People Before Profit blog

Badgering the Republican Right in Wisconsin

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:00:00 +0000

After rewarding his corporate supporters with a $117 million tax break, Wisconsin's newly-elected Tea Party Governor, Scott Walker, manufactured a $137 million budget shortfall in order to go after public employees, including their basic civil right to form a union and bargain collectively. As Stanley Kutler reports on Truthdig.org, prior to Walker's huge tax giveaway to corporations, Wisconsin's non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau predicted a budget surplus of $67 million for 2011.

Despite this glaring fact, many of the public employee unions and their Democratic allies in the Wisconsin state legislature told Walker and the Republicans they would agree to wage freezes and benefit cuts to help contribute to balancing the budget, if they in turn would agree to drop their demand to eliminate collective bargaining rights for state and municipal employees.

Since that appeal for negotiation and compromise, Walker has stubbornly refused to reciprocate. On MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell in late February, one Republican legislator, when asked by a Democratic colleague about this attempt to come to an agreement, sheepishly said, "I'm not empowered to negotiate," while refusing to say whether there was a chance he might change his vote on the bill.

Walker's last stand isn't about balancing Wisconsin's budget. It's really about attacking unionized teachers, sanitation workers, janitors, nurses, police, firefighters, and other public employees who collectively bargain and denying them the right to make their voices heard in the workplace.

Indeed, Walker has gone out of his way to blast Wisconsin's state, county and municipal employees who provide the people of Wisconsin vital public services such as rescuing and caring for the sick and injured, putting out fires, plowing the roads, hauling the garbage, driving the buses, and teaching our children. Last November, then governor-elect Walker claimed that public employees were "the haves" while taxpayers were the "have-nots," thus implying that public employees earn vastly higher amounts than comparable workers in the private sector. Walker made this comment at the Republican Governors' Association annual conference, a gathering backed by millions of dollars from corporate donors such as the now infamous Koch brothers, in what amounted to a Republican hate-fest against public employees and labor unions. As the LA Times reported, Walker's comments were made in conjunction with other right-wing celebrities like former Minnesota Republican governor and presidential aspirant, Tim Pawlenty, who described public employees as likely "to stick a shiv in us," while Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said he hears little more than "crap" from public employees in his state.

Walker is ignoring the facts to claim that public employees earn too much and are therefore the cause of the budget shortfall, since new data on the pay and benefits of Wisconsin's public employees shows they are compensated about four percent less than comparably educated private sector workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

A basic democratic right, the right to organize a union and bargain collectively is what is at stake in the Battle of Wisconsin. It is at stake in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and New Jersey, where extremist Republican governors are pushing similar Koch Brother-funded schemes to strip first public employees, then also private sector workers of their right to bargain collectively about working conditions, health care, pensions, and wages. Public employees in Wisconsin have already agreed to take a 12 percent cut in wages and contribute more toward their health insurance premiums, but they firmly refuse to give up the basic right to organize and bargain collectively, a last minute budget provision Gov. Walker pulled out of thin air at the urging of the Koch Brothers and other corporate backers. (For Walker's role as a Tea Party-inspired union buster, listen to his lengthy telephone conversation with the fake "brother Dave Koch.")

What is at stake in Wisconsin is a basic question of democracy. All workers should have a say in their workplace, and all workers should have the legal right to organize a union.

This is, in fact, a civil rights issue that goes beyond just dollars and cents to the very heart of the democratic process. Walker and his Republican allies want to eliminate the voice with legal and organizational clout that US workers have in the workplace. So far the governor and his Republican allies (the beneficiaries of tons of anonymous corporate cash following the corporation = person "free-speech" ruling by the Supreme Court in "Citizens" United case) have been unable to demonstrate the dollar-saving effect on the current budget "crisis"of union-busting and the stripping away of collective bargaining rights.

Since Walker one Monday a few short weeks ago introduced his nearly 200-page budget (with the stripping of bargaining rights buried deep within it) and tried to ram it through the following day, 14 courageous Democratic senators have fled the chamber and the state of Wisconsin in protest, while the state capitol and legislative chambers have been rocked by popular protests against the Governor's bullying tactics and budgetary deceit. But the governor stubbornly refuses any dialogue with either the Democratic lawmakers or the public employee unions. It's all about increasing power, more power for the corporations, more power to break the labor movement, and more power to bully a low-wage, non-union workforce with impunity. There has also, not surprisingly, been no dialogue with the people of Wisconsin about the Governor's massive tax giveaways to the state's biggest corporations.

The bottom line in Wisconsin is this: to claim the right to silence public employees is to claim the right to deny the taxpaying citizens of Wisconsin a voice in how their government is run. By denying workers the right to bargain collectively, Governor Walker is denying them any say in the conditions in which they work to provide the people of Wisconsin with the vital public services they need, as well any say about their healthcare benefits, pensions and wages. It is important to note that in contract negotiations public employee unions across the country have agreed time and again to trade lower wages for good healthcare coverage and decent pensions.

Walker counted on massive corporate support for his union-busting actions. He also counted on support from the Tea Party (itself lavishly bankrolled and manipulated by the Koch Brothers) and the entire leadership of the Republican Party. And he got it.

What he didn't count on was the swift, dynamic and inspiring opposition to his plans. Public workers – from teachers to cops to firefighters – have joined the protests in Madison, where the crowds have grown larger with each passing day. University students and public school students joined the protests too, along with NFL stars and civil rights and community leaders. Even some veterans of the people's revolt in Egypt have been spotted in the crowd.

The scope of the reaction to Walker's anti-working families law has been so broad that similar protests have quickly spread to other states. In Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, Republican governors with legislative majorities plan to force working families to pay for budget shortfalls (essentially the result of Wall Street crime, the economic debacle it caused, and corporate tax-dodging), while attempting to eliminate workers' rights to form unions and collectively bargain.

Walker, to the amusement of many, even trotted out the old corporate line that the protesters were "outside agitators" stirring up trouble in Wisconsin's normally peaceful communities. Despite that laughable remark, recent polling from USA Today/Gallup indicates that six in 10 Wisconsin residents oppose Walkers' bill.

The labor movement, in a broad alliance with the progressive grassroots, is now proving itself to be the anti-Tea Party, re-invigorating the democratic forces that brought Barack Obama into office by its principled stand in defense of the democratic rights of Wisconsin's public sector employees.

The courage shown by working people and their unions in Wisconsin (and other states where workers face Republican attacks) is actually about much more than stopping anti-working families bills from becoming law. In his rousing speech to protesters on the steps of the capitol building in Madison, Jesse Jackson called the protests "the Superbowl of workers' rights."

"When we fight, we win," said Jackson.

The stand taken by labor and its supporters in Wisconsin is also about energizing and uniting a movement to take back the country from the Republicans and the Tea Party. "This is the first round in the battle," said Reverend Jackson, "to recapture the integrity of our nation, as we fight for the rights of working people. "This is a fight to rebuild the country from the bottom up," he continued. "We seek to restructure our economy, not just refortify it."

"We've seen in the last few years greed unleashed on our society," said Jackson, "and a huge collapse of our banking industry, driven by greed without oversight," citing the constantly revolving door that connects Wall Street to Washington by means of a reliable network of ex-politicians turned lobbyists. "Those who oversaw it were as guilty as those who were greedy," he said.

Most importantly, the stand in Madison, Wisconsin is energizing a national movement to fend off Republican attacks on working families and turn the country in a new direction – toward increased political power and democracy for America's working families and a long overdue increase in the amount of tax dollars big corporations and the wealthiest two percent contribute to the public treasury.

Photo by PeoplesWorld.org

Swindling Seniors – And All Workers?

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:59:00 +0000

The attack on Social Security – a major threat in its own right – is actually the centerpiece of a broad-based assault on all retirement security and the pensions of American workers. As private sector workers have seen their employers blow off their pension obligations, the pensions of public workers and public school employees in many states are increasingly at risk.

In Pennsylvania, for instance, teachers and public workers last fall managed to beat back an attempt in the state legislature to switch the pensions for future hires from “defined benefit” to “defined contribution” plans, which would have thrown their pension savings on the stock market to sink or swim. And that was before the Republicans took control of the lower house and the election of a conservative Republican governor who signed a “no new tax” pledge during the campaign. With the changes in the state capitol and the state looking at a reported $4 billion budget hole, a renewal of the attack could come at any time. Next door in New Jersey, one of Governor Christie’s favorite targets is his state’s public pensions. A year ago he said, “Make no mistake about it, pensions and benefits are the major driver of our spending increases at all levels of government … we cannot …fund a system that is out of control….”

So, what is really going on with this broad attack on Americans’ retirement security? A couple of points need to be made up front in this discussion. First, the attack on pensions is a part of the general threat to the livelihoods and the unions of public sector workers, both and active and retired. Note, for instance, New Jersey Governor Christie’s lumping “pensions and benefits” together as the main culprit in state and local government spending. (Here Christie at least does us the favor of putting active and retired workers in the same boat. On the other hand, a favorite tactic of politicians is to pit active workers and retirees against each other as if they are in competition for a finite and limited pot of money.) Second, when officials discuss the “pension crisis,” they pretend that they can predict fiscal and economic conditions decades into the future. This allows them to transform a possible worst case scenario at some far-off point into an immediate crisis.

One has to wonder about the truth of this doomsday outlook. According to the Pew Center on the States, for instance, states aim to “save enough to pay 80 percent or more of their pension bill. Pew found that overall, states had set aside enough to pay 84 percent (in other words above the target) of the bill but 21 states were below the 80 percent target.” How much below? Out of the 50, only seven states are currently setting aside less than 75 percent of the recommended level. Talk about a contrived crisis.

With this background in mind, an interesting article by economist James K. Galbraith caught my attention. The article, entitled “Actually the Retirement Age is Too High” makes a case for reversing the wide spread trend of calling for workers to retire later than they already do and to spend more of their “golden years’ on the job. Galbraith argues that “productivity gains … mean that we can and do enjoy far more farm and factory goods than our forebears … only a small fraction of today’s workers make things.” He says that, given our current level of unemployment, young workers should get “first crack” at the available jobs and that “older people who would like to retire and would do so it they could afford it should get some help. The right step is to reduce, not increase, the full benefits retirement age.” He suggests dropping the age at which workers become eligible for full Social Security to 62 (for a three year trial period to begin with). With a full pension and medical care, retirees “will be happier. Young people who need work will be happier. And there will also be more jobs. With pension security, older people will consume services until the end of their lives.” (There is research to support Galbraith’s proposal. A study by the National Institute on Retirement Security [NIRS] entitled “Pensionomics” is available on line at nirsonline.org.)

Galbraith’s article is brief and he does not pursue the implications of his proposal or state what seems to be his logical conclusion. If it is true that our society has reached the point where “a small fraction of today’s workers” can produce enough goods for everyone, then now would seem to be just the right time to undertake a massive effort to do two things: 1) ensure that the wealth produced is fairly distributed and 2) train and educate the additional doctors, nurses, teachers, technicians, scientists, writers and others so sorely needed to make all of our people, young and old, “happier.”

Photo courtesy AFL-CIO

Class Warfare Extends to Senior Citizens

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:58:00 +0000

Older Eskimos, according to the story, didn't retire to a golden age, but were gently placed on ice floes to freeze. Such an idea may be more humane than what the American ruling class and its political stooges have in mind for seniors.

American retirees face an imminent threat of losing their Social Security, their pensions, and their health insurance coverage. What's more, retirees make good victims in the assault against the working class – they generally vote for their own executioners!

The fastest growing age demographic has consistently voted Republican, and continued to do so even when President Obama swept the younger age groups. While union retirees, who are much better informed, voted with their unions in even higher proportions than active union members, the over-65 population in general continued to vote Republican in 2010, even when some of the right-wingers had let it be known that they intended to slice and dice retiree benefits!

Not so long ago, some American seniors had an enviable life. Their retirement packages were guaranteed for life, and there was no historical precedent for taking anything away from them. The LTV corporation pioneered the scheme, around 1986, of throwing retiree benefits into the general pool of "unsecured debt" during bankruptcy proceedings. Retirees argued, rightly, that their pensions and health care benefits were not "unsecured debt" but their own income that had been delayed until retirement. They could have, they argued, taken their job benefits in the form of larger salaries, instead of delayed benefits. But LTV shopped around until they found a bankruptcy court that would massacre retirees, and the rest of America's corporations quickly followed the precedent.

Many unionists think that company-controlled pensions and health care were an accomplishment of far-sighted union leaders. United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther is especially credited with inventing the idea in the so-called "Treaty of Detroit" around 1950. Other historians may agree that Reuther was the first to accept these benefits in a union contract, but say that the actual idea came from the CEO of General Motors, Charles Wilson.

In his shockingly candid account, Rainbow at Midnight, historian George Lipsitz explains that Wilson wanted to tie labor to General Motors and the other big corporations who would benefit from pension investment money. He wanted to delay paying workers their benefits, and the tax advantage didn't hurt at all. Wilson wanted to divide the working class into those who had good pensions and those who didn't. He wanted General Motors employees to have strong incentives for staying with the company and making fewer waves. He wanted employees to feel that they had a big stake in capitalism and the stock market, where their future pensions were invested. Lipsitz writes, "The new pension plans gave union leaders added incentive to cooperate with management. The fund functioned as an indirect kind of union shop, tying workers to the union as well as the company. The rank and file would be more amenable to schemes of labor-management cooperation and less likely to risk being fired... Within a year of the agreement between GM and the UAW, more than eight thousand new pension plans went into effect in the United States" (page 246).

In Europe, nations with strong and socially conscious unions were implementing government pensions and health care after the World War. In the U.S., corporations maintained control of both. In the 1970's, as the post-war prosperity exhausted itself in America and foreign competition re-asserted itself, those same corporations sharpened their knives and went against the time-weakened and unsuspecting working class. The slaughter, delayed but not defeated by the stronger unions, is still underway.

Social Security and Medicare were special cases. The first came from President Roosevelt's visionary assistant, Frances Perkins, in 1935. Republicans opposed it then and on every possible occasion since, but it remained America's best and most successful program. Medicare was added in the 1960s under President Lyndon Johnson. The National Committee for Senior Citizens, NCSC, largely under the control of the Auto Workers union, took credit.

Neither program met all the needs of retired workers, but both were a great deal of help and were generally improved upon. In 2003, Republicans led by President George W Bush added a fatally flawed prescription drug program to Medicare. Most of its worst features were corrected in the Democratic Party's 2009 health care reform.

Today, anti-worker politicians claim that Medicare is one of the biggest contributors to what they call America's biggest problem: the federal deficit. Instead of supporting the 2009 health care reform, which would actually reduce the long-term deficit, they are calling for its repeal and for slashing Medicare benefits.

Those same anti-worker politicians and their corporate sponsors believe that they can also convince American workers to give up Social Security. They same that it is the largest contributor to the deficit, that it is an "entitlement" like welfare, that its fund is exhausted, that its only assets are "worthless IOU's," that workers live much longer now and can easily work far beyond the retirement age, and that there aren't enough workers in America to support the retirees. Check the box for "false" on every allegation.

* Social Security has its own pay-as-you-go funding and has nothing to do with the federal deficit. It never did.

* Social Security was never an entitlement and still isn't. The payments come from a fund supplied by equal payroll taxes on employees and employers.

* The Social Security trust fund is solvent until 2037, when it could either reduce the payment schedule or take an easy fix, raising the cap on taxable income, for more revenue.

* The Social Security trust fund, while no longer in a "lock box," consists of U.S. government securities, generally thought of as the safest investment in the world.

* While Americans on average do live longer than before, the averages are skewed by the well-to-do, whose gain in life expectancy is much higher than that of workers.

* Even though there are more retirees relative to active workers than before, the difference is more than compensated for by the increase in each workers' productivity. A simple spreadsheet of annual productivity gains from the Bureau of Labor Statistics will show that today's workers produced 413 percent as much real value per hour in 2010 than they did in 1947. In other words, one worker today could support four times as many retirees as he/she supported in 1947!

In short, all the arguments against retirees and retirement benefits are nothing but ruling-class lies for their class war against us. Our side, the workers' side, is not giving in. The older NCSC has given way to the modern Alliance for Retired Americans, with much broader and more effective union support. A growing number of state and local retiree organizations, led usually but not always by unionists, is fighting back with the truth and organized political power. They merit our support.

Podcast: Racial Segregation in American Cities

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:57:00 +0000

On this episode we play the second part of our interview with historian and author Luther Adams on his new book, Way Up North in Louisville: African American Migration in the Urban South, 1930-1970. For the map discussed in the interview see here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/5011003858/

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Podcast: African Americans and Migration in the South, an Interview with Luther Adams

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:50:00 +0000

We want to send a shout out to the working families of Wisconsin who are standing up to the abuses of power by the Republicans who want to balance their state's budget on the backs of working people to pay for tax cuts for the rich. And we play the first part of our interview with historian and author Luther Adams about his new book, Way Up North in Louisville.

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Marxism and Science

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:49:00 +0000

In his recent article "A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century," Sam Webb made the following seemingly innocent and obvious statement:

"Marxism is a scientifically grounded mode of analysis, compass of struggle, and legitimate (and necessary) current within the working class and people’s movement."

But what does it mean? There are essentially three claims presented in this single sentence: 1) Marxism is "scientifically grounded," 2) it combines both analysis and political action, and 3) it is a dynamic political, cultural, and theoretical "current" in the movement for democracy and working-class power. Here, I propose elaborating on the first of these.

What does it mean to describe Marxism as "scientifically grounded"? Further, what does it mean to ask working-class people – many of whom, if they are like me, struggle to help their 11 year olds with basic algebra – learn science? Even more fundamentally, do appeals to science (i.e. empirical, objective method, dialectics, etc.) remain valid ways to explain Marxism itself?

Author, authority, authoritarianism

As to the first question, it is easy to promote divisions and distinctions between trained intellectuals who have spent years studying specific scientific questions and everyday working people who are almost always intellectually curious but usually find themselves with a shortage of time – between work, family, and political activism – to focus on luxuries like science.

On top of these barriers, science writers add to the problem when they make their own subjects painful to follow with difficult writing that can create feelings of alienation in the under-trained reader. Ask a teacher how many times they've heard a student who, after difficult reading, says something like, "It hurts to read this" or "This author is trying to make me feel stupid."

This artificial division between trained intellectuals and their working-class constituency can create an undemocratic result. It becomes easier to rely on trained intellectual to explain things – the true nature of things, systems, society – to everyday people. Professional thinkers become leading voices in the publications and websites of working-class movements. These leading voices sometimes become organizational leaders, as they seemingly are best able to understand, explain, and interpret in writing real experience as abstractions. Through this process of ungrounded theoretical development, the author – a producer of written statements – is transformed into the original Latin meaning of the word: master or leader.

This literary phenomenon has a social consequence also. Leading voices become authority figures who dictate the lessons of science to the tabula rasa (the erroneous metaphor established by some European philosophers suggesting people are empty vessels to be filled with the knowledge produced by the great minds of advanced civilization) of the working-class mind.

The relationship between author and authority is a question that holds special importance for a working-class movement in a capitalist society that neither values education nor actually provides it on a meaningful scale to the vast sections of working-class people. The social relationship between the author (authority) and the reader (working class) is, then, a question of class domination, one that the working-class movement within its own independent organizational structures tries to be mindful of. Authorship can, thus, lead to authoritarianism.

Working-class authorship

As one scholar of the works of both the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and radical Brazilian educator Paulo Freire has noted, despite best intentions "authoritarianism is authoritarianism." [1] To counter this, both Gramsci and Freire posed important interventions in the traditional author-reader social relationship. In addition, American intellectuals like the great W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as more contemporary thinkers like Victor Villanueva and bell hooks in our modern setting, too, have offered important ways to think about these questions. Some post-structuralist philosophers have even urged the metaphorical death of the author. [2]

Gramsci highlighted the need for a working-class movement, like a communist party, to make a special effort to develop the intellectual capabilities of working-class people, which they all possess. [3] He praised the work of the party's press in organizing discussion groups that built up a "new intellectualism" among their participants. This new intellectualism consisted of moving from oral agitation to the systemic expertise in everyday "practical life." The working-class intellectual was "a builder, an organizer," an expert both in the nature of work and in the political activity of the class. Gramsci also emphasized the interconnectedness of the new intellectual and new stages in the development of social production (technology, work, social relationships, etc.) To transform this reality into a tool of liberation, schools, generally, should emphasize creativity, independence, and above all active and experiential learning.

Rather than the traditional author-reader social relationship, teachers should see themselves as allies of the student, Freire continued the point. If the relationship of intellectual to non-intellectual began as something like the priest and the supplicant, in today's education system, especially in the universities, the expectation is that teachers are like employees waiting on the needs of the university's clientele, the student. Students feel empowered as consumers, but like consumption in capitalism generally, the products consumed produce desire without satisfaction. Boundless desire is contradicted by the reality that the education system's role is confined to transforming unsocialized children into functioning workers in a service-oriented economy shackled by student loan debt peonage – not the liberation of the working class or full development of human potential.

Such a corporate model of education replicates the so-called business model of government in which the rulers count on appeals to consumers, taxpayers and voters to side-step the realities of structures of class, racism, and gender inequity. Freire asserted that this relationship between classroom structure and society was no accident. The goal of education is, above all, to provide the student with practice at obedience, accepting authority of the intellectual standing up in the classroom.

By contrast, the working-class intellectual sits down and sees herself in alliance with the student-reader-coworker. The working-class intellectual doesn't say things like you must know this and articulate it that way in order to be a real Marxist. She doesn't say, if you don't accept this or that point of view then you are a social democrat and unworthy of full inclusion in the Marxist party. Freire argued that a dynamic continuity exists between the classroom and the dominant social relations of production. The intellectual and the knowledge produced is also – always, already – situated in that continuum.

Both Gramsci and Freire also noted that even the liberated, critically conscious, working-class organic intellectual, Marxist (or however you want to label this person) must live with the contradiction of being of – a part of and apart from – the system they work to explain and transform. Villanueva and hooks describe this individual as being in a process of becoming something more than the socially mandated limits placed on her rather than something "other," a fiction. The resolution of this internal contradiction would likely mirror a larger social transformation towards working-class liberation.

Marx was also such an intellectual. Rather than living and producing knowledge outside of history, Marx was a product of the European Enlightenment and its contradiction, Romanticism. Notably, the Enlightenment, a class and imperialist-oriented system of thought and practice, was Euro-centric and privileged its science and rationalism, human primacy over nature. It was in this period of the development of historical capitalism, as noted Egyptian theorist Samir Amin describes it, that Marx developed an analysis of capitalism. [4] Marx may have held affinities with the Enlightenment's Romantic other, but in the end, it is a rational discourse of dialectics and materialism that Marx would affirm.

Soft science

Because of this context, Marx located his critique within the most authoritative discourse of the time: science. This wasn't an act of sheer will, however. Political economy and philosophy had been organized under the category of science before him. He could either pursue the Socratic method of negation through dialogue, that is, showing simply how everyone was wrong without providing an image or idea or formula for the correct steps, or he could work through the contradictions of being and becoming, as a dialectician should. He chose the latter. There is no doubt, however, that his science, or the science attributed to him, lies within history itself, and is, in its own process of becoming more, a product of that system of knowledge and production itself.

Simply put, science, regardless of label (Marxism, physics, social sciences), has no special claim to authority or to mastery over history (or the historic development of humanity on Earth). Knowledge (languages, meanings, disciplines) produced by science cannot lie outside of history, despite its claims to the universal, the objective and the empirical. Marxists, for our part, have long understood or sought to explain interconnectedness and dialectical relations of science, technology and capitalist development. [5] But the continued belief in, as Althusser would have it, the new historical subject constituted by the self-organizational working class revolutionary figure represented a break with dominant ideologies, epistemologies, and habits of thought constructed by and reproduced under the social relations of capitalist production is mere belief in trope, metaphor, a discourse itself unable to reflect on its own position within a historical context. This imagined historical subject (not to be confused with individual, but something closer to working-class movement or communist party or Marxism as a historical current of political philosophy) through a radical critique of historicism and human produced, within a definite set of social relations of production, little more than the belief in a science outside of the social relations of production, their future and their past. [6]

This is not to reject the objective reality that exists apart from our knowledge of it or theories about it. [7] The ability to prove or refute hypothesis with repeatable experiments and creation of a record of experience has helped prove theories of evolution and the Big Bang; it has provided important stepping stones for human progress from the eradication of some disease to the potential for for erasing social distinctions of any oppressive sort. But no such thorough research agenda or record exists for the dialectics of human history, a fact that results partially from the lack of systematic effort in capitalist societies to do so and failed, partial, or ideologically driven efforts in former socialist societies. Failed efforts at the production of a systematic science of human history, however, are not the only explanation for its non-existence.

Marx's Capital is the most well known attempt at such an inventory. It is focused on a place within a hypothetical framework that provided important lessons and glimpses at the nature of the "reality" that exist objectively apart from humanity's own socially mediated awareness of itself. While it carefully records the specific development of capitalism in a particular place and time, it does not (cannot?) quantify the subjective impact of human activity, motives, organization, activism, (as well as inaction and silence) that propelled that development (or lack of it). Nor can Marx's monumental effort account for developments adequately outside that definite geo-political set of social relationships, hence reductive and stereotypical assertions about the "Asiatic mode of production." As the Marxist political scientist Bertell Ollman notes in his book Dance of the Dialectic, dialectical thinking (the underlying "science" of Marxism) provides no guarantee to a discernment of truth about the nature of social reality. As he notes "relative change" is emphasized and conclusions drawn – a product of the nature of the "science" – while "relative stability" is downplayed as meaningless to the overall analysis. [8] It is important to note that this isn't a subjective consequence of bad thinking; it is a product of the structure and nature of dialectics – hence the dialectical materialist's ease with such terms as "laws" – in which motion, change and transformation are always the necessary and inevitable ingredients. [9] To some extent, science's objective powers, its method, and its concepts serve more as metaphor for Marxism's subjective aims rather than as techniques for analysis, experiment and testing or, ultimately, theory and explanation.

So, to return to the starting point of this argument, Marxism is scientifically grounded by virtue of its historical relations to the scientific project's claim to produce knowledge about the nature of objective reality. It is scientifically grounded in that it seeks to discern and decipher dialectics of technology, science and human development (like those that now exist under capitalism, for example, or those that might exist under a new system of social relationships that give more power to working-class people). It is grounded also in its political and ideological alliance with science as a field of human liberation from lack, inequality, fear, or alienation. Will it ever produce a formula that would allow us to quantify the needed human inputs to force a change in Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's anti-union policies or to win a particular election? No. Will there ever be an objective reality in which such conditions exist that allow humans discover such formulas to make such predictions? That galaxy may not be too far away.

Notes:

[1] Victor Villanueva, Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color, NCTE, 1993, 61.

[2] W.E.B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 is nothing if not a narrative explanation of the unity of thought and action of African Americans who sought to free themselves from slavery and white supremacy during and after the Civil War. For example, the general strikes and exodus of African American slaves during the war that caused the collapse of the slave system was not the brain child of intellectuals or thinkers. After the war, though trained African American professionals and thinkers poured their hearts and souls into the education programs and schools that spread throughout the South, it was the aspiration for freedom and equality of millions of African American farmers, sharecroppers, and workers that drove the education movement. See also, bell hooks, Where We Stand: Class Matters, 24-27; Foucault "What is an Author" in Language, Counter-memory, Practice, 113-138. Still others sought to locate the production of meaning and knowledge – simultaneously the product of and developer of consciousness – outside of texts, away from authors and producers and into the hands of readers/viewers/consumers primarily. Robin D.G. Kelley, "Notes on Deconstructing "The Folk," American Historical Review, December 1992, 1401-1402; Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford university Press, 2001, 45ff; Michael Ryan, "The Politics of Film: Discourse, Psychoanalysis, Ideology," in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, 477-488.

[3] Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings, International Publishers, 121.

[4] Samir Amin, The Trajectory of Historical Capitalism and Marxism’s Tricontinental Vocation, Monthly Review, http://www.monthlyreview.org/110201amin.php; See also Edward Said, Orientalism, Vintage, 1978, especially its introduction.

[5] See for example, Nick Dyer-Witherford Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology Capitalism, University of Illinois Press, 1999.

[6] See for example Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capital, Verso, 1997, 119 ff.

[7] Meera Nanda, "Against Social De(con)struction of Science," in In Defense of History, Monthly Review Press, 1997, 74-96.

[8] Bertell Ollman, Dance of the Dialectic, University of Illinois Press, 2003, 19.

[9] See for example John Somerville, The Philosophy of Marxism: An Exposition, Nature, Society and Thought, Vol 1. 18, no. 1, 2005.

Photo by Argonne National Laboratory, cc by 2.0/Flickr

Organizational Rubric, Power and Relevance: A Close Look At a Proud Organization

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:46:00 +0000

I’ve read with interest over the past few months the numerous articles that have become the “What’s in a name?” discussion. I think all of the articles have displayed a high-level of integrity and maturity; all have tried to honestly and sincerely address different and difficult aspects of an on-going and important discussion around the name of our organization and its purpose. Undoubtedly, all of the articles and discussions are part of a healthy process, exemplifying internal democracy, transparency, openness to change and new ideas. In other words, it has been a rich and engaging discussion.

Unfortunately though, in many regards the discussion has been too narrowly focused. To-date, we have largely focused on questions of internal substance and form, on redefining what it means to be a communist (substance) and organizing ourselves accordingly (form).

In fact, the discussion has raised very important questions: How do we define ourselves? Should we change our name? What does communism mean to us? What is our purpose? Are we a Party?

While all of these questions are necessary and deserve attention, they only peripherally deals with what I see as the real issues - our size and possible tactics for growth, which is what I hope to address.

Additionally, the nature of this discussion has caused what I would call miss-the-forest-from-the-trees analysis, an analysis that has lost sight of the most relevant point – our desperate need to grow.

Furthermore, I think it is unfortunate that as a materialist organization grounded in science, we are more comfortable talking about names, identities and definitions than about results – demonstrable, concrete, tangible results. I think it is unfortunate that we are more comfortable talking about names, identities and definitions than actually developing a concrete, coherent plan for growth that includes deliverables, timelines and a much higher level of stakeholder accountability.

This may not make me any friends, but I think we need a different approach to how we have this discussion. I think any organization that is serious about growth, influence and building power has to continually develop new and verifiable approaches to growth. New approaches by themselves aren’t enough; we need to be able to verify that our new approaches are actually getting the desired results.

In other words, we need to set criteria for discussion and debate that is grounded in results; we need a rubric by-which we can gauge our successes and failures, by-which we can assess if we are actually gaining ground or moving backwards.

In short, I am arguing that we take ourselves more seriously; that we really embrace living-breathing Marxism by getting results, not by quoting from Marx, Engels or Lenin’s many volumes; not by having another internal ideological discussion.

In that regard, what follows is decidedly non-ideological. Let me be clear, my approach isn’t anti-ideological. We have a proud Marxist heritage and we have made many wonderful contributions to the ideology, which we will undoubtedly continue to do. However, in this article my goal is to approach pertinent organizational questions as a results-based field organizer first, and then secondly as a communist, as I believe the discussion thus-far has suffered from too much communist analysis.

Steps in our organizational rubric

In my opinion as an organizer, we desperately need an organizational rubric by-which we judge our performance, as rubrics focus on measuring a stated objective, use a range to rate performance and then indicate the degree to-which the objectives are reached.

For the sake of clarity, a rubric is defined as a scoring tool for assessments; it is a set of criteria and standards used to assess performance; it allows for a standardized evaluation according to specific criteria, which makes assessments transparent; it eliminates inconsistencies, while providing ground for self-evaluation, reflection and review.

Rubrics include one or many different steps by-which performance is rated. Some rubrics employ a rating scale for each dimension, goal or criteria; others are considerably less complex. For our purposes, I think a simple rubric with five steps will suffice.

Most importantly, as we move forward, we should keep in mind that rubrics help participants become thoughtful evaluators of their and other people’s work; having a thoughtful, honest evaluation of our work is the first step towards becoming the organization we envision – a mass organization with real influence and power.

The first step in our rubric should have participants look at and develop agreed upon models of good vs. "not-so-good’ work. This could be an analysis of past practices or of victories/defeats; I would urge that we look at our actual work, as it is our organization that we have a primary responsibility in building and as a stronger Communist Party necessarily leads to a stronger movement for economic and social justice.

The second step in our rubric should be to list the criteria to be used and allow for discussion of what counts as "quality" work. Asking for feedback is important, as we will have very different definitions of "quality" work based on experience, location, history, etc.

The third step in our rubric should be to articulate our shared definition of "quality" work and highlight acceptable gradations. Hierarchical categories should concisely describe the levels of "quality," while allowing for fluctuations that exist given the nature of our work, the ebbs and flows of the movement, red-baiting, etc. Currently, in my opinion, our shared definition of "quality" is very low.

The forth step in our rubric should be practice; discussion and role-playing of sample assignments provides an opportunity to build confidence by demonstrating how successful and/or best-practices have been implemented. Practice also facilitates reliability, while providing for a common approach to common problems.

The fifth, and probably most important step in our rubric is self and peer-assessment or evaluation. It is okay to honestly assess peer skill level, capacity at getting results and ability to work collectively/independently. We should have peer assessments at every level of our organization; in my opinion, no individual or collective is above assessment or evaluation. Most often, poor peer performance is due to a lack of clarity; we usually do not clearly identify the expected demonstrable results that are expected of our peers.

Additionally, one of the main weaknesses of our movement (and this is true of all grassroots, democratic organizations) is our inability to objectively assess performance and skill, and when necessary ask people to step down. We rarely say, “It just isn’t working out. We expect more. We want results.”

Don’t misunderstand me: this doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for members who lack the above mentioned skills, capacity and ability; nor does it mean we shouldn’t take the time to train people. In my opinion, we need to devote a lot more time and energy to hands-on leadership development. Obviously, we need to make room for all types of members (passive members, activist members, leaders, etc.). However, my primary focus in regards to step five of our rubric is developing and training leaders; people who are proficient, professional and results-based.

We have finite resources and we should develop a culture of transparency, high expectations and accountability, especially when identifying and training leaders. See my article “Towards a Leadership Criteria” for a more detailed analysis.

While rubrics are often used as a means by-which to assess a students’ educational capacity, they can also be used to reflect a process of developing “real-life” approaches to organizational necessities. Of special importance for us is a mutually agreed upon negotiated contract for success that incorporates input from relevant stakeholders, i.e., for example, leaders in our organization who reflect and speak-for a defined membership base and bring-in a defined amount of money.

In my opinion, while other input is appreciated, the main criteria for moving forward with our organizational rubric should be agreed upon by those who in-fact represent dues paying members and in-fact fund our organization. Their input is especially needed, as they are the ones who organize and mobilize our base; if these stakeholders are not bought-in our organizational rubric is meaningless and we will not be successful. Conversely, if our stakeholder definition is too broad – if it includes people who do-not represent dues paying members and do-not fund our organization – then any plan we develop will be largely meaningless, as our stakeholders will lack the on-the-ground organizational capacity and infrastructure to actually get anything done.

In short, we currently have too many cooks in the kitchen.

Additionally, a key advantage in this type of analysis is that it forces stakeholder clarification of a shared definition of success by establishing clear benchmarks for achievement. Concomitantly, as stakeholder buy-in is collectively agreed upon, collective benchmarks are developed objectively and consistently with an eye towards verifiable goals creating a culture of high expectations.

The Party is arguably already moving in this direction, albeit without the actual rubric steps and stakeholder definitions employed above. The increased focus on setting People’s World and Political Affairs readership goals, on district sustainer goals, on member contact in organized and unorganized areas, and on leadership development (schools) all argue for and demonstrate a willingness to move our organization into a more practical, results-based direction that acknowledges our necessity for growth, though much more work needs to be done.

Our agreed upon short-term to mid-term goals should be coupled with long-term tactical and strategic objectives. While our Party program outlines our external strategic objective of defeating the ultra-right, it does very little to address our internal strategic objectives, nor does it address the necessary tactics needed to building our organizations’ real, demonstrable influence and power.

Power: “In a conflict between two rights, power is the final arbiter.” – Karl Marx

For our purposes, power is the ability to control, create or prevent change. So first and foremost, let’s dispense with other notions and definitions of power. It isn’t bourgeois; it isn’t elitist; it isn’t egotistical; it isn’t any of the things we’ve been taught. It is the ability to control, create or prevent change.

Organizationally, we cannot be so naive as to not address issues of power – how we build it, what it means and how we employ it to achieve stakeholder benchmarks and organizational objectives.

Most importantly, stakeholder benchmarks discussed and agreed upon as part of our organizational rubric should be inseparable from our desire to become a more influential, more powerful organization. If employed correctly, the dialectical relationship between getting concrete results and becoming a more influential – more powerful – organization should be abundantly clear, as it is only through power and influence that we are able to live out our communist values in real life.

So the question emerges: How do we become more powerful as an organization, and as a result grow? Coupled with questions of power are concerns regarding our actual relevance. Are we relevant? I think, in most places we are not relevant, which has a direct bearing on our ability to grow.

In my experience as an organizer, people want to be a part of an organization that can get results, that can make a demonstrable impact on their day-to-day lives; people want to be part of an organization that is relevant. An African American trade union leader once told me, “No one wants to be a member of a chump organization.” I think he is absolutely right.

Stakeholders should take this hard reality into account as we move forward and accept as fact that we are largely irrelevant in most places; they should then begin a process of rebuilding with an eye towards becoming relevant.

In relation to power, I will offer three concrete suggestions that I think will streamline our work, maximize our resources and begin the process of moving us towards broad influence and power; the suggestions also directly relate to our relevance. The first suggestion requires very little actual work on our part; the second and third suggestions require a shift in how we work, not necessarily more work.

Additionally, the above rubric can be employed locally and nationally, and forms the basis for my suggestions below.

First, stakeholders should do an honest and objective assessment or survey of our actual, on-the-ground organizational capacity, membership, financial resources and ally support: What can we do? Who can we move to act? How many people can we turn-out to a strike, picket, rally, electoral campaign, etc.? How much money can we move to fund coalition partners and campaigns? Can we employ our resources strategically? Do we have the capacity to make-or-break local elections? Do our actions empower us and build support for future action? Are we seen as an essential part of local coalitions, groups and unions? What is the "quality" of our work? These are just some of the questions we should ask ourselves.

Currently, if we answer these questions honestly, we are lacking in every arena. In other words, our actual, on-the-ground capacity is at a very low level. While some individual communists (in some areas) have influence in their unions, community groups and coalitions – influence that far out-weighs our actual size – the Communist Party as an organization does not; and we should not confuse the two.

We should honestly address this issue as it directly relates to our actual on-the-ground organizational capacity: If we hope to be a mass organization capable of influencing change, can we afford to confuse moving other organizations’ members with moving our own?

Second, after an honest assessment is made of our capacity, we should agree to stop spending money, time and resources on activities that don’t build capacity. If our goal is to grow, we should not spend money, time and resources on activities that do not facilitate quantifiable growth; we should be able to quantifiably gauge the results of our actions, our success vs. failure ratio. Additionally, publicly quantifying our work is a condition for developing a new membership and investor base. We should not think of ourselves as selfless, behind-the-scenes martyrs; it is inconsistent with our values, and it does not build our organizational capacity. If we want to live-out our values publicly, we should publicly claim our work.

In short, we should invest money, time and resources primarily to the degree that we will get a return on our investment, to the degree that we will get money, time and resources in return.

In many regards the Party is already moving in this direction; National Board and National Committee discussions have recently emphasized the need to eliminate administrative tasks and bottlenecks (especially in-regards to online work), activities that cost time and money, but do not contribute to our core capacity. Undoubtedly, more work needs to be done in many different areas.

Third – after the honest assessment of our actual capacity, after the refocusing of energies into activities that result in increased capacity – we should consciously employ tactics that grow our organizations’ influence and power. For example, we should consciously target our energies, consolidate our presence, develop investor bases, and then move-on to new target areas. If our internal strategic objective is to grow into a more influential, more powerful organization then we should employ tactics that achieve that objective.

Whether it is in an aldermanic or city council ward, a state representative district, a key industry or union, we need to target our energies to maximize effectiveness and get results. As any honest assessment of our capacity will easily demonstrate, we (the Communist Party) are entirely too small to accomplish anything of consequence if we are not focused. It is easily a matter of deduction: we must target organizations, communities and campaigns to be effective; to maximize our effectiveness we must focus our members’ energies. This requires stakeholders who in-fact represent members.

In short, stakeholder benchmarks should focus the effectiveness of a small membership to get results.

We should not work under the illusion that large numbers of people will join or fund our organization for altruistic reasons. Furthermore, our ideas should not be the basis of our on-the-ground organizing strategy. Our organizing strategy should be centered on getting results and becoming relevant, on engaging people in real-life struggles, as our ideas matter very little if we lack the troops on-the-ground to implement them.

We should not work under the illusion that large numbers of people will join or fund our organization for anything other than self-interest. In my opinion, we should embrace and acknowledge that people will join our organization, fund or volunteer for it, because it is in their self-interest to do so.

In fact, we want people to join or fund our organization out of self-interest, as that will mean we are an effective, results-based, relevant organization capable of controlling, creating or preventing change.

If self-interest is identified as a key reason for joining or funding our organization, it is easily a matter of deduction to assess whether-or-not we are living up to our part of the tacit member-to-organization relationship. In other words, we will be able to assess if we are in-fact getting the type of on-the-ground results that justify membership.

If we want to build a new membership and investor base of people who are invested in our success precisely because their success depends on our effectiveness, then we have to get results.

A strong Party organizational presence in target areas not only strengthens the coalitions, communities and unions that we are a part of, it inextricably links our organizational capacity to the broad people’s movement ensuring our participation and leadership on-the-ground, which is where we need to grow. Concomitantly, by building a membership or investor base that relies on our effectiveness, on our ability to get results, on our ability to impact their lives, we become relevant.

Like any effective political machine, we should target areas for concentration, consolidate a membership base, develop investors among that base, and then move-on to the next target area. Additionally, as we consolidate our base and develop investors, we make it impossible to easily extricate or disentangle our organization as success depends on our members’ work, which gives us organizational power and influence.

As I said above, power is the ability to control, create or prevent change. In my opinion, if we are to build any semblance of power we need to honestly assess our capacity, stop doing things that don’t build capacity and employ tactics that grow our organizations’ influence and power, all with an eye towards identifying member and organizational self-interest.

For purposes of clarity, the above is an attempt at developing a “real-life” approach to our organizational necessity for growth; I make no claim to possess a monopoly on tactical best-practices. Other approaches may fit other communities’ realities better. However, as a results-based grassroots organizer analyzing our actual organizational on-the-ground capacity, I would urge strongly that we develop tactics that have clearly defined stakeholder benchmarks and are coupled with a very clear understanding of our member and organizational self-interest.

My point: we currently lack a cohesive approach to becoming relevant, to getting results and building power. And as long as we are largely irrelevant and powerless there is very little incentive for people to join our organization. What do they get out of it? How do we make their lives better?

A hard look at a proud organization

The above is probably a hard pill to swallow, especially for people who have devoted the entirety of their lives to our organization; to an organization “as it was,” not an organization in the process of becoming. However, we need precisely this type of wake-up-call if we are to survive, grow and eventually become a real force for progressive change, something we haven’t been for many, many years.

Additionally, I have probably made some people very angry; some people will say that our primary role is within the realm of ideas, not results; some people will say we can’t quantify everything; some people will not stomach my emphasis on power and influence. For those comrades, we will have to agree to disagree.

Obviously, my analysis is decidedly non-ideological; what I’ve outlined above could be employed by any organization, coalition or union – by organizations that have been much more successful at getting results. Undoubtedly, ideology should play an important role in our organizational development as we move forward, primarily through the education of our members and the broader public.

Additionally, I did not touch on our online work, especially in regards to online members. I think our approach to online work is still developing. In my experience, we are making every attempt to contact and consolidate online members as quickly as possible. While I agree that we should not set-up men of straw (i.e. internet organizing vs. on-the-ground organizing), we should however address questions of how we build power with an online membership base. How do we get them involved in real, demonstrable ways? How do we mobilize them? How do we turn them into sustainers? Among many, many other questions.

I believe the pendulum of organizational priorities should be balanced; not weighed too-much in one direction or the other. As is probably obvious, I think our priorities are currently weighed too much towards ideology, to the detriment of our actual on-the-ground capacity.

In my opinion, our goal as communists is to create change. While we can undoubtedly change peoples’ consciousness by doing a better job within the realm of ideas, we ignore the on-the-ground realm of political necessity at our own peril.

Furthermore, as an organization we cannot build a base of power in the abstract; power is concrete; power is the ability to control, create or prevent change. If we agree that our goal is to change the world then it is incumbent upon us to build a relevant and powerful organization capable of leveraging its power for member and organizational self-interest. As Marx said, “In a conflict between two rights, power is the final arbiter.”

In his comment on Sam Webb’s article “A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century,” C.J. Atkins wrote: “I think power and relevance are at the heart of what we need to be thinking about as a political movement. Power, in the sense of political influence and the ability to move people and policy in a desired direction, should be central to any party or political organization.”

Atkins’ comments are good advice. We need more members and stakeholders who share this perspective.

Our history is a proud history and our country is undoubtedly better-off because of the Communist Party. However, unless we take a hard look at ourselves and seriously commit to substantial strategic growth – membership, financial and influential growth – we will remain an organization with a proud history. And no amount of discussion or debate about names, identities or definitions will matter because we will have lost any claim to relevancy in the eyes of the class we represent.

Photo by AFL-CIO/cc by 2.0/Flickr

Imperialism 2011: Steps Going Forward

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:45:00 +0000

This essay is presented in the interests of analysis and discussion of tendencies in the international communist movement. Its focus is the issue of imperialism and anti-imperialism. It represents the writer’s opinions only.

In his 1916 book “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,” Lenin takes on rival ideas, especially those of the German socialist Karl Kautsky, on the nature of imperialism and its future. But the most important thing in the book for us today is how Lenin described imperialism, and how he saw the duty of revolutionaries towards it.

Lenin defined imperialism as the natural outgrowth of the development of capitalism, not a policy option chosen or not chosen by this or that bourgeois government. The most important characteristics of imperialism, according to Lenin, are:

1.    The combination of industrial capital with finance capital, with the latter dominating.
2.    The move from competition among many capitalist concerns to huge transnational monopolies.
3.    The move from mere export of products to export of capital; i.e. capital moving all over the globe in search of maximum profits.
4.    Competition and wars between rival capitalist powers.

This description show that Lenin saw imperialism as the correct name by which advanced capitalism should be called, not a “dimension” or “aspect” of advanced capitalism. If imperialism and advanced capitalism are one and the same, you can’t fight the one without fighting the other.

Put another way, you can’t be “anti-capitalist” without being “anti-imperialist.”

So Lenin held that the road to socialism runs through a struggle against imperialism, a struggle that was incumbent on all revolutionaries, especially those who live in imperialist-ruled countries. He criticized a hypothetical Japanese person who denounces the United States for dominating the Philippines, saying that such a person would have no credibility unless he also denounced and struggled against Japanese imperialist control of Korea, at the time an especially brutal reality.

Lenin’s position sharply contrasts not only with that of Kautsky, who believed that a benign “super-imperialism” might be the road to socialism, but also with that of social democrats. In wealthy and powerful developed capitalist countries, most social democrats sought not to dismantle imperialism, but at best to fight for workers in their own countries to get a bigger piece of the pie of profits gained from imperialist exploitation of the colonial and semi-colonial countries. This was the characteristic stance of many social democrats in the U.K., France and other wealthy countries.

Lenin could not have anticipated that social democratic groups might also appear in poor countries which are the victims of imperialism, and that you could have, in such circumstance, political currents that are social democratic but also anti-imperialist: Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas in Haiti, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Revolutionary Democratic Party/PRD in Mexico, and left-center social democratic ruling parties in Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay etc. The difference in political conduct between Tony Blair’s “New Labour” and Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas is that for the former, the strategy is to cozy up to international monopoly capital to get a better share of the pie, and for the latter, only the empty pie plate is offered by imperialism, so perforce they have to take anti-imperialist positions.

Because Lenin’s statements were taken to heart in the world communist movement, anti-imperialism has been a near-constant in the varying positions and stances of our parties. By fighting imperialism, one is not only doing justice to the workers of the colonized world, one is performing an essential task for making socialism possible in the developed, wealthy countries.

This was not entirely new with Lenin; Marx had already come to the realization that for British workers to achieve their liberation, the liberation of Irish workers was essential, and that white American workers could not be free while Black workers were “branded.” Coming at the issue from the ruling class side, the British imperialist statesman Benjamin Disraeli averred that by expanding the British Empire, he was making it possible to preserve capitalism in the U.K. because the wealth brought in by imperialism made it possible to make life more tolerable for British workers. By dismantling imperialism, revolutionaries make it impossible for the capitalist ruling class to go on governing as before—a necessary condition, Lenin thought, for socialist revolution.

So with few lapses communists in wealthy countries such as our own have thought it important to emphasize solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles in the colonies and what Lenin called the “semi-colonies,” in other words poor countries under imperialist sway, or threat.

At the time that Lenin was writing, the United States was ruling Puerto Rico and the Philippines with an iron hand, and dominated the government of newly independent Cuba to the point that many Cubans thought their “independence” was a joke. In 1895 the US had taken over the independent Kingdom of Hawaii by force. By World War I, US imperialism had established military, economic and diplomatic control over Central America, the Caribbean (the part not ruled by Britain or France) and some of the South American states. The United States had long dominated Mexico, and the year after Lenin’s book came the farcical Pershing expedition to capture Pancho Villa. The 1904 Roosevelt Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine was used to justify dozens of armed interventions in the region, which made small and poor countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as well as Cuba, poorer and less free and independent. The general of US Marines who had been in charge of some of these operations, Smedley Butler, described the role of the US military in the following eloquent terms:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

So the United States did not engage in these military aggressions just for the fun of it, or to keep order or defend democracy or civilization, but to lend support to the economic dimension of imperialism in which the main actors were companies like United Fruit.

The US also was a participant in the scramble to carve up China and its markets among the wealthy powers, hypocritically denouncing its partners in crime, France, the UK, Germany, Russia, Japan and others, for their greed, but really annoyed because they tried to stop the United States from participating in the orgy through the “Open Door” policy. In many of these countries, the beginnings of local communist movements and parties honed their skills by organizing workers and farmers not only against the local bosses, landlords and mandarins, but also against imperialism. This was true all over the world, leading to the strong communist and workers movements in China, Vietnam, India, South Africa and many other places.

There was a semi-hiatus in the most aggressive manifestations of US imperialism during the later 1930s and the 1940s. The administration of Franklin Roosevelt instituted the “Good Neighbor Policy” which temporarily put an end to direct US interventions in Latin American countries. Thus it was possible, in 1938, for Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas to seize foreign oil holdings without triggering the invasion by US Marines which would have followed had he done it 10 years earlier (or the CIA machinations that would have been unleashed had he done it 12 years later). The “Good Neighbor Policy” partly overlapped with the “Popular Front” period of the Comintern, in which communist parties in the Latin American area were urged to enter into the broadest possible united fronts with bourgeois parties in and out of power, so as to prioritize the fight against fascism, in which the USSR was allied with the United States and the UK. In 1943, the Comintern was dissolved, as a measure to reassure the allies that the USSR was not actively working for the overthrow of their bourgeois regimes. This was the period in which the Cuban Communist Party, for example, changed its name to the Popular Socialist Party and entered into an electoral alliance and then a coalition government with future dictator Fulgencio Batista.

The Comintern parties’ policies of this period, though arguably correct in the fight against fascism, also led to some illusions among some of the Latin American communist parties, to the effect that promoting US corporate investment in Latin America was entirely beneficial to a socialist project. This jibed with similar ideas coming out of our own party at the time, especially those of Earl Browder, who thought that the wartime alliance among the United States, the UK and the USSR was a permanent thing which would allow for the gradual development of socialism in the United States. Militant opposition to US imperialism was shelved for the time being. When the Cold War started after the end of World War II, there were big controversies in the parties of the region, including our own, with splits, ousting of leaders and expulsions.

The coming of the Cold War led to a new, more violent stage of imperialism. The hysteria in the United States on the subject of “who lost China” and the attempts by the European imperialist powers to restore their control over Asian colonies that had slipped out of their grasp during the struggles of World War II (the Dutch in Indonesia, the French in Vietnam etc), the Korean War and the growth of left- and often communist-led insurgencies and mass resistance movements led to a new level of imperialist intervention to crush anti-imperialist insurgents. We are familiar with the story of the Korean War and also the Vietnam War in which the United States took over from a defeated France. In 1953, the CIA (a relatively new entity at that time) teamed up with British imperialism to overthrow the democratically elected, secular government of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who had threatened British oil interests in that country. Mossadegh was hardly communist (he stiff-armed the Iranian communists, the Tudeh, when they offered to help defend him) but anti-communism was now used as the pretext for an intervention that restored the reactionary government of the Shah, who became imperialism’s strongest ally in the Middle East.

In Guatemala, the Third International communist party, the PGT (Partido Guatemalteco de Trabajo) had grown up quickly from its founding in 1944, especially in its work to organize and mobilize indigenous peasant farmers and agricultural workers. The communists, though officially proscribed until 1952, were allied with two successive left wing nationalist governments, those of Juan Jose Arevalo (1945-1951) and Jacobo Arbenz (1961-1954), and had become an influential force in the country. The most right wing elements in Guatemala, the planter elites who exploited the indigenous communities, and the conservative elements of the Roman Catholic Church, made common cause with US imperialism and particularly with Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, who had investments in the United Fruit Company that Arbenz had begun to nationalize. The CIA financed and led a bloody coup d’état in 1954, leading to the overthrow of Arbenz and to decades of warfare and repression which lasted until 1994, with a death toll of over 100,000 and perhaps as many as 200,000 civilians (for the early stages of this story, see Greg Grandin’s book “The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War,” University of Chicago Press, 2004).

From the Guatemala coup until the 1990s, Latin America from Central America to the Southern Cone (Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) was a bloody battleground in which the US government played both and open and an undercover role in bankrolling coups d’état, fingering left-wing and especially communist activists to be murdered, and using economic pressure to destabilize left wing regimes. “Operation Condor,” in which the US was heavily involved, resulted in the deaths of thousands of Latin American activists and leaders, and the crushing of labor unions, student groups and any other force that would oppose the local elites and/or US economic domination of the hemisphere. The United States associated itself, in these activities, with some of the most gruesome dictators the world has ever seen: Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier in Haiti, Jorge Videla in Argentina, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Hugo Banzer in Bolivia, Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, Efrain Rios-Montt in Guatemala and many more. Direct interventions occurred also, in Cuba at the beginning of the 1960s, and in the Dominican Republic in 1964 (the Cuba intervention was a farcical failure, but the Dominican, Grenadan and Panamanian interventions were successful). Many Latin Americans believe that the CIA was behind a number of assassinations also, including that of President Omar Torrijos of Panama and President Jaime Roldos of Ecuador, both of whom were killed at nearly the same time (July 31 and May 24, 1981, respectively) in very suspicious aircraft “accidents,” after antagonizing the US government. The question of whether the death of President Salvador Allende of Chile on September 11 (!) 1973 was murder or suicide is now being re-investigated. There were murders of left-wing political leaders who had been ousted from power, including former Bolivian President Juan Jose Torres, in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1976. Torres had been overthrown at the behest of the Nixon administration and his administration was succeeded by the brutal drug-dealing regime of General Hugo Banzer.

In all cases, things became truly nasty when the interests of US and other corporations were threatened. US embassies worldwide became the bases of operations for CIA and military intelligence agents who worked overtime to develop corrupt ties to local oligarchs, military officers, politicians and social and cultural figures. The vast extent of these ties was revealed by a repentant C.I.A agent, Philip Agee, in his 1975 book “Inside the Company: CIA Diary.”

The joke became current in Latin America:

Question: “Why has there never been a military coup d’état in the United States?”

Answer: “Because there is no US embassy in Washington D.C.”

The CIA and other US and Western European intelligence agencies also did their best to infiltrate and utilize all kinds of academic, cultural, charitable and especially labor groups and organizations for the purpose of maintaining imperialist hegemony worldwide. So when recently a left-wing website in Latin America posted an article claiming that the Campfire Girls are a CIA front, the initial urge to laugh is tempered by the realization that infiltrating cultural organizations exactly what the CIA used to do, on a huge scale. When I was a graduate student at Northwestern University during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the big scandal in our field of cultural/social anthropology was the degree to which the CIA saw US and other anthropologists and scholars working abroad as a natural means of extending not only intelligence, but also intervention activities. There were serious blowups about the CIA and other US intelligence agencies recruiting anthropologists to do information collecting and even counterinsurgency work in Chile, India and Vietnam. As I and other students who were opposed to this tendency looked into the question, we were shocked by its potential scope, and by the blasé attitude of senior figures in the field to what we saw as major violations of professional ethics. Unfortunately, there is no way we can be sure that this sort of thing has stopped.

The victory of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1979 led to the Contra Wars, coordinated by the CIA, which killed thousands. Many major US figures involved in the Contra Wars are still politically active today and work closely with right-wing political currents all over Latin America and beyond: Lt.Col. Ollie North, John Negroponte, Roger Noriega, Otto Reich and others. They are particularly close to the right wing of the Republican Party and to the Cuban exile community in Florida, and will play a major role in the future. Many of them have their fingerprints all over the Honduras coup of June 28 2009.

And this bloody phase was not confined to Latin America. One of the most vicious episodes of repression following a military coup happened in Indonesia in 1965-1966, with the overthrow of President Sukarno. In that incident, up to a million innocent people, including most of the members of the Communist Party of Indonesia, were massacred, lists of people to be killed being provided by the CIA There are strong indications that the overthrow and murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo involved cooperation between “the Agency,” Belgian security forces and Congolese politicians.

In Africa, also, there was collusion between the United States and the apartheid regime in South Africa. In the Middle East, in addition to its close alliance with Israel, the United States cooperated with a young thug named Saddam Hussein by giving him lists of Iraqi communists to be liquidated. Billions of dollars in mostly military aid were channeled into the governments of Egypt and Israel. The list of intrigues and interventions is too long to give here. Imperialism also had a major hand in developing reactionary Islamist jihadism, under the Zia Al-Haq dictatorship in Pakistan and the warfare against the left wing government and its Soviet allies in Afghanistan.

Even in Europe the activities of imperialism included destabilization plots in several countries, designed to isolate political sectors which seemed to be taking off in an independent direction. NATO was and continues to be a major force in this; the full story of “Operation Gladio” and its destabilization efforts in Greece, Italy and perhaps other countries has not yet been told.

I have concentrated on the role of the US government in imperialism, because the US is where most readers live and because the it was, and continues to be, the strongest imperialist state. We know, of course, that other developed capitalist states did not, and do not, keep their hands clean in these matters. France and the other European Union powers are heavily involved in imperialist exploitation of Africa. Even a relatively small country such as Canada (33 million inhabitants) is heavily involved in exploitative and environmentally disastrous mining activities in poor countries, especially in Central America, and under the current Conservative Party government of Mr. Harper, plays the role of “Mini-Me” to US imperialism’s “Dr. Evil.”

While there was a Soviet Union and a Socialist Bloc, there was a counterweight to the power of imperialism. Though the USSR and the European socialist countries were usually loathe to project military force, they were a vital source of economic support for countries seeking to move away from imperialist domination. The socialist bloc provided direct foreign aid (including military and infrastructural aid) and also trade deals which, if they did not always come to Che Guevara’s high standards, at least gave poor countries and alternative to imperialist terms. When the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialism collapsed, a process finished by 1991, this counterweight no longer existed. So, for example, 2,000 Angolans who had been studying medicine in socialist Czechoslovakia were kicked out by the “humanistic genius” Vaclav Havel. In the debates in the Soviet press in the lead up to the collapse, the issue of poor countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America supposedly sponging off the Soviet people came up in a brutally racist way. Cuba was a particular target of these writers. The idea that the USSR had fair trade relations with poor countries caused a negative reaction; the writers wanted the USSR to establish the same kind of UNFAIR trade relations with the poor countries that the wealthy countries had; i.e. exploitative and unequal. For all the faults and errors of the USSR and the former socialist states of Eastern Europe, they played a vital role in supporting the liberation struggles of South Africa and other countries, and the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European Socialism was, for this reason, a huge victory for imperialism, which did not wait a moment to press its advantage.

Neo-liberal imperialism, which succeeded the fall of the socialist governments, has taken a huge toll on the poor countries and on the former socialist countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Though there have also been military interventions (the Balkan wars, Gulf War I, the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War being the largest) and the role of NATO has been hugely expanded, the main imperial instruments of rule have been the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which control poorer countries’ access to loans and development aid, and the World Trade Organization, which sets the rules of most of international commerce, as well as regional bodies. These entities are overwhelmingly dominated by international monopoly capital and by the big imperialist powers (the United States, the European Union countries, etc.).

Countries which could no longer rely on help from, or even on alternate trade agreements with, the socialist block have been hammered into adopting the “Washington Consensus,” one of the most important instrumentalities of imperialism in the last 15 years. The Washington Consensus requires all international trade between rich countries and poor to be structured in such a way as to give the rich countries maximum access to markets and natural resources of the poor countries. It dictates the adoption of the neo-liberal package as a requirement for getting any kind of loans or credits from international agencies or wealthy capitalist countries. This package consists of the following items:

•    Bogus “free” trade, which entails opening up the poor country to penetration by transnational corporations. This entails removing or drastically lowering tariffs, and eliminating subsidies on the poor country’s own exports or internal sales. However, rich countries are allowed to subsidize their exports to the poor countries, which amounts to the “dumping” that Lenin was already talking about in 1916. This has been one of the main characteristics of US “free trade” agreements with Latin American countries, including NAFTA and CAFTA-DR. A classic example is Haiti; in exchange for helping restore President Aristide to power in 1994, the Clinton administration forced Haiti to drastically reduce import tariffs on rice. This opened up the Haitian market to heavily subsidized US rice exports, coincidentally or not mostly from rice producers in Arkansas, President Clinton’s home state. But it drove thousands of Haitian rice producers off the land and into the Port au Prince slums. This is why the Haitian capital was so overcrowded when the earthquake hit a year ago. As a result of the crowding, many more people were killed than would otherwise have been. Recently ex President Clinton admitted that his policies had done more for Arkansas rice producers than for the Haitian people, but the policy remains.

•    Radical privatization of public resources, which allows transnational corporations to take over and/or replace whole areas of the economic life of poor countries, to the benefit of the bottom line and the detriment of the vast majority of the poor countries’ inhabitants. Privatization of water, telecommunications, educational, health care and other services in poor countries has been a characteristic of this period, and has become the focus of sharp class struggle, e.g. the successful “water wars” in South America.

•    Austerity measures, including mass layoffs of government employees, cutbacks of the most basic public services, and fees charged even to allow children to go to elementary school are forced on the poor governments. The 2008 mortgage, financial and housing crisis has become a pretext for pushing austerity measures all over the world, including in the United States.

•    Repression of the inevitable social rebellions is enhanced by aid from the rich countries to the military and police establishments of the poor ones. To facilitate the crushing of opposition and to realize greater profits, governments are urged (and often don’t need much urging) to go after labor unions especially, with direct repression and also with labor law “reforms” designed to make labor relations more “flexible.” Sometimes fighting crime and drug trafficking is the pretext by means of which the rich countries pressure the poor countries to increase their repressive measures (as in the case of “Plan Colombia”).

•    Wealthier countries do what they can to make sure that the governments of the poor countries accept these conditions, and that nobody comes to power who is going to buck the trend, to which end they are willing to manipulate elections, surreptitiously fund right wing opposition groups and engage in other kinds of interference. US and French action to remove Jean Bertrand Aristide as president of Haiti in 2004 is a noted example.

•    There is a mutually supportive interplay among international monopoly capital, the Breton Woods organizations (IMF and World Bank), the WTO and local economic and political elites. Thus it was that as Mexico was taking the plunge into poverty and despair after the initiation of NAFTA in 1994, 25 new billionaires suddenly appeared on the scene in that country. They all derived their sudden extra wealth from the politically wired privatization schemes that Mexico adopted as part of the Washington Consensus. This has happened in many countries, including the former socialist states of the USSR and Eastern Europe. Privatization of telecommunications systems, banks, mining industries, transportation and utilities play a major role in the less industrialized countries especially.

•    There is also a reactionary ideological offensive to accompany and support the economic and political (and sometimes military) offensive of imperialism. The promotion of ideas like “the end of history” (now discredited, since history has obviously not ended), “human nature” as being “naturally” bourgeois, “trickle down” economics, the depiction of workers as the “problem” and entrepreneurs as “the solution” and, of course, anti-communism are all part of this offensive. New racist offensives are launched in the media, with the purpose of dehumanizing the people of poorer countries (who are mostly non-white) so that the barbaric treatment meted out to them will be more palatable to people in the wealthier countries.

This form of imperialism has been imposed on all the less developed and poorer capitalist-run countries, including the former socialist states of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Even governments that have come to power by revolutionary struggle, such as that of South Africa, have found themselves forced to accept at least part of this formula. After all, no country, and especially no poor country, can simply drop out of international commerce. While imperialism is making all the rules for international trade virtually without challenge, other countries are forced to adapt themselves.

The neo-liberal phase of imperialism has been called “the last stage of imperialism” by former Cuban President Fidel Castro, whose unquenchable revolutionary optimism always cheers us up, but it is still going strong and wreaking havoc. In a recent analytical article in the New York Times, Neil McFarquhar reveals that all over Africa, outside corporate entities are buying up vast quantities of farmland out from under the feet of traditional communities engaged in subsistence agriculture. This land is to be turned over to the production of cash crops for export. The experience of other countries shows that this will lead to the vast displacement of village agricultural populations, with no new employment opportunities offered to them except to immigrate to wealthier countries. And this will happen without visas, because no visas are going to be offered to these displaced and often minimally educated farmers and their families. Because of imperialist domination of international trade, credit and aid, poor countries are unable to generate enough industrial and service jobs to absorb all these displaced people. Also, transferring so much land that has been growing crops to feed the local population into cultivation of cash crops for export (often, for biofuels) worsens the food situation in the poor countries. McFarquhar’s article reveals that a South Korean agribusiness conglomerate was about to get control of nearly ½ of the arable land in Madagascar, which led to the 2009 uprising in which President Marc Ravalomanana was ousted by Andry Rajoelma.

This is an old pattern in Africa and beyond, namely the conversion of traditional peasant farmers and tribal cultivators into proletarians exploitable for the surplus value they create through various mechanisms to make their subsistence farming unsustainable. It was pioneered in Southern Africa by Cecil Rhodes and his colleagues, who were adept at inventing various schemes for taxing the “natives” so that they would be forced to work in the cash economy, i.e. in the mines and on commercial farms and like enterprises. There were taxes on huts, on firearms and even on dogs. These were means used to generate a Black proletariat to work for a pittance in extremely dangerous and unhealthy conditions in the diamond mines at Kimberly and the gold mines of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Farm and other labor was, of course, also generated by these practices. The information contained in McFarquar’s article shows that far from being a thing of the past, these tactics are now expanded to a worldwide scale, as well as vastly intensified.

Neo-liberal imperialism with its aggressive displacement of poor farmers in the interests of transnational agribusiness considerations has other effects. All over the world farmers are forced to accept genetically engineered seeds to replace the ones they have been using for millennia. This sharply reduces both their options and their incomes. It is thought to be one factor behind a huge wave of suicides by farmers in India over the past decade.

The massive disruption of both rural and urban populations which neo-liberal imperialism has effectuated has produced another result also: That of massive movements of displaced farmers and workers within individual countries, and across national borders. Naturally, the cross border migration goes from poor countries to rich ones. It comes in undocumented, because the rich countries are almost never willing to give permanent immigrant visas to these displaced people. It also comes in in the form of exploitative “guest worker” programs. It is noteworthy that not one single rich industrialized country has signed the main U.N. protocol on the rights of migrant workers, the International Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families. The large scale undocumented immigration from Mexico, Central America, Haiti and other countries to the United States, and similar waves of migration from Africa and Asia to Western Europe, exist not in spite of, but because of, “Western investment” in the poorer countries. The North American Free Trade Agreement among the United States, Mexico and Canada is a case in point. Mexico now sends 80.2 percent of its exports to the United States, so it is trapped in the framework. At the same time, the huge invasion of Mexican internal markets by monopolistic agribusiness has displaced millions of Mexican farmers and their families. Industrial development in Mexico has not made up for more than a fraction of this displacement, leading to a sharp increase in undocumented Mexican immigration to the United States – undocumented, because the US does not make legal immigration visas available.

Many have commented that “neo-liberalism” has also been imposed within the rich countries, including our own, where we have also seen drives toward privatization, austerity and the rest of it. The citizens of especially, but not only, the poorer countries of Western Europe (Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece) are up against the wall with a new wave of aggressive neo-liberal assaults being carried out under the pretext of the world financial and economic crisis. In our own country, the current attacks on public service workers’ unions and the social safety net are part of the same dynamic. The effort to destroy public employees unions in Wisconsin and elsewhere are part of this dynamic.

Into the 21st century, most of this neo-liberal phase of imperialism still continues. However, there have been some counter trends.

The growth of China, India and Brazil is reducing the degree to which the US, the wealthy countries of the Euro zone, Japan and the smaller rich countries can dictate trade terms to the rest of the world. Several of the documents that came out of the 12th World Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties point out the degree to which the share of world economic activity of the United States and European Union countries has dropped, while that of the “BRIC” countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) has increased. That is a topic for another article, or several.

While the US has been occupied in Iraq and Afghanistan, there have been successes in the efforts of Latin American countries to slip out of imperialist control. In a number of countries, left wing nationalist, social democratic or populist governments have been able to take power and, as importantly, build relationships of trade, credit, aid and mutual diplomatic and military support among themselves to resists the hegemony of US imperialism. The formation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), consisting of Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador and some smaller states, is of signal importance because it unites countries whose leaders have explicitly, though, except for Cuba, somewhat vaguely, socialist goals. Beyond these countries, the two big trade alliances in Latin America, MERCOSUR and UNASUR, lend support without having stepped forward with an explicitly socialist goal. This system of alliances has to some extent made the old Organization of American States (OAS), which used to be an instrument of US imperial control in the region, far less relevant. The ALBA countries are trying to create a new OAS type structure which would be explicitly anti-imperialist, thus excluding the United States and Canada. But some of these progressive governments are rather fragile. In Chile last year the right was able to win the presidential elections. In 2009 a right wing coup toppled the progressive president of Honduras. There has been heavy pressure on the government of Paraguay to move to the right.

It is important for us to ask: What is the situation of imperialism today? And, what is the role of the United States under Obama in imperialism?

First of all, nobody can say that imperialism is a thing of the past. All of the items Lenin listed as characterizing imperialism are still extant and in full force, except for active inter imperialist wars, which are unlikely in the short run. If anything, most of the dynamics of imperialism listed by Lenin in 1916 have intensified in the intervening years: Monopolies, concentration of capital, domination of finance capital, export of capital to areas where greatest profit can be realized, etc. Many of the communist and workers parties which contributed discussion papers to the 12th Annual Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties in Tshwane, South Africa, take the view that imperialism is still aggressive and expanding.

I strongly agree with this. There is no contradiction between the ideas that imperialism is on the march, and that anti-imperialism is also on the march. That’s how materialist dialectics work.

Secondly, since imperialism is an advanced phase of capitalism itself, and not a policy option that can be switched on and off by this or that king, president or prime minister, it would have been impossible for Obama to rule a non-imperialist United States, unless capitalism itself had somehow collapsed at the point he was elected. And like Franklin Roosevelt, Obama’s task has been to save capitalism, not destroy it. So Obama or no Obama, the United States is still the most powerful imperialist country in the world.

Let us be clear that the Republican victory in the US elections of November 2010 was a victory also for imperialism and for the ultra right. Another Republican victory in 2012 would be a huge setback for people’s struggles not only in the United States, but worldwide. That is not in doubt.

However, to ask about how the Obama administration has gone about ruling over this imperialist system is legitimate. Recall that in the case of US imperialism in Latin America, Franklin Roosevelt’s government opted to use softer methods than his cousin Teddy Roosevelt’s belligerent “big stick” method. Can we describe Obama’s foreign policy as a “Good Neighbor” policy for the 21st century, in which US economic interests are still pushed but by other methods, with more of a willingness to cede ground to popular demands for justice in the poor countries, when necessary?

During the 2008 election campaign, and for a while after his election and inauguration, it seemed to me at least that Obama was moving away from “the big stick” as wielded by the crackpot Bush administration and to a sort of “Good Neighbor” stance similar to that of Franklin Roosevelt. Obama said during the elections that he would be willing to meet one on one with US adversaries such as Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez and others, without conditions. He was attacked for this by the Republicans and, importantly, by Hillary Clinton during the primaries. So I entertained some hope that Obama, while not doing away with imperialism, would at least begin to talk to Latin American and other countries the way the US talks to China, i.e. recognizing the other countries as equal partners and not as a lot of contemptible “banana republics” to be managed by threats. In particular I thought that given the economic power of countries like Brazil and Venezuela, the United States would use a more respectful tone in dealing with the Latin American countries as a group.

At the Trinidad Summit of the Americas in April 2009, this appeared to be a possibility given statements made by Barack Obama, newly installed as president. But so far, this has not panned out.

•    The US continues to ally itself with the most right wing governments in the area: Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and has done little to improve its relations with Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba. The Egypt phenomenon should serve as a warning as to the eventual results of such policies.

•    The Obama administration continues to push NAFTA-like free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and Peru, and also South Korea that are opposed not only by the left in those countries, but by US labor and the left wing of the Democratic Party here.

•    It continues to pour military aid into Colombia, which reduces instead of increasing the possibility of a peaceful settlement to that country’s long running civil wars. Wikileaks recently revealed that the United States is providing funds for Colombian military and police to train officers in Mexico in how to fight the drug cartels. This has caused a strong negative reaction among the Mexican left; 2006 PRD (Revolutionary Democratic Party) presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has written an open letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticizing this and calling for her government to go back to the Franklin Roosevelt “Good Neighbor Policy.”

•    It has made some changes in US policy toward Cuba, though the Cubans complain that in some ways has tightened the US blockade (by doing more to prosecute companies that “violate” it.). Recent changes in travel and remittance policy have to be seen in the context of the overall outrageousness of US Cuba policy. They are positive, but small scale. Of considerable significance has been the willingness of the Obama administration to call witnesses from Cuban state security agencies to testify in the trial of former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles in El Paso, Texas. We shall see if there is further progress.

•    State Department policy appears to be set on busting up the coalitions in the Latin American area (especially ALBA) rather than finding a way to work with them. Efforts to destabilize the government of Bolivia, for example, appear to have continued, under the pretext of the anti-drug struggle. The US is taking a hard line on Bolivia’s refusal to eliminate cultivation of coca leaf for traditional medicinal purposes, a position with which hardly any other country agrees.

•    The handling of the Honduras coup of June 2009 particularly antagonized the majority of Latin American states and the Latin American left. The OAS, hardly a bastion of left-wing radicalism, took a collective stand that pressure had to be exerted to force the coup regime headed by Roberto Micheletti to stand down and restore the legally elected president, Manuel Zelaya. Even some of the right wing governments agreed with this, because they have no interest in legitimizing a return to the military coup d’état as a means of regime change – the same thing could happen to them tomorrow. The United States broke with this unity and created a parallel negotiating mechanism outside the structure of the OAS to carry out utterly fruitless “negotiations” with Micheletti. When these failed, and Micheletti announced he was going ahead with elections for November 29, which the hemispheric consensus saw as illegitimate because they would be carried out with troops in the street repressing the left, the United States supported this and, since then, has been pressuring other countries to give recognition to the regime elected by that process, even though the murders of trade unionists and others still continue. Hillary Clinton openly stated in the fall of 2009 that she was changing US Honduras policy in a deal with Senator Richard Lugar whereby the Republicans would stop their Senate hold on two middle-range State Department appointments, in exchange for recognition of the legitimacy of the November 2009 Honduran elections.

This is not the approach Obama seemed to be articulating during the elections. Nor is it the Bush or McCain policy, which would have been more directly interventionist. It resembles, rather, the policies of President Clinton (1993-2001) for the region and the world, namely a policy aligned with the neo-liberal phase of imperialism, but shrewder and more nuanced than the caveman Republican strategies. (We can not say less violent, because of the Yugoslavia episode which was very violent indeed). This is perfectly logical: For political reasons deriving from the dynamics of the 2008 election, Obama had to give Ms. Clinton a major appointment in his government, and it is not believable that a person of Ms. Clinton’s character, political experience and stature in the Democratic Party would have accepted the foreign policy portfolio without extracting a promise of a substantially free hand in determining and implementing that policy. So we get a Hillary Clinton foreign policy, only occasionally mollified by the president, which greatly resembles the Bill Clinton foreign policy. Whether this will continue into a second Obama term we will have to wait to see.

Steps going forward

Lenin’s analysis of imperialism is as true today as it was in 1916. He argued that imperialism is inseparable from advanced capitalism, and that you can’t fight the one without fighting the other. We will not achieve socialism in this country while imperialism exists, and imperialism will be defeated mostly by the resistance of the people in the poor countries it exploits. There is no longer any Soviet bloc to help with this.

But democratic forces in this country have a duty to help. And to do so is also in the short, medium and long term interest of US workers. The better workers are doing in other countries, especially poorer countries, the better workers will do in this country. Outsourcing and the runaway shop, as well as the threats of these things, are used by US based corporations to control the wage demands and bust the unions of US workers. This is possible only in a world in which workers in Mexico, Haiti or Bangladesh are paid for a whole day what US workers earn in an hour or less. Victories for workers anywhere are victories for workers everywhere.

Secondly, because of its history and national and international orientation, the CPUSA put us in a better position than many others on the US left to give direction to the fight against imperialism, which means solidarity with people abroad who are fighting against imperialism. Other progressive and left groups do not always share our analysis of imperialism, so will not consistently fight it, except for purely domestic reasons (e.g. costs too much money, sacrifices the lives of our soldiers to “help foreigners”, we should help our people at home before “helping” people on the other side of the world, etc.). Other groups considering themselves Marxists for the most part are not well enough rooted in the class struggle here to be able to influence US workers and masses on anti-imperialist issues. The Communist Party can do that, because we have that presence in the unions and the working class communities, albeit small-scale, and we have a non-sectarian, flexible stance toward forming united fronts. We are for building center left unity at a mass level and at a leadership level, while some on the left still insist that there’s not a “dime’s worth of difference” between Republicans and Democrats, and that the only united fronts that are worthwhile are among small leftist sects. The “left talking to the left” does nothing to solve the main problem we have, which is that it is difficult for the US leftists to get the attention of major sectors of this country of more than 300 million people.

Republican administrations such as those of Reagan and Bush have used more aggressive methods to push imperialist interests than have most recent Democratic administrations. McCain, if he had been elected in 2008, would certainly have been much worse. The people who aspire to take over the country from the right in 2012 are decidedly worse. Some of the worst of them, with the leadership of their fairy godmother Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., are meeting regularly in Miami with the most gruesome right-wing figures from Latin American politics, with the stated aim of going after Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia etc, via the new Republican control of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. These get-togethers are by no means only with the Tea Party crackpots; they include “respected” Republican figures such as Senators Lugar and McCain. Still, scrutiny of the Obama administration, and especially of the Clinton State Department, is in order. A broad ranges of forces have taken issue with certain policies. The Congressional Black Caucus just issued a statement in disagreement with Hillary Clinton’s policy on Haiti. Organized labor continues to criticize the administration’s push for more free trade agreements, especially the one with Colombia. During the Honduras crisis in 2009 many left and center Democrats in Congress criticized the administration’s policies, with notable leadership from Senator Kerry, the 2004 Democratic Party presidential candidate.

It can not be denied that Democratic administrations, including the present one, also promote imperialist interests in their international functioning. This is true not only vis a vis Latin America, which I have emphasized because it is the region with which I am most familiar and because it has been, traditionally, the geographic area in which specifically US imperialism has operated most intensively, but worldwide. Note, for example, the way the US administration has pushed NATO as a worldwide intervention force (at the NATO conclave in Lisbon, Portugal), and Mrs. Clinton’s saber rattling in the Asian context.

Pro-imperialist policies do not stem from popular demand, from US workers and masses. On the contrary, in spite of all the propaganda, the workers and masses in the United States are generally against interventions and in favor of peaceful relations with other countries. There is not, for example, majority support for US anti-Cuba policy at a mass level, except among a shrinking number of Cuban exiles, and right wing ideologues. Nor is there support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are policies directed by the interests of monopoly capital, not by mass public opinion.

There is opposition to aggressive imperialistic policies within the Democratic Party; however, I am not of the opinion that when Republicans do bad things at home or abroad, it is because of the class position of their leaders and their financial backers, while if Democrats do the same things, it is, in every case, because the Republicans forced them to do them. The Democrats as well as the Republicans have their connections with international monopoly capital. To some extent there are exceptions among Democrats who represent minority districts or who have forged strong connections with organized labor. But ruling class ties are not confined to the most right wing Democrats, the Blue Dogs and the New Democratic Majority.

A particularly positive turn in the anti-imperialist struggle has been the movement of major US labor away from the aggressively pro-imperialist positions and actions of the George Meany-Lane Kirkland days. On the AFL-CIO blog now is a joint statement by the AFL-CIO and progressive, left led Mexican unions which not only shows the degree of solidarity on that front, but also a new understanding on the part of US labor of the way imperialist free trade pacts impact workers and farmers in countries like Mexico. We should work hard to build on that. It is certainly a breath of fresh air for those of us who remember things like the “American Institute of Free Labor Development” which was the CIA’s means of channeling resources to right wing, anti-communist “labor activists” abroad, using our unions as fronts.

Left-wing groups in and out of power in other countries have raised criticisms of Obama administration’s policies. These criticisms are in line with their own long-term experiences with imperialism as a whole. These criticisms often make sense in terms of the priorities of struggle in those countries, which necessarily emphasize the long term need to organize, unite and mobilize their grassroots sectors against local elites allied with international monopoly capitol, and to build structures of international cooperation that can sharply reduce dependence on the United States. We should endeavor to understand the policies of countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia as being within the framework of that long term struggle.

We, in the United States, have to deal with the limitations of objective and subjective conditions here, and have to develop our strategy and tactics accordingly. We don’t even have a viable Second International social democratic party that could actually win elections in this country, and have to work our tactics within that context. This entails building broad center-left alliances and encouraging more independent forces in the Democratic Party, while working to isolate the ultra-right. Others elsewhere have to deal with their own tactical exigencies, and objective and subjective conditions very different from ours. We must remember that in many parts of the world there are very different political systems, and communist and workers parties, or explicitly socialist united fronts, that are on a bigger scale and are able, thus, to function in a different way.

It is impossible that we transform the United States from being the most powerful imperialist state into an anti-imperialist state simply by voting one capitalist party out and the party in. However, we can set a goal of moving US foreign policy more in the direction of Franklin Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor” policy, as Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has suggested. This will absolutely not happen under a Republican administration, but will not happen automatically under a Democratic administration, without mass pressure.

How can we do that? First, we have to understand that imperialism is still the dominant system in the world, that the United States plays the strongest role in imperialism, and that everywhere there is resistance. We have to educate ourselves about these things. This is an uphill struggle because most people in this country were taught in school and church, and of course also by Hollywood, that the United States is a benevolent superpower which tries to help people all over the world with our investment and foreign aid, only to be met with churlish ingratitude. But things like the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and the revelations as to how the Bush administration maneuvered the country into to those disasters are topics of great interest to our people, and can serve as openers to wider discussions of how imperialism really works. The uprisings going on now in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries in the Middle East have shown millions of people in the United States how US imperialism has allied itself with crooked and repressive dictators, and except on the ultra-right, this has been a chastening experience. The people of our country, as a whole, do not like that our government props up dictators who oppress their own people, and want to know why it does such things. This, as Obama likes to say, is a “teachable moment” for us.

Then we need to understand how our own system works, and constantly be looking for the pressure points that can be used, via mobilizations of labor, churches, minority and women’s organizations, and every kind of democratic force in this country that can be mobilized in unity to force changes.

Photo by cjb22/cc by 2.0/Flickr

Frederick Engels and Eugen Dühring on the Natural Laws of Economics and Ground Rent

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:44:00 +0000

Engels deals with Dühring's views on ground rent and the natural laws of economics in chapter nine of part two ("Political Economy") of his famous book "Anti-Dühring." Dühring claims that his theories on capitalism and socialism are the scientifically correct ones, not the overrated views of Herr Karl Marx, and that the worker's movement should follow his ideas not those of Marx and Engels. Engels proposes to look at Dühring's views on the "natural laws" of economics and of ground rent to see if there is anything to them.

The FIRST NATURAL LAW of economics, somehow overlooked by Adam Smith and others, has been discovered by Herr Dühring and is thusly quoted by Engels: "The productivity of the economic instruments, natural resources and human energy is increased by INVENTIONS and DISCOVERIES." This is pretty vapid, according to Engels, as are the following four other "laws" discovered by Herr Dühring. Law Two: (the division of labour) "The cleaving of trades and the dissection of activities raises the productivity of labour." Law Three: "DISTANCE AND TRANSPORT are the chief causes which hinder or facilitate the co-operation of the productive forces." Law Four: "The industrial state has an incomparably greater population capacity than the agricultural state." And finally, Law Five: "In economics nothing takes place without a material interest."

Engels says that Dühring's method in explicating economics is the same as in his discussions of philosophy: poorly expressed commonplaces and banal formulations of so-called natural laws. Dühring gives no proofs, just dogmatic assertions about the nature of wages, the earnings of capital and the nature of ground rent. In previous articles we have discussed Dühring's views on capital, wages, and surplus value, so now let us turn our attention to the meaning of "ground rent."

In his own words, Dühring says ground-rent is "that income which the proprietor AS SUCH draws from the land." But this is a legal right of the proprietor, it doesn't tell us what the economic basis of ground-rent is, so Dühring must dig a little deeper. Engels says he then compares a farm lease to "the loan of capital to an entrepreneur" but come across a "hitch" in so doing. The "hitch" is that we are not dealing with natural laws but historically developed laws. Ground-rent, Engels points out "is a part of political economy which is specifically English."

This is because England developed an economic system in which "rent had in fact been separated from profit and interest." Unlike Germany (Dühring's model) England developed large scale agricultural industries and the farmer (unlike the German peasant) hires workers to work his lands "on the lines of full-fledged capitalist entrepreneurs."

In England we have the three main bourgeois classes and their incomes: landlords getting ground-rent, capitalists getting profits, and workers getting wages. In England it is quite clear, though Dühring doesn't see it, that the farmer's income is "profit on capital." This has been known at least since the time of Adam Smith.

Smith (The Wealth of Nations) tells us labor revenue is called WAGES, that from stocks, etc., PROFIT, and from the land RENT. This is very clear when each type goes to different individuals, the worker, the capitalist, the landlord. However, when the same individual gets two or more of these types of income "they are sometimes confounded with one another."

This is exactly what Herr Dühring is guilty of, according to Engels. Dühring sees that the capitalist farmer exploits rural labor and this exploitation puts revenue in his pocket, thus it becomes unavailable to the landlord as rent. So, the capitalist farmer is living on "rent" (not the exploitation of surplus labour) which has been taken from that which would have been available to the landlord.

In this amazing notion, that the landlord pays "rent" to his tenant farmer, we can see just how confused Dühring really is. Dühring thinks that ground-rent is "the whole surplus product obtained in farming by the exploitation of rural labour." Everyone else who has seriously studied this subject divides the surplus product from agriculture into ground-rent AND profit on capital.

But Dühring thinks there is NO real difference between the earnings of capital and ground rent; the one is revenue from industry and/or commerce the other from agriculture. This is the result of his view that all surplus wealth is the result of the subjugation and domination of man by man. The agricultural surplus is rent and the industrial surplus is profit on capital.

Dühring's views pit him against the views of "all classical political economy" which divides agricultural surplus into both the profit of the farmer AND ground rent.

Engels has accomplished what intended in this chapter of Anti-Dühring – i.e., that Dühring doesn't understand what ground rent is. Engels has not, however, explained just what it is himself.

It is not my purpose here to give an exposition on ground rent and the distinctions between rent, profits of production and interest, all of which are derived from the surplus value created by labour power. For this I refer you to volume three of Das Kapital.

I will note, however, that the notion of ground rent is a controversial subject as can be seen from a recent article by Benjamin Kunkel in THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS of Feb. 3, 2011. In "How Much is too Much" Kunkel reviews two recent books by David Harvey, THE ENIGMA OF CAPITAL: AND THE CRISES OF CAPITALISM and A COMPANION TO MARX'S 'CAPITAL'.

Kunkel points out that many Marxists are embarrassed by the concept of ground rent because it SEEMS difficult to reconcile the labour theory of value with the concept of rent since unimproved land doesn't incorporate human labour power.

David Harvey suggests that ground rent is "fictitious capital" ["virtual" capital?] and writes that it is based on a "claim on future profits from the use of land or, more directly, a claim on future labour."

These discussions, however, take us beyond the parameters of Engels' critique of Eugen Dühring and his misconceptions regarding ground rent.

Photo by Charleston's TheDigitel/cc by 2.0/Flickr

Poem: Solar Flares

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:30:00 +0000

Solar Flares

     solar flare
noun Astronomy
a brief eruption of intense high-energy radiation from the sun's surface, associated with
sunspots and causing electromagnetic disturbances on the earth, as with radio frequency

communications and power line transmissions.

At work, everyone smiling bellicose
through teeth staked together
jutted over clenched knees
all knotted there.

The Platte poured over choked
in ice jams,     floated past
blocking all exits West.
Droid compass
stroked message spelled:
Atypical Electromagnetic Field Detected

My finger near my ear
gestured South, so still
turning was the only way out.

Somewhere in this,
I posted:

Wisconsin Aid:

To supply protesters with WATER contact (Capitol Center Foods at 608-255-2616). To supply protesters with FOOD contact Burrito Drive at 608-260-8586, Silver Mine Subs at 608-286-1000, Ian's Pizza at 608-257-9248, Pizza Di Roma at 608-268-0900, or Asian Kitchen at 608-255-0571

on the union listserve.
Senority tuned-up
lodging complaint
"misuse of internet"
knees, mandibles clacking–

Me, I watched
Which Way Home
dreamed more for the children there
and isn't that why we organized, anyway? This flaring?

Socialism in American History, an Interview with John Nichols

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:53:00 +0000

Editor's note: John Nichols is the author of The "S" Word: A Short History of an American Tradition…Socialism. He is Washington correspondent for The Nation and an editor of The Capital Times, based in Madison, Wisconsin.

PA: What inspired you to write The "S" Word?

JOHN NICHOLS: That’s a very good question. I think that most readers of Political Affairs would know the answer to that. We live in a remarkable moment where there is an immense amount of discussion of socialism and socialist-democratic and communist and anarchist views, but most of that discussion appears to come from folks on the right who are demonizing left-wing ideas, the traditional notions advocated by progressives and people on the left. And that demonization is so intense that there is an assumption growing, I think, on the part of a lot of folks, that socialism is some foreign idea, that it has never been talked about in America before, that it’s never existed here, that it’s being imported at this moment by Barack Obama of all people.

What I wanted to do was to delve back into the history of the country and look at some critical junctures, not to provide a full history of socialism in America, which is so rich and so diverse – I’m not sure that any one book could do it, but to give some sense that this country has generated socialist ideas, it has embraced socialist ideas, and that those ideas are very closely linked to an awful lot of our history, including, I note, to parts of our history that we cherish very deeply.

PA: Speaking of demonization, are Glenn Beck and people like him really afraid of socialism happening in the United States or are they simply using it as a demagogic tool?

JOHN NICHOLS: That’s a great question, and I wish that you, Joel, and other reporters would have the chance to ask Glenn Beck that question directly, because it goes to the heart of the matter. I do believe that it is possible that many of the critics of socialism, many of the people who rant and rave about it, really are afraid of it, and they have reason to be afraid of it, because socialist ideas in so many ways expand the debate, open things up, really do create opportunities for low-income and working-class folks to be on a more equal footing with the wealthy and the powerful. And so, yes, I can imagine that Glenn Beck might genuinely be frightened by socialist ideas. However, the fact of the matter is that, at this point, the way that he uses them is entirely demagogic.

The notion that Barack Obama is somehow the face of contemporary socialism, or that the people around him, who are actually in most cases very centrist and even sometimes relatively conservative Democrats, are somehow advancing a socialist agenda is absurd. It’s clearly used to demonize people with whom Beck disagrees on often very minor political points. To give you an example, just a sense of this. It isn’t Glenn Beck in this case, it’s another figure who comes up in the book, Sean Hannity. I actually in preparing the book spent an immense amount of time listening to tapes of the Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh shows, and the most fascinating thing I found in the whole process was an exchange between Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin, in which at some length they discussed weatherization programs. This is when the government helps people put better windows on their house so they can stay warmer in winter. And they were both ranting about how this was socialism, this was creeping dangerous socialism that was a threat to the Republic.

So you see this isn’t about big ideas, it is often about very minor objections which they then inflate, using the word socialism as some sort of ultimate demonization, some sort of ultimate threat – and yes it’s demagogic; it’s also unhistorical, or anti-historic, and very crude. I think that’s the most interesting part about it. It’s so crude that there is some good evidence that it has caused an awful lot of people to open up to socialism and consider socialism in a way they haven’t in the past.

PA: There are some prominent figures in American history you associate with the socialist tradition, if not socialist parties, people like Tom Paine and Abraham Lincoln, which counters everything we learned about them in school. How does that work, in your mind?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, history is a fascinating thing. It’s always something that we can dig deeper into and learn a little more about. Now in our history classes in school, we are obviously given a sort of first level introduction. It tells you some dates and some prominent figures. By the nature of it, we don’t go as deep into that always as we should or as we might. One of the things I did with this book was to spend a lot of time looking at the original documents going back to the real history, the deeper history, which is one, I might add, that was known through much of our American experience, but has sort of been swept away in recent decades.

To give you an example, Eugene Victor Debs frequently referenced Paine and Lincoln as folks who had inspired him toward socialism. So it’s not that this is something that we have just discovered, but it is something that has been sort of lost in recent decades. With Paine the fascinating thing is that so much of the teaching about Paine focuses on a couple of pamphlets he wrote very early in his career, “Common Sense,” which of course was an inspiration to the American Revolution and “The Crisis,” which was an inspiration to the soldiers once the Revolution began. Those are both terrific pieces of writing, very inspirational and very inspired works. But what people don’t note is that Paine kept writing. He wrote for another 30 years, and as the years went on his writing focused more and more on economic inequality and economic injustice, such that his final essays outlined a social welfare state, and there’s no question of that, that’s not a debatable point. In fact, amazingly enough, if you go to the Social Security Administration’s web site today, they have quotes on there from Tom Paine back in the 1790s describing a social security system, a system of pensions and social welfare supports for the elderly, the infirm, children and others who might otherwise suffer in extreme poverty.

So again this is not hidden history – it’s there, it’s findable, but it’s not a history that has been emphasized. More significantly you bring up Lincoln, and the history on Lincoln is absolutely fascinating, because when you go back to the founding of the Republican Party, there is simply no question that that party was founded by a broad array of folks from many different ideological perspectives and backgrounds, but some of the founders of the Republican Party, in fact key founders, people who called the initial meetings, were socialists and communists. A friend of Karl Marx was one of the key players in the founding of the Republican Party. That is not a debatable point – the history is there – but it is something that has not been emphasized, it’s almost been pushed aside.

PA: What do you think the appropriate socialist response to the current economic and financial crisis should have been?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, I write about that in some of the initial chapters, because I think it’s important, especially because so many folks claim that Obama is a socialist, to consider what he might have done, what a socialist response or a social democratic response might have been.

Now, I don’t presume to be the definer of what the appropriate response is. We have a wonderful array of tendencies and ideologies, and people have different ideas, but I can tell you that if Obama was operating on the model of mainstream international social democratic and socialist responses and ideas, he would not have allowed “too big to fail” banks to continue to exist. You break them up! And if it’s necessary for the government to take over a bank because it has either managed itself into a crisis or managed the whole of the economy into a crisis, you don’t give it money, you don’t just flood bailout money into it, and then, after it has stabilized itself, allow it to pay back some minor amount of that money and then operate as a bigger bank.

In general the response to the financial crisis, I think, has been horrific. It’s been absurd. It shores up institutions which we know have engaged in wrongdoing, and it actually uses our taxpayer dollars, our public wealth, to institutionalize and strengthen entities that pose threats to the economic stability of Americans.

Now what would an alternative response be? Well, first off we should be taxing speculation. We live in an era where so much of our economic life, whether we like it or not, exists in this netherworld of transfers of stock ownership, bond ownership, currencies, and the interest on different revenue-generating instruments, and yet we tax so little of that and that’s an absurdity. If a small business owner is operating on Main Street, they are taxed, but a speculator gets away with very very little responsibility – so we should be getting tax revenue from that for the public.

But there’s more than that – that’s just a baseline, very simplistic reformist approach. We also ought to be using our public wealth, our great, immense public wealth, to get the banks out of all sorts of areas where they shouldn’t be. Why, for instance, when we have a mortgage crisis in the United States, when we have as many 3 million families that are teetering on the brink of losing their homes, why do we trust the banks to sort that out? Why do we give them money and say, “Why don’t you guys take care of it?” We have the capacity to stabilize home ownership and rental agreements in a way that would make it possible for virtually everyone to stay in their home and create much more stability in our neighborhoods. That is something, as has been proven by many other countries around the world, that can be done much better in the public sphere, rather than trusting private entities that have it in their interest to frankly just throw people out of their homes.

PA: I have a couple of more questions, if you’re okay on time.

JOHN NICHOLS: Oh yeah, yeah, you’re fine - I’m delighted. You know I have to tell you, I’m very pleased to talk to you, because I’ve read Political Affairs for a very long time.

PA: Thank you. On an abstract level, is there a difference between socialism and democracy?

JOHN NICHOLS: I don’t think so. In my view, socialism and democracy co-exist. A true socialist state would be democratic and would allow certainly for elections and processes by which the people would make clear their ideals, their goals, their desires, so no, I don’t think socialism is antithetical to democracy in any sense. In light of the Citizens United ruling, which has allowed corporations to flood money into our political life, there’s an awful lot of evidence that suggests that capitalism without restraint, without some regulation and control, is far more damaging to democratic processes.

PA: In the book you note that in progressive politics there is a constant kind of contradiction between the need to appeal to the center to win elections and the need to appeal to the left to maintain energy. How does that get resolved eventually?

JOHN NICHOLS: That’s a very good question. You know, one of the great challenges that we have is a sense on the part of a lot of people on the left, and you hear this so often, who say, well if there’s just a crisis, a bad enough depression, people will wake up to the reality that we need a much more equitable social order and we need a much more “small-d” democratic life.

The problem there is that waiting for a crisis to come is a fool’s mission ultimately, because the crisis comes in fits and starts. It wraps around us. We have a crisis now that we are neglecting. The fact of the matter is that when you look at the real unemployment figures in the US, not the official ones, but the ones that include those folks who are underemployed or have given up looking for work, you are getting up to a 17-18% unemployment/underemployment rate in the United States. That’s a crisis. It’s beyond comprehension how you can neglect that. So the idea of waiting for a crisis doesn’t seem to work, and if that is the case then there will always be this tremendous pressure to say, okay, no matter what happens, we’re going to have to somehow reach into the center, somehow try to compromise.

But my sense is, and I’ve covered politics for a very long time, this tendency toward compromise, this tendency toward saying, oh well, let’s try and find something in the center that we can work with, ultimately dumbs down the politics to such an extent that we end up in a situation where basic ideas, central ideas to what progressive politics should be about, are tossed to the side or frankly are imagined as somehow too radical. What Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and also, I would suggest, some Democrats dismiss as radical, socialist or extreme ideas, used to be ideas that were presented by moderate Republicans, and so when we talk too much or too long about erring toward the center, I think we run a real risk of kind of losing any dynamism whatsoever.

I would argue that it’s much wiser to stand on principle, on a host of principles – and different people, different groupings will have different ones that they emphasize – but to stand on some core principles, and those are a belief in an equitable distribution of the wealth in our society, a radically different approach to foreign policy that really does celebrate human rights and justice, and a host of other environmental, educational and housing initiatives, which again are not radical.

Again and again in the book, I come back to the point that one does not need to be a socialist to recognize the value of socialist ideas in a debate in the United States. I think a wise conservative could recognize that there is value to having these ideas in the mix, because even if you don’t accept them all, some of them have tremendous value and a tremendous potential to contribute to solving problems. When we take a whole range of ideas off the table and say, well we’re not going to ever consider them, we don’t solve basic problems.

On that point I would suggest that it’s not just conservatives, not just the Sean Hannitys and the Glenn Becks that are guilty. I think an awful lot of Democrats and an awful lot of self-identified progressives are guilty as well, because they ask for so little and present so little in the way of a radical alternative to the crisis that exists. My sense is, again from covering politics for a very long time, that when one presents a radical alternative, when one presents a bold alternative, it may take an election cycle or two for that alternative to really embed, if you will, to really come into the debate and be accepted but over time it gets there. I have seen it happen on so many issues, particularly social issues, but also some economic ones, that I just don’t believe at this point that the Democratic Party or an awful lot of Democratic politicians are doing a very good job of presenting their ideas.

PA: You write at one point that the anti-socialist rhetoric coming from the right has actually boosted general interest in socialism and social democratic ideas. How do you think everyday people think about these questions?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, I’m afraid they may not think that much about it. We live in a very de-politicized society, where our media tends to give us an exceptionally narrow range of options and does not encourage us to think about all the things we might do to respond to the crises and challenges of our time. I’m not trying to suggest that every American walks around really trying to distinguish between a socialist and an anarchist idea, or Marxism versus Christian Socialism. I’m not going to begin to suggest that.

However, there’s simply no question that when the right raises the issue of socialism so frequently, especially among people who have tended to be pushed to the edges of our political discourse, young people, people of color, working class folks, they are hearing this constant attack on socialism, this constant use of the word socialism as a demonization, as a kind of awful alternative. But the fact is that they are hearing it from people they don’t like or they find to be unsettling folks who actually might attack them. I’m talking about folks who might attack working families, people of color, young people, there is a tendency to say, well, okay look, I know that I don’t agree with Glenn Beck, I know that I don’t agree with Sean Hannity, I know that I don’t agree with Sarah Palin, and they keep talking about this thing socialism – maybe it’s not so bad – I wonder what’s there that might be worthy of attention.

And the reason I believe this very strongly is not merely anecdotal, although I have certainly seen it going out and traveling and covering politics across the country, it’s also based on polling. If you look at the polling data, there has been a substantial rise in the number of people who have positive attitudes toward the word socialism. That doesn’t mean, and I think we have to be very careful about this, that they are all embracing socialism, that they are definitely, you know, ready to sign on for the cause. What it means is that they are open to the ideas, that they recognize that socialism, far from being evil, might actually present some positive ideas and some positive proposals. This is one of the real, core reasons why I wrote the book, that is, to suggest that at such a point historically we have had political groupings and individuals who have been very willing to step up and say, “Wow, okay, you’re interested in socialism? Here’s what it’s about. Here are these ideas, let’s talk it about more.”

I know there are terrific groups, I write about a lot of them in the book, who are doing that now. But the challenge is that I’m not sure the left is rising to this moment as fully as it could or should. Because I really do believe that if Glenn Beck wants to have an argument about his vision of what America ought to be and socialism, you ought to give it to him, have that debate, and don’t do it from a defensive standpoint, do it from the standpoint of American history. Recognize that Tom Paine outlined, at the very least, social democratic ideas and a vision of a social welfare state. Do it with an understanding that socialists and Marxists were among the founders of the Republican Party. Do it with an understanding that Abraham Lincoln read Marx. Do it with an understanding that many times throughout this country’s history the voters of our cities and our congressional districts have elected socialists and communists and social democrats to positions of responsibility, and those individuals have held those positions in able and highly creative ways. They’ve done a lot of good and this is part of our history.

If we wipe it away, if we make socialism and social democracy, these ideas and also this politics, something foreign, we neuter the debate, we make it an unnatural debate, and that’s unhealthy. It’s unhealthy for solving problems. It’s also unhealthy for the left, because a cautious left, a left that always pulls its punches, is not a sufficient counter to an aggressive right. I think that in this great battle of ideas, which we can and should have, it’s time to reconnect with our history, and our history tells us that at the best points throughout the American journey, at those points where we have really leapt forward, socialists and their allies have been central to the discourse, accepted not merely by folks on the left but also listened to by Presidents and Senators.

I write in the book on the chapter on civil rights about when the great labor leader, A. Philip Randolph, was being honored in 1960 on his 70th birthday, in the audience was the head of the Socialist Party, Norman Thomas, but also Hubert Humphrey and Eleanor Roosevelt were there, and Nehru had sent greetings, and so did Dwight Eisenhower. You see what I mean? Randolph wasn’t marginalized; he wasn’t pushed to the edges of the discourse, he was central to it. And I think that we as a society have moved forward when we have allowed, in fact, when people on the left have made sure that radical ideas are part of the debate and are entertained, because it is a radical idea – democracy itself is a radical idea, civil rights is a radical idea, economic justice is a radical idea at some point, but it becomes mainstream and as it becomes mainstream, that’s where we really move this country forward.

Where are "The People"?

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:21:00 +0000

“People’s congresses and people’s committees represent the end result of people’s struggle for democracy.”
Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi, The Green Book

The people have spoken. We just don’t know what they have said yet.”
Lord Ashdown

“The people have spoken, the bastards.”
Dick Tuck, American political fixer

“Our job is to listen to the American people and follow the will of the American people.”
John Boehner, Speaker of the House

“The first thing President Obama will need to do on Nov. 3 is acknowledge and accept the fact that the people have spoken.”
Yash Gupta, Washington Post Nov. 2, 2010

The conservative NY Times Op-Ed columnist David Brooks tells us that The People want both Democrats and Republicans to have a serious conversation about the role of government. It’s a repeated refrain of his these days. David Gregory, the host of Sunday’s Meet the Press, asks his panel whether The People are behind the Wisconsin governor’s fight to end public employee collective bargaining. Are the People willing to destroy unions as a government spending measure? It’s hard-shell Bible truth now that the results of the 2010 Congressional elections showed that the People don’t want Obamacare, didn’t want the Stimulus, and want serious government spending reductions in order to reduce the national debt.

The People have also adopted some other hard-shell Biblical truths: reduce and reform taxes, give tax rebates to the wealthy so that an eventual “trickle down” will float all boats, keep gasoline prices low, replace welfare with work, reduce foreign aid, eliminate Affirmative Action, forget about global warming, fight wars against terror over there so they’re not fought here, round up illegal immigrants and send them back, get government out of the way of free enterprise, avoid Moral Hazard by preventing the government from letting “the chips fall where they may,” mock any talk of the negative effects of a wealth divide and of class warfare, maintain the doctrine of American Exceptionalism without the need of a comparative review, accept technology’s power to overcome any ill effects that technology might produce, recognize that attacks on government and the media are justified but any attacks on free enterprise are socialist, acknowledge that all politics and politicians are corrupt and that personal and family power is determining, agree with Oprah Winfrey that one can will one’s way to success, rather like Oprah herself.

I could go on but I’m descending into the absurd, which I think one needs a good sense of in order to survive the sort of People’s “cultural imaginary” that I’m cataloguing. But the theatre of the absurd is not my focus; The People are. Where are The People? Because any reference to “The People” is overdetermined, by which I mean there are an ungraspable variety of constituting meanings and no single conception of “The People,” any use of the expression must be greeted suspiciously. There is no single constitution or conception of “The People.”

When a politician or a marketer refers to “The People,” it’s best to run. Other phrases to run from are “perfectly clear,” which invariably means that the topic is without single meaning or cause, “The Market,” which may be offline or online, in Sofia or Tokyo, or “The Good,” which may be the single product of “having the goods,” or what Plato’s mouthpiece – Socrates -- is refining in The Republic.

Overdetermination also implies that our talk and what we are talking about are not divided. The discourse of “The People” infects the reality of “The People.” We learn about things within and through a multiplex of economic, political, environmental, societal, cultural factors that are in motion. The things of reality, so to speak, including “The People,” are never there for us humans separate from what we’ve learned they are, from our discourse, from our saying of what they are.

In our seriously wealth divided society an underclass is both economically and psychologically under water and a middle class is running on the fumes of past solvency and security. In such a situation, one would expect a rejection or at least a riddling of the discourse/reality determination of “The People” that represents a wealth class but not the underclass or the middle class. In other words, the wealth class has appropriated how everyone else learns about the world, in this case, “The People.” It is ironic and sad that some 80% of “The People” have nothing to do with how they themselves are constituted by a reality-creating discourse. “The People” therefore have learned all of the above hard-shell truths within a learning discourse that produces as real what benefits the wealthy and denies as real what benefits everyone else.

When we talk about The People somewhere else, say, Egypt or Somalia or The Netherlands, we are talking about different arrangements of reality and reality shaping discourse, and different arrangements in those places at different times. In the U.S. in 2008, a discourse of “change” personalized by a charismatic candidate – Barack Obama -- mobilized a construction of The People that expanded atypically. They overwrote the conservative/liberal dualism and defined “change” as an overwriting, a grand delete, of ‘back in the day’ politics itself. This wasn’t the same “The People” that Nixon had appealed to or that adopted Reagan as a savior or propelled Gingrich and The Contract with America into power. In the 2010 Congressional elections, the new overflow electorate of 2008 were dispirited by the failure of Barack Obama to fulfill a promise of “change” that he, as the highest political representative of the government of the United States, could not fulfill: that is, replace “a knife fight in a phone booth’”politics between conservatives and liberals with the personal “politics” of Facebook.

The significance of “The People” after 2010 returned then to what a conservative and neo-conservative discourse had shaped them to be. They returned to the hard-shell “truths” that have no truth in their lives. Some returned to the status of The Deleted from inclusion, from signification.The People already down and out– call them the underclass/blue collar/working class – continued to see themselves identified as part of what they had been excluded from. Some of those reeling and going to their knees – call them the middle class – declared themselves independent of all connections to any politician’s reference to The People. Suffering and misery kept on increasing, except for the Dividend Class, but these Independents couldn’t detach themselves from a Winner’s discourse, one that did not represent their reality.

Independents also remained independent of any variety of critique of a winner take all, unregulated capitalism that would represent their reality and serve their interests. The vast majority of The People would be well served by socialized health care, by increased taxes on the wealthy, by high speed rail and expanded public transportation, by effectively regulated food and drug industries, by a transference of tax rebates to the wealthy to Social Security, by strong anti-trust enforcement that preempts the creation of corporations “too big to fail,” by a tax supported safety net that reduced the hardships of the underclass, undermined the need for prison building that exceeds the building of schools, by participation in a global effort to delay and end global warming... Absurd that The People do not act on behalf of themselves but on behalf of a construction of themselves they have swallowed.

I shall refrain once again from a long reference to the theatre of the absurd.

Let’s say, rather, that some of what constitutes “The People” economically and politically and so on breaks free and re-engages the determination of their own identity. Let’s call them “Those People.” What do “Those People” want and where are they?

“Those People” want a serious conversation about the role of globalized technocapitalism in a democracy, especially it’s computer facilitated, internationally unregulated transnational financial operations;

“Those People” want to know to what degree money and attendant power has turned democracy into plutocracy;

“Those People” want to know whether the corporate axiom of low labor costs mean greater profits is best achieved, and has been historically best achieved, with or without workers’ unions?;

“Those People” want to know why the reckless looting of Wall Street financial finagling is best resolved by austerity measures placed on the working class and the middle class?;

“Those People” want to know why 90% of population has seen a 13% rise in income while the top 400 households have a 399% increase? And why the top income earners are now paying 16.6% in income taxes when they paid 91% from 1951 to 1964, a period in which our middle class democracy was created and thrived. In 1964 wages stopped rising and by 2010 were, in 1981 dollars, less than wages in 1970. Why isn’t tax reform tied to a return of income tax on the wealthy to levels which maintained a solid middle class? Why is tax reform defined as a tax rebate to the wealthy? Why replace a progressive income tax system that supported a democracy with some claim to egalitarianism with the voodoo economics of “Trickle Down” and regressive taxes that further exacerbate the wealth divide?

You can see how “Those People” put discourse and reality together differently than “The People.” They are learning within a different discourse, one that brings into sight what a wealthy man’s discourse denies. “Those People” deny to learn the world, including the reality of themselves, in any way that robs them of what they have fought for and earned. “Those People” are learning to be where they should be and not where a high stakes Monopoly game now played globally wants to put them.

There seems to be only slight but encouraging indication that “Those People” are here in the U.S. at this moment. In fact, it has seemed that the so-called Millennials, those born after 1989, have reduced the overdetermined “The People” to “Myself,” or, at the boundaries of Millennial social solidarity, “Friends.” That is a state of affairs very much in flux at this moment as the online realities of the young have interconnected and put on the boil long delayed rebellion against the wealthy and powerfuls’ determination of who The People are. Our long staged U.S. theatre of absurdity in regard to who The People are and what benefits them may yet be upstaged.

Photo: PeoplesWorld.org

What’s the Problem with Secession?

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:12:00 +0000

It may be hard to believe anyone would be against, or at least not enthusiastic about, the impending secession of southern Sudan from the rest of the country. After all, the mainstream media has openly championed the cause for an independent southern Sudan and the vote in favor of separation in last month’s referendum was nearly 100 percent. And, of course, the right to self-determination is a fundamental principle of Marxism-Leninism, the very reason why progressive nations like the Soviet Union and Cuba supported Africa’s liberation movements and fought against imperialism during the so-called Cold War.

But on a continent of dozens of poor and weak nations, most only recently celebrating five decades of independence, not to mention numerous armed conflicts, the precedent set by southern Sudan’s breakaway concerns many Africans. The long, difficult process of uniting diverse peoples and forging a national identity within each country – especially with the added challenges of a neo-colonial global economy, misrule by parasitic elites, and backward ethnic and religious chauvinism – can easily be undone with calls for independence by opportunistic leaders. We all know sometimes it is easier to leave a relationship than to repair and strengthen it.

So what worries many observers it that the southern Sudan model – separation through the ballot box – will be viewed as an option across Africa by secessionist groups as well as countries experiencing political turmoil. The most obvious candidate is Cote d’Ivoire where a war that split the country and claimed thousands of lives nearly a decade ago seems on the verge of resumption. That West African nation has two presidents right now – incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, the presumed loser in November’s elections who still occupies the presidential residence, and Alassane Ouattara, the widely-recognized winner who meets with his cabinet in a hotel protected by UN peacekeepers. Their bases of support reflect Cote d’Ivoire’s division: allegiance to Gbagbo comes mainly from Christians and the southwestern part of the country, while most of Outtarra’s supporters are Muslim and hail from the north. Hopes of reuniting this once relatively prosperous and stable nation, hailed by the West as a capitalist “success story” in Africa, are fading. And there are many other relevant cases across Africa, such as the decades-long secessionist war in the Casamance region of Senegal, a movement for independence in the Cabinda province of Angola, and questions about the status of the island of Zanzibar within Tanzania. If southern Sudan could negotiate and vote for separation, why not northern Cote d’Ivoire, or Casamance, or Cabinda, or Zanzibar, or countless other places? Even within Sudan itself, what about secession for Darfur or the Nuba mountains, two other trouble spots in that enormous country?

Ali A. Mazrui, a leading African political scientist, warned of the possible domino effect of southern Sudan’s secession in a recent Guardian article titled “Is this Pakistanism in Sudan?” It was Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah who coined this term when he voiced his opposition to secession on religious grounds, a particular concern of Africa’s leaders since many countries, like Sudan, have significant populations of Muslims and Christians as well as many practicing other religions. Besides the religious plurality, Mazrui points out there are more than 2,000 ethnic groups in Africa. He argues: “If territorial self-determination was granted to even a tenth of them, it would be reduced to dozens of warring mini-states – especially when the location of minerals coincides with ethnic differences.”

The main argument against secession is that Africa’s economic and political position in the world is strengthened by unity and weakened by further division. Simply put, it is easier for capitalists to exploit and co-opt small, fragile, and underdeveloped nations. Nkrumah presented this thesis in his influential book Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, building upon Lenin’s classic work on imperialism. Nkrumah advocated an All-African Union Government to defend the continent against international monopoly capitalism and to develop a socialist economy. At the time Nkrumah wrote this book in the 1960s, many African nations had only recently become independent while others remained under colonial rule. As leader of the first sub-Saharan colony to declare independence, Nkrumah realized political independence was superficial since it did not guarantee economic sovereignty. The value of Africa’s raw materials and cash crops were determined by the west, plans to industrialize Africa’s economies were stifled by capitalist powers, and former colonial maters intervened in domestic matters. Many African leaders resisted continental unity, preferring to negotiate special deals with western nations. To Nkrumah, a champion of Pan-Africanism and socialism, the prosperity and stability of Africa could only be realized through unity, not division.

The first generation of African leaders faced a vast array of obstacles to development, all rooted in colonialism: insufficient transport and communication infrastructure, export-oriented extractive economies, poorly educated citizens, and divided populations. Not only did colonial rulers favor certain ethnic groups over others in allocating scarce educational opportunities and administrative positions, but they created colonies of astonishing linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversity. Indeed, the borders of Africa largely were drawn up by European imperialists in the late 19th century during the infamous “Scramble for Africa.” As they carved up the continent, without African consultation, they divided up societies, disrupted trade networks, and ignored existing political boundaries. As a result, numerous ethnic groups found themselves split up by colonial borders, sometimes multiple ones, while individual colonies comprised a multitude of peoples who had no shared history of living together. Imagine if alien rulers occupied Europe 100 years ago and created a colony encompassing a minority of Germans, all of the Dutch, some French-speakers, a large population of Spaniards, and several Italian towns?

European authorities never fully controlled their colonies even after the so-called period of pacification at the turn of the 20th century. Africans resisted colonial authority, some areas remained outside the reach of imperialists, and the day-to-day operations of the colonial state were left in the hands of what Europeans called “traditional authorities.” Nevertheless, colonial rule had major economic, political, and social ramifications: the establishment of export-oriented extractive economies, the institutionalization of authoritarian administration, and the spread of bourgeois culture and values. Although trade unions, military veterans, women’s groups, and other mass organizations led the fight against colonial rule, the foundations of neo-colonialism were well-established in Africa’s new nations, ranging from gigantic Congo and Sudan to tiny Gambia and Togo, each economically more closely linked with their former European rulers than with their African neighbors.

While most of Africa’s founding fathers lacked Nkrumah’s vision, they foresaw the dangers of redrawing the map of Africa. So, when they created the Organization of African Unity in 1963, they decided to keep the existing borders intact. And, despite the many upheavals in Africa in subsequent decades, including the catastrophic Nigerian civil war in the late 1960s, there has been only one exception to this rule: the secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1993. Unlike southern Sudan, there was some historic and cultural basis for an independent Eritrea since it had existed as a separate colony before being federated with Ethiopia in 1950. Nevertheless, on July 9 this year, southern Sudan will declare independence and become Africa’s 54th nation, “the first redrawing of an African colonial border by popular vote,” in Mazrui’s words.

Most of the corporate media coverage of this issue has been celebratory and shallow – for instance, where else have you read about African reservations about southern Sudan’s secession? – but there has been some reporting of the enormous challenges facing Africa’s newest nation. Grossly underdeveloped and poor, southern Sudan is dependent on foreign aid and deeply divided along ethnic and regional lines. Despite the almost unanimous vote for separation, the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) is dominated by the Dinka ethnic group and it still has to content with breakaway factions, as evidenced by last month’s armed clashes with a former leader’s militia that claimed 200 lives. While most of Sudan’s oil reserves are located in the south, all the pipelines run through the north to the country’s ports. Thus, difficult negotiations between southern Sudan and the central government in Khartoum lie ahead. Besides figuring out how they will share oil revenues, other issues include the status of Abyei, an oil-rich area sandwiched between north and south, the final delineation of borders, and the citizenship status of Sudan’s diverse peoples.

Despite misgivings about southern Sudan’s secession and the precedent it sets for the rest of the continent, it is important to recognize the struggles and sacrifices of millions of people in the country’s two decades of civil war. Clearly, secession is the will of the people who lined up throughout Sudan and eight other countries to participate in the mostly peaceful referendum that endorsed secession. But the sad fact is separation was not always the inevitable outcome: the SPLM leadership once comprised both southerners and northerners, including many Marxists committed to national unity, and many believe the movement’s deceased founder John Garang would have campaigned to keep Sudan united. Southern Sudan’s secession partly is the result of failed leadership in Khartoum: by marginalizing the south and encouraging religious intolerance, the corrupt ruling National Congress Party failed to make unity an attractive option for southerners. The voices for unity, including Sudan’s Communist Party, were largely silenced through a campaign of censorship and intimidation. Outside Sudan, the role of imperialists, from the corporate media whose analysis reduced Sudan’s complex problems to a Christian-Muslim conflict to multinational corporations eager to exploit the country’s oil and minerals, must not be overlooked.

In Voice From Conakry, a series of radio broadcasts delivered from exile after he was overthrown in a coup carried out with US backing, Nkrumah warned: “the progress of political movement in Africa will always be militated against by imperialism and its kindred forces.” Secession represents failure, for it undermines African unity. If individual nations cannot overcome their differences, how can a continent come together to advance economic and political sovereignty?

Photo: Voters line up to cast their ballot in the January referendum on secession. (by USAID.Africa)

Book Review: Social Ethics in the Making

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:01:00 +0000

Social Ethics in the Making. Interpreting an American Tradition,
By Dorrien, Gary,
New York, Wiley-Blackwell, hardback, (2008), paperback edition (2011).

In the dog-eat-dog late 19th century world of the Gilded Age, when Horatio Alger stories touted rags to riches, the yawning gap between rich and poor was as extreme as it is today. In that Social Darwinist milieu of abject oppressive poverty, a progressive Christian movement called “the Social Gospel” was born. Progressive Christians were convinced that Christianity had the social responsibility to transform society so that it reflected the mission and message of Jesus, with an arc toward social justice and “social salvation.”

Gary Dorrien, who is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, New York, has written an encyclopedic primer of social ethics, an academic discipline that grew out of the Social Gospel. Dorrien analyzes the three major traditions of social ethics, and offers both biography and thought of both major and minor lights in the field – from the beginnings of the optimistic Social Gospel, to the Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr, and later to the various expressions of liberation theology, including feminism, and ecological ethics, as well as some of the backlash of Right-wing thinkers.

Much of the character of Christian social ethics will speak to people on the secular Left, because they share a common view of the “social problem” and the socialist vision of a just and egalitarian society. In fact, the book’s sub-title could well be, “Progressive Christianity and the Socialist Vision.” The classic struggle of the Knights of Labor, the Hay Market Massacre and the formation of the American Federation of Labor all had a great impact on the liberal churches in forming their understanding of the nature of the social struggle. The laissez faire theory of society was seen as a hellish counterpoint to the teaching of Jesus.

The greatest early lights of the Social Gospel movement were Washington Gladden, called the “Father of the Social Gospel,” and Walter Rauschenbusch, probably its most profound thinker, both of whom held strong socialist positions. Their vision of the “kingdom of God” which Jesus proclaimed was akin to Marx’s vision of the classless society. The Social Gospel was the dominant thought among progressive churchmen in the 1920s and ‘30s. It also had its weaknesses, however. It tended to be a gospel of eternal optimism with a middle class idealistic Jesus. It fell short of demanding racial justice and often gave luke-warm support for women’s rights.

Nevertheless, Dorrien shows that the Social Gospel paved the way for everything that was to follow in social ethics. It had black, anti-imperialist, socialist and feminist advocates. An early voice against white supremacy and for black freedom and equality was the fascinating Rev. Reverdy Ransom, who, although now all but forgotten, sounded a call much like a combination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

Reinhold Niebuhr in the early ‘30s ridiculed the Social Gospel in his classic Moral Man and Immoral Society, which ushered in what Niebuhr called “Christian realism.” In the years of the Great Depression, this premier social ethicist pushed aside the optimism of the Social Gospel for the language of sin, power politics, transcendence and realism. He made the case that individuals might operate with altruistic motives, but society is made up of classes and groups who have clashing interests. In this howling arena, where each group demands to be heard and seeks power, the voice of Jesus calling for selfless love may only be a future vision, and the best we can realistically end up with is “rough justice,” which is the compromise amid countervailing power relations. Reform is possible, but it comes through struggle between capital, labor, and an assertive national government.

Niebuhr in these early days was an ardent socialist, but later, upon giving up Marxism, he adopted a welfare state realism in the Roosevelt era that put him in the mainstream of liberal democratic politics. He was, among other things, a co-founder of Americans for Democratic Action. In domestic politics, Christian realism was a strategy of balance-of-power relations between capital, labor, and assertive national government. As an aside, Walter Reuther, the union leader, was influenced by Niebuhr’s thinking, and Barack Obama is well-read in Niebuhr’s writings.

Internationally, Niebuhrian realism was a theory of balance-of-power interrelations among nations, which American strategists applied particularly to the USSR. This legacy was toxic. In defense of Niebuhr, he said that he hated that Cold War ideologues considered themselves Niebuhrian. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the neo-conservative ideologues promoted imperialist expansionism, a rationale that led the U.S. into, among other things, the fiasco in Iraq. This neo-con adventurism is the sorriest misuse of Niebuhr’s thought. It should be said, however, that Niebuhr’s persistent prophetic public call to stop fascist tyranny prior to World War II is one of the high points of the social ethical tradition.

After holding center stage for 30 years, Christian realism was pushed aside by liberation theology, which became a formidable force with the publication of Gustavo Gutierrez’ epoch-making book, A Theology of Liberation, linking Christian theology in dialogue with Karl Marx to the struggle for the political, social and economic freedom of oppressed people. Although liberation theology swept through third world societies, it was perceived as too marginal and radical in the U.S. to have much impact. Meanwhile social ethics produced offshoots, with followings in every direction, such as feminist theology (often white in orientation), womanism (speaking primarily to the situation of black women) and mujerista thinking (addressing Latina culture).

With growing awareness of capitalism’s deleterious effect on the environment, social ethicists, such as the theologian, John Cobb, who addresses theology within the context of evolution and relativity, and who already decades ago raised a prophetic voice, and the Lutheran Larry Rasmussen (Gary Dorrien’s predecessor in the Reinhold Niebuhr chair of ethics at Union Theological Seminary). They, among others, have been powerful advocates for ecological ethics and sustainable development. In light of capitalism’s continuing destruction of mother earth, sustainable development means, among other things, a dramatically expanded worker and community-owned sector that deals gently with the environment, and an end to industry’s greedy environmental pillaging.

All of these contemporary movements share a vision of a socially transformed economic order with the hope that predatory and community-destroying economics would be replaced. This “something better” has been at the heart of progressive Christianity’s social mission.

Dorrien also describes the neo-conservative backlash to progressive social thought, including the erstwhile liberal, Michael Novak, who extols the glories of “democratic capitalism,” and even sees religious qualities in it by drawing parallels between Roman Catholic sacramental theology and seven “sacramental” qualities in corporate America.

Dorrien concludes that the “discredited” Social Gospel vision of a cooperative commonwealth and a decentralized egalitarian economic democracy is more relevant than ever today. The seemingly hopeless problem of social and environmental injustice can only be confronted and overcome if there is a meeting of the minds and concerted united efforts among progressives, both of the secular Left and people of faith.

Dorrein’s thought-provoking book has significance for progressives of every stripe. It is particularly useful for students and scholars, but it is eminently readable and can fill an important gap in the thought of people on the Left. For those who think that American Christianity is represented only by the dangerous antics of the religious Right, it will offer hope that there are many progressive people in faith communities with whom we can find common cause.