dialectics are in Marxism the "dialectics of contradiction."

Briefly, contradiction is a category used in dialectical logic to represent the hypothesis that opposing forces in contention are the essential feature of all processes of development. The resolution of the struggle between the contending forces generates a new synthesis, and further development, i.e. thesis/antithesis – synthesis. The place of this dialectic of contradiction in Marxist theory is and has always been fairly controversial.

In the more recent past the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser tried to distinguish more fully the Marxian materialist dialectic from the old Hegelian idealist dialectic, chiefly in order to warn against the survival of Hegelianism in what he called Marxist-humanist ideology. The dialectics of contradiction that Althusser criticized was one that official (war, post war) Soviet ideology imagined as ingrained in the social movement, and was also promoted by the French Communist Party, of which he was a member.

One of the problems, in a nutshell, was how to deal with the process of trying to arrive at the truth if you have ditched philosophy as such (in the guise of bourgeois ideology) and think of your position as already the "scientific truth," as it were, by default, because socialism had won the day. It had to have a policy, thus official Soviet philosophy became a kind of anthropomorphism; it placed the descriptive and logical category of dialectic (Althusser said) at the heart of a conventional, humanly designed, social system. The Soviet State’s solution, according to Althusser, resulted (presumably because people acted out this ideology and, in a sense, refined it) in the Cult of Personality (CoP). The CoP was the ultimate destiny of this slippage into humanist idealism, where Hegelianism resurfaced, and was eventually embodied in the figure of a single authoritative individual, the leader, with a transcendent personality.

The features of this will be familiar: appeals to abstract human nature, notions (leaving aside ethno-cultural inheritances of Russian history) of essential national identity, "sacred rights," and the embalming of Lenin after his death as a kind of demigod.

Althusser understood the CoP as specifically a label that stood in for a proper, "rounded," Marxist theory of personality. But while his contemporary socialist humanist critics interpreted the past Soviet (and other’s) problems of this kind to be an inhuman response to a historically tragic situation (World War II), he thought that trying to remedy the inhuman by recourse to a notion of the human (i.e. as an essence) was to persist within the theoretical circumference of the problem itself.

I think he was right. He said (1976) that we could not comprehend, and therefore adequately critique, Stalinism and the CoP by simply branding it evil or a mistake, because this would be once more to slip into exactly the same philosophical ideology that we were attempting to get away from: humanism; at the same time this argument, of course, worked fine for all the bourgeois critiques of Stalinism that sought to pin all historical atrocities on struggles by the working class, and to avoid having to face the problem of the funding of fascism and all its horrors by capitalism.

To the unwary, this kind of anthropomorphic dialectic might have seemed to have been endorsed by Marx’s original concept of the contradiction between the forces and the relations of production (in capitalist society), which in turn is based upon the fact of the existence of the laboring worker that capital produces "as its own gravedigger." But it is important to note that Marx’s economic contradiction cannot be the same kind as that of the "dialectics of nature" as was expressed by Engels.

We must look at this more closely:

Engels clearly understood dialectics to be 1) a process of thought (representing the real) and 2) a process intrinsic to matter itself (as a physical or even meta-physical process). Can there be a third kind, where there is a dialectical economic antagonism? If so, it cannot be a dialectic of thought or of matter (physics).

If we take the dialectic to be a method or a system of thought that allows us to analyze and explain the antagonism in capitalism between the forces and relations of production, then we are obviously "thinking the problem through dialectically" rather than proposing that a dialectical contradiction is inherent to this actual economic situation. Although, certainly, we can see that the forces and relations of production in capitalist society do come into actual antagonism with each other, this cannot be the same kind of dialectical contradiction as Engels’ "matter in motion" type of contradiction, which is an actual part of the physical laws of nature. This is because the laws of nature are permanent, while the human rules and regulations governing the economy are temporary, so any dialectic of the same kind would also be temporary, an antagonism born of the clash of economic conventions. These conventions are relatively binding (by human law and by force in the last instance), certainly, but they are not physical laws of nature.

It has to be said, with all due respect, that in the past some important Marxist figures have sometimes mixed up the former with the latter kind of contradiction, or failed to make adequate distinctions. I believe this is true of Mao (leading to problems in the theory and practice of the Cultural Revolution) and of Trotsky sometimes, as well as being a feature, as Althusser explained, of Stalinist orthodoxy, though I can only comment on in passing that Stalin himself in his little book "On Linguistics" is not a "Stalinist" in this respect, in fact this book is against such a position, which is a peculiar conundrum.

Althusser makes a defense of Marx’s original materialist dialectic.

According to Althusser: "the [genuinely Marxist] contradiction" that leads to a revolution is never simple (e.g. mechanistic), but is constituted by many determinations and contradictions arising from different sources. Although these all derive from the relations of production, the contradictions are different and have their own consistency and effectivity. They merge into a real unity, he says, but are not in Hegelian fashion "dissipated" in this due to "cumulative internalization."

In his book For Marx, Althusser says: “…the simplicity of the Hegelian [Idealist] contradiction is made possible only by the simplicity of the internal principle that constitutes the essence of any historical period”; in this way he shows (as Marx did before him) that the Hegelian dialectic can never definitely be anything but the most abstract form of an epoch’s consciousness of itself: "its religious or philosophical consciousness, that is, its own ideology."

Against this, he explains that the materialist dialectic determines, but is also determined itself by the various levels and instances of the total social formation that it animates. He called this "overdetermination," a term he borrowed from Freudian psychoanalysis.

In fact, he sometimes also called this process "aleatory materialism," referring to the element of chance that is allowed, now, to be factored in. Chiefly this latter move was to avoid any too vulgar an idea of an "inevitable progress," seen as a mystical destiny or fate. He never actually abandons philosophical determinism with the introduction of overdetermination; it is important to note this because not a few later interpretations have emphasized the role of chance at the expense of determinism. For instance some non-determinist Marxism, known as postmodern materialism, refers to Althusser’s concept of overdetermination principally as anti-deterministic. This is wrong, for, according to Althusser, it is the principle of overdetermination, i.e. in the sense of more complex material determination, which distinguishes a truly Marxist concept of contradiction from a Hegelian one. It also distinguishes it from vulgar mechanism: Marxist determinism recognizes that mechanical cause and effect by itself enters into a metaphysics that cannot explain anything in the end except by some form of absolute first mover, and that the opposite ideology of total freedom from necessity ends up as chains that bind us to a universal "anything goes," which likewise ultimately explains nothing and allows reasonless discrimination. Dialectical materialism sees and articulates the paradox in this: for it, recognizing necessity brings freedom, because in this (Epicurean) way the human subject is able to enter into necessity as a determinant.

Althusser’s overdetermination is a recognition of the latter kind of determinism.

But, it seems to be the case, though, that in Althusser, although he critiques the Hegelian dialectic in its survival in certain Marxisms, he was unable to fully divest himself of an attachment to a unitary dialectic producing an effect that was somehow something different from the mundane material antagonism between forces and relations of production. This mundane effect is an effect which comes about only because an integral part of those relations and forces are material-creative human beings, self-aware subjects who become, so to speak, the nodal repositories of all the social stresses at large in society. These nodes feel antagonistic to their economic existence and not necessarily their ontological existence; though the two can be and are often confused, because of course they are always lived simultaneously.

All this is to be found in Marx’s 1844 Notebooks, but Althusser had, I think, misunderstood them; in these texts he only found Feuerbach’s language and problematic reflected, not finding what Feuerbach had donated, so to speak, to Marx. The Marx of 1844 was therefore only "an avant-garde Feuerbachian applying an ethical problematic to the understanding of human history." It is indeed difficult to assess the profound synthesis of both Hegel and Feuerbach at the same time that appears in early Marx (and "keeps going") without ejecting essential parts of the influence of either. In particular Feuerbach’s contribution is often, I suggest, underplayed and/or misunderstood. Insofar as I refer to Althusser’s error here, I think we find a misapplication of his own dialectical philosophy in the terms he uses, such as "epistemological break" and "rupture." It is as if he willfully seeks a total scission for Marx from Marx’s predecessors (a "true" Marx in an almost religious sense), rather than a development through thesis/antithesis and synthesis.

What we seem to have noticed here, then, is a fundamental antagonism between two different kinds of dialectical process: the economic-historical and the natural-historical, the latter being embodied in the physiology of the human body, the sense and feelings of our species. The economic contradiction only exists because it is, after all, people who live out the economy and for which it functions (though we might easily forget this in a world of credit default swaps and hedge funds). Thus, although the economy works in a postmodern sense as a process without a subject (i.e. it does not have a sense of itself or a "guiding spirit"), as Althusser admitted, and cannot be separated from the effects that this process has on subjectivity, the person is also a physical, feeling, passionate being, which cannot be reduced to this economic node as its "economic consciousness" alone. So, while the worker (like all subjects) may indeed only be a kind of point in a matrix, the class of workers is at the same time a network of physical-feeling and suffering beings.

It seems that we must think of each "node," each unit, as at the same time a part of a "wave," as with the dual particle/wave nature of matter in modern physics, so that we avoid economically "atomizing" away this level of human feeling (I have put forward the concept of the "aesthetic level" for this reason). Indeed, it is absolutely compulsory to the Marxist concept of class itself, which is nothing if not a group of people with commonality in feelings based in their relationship to their labor. This (rather descriptive, I must confess) way of understanding is of course a modification of Newtonian mechanics through an Einsteinian subtlety, without losing materialism or determination on the way.

Photo: courtesy Wikimedia Commons, cc by 3.0

Feeling Locked Out of the American Dream?

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:47:00 +0000

Editor’s note: The following is the text of a pamphlet published as a pubic service by the Chelsea Fund for Education.

Twenty-first century science and technology make it possible for all the world’s people to have good food, good health, good education, a good job and a fulfilling life. What stands in the way? Capitalism – an economic and political system that puts profits before people.

Q: What’s wrong with capitalism?
A: It puts profits before people.

The heart of capitalism is the drive for greater and greater profits for banks and corporations no matter what happens to our nation’s people and environment. The results of this built-in greed are horrible:
•    20 million people out of work, including 25% of our young adults
•    Exporting jobs to wherever workers are paid the least, wiping out American industry
•    Draining the public treasury with tax breaks and bailouts for the super-rich and giant corporations.
•    People’s needs go down the toilet. Public schools, health services, parks, libraries, and transit systems are cut back or closed.
•    Poisoning our drinking water, air, food supply and oceans.
•    Cutting workers’ pay and benefits, stealing pensions.
•    Corruption of Congress and our democratic institutions by corporate dollars and lobbyists.
•    Denying workers the right to join unions.
•    Record levels of inequality.
•    Greed for profits is the impetus for war – for oil, for domination of other countries’ markets and profits of military contractors.
•    Capitalism foments racism, sexism, homophobia and anti-immigrant campaigns.

Capitalism is un-American. Instead of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it imposes a political system and economy focused on greed and the pursuit of private profits.

In a socialist economy, people come first, not profits

Socialism means re-structuring our economy to be fairer and more democratic.
Right now Americans already produce our nation’s wealth socially. We work together in factories, offices, schools, stores, laboratories, hospitals, and on farms and construction sites.

What’s not decided together is how the wealth we create could be fairly distributed. In a socialist economy, there would ne social ownership and social control instead of private ownership and control.

The people would decide. The deciding factor would no longer be what’s best for corporate profit.
•    Banks, oil companies, utilities and key sectors of the economy such as steel and transportation would be publicly owned and operated.
•    Small business would still be a vital part of the process.
•    There would be enough resources freed up to fully fund public education, health care, mass transit, child care and any other priorities the American people decide on.
•    In a socialist society, people would get paid for the work they do and rewarded for the initiatives they take. The difference? No corporate big shots getting paid billions for the work that others do.
•    War, racism, sexism, and homophobia would lose their corporate sponsors.
•    Reversing climate change, developing green industries, sustainability would be top priorities. No doubt millions of young people would lead the way with such initiatives.
•    The rich and diverse multicultural American heritage could flourish in music, literature, dance, sports, film and art.

Bill of Rights Socialism

Socialism in the United States would be built on the strong foundation of our Constitution’s Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and equality for all. Other fundamental rights, such as the right to a job, health care and education could be added.

A socialist society would need to create organizations at the grassroots level to assure democratic controls. Americans already have great traditions of such grassroots organizations from town hall meetings to PTAs, unions, churches and charitable organizations. In a socialist society we could expand those traditions to democratize our country’s economic life.

How do we get there?

Capitalism in the United States can and will be replaced with a people-first socialist system. This will happen when a majority of our country’s people are convinced of the need for such a revolutionary change and are ready to make it happen.

To make that change will require a very broad coalition, a movement with workers, including unemployed workers, at its heart. This coalition must also include small business people, students and professionals. The union movement as well as African American, Latino, Asian American , immigrant and Native American communities will be central parts of that alliance. The involvement of youth, women, seniors, the LGBT community, environmentalists and people of faith is vital. It will be the same kind of people’s movement that is fighting for progress today, but even bigger and broader.

We gain this majority by uniting for people’s needs. That means combating racism, sexism, anti-immigrant hysteria, and homophobia. It means showing in the course of grassroots struggles how these are used to divide and conquer the movement for progressive change. In the fight for jobs, education, the environment, healthcare, peace and human rights, at the workplace, at the polling place and in the community, this unity can be built.

Americans already have lots of experience with public ownership.

Here are some examples:
•    Bank of North Dakota – founded in 1919, its profits go to benefit the people of that state
•    Credit unions – 87 million Americans participate in these local financial institutions that are owned and controlled by their members
•    Cleveland Public Power – provides electricity at affordable rates to tht city
•    Cooperative socieites – farmer co-ops, housing co-ops, food co-ops, etc.
•    Union pension funds
•    Social Security
•    Veteran’s Administration healthcare network
•    16,000 municipally owned and operated sewage treatment systems
•    Tennessee Valley Authority – provides electrical power for 8.5 million Americans in 7 states

Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan’s Left Period

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:43:00 +0000

Editor's note: This is a slightly edited version of what was originally published in American Communist History, pp. 77-87 (April 2010)

Introduction

Long reticent about her relationship with the protean and transformative exponent of American popular music, Bob Dylan, Suze (Susan) Rotolo’s evaluation of her relationship with Dylan is modest, and undoubtedly true: “Our time together fed his work. I know I influenced him. We marked each other’s lives profoundly. He once told me that he couldn’t have written certain songs if he hadn’t known me.... I served as his muse during our time together, and that I don’t mind claiming.” (p. 290) A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties covers the years from 1961, when Dylan arrived in New York City, until 1965, when after his achieving enormous celebrity, they parted. This period of Dylan’s career was critically important to American popular culture; during this time, Dylan composed a series of exquisite, politically engaged songs based on a folk music movement identified with the American Left. It concluded with his controversial adoption of more popular, depoliticized modes of music performed on amplified instruments in place of the traditional acoustic instruments. Rotolo’s intriguing work is the best place, to date, to assess the intense, albeit brief, encounter with the Left of a preeminent cultural icon—Bob Dylan.

Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan’s relationship started when a seventeen-year-old girl, who was hanging out in Greenwich Village, met her first love, a twenty-year-old who, in less than five years, rocketed into the firmament of America’s rich musical culture. A Freewheelin’ Time does not retrace the tale of Romeo and Juliet; it is a less common story whose deeper meaning is the narrator’s insistence on maintaining her separateness, her integrity, even at the cost of losing her lover. Fearful of becoming a sidekick to a celebrity, Rotolo withdrew from a relationship others could only dream of possessing. Tragically for Ms. Rotolo she seems to have derived no clear benefit from her brave decision. She senses that she has been “forever enshrined and entombed, also, beside the legend of Bob Dylan.” (p. 3) For all but her family and a circle of close friends, her greatest value continues to be as a source of information about one of the most dominant, and inscrutable, figures of American popular culture. This memoir, which should serve as a means of converting this depressing legacy into a gain for herself, has earned a place on the shelf of must-read books for anyone attempting to fathom this transformative figure.

The reader of A Freewheelin’ Time is pulled back and forth from Rotolo’s semi-tragic loss to bemusement as to why she forsook a promising and truly freewheeling life for the meager attention of a misogynistic misanthrope. Rotolo sums it all up, by saying, “[Dylan ] was not known for his generosity.” (p. 158) Sadly, for this reader, she clings to a memory: “Bob gave me a handmade, embroidered Romanian sheepskin jacket.... It was beautiful and very warm. I loved it.” (pp. 268-269). Dylan’s extraordinary sense of entitlement and all-around arrogance is distilled in a couple of sentences. “When I was with him, he seemed to take my presence for granted. I was expected just to be there by his side as he went about his business.” (p. 183) Nothing in A Freewheelin’ Time contradicts the assessment of Dylan by Suze’s older sister Carla, “[He made] no effort of any kind to be polite to anyone.” And then there was Dylan’s blatant womanizing; with Joan Baez and others. Can “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right,” “Boots of Spanish Leather,” and other songs that immortalize their love compensate for Dylan’s narcissism? The calculus of this relationship is best left to the individual reader. However, few would disagree that Rotolo’s memoir is an important feminist text.

A Freewheelin’ Time is rich in insights and information about a number of compelling (and less often discussed) topics. It presents an insider’s view of a high point in the performance of American folk music and its ultimate marginalization by commercialization, and (even more fatally) its absorption into a more eclectic, transmogrifying musical modality. In addition, the author chronicles the brief transitional period between the unraveling of the Old Left and the ascendancy of the New Left, a period that neatly coincided with Rotolo’s relationship with Dylan. Interwoven with this strand, A Freewheelin’ Time provides a glimpse of the overlooked story of Italian American radicalism. As might be expected from devoted Communists, Rotolo’s parents transmitted aspects of this movement’s politics and culture to Suze (and to a lesser extent Carla), who in turn shared this heritage to a force majeure of American culture. This last theme is the least explored in the vast biographical literature on Dylan; it is also the least satisfactorily treated part of this otherwise compelling memoir, where it had the best chance of coming fully to light.

Greenwich Village

A Freewheelin’ Time’s subtitle, A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, refers to the place (and what was becoming known as the East Village) and time that this story unfolded: both.of which provide a wider context for her story. In lieu of attending college (Dylan spent one year attending the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis), Rotolo “took the subway” and entered what was for her an enchanted urban village offering refuge from the miasma of the McCarthy Era and its debased culture. At times, it seems that she is not as regretful about the collapse of her relationship with Dylan as she is nostalgic for a community that offered endless possibilities for sociability and creativity (and where cheap apartments abounded).

Typical of Little Italys everywhere, the Village was a district where commercial uses mixed with a wide variety of types of housing. Denoted by names rather than numbers and largely outside Manhattan’s grid, the streets of the Village are generally narrow; they curve and run diagonally. Along these storefront-lined streets, its residents conveniently shopped for fresh bread, fruits and vegetables, fish, and other daily needs. The community clustered around the parish of Our Lady of Pompeii through whose doors, every summer, the Madonna was carried outside to preside over a week-long festa. The Italian community in the Village was neither as large nor as self-contained as Manhattan’s other two Little Italys—Italian Harlem and the Lower East Side’s Mulberry Street District. Moreover its housing stock was more modern and its population less dense than Italian Harlem and Mulberry Street’s. Nonetheless, the Village bore the salient characteristics of Little Italys everywhere. The inward-looking, tight-knit, predominantly Italian residents were indifferent to (or at most mildly curious about) the goings-on of their exotic neighbors—including those who were gay. As the landlords of the tenements and many smaller dwellings and the proprietors of the commercial establishments, they also benefited from the patronage of those rejected elsewhere. More than for any other outsider community (arguably even the gay and lesbian community), the Village was a community that tolerated behaviors and lifestyles treated with opprobrium elsewhere in America.

Donald Tricarico, who wrote the most important study of this community, commented, “the students and artists living in the vicinity were essentially an appendage of the Italian community.... For all purposes and intents, they were guests of the Italian population.” It was the Italians who stayed while others passed through on their way to celebrity, or much more frequently, assimilation into more predictable and conventional identities. Although Rotolo seems very much in touch with her Italian heritage—as evidence by her devotion to grandparents, for example, and later by her extended stay in Italy where she learned the language—she expresses little interest in this aspect of Greenwich Village.

Greenwich Village provided a nurturing environment for folk music artists and their devotees. It offered venues where alternative entertainment took root and thrived. Gerdes Folk City (where Rotolo first saw Dylan), the Gas Light, the Bitter End, the Limelight, all located within a few blocks of one another, presented new and established performers to eager audiences. It was a place (and admittedly, an age) where Dylan could simply roll into town and begin performing. With a sharp eye and a deft touch, Rotolo sketches many major figures of the folk music revival—Dave Van Ronk, Odetta, Jack Elliot, Tom Paxton, Ian and Sylvia [Tyson], Joan Baez, Gil Turner—and relates ways in which they interacted. Rotolo notes, “Many did what they loved to do and became known for it far and wide, and others did what they loved to do and managed to make a living at it. Still other burned out and lost their way.” (p. 131) Only one, Bob Dylan, emerged from this small crowd to acquire immortality in the world of American popular music.

Rorolo makes an insightful evaluation of Dylan’s music. “Bob’s songs were in the folk idiom yet they were definitely and undeniably written in the present. The writing was timeless and timely—explosively so—and the audience gasped in recognition.” (pp. 231-232) Nonetheless, aside from some banal musings about his good work habits and ability to concentrate, Rotolo gives no hint as to what she observed during their five-year relationship, which coincided with his most formative years, that might explain how he bypassed all the others. Dylan’s lyrics place him in the prophetic tradition of the Bible, Walt Whitman, and William Blake. Did Suze Rotolo know whether Dylan actually read any of those sources? Did he own a Bible, copies of Leaves of Grass, or The Collected Works of Blake? Did he discuss extracts from these works? Did he channel the spirits inhabiting the Old Testament prophets from his studies for his Bar Mitzvah? Was there an especially talented English teacher or two in Hibbing, Minnesota’s high school who exposed him to Whitman and Blake? Whatever Rotolo may know about these and similar questions does not appear in the book.

Family Politics

Joachim (Pete) Rotolo and Mary Testa (Mary used the Anglicized version of Maria for her first name and the surname of her first husband, who died in a freak accident in 1937) were immersed in the Communist Party. Like other Communists of that period, Suze notes that her parents earned working class incomes but engaged in a culture that bore little relationship to their working and lower-middle-class neighbors and her father’s workmates. She recalls, “The culture I lived in [meant] being around interesting adults from all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of music, and all those books.” (p. 34) Although Suze does not link her parents to the folk music movement, she mentions their frequenting Café Society, a cabaret located in the Village, where in addition to Billie Holiday and other great jazz artists, featured folk musicians such a Leadbelly and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. In any case, her associations with other children of Communist parents and her work as a counselor at the Communist-sponsored Camp Kinderland thoroughly acquainted her with the folk music world. Long before she met Dylan, Rotolo points out, “Most of us were children of Communists or socialists, red-diaper babies raised on Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and Pete Seeger. We had listened to Oscar Brand’s Folksong Festival on radio while still in our cribs.” (p. 45)

Suze Rotolo’s Italian-born father arrived in America at the age of two. His parents were prosperous skilled workers (a seamstress and a decorative iron worker) who eventually bought a brownstone in South Brooklyn. They provided the motivation and material support to guarantee their three children passage into the American middle class—Pete graduated from high school and attended Pratt Institute on a scholarship. At least directly, Pete was untouched by poverty or discrimination. Together with his wife (and many other Italian Americans), the executions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in 1927 contributed to his embrace of Communism. His path to Party membership was through the John Reed Clubs, clubhouses the party established to disseminate social realist art and encourage workers to write. Pete’s artistic endeavors were laid aside for what Suze defines as “his duty, his ‘Communist work.’” (p. 29) Pete worked in a linotype factory, where he became a shop steward for the union. Questions that arise from the information Suze Rotolo gives the reader go unanswered in her memoir. Was Pete one of the select cadre the Party assigned members to work in factories? Suze doesn’t name the union for which her father served as a shop steward. Was it a Communist-led union like the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America? Clear answers to these queries would have significant bearing on her father’s tenacious connection to a job for which he was clearly overqualified. One suspects throughout the book that Suze didn’t do much research to find sources outside of memories and family lore, which could challenge, substantiate, and most importantly, contextualize her own information base. She reports that Pete, whose politics were known to his coworkers, was well liked by them. After he became too sick to work, many of his shop mates visited him on weekends and made a collection to buy him a television, something hitherto excluded from their home where the phonograph had pride of place in the living room. His infirmity yielded one benefit: Pete resumed his artistic endeavors. In 1958, while starting up his car for a visit to Ralph Fasanella, a Party comrade, Suze’s father suddenly died.

Mary Testa was the third of the four surviving children of the eight to whom her mother gave birth. After her father, Sisto Pezzati, died of tuberculosis when she was three, Cesarina, their widowed mother, raised Mary and her siblings in a series of abysmal tenement flats in and around Boston under conditions of extreme poverty. Cesarina took in laundry and cleaned houses; her older brother left school to work full time. Mary and her younger brother, Albert, the sibling with whom she remained closest to throughout her life, scoured the railroad tracks in search of lumps of coal for the kitchen stove and chased after the ice wagon to gather ice chips to cool the food in the icebox. The Pezzati children ate polenta every night and were subject to taunts and beatings by local Irish kids. Later in life, her mother refused to eat polenta, and Suze adds, she also “had trouble digesting the Irish.” (p. 71) Mary’s older brother, Pietro, became a successful portrait painter working in the Renaissance style; Josephine, the older sister lived her life as a liberal Catholic.

In advance of Mary, Albert, of whom Suze speaks little, joined the Communist Party. Had Suze conducted some additional research, she would have found out that he did important work as a Communist. He ran for State Senator for the American Labor Party in 1940, and later served as secretary-treasurer of the International Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers’ Union, which was expelled from the CIO in 1949 for its Communist leadership. He was indicted under the Taft-Harley Act for falsely signing an anti-Communist affidavit in 1956. Albert served as the spokesperson for his union in the fight against silicosis, a deadly disease afflicting hard-rock miners, and demanded the establishment of a National Industrial Health Institute. Perhaps it was not coincidental that Albert’s struggle to save the lungs of the workers he represented was associated with another rapacious lung disease of the poor, tuberculosis, which killed his father before Albert had a chance even to remember his face.

Suze glosses over her mother’s heroic political career. From 1937 to 1939, Mary Testa was deeply involved with the Party’s illegal work. She traveled to Paris, where she met major leaders of the Italian Communist Party including Palmiro Togliatti. During her travels, Mary acted as a courier carrying concealed passports gathered from Italian Americans; in Europe the passports were doctored to provide passage for underground cadres in Italy to travel into Spain to join the International Brigades. These passports later gave safe passage to Italian Communists trapped in France after the defeat of the Spanish Republic. Mary, who traveled to Fascist Italy and war-torn Spain, had placed herself in mortal risk. This work also entailed the possibility of imprisonment in the United States, at a time when the federal government was indicting and convicting Communists (including the Party’s General Secretary, Earl Browder) for passport violations.

In 1940, upon her return from Europe, Mary, who had never finished high school, became the founding co-editor of L’Unità del Popolo, a weekly, which was the successor of four previous Communist Party-sponsored Italian-language newspapers—L’Alba Nuova, Il Lavalatore, L’Unità Operaia, and Il Popolo. In 1942, shortly before her first daughter, Carla, was born, she resigned from this position. Thereafter her political work centered on giving speeches and writing articles, in English and Italian, promoting the American Labor Party and helping to elect its sole Congressman, Vito Marcantonio, whose East Harlem district included Italian Harlem. Suze Rotolo remembers that Mary took Carla and her to Marc’s headquarters, where they helped stuff envelopes for mailings to his constituents. On November 19, 1950, Mary Testa chaired a banquet that attracted four-hundred friends and comrades of Michael Salerno, the editor of L’Unità del Popolo, who gathered to say arriverderci before his imminent deportation, accompanied by his American-born wife and son, to Italy. (Salerno never returned to the United States.)

In A Freewhellin’ Time there is no indication that Suze has applied for copies of her parents’ FBI files, which however heavily redacted before their release, would have provided much information. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was greatly interested in all the members of he Communist Party and especially those who, as did Suze’s parents, had genuine influence. Their files are almost certainly voluminous. Among other things, they would reveal if they had been placed on the list for detention during a time of national emergency as defined by the Attorney General and detail the extent of their political activities. Rotolo never notes how her Italian-born father obtained citizenship. If he had been naturalized, he was at risk for deportation. (She mentions that the parents of her red-diaper friend Pete Karmen were held on Ellis Island for deportation even though his mother had entered the United States as a child.) A complete run of L’Unità del Popolo is deposited in the New York Public Library. Yet, there is no evidence that she read the paper her mother edited and for which she frequently wrote. Had she done this work, Rotolo might have been able to view her parents with greater equanimity. It might also have allowed her to let go of her need to sanitize her parents as members of “the idealistic, as opposed to the hardcore Stalinist, wing of the American Communist Party.” (p. 33)

“Parents were baggage.” (p. 250) With this three-word sentence, Suze Rotolo imagines that she has simultaneously justifies Dylan’s rejection of his parents and her dismissal of her mother as preoccupied with drinking her way through her second widowhood. Elsewhere, she speaks more positively of Mary Testa. “[Mother] taught us about equality, that all men are created equal, and instilled in [Carla and me] a sense of justice.” (pp. 211-212) While still attending high school, Suze traveled to Harlem where she worked in support of the initiatives of the Congress of Racial Equality. She also helped organize for The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy Committee—organizations her mother and father would have felt very comfortable supporting. In 1964, Suze struck out on her own by joining others in defying a United States government ban on travel to Cuba. After returning back to the United States from this two-month experience in political tourism, Rotolo found herself unable to repay Cuba’s hospitality with political work on behalf of the beleaguered island. When at the end of a “break the blockade” rally at a college in Boston it came her turn to give a rousing speech, she was unable to rise to the occasion. “I was in a gloomy frame of mind that evening [and] in general I had lost a good deal of my enthusiasm for politics.” (p. 330)

Suze Rotolo and others around Dylan discovered his identity through rumor and a not-too-polite disclosure in a newspaper article that he was not a runaway from a traveling circus, named “Bob Dylan,” but Robert Zimmerman, the oldest of two sons of second-generation Jewish parents who owned and operated a clothing store in Hibbing, Minnesota. He concealed his true identity from his friends and associates and his whereabouts and nascent career from his parents. Mary Testa sensed from her first encounter with Dylan that neither his name nor his purported background were accurate. Rotolo reports, “Mother had a hunch right off the bat that the tales he told about himself, not to mention his name, were bogus.” (p. 104) Suze gives no credit to her mother for her prescience, which surely represented a fringe benefit from her life in the Party and especially from her engagement in its illegal work, where identifying infiltrators was literally a matter of life and death. Suze still doesn’t quite get what is so wrong about someone presenting himself, especially within the context of an intimate relationship, as someone other than who he is. Her continued protectiveness of Dylan, especially once she crossed the Rubicon and put her pen to the first line of her memoir, is difficult to comprehend.

At her mother’s behest and by her largess, Rotolo traveled to Italy, ostensibly to study Italian. But we hear little about her studies and how they later enriched her life. She does not even chronicle the typical high jinks typical of a ‘60’ American student in Europe. A Freewheelin’ Time has no Epilogue, so the reader doesn’t learn that later, Suze returned to Italy where she found the true love of her life to whom, along with their son, the book is dedicated. This knowledge, withheld by the now unreasonably taciturn Ms. Rotolo, also establishes the rectitude of her mother’s motives. For her daughter, who did not attend college, studying Italian had multiple benefits, including something fairly rare in America, continuity with previous generations.

American Folk Music and the Left

Rotolo’s entrée into the small, but absorbing, world of folk music was not through any musical talent; it was facilitated by a cultural inheritance from her Communist parents with its attendant subculture. The devotion of American progressives—Communists and those influenced by the Party’s cultural outlook and activities—to folk music flowed directly from Georgi Dimitrof’s insistence in 1935 in The United Front against Fascism that Communists, “not relinquish all that is valuable in the historical past of a country, [and that they help create a] truly national culture that is national in form and socialist in content.” From the enunciation of the Popular Front until the Cold War repression, the Communist movement had widespread influence on American “high” and popular culture. Michael Denning—in his authoritative, The Cultural Front, which documents the pervasive influence of the Communist movement on all aspects of American culture—states, “The folk music revival was spearheaded by Communists.” They were responsible for creating an infrastructure including an organization, People’s Songs, a magazine, Sing Out, and an organization of practitioners of this art form, People’s Artists. Major figures in the folk music world were Communists, including Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger; they along with musicologists and performers sympathetic to the Communist movement, agreed that “the people,” its longings and lives should be the focus of progressive music. Rotolo notes that in practice folk music movement “included everything that wasn’t easily classifiable, all of which was freighted, most often implicitly, with left politics. [It was] an amalgam of other genres: bluegrass to country to blues to gospel to traditional.” (p. 128) Rotolo earlier reminds the readers how much international music (for example, the Armenian-American oud player George Mgrdichian and the Israeli singer, Ron Eliran,) was a part of this scene. The international music countered the dominant nativist and chauvinist ideology of that decade, and the “folk” of the folk music were “the workers,” who (unbeknownst to themselves) had created songs deemed inherently oppositional to the dominant culture. The songs’ subjects and underlying assumptions, in fact, rejected the individualism, romanticism, and consumerism of the dominant culture. However, this was much more due to their origins in a pre-industrial society more than any association they may have had with socialism. There were overtly Left songs, which set to traditional (often religious) tunes had lyrics rousing the workers to join unions or memorializing industrial accidents, but they were few in number. Be that as it may, these songs helped sustain a besieged community.

Rotolo’s Contribution to Dylan’s Career

Suze Rotolo greatly underestimates her contribution to Dylan’s enthronement in the pantheon of American cultural giants. It was neither Dylan’s raspy voice nor his strumming technique that stopped a generation in its tracks. A short list of political anthems that he composed during his time together with Suze Rotolo enraptured a new generation of political activists. His first album, Bob Dylan, included an eclectic and uneven collection of traditional ballads presented by a very young Woody Guthrie wannabe, who had some je ne sais quoi. His second album, A Freewheelin’ Time—which featured “Blowing in the Wind,” “Masters of War,” and “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” – and his third album’s, The Times They Are a-Changin’” – whose soon-to-be classics “The Times They Are a Changin’,” “With God on Our Side,” “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol,” “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” “ When the Ship Comes In,” and “Chimes of Freedom” were composed at a moment when American youth were poised to repudiate the domestic cold war and mobilize a massive antiwar movement. This short list of songs gave immediacy and gravity to Dylan’s music; it launched his work into the special space reserved for those few performers/composers of American popular music who create classic American popular music.

Suze Rotolo not only introduced Bob Dylan to the Left movement, she also took him to the Museum of Modern Art to see Picasso’s Guernica, encouraged him to listen to Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Three Penny Opera, and exposed him to other aspects of the Old Left’s cultural amalgam of folk and high culture. “Pirate Jenny,” from The Three Penny Opera, provided Dylan with the framework for “The Times They Are a–Changin’.” “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” which was based on a front-page article published in the Leftist weekly, The National Guardian, suggests that the murder of Medgar Evers was determined by a culture where the ideology of white supremacy manipulated poor white Southerners into foregoing their own economic interests, might be the single most Marxist song composed in the United States. The refinement of the lyrics of “When the Ship Comes In,” the larger framework of the song, its apocalyptic vision, elevate Dylan’s song to a higher category than, for example, the blithely optimistic ditty of the contemporaneous “If I Had a Hammer” composed by Pete Seeger.

Conclusion

Suze Rotolo’s memoir represents an important addition to the vast literature on Bob Dylan, who is arguably the largest single influence on American music to emerge from the 1960s. It also documents the transmission of the culture of the Communist Left, to the wider culture—a topic that deserves further attention from the burgeoning field of American Cultural Studies. At its heart, it is story of one young woman’s quest for an elusive autonomy from the complex inheritance of heroic parents and a celebrated partner. Suze Rotolo did something noble when she chose her own integrity over being a satellite of a blazing star. However, she has not yet entirely worked out the complexities of inheriting a rich parental legacy and later attaining a larger degree of acceptance of the satisfactions of participating in the construction of an American legend. Perhaps her next volume should be about her parents, their own families, and their very large, and less ambiguous, impact on her life.

Notes:

[1] Suze Rotolo, A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties (New York: Broadway Books, 2008).

[2] Gerald Meyer, “Italian-Americans and the American Communist Party,” in The Lost World of Italian American Radicalism: Politics, Labor, and Culture, pp. 205-227, eds. Philip Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003).

[3] On Italian Harlem see: Richard Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Gerald Meyer, “Italian Harlem: Portrait of a Community,” pp. 57-67 in, The Italians of New York: Five Centuries of Struggle and Achievement (New York: New York Historical Society and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, 1999). On Mulberry Street’s Little Italy see Donna Giababacia, From Sicily to Elizabeth Street: Housing and Social Change among Italian Immigrants, 1880-1930 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1984).

[4] Caroline Ware, Greenwich, 1920-1930: A Comment on American Civilization in the Post-War Years (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), pp. 152-202; Donald Tricarico, The Italians of Greenwich Village: The Social Structure and Transformation of an Ethnic Community (New York: Center of Migration Studies, 1964), pp. xvi, 2, 103.

[5] The tolerance of Greenwich Village did not extend to racial and ethnic minorities. In 1950, in its three most Italian American census tracts, the number of African Americans numbered only 40 out of 4,116; by 1960 there were 138 living there. From 1960 to 1980; during this same period, the number of Puerto Ricans living in this area actually declined from 327 to 114. Tricarico, Italians of Greenwich Village, p. 76.

[6] It is possible that Mary retained the surname “Testa” so that her connection with Pete was not so immediately apparent. As editor of L’Unità del Popolo, her Party affiliation was undeniable. With few exceptions, those Communists “colonizing” factories had to conceal their membership. Hence, by keeping her first husband’s name she was protecting her husband’s anonymity.

[7] In his autobiographical novel, Going Away: A Report, a Memoir (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1962), Clancy Sigal argued that the Communist Party attracted working class youth and transformed them into bookish petite bourgeoisie, thereby over time separating them from the working class.

[8] David Margolick, Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2000), pp. 40-41. Founded in 1938, Café Society, became New York City’s first truly integrated nightclub, which “marked the emergence of a Popular Front cabaret blues, a fusion of jazz and political cabaret.” After being targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, it closed in 1948. Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 1997), pp. 323, 360.

[9] Gerald Meyer, “Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti: Their Legacy,” Voices of Italian Americana, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2008), p. 64.

[10] Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 221-230, 271-273, 281-283.

[11] Victor Grossman (Stephan Wechsler), Crossing the River: A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003).

[12] Fasanella, who had been reduced by the McCarthy repression to working in his brother-in-laws gas station, was soon to achieve great acclaim for his copious production of social realist paintings many of which are part of the permanent collections of major museums. Patrick Watson, Fasanella’s City: The Paintings of Ralph Fasanella with the Story of His Life and Art New York: Ballantine Books, 1973.

[13] Robert Shrank, Wasn’t That a Time?: Growing Up Radical in America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), pp. 313-314.

[14] Harvey Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade (New York: Basic Books, 1984), pp. 406, 408.

[15] Nunzio Pernicone, “Introduction,” special issue devoted to the Italian American Press of The Italian American Review (Spring/Summer 2001), p. 5.

[16] Gerald Meyer, “L’Unità del Popolo: The Voice of Italian American Communism, 1939-1951,” Italian American Review (Spring/Summer 2001): 121-156.

[17] Gerald Meyer, Vito Marcantonio: Radical Politician, 1902-1954 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1989).

[18] Meyer, “L’Unità del Popolo, pp. 126, 139. The weekly ceased regularly publishing on August 11, 1951. During the McCarthy Era, the Justice Department indicted, at least, fifteen editors of pro-Communist newspapers (including those publishing in Italian, Korean, Yiddish, Greek, Chinese, and Finnish) under the Smith Act for the purpose of allowing the federal government to seek their denaturalization and deportation. David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 239.

[19] Georgi Dimitrof, The United Front against Fascism (New York, New Century Publishers, 1950), pp. 78, 81.

[20] Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 1997), p. 283.

[21] Robbie Lieberman, My Song Is My Weapon: People’s Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-1950 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989).

[22] Ronald Cohen, “Woody the Red?,” in Hard Travelin’: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie, pp. 138-152, eds. Robert Santelli and Emily Davidson (Hanover, MA: Wesleyan University Press, 1999).

[23] Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, director, Jim Brown (2007).

[24] Lieberman, My Song Is My Weapon, pp. xix, 53.

[25] Suze’s two-years-older sister, Carla (who, like so many other red diaper babies, was named after Karl Marx), worked for Alan Lomax, the renowned folk music collector; she also contributed to Dylan’s musical and political education, but Suze’s memoir does not include this part of the story. Although she gives her no credit, Carla must have contributed to her younger sister’s involvement in folk music. Dylan vilified Carla in “Ballad in Plain D” when he hurled at her the epithet “parasite.”

Photo: Shht, Flickr, cc by 2.0

Protect Miranda

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:42:00 +0000

A specter is haunting Washington. The specter of the second Bush Administration. This specter is possessing members of the present administration. On Monday (5-10-10) the New York Times reported that Attorney General, Erich H. Holder Jr., wants a law so the US can "interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their [Miranda] rights." Do we really want the government to ignore people's rights? People SUSPECTED of a crime have a right to a fair hearing, a lawyer, a presumption of innocence, etc.

Holder thinks the government needs "greater flexibility to question terrorism suspects." But the government has been expanding the definition of who is a terrorist. It's not just the mad bomber from abroad anymore. Now there are mentally disturbed folks being labeled "domestic terrorists" – no Miranda for them. There are animal rights activists being charged as "terrorists" – no Miranda for them. Warning bells should go off anytime the government wants to take rights away from suspects, especially the usual suspects, because there is a danger we will all end up without these rights.

The right we should worry about is that guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights – i.e., the right not to incriminate oneself which is the basis of the Miranda warning.

Well, as a matter of fact, the government already has “greater flexibility to question terrorism suspects.” The government can question away without ever informing people of their Miranda rights – they just can’t use the information in court against the suspects in criminal proceedings. If it is information they want to prevent a terrorist act that can go ahead and get it and ignore Miranda. They don’t have to wait for a lawyer, read anyone their rights, or put off questioning at all. They just can’t use the evidence later in court, but they can certainly get it and prevent a terrorist act.

Besides, we have been holding some suspects for years with no evidence and no charges completely ignoring the entire legal system so this new fuss about the Miranda warning is just an attempt to look tough. There is, anyway, a PUBLIC SAFETY EXCEPTION, recognized by the Supreme Court, that allows evidence to still be used in court even if the Miranda warning has not been given to a suspect. So what is Holder really doing?

He is just pandering to the Republicans and their fear mongering instead of standing up to them and pointing out that the Miranda rules are necessary to protect everyone's rights. The Times reports that "Conservatives have long disliked the Miranda ruling, which is intended to ensure that confessions are not coerced." Why anyone would want a coerced confession is beyond me but I am sure conservatives have their reasons. After all, there is a long tradition of forced confessions and frame ups by the police and conservatives are big on tradition.

Anyway, it is so much easier to get a coerced confession, as the Innocence Project has shown and as has the almost weekly announcements of some poor soul, after umpteen years in jail, being released as innocent. Holder should tell his conservative critics that he understands and even appreciates their desire to help the US win more cases and get more convictions by the use of coerced confessions, but it's a bad idea since our stance is that we represent truth and justice and all that good stuff.

Class and Race in the US Labor Movement: The Case of the Packinghouse Workers

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:33:00 +0000

Original source: Diary of a Heartland Radical

Racism and the Labor Movement

Historic connections between organized labor and African Americans have been problematic. During the period of modern labor history, that is, from the formation of the CIO in the 1930s, to its merger with the AFL in 1955, and into the present, labor's struggle against racism has been mixed. On the one hand, as Philip S. Foner describes it, the American labor movement throughout much of its history has practiced racism in its internal organizational policies, in its efforts to organize new workers under the banner of labor, and in regard to its advocacy of political positions. Writes Foner, "from the formation of the first trade unions in the 1790s to the mid-1930s, the policy and practice of organized labor so far as Black workers were concerned were largely those of outright exclusion or segregation."[1]

As a prominent institution in American life, perhaps it is no surprise that organized labor has reflected the currents of racism that run deep throughout American history. However, a close reading of labor history will also uncover significant exceptions to the rule. That is, various trade union confederations, such as the Knights of Labor in the 1880s, and the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) of the 1930s and 40s, reflected through words, and sometimes in deeds, the position articulated by Robert Baker in 1902, that the organization of workers should encompass "the cause of all humanity, regardless of race, color, or sex." Said Baker: "The more organized labor champions the cause of all labor, unorganized as well as organized, Black as well as White, the greater will be the victories; the more lasting, the more permanent, the more beneficial and the more far-reaching will be its successes."[2]

One of the most striking successes in the struggle against racism in the modern labor movement is a little studied labor union, the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA), which formed as an organizing committee in 1937 and continued to represent packinghouse workers until its merger with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters in 1968. During its 30-years' existence UPWA struggled to organize and fairly represent workers in meat packing plants and collateral industries, fought to overcome racism within the union, and played a major role in building and supporting a burgeoning civil rights movement during the 1950s. In the words of Michael Goldfield: "The racial practices of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) are especially inspiring."[3]

The UPWA story below is constructed largely from a set of 128 interviews with former members of the union, both from the rank and file and leadership, conducted by Halpern and Horwitz.[4] Three published books add to the literature on this progressive union, helping to create a history of a trade union led by a coalition of political leftists (many members of the Communist Party USA), liberals, and militant Black workers who stood for peace and social justice during difficult times in the United States, particularly after World War II.[5] In addition to the three new books and selections from the Halpern and Horwitz interviews, I will add a few insights gathered by my own interviews of three leaders of the UPWA.[6]

On Labor History

The industrial revolution in the period following the Civil War planted the seeds for a transformation of the workforce in the USA, shifting workers from farm to factory. With the emergence of modern manufacturing came increasing patterns of control and exploitation of workers. While many workers were initially skilled craftspersons who enjoyed autonomy and expertise, owners and managers of capital sought to increase control over the processes of work, especially in an effort to speed up production. Profits could be enhanced further by extending the length of work days as much as physical survival would allow. Of course, as capitalism grew and grew, profits also would be increased if wages were reduced as much as possible. Increasing managerial control of the work process, speeding up the pace of work, extending the work day, and cutting wages all stimulated the creation of labor movements to challenge capital's prerogatives.

In the 1880s a confederation of unions that embraced the skilled and unskilled, men and women, Black and White, organized as the Knights of Labor. While its history was short"lived, it fought for the eight-hour day and introduced into USA labor history a principle of inclusiveness that would flower and grow in the 1930s and beyond. Also in the 1880s, a trade union confederation called the American Federation of Labor formed, bringing together unions representing primarily skilled workers. Under the leadership of its first president, Samuel Gompers, the AFL built an organization that, despite ups and downs, survives to this day. Whereas the Knights practiced inclusiveness, the AFL as it unfolded gave primary support to the organization of skilled workers, and over time tilted toward segregation among affiliated unions, so that Black workers would be represented in totally Black unions. The AFL also accepted unions into the federation that constitutionally prohibited Black workers from membership.

From 1905 until World War I, a militant union, the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, organized hard rock miners, textile workers, and others. The IWW rejected political action, championing a syndicalist vision of a new world order, organized around worker control of the economic life of the country. Since the IWW rejected electoral and other more conventional politics, it was not involved in struggles around de-segregation and voting rights. However, the IWW championed the inclusiveness of all workers and rejected racism. Given their brand of revolutionary activity, Wobblies were hounded by the state and by vigilantes until, by the 1920s, they were virtually crushed.

After an interregnum of state repression, company unions, and company welfare schemes to keep workers from organizing, the 1930s saw a huge wave of political mobilization and labor organizing that led to the formation of the CIO. Some union leaders, led by John L. Lewis of the miners, withdrew from the AFL to form the CIO, because the former group refused to organize industrial, or so-called non-skilled, workers. Between 1935, at its founding, until 1940, the CIO unionized four million workers. Unions emerged in such industries as automobile manufacturing, electronics, steel, rubber, and meat packing. The great flurry of working-class mobilization was stimulated by the exigencies of the Great Depression, the exclusiveness of the AFL, and the groundbreaking work of communists and other leftists on the shop floors, who had worked for years to plant the seeds of the idea of industrial unionization. By 1955, over thirty percent of the American workforce was in unions. The AFL and CIO, the two major trade-union confederations, had over 100 member unions in them. Then the two confederations united, the legacy of which survives today as the AFL-CIO. This constituted the melding of the old craft unions founded before the 20th century with the newer industrial unions of the 1930s.

Meat Packing

The processing of meat was one of the earliest mass-production industries, developing a detailed division of labor that became a model for most subsequent manufacturing. The corralling, slaughtering, and dressing of meat products for shipment around the country became possible when the refrigerated railroad car was developed. By the turn of the century, meat was processed in huge centers in Chicago, Omaha, and Fort Worth, with smaller operations around Iowa and Minnesota. Meat packing plants were scattered throughout the South and Northeast as well. The meat processing center from the 1880s to the late 1950s was in Chicago. The stockyards, housing the "Big Four" packers (Armour, Cudahy, Swift, and Wilson), employed thousands of workers. Because the work was so dangerous and unpleasant, it was largely carried out by the most marginalized sectors of the working class. First, this included primarily immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. During the great migrations from the South, both before and after World War I, Black workers gravitated to the packing plants, leaving behind their lives as sharecroppers.

Packinghouse workers, experiencing horrible working conditions and insufficient wages, sought to secure union recognition as the Amalgamated Meat Cutters. Two long and bloody strikes (1904 and 1921) were defeated by the companies. During both strikes, many African-American workers were temporarily employed to break the strikes. Since Black workers suffered from economic circumstances as desperate as those faced by the striking White workers, and since they were excluded generally from unions and consequently the benefits they would gain from unionization, these so-called "scab" workers felt no loyalty to the strikers or the union. In the aftermath of the two defeats, hostility towards Black workers rose, and Black resentment of Whites increased as well. For years, remembrances of racism and scabbing impaired any effort to create a common front against the packers.

UPWA (CIO)

The atmosphere and historical circumstances changed in the 1930s. First, the depression hit working people very hard. Twenty-five percent of the work force was unemployed by 1933. Industries were working at 40 percent of capacity. In big cities, vibrant radical movements began to surface. Communists organized Unemployment Councils whose task it was to protect debtors from being evicted from their apartments. Also the Councils organized mass rallies and marches against unemployment and poverty and, on occasion, marched with throngs to city welfare departments demanding relief. Communists and other radicals were particularly active in Black communities. Also, the Communist Party mobilized mass campaigns to save the Scottsboro Boys who had been charged with raping two White women in Alabama, a charge that was clearly untrue. The mood of despair turned to militancy in cities and towns around the United States. Many Black citizens began to participate in the street militancy. These militants included those who were to work in the packinghouses. Inside the packing plants, Black workers had the most difficult and demeaning jobs and worked for lower wages. However, in terms of meat processing, Black workers were situated in strategic locations such as the killing floor. If they chose to stop working, the whole process of slaughtering and dressing meat would grind to a halt. Also in the major packing center, Chicago, the percentage of the work force that was Black was as much as 30 percent by the 1930s.

Both Black and White workers had come to the view that wages and working conditions would only improve when the work force became unionized. Also, Black and White workers both realized that successful unionization would not occur until and unless they combined to support unionization. This recognition, combined with the experience of working with radicals on community action, the clear role of communists in the effort to organize a packinghouse workers union, and the demonstrated work of the left in anti-racism campaigns nationally, all influenced the militant African Americans who assumed significant roles in organizing the union. White workers, often former union members from the days before World War I, and cognizant of the pragmatic necessity for solidarity, joined the struggle as well.

The first independent local of packinghouse workers was formed in Austin, Minnesota, by some old Wobblies in 1933. In 1934 there were general strikes of workers in various industries in San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Toledo, Ohio. In 1935, John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers, walked out of the national convention of the AFL to form the CIO. Thus was launched the effort to organize unskilled industrial workers all across the industrial landscape. Also, in 1935, Congress passed the Wagner Act, which legalized the effort of workers to form unions. In this multidimensional context, Herb March, a communist organizer who had been working in Kansas City, arrived in Chicago to initiate the drive to organize the packing houses. In 1937, Black and White packinghouse workers with CIO approval formed the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC) to begin the union building process.

The "Big Four" meat-packing companies resisted the initial organizing efforts. Armour, the first target of the PWOC, resisted efforts to get a master agreement that would apply to all plants. Such a master agreement would institutionalize the union in the industry, an outcome that all the packing companies opposed. However, despite efforts of a discredited AFL union (the Amalgamated Meat Cutters) to counter PWOC presence in the Chicago Armour plant, and despite a pre-election visit to Chicago unions by the newly formed House Committee on Un-American Activities, the PWOC won majority support from workers for the new CIO union in 1939. Shortly thereafter, PWOC signed separate agreements for all Armour plants, a clear prelude to the master agreements the union sought. The initial accords, while not involving wage issues, did increase vacations, guaranteed at least 32 hours of work, and improved grievance procedures. Almost two years later, contract negotiations between Armour and the PWOC led to the signing of the industry's first master agreement in September, 1941. The accords included a ten-cent-an-hour wage increase. This was followed by agreements with Cudahy in November and Swift in April 1942. Finally, Wilson was forced to sign an agreement in March, 1943 by the National War Labor Board. Also in 1943, PWOC became the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA). CIO militancy, the tidal wave of organizing throughout American industry, the particular role of White left activists and Black militants, and the emerging production needs brought by the onset of World War II all together stimulated the successes of unionization efforts in the meat packing industry.

While a wage-freeze agreement in support of the war effort was accepted by government, the corporate sector, and the leadership of the labor movement, PWOC was able to secure a variety of improvements in fringe benefits and working conditions during the war years. While labor, capital, and government all endorsed wage and price controls over the course of the war, government and capital did agree to not challenge the presence of unions in plants across the country (so-called "maintenance of membership" agreements). However, as the war drew to a close, many unions in the CIO made demands for increases in wages. They claimed that prices in fact had increased by 45 percent during the war, while real wage increases were capped at 15 percent. While workers at the home front saved money, both because of much overtime and limits on commodities to purchase, their wages fell further and further behind prices and company profits. When corporations resisted pay hikes right after the war, unions in auto, steel, electronics, railroads, and meatpacking went on strike. The 1946 strike wave was the largest in U.S. history, affecting 4.6 million workers or 14.5 percent of the work force.

The strike in packing began on January 16, 1946. The next day, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters offered to settle in those plants in which they had locals with a 15-cents-an-hour raise. The packers refused, but a government fact-finding board was established to investigate the claims of the competing sides. Further, the Secretary of Labor ordered the meat-packing plants seized under provisions of the War Labor Disputes Act. After UPWA threatened not to return to work under the order, Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson assured the union that he would urge adoption of any recommendations of the fact-finding board that were accepted by the packing companies" unions. By March, a 16-cent hourly wage increase was recommended by the board and accepted by the packers and the unions. The Office of Price Administration granted the packers a raise in meat prices to compensate for the wage increases. Later in 1946, at its national convention, the UPWA elected Ralph Helstein as its new union president with the broad support of a "left-center" coalition in the union. Over the course of the next several years, the UPWA leadership would tolerate Communist Party members and other radicals in the leadership and rank and file of the union, while walking a careful, straight line in support of mainstream CIO policies that became increasingly anti-communist.

The political stances of each of the ten UPWA districts varied, with radicals particularly popular in Chicago"s District One; District Three covering Iowa, Nebraska, and Colorado; and District Six in the Northeast. As the cold war and anti-communism heightened, some districts would pass resolutions supporting Henry Wallace or opposing USA foreign policy, while other districts would refrain from such positions or overtly oppose them. As packer-union struggles deepened in 1947 and 1948; as the coalition of manufacturers, Republicans, and Southern Democrats moved more actively against labor; and as the AMC sought to gain control of locals in packing plants, conflict between the left-center coalition and right-wingers known as the "CIO Caucus" heated up dramatically in the UPWA. Many of the conflicts involved issues revolving around the cold war and anti-communism, and different conflicts emerged in the late 1940s around issues of racism in UPWA locals and how active UPWA should be in the struggle against racism in communities and the nation at large.

Anti-Communism and Racism

In 1948 UPWA again engaged in a general strike against the "Big Four" resistance to wage increases. Because the USA cold war policy was developing, along with anti-communist zeal and the opposition to the campaign of progressive presidential candidate Henry Wallace, the level of support to strikers was not as strong. After nine weeks in which the meat packers held firm, injunctions were issued, police hounded strikers in various locales, and nonunion labor replaced striking workers, the UPWA called off the strike and returned to work. Six weeks after the strike, the UPWA met for the most contentious convention during the entire life of the organization.

In an intensely fought election for union leadership, president Helstein was reelected after a challenge from the CIO Caucus. The Caucus warmly endorsed the Truman presidential candidacy and his cold war foreign policy, favored purging the left from the union leadership, and generally took an anti-communist stance. Helstein's reelection allowed for the continuation of a left-center coalition that would more or less remain intact until the union merged with the AMC in 1968. This left-center leadership would remain critical of USA foreign policy, would endorse trade union militancy, would encourage rank-and-file political activity in communities, and would take a pro-active stance against racism in the union and the nation. Subsequent to the 1948 convention, and throughout the 1950s, UPWA would investigate racism in the union, establish Anti-Discrimination Committees at the national level of the union and in each local, would run workshops on racism in American life, and would fund and actively work for the burgeoning civil rights movement. UPWA would become a significant political force in those communities where it was strong (such as Chicago) and nationally.

To a considerable degree the transformation of the USA political economy was shaped by technological change. In the meatpacking industry, automation decreased the number of workers needed to produce the meat product and increased the possibility that production could be decentralized in hundreds of small-sized processing plants (where work forces are smaller, less organized, and more vulnerable). While UPWA was growing as a progressive political force in the USA in the 1950s, technological change was destroying the material base of the work force in the industry itself. Ultimately, with declining workers in the industry, declining UPWA membership, and continuing competition between UPWA and the old AMC, the leadership realized that it must consolidate to maintain any presence in the meatpacking industry. Consequently, in 1968 AMC and UPWA agreed to a merger. In 1978, the enlarged AMC merged with retail clerks into the current United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), a much larger union with a meat packing division.

Why Study the UPWA?

Even though the old UPWA no longer exists, its story is one of class struggle and a sustained struggle against racism. It is important to revisit this history to better understand the positive role of the labor movement in these struggles as well as the negatives and, perhaps, to learn lessons that might still have value to the role of a revitalized labor movement today.

Roger Horowitz writes that the UPWA was a union engaged in "social unionism". By this he means a union engaged in activities addressing the needs of members as workers, as citizens of local communities, and finally as part of the working class in general. Most trade unions in the 20th century have practiced "business unionism""engaging in bargaining and negotiation on behalf of workers' shop floor interests, but not engaging in broader political struggles. Concretely, this has meant that many trade unions have not engaged in the struggle against racism in their unions, communities, or society at large. As has been suggested above, the history of efforts to organize in meatpacking plants was fraught with defeat and bitter conflicts between White and Black workers. Strikes in 1904 and 1921 were lost because the "Big Four" packers were able to use racism to divide packinghouse workers. Armed with this knowledge, Black and White militants struggled to overcome racism as they built the PWOC and later the UPWA. The 1943 constitution of the new union forbade racism in the union. Generally, from the outset of the CIO mass movement, the UPWA stood for racial equality in the union, but, as with many other unions, the UPWA did not actively engage in the fight against racism.

The failed 1948 strike against the "Big Four" packers threatened to destroy the union. Large numbers of members were forced out, because they were fired by the packers. Factionalism surfaced, and during the 1948 convention an anti-communist slate of candidates ran for the various union offices. While the challenge to the incumbent leadership was defeated, president Helstein used the weakened condition of the union to launch an active anti-discrimination program that included efforts to purge union locals of racism and to commit each and every packinghouse local to the struggle for racial justice. From the late 1940s to the 1968 merger with the AMC, the UPWA distinguished itself in the struggle against racism and engaged in civil rights mass actions, even before the rise of the movement against segregation in Montgomery, Alabama. The movement in support of civil rights was driven by rank-and-file initiatives from militant Black and White workers in various locals of UPWA, and by the leadership of the international union itself. Not all members of the 100,000-member union embraced the civil rights agenda and, in fact, some workers from the South and Southwest particularly opposed the unions" commitment to racial justice and integration of union and society. Over time, these elements were forced out of leadership positions in the union, leaving union members either civil rights activists or passive supporters of union efforts.

An early spark to the building of a commitment to the struggle against racism occurred when president Helstein hired sociologist John Hope to study race relations in the union. Hope found high levels of Black participation in union locals (for example Blacks were stewards in 83 percent of UPWA locals and 73 percent of locals had Blacks on executive boards). However, there were significant reflections of racism among UPWA members (30 percent objected to working with Blacks and 90 percent of southern Whites favored segregated eating facilities). Also, Blacks had a presence in significantly fewer job categories than Whites. As a result of Hope's findings, the UPWA at its 1950 convention initiated a broad-based program to expunge racism from union locals. An anti-discrimination department was established in the union at large, and anti-discrimination committees were established in every union local in the organization. These were not just symbolic gestures, but rather structures by which racism would be eliminated from the life of the union.

Union contracts were to prohibit any discrimination by companies, not only for employees, but for job applicants as well. Anti-discrimination conferences were held in the union on a periodic basis, and networking also occurred through national conventions and conferences of union members working for the same employers. Then UPWA strongly encouraged members to be active in the struggle against racism in their communities. Horowitz summarizes the full range of UPWA activities, from shop floor to political arena. In addition to integrating "lily-White departments" on the shop floor and prohibiting discriminatory hiring practices, especially against Black women, "locals attacked discriminatory practices in their communities, primarily restrictions on Black access to bars, restaurants, and public facilities, as well as employment restrictions by local businesses. Finally, packinghouse workers consciously worked with and influenced community-based organizations, especially the NAACP."[7]

Black, White Unite and Fight

Several points can be made about the UPWA commitment to civil rights. First, as suggested above, the struggle to overcome the long history of racial strife in packinghouses was central to the organizing of the PWOC and UPWA since the 1930s. Second, Black militants and White radicals played a fundamental role in the creation of an integrated union. Third, a high percentage of the workforces in packing centers were Black workers, particularly in the industry's central facility in Chicago, where some 10,000 workers were employed. Fourth, UPWA constructed a union structure that gave real power to rank-and-file workers. Each department had at least one shop steward to represent the workers; and stewards, by virtue of their presence in the various job sites, were accountable to members. Also, many locals engaged in militant job actions when foremen tried to speedup production beyond what was called for in the contract, when particular workers experienced discrimination, or when other actions by management were seen as oppressive and discriminatory. Some locals were more militant than others, but the bottom-up structure of the union encouraged participation.

Fifth, president Helstein was fully committed to civil rights, as were most of the district directors representing regions around the country. Also, since the national leadership of the union refused to purge radicals from its ranks, UPWA had in its employ and as officers in union locals many radicals, including members of the Communist Party of the USA. Since they were among the strongest supporters of rank-and-file union militancy and civil rights, their presence reinforced other factors that stimulated UPWA's activism. Sixth, the most militant members of UPWA worked in plants in Chicago. Since Chicago alone had 10,000 UPWA members, and since a higher percentage of Blacks and leftists were in Chicago locals, that city's packinghouse workers set the tone for the organization.

As a result of these factors, therefore, the UPWA, or at least many locals, participated in active campaigns against racism in plants. They also fought for integrated neighborhoods. When Blacks moved into a public housing development in Trumball Park in the early 1950s, race riots occurred. UPWA members organized campaigns to force the city housing authority to open up public housing to Blacks and to protect them from racist responses. When hotels where UPWA meetings were to occur barred Blacks from housing, the union pulled out of the hotels in protest. When the Swift plant discriminated against hiring Black women, the Swift local and the Chicago district launched a public campaign and pressured government to end such practices.

Perhaps most importantly, UPWA was the first union to support the efforts of the newly formed Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. UPWA sent a check for $11,000 to SCLC during the Montgomery bus boycott, and leaders of the union marched with Dr. King from Selma to Montgomery; in Jackson, Mississippi; and participated in other mass actions. When Dr. King brought SCLC to Chicago to campaign for fair housing, the leadership of UPWA joined in. Horowitz argues that "UPWA's antidiscrimination program represented a significant expansion of social unionism" or activism beyond the shop floor. "Its aggressive policies contrasted starkly with the laxity of mainstream CIO organizations and represented an "opportunity found and kept" by its Black members in a manner paralleled, to a far lesser extent, only by industrial unions expelled from the CIO."[8]

Conclusion

A reading of the volumes by Halpern and Horowitz, and the numerous interviews with former packinghouse workers that provide the data for their work, suggests that there is much of historic and contemporary significance in the UPWA.

First, the UPWA, to a degree not achieved by many other unions in the CIO and AFL-CIO, created an integrated union in terms of leadership, policymaking, shopfloor protection of workers, and political program.

Second, political radicals and Black militants provided impetus for the construction of an integrated, class-conscious trade union in the 1930s and 1940s.

Third, the UPWA engaged in civil rights activities in various communities in the North and South, several years before the formation of the SCLC. Taken in conjunction with the efforts of other leftwing unions, it is fair to say that progressive sectors of the labor movement served as a major stimulus, inspiration, and resource for the rise of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. While some sectors of the labor movement historically have impeded the path to racial justice, it is also important to point out that other sectors of the labor movement have played a critical role in whatever advances toward racial justice have been achieved.

Fourth, the history of class struggle and the struggle for racial justice in fact go hand in hand. The working class, by virtue of its role in providing labor power for the construction of society, and as the class that experiences the expropriation of the value that it produces, is a leading force in movements of social change. African-American or woman workers, who often belong to super exploited classes within the working class, constitute sectors that have the possibility of seeing most clearly the exploitative nature of society.

Fifth, UPWA was to a considerable degree a rank-and-file trade union. It practiced union democracy. Shop stewards, committees, job actions in the production process, and picketing for civil rights all are expressions of the will of the membership. All of these activities were institutionalized and encouraged in the life of the union.

Finally, the UPWA story is the story of the success of the old leftwing slogan that still is relevant today: "Black, White, Unite and Fight!"

Notes:

[1] Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1973 (International Publishers, 1976).
[2] Speech by Robert Baker, presented to the Central Labor Union of Brooklyn, January 1902.
[3] Michael Goldfield, The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics (Ann Arbor; University of Michigan Press, 1997).
[4] Rick Halpern and Roger Horowitz, Meatpackers: An Oral History of Black Packinghouse Workers and Their Struggle for Race and Economic Equality (NY: Twayne Publishers, 1996).
[5] See Rick Halpern, Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904-54, (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Roger Horowitz, `Negro and White, Unite and Fight!':A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930-90 (Champaign: University of Illinois, 1997); and Michael Goldfield, The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).
[6] Harry Targ, Interviews with Charles Hayes, Ralph Helstein, and Les Orear (Chicago, December 1982).
[7] Horowitz, Negro and White, Unite and Fight!, p. 104.
[8] Ibid., p. 108.

Reflections on the 29th Convention of the CPUSA

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:32:00 +0000

Reckoning

The US Communist Party held its 29th Convention this past weekend in New York city on the 90th anniversary of its founding. I last attended a CP convention in 1991, a time of great turmoil throughout all parties and movements that identified with socialist or communist ideals. The collapse of the USSR and the fall of quite a few socialist led governments had persuaded many that the entire socialist experiment had failed, that Marxism was false.

For those who had came to view the vision and theories of Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin, more as religion than contributions to economic and political science; for those who followed dogma over facts; for those who believed political regimes by will alone were capable of leaping over the real laws of economic and social development - a reckoning was certainly due.

Return of the Specter

But time has not been kind to those forces who believed Bush the First when he proclaimed the dawn of a new world order in love with the vicissitudes of capitalism, and lawless globalization. Despite vigorous attempts to bury the socialist and communist movements - and social democratic regimes too - and poison the atmosphere against their ideologies, both organization and ideas on the Left appear to be returning in new, more robust and energetic forms, judging by the new wave of activists and rebels attending the 29th CP convention.

Of course the CP has been around for a long time. But it gives every evidence of shedding old skin and reinvigorating itself. It takes multitudes of working people, of many races and nationalities, men and women, gay and straight, youth and seniors - together - to move the mountains of inequity and injustice arising from the past 35 years of financialization of the US economy, and the greatest economic crisis since the 1930's. And the end of this crisis is not yet in sight, which in itself gives rise to new thinking about the nature of capitalism, and its ability to reproduce itself. This convention marked a sharp break with any remaining legacy within the party for narrow or defensive conceptions of party organization. It rejected notions of the path to US socialism other than through the struggles to defeat the ultra right, and raise the wealth and democratic rights of working people, at the expense of monopoly corporate power.

Both old and new defenses from the ideologists of capitalism are being broadly challenged. Robert Rubin's well-managed society whose economy rests in the hands of liberal investment banks has crashed. David Brooks can't decide what to think. The right wing crazies are probably too agitated and medicated to even be allowed to drive a car. In this atmosphere of permanent hot media and ceaseless information streams, no wonder Obama's coolness stood out as a virtue voters thought we might need! Thus, no surprise that Karl Marx, and revised, more democratized conceptions of socialism, are gaining renewed interest as the economic crisis once again confronts society with the grave difficulties of reining in capitalism's terrible instability. Under the right constraints, capitalism has been shown to generate great innovative successes. Yet as each technological revolution overthrows and succeeds a previous order, the conflicts between private anarchy and public stability appear to have grown sharper, to become destabilizing on an ever greater scale. Globalization, left to the management, or non-management might be a better term, of a few large powers and central banks greatly aggravates this conflict on a worldwide scale. Vladimir Lenin, liberated in recent years from the grim Stalin legacy that followed him in Russia, also seems to be making a comeback via diverse and mixed socialist parties and governments from China and Vietnam, to the popular social-democracies in South and Central America.

Emulating the Working Class, Diversity and Equality

The beautiful and diverse composition of the delegates to the CP convention was its most striking feature. Always striving to reflect the character of the US working class in its own composition, the Communist Party has been one of the most integrated political organizations in the United States - going all the way back to its founding. Of all left organizations in the US, a CP meeting is the most like a union meeting - there is a century long and deep commitment to strengthening the organized section of the working class. The party focuses much of its work on, and draws much of its strength from, the US labor movement. Working people need strong unity to exercise power, and organizing multi-national, multi-racial cooperation and solidarity are values that the CP in particular has long placed front and center in every political fight. No change there. Except the breadth and depth of the Obama coalition, building on the always deepening diversity of the US population, makes the CP not so unique in this respect. Perhaps it even makes this part of its task easier. Inequality and inequities abound. Yet young people are raised in a much less segregated, and much more diverse, culture than the generations before.

Delegates to the convention appeared steeped in trade union and working class movements. The African American, Latino, Asia and Pacific island, LGBT, Native American, gender, youth and senior, immigrant and naturalized composition genuinely reflected the real colors and shades, cultures, traditions, lifestyles, dialects and languages of this land. Watching them struggle and reach for agreement on an advanced but realizable progressive platform gives one hope about our country, despite the many storms and furies that seek to divide us.

Sam Webb's Report

The convention opening report of National Chair Sam Webb focused on the compelling need to accelerate the democratic upsurge of working people and all progressive forces combating persistent joblessness, which stands near 20% of the workforce when all are counted, and to defeat a resurgent ultra right-wing, racist offensive designed to derail and destroy the entire Obama progressive reform agenda, and Obama's historic presidency as well. Webb targets the 2010 midterm elections were as the focus of political activity for the next 6 months. Both the ultra-right challenge, and the prospects for deepening reform and kicking up the strength of the coalition that elected Obama, will meet their next big test on November 2, 2010. That's just 160 days from now.

Webb made strong appeals not to underestimate the important and positive changes in the political environment since the campaign and election of Barack Obama. The broad coalition that gave birth to the Obama phenomenon went to sleep for a while after the election. But if the recent primary elections are any sign, it is waking up again! And none too soon! This movement is taking us all to school in the art of grassroots majority politics.

The Ultra-right, racist danger

The dangers posed by unambiguously racist propaganda emanating from not just the fringes but the leadership of the Republican Party -- were specifically addressed by Executive Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner. He argued that the so called "tea party" forces' unchecked resorts to vicious slurs, threats of violence, and provocations are well organized and are picking up steam in some areas of the country. The goal being to distract and divide folks who are in near panic over the prolonged economic crisis. Rand Paul, an open opponent of the old Republican establishment, wins the Kentucky Senate primary. Like his father, so-called Libertarian Ron Paul, this "Tea Party" candidate is a front and cover for outright white supremacist organizations, as was revealed in press conferences following the election where Paul criticized the foundations of de-segregation laws. Fox news pundits and the Limbaugh-talk radio, drug-crazed crowd running the new Republican Party are also riding these racist diversions to challenge longstanding civil rights legislation on affirmative action and bars against public segregation, as well as celebrations of the Confederacy.

Tyner, and many speakers, noted the intense anti-immigrant fever that has broken out like an infected sore in Arizona. The state legislature and Governor enacted a draconian law directing state law enforcement to arrest and demand "papers" of anyone they "suspect" is "illegal." A large, multi-racial and multi national movement to "legalize Arizona" has emerged in response, gaining a hat tip from President Obama, and direct pledge of support from the President of Mexico and other international forces. Yet, as convention participants noted, polls currently show two to one support for the law, both in Arizona and across the US, reflecting again both a profound level of panic over jobs, and frustration with failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Highlights

Despite warnings about the danger from the ultra right, the mood was upbeat at the convention. Convention reports noted the results of the recent primary elections that, in the main, repudiated Republican and ultra right campaigns, and asserted that the majority of voters, while divided on some questions, are in support of the Obama reform agenda and in many cases moving toward even more progressive proposals.

Expressions of greeting and solidarity were received from many communist, socialist and workers' parties, including remarks from an official rep of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Highlights also included reports of many rich experiences of delegates in electoral, grassroots, trade union, health care, May Day, financial reform, and varied community struggles and campaigns. Communists are winning or in serious contention in several races across the country. They are running primarily in the Democratic party. There were strong messages of solidarity from UE Republic Windows, victorious sit-down strikers in Chicago, and from organizers and leaders in the immigrants rights movement, and from the many moving and emotional song, letter and speech tributes, from many nations, at the Saturday evening international solidarity and 90th anniversary celebration.

Reports on the struggle for peace focused on accelerating and advancing the withdrawal from Iraq, returning to regional diplomacy over war in Afghanistan, and addressing the urgent needs to implement the two state solution in Israel-Palestine. The world wide improvement in unity in preventing the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction needs to be buttressed with legislation.

Much attention was paid to building and expanding online media initiatives and responding to increased demands for flexibility in tactics.

Unity

Sometimes in reports on political conventions, especially those on the Left, there is a tendency to overstate, or perhaps mis-characterize the overall impression of unity. Of course all political parties can only move decisively forward on those matters where there is the broadest agreement. There is indeed broad CP unity on strengthening the democratic upsurge behind a reform agenda that is friendly to that of the president. But the convention was not a boring recitation of people rising to associate themselves with the remarks of the chairman. There are very diverse, and quite different, conceptions of how socialism, or mixed market - socialism, or the transition to socialism, is developing in the United States, and around the world.

Sam Webb, Jarvis Tyner and Roberta Wood were re-elected as officers, Chair, Exec Vice-Chair and Secretary-Treasury, respectively.

The meeting opened singing "This land is your land", and closed on the "International."

How come not bigger?

It's an odd and somewhat uneasy juxtaposition of thoughts and feelings that witnesses the truly beautiful composition and spirit of the delegates to this CP convention alongside the small size of the Communist Party - which has not enjoyed a strong base of strength since the beginning of the McCarthy repression in the late 1940's and the 1950's.

I keep asking - how come? How come such a lively outfit as this crowd does not have 20,000, or 100,000 members? The same question could be asked about the organized Left in general. But I think when its answered for the CP, it will be similar to the answer for the Left too. The most important part of the answer is rejecting all political doubts about the importance of the democratic struggle for workers, and not picturing the path to socialism as in any way separate from the tasks of this struggle. The CP focus on labor and its explicit class orientation has always been the essence of its survival strategy even in the darkest times. And now - now that the time for an offensive is at hand - the class base and focus is helping it make the necessary adjustments in political program, strategy and tactics. This convention got that done! Which should alone enable it to grow its membership if folks do as they have pledged!

The name "Communist"

Beyond that, while it did not come up on the agenda, or in speeches, one of the elephants in the room - not far from my own mind, at least - is the linkage between the name "Communist" and the failed USSR, so identified with it. To ask American workers to find their way through all of cold war history in order to help work with and lead the class and democratic fight that the delegates to the CP convention committed themselves to - is asking too much, in this writer's opinion. However, even if that association were to fade with time and be overtaken by the record of sound, sober, serious and solid leadership in this struggle before us, its hard to picture a large workers party in the US calling itself "Communist." Why? Because such a party is tasked in this era chiefly with fully exhausting the democratic struggle to raise workers incomes and rights under capitalism. Further, even strategically such a party must be willing and able to participate in and help lead coalitions capable of running a sustained mixed - part capitalist, part socialist - economy for a likely lengthy transition period. Naming this party "Communist" before such time as the tasks of constructing a society reflecting the communist ideal are fully prepared, is premature in a mass context, at least in the US. However, since all political obstacles to full participation in this great democratic upheaval of our time have been set aside, I am sure this one too will in due course be set aside if it remains a block to the growth that the CP's program and broad approach most definitely deserves. I recommend its serious consideration by all.

Single slate elections

The other elephant in the room, from this writers point of view, is the single slate method of electing leadership. To most Americans familiar with trade unions or other political parties, it would seem strange. Most of the latter have a more "federal" style of electing leadership. That is, geographical and other established party or union organizational components are each given some proportion of seats on the leading committees. Delegates to conventions of more federal organizations do not vote on leading committees as a whole, but by district, state or other type of sector. Officers are typically elected at large, and with a broader mandate than members of leading committees. The CP in the US does it differently, due to three factors. First, preserving a balanced class, racial, national, gender, youth and cultural composition in leadership has always been a high priority - a priority that can sometimes be sacrificed to regional or other sectarian tendencies. Second, the repressions against the CP for years made it very difficult to operate as other organizations. And a fully open or transparent process still poses some risks - although these are declining in the current period - of retaliation from members' employers or other forces meaning harm. Third, the slate method arguably constructs a more harmonious leading collective able to perform multiple tasks, both regional and national, with better coordination. In the single slate election a presiding committee, elected by the delegates, prepares a proposal for the entire incoming national leadership, subject to amendment by the convention.

So, there is cause to proceed carefully and in a manner that does not provoke unnecessary division. But it is hard to see the single slate method adaptable to a larger party without risking bureaucratic distortions. Yes - becoming more "federal" might weaken collectivity and give more ground to factions. But dealing with factions, and building unity, is a never-ending task in all mass organizations. Further, single slate methods can weaken individual leadership accountability to members. Lastly, I don't see the single slate method adapting easily to a party much more focused on elections and electability, as a mass party must be.

Si Se Puede!!

I will no doubt be accused of quibbling about less important matters by some, or exposing liberal ideological tendencies by others. But I remain convinced these are important quibbles, weighty elephants indeed!

Nonetheless, it is clear from this convention that these challenges will be addressed in order, and constructively. These delegates are serious, and practical. They elected officers completely committed to the democratic tasks before working people. They are bowing to no authority but reason and necessity. The enthusiasm, the si se puede!! spirit, the stubborn determination and grit of the delegates and leaders gathered in New York for the 29th Convention of the CPUSA do not look like folks who will be stopped, or driven in any cultish or sectarian direction. They have the main tasks down! And they seem ready to lay it all on the line to move the working class and popular democratic movement forward, for peace, and a higher standard of living. From this convention, I predict they will not be blocked by any trees fallen across the road that stand in the way!

As Robert Frost wrote:

"...And yet [Nature] knows obstruction is in vain: We
will not be put off the final goal We have it hidden in
us to attain, Not though we have to seize earth by the
pole And, tired of aimless circling in one place, Steer
straight off after something into space."

...and across the Universe

yes we can! si se puede!

Obama, the Tea Party, and History: Part II

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:31:00 +0000

From April showers to May grey: April came to a Tea Party climax on tax day, and in May, it drizzled and all but fizzled out; however, May brought much more turmoil. After May Day - the real "Labor Day" throughout the rest of the world - events in the U.S. brought us the worst example of dominant class interests, that is, capitalism run amuck over government, with the worst (preventable) oil spill disaster in U.S. history.

Then, of course, came Arizona's SB 1070 Immigration Bill, directed against illegal aliens or "suspected" illegal aliens (Mexicans "without papers"). San Diego Republicans, such as Duncan Hunter, Jr. and Brian Bilbray, wholly supported the Arizona SB 1070 bill, going much further. The former advocated sending legally U.S. born children of undocumented parents back to Mexico, thinking he was evading the criticism that we break up such families. In order to do that, we would have to amend the U.S. Constitution! Bilbray stated that it's easy to identify illegal aliens by their clothes, their shoes. A non-apologetic follow-up upped the ante with Arizona's HB 2281, mandating a total ban on ethnic studies in public schools, outlawing classes "designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group," including any courses that would "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." The Tea Party supporters of these highly controversial and insensitive Arizona Senate and House laws claimed that ethnic studies separated people out, identifying them as a group as opposed to individuals (abstract U.S. citizens-per se), teaching hatred for America and fostering civil disobedience, violence, and revolution.

In May, my article appeared in Political Affairs, "President Obama, the Tea Party Opposition Movement, and History Repeating Itself." A right-wing Tea Party group copied the article, adding "(Revisionist history)" to the title. "Revisionist" history is a pejorative code word for, in reality, a real, complete history...the other, an-other side of history from the perspective of the exploited and oppressed. The label had been used in reaction to uncovering and exposing an oppressive history of capital against labor, the Civil Rights Movement(s), the Women's Movement(s), the Anti-war Movement(s), etc.

One of the first times I remember reading a bona fide American history book labeled "revisionist" was Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. It was simply the other side of the story, from the Indians' own perspective. But many books throughout history have been attacked as being revisionist. Philip S. Foner's classic, multi-volume work, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, was deemed to be "revisionist." A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn was, of course, also "revisionist," along with Who Owns History? and The Story of American Freedom by Eric Foner, The American Revolution by Herbert Aptheker, The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, and hundreds of thousands of so-called "revisionist history" books. [1]

When I was a young Italian boy growing up in New York, in public, our family was made to feel ashamed of being Italian. There was a self-imposed filial denial of our heritage. There were no ethnic classes in the public schools, no history, no ethnic pride, and no identity of Italian heritage that came without dire prejudicial consequences. That ethnic-racism was even extended and amplified within the Catholic Church, which was actually dominated by the Irish in New York at that time (as well as in the public schools, police department, etc.). My parents fully experienced this before I did. Of course, the funny thing about all of this is that my older brothers, my parents, and I were born in the U.S., and my grandparents had been here since they were about three years old. My parents even denied and faked not knowing how to speak Italian, in public. The idea and ideal back then was to just blend in and hide any cultural identity within the greater non-Italian neighborhood. We led a dual, alienated existence. We were referred to as W.O.P.s, literally, "without papers," which I was called, continuously, during my four years in high school in Southern California, after moving there with my parents.

By the 1970s, when those kinds of prejudicial ideas had changed, for the most part, and cultural pride became "politically correct" (often a pejorative code word for merely "correct"), the general public also accepted, for example, Black Pride, "Black is Beautiful," etc. And critical thinking was now valued, from the history of the struggles in the Labor Movement to the war in Vietnam. Education reflecting what was previously labeled "revisionist history" was now just considered to be history, since it was a much more accurate, complete, and honest history.

For Arizona to ban ethnic studies now, in 2010, is more than just taking "one step forward, two steps back." It is actually an attempt to erase all cultural identity, heritage, and history...albeit a revolutionary one. Historical Latino figures, especially Benito Juarez, and such revolutionaries as Emiliano Zapata, Fidel Castro, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, etc., are now considered to be dangerous subversive influences on that particular ethnic group in Arizona, blaming that kind of education for creating "troublemakers" in Arizona and the U.S. in general...fomenting the overthrow of the government. [2] Where would conservative Arizonians ever get that idea? Perhaps too many (or enough) people reading "revisionist" history read the interpretations claiming that President Polk attacked Mexico and then literally stole most of the Southwestern United States from Mexico, even though we threw some money at them to pay for the theft. Is it of any surprise that one La Raza group has reclaimed that original national birthright that Latinos have been deprived of for so many years under the yolk of oppression and discrimination? [3]

The Nazi, Hermann Goering, reiterated, at his Nuremberg trial defense, history is always written by the victors. He finally seemed to get something right. The empires, the oppressors, the ruling class, and basically the rich, mighty, and powerful dictate their account of history, under glowing pedestals of praise and just causes..."Might makes Right," but it really doesn't, does it?

African-Americans and Latinos have always been subject to racial profiling, even though it was always illegal, unconstitutional. Indeed, so are these new Arizona laws, since you cannot realistically implement SB 1070 without racial profiling. Recently in our history people appearing to be Iranian-Arabic/Muslim have suffered the same fate of harassment. I related many of these occurrences in Terrorism as a Political Philosophy. [4] The glaring contradictions of racism under capitalism have sunk to the lowest meta-meta-level. Even the most simplistic, one-sided "traditional" logic (via Aristotle, in contrast to a more comprehensive, "revisionist" dialectical logic) reveals the inherent contradictions. In theory, we do not profile, torture, etc., but in practice...in reality? Theory and practice, the ideal versus the real, ideas vs. matter, form and content, appearance as opposed to substance, etc. have all been hopelessly and artificially bifurcated in our society, but thought cannot really be separated from action.

Why are these Tea Partiers emphatically supporting more government control by defending Arizona's SB 1070 and HB 2281? They contradict themselves. They supposedly argue against more laws, more government, etc. Where are their intelligent, educated leaders? Their most vocal speakers, such as Sarah Palin, and the rest of the modern day "Know-Nothings," seem to be their leaders. They are hardly a vessel for knowledge and a beacon for liberty. The contradictions multiple as we are reminded of the inscription on the pedestal of "Lady Liberty" in the New York harbor, welcoming immigrants to a land of freedom and opportunity: "Give us your tired, your poor, your hungry, your huddled masses..." Ironically, the original French phrase of "laissez-faire," for "hands off/leave alone" capitalism, used and made famous by Adam Smith in his 1776 Wealth of Nations, also included "laissez-passer," "let pass/hands off borders." The Right seems to have left this second part out of the equation. The contradictions do mount, as does the level of hypocrisy. That is why a good, liberal, well-rounded public education is a prerequisite in the fight against such untruthful, illogical, and a-historical positions taken by the Ignorantsia.

The Tea Party support for laissez-faire capitalism, coupled with their ongoing support for the Arizonian agenda is not at all revolutionary or progressive (nor very American), but is, on the contrary, regressive and reactionary. Nevertheless, the Tea Party Movement, rooted in its anti-government, anti-Obama, and anti-tax crusade has ironically found its ("laissez-faire" free trader) niche in its anti-incumbent electoral victories for libertarians...and yes, over mainstream Republicans. But, make no mistake about it, racism and ethnocentrism have always been a part of the "divide and conquer" strategy by "haves" over "have-nots." Perhaps that is why, in reality, both libertarians and mainstream Republicans have consistently been opposed to an open and equal playing field in economics, politics, and education. They do not see-nor want to admit to-the class struggle...nay, they do not even want to see classes, only "individuals," even though people are oppressed as groups, in spite of the social and economic truth that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

What, quintessentially, is at stake in the struggle over ethnic studies and cultural pride? It is truth, the whole truth, which calls for one to act. The young Karl Marx stated that freedom and dignity are achieved through fighting back; and when asked by young Hegelians, how people could revolt in the midst of shame, Marx's reply was "shame already is a revolution."

As the dialectician, G.W.F. Hegel said, the truth is the whole, not partial truth, partial history, but the whole truth. Partial truths can become the biggest lies. If one chooses to call the completeness "revisionist history," "political correctness," etc., well...language itself is political, is it not? We need to re-establish the other side to our American tradition, our roots and core values; that which is beyond and in addition to possessive individualism - with its unbridled greed and anarchy of production - with a sense of community, commune, social responsibility, and our indubitable interdependence. "It takes a village." Lest we forget our nation's values stated in the preamble of US Constitution, to "promote the general welfare" and common good, and our cherished heritage of the "common-wealth." Is this also "revisionist" history?

Republicans, libertarians, conservatives, Tea Partiers, and whatever one wants to call them, are hopelessly romantic -in a certain sense; they are unscientific (actually, they are anti-scientific; e.g., from denying global warming and evolution to denying the hazards of offshore drilling), unrealistic idealists from a utopian time that never was...a free open market society with a free open marketplace of ideas, reflecting a rugged individualism and total independence. The revamped "laissez-faire" principles of John Locke and Adam Smith (from the 17th and 18th centuries), in the 20th century form of Ayn Rand has, once again, re-emerged within the Tea Party phenomenon, only to reflect ruling class interests, and only to be deconstructed and reduced into a more hopelessly reactionary (Party of "No") solution to the real, unresolved problems of capitalism. But a true, critical analysis is not merely edifying and didactic; it is not merely theoretical -severed from praxis, but is thoroughly dialectical, connecting the historical and aesthetical with the pragmatic, and paving the way for the future.

"May Grey": the dialectical circle recoils...from Goethe to Hegel, in The Philosophy of Right, and, ultimately, with Marx's critique of it, we have truth, as a poetic, romantic, and yet realistic revolutionary notion concerning the relationship of thought to action...

When philosophy paints its grey in grey, then has a form of life grown old.

Grey are all theories...and green alone life's golden tree.

The owl of Minerva spreads its wings, but only at the coming of the dusk.

(Marx) The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

Notes:

1. Many, many others are included in a comprehensive list and bibliography in Terrorism as a Political Philosophy: A Comprehensive Analysis with a Unique and Controversial Perspective, by Frank T. DeAngelis (iUniverse/Writer's Club Press, 2002).
2. There are many, many others, including "thief-turned revolutionary," Pancho Villa, Salvador Allende, and artists such as Frida (Kahlo) and Diego Rivera.
3. National Council of La Raza (NCLR) is a non-profit and non-partisan advocacy group in the United States, not to be confused with La Raza Unida.
4. Terrorism as a Political Philosophy, ibid, cf. preface and introduction, p. 156, w/fts. #240-1, 364-66, etc.

Photo: Tea Party "activists" try to claim President Obama aims to make fascism, socialism, marxism, communism or any other -ism in America. By HeroicLife, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Podcast #116: Labor History vs. the Cold War

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:29:00 +0000

Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes

Political Affairs #116 - Labor History vs. the Cold War

It's June 3rd, 2010. On this episode we talk with Political Affairs contributing editor Ben Sears about his new book, Generation of Resistance: The Electrical Unions and the Cold War, out now in paperback at Amazon.com. So stay with us.

Download the mp3 version of episode #116 here

Defeating the Ultra-Right: Know Your Enemy

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:55:00 +0000

It was decided at the Communist Party, USA's recent national convention that the Party will continue to mobilize primarily in order to combat the efforts of the ultra-right. This article is meant to illustrate the basic reasoning behind two ideologies most exhibited by the modern right-wing. It is not meant to address specific issues with which one differs from the right, but to assist in responding to such issues by summarizing the right's ideological foundations.

The ideologies of the right may seem non-sensical to those who do not count themselves among the conservative camp, but their ideological systems are actually quite coherent. We on the left may disagree with the premises of conservative ideology, as they are not quite material, but it is rather hard to disagree with the philosophical conclusions they reach based on said idealistic premises. Even more disturbing is the unity the right's theories produce - the broad left is only just adopting such a coherent ideological set with which to work together in solidarity.

Working together on the right are the fundamentalist-rooted Bush-Era Conservatism and the newly popular Libertarian Conservatism. As they are very similar, most conservatives will mix the two based on whatever works best for them in a given situation.

Let's examine them...

Bush-Era Conservativism

Most conservative ideology is rooted in a narrow interpretation of Christianity (the premise). All major right-wing figures, from Mike Huckabee to Glenn Beck, believe that the democracy of the United States is rooted in God. The right believes that the Constitution of the United States, especially the Bill of Rights, mirrors God's will, and that the "founding fathers" creation of our nation's highest law was guided by a strong belief in Him.

The founders of our democracy were simply dutiful vessels through which God's wisdom was able to be transcribed into law.

This does not mean that they believe the Constitution was written perfectly. They would argue that, if it was, it would not have included any provision to amend it. It is asserted that any part of the Constitution that has been recognized as wrong, and changed by later amendments, is the fault of the constitution's human scribes, not God.

The conservative idea of God-given rights is important. However, it only goes so far. God would not want us amending the Constitution in a way that rewards the individual things they have not earned. This is where the modern conservative movement really clashes with the left. God-given rights are only meant to protect individuals from the state or collectivism.

This emphasis on the individual is also rooted in Christianity. As conservative commentator Sean Hannity often explains, individuals must live righteously (in a manner consistent with God's will) if they want to succeed. "Sinners" must be allowed to fail.

This belief provides a justification for capitalism. The right believes a strict Christian life is recognized by others as both morally right and highly productive, an idea that has, in turn, perverted Christian theology in a way some educated as Pentacostals might attest to. According to this theory, Christians naturally succeed in capitalism. If they do not, it is either due to some fault of their own, or efforts by liberals to reward the lazy. The social safety net liberals, and progressives, desire only serves to aid bad behavior (sin) by not letting those who have strayed "experience the consequences" of their bad behavior. Progressives, consciously or unconsciously, exist outside of "God's will."

This mode of thought provides us the reason why the right believes the death penalty is justified, while abortion is not. Those on death row have sinned to the greatest degree, so it is justified to execute them according to this theory. The fetus, on the other hand, is 1) human (with a soul), according to the Bible, and 2) must be given the chance to prove itself worthy of life.

Pure capitalism's justice also provides the right with the means to oppose affirmative action. They attempt to avoid being exposed as racist by stating that they are color-blind, "just like capitalism," and that it is actually the liberals race-conscious efforts to promote racial equality via social programs that results in African Americans being disproportionately represented among the poor. To many conservatives, African Americans are disproportionately poor because liberal programs have led their culture to "stray far from positive (European Christian) values" by not "demanding hard work from the individual." "The liberal's idea that African Americans need assistance to succeed in capitalism is racist, in that it does not give African Americans credit for being able to change themselves," conservatives like Ward Connerly spout.

This notion is not only idealistic, in that it does not recognize the material barriers that continue to limit what an oppressed group can achieve, but it is also racist, actually assuming European Christian values are, inherently, the best version of values, and that they ought to be adopted by anyone who wants to become increasing self-determining. It blames the victims for not being more like their oppressors.

The conquering "Christian soldier" of the past has been re-incarnated as today's Culture Warrior.

Nearly any social issue you can think of can be examined using this cohesive theory of God-based rights and the duty of the individual to act in accordance with "God's desires." That is why it is such a powerful theory for the right. Repeated non-stop on conservative talk-radio, expect it will spread unless we on the left affectively address it.

Libertarian Conservatism

Libertarians make up a sizable portion of the post-Bush conservative movement, and are a large part of those represented in Tea Party associations. While they are conservative, particular philosophical emphasis make them worth distinguishing from other mainstream conservatives. While the primary focus of conservatives is the individual's relation to God, the primary focus of libertarians is the individual, alone. While this may lead to minor disagreement between libertarians and other conservatives when the issue of moral legislation is debated, the two camps tend to be held close by a common desire to promote "free" trade.

Libertarianism owes much of its popularity to the writer Ayn Rand. Rand's stories focus on the individual and the ego. They have a philosophical basis in Aristotle's ethics, but merge Aristotle's idea of self-development with philosophical egoism. For Rand, collective action always falls short of action taken by individuals because of her assumption that collective action requires that those with the best skills compromise with less qualified individuals. Responding to this idea, and her declaration of selfishness as a virtue, Rand believed that competition would lead to the most beneficial organization of society, and proposed laissez-faire capitalism as the way to achieve that society.

Economist Milton Friedman further contributed to libertarian views when he promoted the idea that economists should concern themselves primarily with mathematical problems in economics, instead of any social considerations, the general assumption being that a healthy capitalism resolves social problems itself, and that any attempt to resolve such concerns actually harms the market's ability to solve such problems.

These views grew all the more popular with time.

Alan Greenspan, ex-Chair of the Federal Reserve, recently illuminated us to the fact that his actions as creator of the recent market boom and bust were based on beliefs sympathetic to Rand and Friedman.

At the basis of most libertarian theory is the idea that human beings have an exceptional consciousness, and that this consciousness can be developed into something greater. This much is shared my Marxism, as it and libertarianism are both modern philosophies focused on human development. However, libertarianism believes that what limits individuals' ability to realize themselves is any commitment to give, or accept, assistance. To libertarians, self-realization is necessarily a result of a person's total, independent control over their pursuit of individual self-realization.

This leads libertarians to promote the idea of society as being in a state of total competition, represented by an idealized laissez-faire capitalism.

In economics, the state of society libertarians desire is known as exhibiting perfect competition. While most capitalist economists recognize perfect competition as theoretical and in constant flux, libertarians largely believe that perfect competition is attainable. In this state of society, individuals are perfectly able to work wherever they chose, and there are no forces inhibiting the ability of anyone from starting their own business. Further, prices are kept low by the total absence of any collusion between industries, and growth is determined solely by a product's ability to meet the needs of consumers.

Some libertarians even go so far as to state the all forms of chauvinism disappear in laissez-faire capitalism, because the market is more interested in the skills of a person rather than their race, gender, class, or any other arbitrary distinction.

This notion is what has lead Tea Party backed Republican candidate Rand Paul to state that he would repeal the portion of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits acts of discrimination from being committed by private business.

According to libertarians, any governmental or purposeful social actions that influence the market only maintain old chauvinisms and prevent perfect competition from being realized.

Libertarianism is, essentially, capitalist utopianism.

It totally overlooks the individual capitalist's ability to use the power they have accumulated to their own ends.

Conclusion

If we are to neutralize the power of the conservative movement, we must dismantle their theoretical assumptions. Debating surface level issues is like removing the head of a Hydra, only to find that it will sprout two heads in its place.

In response to the mainstream conservative movement, we must expose their statements about what God desires to others by linking their own, material desires to their statements. We should utilize research performed on so-called religious political movements that illustrate their perspective is not devoid of material influence, but is self-serving (at best) and chauvinistic (at worst). Our greatest ally in this effort are the multitude of religious groups who are open to membership from all types of people, realize themselves as progressive as such, and are willing to take action that is not self-serving.

In response to the libertarian movement, we must expose them as another utopian trend. History is flush with evidence that, as regulation is removed from the market, the economy tends towards control by fewer and fewer individuals.

George Orwell was quite right when he observed, in a response to Austrian economist F.A. Hayek, that "the problem with competitions is that someone eventually wins them."

Further, we can easily illustrate that these corporate individuals' represent a worldview tied to the specific race, sex, gender, and sexual preference of those who have come before them, and do not care to enact real change.

While it may surprise a Libertarian, a Communist is certainly not surprised that the government, charged with representing the wishes of the people, was the entity that made it illegal for businesses to discriminate based on race, by passing the Civil Rights Act; or disability, by the passing of the ADA; and in numerous other instances.

While the major conservative beliefs are largely idealistic, our theory is based on materialism. The issues addressed by Marxism are bound to adapt when it encounters new material, the method with which to address them remains true. The same cannot be said for our political adversaries, for whom world experience is already removing bits of their idealistic theories' foundations. If we engage in well-informed and serious debate, I am confident in our ability to reach vindication in the long-term.

Photo: Fibonacci, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Video: Sam Webb, Keynote Speech to CPUSA Convention

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:30:00 +0000

Don’t Burn the Books: Ban the Courses that Use Them

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:25:00 +0000

The state of Arizona recently passed an "immigration law," which pandered to peoples worst chauvinist sentiments, a law in clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which establishes both national citizenship and federal supremacy over the states on such questions. (Actually, rules governing immigration and citizenship were explicit in the Constitution and national matters before the 14th amendment was enacted).

The law has been denounced by President Obama and anti-chauvinists through the U.S. Although the law is popular among those who are susceptible to arguments which scapegoat immigrants for the loss of jobs and the increase in crime, it has hurt Arizona's reputation and most probably the tourist sector of its economy as various groups have been to cancel conferences and conventions in the state

Arizona has now passed a state law barring the teaching of ethnic studies courses in public schools which "promote ethnic solidarity." The law stems from a Chicano studies program in the Tucson school district, but it has much broader implications. Although the school board has pledged to continue its program, which reaches three percent of the 55,000 students in the district, whether it can sustain this is questionable, since the law, which goes into effect on December 31st, gives the state the power to cut state funding by as much as ten percent for districts that refuse to comply,

First, the law is clearly an act of censorship, a restriction on both academic and intellectual freedom and a violation of the First Amendment. I am immediately reminded of the World War I attacks on "hyphenated Americans" (Irish Americans, German Americans, etc) the official banning of German language teaching and sudden name changes, e.g., calling sauerkraut "liberty cabbage" and hamburgers "Salisbury steak," all in the name of "100 percent Americanism."

There was also a great deal of violence directed against German Americans and others considered to be anti-war-violence indirectly sanctioned by state policy.

Arizona has not yet announced that Cinco de Mayo events will be banned in schools and tacos will now be called chip sandwiches in school lunchrooms, but these are certainly possibilities.

The movements over the generations for African American studies, Asian American studies, Latino studies programs, and women's studies program, have enriched and broadened education. They have been open to all students and in many states students who seek certification to teach in public schools are encouraged to take such courses to make them better teachers.

Do such courses promote ethnic solidarity? I have certainly known various nationalists who teach them in such ways, but they are really a small minority. I have also known those who teach that the U.S. was a middle-class democracy from the time of the revolution, that slavery was relatively unimportant and not so bad, and that all U.S. Foreign policy from the Mexican War to the Spanish American War to the A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the interventions in the Korean and Vietnam Wars were wholly justified. They are also a relatively small minority (and one that I would never ban) although what they encourage is chauvinistic nationalism and they are far more privileged and supported by public and private funding than any ethnic nationalists.

Arizona reactionaries and their collaborators in the Arizona legislature may think that they have the right as a state to do what they want to people who cross the U.S. border from Mexico and to deny Mexican Americans and others the right to study their history in a state that was until 1849 a part of Mexico.

But an attack on one is ultimately an attack on all. In principal, this law will be applied to African American and Asian American studies programs. And one can ask how it will affect general curriculum. What will happen to the history of Native Americans, the history of the Civil Rights movement, the history the United Farm Workers, the history of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, in which the Arizona political authorities played a significant role, albeit far less known then their compatriots in California.

The only exemption in the law is for courses devoted to the Holocaust, even though as some have pointed out, such a courses may promote "ethnic solidarity" among Jewish student, and depending on how they are, taught a negative view of Germans. Also although former Vice President Dan Quayle was unsure of this when he was asked about it long ago at a press conference, the Holocaust of course didn't happen in the United States.

We should stand with the Tucson school district and all other non Anglo chauvinists in Arizona who resist this law. Its contemporary version of "100 percent" Anglo-Americanism is an affront to the best traditions of the United States, largest multiethnic democratic republic in history.

We should also demand that the U.S. Department of Education stand with the Tucson district in opposing this law and inform the State of Arizona, which has threatened major funding cuts for those who do not comply with this act of censorship, that it will re-examine its funding of Arizona educational programs because of the laws negative effects on education.

Photo: Pamhule, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Book Review: A World of Trouble

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:22:00 +0000

A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East - from the Cold War to the War on Terror
Patrick Tyler
New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2009

October 29th, 1956, just days after the Soviet Union invaded Hungary with ground forces, the Israeli army swept in Egyptian territory. This action launched the first stage in an ultimately failed joint Anglo-French effort to regain its colonial possession: the Suez Canal and the $100 million in revenues each year their control over it produced.

To achieve this aim, British and French officials clearly used Israel's anxiety about its security and its ambitious expansionist goals in a region with regularly shifting frontiers, alliances and power blocs. In existence as a nation for just eight years, and having been recognized by the two major competing global powers - the US and the USSR - Israel came under attack by its neighbors. In the ensuing conflict, outrages and atrocities were committed on both sides with the intention of demonstrating power and resolve to whip the other into accepting their presence.

Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, however, was not satisfied with a stalemate or any efforts by the US or other countries to pursue a peace process. According to Patrick Tyler, in his new book, A World of Trouble, Ben-Gurion sought military supremacy, control of atomic weapons, as well as new strategic alliances that would help defeat Israel's neighbors.

Into this complicated situation stepped Egyptian dictator Gamel Abdel Nasser. Nasser had risen to power with the aid of the Egyptian Communists and the far-right Muslim Brotherhood, both of whom he subsequently rounded up and housed in what, to many people fresh from the experience of the Holocaust in Europe, seemed like concentration camps.

Nasser then sought to establish himself as the leader of the emergent Arab nationalist movement by challenging Israel's right to exist and by challenging the regional hegemony of the global powers that had helped Israel into existence - Britain, the USSR and the US.

Initially courted by the Eisenhower administration, especially after he began killing and imprisoning communists, Nasser sought massive US military and development aid. The Eisenhower administration sent positive signals, but with the added condition that Nasser abandon his independence and become a US satellite in the Cold War.

Nasser responded by showing up at the Bandung Conference in 1955 as a participant in the Non-Aligned Movement, shaking hands with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and rubbing shoulders with world leaders who had rejected US advances.

Tops blew in Washington. A consensus emerged in the Eisenhower administration that Nasser had to go, but through non-military interventionist means. This decision came hard on the heels of the Eisenhower-ordered CIA operations in Guatemala to unseat democratically-elected President Jacobo Arbenz and and Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh.

Still, Nasser survived Washington's wrath, if only because he remained strategically useful to the Eisenhower administration against Soviet influence in the Middle East.

Tyler's well-researched volume traces the this example of the US government's interventions and machinations in the Middle East from the 1950s through the George W. Bush administration. It draws heavily on de-classified and hard-to-find government documents to give an insider's view of high level diplomatic meetings and communications between US presidents and other top officials as well as top diplomats and leaders of Israel, Egypt, the Soviet Union and other countries. Tyler's work is often revealing, especially about Israel's nuclear ambitions beginning in the 1950s and its secret strategic and tactical goals through the extensive period under study.

This must-read book documents the dynamic, often contradictory positions the US government adopted toward Middle East issues. While history not political solutions is the subject of Tyler's work, the book reveals the need for a radical re-orientation of US aims, including a diplomatic surge that includes all of the regional actors as equals, presses for a long-term settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that recognizes Israel's security concerns but also the special rights of the Palestinian people, their need for a recognized state, and for political and economic development on a cooperative and equal basis.

Poetry, June 2010

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:00:00 +0000

A SMUGGLED LETTER

I live in an asylum
Where conscience is forbidden
Our fat keepers
Are ourselves
So they treat us well
At feeding time
Our troughs are full
We lack nothing essential
And if we never complain
And make our own beds
And march in formation
To perform assigned chores
Our keepers allow us
To murder our children.

by Ed Stone

ALL-AMERICAN

The occasions increase
When we must prove
That we can love.

The opportunities fall
All around us
Like rice
At a wild wedding.

Or like strings
Of lighted firecrackers
Flacking the dizzy air
On the Fourth of July.

These days and nights
Circumstances are flowering
Like cancers of blue bones
Testing the invisible marrow
Of being human.

This test
Is the last.

by Ed Stone

All

Wonderful story
of Gus Hall
in the prison yard,
heart of McCarthyism fifties

told over and over again
inside the Party in later years
no one sure if it really happened,
embroidered, or made
out of whole cloth,

in the end
maybe doesn’t matter,
having taken on
aura of working class myth

like the coal miner who shouted
you can’t mine coal with bayonets,

or the textile worker ‘s
we want bread, but we want
roses also,

Gus playing baseball in the yard,
tough looking Italian guy
asking him who he is
and what’s he in for,

he says, Gus Hall,
a leader of the Communist Party,

-- advocating the overthrow
of the government –
real poppycock,

(actually we were taking a stand
against the banks and corporations)

the guy standing back
a minute, marone,
scratching his head
as he calls his friends over,

Gus there,
third day in the yard,
not yet knowing
what to expect,

bracing for the worst, perhaps,
hoping for the best,

but knowing enough that,
whatever happens, as in the steel mill,
the important thing is
to stand one’s ground

then, just as quickly
as he asked the question,
the same guy goes on
to introduce him
to others in the yard

as if he was head
of some rival tribe
he had not yet heard of
and worthy of some respect,

head of the bank robbers
meet Gus Hall,
head of the Communist Party,
head of the fencers
meet Gus Hall,
head of the Communist party,
head of the the numbers runners,
meet Gus Hall,
head of the Communist Party

and so on
and so forth
until it was time
for roll call.

Later, after the others leave,
one guy who had been listening
real quiet in the corner,
pipes up,

” you’ll find the grub
is not as bad in the third line
on Fridays and Sundays.

Ask for Tony
at the commissary
and tell him Louie G. said
to take care of you.”

“Communist Party,
huh?”
he says,
pausing thoughtfully.

“You are the guys
J. Edgar Hoover
really hates.
I heard of you guys.

You are the ones who
organize the unorganized
and stick up
for the working people.

Man, I thought
we were bad.
We just rob
banks.

You guys
want it all.”

by Chris Butters

Originally appeared in Pemmican.