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  • RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY: PETER H. CLARK, AMERICA'S FIRST BLACK SOCIALIST

    Nikki M. Taylor. America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2013. 308 pages. Photos. Hardback $40.00. Also available as an e-book.

    Nikki Taylor’s America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark rescues from obscurity the Cincinnati African American activist and politician who until now was known only to a handful of specialists in that city’s history or in African American or labor history. Taylor, who has constructed this biography from exhaustive research in local and national African American newspapers as well as the private papers of major and minor figures in black history, argues that Clark was an idealist and even “a visionary” (p. 129) who late in life succumbed to political corruption and became a political and social conservative. Yet the evidence that Taylor presents suggests that from early on and throughout his life Clark was a political chameleon, a charlatan, and an opportunist, ever on the lookout for the main chance of political preferment and power, but who, because of his political unreliability failed ever to achieve of his dream and ended up a worn-out political hack despised by the African American community. There were idealistic black socialists in the late nineteenth century, but Clark was not one of them. (1)

    Clark was born on March 29, 1829 was the descendant of both slaves and freemen. His father, the owner of a barbershop and a bathhouse, was successful enough that young Peter “did not want for much during his childhood” (p. 23) while his light complexion—his parents were both mulattos—also gave him social advantages and privileges throughout his life. He grew up amidst Cincinnati’s perennial violence—the Cincinnati race riots of 1829, 1836, and 1841, white racist attacks on the black community—experiences that no doubt intensified his consciousness of the African Americans’ precarious situation in the ante-bellum era. His family, as part of Cincinnati’s African American elite, was able to send him to a private school where he received a classical education, graduating in 1848, though unlike some better off Ohio African Americans he never went on to study at Oberlin College.

    Interestingly, Clark’s youth was spent among abolitionists and utopian socialists, the latter followers of Robert Own and Charles Fourier. Several of these reformers joined together in 1847 to create a Fourierist “phalanx,” as their cooperative communities were called, and some of Clark’s relatives became involved in the community, giving young Peter what Taylor calls exposure to “socialist principles.” (p. 32). Clark met and became associated with two Owenites, Thomas and Maria Varney, whose newspaper The Herald of Truth published articles on Fourierism, spiritualism, and socialism, including some by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Varney’s hired Clark as an apprentice stereotypist, that is a maker of metal printing plates, to produce their newspaper and the Free-Soil paper, the Cincinnati Herald.

    When his father died, however, Clark, who had never wanted to be a barber, found that he had to take over the family business, cutting hair of both blacks and whites, a rarity at the time. But when once a white client asked if Clark could get him black women, Clark erupted in anger, vowed never to shave another white man, left the shop and gave up the barbering business. In need of a job he went to work for his uncle John Isom Gaines as a clerk in his grocery store. Gaines was community leader who introduced his nephew to politics in the form of the Black Convention Movement, assemblies of African Americans taking place in many states in those years.

    Clark accompanied his uncle to the Convention of the Colored Citizens of Ohio in 1849 where the issues of slavery and the merits of emigration were being debated. Most of the delegates supported the abolition of slavery and called for improved conditions of free African Americans, though some supported emigration to Africa to escape the racism of American society. Clark decided he wanted to emigrate and with two other friends organized the Liberia League—but they then sought and received the support of the American Colonization Society (ACS), backed in Ohio by the wealthy slaveholder Charles McMicken. Given its backing by a slave master, Taylor finds it “a bit perplexing that Clark would ever participate in any of its schemes.” (p. 49) Clark traveled to New Orleans, but at the last moment, decided not to board the ship. Clark returned to Cincinnati around the beginning of 1852, continuing to advocate emigration.

    At the 1852 Ohio Colored Convention, Clark’s uncle Gaines was one of those who opposed emigration; the convention demanded abolition and called for solidarity with the European freedom fighters in Hungary and Germany. The following year, Clark attended his first national Colored Convention in Rochester, New York dominated by anti-emigrationists where he became “an ardent opponent of both emigration and colonization thereafter.” (p. 59) This was only the first of Clarks’ many political conversions.

    As a young man, Clark was a rare bird: a member of the Unitarian Church to which almost no blacks belonged, a friend the city’s German-born free-thinkers and socialists and radical intellectuals such as August Willich and Johann Stallo. He also became friendly with Alfonso Taft and George Hoadly, abolitionists who later became political movers and shakers, the former the founder of the Taft dynasty and the latter becoming Ohio governor decades later. The one constant throughout Clark’s life—despite several attempts by political enemies to get him fired, one of them briefly successful—was his job as teacher and principal in Cincinnati’s Colored Schools. Hired in the mid-1850s he continued to teach there until the 1880s when he fled the city in disgrace. It was also in those years that he married his wife Frances Williams, another member of Cincinnati’s black elite and a graduate of Oberlin College’s Ladies’ Course. Politics, however, would keep him from spending much time with his family.

    A good writer and outstanding public speaker—once called the “silver-tongued orator of the West”—Clark made a reputation early on by debating Frederick Douglass in the black newspapers on the question of African American education. While Douglass called for industrial education, Clark—like W.E.B. DuBois later—argued for a classical education that would give African Americans greater opportunity. By the time he was in his twenties, Clark had a national reputation as a black intellectual. He was a rising star.

    Initially a Republican since shortly after its founding in 1854, Clark soon joined the Radical Abolition Party given the honor of introducing Frederick Douglass at its May 1856 convention in Syracuse, New York. He aligned himself with the militant abolitionists calling for abolishing slavery everywhere, and not merely stopping its spread, which was the Republican Party position. Yet, within a couple of years Clark had left the Radical Abolition Party and rejoined the Republicans. Taylor writes that in that period, “Clark’s abolitionism focused less on ending slavery, and more on securing full freedom, equality and citizenship for free African Americans.” (p. 90) Taylor speculates—though she concedes there is no solid evidence—that he may also have been involved in the Underground Railroad network, in part because of his once becoming involved in a fugitive slave case.

    In 1855 Clark launched the abolitionist newspaper Herald of Freedom, and though it did not survive long, it attracted the attention of Douglass who offered Clark a position on his paper, Frederick Douglass’s Weekly, the leading African American abolitionist paper of the time. Clark moved to Rochester where he lived for a while working under Douglass. Taking Douglass as his model, Clark also traveled about lecturing and selling an abolitionist play he had written. He also remained active in the Colored Convention movement speaking out in solidarity with John Brown and writing petitions to repeal Black Laws. All of this took place in the turbulent period between the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law (1850) and the Supreme Court’s Dress Scott decision (1858). In the first years the Civil War, Clark called for the emancipation of the slaves, sometimes speaking before hostile white audiences.

    While few African Americans had initially supported the Republican Party at the time of its founding, by 1858 many had been won over, and by 1860 nearly all African Americans voted Republican. After the Civil War, black voters saw the Republican Party as the party that had ended slavery, emancipated African Americans, and granted them freedom, citizenship and vote in 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Clark, however, began to orient toward the Liberal Republican Movement, a group that was conservative on economic issues and generally hostile to black voters and to black workers. “Oddly enough, Peter Clark briefly joined this movement and even addressed the 1871 Liberal Republican Convention in Cincinnati.” (p. 111). But, coming under fire from Douglass and other African American leaders, Clark deserted the Liberal Republicans that same year and returned to the Republican Party.

    In the fall of 1872, Clark traveled throughout Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, speaking more than sixty times on behalf of the Republican Party. He hoped to be repaid with a patronage position, but when he went to the White House and spoke to President Grant, he failed to receive the job in the federal government that he sought. Angry with the Republicans and arguing that they had failed—as they indeed had—to live up to their promises to African Americans, he organized the Chillicothe Convention , a gather of 100 Ohio African Americans who passed resolutions condemning the Republicans for failing to fight for full, equal rights for black Americans. In the end, the convention voted to back the Republicans at the state level but to call upon voters to make independent decisions on local offices. The Democratic Party, then the party of racism in America, supported Clark’s Chillicothe Convention, see in it an opportunity to break off a piece of the black vote. Taylor argues that Clark’s strategy represented a form of “independent political action,” though it appears from her own evidence that he was simply trying to pressure the Republican Party for patronage jobs, above all for a job for himself. The Cincinnati African American community, disgusted with him, booed Clark when he attempted to speak at a meeting opposing the Chillicothe resolutions.

    During the 1870s Clark developed political positions at odds with Douglass and other African American political leaders. He did not endorse “social mingling,” that is, he did not favor integration, arguing that it was not a civil right and not an objective of the movement. He accepted Cincinnati’s segregated school system, because he believed that it provided jobs for principals and teachers like himself who would in an integrated system be fired (as in fact proved true when the schools were later integrated). He defended African Americans who joined and worked with the Democratic Party, especially those in the South. All of these positions placed Clark at the far right of African American political activists of his time.

    At the same time during the mid-1870s, he began to become involved in the socialist labor movement, participating in the Sovereigns of Industry cooperative movement, the Colored National Labor Union, and in 1876 joining the Workingmen’s Party (WP) of the United States, made up of Marxist and Lassallean socialists. He became the first African American socialist. Long a friend of the city’s German socialists, Clark was welcomed in their party—even though he continued to work in the Republican Party, campaigning for Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and “trying to secure Republican patronage through mid-1877.” (p. 137)

    The WP forbid membership or activity in a capitalist party, but Clark had ambitions; he wanted to be named the head of Howard University, but the Hayes administration failed to reward him. Still he remained loyal to Hayes. When Republicans agreed to the Compromise of 1877—effectively returning the Democrats to power in the South—Clark spoke at an African American protest meeting that year defending Hayes and somehow winning over the black crowd. Unlike other African American politicians, Clark actually applauded the end of reconstruction. Meanwhile, he continued to speak before socialist gatherings, at first as a gradualist and reformist, but over time calling for an end to the capitalist system.

    During the Great Strike on the B&O Railroad in 1877, Clark—wearing his socialist hat—addressed a massive rally of 4,000 people in downtown Cincinnati, calling for an end to violence, but also for the government to take over and run the railroads. He was not only the first African American socialist, but also the only black person on record speaking about the strike. Clark now also called on African Americans to vote for the Workingmen’s Party. The WP, excited to have the black orator in the organization, nominated him for state school commission, “making him the first African American in history to run for political office as a socialist.” (p. 148) While the party won 24 percent of the vote, Clark lost his bid for commissioner, though he got a surprising number of votes from both black and white voters.

    Soon, however, the Workingmen’s Party (having changed its name to the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei) was pushed aside by the National Greenback Labor Party, which split the left and labor vote. By 1879, Clark could no longer see any future for the socialists and left the party. Taylor notes that “As the father of black socialism—and one who had been informed by black radicalism—Clark held ideas about black socialist what were surprisingly white.” (p. 154) That is, Clark as a socialist had nothing in particular to say about the condition of blacks in America. Taylor concludes the chapter writing, “The truth is, Clark had never tried to change the color of socialism; but socialism had, in fact, changed him. If nothing else, it brought him tantalizingly close to the possibility of elected office.” (p. 155) Clark returned once again to the Republican Party, no doubt hoping that he would find either an elected position or a patronage job there.

    In 1880, Clark campaigned for Republican James A. Garfield, and when his candidate won Clark sought the positions of either minister to Haiti or assistant United States treasurer in Cincinnati, but, once again, no patronage job was forthcoming. So in 1882 Clark switched his allegiance, leaving the Republicans and joining the Democratic Party. For an African American at the time, this was not only a rare decision, but one that cut him off from most of his former friends and allies. The Democrats, however, immediately rewarded him by appointing his son Herbert Clark to be a deputy sheriff of Hamilton County and by providing funds for Clark to start a newspaper, the Afro-American, edited by his son. The paper served as the voice of the Democratic Party among Ohio’s African Americans. Democratic Party governor Hoadley also appointed Clark to be a trustee of the Ohio State University. When an anti-segregation bill came up in the Ohio legislature, the Littler Bill of 1884, Clark and his allies in Cincinnati opposed it because it would also have ended the segregated schools and cost African American teachers their jobs.

    In the 1884 presidential campaign between Democrat Grover Cleveland and Republican James G. Blaine, a high stakes election, Clark supported the Democrats for whom he was now working. While the story is too complicated to go into here in detail, Clark worked with the Democrats to disenfranchise African American voters and then engaged in bribery in an attempt to get a black witness to retract his former statement and exonerate the white Democratic Party policeman who had suppressed the vote by jailing more than 150 black voters. When accused in print, Clark declined to deny the charges of bribery against him, and suggested that indeed he had bribed the witness to recant his testimony.

    After his disgraceful act, Clark no longer had a future in Cincinnati. The Republican school board fired him and the black community would no longer come to his defense. Clark moved on, serving briefly as principal of the Alabama Colored Normal School and later taught in St. Louis at all-black Charles Sumner High School. He participated in the National Negro Democratic League during its 1888 St. Louis Convention, becoming its permanent chairperson. The NNDL, controlled by Booker T. Washington and his agent T. Thomas Fortune, represented the far right of African American politics at the time. Speaking to its convention, Clark laid out “a path of salvation for African Americans.” “He advocated racial uplift through increased morality, intelligence, and wealth.” (p. 210) Clark’s last initiative came as a response to the lynchings of 1892, the worst year on record. He called for setting aside May 31, 1892 as the Day of Prayer, when African Americans would leave work, meet in in churches, and pray. Most of the country’s major African American leaders endorsed his call, though it is hard to know how many African Americans actually participated. By the turn of the century Clark was fading from the political scene. He introduced booker T. Washington when he spoke in St. Louis to the Annual Afro-American council and spoke himself at the 1904 convention, but his career was at an end when he attended the Negro State Convention in Missouri in 1907. He died on June 21, 1925 at the age of 96.

    Having read Taylor’s book, one can see why he remained virtually unknown for so long, for his contemporaries were happy to see him fall into obscurity and his successors had no interest in disinterring his memory. Clark betrayed at one time or another every organization, individual, and principle with which he had been associated during his life. He seems never to have held any clear and firm conception of politics, having variously embrace emigration, abolitionism, the Republican Party, the Liberal Republican Movement, the Workingmen’s Party, and finally the Democratic Party. What becomes clear is that by the time he had become an adult he was interested above all in a patronage position that would give him power and economic security. While Taylor does not mention it, through his adult years he must have been supplementing his income as a teacher with political payoffs from the Republicans or Democrats, money that allowed him to travel, speak, and organize. His was not, as the title suggests a “radical life,” it was an opportunist’s career. It is not surprising that neither American socialists or African American freedom fighters have ever claimed him as one of their own, for Clark was not one of them; he was a professional politician, interested in spoils and patronage, the man on the make whose restless ambition made him his own worst enemy, distrusted by all in the end. 

    (1) Philip S. Foner, Ed. Black Socialist Preacher: The Teachings of Reverend George Washington Woodbey and His Disciple Reverend George W. Slater, Jr. (San Francisco: Synthesis Publications, 1983).

     

     

     

     

     

                                                                                                            

  • Ali Mustafa

    I will never forget when I first met Ali Mustafa. It was September 2012, during my first year at York and just before I joined Students Against Israeli Apartheid (Ali was a former member), where he did a talk on his visit to Egypt. After he was done, he asked the audience for comments. Seeing no takers, I chimed in. Not knowing who I was, he was very impressed with my comments, and that was the beginning of our friendship.

    I ran into him again at an event on the Quebec student strike that same month, and after that I remember seeing him on the day SAIA held a solidarity action with Gaza in Vari Hall in November 2012. I also saw him again at David McNally's "Monsters of the Market" launch in December of that year, and a week later when I joined the New Socialist Group, I discovered that he was also a member (or at least attended meetings).

    In 2013, we would sometimes hang out, getting a drink after a Beit Zatounevent, or taking the streetcar together after NSG meetings. We would talk about all sorts of things, but mostly politics, from the state of the left here and abroad, to the British Socialist Workers Party scandal, and to the Arab Spring, which is when I learned he planned to visit Syria for the first time. He told me he planned to get into Syria from Turkey and that he would be embedded with Free Syrian Army units. This was just before an Israeli Apartheid Week 2013 event in March titled "Who's afraid of the Syrian Revolution" which featured activist Razan Ghazzawi on the history of the struggle of the Syrian people since 2011. The event, which was disrupted by the pro-Assad crowd, was the last time I saw Ali before he went to Syria the first time.

    During his first trip to Syria, I would follow his Facebook account, keeping an eye out for updates, and look at all the pictures he took. He was also interviewed by CTV News a few times. He returned to Toronto in May, but I didn't see him again until June, where he exhibited a lot of the photos he took in Syria, in a panel discussion on the struggle of the Syrian people at Beit Zatoun. The sight of all the destruction in Syria, coupled with photos of Syrians continuing to resist the terror of the Assad regime and building the foundations of a new and better society, was very moving. Getting a firsthand description of the Paris Commune and soviet-like popular
    assemblies that had sprung up throughout liberated areas of Syria was very inspiring.

    The last time I saw Ali alive was on July 12, 2013. That night, he had debated a member of the Communist Party. Expecting the event to be a debate between Ali and someone who was critical of just the armed uprising, the event turned into a total character assassination and hit job on Ali and the Syrian Revolution. His opponent was not in the least bit critical of Assad. The audience was dominated by Stalinists and members of other pro-Assad groups. There were very few pro-revolution people in attendance and those who were there did not feel safe expressing their views. Ali was called a liar, and all of his pictures were alleged to being fake.

    Following this incident, I went out with him and some of his friends, where he told me that he planned to visit Egypt again, this was just nine days after the coup against Morsi. The last memory I have of him is walking out of Future Cafe on Bloor Street towards Bathurst, and talking about Egyptian politics, and saying goodbye and telling him to stay safe as I walked back east along Bloor and he walked with his friend north along Bathurst.

    This morning I awoke to find out that he was one of the latest victims of Bashar al-Assad. After more than six months in Egypt, he had visited Turkey and decided to go back to Syria. I didn't worry about him this time. If he had survived Syria the first time, and survived Egypt under Sisi, surely he'd be okay?

    But it was not meant to be.

    Ali Mustafa was killed by Bashar al- Assad's armed forces, the same armed forces that have already killed tens of thousands of Syrians and counting.

    Ali would want us to continue fighting for the Syrian people. He would want us to do whatever we can to help the people of Syria and express solidarity with them against Bashar al-Assad, the reactionary Saudi and Qatari backed Islamist groups, and imperialism, both American-Western and Russian, and most importantly, he would want us to defend the Syrian Revolution, against both the pro-Assad crowd, and also against those of the “a plague on both your houses” type.

    In the 18 months I knew him, I considered him to be a great friend and comrade. I still cannot believe that I will never see him again.

    Goodbye Ali, 

    You're gone, but not forgotten.

  • Address on unfolding situation in Ukraine, 10 March 2014

    The author's view of the strength of the right is not universally shared among UK progressives. – DL

    I am Zakhar Popovych a member of the Left Opposition initiative, and I have been on the Maidan under my red flag from the very first day of its emergence. I don’t sleep there in tents but I have been visiting the square virtually every day during these months.

    Euro-Maidan is mass popular and grassroots movement, not  a manufactured one

    And this is the red flag we raised up on the 24th of November at the first mass rally of Euro Maidan. I never saw so many people demonstrating in downtown Kiev since 2004. No political rally or public event had attracted so many people during this past decade. Rallies of right-wingers could possibly be some thousands people strong last year, but they were never ten thousand, not even on the Ukrainian Insurrection Army Day. The first Euro Maidan rally was at a minimum fifty thousand strong; such a movement could not be simply a manufactured one. It is clear that it was a mass mobilization of mostly Kiev citizens angry with corrupt, ineffective and greedy government. It was against the government of oligarchs, who are robbing the people of Ukraine.

    The economic and political system of contemporary Ukraine was manufactured by oligarchs perfectly to make this robbery as legal and as intensive as possible. The political system, which is totally controlled by oligarchs, supplied them with legislation that made tax dodging an absolutely legal and common practice. If you are a Ukrainian oligarch you will pay no profit tax at all – this is the rule of the Ukrainian economy. The greatest taxation pressure is on the workers and small business owners, even if we are talking about income tax where we formally have a flat rate. In fact the rate is regressive. Workers’ wages are affectively taxed by up to 40%, when wealthiest guys are paying only a “flat” 17% from their shareholders’ dividends.

    For most of the people the Europe means justice, social justice to be more precise. I met on Maidan many workers and unionists. Miners from Luhansk (the very eastern region of  Ukraine) told me they are on Maidan because they want the courts to be just. “We want the courts to act!” Volodymyr Sokolov, leader of the Independent Miners Union in Roven’ki, Luhansk region, told me. When our union activists face illegal firing it takes up to three years of trial proceedings to reestablish them in their jobs. Actually, it means that an employer can fire anybody and not be concerned about the union’s demands. We want to stop such practice! We want the reform of the court system. We want to secure the rule of law in our country. An Association Agreement with the European Union includes the obligation to reform the courts – and we demand the government to signs it.

    That is why our Left Opposition initiative called for Association without a Free Trade Agreement. The political part of the Association Agreement also includes some contradictory points, but in general it can help to make Ukraine more democratic and free minded, and it can help us to secure the rule of law. And the Labor Law in Ukraine is still the Soviet one; in most cases the law is on the side of workers, not employers. The Soviet labor code in Ukraine was preserved, not canceled as it happened in Russia. And we want Soviet Labor Code to be enforced in Ukraine!

    Radical right-wingers systematically tried to clear the Euro-Maidan from the Left but that successfully

    It is true that the Euro Maidan movement was initiated by the right-wing opposition. And it is also true that the most organized and influential part of these right-wingers is the far right Svoboda Party. I consider this party as one trying to develop itself in the Hitlerism tradition. It is not just the mere assertion and “Argumentum ad Hitlerum.” Some of its leaders are busy popularizing the heritage of Hitler and Göbbels into the Ukrainian language. For example, the main theoretician of Svoboda Mr. Mykhalchyshyn personally translated Dr. Göbbels’ Das kleine ABC des Nationalsozialisten and published it in a collection of articles together with NSDAP 25-point programme and Ernst Röhm’s Why exactly the SA? All together with Mr. Mykhalchyshyn explanation of the actuality and topicality of all this Nazi rubbish for contemporary Ukraine. For example, he personally is the author of the text called Revolutionary National Socialist.

    It is no surprise that as soon as the huge mass demonstration was finished, the density of Nazis per square metre rose dramatically. On November 27 the flagstaff of this red flag was broken by C-14 militants affiliated with Svoboda.

    As you can see the flag was chewed up, even a bit masticated but it was not eaten. Unfortunately, many of our banners were eaten. Definitely no pieces of them left. In the latter days of Maidan dozens of leftists and union activists were attacked by far right militants.

    In the evening of November 29 it seemed as though the Euro-Maidan was over. Just a few hundred radical students were left on the square. But, as you all know, the violent police attack in the early morning hours of 30th November caused the level of protests to rise up again.

    As soon as a new wave of mass movement flooded the squares Nazis systematically found themselves in a small minority with little ability to influence the movement. Propaganda of left socialist ideas was possible each time it was a really big rally.  And it was possible at any time outside the Maidan.

    In the first days of December we organized a number of public leftist events outside Maidan, mostly in downtown Kiev. One of them was a two hundred people strong march against police violence. Unfortunately, the authorities were not notified according to the appropriate legal procedure, because it was very hard for us to submit an application to Kiev City Council, then occupied by Svoboda. But nobody attacked us, neither the police nor Nazis. We had absolutely no security problems.

    On the big Sunday rally of the 9th December we made a successful intervention on the Maidan using the separate “Free microphone” stage with absolutely new banners and posters. But you can be sure that the content of our agitation was of the same socialist character.

    The movement changed after the introduction of emergency laws – people heard the Left voice

    Days and weeks passed by. And, as you can imagine the zero reaction of the government was making people more and angrier. We felt cold and tired, and that made us even angrier. The government was just waiting for us give up and disperse, showing no sign at all of willingness to negotiate, even with opposition leaders. When the number of protesters began to decline significantly the government decided to smash the remaining ones.

    The emergency laws of January 16 passed through parliament and were introduced by January 19. Protesters now became very angry with the government and an insurrection began. People moved from the Maidan square and attacked the police on Hrushevsky Street on the approach to Parliament.

    The first attacks against the anti-riot police of the Berkut were organised mainly by the neo-Nazis of Pravyi Sektor, who are still more radical than the far right Svoboda movement. But it is also true that in the following days, many ordinary and very different people entered the struggle. Thousands of them brought tyres and oil to feed the huge fire. Among the activists, I saw very different people, mostly Russian speaking, and many youth from the suburbs of Kiev. This was very different from the people on Maidan square, who were mostly Ukrainian speaking people from villages in western Ukraine.

    After the introduction of the emergency laws most of the citizens of Kiev were very angry. And after the killing of the activists, even more so. The Maidan square, frequented on a “normal” evening by a few hundred people, was invaded by several thousand people, who stayed all night. This mass mobilization probably saved the Maidan from an attack which was clearly being prepared by the police.

    Everybody believed that the police would take the Maidan by storm. Everybody was sure that the Berkut would attack. According to the new laws, the demonstrators were all considered criminals. Among them far right groups were present, but also some left radical groups (mainly anarchists). Most demonstrators were critical of the opposition and the xenophobic far right. Many stones and Molotov cocktails were thrown against the police, with several of them being injured. Unfortunately, many young people behaved as if it was a game, even after some of them had been killed. Nonetheless, it was a mass revolt of Ukrainians of different nationalities and ethnic groups for democracy in Ukraine. The far right were certainly present, but in the context of a much broader movement.

    There was no lack of resources. You can imagine elderly people in queues passing stones and automobile tyres to fighters. Old women helping grandchildren to fill Molotov cocktails. As a journalist I was personally present there on the front line and was immediately engaged: Take your cocktail, friend! I was welcomed by a courteous boy in a balaclava. It was very hard to resist but I managed myself. The boy noticed my hesitation and my press card and did not persist any further.

    Confronted with such an impressive mass mobilisation, the government decided not to use force against the demonstrators. Any attempt to evacuate the square would have ended up with many wounded and perhaps even deaths. However, this mass action, which had prevented the introduction of new anti-democratic emergency laws, also gave impetus to the most anti-democratic elements of the Maidan movement. After the first battle against the police, far right neo-Nazi groups strengthened themselves and felt strong enough to proclaim themselves leaders of the movement.

    The Left in the occupation of the “House of Ukraine” and Ministry for Education and Science

    But the Left also strengthen themselves! This revolution is very different from the Orange revolution of 2004. This revolution is loud! There are many places where public discussions are constantly going on. Not only on the main stage of Maidan, but also on the “Open University” stage, the “Open microphone” stage, in the open air. And, of course, many, many discussions were held in the rooms of occupied buildings.

    Soon after the battle of January 19 on Hrushevsky Street, the leftist students assembly succeeded in occupying a part of Ukraine House and managed to organize systematic agitation there. Despite a difficult situation the left was accepted on the Maidan, much more than before, and we intervened systematically at the Ukraine House in a student centre mainly organized by left and progressive activists. Left books and leaflets, including thousands of copies of our 10 point manifesto, were distributed here and we participated in the public debates.

    There were many discussions, lectures, and movies shown. We also had a presentation of a new issue of our Spilne magazine, and it was very successful. I personally began my presentation declaring myself a communist and summed up with the demand of social lustration: that is, the immediate removal of oligarchs and the wealthiest from all positions in power.

    I want to stress that all ten points of our Left Opposition program of social change received sincere support and applause. There in the hall of Ukrraine House were people from Western Ukraine that consider themselves as anti-communist, and people from East considering themselves as anti-Banderites. But all of them believe social justice is needed! All of them support a radical program of social lustration! The idea of social justice could unite Ukraine; this is the only idea that can.

    Our proposals, including workers’ control and the deprivation of electoral rights for all millionaires, got a good reception.

    This presentation was on February 17; on the 18th there was new massive attack. We were removed from Ukraine house and unfortunately lost their all our equipment. Equipment but not faith! We recaptured Ukraine House a week later but nothing was left.

    Ministry for Education and Science

    Another example of the Left on Maidan: soon after President Yanukovych ran away radical students occupied the main building of the Ministry for Education and Science. And what is important – Svoboda people were not allowed to enter. The position of the Minister of Education and Science is in Svoboda’s quota in the new government, but they decided not to appoint a radical party member like Ms. Farion but rather to support the relatively moderate Mr. Serhiy Kvit, chancellor (rector) of the University of Kiev Mohyla Academy.

    And before Mr. Kvit was allowed to enter his new office, he had to defend his program for education and science in front of the students’ assembly and to answer many questions that were not always so polite. Moreover, he signed a road-map plan prepared by the students. And we are now moving forward on the steps of this road map. It is not forgotten and the students’ assembly still controls its implementation.

    My comrades and I from the Left Opposition are now personally involved in in an open-data project. The brilliant automaton expert Ms. Kejova is now deploying a new accountancy automation system in this Ministry and we will publish on the internet all raw data of the general ledger (all postings). First deputy minister Ms. Inna Sovsun is giving much consideration to this project and I am sure that it will be published no later than April 1. And beginning from that moment it will be published daily, on each work day.

    So I invite everybody to download our raw data and analyze it; probably some British experts could advise us on some optimization of the Ministry business? The next Ministry we plan to open is the Ministry for Culture.

    Workers in Kryvyi Rig supporting  Maidan

    Tne more significant point that convinced me about the democratic and social character of this Ukrainian revolution is the role of independent workers’ Unions in it. Kryvyi Rih is a big industrial city on the South-East. It is a mostly Russian-speaking Ukrainian city—typical in that sense.

    It has approximately one million inhabitants. Most of them are industrial workers employed by industrial enterprises: miners and metallurgists who are producing iron ore and steel. Many cities of Eastern Ukraine were deindustrialized and declined after the crises of 1990s, but not Kryvyi Rih. As you know, we suffered a huge decline in machine building and metallurgy, but not in raw materials production. This city is the capital of Ukrainian iron ore mining. Even the dust in the streets is red.

    Maidan here was also initiated by small business and traders, but the role of workers is now very significant. The Maidan saw an enormous mass mobilization here. There were frequently more than five thousand protesters. By way of comparison pro-Russian events attracted up to one hundred participants, two to three hundred maximum – and most of them are citizens and agitators from the Maidan trying to find out who are these people and why are they raising this Russian tricolor in their city. The trick is that nobody in the city knows these pro-Russian guys. No one of them was active in civil society, in unions or even political life. There are some bikers, the kind Putin likes to meet with… but nobody knows who the rest of them are because nobody saw them in the city before. Now approximately ten pro-Russians are still standing in a picket line near the local government building.

    The leaders of Independent Union of Miners are among the dozen representatives elected to the Rada Maidan (Maidan Council). The coordinator of the Miners Union, comrade Jurii Samoilov, is the commander of “Miners hundred”, the major unit of Maidan self-defense forces. Self-defense is important because the administration of the mines headed by Rinat Akhmetov and owned by Russian oligarchs had organized their own paid paramilitary titushki units. These units attack protesters and burn offices of opposition party leaders. Maidan self-defense units were formed only after such attacks began.

    Now the ‘Miners hundred’ is busy in joint patrols of the city with the local police force. At the beginning of the Maidan the miners told me: We support it in general but it is not our revolution. Now they feel it is. We do feel it is our Revolution, they say. At least in Kryvyi Rih.

    New government with Svoboda – recognition but no support

    It is true that new government incorporated neo-Nazi minded leaders of Svoboda party: three out of 20 ministers. These  people are really crazy about establishing a New Reich for racial Ukrainians. The slogan they shouted on the Maidan is just a translation into Ukrainian of “Deutschland über alles.” This Reich, they have dreamed up is to be equipped with nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles. And, believe me, Ukraine has enough resources to do it. The missile plant in Dnepropetrovsk is ready to produce them immediately. Newly appointed Dnepropetrovsk governor and notorious oligarch Kolomoisky just inspected this missile plant. Kolomoisky is a leader of  the Ukrainian Jewish Congress, but this doesn’t prevent him from being right wing and anti-worker.

    But being willing to behave like Nazis don’t mean you automatically are a Nazi. Under circumstances of pressure of the mass movement they can’t push their rightwing war and xenophobic agenda. The problem is that if Ukraine were to go to the war with Russia this fascist agenda could probably be accepted in society. But at the moment we still have no actual war. And we have a chance to prevent it. 

    At the moment the government has completely forgotten the social slogans of the Maidan. Instead of dividing government and business we have oligarchs appointed as governors in Dnepropetrovsk and Donetsk regions. Instead of the Maidan demand that oligarchs should be taxed at 10 percent of their wealth (so the wealthy will share with the poor), we hear no word at all about taxation of big business and the very  opposite declaration of absolute agreement for all the demands of the IMF. Yet, we accept this government as a legitimate one. It was clearly formed on the wave of a really mass grassroots mobilization of the Maidan. And it declared its responsibility to the Maidan. We appeal to all governments of the world and to Russia among others to recognize this government.

    But we do not support it politically. We do practically support it in some local initiatives like the open data project, but we don’t support it backing destruction of monuments or its language legislation initiatives. Using the threat of war as an excuse, the new government is backing extremists who destroy soviet monuments and incorporate far-right militants into the police and war force. Generally we do not support its chauvinist and anti-communist hysteria which they are trying to inflate using the war threat. And, as a back-loop, they are inflating the war threat by this hysteria.

    To stop the inflation of war hysteria and prevent actual war we should find a way to re-unite the country politically. And this is possible, not on the grounds of radical nationalism, but around a social justice agenda. It is true that many people in the East and South of Ukraine do not trust the new government very much. I do not think they trust Putin and pro-Russian extremists either. But you should notice that the fast change of mind of the Party of Regions’ members of parliament led voters in the Eastern and Southern Ukraine feel betrayed and excluded from the government. Formally, the Ukrainian Parliament is absolutely legitimate, but the former majority of it, I mean Party of Regions MPs, are now representing just nobody. Voters in Crimea are very angry with them. And this fact is systematically used by separatist propaganda, for example by Crimean Parliament speaker, who declared himself a new leader of Crimean Party of Regions

    Therefore to press Ukrainian government to call new elections of Parliament as a priority! Reelection of the Rada is the only way to make it representative for both East and West Ukraine. And I am sure that in the present situation it would be very hard to falsify the vote, and the composition of Parliament would change much in favor of representatives who are really trusted by people. And I am also sure that the social justice agenda will be pushed to the front. 

    Second but no less important is to press Russia to withdraw troops from Crimea. This is a prerequisite for any legitimate referendum and even recognition of independence. Otherwise Crimea remains a not recognized country in hard economic crisis. No air connection, no water supply, no tourists, etc. And this semi-war situation will be used by Ukrainian far right to suppress democracy and social justice agenda. We appeal to European left not to back Russian intervention in Crimea. I will say it even more strongly – you should firmly oppose it! And of course, international observers are needed in Crimea – as much as possible.

    And of course Ukrainian civil society and even some government institutions need your technical support. I mentioned the open raw data initiatives to eliminate corruption in Ministries of Education and Science. We hope it will spread to all governmental institutions soon. The British have significant experience in open-data project. You are welcome your advice and help!

    Please support the independent workers unions. Most of them are locked in industrial regions and has very little influence on the big politics of Ukraine. Help them to build their institutions. They realize they need their own Labor Party separate from oligarchs. But they have very little experience in building of such institutions.

    Finally, it is of course important to show zero tolerance for the far right, which is present in the Ukrainian new government!

    And of course European activists and personalities are strongly welcome in Kiev to talk about these problems. It is still possible to speak there freely and I am sure it would attract significant audience.

  • Social movement teacher unionism in the NEA? In the South? As sure as there is BBQ

                  ImageWe’re seeing social movement teacher unionism arise in the South, in NEA, in Organize2020, a hardy band of activists who intend to transform their NEA state affiliate, North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE).  I was invited to speak at their first state-wide conference but when we were iced out (literally – an ice storm downed power lines and paralyzed the portion of the state where the conference was to be held) caucus activists and I met together to discuss the challenges they face.

                  As occurred when I met CORE’s leaders in their early days,  I was dazzled by the passion, smarts and commitment these activists bring.  We talked frankly about the need to confront hard issues that have stymied growth of unions in the state, most of all racism.  Their program is great but what impresses me most is their commitment to democracy, in the school, in their communities, in a revived labor movement, and in teachers unions.  It’s in their bones and hearts, not just their program. They clearly see the obstacles to building a new kind of teachers union in a political landscape that has for decades withered under the Right’s scorched earth policies; at the same time they aren’t intimidated.  They have a commitment to collective leadership, which I saw in action as they mapped out organizing plans.  They’re not accepting the false dichotomy of either social justice or bread and butter.  They understand a new kind of teachers union has to fight for both simultaneously, educating and organizing  teachers in the schools so that they don’t say “Where’s the union?” when a conflict arises.  This group of activists want teachers to know that THEY are the union and have to build mutually-respectful alliances with parents, community, students, and other workers to make deep change happen.

                  We’ve seen militant action by a few NEA locals, for instance in Oregon, which I’ll write about next week. And we’re waiting on election results for UTLA, the union representing teachers and support staff in Los Angeles Unified School District. UTLA’s Union Power slate is committed to social justice in education, mobilizing members in the schools and establishing democratic norms in their union.  I’m hoping they win. If they do, they’ll be shaking up NEA.

                  But Organize2020 seems to me very special in its fierce commitment to building a militant, democratic NEA in North Carolina,  transforming the entire state organization,  from the bottom-up,  challenging  the way staff determine policy and the deadening weight of NEA’s bureaucratic protocols.  The caucus is pioneering what might be done outside the major cities, where we’ve seen significant teacher pushback.

                  Of course, they have a secret weapon missing in other states: North Carolina barbeque – Eastern style.  You can get the sauce with tofu if you don't eat pork. With that BBQ, along with biscuits, hush puppies, and fried green tomatoes as fuel, Organize2020 is bound to build a very powerful movement.           

                                             

    Is there a subject you want me to tackle? Let me know. You can follow me on twitter and Facebook, as well as my blog every Wednesday here at New Politics.  Or write me at drweinerlo@gmail.com. 

     

     

  • Ukraine: Was What Happened a Revolution? If so, then…

    I view the recent events in the Ukraine rather simply – everything hangs on the answer to a central question: Were the events in Ukraine a revolution? If one agrees, as I do, that the overthrow of Yanukovych was the product of a genuine, popular uprising against a corrupt and thuggish regime, then progressive people of all stripes should be supportive of the events in Ukraine – even with reservations. If, on the other hand, one believes that Yanukovych’s ouster was masterminded in some Western capital, or manipulated by a shady cabal of neo-Nazis, then, for me, there is simply nothing more to say. 

    If a revolutionary event occurred in Ukraine, then any discussion of Yanukovych as the legitimate, democratically elected president is ridiculous, even absurd. The last Ukrainian election may have been judged fair from the perspective of Western poll watchers, but everyone, and I mean everyone, knows that when elections are stolen, they are stolen well before the balloting begins. It would be a stretch to equate the results of any Ukrainian election held since the fall of the Soviet Union with the genuine, popular will of the Ukrainian people. I dare say that the election victory of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood was carried out in far freer conditions that any electoral contest in which Yanukovych was a candidate. Ukraine, since independence, has been run by authoritarian kleptocrats who have enriched themselves grandly while the living standards of the average Ukrainian have deteriorated miserably.  

    The fact that the oligarchs of eastern Ukraine stepped away from Yanukovych at the moment of his greatest need does not mean the events on the Maidan were, effectively, a coup led by the oligarchs. The fact is that oligarchs held their cards tight, until almost the very end, switching allegiance at the last instant, after Klitchko and Tymoshenko failed to sell the deal they had brokered to the masses on the square. Oligarchs understand self-preservation, it is the reason they squirrel away their loot in foreign real estate and banks. Self-interest and oligarchy go together as naturally as cookies and milk. 

    Yanukovych fled when he finally understood that the military and the security forces were no longer willing to suffer the consequences of protecting a tottering, unpopular regime. When those forces left the scene – the revolution prevailed by default. Remember Teheran in 1978: there were months of street fighting, cycles of martyrdom, and then one day the army refused to leave their barracks, then the police refused, and by that afternoon, the Shah was on a helicopter out of Iran. The same thing happened in Bucharest—only there, the revolution put Mr. and Mrs. Ceausescu in front of a wall.      

    The fact that the Obama administration appears to be taking a hard, public position on Russian military action in Crimea, does not mean that the Ukrainians on the Maidan were agents of U.S. imperial expansion, as Putin, Lavrov and some commentators on the left would suggest. The U.S. was not interested in seeing a revolutionary situation unfold in the Ukraine any more than was Russia. The United States and its allies were willing and happy to see Yanukovych hold onto power until December.  

    Besides, does anyone believe that the US government is even capable of launching an operation like the Maidan. They’ve been fought to a draw by the Taliban, they still haven’t been able to topple the Chavez/Maduro regime in Venezuela, and let’s not even bring up Cuba. Gone are the days when they could topple a Mossadegh, an Arbenz, or an Allende with a suitcase full of money and a coterie of ambitious generals and admirals, and Yanukovych was no Mossadegh or Allende. He was a thug and he remains a thug. Even Putin keeps him at arm’s length, like spoiled meat.   

    Certainly, the big money in the West wants more effective economic penetration of the Ukraine, but not at the cost of jeopardizing economic relations with Russia. Business is business and revolutions are generally bad for business. In a similar vein, Putin understands that his Eurasian Economic zone is a joke. He also understands that Russia survives on the hard currency it earns selling energy to the West. The invasion of Crimea is nothing more than a crude negotiating ploy, Putin’s oligarchs will not allow him to strain their purses for the sake of some Russian pensioners.

    If we have witnessed a revolution in Kiev, then progressives should be generally supportive. The best thing progressive people could hope for would be a popular revolution in Russia. Outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg —where billionaires have the most fun — life is miserable. The rural economy has collapsed and the population is in a demographic death spin, appointed regional governors operate like feudal lords and in the countryside they are back to burning witches.   

    Will the Ukrainian revolution fail? Almost certainly yes. The forces on the Maidan have not coalesced around a genuine revolutionary group or movement and even if such a movement were to emerge what chances would it have in the current situation. There are new but familiar faces in power now, but let’s not forget that these parliamentary revolutionaries recently installed local oligarchs in Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk to keep order. What we don’t know is whether the Ukrainian masses—both Russian and Ukrainian-speaking—can protect the political gains they have won against the restoration of oligarchy albeit with new faces. 

    The world today looks a lot like it did before the start of World War I. What seems to be happening around the world, with the Arab spring and now the Ukraine, is more evocative of the revolutions of 1848 than of 1917 and 1918.  It almost feels as though the twentieth century was some kind of aberration. The Russian Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, China, Vietnam—what lessons do they offer that can help us to understand the events of today? I’m afraid very few.   

    Today, people who side with the poor and weak against the rich and powerful would do well to unlearn what they were conditioned to see through the prism of the twentieth century. The alignment of power in the world today looks much more like 1890 than 1950. If you ignore the events of the century, can try reading Marx and Engels, Kropotkin and Bakunin and you will find that you can read them in a completely new way, in a way that makes a great deal of sense about the world we live in. The old left-right paradigm has been broken by history. The language that was once so effective no longer works and the people who continue to cling to it sound, increasingly, out of touch. 

    The events in the Ukraine are taking place in an entirely new context. Who is on the left and who is on the right—who is with the people, who is against them no longer fits into neat little boxes. Progressives need to go back and revisit the things we think we know. When the common people, working people are on the barricades, we don’t need to over-think it—we need to relearn how to show them solidarity.

  • A Tale of Resistance: Conversation with a Woman Striker

    The workers of Punto Leather Factory, located at Kazliceşme in the district of Zeytinburnu in Istanbul, have been organized in their union, Deriteks, for a decent livelihood and decent working conditions. They stand against harsh working conditions, health and safety problems, denial of their constitutional right to unionize, disadvantageous health insurance plans, prohibitions against using their annual leave entitlements; in summary they stand against working in conditions of slavery. The workers, who have been fired by their employer who seeks to ban workers’ participation in trade unions, have been resisting in front of their factory to protect their rights for 197 days now.

    According to our findings, there are around four thousand factories in this area; in the leather and textiles sector there are 25, 000 leather workers who are registered in the Social Security system while employed there are also as many unregistered workers. Thirty percent of these workers are women employed in the leather industry with no record, no insurance and working in unsafe conditions. The problems are common to all workers employed in the leather industry. This is the first instance of resistance in this sector and for this reason it is very important.

    Of the fifty or more women who work at Punto Leather Factory, we spoke to Hülya Alptekin, who is the first woman to become a union member and who for that reason was fired from work. Alptekin explained her determination to resist with the following words “we will resist until we win our rights!…”

    • Can you tell us the story of this resistance, how did it start and what has this time of resisting taught you?

    When we first organized against bad working conditions and for our right of “freedom to organize,” I got fired because I had become a union member. This happened despite me doing my job well and not having received a warning during the time I had been employed. We formed a working-place committee together with a few friends, I became the women’s representative, we had some demands laid out regarding the amelioration of our working conditions. The employer held a meeting with us: “What is this business of forming a committee? Drop out of the union, resign,” he told us and offered to make dirty deals with us. We were promised for example double pay. But when he saw that we remained determined, he said that our labor contracts had been terminated.

    When we first started our resistance, we were offered a lot of money. But we were constantly in touch with our union, we needed to be organized in the name of workers’ solidarity, for our rights, in order to be able to act collectively. We wanted to use our legal rights. We wanted the right to negotiate for what we deserve; this was our only option. We had nothing to loose, nothing but our labor. Most of us had been working for over ten years and we had been exploited long enough. We needed to say Stop! to this exploitation. Right now, in total, there are 79 of us resisting. There are 20 more union members like us inside the factory, the rest are not part of the resistance. They fear loosing their jobs.

    • Can you say a little bit more about the work that you do, how many hours you work, how much do you get paid when you work overtime?

    Where I work, hand-made high-quality products are produced out of a variety of animal skins and they are provided for the world’s richest at very high prices. In other sectors, the use the Böve machinery that works with chemicals, the water waste inside the machine causes lung diseases. The workers have to check in to the hospital once every three months and they have to spend time there to get treatment but this is kept a secret. The environment we work in is not healthy, the air circulation is not at sufficient levels, we inhale leather dust and fur. Our lunch and tea break time is cut from our paychecks. The food quality is very low. Our service hours are not reflected correctly on the payroll. We are working more than that is shown on the payrolls. When male workers have family members that have health problems, they are not given time off. If they do get time off, it is unpaid. We are not allowed to take annual leaves. There are a lot of accidents at work, but they are covered up.

    • As a woman worker, can you describe the problems that you face as a result of being a woman, also which demands are the most important for you?

    The working conditions are not suitable for women. As women, we think we are more oppressed and subjected to exploitation. Our shifts start at 8 am, it can be often 10 pm when we are able to leave. There is no shuttle service, we do not get reimbursed for transport expenditures. Our family members come to pick us up from the factory at night. But when we say “become union members for the amelioration of working hours and working conditions,” the families put pressure on women not to become union members. There is no daycare for children, despite the fact that there are leather factories in the area and there are a lot of working women in them, there is no daycare that can serve the whole area.

    On paper, women workers appear to use their maternal leaves, but in reality they work almost until the day they give birth. Even when they make use of paid leave, because insurance payments are so low, the pay is low. As it is, we live below the poverty levels. Usually, women do not want to use their maternal leaves, because after they give birth, they are laid off after they return back to work. Besides, as women workers, even though we do the same work, we are not paid the same amounts as men, our paychecks are less. In the eyes of the employer, women are not fit, there is gender difference. We are made to work more than men while being paid less than them. There is actually so much to tell, our hearts are full! We want equal pay for equal work. We want daycare, we want our constitutional right to organize.

    • What would you like to say regarding the conditions, the problems women workers experience and their needs in their working lives?

    Women’s biggest problem is the lack of security regarding their employments, the fear of being laid off because it is usually women who are first fired. At home they are judged by their spouses and their fathers; they cannot make their own decisions. Even though they work, they do not have “economic freedom.” They are not free in their individual lives although their struggles are fought at the workplace and at home. Our most important demand is that we are given the right to speak, we want to be listened to, we want our voice to be heard. If we have security in our jobs, everything will be different.

    • As a woman, what kind of reactions did you receive from your social circle? In the leather industry sprawled in this area, there are approximately four thousand factories and thirty percent of the workers are women. You are the only woman who is part of this resistance. It cannot be easy at all to be doing this.

    Yes, it has not been easy at all. I have been told: You are a woman, what are you doing among the rest of them? I wear the veil so they do not expect me to be part of the struggle and take part in the front rows. But the struggle for our labor and my struggle as a woman is what are important to me. Other things also happened for example. It was during the first days. I had just left the area and on my way out I came across the brother of the factory’s boss. He stopped me and said, “Go sit in your house. What is your business among all those men.” Psychologically, I felt very bad. So, I said to him, “For years and years we worked, men and women side-by-side, now it suddenly occurred to you that I am a woman.” I shared this story with my resistance friends, though later on the person denied what had happened.

    • Is there gender discrimination?

    As a woman, one is always on the second plan. We always face gender discrimination and inequality. Psychological harassment, oppression, and mobbing as well.

    • What is your relationship with your surroundings, how are you received? What other kinds of pressures are you subjected to?

    The shopkeepers in our vicinity do not sell us tea, etc., the bosses are constantly threatening these small merchants that they will be sacked if they provide us with anything. Undercover police officers come here to ask questions. They ask a few questions and leave. We do not break anything, we do not hurt anyone, we only chant our slogans.

    • Are you married? What does it mean to be a working woman, how does it affect the work you do at home and your life in the factory? Did you face any kind of coercion by your family when you became a union member?

    I am not married but I do not need to be married to take on responsibility, to organize and to be part of the struggle. I want to protect my economic independence. I believe in union organizing and in the struggle. I think I can achieve my social and other rights by getting organized. If we act together, we can make our voice heard, we can win our rights. My family supports me. I told my family about my union membership. My mother never attended school, she is a woman from Anatolia but she has always supported me in what I do. The situation of the married women workers at the factory is very difficult. They work until late at night, including on the weekends. The wages are very low. They are exploited at home and at work. Their economic situation is very bad, they have to work and their biggest fear is getting fired. Their husbands do not want them to become union members. At work, they face the injustices of the employer, at home those of their husbands. Those of them who become members hide it, the reason being the fear of being fired.

    • During the time of your resistance, did you receive any support by women organizations, women in other trade unions or the media, what are your expectations regarding this issue?

    We did not get the right support by women. Some people said that women organizations, feminist women will probably show support. I never saw the feminist women here. We reproach the lack of feminist support. There was passivity regarding our resistance. We need the support of women’s organizations and unions. The women who are inside do not even greet us, we are alone outside of the factory. We need our voice to be heard, we need solidarity. Except for a few media outlets, the media does not talk about us, we are not on the news. There is Fox TV here. Come we said and report about us but they did not come, so we protested in front of the news channel building, later we protested on the road along the shore, after that they showed up.

    • Are you going to take part in the protests and the activities organized on the 8th of March on “Women’s International Unity Struggle and Solidarity”day?

    As the only woman in the leather sector who has become part of this labor resistance, I would like to participate in the 8th of March activities, even though I have been left alone. All women should unite on the International Women’s Day, if we stand united we will be very strong. As long as we break our traditional taboos… Let us organize in life and in labor and let us be in solidarity with each other. We need this during this time. All wars have been won when women were part of them, if we women stand united, there is no struggle that shall not be won.

    Translated by Erka Kosta

    This article originally appeared in Birgün, the newspaper of the Freedom and Solidarity Party of Turkey. 

  • Left Opposition Statement: Ukraine will be saved from intervention by solidarity

    The following article is reprinted from LeftEast. 

    The socialist union “Left Opposition” offers its assessment of the Russian aggression in Crimea and the destructive role of Ukrainian nationalists. The intervention of Russian armies was made possible as a result of a split in Ukrainian society. Its unity is impossible with the oligarchs and chauvinists in power. Only solidarity will save Ukraine.

    1) We are for the self determination of Crimea only after the withdrawal of the Russian armies that are carrying out this flagrant intervention. We are for the self determination of the people, and not of the mercenary elite who “self determine” so as to protect themselves from Crimeans with the muzzles of Russian automatic weapons. The outcome of separatism in Crimea will become the rebirth of the Russian empire, which threatens a world war.

    2) The justification of Putin’s aggression is the nationalist hysteria that the leaders of the Maidan have ignored. Aggressive xenophobic jokes were treated as normal, and even today on anti-war pickets we are still hearing provocative slogans like “Glory to the nation! Death to its enemies!” The Kremlin’s manipulation of these slogans has frightened the people of the East and South. However, the aggression initiated by the Russian Federation is patently imperialistic and aimed against the revolutionary republic (the genuine revolution, unfavourable for the oligarchs, only just began to unfold and it was sure to put the question of social lustration on the order of the day).

    A war of liberation if led by the Ukrainian oligarchs would resolve itself in the fascisisation of society: we can expect unification around mythical national interests, an unrestrained dictatorship and the conduct of social policies aimed at concentrating wealth in the hands of the elite. Our government can claim popular legitimacy only after a social lustration has been carried out. However, our government has been legitimised by the threat of foreign intervention – we are forced to love a regime, not our country. Government in Ukraine is progressively passing directly into the hands of the oligarchs (Kolomoisky and Taruta have become governors). The oligarchs plundered our country, and now they are demanding that hungry people stand in defense of their corrupt state!

    3) the Maidan was not uniform – radical nationalists really bespoiled the protest with xenophobia, but fortunately they did not determine the Maidan’s demands. The population of Eastern and Southern Ukraine, as well as the members of ethnic minorities should know that there stood on the Maidan many representatives of those forces who uphold internationalist, left and democratic positions. To support the myth of a “fascist Maidan” is to legitimise the use of force by neo-Nazis against such citizens as those noted here who disagree with them. We are very saddened to see that antifascist ideas are being exploited to justify war. |Antifascism is solidarity, not intervention!

    4) the citizens of Western and Central Ukraine should press the government not to allow linguistic discrimination, destruction of monuments or the incitement of unnecessary hostility. Ukrainisation led by the oligarchs can be realised only in a chauvinist key. It is necessary to review language policy and to broaden the right to use the native language in those regions where it is needed. The national-cultural renaissance of the Ukrainian and other peoples of our country is inseparable from the resolution of social questions.

    5) We are for the preservation of a united Ukraine, as a unique cultural phenomenon. The coexistence of various ethnicities only enriches universal human culture. In the event of the country splitting the rule of chauvinists will be established in both its parts. All conflicts in Ukraine are as a result of the dictatorship of the oligarchs. Ukraine can be consolidated on the basis of defeating the rule of the oligarchs – the workers of the East and South equally want social change and they should understand that inflaming conflict simply puts off the prospects for improvements to an unforeseeable future.

    6) The Russian Federation government is controlled by the most conservative advocates of the interests of capital. And that is why those citizens who support a referendum on “reunification” with Russia had better prepare for a police state and for an antisocial policy. We will not allow for the precedent of a victory for Russian imperialism. Despite the claims of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists, there are no traces of socialism at all left in Russia. The population of Ukraine will start to hate Russians even more, while among the Russian masses imperialistic and revanchist illusions will grow stronger. Hitler-style promises of a better life will culminate in a catastrophe for the aggressor nation. Let us not forget that this war is also an opportunity for Western capital to bring in its own armies and to seize part of Ukrainian territory.

    7) It is necessary to appeal in the first instance to the Russian speaking population of Ukraine and to Russians who do not support war. They must sabotage the mobilisation and movement of occupying armies, while also exerting continuous pressure on the Russian government and Russian capital. Russian imperialism is using them to strengthen its domination through a referendum. It is necessary to create international brigades to maintain lawful order, to oppose mutual chauvinisms, to defend strategic facilities, to conduct propaganda among troops, as well as to oppose the disarming of Ukrainian armies. Form workers self defence detachments at enterprises for their protection from external intervention and the covetous hands of their unpropitious “owners”. Organise detachments with those you trust, or whom you are prepared to elect! The Ukrainian army should act under citizens’ control. Why die under the leadership of nationalists like Parubiy and Yarosh? They have on their conscience inept tactical mistakes on the Euromaidan and the stoking of interethnic hostilities. Why die in the interests of the Akhmetov-Kolomoiskys? The workers of all nations should learn solidarity from the Ukrainian oligarchs – they overcame all their differences and united around their common class interests.

    Down with the bandit office holders who have become separatists!

    Down with Russian imperialism!

    Down with the Ukrainian chauvinists!

    Long live the workers’ independent Ukraine!

    Translation from the original (http://gaslo.info/?p=4990)  3 March 2014

     

  • Under the radar: Chicago teachers boycott tests; UIC faculty strike; NC teachers mobilize

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    The latest news from Chicago is that teachers and parents in dozens of schools are defying the school board’s threats to boycott the ISAT, one of the many standardized tests students must take.  The Chicago Teachers Union has announced support of this action and has geared up to defend its members.  The movement to “opt out” of testing has been largely driven by white middle class parents and teachers, but as CTU President Karen Lewis masterfully explains, standardized testing has its roots in the eugenics movement. In last week’s blog I comment that as transformed teachers unions (like the CTU) wage struggles “alongside students and parents in communities who deserve better schools, we’ll open space to have discussions we need to generate the complex evaluative measures good teaching requires.” CTU’s stance on standardized testing, the superb materials it distributes to members, the media and parents, and now, its defense of teachers who refuse to be frightened into doing what they know is wrong for their students – all show what can happen when we have teachers unions that are democratic and militant.

             Just days before Chicago teachers announced their intended test boycott, faculty at the University of Illinois, Chicago went out on strike for two days.  How refreshing (and alas, rare) to see tenured full-time faculty challenging the hyper-exploitation of non-tenured faculty, defending faculty voice, arguing against tuition hikes! The feisty grad students’ union supported the strike, always a good sign that full-timers are doing what’s right.  The Jacobin carried the best analysis of the strike I’ve seen.

             Privatization of K-12 schools and corporatization of higher education are linked in a global project that aims to stratify educational outcomes and justify increased economic inequality.  Faculty unions have an important role in pushing against corporatization. They provide institutional support for traditional norms of faculty governance and can help bring labor’s support to public policies that are pro-student. Noam Chomsky observes that the university should be a “democratic institution, in which the people involved in the institution, whoever they may be (faculty, students, staff), participate in determining the nature of the institution and how it runs; and the same should go for a factory.”

             So far, tenured full-time higher education faculty in the US have been quiescent.  Why? Like K-12 teachers, many are not political.  Others are  intoxicated with their status, which blinds them to a status quo that privileges them while exploiting graduate students, adjunct, and non-tenured full-time faculty.  A case in point is this intellectually tortured testimony by a UIC faculty member (at Champaign-Urbana) who opposes unionization of faculty. Unionization, he argues, will diminish an elite institution. Unlike Chomsky, who sees universities as sites at which all the workers should have voice, this tenured, full-timer defends an unjust, unequal status quo.

              The stakes are very high. “Public education today is at a crossroads… nothing less is at stake today than the survival of the democratic form of governance and the role of public education in that enterprise.”  That quote comes from “Globalization and Education: Critical Perspectives,” Nicholas C. Burbules and Carlos Alberto Torres (eds) Routledge, 2013 (Introduction, page 23).  Yes, the same Nicholas Burbules who testified in the Illinois Senate and has led the campaign disparaging the UIC union and strike using rhetoric straight from the “right to work” playbook – like “forced unionization.”

             Here’s hoping Burbules realizes his opposition to unionization has been wrongheaded.  He’s sided with the anti-union, anti-democratic forces that he has spent years explaining we have to oppose. We do, still, which is why we support professors having unions.

             This weekend teachers in North Carolina are launching a caucus to transform their unions. I’ll be there to support them.  Find more information at http://www.organize2020.com/.  This movement, still under the radar of the corporate media, is spreading very fast.

    Is there a subject you want me to tackle? Let me know. You can follow me on twitter and Facebook, as well as my blog every Wednesday here at New Politics.  Or write me at drweinerlo@gmail.com.

  • In the United States Social Struggle Declines, Plateaus: The Most Important Social Conflicts of 2013

    While there was social struggle and conflict over a variety of issues in the United States in 2013, including an ascending movement in one region, the overall picture was one of diverse and diffuse social movements that had plateaued at a low level. The exceptions were the growing Moral Monday movement in North Carolina, which gained in numbers of participants throughout the year, and the movements of fast food and Walmart workers. While the Occupy Wall Street Movement and a few large labor conflicts of 2011 and 2012—the occupation of the state capitol in Wisconsin, and the Chicago Teachers Union strike— had suggested a rising trajectory of social struggle, in the past year the arc of social conflict and particularly labor conflict descended.[1]

    Though social conflict declined, there was a small political shift to the left in some regions, apparently in part as a result of the struggles of the past few years. The issue of economic inequality raised by the Occupy Wall Street Movement of 2011-12 was transformed into political action in 2013. Democrat Bill de Blasio was elected Mayor of New York by a landslide running on a platform opposing the policies of his predecessor Republican Michael Bloomberg that had led to an increase in economic inequality in the nation’s largest city.[2] In Lorain, Ohio the city Labor Council, angry with betrayal by the local Democratic Party, ran its own candidates for city council and won. Two dozen independent labor candidates were elected to the council.[3] The Socialist Alternative candidate Khasama Sawant was elected to the Seattle City Council—a virtually unheard of election of a revolutionary socialist (not a social democrat)—running on a platform calling for an increase in the minimum wage to $15, reflecting both the Occupy movement of 2011 and 2012 and the low-wage worker organizing of 2013. [4] Her election and continued advocacy of the $15 minimum wage also pressured local Democrats to adopt her position.

    Still, in contrast to these symptoms of political change, social struggle declined overall in 2013. This decline of conflict, particularly class conflict, is seen most clearly in the strike statistics. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2013 there were only 15 major strikes or lockouts involving 1,000 or more workers that lasted at least one shift, down from 19 in 2012. Major work stoppages in 2013 involved 55,000 workers, down from 148,000 in 2012, with 290,000 workdays lost in 2013 compared to 1.13 million in 2012. The largest of the 2013 strikes involved public employees in New York and California.[5] In terms of union membership, there was no decline in 2013, but neither was there any increase.[6]

    What was true of labor struggle was also true of social struggle more generally. The Occupy Wall Street Movement that swept the United States in 2011 and 2012 was severely repressed by local, mostly Democratic Party city governments and their police departments, with many beatings and jailings. The movement declined and then virtually disappeared.[7] No similar national movement arose in 2013, though an important regional movement, Moral Mondays, developed in North Carolina and subsequently spread to other areas.

    Still there were in 2013 many other significant protests over environmental issues, racism, LGBT concerns, and labor issues. The largest protests were the Forward on Climate environmental rally in Washington in February, the fast food workers’ and Walmart workers’ demonstrations held around the country at various times during the year, the Moral Mondays movement that began in the spring, and the protests of over the July verdict in the Trayvon Martin case that took place in cities throughout the nation. We list more than a dozen important social conflicts that took place here, choosing them for their size and political significance, as well as to show the variety of conflicts that occurred.

    The Moral Mondays movement that began in Raleigh, North Carolina, represented the most inspiring movement of 2013 based on its consistently large mobilizations, its continuing use of civil disobedience, the willingness of its participants to face arrest, and its growth and spread to other regions of the state and then to other parts of the South. We turn now to look first at the Moral Monday movement and then at the other movements chronologically and thematically.

    Moral Mondays – April – December

    Moral Mondays, mass protests accompanied by civil disobedience, began in April of 2013 in response to a series of laws passed by the Republican-dominated legislature of North Carolina and signed by Republican governor Pat McCrory. Elected in 2012, McCrory’s party also won the majority of the state Senate and the House and proceeded to pass laws that restricted voting rights to reduce likely Democratic voters, cut social programs, eliminated teacher tenure and cut teachers’ salaries, created new regressive taxes, repealed the Racial Justice Act that had allowed death row inmates to challenge their sentences on the basis of discrimination, and limited abortion rights.[8] The state also ended federal unemployment benefits for 70,000 jobless people.[9]

    Financing the campaigns of the conservatives who won election and helping to set their ultra-conservative agenda was Art Pope, the wealthy chairman of Variety Wholesalers Corporation and the state budget director. Pope has been a supporter of rightwing think-tanks and Tea Party candidates and has come to embody in the public mind the connection between the wealthy and Republicans and their attack on the poor.[10] Pope, McCrory, and the Republicans thus provoked the Moral Monday movement.

    Rev. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the inspirer of the movement, and other African American as well as white ministers initiated the protests on April 29, with hundreds of protestors going to the state capital in Raleigh, some entering and occupying the legislature and dozens being arrested for refusing to leave. Labor unions and many union members have been involved in the struggle from early on. The North Carolina AFL-CIO and the independent United Electrical Workers (UE) both mobilized their members for the protests.

    The demonstrations taking place on Mondays involved an average of 2,500 protestors with a total of 900 people being arrested for occupying the legislature in 2013. Other demonstrations were held in other North Carolina cities, most of the demonstrations involving thousands and one in Ashville as many as 10,000 people.

    The Moral Monday protests made religious and liberal arguments challenging the conservatives and the domination of the wealthy and calling for improvements in the lives of working people and the poor. The North Carolina movement adopted a fourteen point agenda back in 2007 calling for: quality education for all children, a living wage and economic support for low income people, health care for all, a reversal of the state’s racist history and practices, same-day voter registration and public financing of elections, assistance for the historically black colleges, fair hiring and contracting practices, affordable housing, an end to racist criminal justice practices, the promotion of environmental justice, collective bargaining for public employees, protection of immigrant rights, strengthening of laws and agencies to protect civil rights, and bringing all troops back from Iraq now.[11] This agenda has provided a program for the movement.

    The first Moral Monday March of 2014 held on February 1 in Raleigh brought out between 80,000 and 100,000 people while at the same time the movement spread to South Carolina and Georgia. The Moral Monday movement has led some of the largest social protest demonstrations in the South since the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.[12] Moral Mondays represented the largest, most sustained, and most significant movement of 2013.

    There were no significant protests in January 2013

    Forward on Climate Rally – February 2013

    Forward on Climate, a coalition of environmental groups demanding that Obama take action on climate change and protesting the Keystone XL pipeline, brought 40,000 people to Washington, D.C.[13] Bill McKibben, the founder of 3.50.org told the rally, “For 25 years our government has basically ignored the climate crisis: now people in large numbers are finally demanding they get to work. We shouldn't have to be here — science should have decided our course long ago. But it takes a movement to stand up to all that money.”[14] The mass demonstration had been preceded by smaller demonstrations of prominent people who engaged in civil disobedience and were arrested. Among them were: attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., civil rights leader Julian Bond, Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune, environmental activists McKibben, actress Daryl Hannah, and NASA climate scientist James Hansen as well as 40 others.[15] While Forward on Climate was one of the largest environmental marches in the United States, it had no impact on President Obama or Congress, neither of which took any decisive action to deal with global warming and climate change or any other environmental issue.

    Kimany Gray Protests and Disturbances – March 2013

    On March 9, New York City Police Department officers shot and killed a 16-year old African American boy named Kimany Gray, claiming that he had adjusted his belt in a suspicious manner, leading them to believe he had a gun and to shoot him. Gray was shot seven times, three times in the back. Police reported that a handgun was found at the scene of the killing, though one eye-witness claimed the boy was unarmed. All agree that Gray never fired a shot. The shooting, so similar to many others across the country where police officers have shot black boys and men, led to protests and riots in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn, New York City, New York.[16]

    Following Gray’s wake and funeral a few days later, rioters ransacked a drug store and broke police cruisers’ window and were in turn pepper sprayed by police. A peaceful vigil for Gray soon turned into two more days of rioting, with mostly African American young men and boys throwing bricks, bottles, and garbage at the police. Police arrested 46 protestors. Peaceful protests by hundreds continued after the riots had subsided.[17]

    Protests against Defense of Marriage Act at Supreme Court – March – June

    From March through June 2013 there were many demonstrations altogether involving thousands outside the U.S. Supreme Court and at other locations to demand that justices overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 federal law that allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted in other states and codified such marriages as not legal for all federal purposes, including social security benefits and joint income tax filings.[18] The Supreme Court ruled the part of the law dealing with federal rights and benefits unconstitutional in June of 2013.[19] The question of interstate recognition of gay marriages is still being litigated. The American gay movement, which through its continuing pressure had won an end the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell policies” in 2011, also succeeded in 2013 in overcoming parts of the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013.[20] The gay movement fighting for legal equality has been among the most successful of social movements in early twenty-first century.

    Anti-Drone Protests – April 13, 2013

    Hundreds of protestors participated in demonstrations at the White House in Washington, D.C. and in other American cities against President Barack Obama’s use of drones to assassinate enemies of the United States in Pakistan. At the time Pakistan alone had had over 2,800 people killed in drone strikes, over 280 of them civilians.[21]  Demonstrations were reported to have been held in Washington, D.C., from across the East Coast and New England, while others participated in joint actions in cities and towns as diverse as San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles, California; St. Louis, Missouri; Albuquerque, New Mexico; New Paltz, New York; Boston, Massachusetts; Tallahassee, Florida (on April 11); and Huntsville, Alabama.[22]. Public pressure led Obama to adopt a more restricted policy on the use of drones, though critics alleged that he was violating it.[23]

    Fast-Food Workers Strikes and Protests – April 4, July 29, August, and December

    The United States has 200,000 fast-food workers; virtually none of whom are unionized. Turn-over among fast-food workers is about 75 percent, making them exceedingly difficult to organize.[24] Median pay for the almost 150,000 fast food workers in New York City in 2013 was $9 an hour, or $18,500 a year, according to the New York Labor Department, approximately $4,500 lower than Census Bureau's poverty income threshold level  for a family of four.[25]

    Fast food workers organizing and actions first came to public attention on November 29, 2012, when workers from Burger King, Domino’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Wendy’s restaurants in New York City struck, demanding higher wages, better working conditions, and the right to form a union without retaliation from management. Many of the workers earned only the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. While only 100 workers struck, it was the largest strike in the history of the fast-food industry.

    The strike, principally organized by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) had the backing of community organizations and NGOs. By April 4, 2013, the number of strikers in New York had grown to 200 while hundreds of others struck in Chicago on April 24, Detroit on May 10, St. Louis on May 9 and 10, Milwaukee on May 15 and Seattle on May 30. The movement culminated on July 29 when approximately 2,200 workers went on strike in all of those cities plus Flint and Kansas City. In August there were simultaneous nationwide strikes with hundreds of workers gathering at work sites in some of the larger cities and in some places occupying the fast food restaurants.[26] In December once again there were one-day strikes by fast-food workers in over 100 cities.[27]

    While the union was able to mobilize only about 1 percent of fast-food workers, the efforts had an impact not so much on organizing workplaces as on the debate about the minimum wage. In December 2013 there was another round of strikes and demonstrations aimed principally at raising the national minimum wage to $15 per hour.[28] Under the pressure of the movement, in February 2014 President Obama called for raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour. New Jersey voters voted to raise the minimum wage in November; altogether thirteen state raised their minimum wage in 2013.[29]

    Workers Strike University of California Hospitals – May 2013 and November 2013

    In May 2013 almost 25,000 workers struck the University of California Hospitals in the cities of San Francisco, Davis, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Irvine, and San Diego. The principal strike by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299 involved 13,000 respiratory therapists, surgical and lab technicians, nursing assistants, and licensed vocational nurses strike over pensions and patient care issues. They were joined by 7,000 cafeteria workers and housekeepers who engaged in a sympathy strike as well as by the Union of Professional and Technical Employees, representing 3,400 other UC hospital employees, among them social workers and pharmacists.[30] These same groups of workers, joined by graduate students and numbering altogether around 35,000, struck again against harassment and intimidation in November as they continued to negotiate a contract.[31]

    Walmart Strikes and Protests – April – June – November

    Walmart is the second largest public corporation in the world, the largest retailer, the largest employer in the United States and one of its largest corporations. Yet its workforce in the United States remains completely unorganized. Founded in 2011, Our Walmart (Organization United for Respect at Walmart), a group established by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), carried out its first major action in 2012, including Black Friday protests, the nation’s big shopping day immediately after Thanksgiving. In the spring of 2013 workers and their supporters confronted store managers in 100 locations to pressure the company to make improvements in the workers’ conditions.

    In June, just before the company’s annual meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas, Our Walmart tried to carry out a work stoppage or strike in the areas where Our Walmart was strongest. Walmart responded by firing or suspending more than sixty workers involved in the actions.[32] The firing of those Walmart workers led Our Walmart to organize in September coordinated protests in 15 cities, among them Dallas, Chicago, Seattle, Maryland, Orlando, Los Angeles, and New York. Thousands participated in the protests and 100 were arrested.[33]

    On Black Friday 2013 thousands of Walmart workers and supporters held demonstrations throughout the United States. The rallies held at 1,500 stores in cities and towns across the country demanding salaries of at least $25,000 per year, more full-time jobs, and an end to the retaliation against Walmart workers involved in union organizing. The company at the time employed two million workers of whom 800,000 earned less than $25,000 per year and many Walmart workers were being supported by U.S. government social welfare programs because their earning were so low.[34]

    In some cities, there were citations or arrests of Walmart protestors.[35] Walmart also threatened workers who participated in the Black Friday protests and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against the company for unfair labor practices.[36] The national scope and the thousands of participants in the Walmart demonstrations make them a significant event covered in all of the national news media.

    Protests of Verdict in Zimmerman Shooting of Trayvon Martin – July

    George Zimmerman, a self-appointed night watchman in Sanford, Florida, pursued, shot, and killed a seventeen year old high school student named Trayvon Martin. The shooting became a widely debated national issue and there were protests nationwide in 2012. When on July 13, 2013 a jury acquitted Zimmerman of the charges of murder and manslaughter, spontaneous, peaceful protests erupted once again in towns and cities across the country.[37] In many cities young African Americans, sometimes joined by whites and Latinos, marched in protest. Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) then organized protests in 100 cities in which tens of thousands participated.[38]

    Concert in Support of Pussy Riot – August

    Amnesty International held its second international Pussy Riot solidarity concert in front of the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. Pussy Riot band members Masha Alekhina, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Katya Samutsevich were sentenced to two years in penal colonies on August 17, 2012 for their performance of a "Punk Prayer" in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral. While Katya was released on appeal, Nadya and Masha have been imprisoned for more than 16 months at the time of the concert. Russian courts refused in July 2013 to grant parole to either of the two women. Following the Pussy Riot arrests, Russian President Vladamir Putin signed a law providing for up to three years in prison for public support of actions aimed at insulting religious feelings. Amnesty International considered Masha and Nadya to be prisoners of conscience and campaigned for their immediate release. The concert featured several bands, dramatizations, and visual displays as well as speakers.[39]

    Anniversary March on Washington – August 28

    Tens of thousands—as many as 200,000—participated in the Fiftieth Anniversary March on Washington, half a century after the historic march at which Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.[40]  Participating in the march were many labor unions, church groups, African American civil rights organizations, and some leftist political groups. The march, however, was not only a commemorative event, and is included in this account of the social conflicts of 2013 because many of those who marched carried signs and banners that advocated for other on-going causes and struggles for social justice. Many carried placards calling for justice for Travyon Martin, for ending racism, for ending the mass incarcerations of the “new Jim Crow,” for creating jobs, for a $15 minimum wage, for taxing the rich, for protecting voting rights, for immigration reform, for reproductive rights, for gay rights, for saving the planet, and for many other issues.[41]

    Demonstrations against U.S. Military Involvement in Syria – August and September

    Hundreds of protestors joined rallies against U.S. military involvement in Syria in August and September, though the motivations of the participants were often different. Joining the protests were pacifists who oppose all violence on principle, opponents of a U.S. imperialist intervention in Syria who also opposed Bashar-al Assad and the Baath Party, and others, both Syrians and some American leftists, who supported Assad and the Baath government because they believed it was a socialist regime. The demonstrations in cities like New York, Washington, D.C., Boston and Chicago numbered in the hundreds.[42]  Some anti-war groups attributed the fact that Obama didn't launch military strikes against Syria to the power of the protest movement; others noted that Obama was very reluctant to get involved and thus welcomed the Russian chemical weapons agreement as a way to avoid U.S. involvement.

    Demonstration against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – September

    Opponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that would create a new international trade agreement in the Pacific region protested on September 23 at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. They carried banner calling for a democratic process and for the release of the text of the treat. The treaty being negotiated between the United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam would cover approximately 40% of the global economy. Protestors fear that the agreement will not protect the environment and workers’ rights and that it will transform and endanger existing agriculture. Organizers of the small but very visible protest included FlushTheTPP.org, the Backbone Campaign, Veterans for Peace, Codepink, and Earth First!.[43]

    Gay Rights Protests against Russian Anti-Gay Law and Olympics – September – November

    Gay rights activists demonstrated in front of the New York Metropolitan Opera House on September 22—where Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” was being performed by visiting Russian stars Anna Netrebko, the popular Russian diva and Valery Gergiev artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg—to protest new anti-gay laws enacted in Russia before the Olympics were to take place there. LGBT activists, some in drag and dressed as opera divas themselves, held up the gay rainbow banner and distributed fliers about the issues. Inside just before the opera began, a member of a group called the Family Circle shouted out “Putin, end your war on gays!” and  “Anna and Valery your silence is killing Russian gays!” Security guards ejected them from the theater.[44]

    Some two dozen LGBT activists also attempted to disrupt the U.S. Olympic Committee’s 100-day countdown event at Times Square at the end of October carrying a banner reading, “”Don’t Buy Putin’s Lies.”[45] In November, Queer Nation gay activists took their protests to the New York Stock Exchange’s Third Annual Russia Day celebration with a giant rainbow banner emblazoned “Thugs.”[46]

    Immigration Protests – October – November

    Eight Democratic Party U.S. Congressional Representatives and 150 other protestors were arrested as thousands of demonstrators rallied outside the U.S. Capitol in October to demand action on immigration.[47] The arrests followed a larger rally on the Mall, an event that had initially been threatened with cancellation because of the U.S. government shutdown, but which was allowed to proceed.[48] The most recent fight for immigration reform began in 2004 and has continued for a decade but has failed to pressure Congress to act.[49] The demonstration in October 2013 also failed to move Congress.

    A group of immigration activists, who had been fasting on the mall for several weeks, were visited by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama in November. Obama told the activist that he appreciated their protest which had called attention to the issue and told them that he was hopeful that immigration reform would pass, though that proved to be misplaced optimism.[50]

    Government Shutdown Protests 

    The United States government was shut down for 16 days in October because of the failure of Congress to pass a budget, resulting in the furlough of 800,000 Federal workers, a delay in pay for another 1.3 million, and reductions in services that affected businesses and workers alike, as well as programs serving millions from pre-school children to the elderly. The Tea Party Republicans and other rightwing Republican legislators had been principally responsible for the shutdown. Standard and Poor’s, the financial services agency, said that the shutdown cost the American economy $24 billion dollars. Finally on day sixteen, Congress voted to fund the government and everybody went back to work.

    The American Federation of Government Employees, the National Treasury Employees Union, and other unions representing federal workers organized protests in the nation’s capital and at federal facilities across the country. Thousands walked picketlines in various cities, towns, and rural areas. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka stated, “Their actions remind us that government workers are proud public servants who often do selfless, courageous work. Because our government shut down, these people are working but don’t know if or when they’ll get paid.”[51] In the end, Congress voted to pay the furloughed workers, even though they had not been sent home from work. The Congressional vote was less a victory for the unions than the recognition by Republicans that the government shutdown had divided their party and cost them public support.

    Detroit Bankruptcy Protests – December

    The economic crisis in Detroit, Michigan, devastated by plant closures over several decades leading to falling revenues from both businesses and workers, had led Governor Rick Snyder to impose an “emergency manager” to run the city. Then in July the city, with a debt of $18.5 billion, filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, though the matter remained in the courts until Dec. 3 when a federal judge ruled that the city could declare bankruptcy and that the city’s pension obligations to its workers were protected.[52] Unions, churches and community leaders organized demonstrations involving about a hundred union members and allies outside the court while hearings went on.[53] The small protests had no impact on the court’s decision.

    Illinois Teacher Protests – December

    Teachers, nurses, and other public employees demonstrated in Springfield, Illinois, against a bill that cut retirement benefits of current and future state employees. The teachers testimony against the bill and their protests failed, however, to prevent its approval.[54] The union announced that it would pursue legal challenges, and did in 2014.[55]

    As the protests in Washington, D.C. over immigration reform and in Michigan and Illinois over workers’ pensions indicated, social and labor movements carried out only weak challenges to authority in 2013; their attempts to pressure the government and its conservative and austerity policies generally failed. While the fast food workers and Walmart workers movement held some impressive national demonstrations and strikes, they mobilized a very small percentage of workers in those industries and failed almost completely in their efforts to organize workers into unions. Still, these were the first time unions attempted on a national scale to organize such low-paid workers in the food industry and retail stores. The Moral Mondays movement represents an exciting and growing movement for greater social justice, for jobs, higher pay, and a fairer and more egalitarian society, but so far it has not become strong enough to overturn the Republican Party in North Carolina, or in any other Southern state. Its spread throughout the South, however, suggests that it will have greater weight and more power in 2014, perhaps leading to movements in other parts of the country as well.

    This article was written for the University of Barcelona’s multi-national Annual of Social Struggle (Anuari del Conflicte Social, Universitat de Barcelona) that provides a yearly account of social conflict in many countries of the world. 

    Thanks to my friends Mike Hirsch and Steven Shalom for his help with this article.

    NOTES:


    [1] Dan La Botz, “An Ascending Trajectory?: Ten of the Most Important Social Conflicts in the United States in 2012” at: Anuari del Conflicte Social (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 2013), pp. 1385-1403, at http://www.youblisher.com/p/628883-ANUARI-DEL-CONFLICTE-SOCIAL-2012/ or also at: http://newpol.orgascending-trajectory-ten-most-important-social-conflicts-united-states-2012

    [2] Michael Barbaro and David W. Chen, “De Blasio Is Elected New York City Mayor in Landslide,” The New York Times, Nov. 6, 2013, at:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/nyregion/de-blasio-is-elected-new-york-city-mayor.html?_r=0

    [3] Bruce Bostick, “Ohioans Elect Two Dozen City Councilors on Independent Labor Ticket,” Labor Notes, Dec. 4, 2013, at: http://www.labornotes.org/2013/12/ohioans-elect-two-dozen-city-councilors-independent-labor-ticket

    [4] Kirk Johnson, “A Rare Elected Voice for Socialism Pledges to Be Heard in Seattle,” The New York Times, Dec. 29, 2013, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/us/a-rare-elected-voice-for-socialism-pledges-to-be-heard-in-seattle.html

    [5] Work Stoppages Summary, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Feb. 12, 2014, at: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkstp.nr0.htm

    [6] Union Members Summary, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jan. 14, 2013, at:  http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

    [7]  Dan La Botz, Robert Brenner, and Joel Jordan, “The Significance of Occupy,” Solidarity, August 9, 2012, at: http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3663

    [8] “Moral Mondays,” Wikipedia, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Mondays

    [9]  Editorial Board, “The Decline of North Carolina,” The New York Times, July 9, 2013, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/opinion/the-decline-of-north-carolina.html

    [10] Jane Mayer, “State for Sale,” The New Yorker, Oct. 10, 2011, at: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all; Trip Gabriel,  “Protests Aim at One Man Who Moved North Carolina to the Right,” the New York Times, Dec. 13, 2013, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/us/protests-aim-at-one-man-who-moved-state-to-right.html

    [11] “14 Point People’s Agenda for North Carolina,” at: http://www.hkonj.com/14_point_agenda

    [12] Ari Berman, “North Carolina’s Moral Monday Movement Kicks Off 2014 With a Massive Rally in Raleigh,” The Nation, Feb.8, 2014, at:  http://www.thenation.com/blog/178291/north-carolinas-moral-monday-movement-kicks-2014-massive-rally-raleigh#

    [13]  Christopher Schuetze, “Holding Obama’s Feet to the Climate-Change Fire,” New York Times, February 18, 2013, at: http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/holding-obamas-feet-to-the-climate-change-fire/; James Gerten, “'Forward On Climate' Rally Brings Climate Change Activists To National Mall In Washington Mall,” Huffington Post, Feb. 17, 2013, at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/17/forward-on-climate-rally_n_2702575.html

    [14] Press Release, “Amazing! 35,000+ March at Forward on Climate Rally in DC,” http://350.org/amazing-35000-march-forward-climate-rally-dc/

    [15] Matthew Daly, “Sierra Club Arrest: Executive Director Michael Brune, Actress Daryl Hannah And Others Detained Over Keystone Pipeline,” Huffington Post, Feb. 13, 2013, at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/sierra-club-arrest_n_2676813.html

    [16]  Chelsea Rose Marcius and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, “Enraged protesters battle cops in Brooklyn streets during third night of rioting after it's revealed that 16-year-old Kimani Gray was shot in the back,” New York Daily News, March 14, 2013, at: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/7-nypd-bullets-killed-teen-kimani-gray-article-1.1287452 ; Sadhbh Walshe, “The sad death of Kimani Gray and society's bad choices,” The Guardian, March 27, 2013, at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/27/sad-death-kimani-gray-society-bad-choices; Ryan Devereaux, “Eyewitness: Police Shot Kimani Gray While The 16-Year-Old Was On The Ground,” The New York Village Voice, at: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/03/kimani_gray_4.php    

    [17] “NYPD Brandishes "LRAD X" At Kimani Gray Protest In Brooklyn,” The Gothamist, March 24, 2013, at: http://gothamist.com/2013/03/25/protesters_march_again_in_east_flat.php  

    [18] Matt Stopera, “Sixty Best Signs against DOMA,” at: https://www.google.com/webhp?source=search_app#q=60+best+signs+against+doma+buzzfeed.

    [19] Ryan J. Reilly and Sabrina Sabriqui, “Supreme Court DOMA Decision Rules Federal Same-Sex Marriage Ban Unconstitutional,” Huffington Post, June 26, 2013, at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/26/supreme-court-doma-decision_n_3454811.html

    [20] Elizabeth Bumiller, “Obama Ends ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policies,” The New York Times, July 22, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/us/23military.html?_r=0

    [21] “Drone attacks in Pakistan,” Wikipedia, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan#Statistics

    [22] Nationwide protests against U.S. drone warfare Demonstrators take to the streets, Liberation News, April 16, 2013, at: http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/nationwide-anti-drone-protests.html; and “National Anti-Drone Group Calls for April Protests” No Drone Network, at:  http://nodronesnetwork.blogspot.com/2012/12/national-anti-drone-group-calls-for.html

    [24] Steven Greenhouse, “A Day’s Strike Seeks to Raise Fast-Food Pay,” The New York Times, July 31, 2013, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/business/strike-for-day-seeks-to-raise-fast-food-pay.html?pagewanted=all

    [25] Emily Janice Fox, “ Fast food workers protest in 7 cities,” CNN, at: July 7, 2013, at: http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/29/news/companies/fast-food-protest/

    [26] Jenny Brown,  “Thousands Strike Fast Food, Picketing and Occupying,” Labor Notes, August 20, 2013, at: http://labornotes.org/2013/08/thousands-strike-fast-food-picketing-and-occupying?language=en

    [27] Jenny Brown, “After a pause, Walmart strikes back,” Labor Notes, July 29, 2013, at:  http://www.labornotes.org/2013/07/after-pause-walmart-strikes-back-0

    [28] “Fast-Food Workers Strikes,” Wikipedia, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_food_worker_strikes

    [29] Paul Davidson, “State minimum wages will exceed the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour in 21 states on Jan. 1,” USA Today, Dec. 29, 2013, at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/12/29/states-raising-minimum-wage/4221773/

    [30] Samantha Winslow, “Hospital Workers Strike Today, Demand Safer Staffing, Pensions” Labor Notes, May 21, 2013, at: http://labornotes.org/2013/05/hospital-workers-strike-today-demand-safer-staffing-pensions?language=en

    [31]  Samantha Winslow, “University of California Workers Strike Against Harassment,” Labor Notes, Nov. 20, 2013: http://labornotes.org/2013/11/university-california-workers-strike-against-harassment

    [32] Jenny Brown, “After a pause, Walmart strikes back,” Labor Notes, July 29, 2013, at: http://www.labornotes.org/2013/07/after-pause-walmart-strikes-back-0

    [33] Alexandra Bradbury, “A Hundred Arrested Protesting Walmart Firings,” Labor Notes, Sept. 6, 2013, at: http://labornotes.org/2013/09/hundred-arrested-protesting-walmart-firings?language=en

    [34] Ed Pilkington, “Black Friday protests demand improved conditions from Walmart,” The Guardian, Nov. 29, 2013, at:  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/29/black-friday-walmart-protests-wages-jobs

    [35]   Wal-Mart protesters arrested at Black Friday rallies,” CNN, Nov. 29, 2013, at: http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/29/news/economy/walmart-black-friday/

    [36] “Federal officials have filed a complaint against Wal-Mart for allegedly retaliating against workers who staged Black Friday protests in 2012,” CNN, at: http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/15/news/companies/nlrb-walmart/

    [37] Lizette Alvarez and Cara Buckley, “Zimmerman Is Acquitted in Trayvon Martin Killing,” The New York Times, July 13, 2013, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/us/george-zimmerman-verdict-trayvon-martin.html?pagewanted=all

    [39] Joshua Axelrod, “Amnesty International Holds 2nd Annual Pussy Riot Solidarity Concert Friday,” NBC News (Washington), August 16, 2013, at: http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Amnesty-International-Throwing-Second-Pussy-Riot-Solidarity-Concert-Friday-219924361.html

    [40] Sheryl Gay Stolberg, ”Guardians of King’s Dream Regroup in Washington,” The New York Times, Aug. 28, 2013, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/us/march-on-washington-commemoration.html

    [41] Samantha Winslow and Alexandra Bradbury, “Jobs, Voting Rights, and Trayvon on Marchers' Minds,” Labor Notes, August 28, 2013, at: http://www.labornotes.org/2013/08/jobs-voting-rights-and-trayvon-marchers-minds

    [42]  “Syria Protests In NYC, DC Oppose Military Action,” Huffington Post, Sept. 7, 2013, at:

     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/07/syria-protests-nyc-dc_n_3887004.html; 

    [43] Kevin Zeese, “Protest against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Secret Negotiations behind Closed Doors,” Global Research, September 29, 2013, at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/protest-against-the-trans-pacific-partnership-tpp-secret-negotiations-behind-closed-doors/5352012; “Video: The Anti-TPP Take Over Of The US Trade Representative Building,” Popular Resistance, September 24, at: http://www.popularresistance.org/video-the-anti-tpp-take-over-of-the-us-trade-representative-building/

    [44] Michael Cooper, “Gay Rights Protest Greets Opening Night at the Met,” The New York Times, Sept. 24, 2013, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/nyregion/gay-rights-protest-greets-opening-night-at-the-met.html

    [45] Tony Meverick and Joel Anderson, “Team USA’s 100-Day Countdown To Sochi Games Met By LGBT Protest,” at: http://www.buzzfeed.com/tonymerevick/team-usas-100-day-countdown-to-sochi-games-met-by-lgbt-prote; Roxanna Scott, “Small group tries to disrupt Olympic celebration,” USA Today, Oct. 29, 2013, at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2013/10/29/sochi-gay-rights-protest-disrupt-winter-games/3297245/

    [46] Mariah Summers and Matthew Zeitlin, “LGBT Rights Activists Protest "Russia Day" At The New York Stock Exchange,” at: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mariahsummers/gay-rights-activists-protest-russia-day-at-the-new-york-stoc

    [47] Julia Preston, “Eight Lawmakers Arrested at Immigration Protest,” The New York Times, Oct. 7, 2013, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/us/8-lawmakers-arrested-at-immigration-protest.html?

    [48] Laura Meckler, “Immigration Rally Goes Forward on Mall,” Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2013, at: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/10/08/immigration-rally-goes-forward-on-mall/

    [49] Elizabeth Bumiller, “Bush Would Give Illegal Workers Broad New Rights,” New York Times, Jan. 7, 2004, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/07/us/bush-would-give-illegal-workers-broad-new-rights.html

    [50] Kevin Liptak, “Obama visits protesters fasting in support of immigration reform,” CNN Political Ticker,” November 29, 2013, at: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/29/obama-visits-protesters-fasting-in-support-of-immigration-reform/

    [51] Laura Clawson, “Furloughed workers rally against Republican shutdown at Capitol and around the country,” Daily Kos, at: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/04/1244210/-Furloughed-workers-rally-against-Republican-shutdown-at-Capitol-and-around-the-country#

    [52]  Monica Davey, Bill Vlasic, and Mary Williams Walsh, “Detroit Ruling on Bankruptcy Lifts Pension Protections,” New York Times, Dec. 3, 2013, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/us/detroit-bankruptcy-ruling.html

    [53] “Union protesters rally outside Detroit's bankruptcy trial,” Fox News, at: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/23812215/hear-from-protestors-outside-detroits-bankruptcy-trial;  “This Is War — Outright War” : Detroiters Protest Bankruptcy,” CBS News, at: http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2013/12/03/this-is-war-outright-war-detroiters-protest-bankruptcy/

    [54] “Illinois OKs pension cuts in landmark reform,” http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/03/retirement/illinois-pensions/

    [55] “Teachers, unions unhappy with pension deal, vow legal challenge,” Daily Herald, Dec. 4, 2013, http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20131203/news/712039745/

     

  • A Response to Robin Hahnel's Open Letter to the Movement

    The question of what demands ecosocialists should put forward in response to the climate crisis is a pressing one.  Robin Hahnel, in “An Open Letter to the Climate Justice Movement”, argues that the climate justice movement should demand a cap-and-trade policy, abandoning its traditional stance against carbon trading.  To Hahnel, carbon trading is the most realistic way for society to make carbon emissions cuts in the necessary time frame, and, contrary to the arguments of activists, it can be done in a socially just way. Although I respect Hahnel as a sincere and principled radical, I find his argument troubling.  I believe it is marred by a misunderstanding of activists’ arguments against carbon trading and, more fundamentally, a lack of attention to the dynamic of reform and revolution.

    Hahnel shortchanges the arguments against carbon trading.  He acknowledges only three: that nature should not be turned into a commodity (a basically aesthetic argument which he easily demolishes), that Wall Street will take advantage of the carbon market and distort it (which, he argues, is a non-issue because even if there’s a financial market bubble, the number of carbon permits will be the same), and that corporations will be awarded bogus carbon credits (which would be impossible under the carbon trading system he proposes).

    In fact, activists who oppose cap-and trade have made many other arguments against the system.  For example, Larry Lohman, in Climate and Capitalism, argues that carbon trading is an antidemocratic system that interferes with positive solutions to the ecological crisis by supporting capital expansion rather than community-controlled alternatives (for example, favoring an energy company building a hydroelectric dam rather than the villagers practicing sustainable agriculture in the area the dam would flood).  He also argues that carbon trading tends to prioritize the easiest cuts, usually in developing countries (which Hahnel touts as an advantage, since it makes the scheme more palatable to capitalists by reducing the overall cost of emissions reductions) when the most important task is to wean the developed world off fossil fuels.  Daniel Tanuro, writing in International Viewpoint, deepens this critique, arguing that precisely because carbon markets are based on the quantitative principle of cost-effectiveness, they cannot drive the qualitative change we need to create a sustainable society.  Carbon markets will favor mechanisms such as biofuel plantations, which are cost-effective in quantitative terms but are inconsistent with the energy revolution we need.  cCarbon trading points away from, not toward, an ecologically sustainable and socially just society.

    Cap-and-trade for the people, or for the capitalists?

    Hahnel calls critiques of carbon trading “ill-informed”, but he appears to be misreading them.  These critiques are not targeting the ideal proposal for carbon trading that he presents—instead, these are critiques of the cap-and-trade schemes that have actually been proposed and implemented. These policies are in no way intended to challenge society’s reliance on fossil fuels.  The experience of the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), the largest yet existing carbon trading system, neatly illustrates these critiques.  It is well-documented that in the initial phase of the system, carbon credits were enormously overallocated, resulting in windfall profits to major polluters and a failure to actually cap emissions.  Further, the ETS carbon market has been highly susceptible to false offsets, frauds and scams, resulting in a volatile and declining carbon price that fails to incentivize conversion to renewable energy.  The result has been a system that, far from reducing carbon emissions, has reinforced a carbon-based economy by helping polluting industries avoid reducing emissions.  The ETS is so bad that a group of European civil society organizations has given up on the possibility of reforming it, instead demanding that it be scrapped.  Their declaration argues that it makes meaningful carbon reform even more difficult and provides a bad model to be exported around the world.

    This is exactly what happened in 2009 when congressional Democrats proposed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES).  This bill would have implemented a national carbon trading system that would have repeated the failures of the ETS.  Despite Obama’s campaign promise of a carbon trading system in which no permits would be given away for free, the bill would have given away 85% of the initial permits freely—again subsidizing polluters by giving them huge quantities of a tradable commodity (Chris Williams, Ecology and Socialism, p. 83).  The bill allowed so many carbon offsets that it would not have met even the watered-down reduction standards it claimed—if polluters used the maximum number of offsets, emissions levels would not have dipped below 2005 levels until 2026.  And this is assuming that the offsets purchased were real—most of them would have been international offsets, which are notorious for being fraudulent or altogether false (Williams, p. 83).  ACES was not a proposal for dealing with climate change in any meaningful way—in fact, it might have made the situation even more difficult by instituting a “solution” that subsidized fossil-fuel companies while reinforcing North-South inequity through unfair international carbon offsets.

    Hahnel is no doubt aware of the inadequacies of these cap-and-trade proposals.  His proposal does not share these problems—rather, it’s based on social justice and climate science.  I review the failures of carbon trading in the US and Europe in order to demonstrate that the cap-and-trade policies enacted by capitalist governments have exactly the opposite basis.  Their purpose is to provide the appearance of doing something while, in fact, fending off a challenge to capitalism by permitting a fossil-fuel-based economy to continue for as long as possible, and, to the extent that transition from fossil fuels does occur, placing as much of the cost as possible on the working class and the developing world.  These schemes, not Hahnel’s proposal, are what left critics of carbon trading are responding to.  These policies represent the capitalist class’ favored “solution” to the climate crisis, and as such are a real threat.  As such, it’s very important for the left wing of the environmental movement to expose and critique these policies for what they are.  I therefore disagree with Hahnel that the left wing of the environmental movement should in any way temper its criticism of cap-and-trade as it actually exists.

    How do we win reforms?

    Of course, critique is only part of our task as ecosocialists.  We also aim to win—to fend off ruling-class attacks, to win reforms, and, ultimately, to overthrow capitalism and replace it with an ecosocialist system.  I agree with Hahnel that we must win meaningful climate reforms soon in order to avoid catastrophe.  I disagree, however, about how we can win reforms.  Hahnel seems to be arguing that the best way to win reforms is through a reformist program and strategy—but I think the best way is a revolutionary strategy.

    It appears to me that Hahnel’s understanding of how reforms are won suffers from an excessively black-and-white understanding of the dynamics of power in capitalism and socialism.  This leads him to a constriction of political possibilities and ultimately to a reformist strategy.  He writes that, although it’s clear that we need radical emissions reductions within ten years to avoid catastrophe, an ecosocialist revolution “is not going to happen in the next ten years because eco-socialism requires massive political support that cannot be won overnight.”  Therefore, although “massive demonstrations and civil disobedience are desperately needed to overcome lethargy and catalyze needed political action,” those demonstrations must focus on a program that’s limited by the possibilities capitalism offers.  Indeed, Hahnel even defines a program as “a set of policies that will achieve these results [radical emissions reductions] even while capitalism persists.”

    It’s certainly true that there is a fundamental distinction between a capitalist and an ecosocialist society.  In the former, the capitalist class is hegemonic, and uses its power over the economy to exploit workers and the planet to accumulate profit at the expense of life.  In the latter, the working class and oppressed groups democratically control the economy in the interest of justice for all and ecological sustainability.  This distinction has an obvious impact on the kinds of policies that can be implemented under either system.

    But, although in a capitalist system the capitalist class is always in power, at no point is the relationship of forces between classes static.  The working class, the capitalist class, and other social forces are always vying for power and influence within the system and its units—within workplaces, neighborhoods, and various levels of government, for example.  Reforms, in general, happen when the working class or oppressed groups gain enough power to force the hand of the ruling class—putting them in the position of either implementing the reform or losing needed credibility and influence.

    People fighting for liberation have many choices of strategies in their battle with the capitalist class.  They may choose strategies based on accommodation to the class enemy and seeking a role within the current system.  This strategy may provide reforms for as long as the capitalist class is prepared to grant them, but tends to lead to a decline in the power of the movement’s base and the political co-optation of the bureaucratic leadership, as has happened with the US trade union movement and the British Labour Party.  Alternatively, they may choose strategies that are not confined to bourgeois frameworks and which build popular power independently from state institutions.  We see this strategy in the great worker-led strike waves of US history, the Black Liberation movement, and, today, in the youth immigrant rights movement.  This is a difficult road, but ultimately one that, if successful, is far more likely to lead to the shifts in consciousness and power relations necessary to win major reforms.  It is also more likely to lead to the development of a revolutionary movement, as it invites those in struggle to think and act outside of the confines of capitalist ideology.

    Principles, not policy

    Such a strategy of class independence is what I refer to as a revolutionary strategy.  A revolutionary strategy does not preclude struggle for reforms—indeed, most of the time, except in revolutionary situations, revolutionaries are engaged in reform struggles.  The question is how to struggle for reforms in a revolutionary way.  Obviously, the answer to this question differs situationally and has many aspects.  Hahnel’s essay addresses the question of program, so that is the aspect I limit myself to here.

    Unlike Hahnel, I conceive of program not as a wish-list of policies we’d like to see implemented, but as a tool of struggle.  Through our ecosocialist program, we articulate the politics of the movements in which we are involved in a way that promotes solidarity and draws attention to the conflict between the movement and the capitalist system. We typically argue for stances that are further to the left of those in the mainstream of the movement, while posing them in a way that is relatable and responsive to the movement’s aims. We should think strategically about the politics we put forth in our movement work: what demands, what slogans, and what ideas will help the ecological movement grow, develop alliances, become more powerful, and radicalize?

    This way of posing the question immediately suggests some answers.  In general, our program should address immediate concerns of working-class people.  It should draw connections between the fight against ecological destruction and the overcoming of racial, national, and gender- and sexuality-based oppression.  It should uncompromisingly demand a shift away from fossil fuels, done in a way that meets human needs.  Finally, all of these demands should be framed in ways which, as much as possible, point in the direction of the environmentally and socially just society we want to see, inviting people to think outside the confines of capitalism.  Hahnel is absolutely right to demand a global emissions cap based on science that would be vigorously enforced for all countries.  Here are some other possible elements of an ecosocialist program:

    ·         A shift away from fossil-fuel and nuclear electricity production; a free basic energy allowance for all individuals

    ·         Free, improved and expanded public transit in all major cities

    ·         Retrofit housing with passive and active solar heating; provide good-quality housing for all through rehabbing abandoned buildings and sustainable new construction

    ·         To produce the abovementioned goods, retool shuttered factories, providing safe and well-paying jobs; retrain workers who lose jobs in polluting industries

    ·         A 30-hour workweek with no loss in pay

    ·         A moratorium on all new fossil-fuel extraction; clean up polluted communities and areas

    ·         Dismantle the global US military; use the money saved for reparations for sustainable development to countries which have been subject to US imperialism

    ·         Greater investment in parks, education, and other public goods

    Someone who is better than I am at coming up with slogans can figure out how to popularize these demands, but you get the picture.  Demands like these are designed with the abovementioned goals of a revolutionary program in mind.  They are best able to meet these goals when that they focus on principles, rather than on policy.  A focus on policy—the legislative means by which the reforms we want will be enacted—limits our political imagination to what’s possible within the capitalist system and pulls our politics rightwards.  Instead of asserting that another world is possible, we adapt our program to the assumptions of the capitalist system.  Instead of choosing strategies and tactics that confront the state and the capitalist class, we begin to think in terms of what is possible (or “realistic”) under the present system, to view progressive bourgeois legislators as our allies, and to think in individual rather than collective terms—leading to a weakening of the movement.  To build the power necessary to force the capitalist class to grant us concessions, we need to focus on the principles that unite us, not on policy.  It is bourgeois legislators’ job to figure out how to implement those concessions within the framework of bourgeois policy—we should not do their jobs for them.  Of course, if legislators do propose policies which could partially mitigate the problem, we should critically support those reforms.  But it would be a step rightwards for the left wing of the movement to make a particular policy reform part of its program.

    Such an approach actually helps us build the power necessary to win reforms now.  The more people view the ecology movement as tied to those of workers and oppressed people by the possibility of a just society, the more those movements will be united.  The more people view the state as standing on the side of our enemy rather than a neutral actor that needs to be convinced, the more likely they will be to choose tactics that pose a militant challenge to the state.  The more people are able to imagine a future beyond capitalism, the more the ruling class will feel the need to implement reforms to shore up their position.  I’m sure Hahnel agrees with me when I say that the climate crisis and other ecological problems are rooted in the structure capitalist system (not just a few sectors of capital, like the fossil-fuel industry, but the system itself), and cannot be reformed away.  Our program and strategy should reflect that understanding.

    What’s realistic?

    Hahnel’s argument seems to be motivated for a desire for a radical proposal to prevent catastrophic climate change that appears realistic.  This is an understandable impulse: the movements of workers and oppressed people are relatively weak, making a global ecosocialist revolutionary movement that has the power to win meaningful reforms within the time frame we have seem like a remote prospect.  It makes sense to look for a way to reduce carbon emissions that can be implemented immediately  However, I disagree that Hahnel’s proposal is realistic.

    To his credit, Hahnel does not water down his proposal in order to make it palatable to the capitalist class and the politicians that serve them.  He insists that a global cap-and-trade scheme would have mandatory emissions caps for all countries based on science, differential emissions caps based on principles of global justice, and enforcement mechanisms to prevent cheating and bogus carbon credits.  It’s a principled proposal.  The problem is that, in order to keep it principled, he must put so many conditions on cap-and-trade that it might as well be a revolutionary demand.

    We have seen that the cap-and-trade proposals which capitalist governments have been willing to countenance have little in common with Hahnel’s proposal: they are deliberately full of loopholes, promote the accumulation of capital, and protect the dominance of the imperialist countries with their carbon-heavy economies over and against the developing world.  The ruling class would never agree to a policy like Hahnel’s proposal, which would amount to voluntarily abandoning imperialism and agreeing to destroy huge sectors of highly profitable capital.  They would have to be forced to do.  It wouldn’t necessarily require a revolution, but it would require a volatile political situation in which a mass movement had the power and popular support to seriously challenge the legitimacy of capitalist governments.  But in such a situation, we would be in a position not only to demand market-based reforms, but to put forward the possibility of “system change”.  So why should we limit ourselves to demanding carbon trading?  Socialists should not limit themselves to demands that are theoretically possible under capitalism—especially when those demands are no more realistic than revolution itself.

    In the meantime, we certainly do need to demonstrate that there is an alternative to capitalism.  One obstacle to a global ecosocialist movement is that there does not appear to be any concrete alternative.  However, we can show that our radical demands are possible without resorting to policy proposals.  For example, when someone asks us how we would pay for the expense of providing food, housing, and education for all in an ecologically sound way, we can point to the way capital manages social resources inefficiently, how it produces things nobody needs in unsustainable ways, and how the vast profits currently appropriated by a small elite could be redirected towards a transition away from fossil fuels.

    Toward a revolutionary ecosocialist strategy

    Hahnel is not alone in arguing that the urgency of the climate crisis merits a shift towards reformist politics.  Christian Parenti argues a similar point in Dissent and in the current issue of New Politics.  Compared with Hahnel’s argument, Parenti’s engages much more with the reality of present-day politics, but I believe he commits a similar mistake as Hahnel.  I don’t have the space or resources here to fully reply to Parenti, but I generally agree with the response of the Monthly Review editors to Parenti’s Dissent piece:

    A revolutionary approach in this area is one that does not simply stop with whatever limited reforms are easily conceivable within the present system, but also: (1) seeks to accelerate the shift to a substantively equal and ecologically sustainable (global) society; (2) involves the mobilization of the entire population (and entire peoples), culturally, socially, and economically in the process of transformation; (3) prioritizes conservation of human and natural resources; (4) seeks to transform infrastructure and technology on a massive, democratically planned basis to meet ecological and social ends; and (5) opposes the logic of profit-making at every point along the line, substituting the alternative logic of people and the planet.

    These principles may sound vague.  Indeed, both Hahnel’s and Parenti’s arguments seem to be based on a judgment that revolutionary ideas are too abstract to offer guidance in this time of acute ecological crisis.  Hahnel writes, “But unlike some in the climate justice movement I will not confuse good slogans and chants with a political program to prevent climate change,” and Parenti states, “I know this doesn’t sound revolutionary or radical, but what I’m trying to do is to be very, very realistic. Because I don’t think it is sufficient to be outraged about this and invoke the righteousness of our cause.”

    There is truth to this.  No manifesto, no strategic document that fully outlines an ecosocialist strategy has yet been produced.  Much writing on ecosocialist politics and strategy has been quite abstract.  For example, above I suggest elements of an ecosocialist program, but I do not translate them into accessible slogans or suggest settings in which to raise these demands. The problem is that translating ecosocialist principles into a strategy can only be done through experience, and the ecosocialist movement is in its infancy.  We need further engagement of ecosocialists in the developing struggle and ongoing discussion of the lessons of that experience in order to concretize our strategy.

    Fortunately, ecosocialism is growing as an organized left force.  Within the past year, ecosocialist coalitions have formed around the world, including Reseau Ecosocialiste in Quebec, the European Ecosocialist Action Network and European Ecosocialist Conference, and the US-based System Change Not Climate Change: The Ecosocialist Coalition (which I am a member of).  These organizations share a commitment to ongoing, democratic political discussion linked with an engagement in struggle.  Their growth reflects both the need for and the appeal of revolutionary ideas in a world beset with crisis.  The experience of these and other efforts will be the basis for crafting a revolutionary ecosocialist strategy for the 21st century.  

  • Letter in support of Chicago teachers boycotting the Illinois standardized test

    The following letter, to which I have added my name, is being circulated by education faculty. Dozens of education faculty have already signed and teachers at another Chicago school, with support of parents, have now decided to boycott the test. School administrators have threatened retaliation against the teachers, and support from outside the city is essential. The Chicago Teachers Union is supporting this teacher-led boycott.

    TO SIGN, PLEASE SEND YOUR NAME, TITLE, AND UNIVERSITY AFFILIATION TO:
    gutstein@uic.edu

    February 28, 2014

    STATEMENT OF SUPPORT FOR CHICAGO TEACHERS REFUSING TO ADMINISTER THE ILLINOIS STANDARD ACHIEVEMENT TEST 

    As university faculty whose responsibilities include preparing future educators, we support the action of teachers at the Saucedo Elementary School in Chicago who are refusing to administer the Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT). Over a decade of research shows that an over emphasis on high-stakes standardized tests narrows curriculum, creates social and emotional stress for students and families, drives committed teachers out of the profession, and turns schools into test-prep factories with principals forced to comply as overseers—especially in low-scoring schools. We understand assessment as the process of gathering evidence about learning, from multiple sources, so that teachers can better support student learning. The ISAT, in contrast, contributes virtually nothing. CPS no longer uses the ISAT for promotion, graduation, or eligibility for selective-enrollment schools and is phasing it out after this year. It is not aligned with Common Core State Standards—which, regardless of how one sees them, Illinois has already adopted—and does not help teachers improve student learning. The pre-service teachers with whom we work are demoralized about a future of teaching in such a test-driven atmosphere. We teach our students—future educators—to stand up for their students, families and communities, and to take principled stands for social justice. That's what the Saucedo teachers are doing. We applaud them and stand with them.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Evaluating teachers and principals: What’s the role of teachers unions?

    (This blog was adapted from my remarks in a remarkable forum on Feb. 8 in NYC that critiqued current policies evaluating principals and teachers and examined possible solutions.  The panel was videotaped and will be uploaded shortly. I’ll give readers the URL when that occurs.)

              It’s difficult for us in NYC to imagine a teachers union that focuses on social justice in schools, making them humane, supportive places for kids of color.  But we can see what unions might do by examining how Teachers Unite operates and what its teacher-members do in schools. They are using restorative practices to democratize decision-making, establish collective voice for teachers and collaborate with parents, communities, and students. 

                But even in their degraded condition, teachers unions provide an essential corrective to narrow measures of teacher quality.  Even if they don’t realize they are doing so, unions put teacher quality in the larger social and educational context. They are a break on policies that scapegoat teachers and impose easy-to-mandate but destructive solutions.

                We can no more say that teachers, as individuals, are solely responsible for educational outcomes than we can say that emergency room physicians should be paid, valued, and punished on the basis of the mortality rates or longevity of their patients.  While teacher quality is an important factor, we know from much research that it is only ONE factor.  The reification of teacher quality is an ideological construct to dismiss other salient factors. 

                To what research do I refer?  It’s important to state the warrants for my claims because so much educational policy is now driven by ideologically-driven anecdote, slipshod analyses based on speculation, reports that masquerade as scholarship. Policies ignore the body of empirical work that debunks the claim that teacher quality can be separated from organizational climate and administrative practices, for instance by Richard Ingersoll at University of Pennsylvania.  Writing in the American Educational Research Journal (AERJ) in 2001, “Teacher turnover and teacher shortages: an organizational analysis” Ingersoll examines why schools are hard to staff.  His arguments and data are laid out in more detail in his 2003 book “Who controls teachers' work? Power and accountability in America's schools” (Harvard Univ. Press).

             Does teacher quality count? Yes, of course. So do other factors. The December 2013 issue of AERJ contained five empirical studies that identified factors other than “teacher quality” that correlated with student achievement:

      1. Proportion of students in a class who had been retained and had large numbers of unexcused absences

    2. Family alienation from the school

    3. Use of pedagogy that encourages shallow learning

    4. Implementation of high-quality summer arts and literacy programs that are accompanied by support to parents for transportation arrangements and encouraging their children to attend

    5. Classroom characteristics that make teachers’ use of discourse strategies associated with improved student reading comprehension a challenge. This same study found that racial/ethnic minority teachers were 14.5% more likely to use the discourse strategies associated with more student learning. Yet current policies, including those evaluating teachers, are reducing the proportion of minority teachers in schools.

             The role of teachers unions is to alter the discussion about teacher quality to take into account factors in schools – and in the society – that teachers need to do their jobs well. Teachers’ professional responsibility is to change lives and hopefully society, for the better.  To do this, teachers cannot be fearful- as they are now.  Teachers have the right, as do all workers, to be treated with respect and dignity on the job. They need the security of knowing that should a complaint be brought against them, they will have the right to hear the evidence against them and put forward, if they wish, a defense of their actions, and to have the evidence heard by an independent party.  This is what is meant by “due process” and in defending due process teachers unions protect a right that is at the core of a democratic society – the right to a fair, impartial hearing when accused of a misdeed, before punishment is exacted.

             I want to close with a comment on the Vergara lawsuit now being heard in California. Backers of the Vergara lawsuit aim to privatize schools, dismantle public education as we have known it, and make teaching contract  labor, a job that young people do for a few years and then leave.  Anyone who has spent time in schools knows that student testimony about some teachers’ demeaning remarks is likely accurate. We who defend teachers’ right to due process have to speak up and say that schools need to be changed so that all students are treated with respect.

             The role of teachers unions is to put forward this vision of schools free from our society's epidemic of 

    Image

    racism and fight for it, as is being done in Chicago.  The smothering domination of the UFT machine in local and state politics can blind us to the new social movement of teachers emerging elsewhere. It is a movement of activists committed to social justice, collaborations with family and communities, democratizing the unions. This new movement is opening opportunities to have the hard discussions we need about what good teaching looks like and how to make that happen in classrooms serving all kids, especially those who have been denied the opportunity to achieve their full human potential.  In the process of waging these struggles alongside students and parents in communities who deserve better schools, we’ll open space to have discussions we need to generate the complex evaluative measures good teaching requires.

    Is there a subject you want me to tackle? Let me know. You can follow me on twitter and Facebook, as well as my blog every Wednesday here at New Politics.  Or write me at drweinerlo@gmail.com. 

     

  • Sanitation Workers: You Gotta Love Them

    Review of Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City By Robin Nagle (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013).

    Rationally, we know garbage isn’t picked up by the faeries, but to much of the public, it might as well be. We “take out” the garbage, but who removes it?

    To write Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City, NYU anthropologist Robin Nagle took a job with the city’s Department of Sanitation and followed, as a participant observer, those she calls “the city’s own municipal housekeepers.” A city can’t survive without regular and dependable trash removal, and her ethnography presents a detailed portrait of the 7,200 men and women willing to do it expeditiously. It’s a tough, dirty, and dangerous job.

    Nagle notes that injury rates for “san workers” outstrip harm done even to cops and firefighters. The Bureau of Labor Statistics ranks refuse and recyclable materials collection as the nation’s fourth most dangerous job, exceeded only by commercial fishing, logging and plane piloting.

    Adding insult to injury, those who prevent New York from being blanketed in waste and who keep traffic arteries plowed and passable even in the worst snowstorms are all but invisible to fellow New Yorkers. Like Rodney Dangerfield’s everyman, they get no respect. When a malicious Queens city councilman charged workers with engaging in a slowdown during the great 2010 snowstorm — this while they actually worked 41 days straight with no evidence of doing any but consistent hump work — the media ran with the story.

    It’s a common enough axiom. Work, when creative, is valued. Labor, which is by definition uncreative, is not. But the 2010 allegations of a worker slowdown were preposterous, Nagle writes. “If a foreman ever gave an order not to plow during a snowstorm, several san workers told me, no one would listen.”

    In fact, the department operates 24/7/365. Workers on two-person crews (it was three to a truck until then-mayor Ed Koch cut the number down — negotiating a “productivity deal” in exchange for a wage increase) must learn survival skills such as lifting trash safely, operating a variety of machinery, maintaining vehicles, dodging street traffic, avoiding getting cut or poisoned or crushed and acclimating to the stench and perpetually stained work clothes, all while looking out for each other.

    And it has its advantages. In the era of the precariat, when even PhD holders wait tables, these san men and women have full-time, secure jobs. The pay is good. There’s even a generous retirement package and a strong union, rare enough in the public sector today and almost unknown in private industry. With overtime they can make more than $100,000 annually — decent money. A former bus driver tells Nagle of one more advantage: he switched from the Transit Authority to the sanitation department “because this trash doesn’t talk back.”

    Nagle should have included more discussion of union-management conflicts. The nine-day strike in 1968 paralyzed the city, and Nagle acknowledges that the union is a powerhouse, but what role it plays day to day — as opposed to management’s ongoing oversight, which she details at length — isn’t clear from her telling. What fights did it pick? What fights did it miss, and why? Who chooses to become a union official as opposed to a foreman?

    Also missing, though not surprising for an anthropological study that’s typically thick on description but sadly thin on explanation, is any critique of garbage as a public service under capitalism. There may be, as Michael Bloomberg remarked, no Democratic or Republican way to collect garbage, but a class society shapes and constrains public services. How this one should function or could function better isn’t part of Nagle’s story.

    Apart from that, the book is a wonder. A reader comes away knowing the story is authentic because the woman was there. She gets the job, its smells, dangers. The formal and the informal rules and eccentric work culture (and what job culture isn’t a bit eccentric?). She renders the scene as lived daily, along with a transparent reading of the department’s origins and mission. It’s a comprehensive view from the top to the bottom of an army fighting a dirty war.

    So instead of honking at the driver whose garbage truck is blocking the street, shake the sanitation worker’s hand for the job he or she does. Failing that, tell them “good job, and thanks.”

     

    This was originally published in The Indypendent, Issue # 194.

     

  • February Traumas: The Third Insurrectionary Moment of the Venezuelan Right

    “Today the counter-revolutionary Right is reactivating itself,” according to long-time Venezuelan revolutionary Roland Denis, “taking advantage of the profound deterioration that this slow revolutionary process is suffering. Its reappearance and interlacing with ‘democratic civil society’ is a clear signal to the popular movement that we either convert this moment into a creative and reactivating crisis of the collective revolutionary will, or we bid farewell to this beautiful and traumatic history that we have built over the last 25 years.”[1]

    For seasoned observers of Venezuelan politics, the events of the past week are a disheartening repetition of opposition-led resistance efforts that have yet again sought to undermine political stability in the country. This is not the first time in recent history that the opposition has resorted to “extra-parliamentary” tactics, including violence, to push their political agenda. Nor is it the first time that the mainstream media has provided generous airtime to opposition demonstrations in Caracas, repeating the sob stories of upper class Venezuelans “repressed” by the government because they cannot find toilet paper on the store shelves, or in a more laughable episode, ingredients to bake a cake.[2]

    As with most situations in which there has been a violent conflict over who controls the reins of the state, it is possible to find fault on both sides. As a February 22nd report by the Centre for Economic Policy Research notes, “the political allegiances” of the victims of the violence so far “and their causes of death are varied.” Of the eight deaths, two of the responsible assailants might be linked to the government, including a SEBIM agent (the Venezuelan intelligence service) who was not authorized to be at the protest. The head of SEBIM was subsequently fired and there is a warrant out for arrest of the agents who fired the shots.[3]

    Over the last few weeks, the functional role of the privately-owned media viewable in Venezuela, such as the Colombian television station NTN24 which also broadcasts in Colombia, and CNN en Español, based in the US, has been to promote and consolidate a matrix of opinion and interpretation around the recent events in Venezuela: “peaceful protests” have been lined up against “excessive use of force by state security apparatuses.” This frame has found its echo in virtually all of the presidential or prime ministerial statements on the recent conflicts in Venezuela issued by Western imperialist states over the last number of days.

    For example, on February 21, 2014 US Secretary of State John Kerry predictably called for an end to violence “on both sides,” criticizing the Venezuelan government for imprisoning  “students and a key opposition figure” as well as limiting “the freedoms of expression and assembly necessary for legitimate political debate,” such as revoking the credentials of CNN en Español reporters. [4] A closer inspection reveals, however, that the situation is less two-sided, to put it mildly, than Kerry and his spokespeople in the mainstream media would have us believe. Indeed, this February the counter-revolutionary forces have once again demonstrated blatant disregard for the basic principles of liberal democracy to which they theoretically subscribe.

    One of the reasons that it is easy to defeat the opposition’s claims in Venezuela (at least in rational argument) is that their attempts to manufacture consent are largely based upon a series of half-truths, lies and misdemeanors. Unfortunately these misdeeds are continually parroted in the mainstream press as if they were true with no apparent need for fact-checking. For example, on February 20, The New York Times, reported that “The only television station that regularly broadcast voices critical of the government was sold last year, and the new owners have softened its news coverage.”[5] This is an outright lie according to the Carter Centre, which reported in 2013 that private TV media has about 74 percent of the audience share for news, with the state share at just 26 percent, for “recent key newsworthy events.”[6] While withering budgets for investigative journalism might be to blame for some of this inaccuracy in reporting, it is more likely that the corporate media shares the opposition’s vision of “democracy.” In such a vision, any attempt to redistribute a mere fraction of the social wealth in a way that curtails the “freedom” to accumulate capital is a threat to social justice.

    As John Kerry lambasts the Maduro government, “This is not how democracies behave,” referring to the imprisonment of some instigators of the protests. By way of context and juxtaposition, on February 12, 30 students were arrested in Venezuela in the wake of barricade building, Molotov cocktail attacks, and tire burning; 7,000 protesters were arrested during the days of Occupy in 122 cities of the United States between 2011 and 2013; and 153 students were arrested in the UK during the 2010 demonstrations against 300-percent hikes in tuition.[7] This is not even to get into what British journalist Gary Younge has called an “open season on black boys” in the United States by vigilantes, and the propensity for police officers to regularly kill unarmed black men with impunity in that country.[8]

    The real problem, it seems, is that democracy is supposed to entail competitive elitism and an exchange of office between bourgeois political parties (such as the Republicans and Democrats); it is not supposed to create room for alternative projects whose aim is to reform capitalism, the foundation of liberal democracy itself, by curtailing some of the “freedoms” associated with owning private property, such as controlling the media, buying elections, orchestrating corporate welfare projects, and supporting a foreign policy that keeps the world “free” for accumulation.

    Unfortunately, the “democratic” space of the Internet has not fared much better. As Julia Buxton documents in her excellent analysis of social media coverage of recent protests, Twitter feeds have repeatedly circulated false and misleading images of the supposed state-sponsored violence in Venezuela, including images that are in fact of Egypt or of the repression by state security forces that have been disbanded. While such false reporting on social media by average folk might be expected, what is highly problematic is that such “reports” have then been circulated in mainstream press outlets such as the ABC paper in Spain and the Guardian newspaper in the UK.  As Buxton concludes, “journalists have yet to learn that authoritative reporting requires fact-based accounts, not recycled and unchecked tweets from Twitter – a mechanism that can be used to promote delusion as well as democracy.”[9]

    Where were the mainstream reporters during the post-election violence in April 2013, when a dozen government supporters died at the hand of the opposition? Where were they when the Chavistas swept the municipal elections by a margin of 10 percent of the popular vote in December 2013? And where have they been every time a landowner has murdered a peasant leader?[10] While opposition supporters complain about the violations of human rights in Venezuela, the supporters of the Bolivarian process talk about the right to information, which is best produced by public and independently controlled and operated community media rather than by the employees of profit-seeking media conglomerates.

    Forgotten Archives of a “Democratic” Opposition

    It is tempting to imagine that there might be some truth in the pro-democracy slogans of the young people coalescing on the streets of Caracas, but the right-wing opposition in Venezuela, of which this student revolt is a part, has a less than stellar record of comporting itself within the constitutional parameters of bourgeois liberalism.  

    They attempted a coup d’état in April 2002, which temporarily removed Chávez from office with the support of the US government. When that avenue closed, and Chávez returned to power with the help of massive demonstrations of public support and military forces loyal to the President, they orchestrated a lockout of the oil industry in late-2002 and early 2003, in an attempt to bleed the economy dry and foment discord among broad swathes of society. That effort soured as well. Indeed, with each lashing of the reactionary whip in these years there was an unintended deepening of self-activity, self-organization, and creativity of popular organizing from below.

    The opposition logged a new electoral failure when their attempt to recall the President through a referendum in 2004 was defeated. They cried fraud, as they do in each election they lose, despite universal praise of the fairness and transparency of the Venezuelan electoral system from independent international observers.  In 2005, the opposition boycotted the National Assembly elections, withdrawing themselves from the electoral game in a misguided hope that the legitimacy of the political system under Chávez would be undermined altogether.[11] Similar to a small child who has lost her temper after losing the game for the umpteenth time in a row, the opposition’s boycott amounted to a tantrum in which the opposition took its ball and went home. And similar to a small child who has become frustrated with playing by the rules, it has resorted to other options when faced with continual defeat: lying, cheating, and challenging the referee.

    Last April, following the death of Chávez, presidential elections saw Maduro best Henrique Capriles, the right-wing candidate for the Mesa Unida Democrática (Roundtable for Democratic Unity, MUD), albeit it by a narrow margin of less than one percent of the vote. While this result was too close for many supporters of the Bolivarian revolution who had previously gained comfort from large margins of 10 percent, it would still count as a landslide victory in a country such as Canada where the Conservative Party formed a majority government in 2009 with only 38 percent of the popular vote.

    Predictably, the opposition’s response to yet another electoral defeat was rage. Capriles and his supporters refused to recognize the veracity of the results and then staged violent protests causing the death of a dozen Bolivarian activists, while leaving another hundred or so injured. The violent vandals of last April also committed extensive property damage to public buildings and institutions. It is worth noting, furthermore, that unlike in the case of the recent Honduran elections – widely recognized by mainstream human rights organizations to have been fraudulent, and which further consolidated right-wing strong man Porfirio ‘Pepe’ Lobo’s grip on that country –  the US has never formally recognized the legitimacy of Maduro’s presidency.[12]

    Once it was evident that provocation in the streets following the April elections was failing to destabilize the regime, or to rally new social sectors to the side of the opposition, the latter regrouped and reconsidered its tactics.[13] The MUD held internal elections to establish a new mandate for its leadership. Capriles came out on top once again, beating Leopoldo López and María Corina Machado, two personalities to which we will have occasion to return in a moment. The revised agenda for the Right was to frame the December 2013 municipal elections as a plebiscite on the legitimacy of the Maduro administration.

    In the municipal elections, Chavismo won decisively, regaining some of the political ground lost in the presidential elections eight months earlier. In spite of a voluntary voting regime and a historical tendency of abstention in local elections, there was a turnout of 60 percent. Chavismo won by approximately 10 percent, capturing 242 mayoralties to MUD’s 75. This unanticipated outcome for the opposition signified its failure since April last year to undermine the legitimacy of the Maduro presidency.[14] MUD proved itself incapable of disputing the hegemony of Chavismo in the electoral field, even during a year in which inflation rose very sharply to 56 percent and shortages of foodstuffs and other basic commodities began to proliferate.[15]

    Surface Divisions, Integral Unities

    Shortly after the results were in, Capriles, now acting as governor of the state of Miranda, changed gears and responded to the second call in the post-municipal election period by President Maduro for opposition mayors and governors to meet with him in the presidential palace and work out a plan of peace and national reconciliation. A photo of Capriles and Maduro shaking hands in the palace was circulated widely in the media, ostensibly ending the Right’s strategy of openly questioning the legitimacy of the constitutional President.

    Alongside Capriles, the majority of oppositional mayors and governors also attended the dialogues with the President, and agreed to participate in a new program designed to reduce crime and enhance citizen security. The move toward moderation and dialogue was unpersuasive to the hardest elements of the ultra-Right within the MUD coalition, however, and the recent manoeuvring of López and Machado is in part an expression of this tension internal to the opposition.[16]

    For many on the Left of Chavismo, however, it is easy to exaggerate the divisions within the counter-revolutionary bloc, and in so doing dangerously obscure their basic unity of purpose.[17] “We are facing the classic counter-revolutionary schema,” reads a recent communiqué of the revolutionary socialist current Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide, MS), which operates within the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). “It consists of applying pressure on the government to implement anti-popular measures and in so doing completely lose its social base, deepen its exhausted image in front of the Bolivarian people. As a result, they will be more open to the ousting of the government, whether that ousting is violent or soft. The government of Maduro is committing a grave error insofar as it believes that there is a ‘violent’ Right and another one that’s ‘peaceful,’ with which the government can negotiate and which will respect the Constitution. As in the old combination of the ‘carrot and the stick’ these sectors converge among themselves around a common objective, the defeat of the Bolivarian Process.”[18]

    “These days, fascist violence and the potential of a coup are taking place in a very distinct situation,” to the one of 2002, notes Denis in the same essay cited above. His reservations on the depth of division of purpose in the camp of the Right are of the same register as the Marea Socialista communiqué. “That fascist subjectivity planted in 2002 has always remained, diminished but consolidated. In fact, López and Capriles, as the personalities most representative of this ‘citizen’ movement, have never separated themselves from it, albeit starting from their individually distinct hysterical psychologies and pathologies, and the divisions between them in their original party Primero Justicia. Today they appear as the leaders of the opposition, competing between each other for its singular leadership.”[19]

    Leopoldo López, together with National Assembly congressperson María Corina Machado, called for the initial demonstration that kicked off the latest events on Youth Day, February 12, under the slogan “La Salida,” or “exit,” unambiguously signifying their intention to overthrow the democratically-elected government. “Opposition leader Leopoldo López – competing with Capriles for leadership – has portrayed the current demonstrations as something that could force Maduro from office,” the American economist Mark Weisbrot reports. “It was obvious that there was, and remains, no peaceful way that this could happen.”[20]

    The cartography of protest in Caracas has closely mirrored the socio-geographic divisions of the capital, featuring as it does a lighter-skinned and richer east, and a darker-skinned and poorer west. Middle class barricades were erected in the east, populated by the students of elite private universities, alongside students of the main state university – historically, a cordoned off stomping ground for kids of the rich.[21]

    The west, on the other hand, was relatively free of unrest. In the days following the initial explosion of activity, the “peaceful” protests of the Right included attacks on 50 of the public buses from a new system that acts as affordable transport for the poor. The Bolivarian University, a new institutional network designed to incorporate the lower orders into the higher education system, was also besieged. And Cuban medical personnel working for the Barrio Adentro health program have been the targets of fierce physical offensives. According to numerous observers, paramilitary shock troops are operating behind the cannon fodder of right-wing students in the streets. In protests that are supposedly driven in part by the scarcity of foodstuffs and other basic commodities available to the population, rightist militants had the audacity to attack government vehicles delivering precisely such products.[22]

    Capriles, meanwhile, has been reluctant to join the call for demonstrations in the streets, and indeed has piously condemned excessive violence by protesters while hoping that popular memory has faded with sufficient rapidity to leave in the past his leading role in calling out protests that led to a  dozen deaths last April. With Capriles there is always one hand discretely, cautiously maintaining its measure of the pulse of insurgent conspiracy. If that pulse grows sufficiently strong, he’ll abandon the path of negotiation.  

    In another sign that the effects of aggressive student protests have thus far alienated moderate sections of the counter-revolutionary bloc, it seems that few political leaders on the Right of any importance – beyond López and Machado – have lent their formal backing to the violent posturing of student and paramilitary demonstrations.

    One salient expression of this reality is the active twitter account of Ramón Muchacho, the conservative and fervently anti-Chavista mayor of Chacao, a wealthy eastern district of Caracas. This is what he had to say after a night of student protests in that municipality left the Bank of Venezuela and Provincial Bank damaged, alongside a judicial building, the offices of the Ministry of Transportation, and a local station of Metro Caracas: :  “We can see a terrible lack of leadership and direction. Only anarchy. Is this what we want? Will there be some limit to the violence and vandalism? Is what is occurring justified? Is someone going to assume responsibility?”[23]

    Portrait of an Unrepentant Coup Plotter

    López, in state custody since February 17, and facing an array of charges related to sedition, is the most visible face of this third insurrectionary moment of the Venezuelan Right – the first being April 2002 and the second being the oil lockout of 2002-2003.[24] He hardly emerged out of nowhere. López was the mayor of wealthy Chacao before Muchacho. After finishing prep school in the United States, he studied at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in the 1990s, where he made contact with US establishment figures such as David Petraeus, ex-chief of the Central Intelligence Agency and confidant of Barack Obama in all matters connected to national security.

    After the stint at Harvard, López returned to Venezuela, where he established relations with the Caracas offices of the International Republican Institute, an entity of the US Republican Party – the institute lent López strategic and financial support. Beginning in 2002, the Republican Party, then in office under George W. Bush, flew López to Washington on multiple occasions to meet with functionaries of the Bush administration. That same year, López led the opposition march on the Miraflores Presidential Palace in the capital, which resulted in dozens of deaths and precipitated the short-lived coup and kidnapping of then-President Chávez. López is also a longstanding associate of ex-Colombian President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), with whom he met on numerous occasions over the last decade. Uribe was well known for his hard-line against the Chávez regime, which corresponded with his domestic war of terror against large sections of the civilian population in Colombia under the banner of “democratic security."[25]

    Social Forces on the Right

    Back in 2002-2003, the counter-revolutionary bloc consisted mainly of the US embassy in Caracas, the highest echelons of management of the state-oil company PDVSA, the business confederation Fedecámaras, the Central de Trabajadores de Venezuela (Venezuelan Workers Central, CTV), the domestic hierarchy of the Catholic Church, and a variety of other oligarchic and conservative cross-sections of political society. This ugly melange was prettified through the lens of private media empires, both national and international, transforming the coup attempt into a struggle of democracy against tyranny. [26]

    Beginning in roughly 2008, the right-wing of the perennially divided student movement was sought out as a new vanguard through which to advance the opposition agenda. The counter-revolution had not enjoyed significant successes in linking organically to any other social subject that might otherwise have flag-shipped their enterprise. The large landowners and big business sectors that constitute their leadership are incapable of forging a national, unifying movement with the incorporation of wider social layers. The presence of the oppositional Right within the formal working class is minimal, as is its influence among the popular sectors more generally, at least for now. It is thus understandable, within its own logic, why the Right has sought out the students as a field of struggle.[27]

    In 2008, the US-based Cato Institute awarded the $US 500,000 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty to student leader Yon Goicoechea for his role in mobilizing protests against the government’s suspension of private broadcaster RCTV’s licence. Subsequently, a considerable chunk of the US$ 45 million in annual funding from US institutions to the Venezuelan opposition was directed toward “youth outreach” programs.

    As an outcome of such financial backing and logistical training in media campaigns the right-wing Juventud Activa Venezuela Unida (United Venezuelan Active Youth, JAVU) became an increasingly active organization. In 2010, for example, JAVU led protests against ostensible state censorship of private broadcasters, as well as struggles framed as defending the “autonomy” of universities from state intrusion. Inside the heat of the internal divisions of the Right today, the students have openly aligned with the López-Machado faction, transforming themselves into the cannon fodder serving the ultra-Right. [28] “Students as the new social subject of the counter-revolutionary Right is something distinct from 2002,” Denis observes. “They are favoured for their capacity to engage in permanent activism, above all students who do not work and who do not have any social responsibilities.”[29]

    If the students are the visible brigades tearing up the cityscapes, a complex configuration of national and transnational networks forms the counter-revolutionary bloc of the present. Fedecámaras remains active, as do the major players in private media, national and international. Political parties, NGOs, and churches are all articulated under the umbrella of MUD. In terms of parties, this fragile unity contains Acción Democrática (Democratic Action, AD); Primero Justicia (First Justice, PJ); COPEI, Causa Radical (Radical Cause, CR); Voluntad Popular (Popular Will, VP); Proyecto Venezuela (Project Venezuela, PV), and a series of other smaller entities of the Right.

    Among the multimillionaires backing the opposition is Pedro Carmona, often considered the father of golpismo (coupism) in Venezuela. Carmona was briefly declared President by coup supporters in the midst of their abortive attempt to oust Chávez in 2002. Exiled in Colombia at the moment, he is said to maintain a network of complicity in Venezuela. Jorge Roig is one of the businessmen of Carmona’s politicized network in Caracas, and Eligio Cedeño is a key contact in Miami. Both Roig and Cedeño are openly promoting economic boycott, shortage of goods, and hoarding at the moment. They are also alleged to have financed various golpista civil society groups, such as the NGO Humano y Libre (Human and Free).

    In the international sphere, US institutions such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have forged intimate ties with the right-wing opposition, providing logistical and financial support at every turn. The full extent of their involvement is unlikely to be known for several years, but through Wikileaks we know already a considerable amount. 

    NGOs proliferate domestically in the shadows of other actors. Among them is the Centro de Divulgación del Conocimiento Económico para la Libertad (Centre for the Popularization of Economic Knowledge for Freedom, CEDICE). CEDICE generates sustained critique of the economic policy of the government and openly supports boycott campaigns. Among its most important financial backers is the US-based Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).[30] It is a widespread belief within Chavismo, and with good historical precedent, that the whole range of domestic actors on the Right are in regular communication with the Pentagon, CIA, and State Department in terms of determining the range of tactics to be deployed over the next period.

    The Regular Misery of Capital

    If that’s the manufactured landscape of the Right, the latest impulse to return to extra-parliamentary insurrection is taking place within a real set of contradictions and crises internal to Chavismo. The eruption coincides with heightened expressions of structural weaknesses in the economic development strategy of the government. Underlying problems have come much more boldly to the fore since we wrote our recent article on the afterlives of Chávez in Venezuela last summer – not least of these are the issues of inflation and shortages.[31]

    Discontent among layers of the Chavista grassroots is real, with a second move to devalue the currency very recently being introduced in capitulation to demands from the Capriles “soft-Right” contingent.[32] High inflation is destroying workers’ real salaries and makes virtually meaningless the recently decreed 10 percent increase in salaries. The social base of Bolivarianism has long been calling for an iron fist in dealings with the bourgeoisie, but the Maduro government has restricted itself to ad hoc and ineffective controls, laws, sanctions, and a series of other measures that do not cohere into an economic strategy.[33]

    Government accusations that the capitalist class is waging “economic warfare,” while substantiated,[34] tend to downplay the absolutely routine problems created by capitalist activity in the normal process of capital accumulation in Venezuela. Manuel Sutherland, one of the boldest Marxist economists writing on the Venezuelan process at present is worth quoting at length on this topic:

    “The government continues to believe in the fantasy of a patriotic bourgeoisie that will renounce the extraordinary profits it can capture through illegal imports and currency speculation. Unfortunately, the government cannot imagine a country in which capitalists don’t appropriate 70 percent of the private sector GDP and massively exploit the workforce…. In sum, chavismo dreams of a reasonable and loving capitalist who obviously does not exist. With him it wants to negotiate, even though the normal action of these capitalists, that is to say the process of the accumulation of capital, is the cause of the country’s misery.”[35]

    It is very difficult to sustain the process even in its current state, never mind deepening and extending any long transition toward socialism, given the weight that private capital still enjoys in the economy. According to Sutherland, Venezuela experienced capital flight during the period of fixed exchange rates of around  $US 150 billion, the equivalent to approximately 43 percent of GDP in 2010. This looting of capital is part of what is driving the devaluation of the local currency and strengthening speculation in the parallel black market in dollars (in which dollars are sold for 15 times the official exchange rate).

    The black market rate is the rate used by commercial vendors to set their prices, with the exception of the few products subject to regulation. So escalating prices, even setting aside the issue of hoarding, would still be a major issue requiring resolution. Those commercial actors who legally obtain dollars through official channels in order ostensibly to purchase imports of goods from abroad have no incentive to actually use the dollars obtained to this end; rather they have every incentive to divert those dollars illegally onto the black market in order to make extraordinary profits. This causes further scarcity of goods, increases in prices, and a fall in the quality of goods and services – i.e. it is less a conspiracy of capital through economic warfare, than its regular behaviour given incentive structures that is at the root of the present economic crisis.[36]

    According to the communiqué of Marea Socialista –a group which has repeatedly declared its decisive commitment to defending the Maduro administration against any and all rightist conspiracies– the principal error of the government consists in its vacillation in economic policy since April 2013. The intervening period has witnessed the introduction of certain measures that can only be read as adaptations to demands from the Right. With the announcement the latest devaluation of the currency introduced earlier this month (called “SICAD 2”), which is similar to the system introduced in 2010 under Chávez, the government aims to free up an even more substantial part of the oil rent, the result of which will be even higher inflation. All of this, Marea Socialists warns, will deepen the crisis of scarcity. This announcement of a new Permuta dollar, embedded within the SICAD 2 arrangements, will achieve nothing but the deepening of social discontent and disorientation among the Chavista social base.[37]

    An appropriate redirection of economic policy, from the defensive to the offensive, according to Marea Socialista, would include the immediate escalation of anti-capitalist measures, such as: the establishment of a state monopoly under social control of all external commerce, and the assurance that the state be the only importer of essential goods for Venezuelan people; national centralization under social control of all dollars available in the country, whether they are dollars that enter through the oil trade, or those that are deposited in foreign accounts; massive intervention and state and social control over the entirety of the private banking system that presently operates in the country, in order both to finance economic planning and to simultaneously centralize control of all funds presently managed by the public banking system; the urgent recovery of state production of basic subsistence products to respond to the authentic shortage crisis; expropriation under workers’ and popular control of the largest corporations involved in the biggest operations of hoarding, speculation, and contraband; a call for the peoples and governments of Latin America to lend support and solidarity through the supply of basic goods and medicines to confront the problems of the immediate moment and of the transition to the implementation of such measures.[38]

    Bureaucratic Sclerosis

    In our recent article in New Politics, we tried to establish some of the basic analytical and empirical foundations for understanding a creeping bureaucratic sclerosis within the various organizations constituting the popular movement.[39] It is perhaps more evident than ever that a rigorous Marxist theorization of bureaucracy is required in order to understand some of the structural obstacles standing in the way of the advancement of the Bolivarian process in an anti-capitalist direction.

    In a recent open letter from Caracas, Mike González, author of a just-released biography of Chávez, calls our attention to a “new bureaucratic class who are themselves the speculators and owners of this new and failing economy… they are to be seen delivering fierce speeches against corruption and wearing the obligatory red shirt and cap of chavismo. But literally billions of dollars have ‘disappeared’ in recent years, the extraordinary wealth accumulated by leading Chavistas, are the clearest sign that it is their interests that have prevailed, while the institutions of popular power have largely withered on the vine…. The right has hoped to trade on that disillusionment.”[40] To speak of withering on a vine is perhaps to exaggerate, but but otherwise this is perceptive analysis. González singles out for treatment the growing military presence within the government, grouped around Diasdado Cabello, and the head of the oil company PDVSA and Vice President of the Economy, Rafael Rodríguez, but notes that there are others.

    According to Roland Denis, there are real divisions within the capitalist class that are partially being expressed through the visible tensions in the current leadership struggle for hegemony in the right-wing opposition. There is, according to Denis, a national section of the bourgeoisie that has enjoyed a “paradise of profits over the last number of years, operating beneath a model of bureaucratic-corporatism and the state capitalism promoted through the economic development plan of the government.” In this analysis, the rent captured through corruption and clientelist networks has generated profits for this national section of the bourgeoisie, just as it has for the internal bureaucratic layer of Chavismo identified in passing by González. As a result, the national section, represented politically by Capriles within the latest dispute on the Right, has not immediately lent its potential force (business strikes, open sabotage of the economy, internal coups, etc.) to the assault on power being orchestrated by López and Machado. Instead, the national section is interested in relative stability, and a regime transition which would not put into jeopardy the current paradise of profits.[41]

    The process of bureaucratization, according to Denis, is also responsible for the loss of an original vitality on the part of the grassroots organizations of Bolivarian process that have been transformed, to an ever deepening degree, into mere clients of the state – made to respond to the incentive structures of a state-capitalist model of development in an oil-rich country, and too often mobilized in the interests of the bureaucrats of that structure rather than being the self-determining subjects of a revolutionary potential which at one time seemed more clearly present on the horizon: “the rentist, parasitic model of state capitalism… delivers a politics of control, concentration of power and the substitution of social control with technocratic and bureaucratic functionaries…. This is a model which if it is not called fundamentally into question, with measures to transform it radically in the short term, will lead to the continuation of out of control shortages and inflation….”[42]

    Buying “Peace” within the Structural Violence of Capitalism

    A strategy of national reconciliation is destined to lead in time to full capitalist restoration and the reversal of the social gains achieved since Chávez assumed office in 1999. The “pacificism” of the Maduro government offers, for Denis, “a ‘peace’ that does not produce, does not create challenges and new levels of mobilization, but simply calls for support for the victimized figure of Nicolás and his government, sending off clear signals of weakness and the absence of an epic sense that every revolution must have.”[43]

    Likewise, for Carlos Carcione, an incisive commentator on the socialist Left of Chavismo:

    “A governmental campaign of calling for ‘peace,’ at a minimum untimely and bound to be frustrated. The maintenance of a doomed plan to search for an interlocutor in the bourgeoisie to establish a process of conciliation, rather than searching for democratic participation of the people who live from their labour, leading toward immediate anticapitalist measures. These are the salient symptoms of the times that over the coming weeks or months will decide, with a heavy emphasis on the weight of actions taken in the streets, the immediate future of what the world knows as the Bolivarian Process.”[44]

    Some Chavista supporters, lacking such a critique of the bureaucratization of the process to date, offer an overly complacent view on the possibilities of resolving the present conflict. They point to the fact that, unlike in 2002, the Bolivarian forces are now much more consolidated. They control the oil rent which is obtained through the state oil company PDVSA. They control the armed forces and access to international reserves. And they have a much more prominent presence in the field of production and arena of the media.[45] On its own, this is more a recipe for the consolidation of a bureaucratic state capitalism than a project of emancipatory socialism.  

    A recent communiqué from the Corriente Revolucionario Bolívar y Zamora – Poder Popular Socialista (The Bolívar and Zamora Revolutionary Current – Socialist Popular Power) resonates more profoundly with the best impulses of the poor in their own struggles for liberation within the Bolivarian process of the last 15 years. The winds of reaction in Venezuela in 2002 and 2003 unintentionally instigated the richest phase of self-organization and activity of the oppressed and exploited that we have witnessed thus far in the course of the Bolivarian process. The question is whether the Left of chavismo can win in the present conjuncture; can it put to rest all illusions fostered by the most conservative sections, and bureaucratized layers of the ruling party in any technocratic, negotiated “peace” with the “democratic” sections of the bourgeoisie. If the Chavista Left can manage this, it’s not impossible that transformative renewal and vitalization of the process generally would be the result. It’s on the table. It matters not just that this third insurrectionary moment of the counter-revolutionary Right is defeated, but how it is defeated, and that it is actually defeated.

    The Bolívar and Zamora Revolutionary Current calls for the “ever greater opening of spaces to the people and not to assume that the people are merely a reserve bequeathed by the comandante [Chávez] that is available to be convoked in moments of risk or electoral conjunctures. It is necessary to free popular protagonism, its incipient power, popular power, the communal councils and communes, the collectives and social fronts, all of the enormous and marvelous diversity that if unleashed in full will be capable of storming heaven. Our biggest strength is the resonance of our ideas in the fertile soil of the grassroots – in political, cultural, ethnic, sexual, popular diversity. There we will find enormous concentrated energies. It’s with these people that the struggle will be won in the street, but also in the struggle of ideas, of values, of ethics and of aesthetics, as they push to fully realize their concrete, revolutionary, fulfillment.”

    The project of counter-revolution nourishes itself on the diminution of revolutionary capacities, the bureaucratization of the once dynamic forces from below within the Bolivarian process. The project of defeating the counter-revolution therefore becomes one of re-establishing, through popular dialogue and grassroots assembly, the revolutionary initiative, to agree “on defensive actions, communication, the takeover of institutions, and the means of production – all of which will no doubt take us to a higher level of confrontation, where it becomes a matter of raising unconditional demands rather than negotiation, much less submission.”[46]

    Concretely, this might mean, among other things, putting an end to the impunity of the Right – not just enforcing the full letter of the law against Leopoldo López, but calling for the detention of Capriles and all those responsible for the government supporters assassinated in April 2013 following the presidential elections. It might mean the incorporation of the grassroots into the highest levels of decision-making power in the government – that is, the inclusion of the social and political organizations of the Bolivarian people, their rank-and-file unions, and their communes and councils, as well as the endowment of these bodies with authentic power. It might mean the encouragement and support for the independent struggles of the exploited who are currently fighting for improvement in their salaries and for the defence of their jobs, as in the case of the auto workers, or for their collective contracts, as in the case of electrical workers – that is, the government must encourage, not criminalize, the legitimate, autonomous struggle of working people living from their labour even as it encounters the forces of counter-revolution, indeed to better its chances in this encounter.[47]

    Such a redirection would also likely require the renovation of leadership circles and the bringing to justice of those in the highest offices of the state – judicial, legislative, and military – who have used their posts for enriching themselves, resulting in the consolidation of a bureaucratic layer within the regime.  One place to start might be the renovation of the cabinet, beginning with the Ministry of the Economy. What of the reactivation of the commission for the transformation of the state, abandoned since 2003? It is also obvious to many that if a socialist transition out of the present crisis is desired, it will be necessary to establish a system of democratic planning, from below to above, from municipalities up to regions, with an immediate emphasis on restoring productive capacity, meeting the basic consumption needs of the population, and moving toward the socialization of the country’s economy.[48]

    “The gravity of the current crisis,” Carcione observes, “can be resolved in the manner in which we triumphed over the April coup [of 2002] and the oil sabotage [2002-2003], decisively unleashing the constituent power, the Bolivarian people. The search for conciliation with supposedly ‘democratic’ sectors within the pro-imperialist domestic Right will lose us the whole Process. It’s a historic moment for this project of emancipation. The hour of truth has arrived.”


    [1] Roland Denis, “Desactivar el fascismo,” Aporrea, February 19, 2014. Available online at: http://www.aporrea.org/oposicion/a182411.html. Accessed on February 23, 2014.

    [2] Belen Fernandez, “Towards Another Coup in Venezuela?” Al Jazeera, February 19, 2014. Available onling: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/02/towards-another-coup-venezuela-201421952658348169.html. Accessed February 25, 2014.

    [4] John Kerry, “Situation in Venezuela,” U.S. Department of State, February 21, 2014. Available online at: http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/02/221919.htm. Accessed February 25, 2014.

    [5] William Neuman, “Protests Swell in Venezuela as Places to Rally Disappear,” New York Times, February 20, 2014. Available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/world/americas/protests-swell-in-venezuela-as-places-to-rally-disappear.html?_r=1. Accessed February 25, 2014.

    [6] Cited by Mark Weisbrot, “Does Venezuelan Television Provide Coverage That Opposes the Government?” Centre for Economic and Policy Research, February 24, 2014. Available online at: http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10400. Accessed February 25, 2014.

    [7] Julia Buxton, “Venezuela: The Real Significance of the Student Protests” Latin American Bureau, February 20, 2014. Available online at: http://lab.org.uk/venezuela-%E2%80%93-student-protests. Accessed on February 22, 2014. Fort he occupy arrest figures see http://occupyarrests.moonfruit.com. Accessed on February 25, 2014.

    [8] Gary Younge, “Open Season on Black Boys after a Verdict Like This,” Guardian, July 14, 2013. Available online at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/14/open-season-black-boys-verdict. Accessed on February 25, 2014.

    [9] Julia Buxton, “Venezuela: The Real Significance of the Student Protests.”

    [10] Jeb Sprague and Joe Emersberger, “Impunity for Venezuela's big landowners,” ALAI, December 20, 2011. Available online at: http://alainet.org/active/51700. Accessed on February 25, 2014.

    [11] For a recent commentary on the Right’s record, see Mark Weisbrot, “US Support for Regime Change in Venezuela is a Mistake,” Guardian, February 18, 2014. Available online at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/18/venezuela-protests-us-support-regime-change-mistake. Accessed on February 21, 2014.

    [12] Atilio Borón, “La amenaza fascista,” Rebelión, February 19, 2014. Available online at: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=181044&titular=la-amenaza-fascista-. Accessed on February 21, 2014.

    [13] See the illuminating discussion of these matters by Gregory Wilpert on The Real News Network, February 22, 2014. Available online at: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11517. Accessed on February 23, 2014.

    [14] Pedro Santander, “Diálogo o golpismo: Lo que está en juego en Venezuela,” Rebelión, February 19, 2014. Available online at: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=181024&titular=di%E1logo-o-golpismo-. Accessed on February 23, 2014.

    [15] See Andrés Schipani, “Venezuela: Amid Unrest, Another Forex Mechanism,” Financial Times, February 20, 2014. Available online at: http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/02/20/venezuela-amid-unrest-another-foreign-exchange-mechanism/#axzz2u4V0vinF. Accessed on February 21, 2014. The figure of 56 percent inflation cited in this article is also the standard figure reported in sources close to the government.

    [16] Santander, “Diálogo o golpismo.”

    [17] Nicmer N. Evans, “Oposición dividida pero no desunida y ‘la salida’,” Rebelión, February 6, 2014. Available online at: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=180472&titular=oposici%F3n-dividida-pero-no-desunida-y-%93la-salida%94-. Accessed on February 21, 2014.

    [18] Marea Socialista, “Rectificar y avanzar hacia la revolución económica: Para frenar la ofensiva de la derecha,” Rebelión, February 15, 2014. Available online at: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=180860&titular=rectificar-y-avanzar-hacia-la-revoluci%F3n-econ%F3mica-. Accessed on February 21, 2014.

    [19] Denis, “Desactivar el fascismo.”

    [20] Mark Weisbrot, “US Support for Regime Change in Venezuela is a Mistake,” Guardian, February 18, 2014. Available online at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/18/venezuela-protests-us-support-regime-change-mistake. Accessed on February 21, 2014.

    [21] Although it is also true that the student movement has always been divided, and its left-wing has had at different historical moments a presence within the elite state universities as well.

    [22] Mike González, “Is Venezuela Burning? A Letter from Caracas,” Revolutionary Socialism. Available online at: http://revolutionarysocialism.tumblr.com/post/77478189373/is-venezuela-burning-a-letter-from-caracas. Accessed on February 22, 2014.

    [23] Quoted in Manuel Sutherland, “Siete apuntes sobre las protestas en Venezuela,” Aporrea, February 17, 2014. Available online at: http://www.aporrea.org/ideologia/a182254.html. Accessed on February 22, 2014.

    [24] Andrés Schipani, “Opposition Leader Detained in Venezuela,” Financial Times, February 18, 2014. Available online at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6afe551e-98d2-11e3-a32f-00144feab7de.html#axzz2u4WW7HU4. Accessed on February 21, 2014.

    [25] Ana Esther Ceceña, “Leopoldo López: Agente de la CIA, el golpe, guarimbas, Uribe y el fascism,” Herramienta. Available online at: http://www.herramienta.com.arleopoldo-lopez-agente-de-la-cia-el-golpe-guarimbas-uribe-y-el-fascismo. Accessed on February 22, 2014.

    [26] Luciano Wexell Severo, “Golpe de Estado suave,” Rebelión, February 21, 2014. Available online at: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=181112. Accessed on February 21, 2014.

    [27] Corriente Revolucionario Bolívar y Zamora – Poder Popular Socialista, “Momento y perspectivas: la nueva asonada contrarrevolucionaria” Rebelión, February 19, 2014. Available online at: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=181029. Accessed on February 21, 2014.

    [28] This paragraph draws on Julia Buxton, “The Real Significance of the Student Protests.” See also, Ana Navea, “Mentiras de la derecha para impulsar un golpe de Estado,” AVN, February 20, 2014. Available online at: http://www.avn.info.ve/contenido/mentiras-derecha-para-impulsar-golpe-estado. Accessed on February 21, 2014.

    [29] Denis, “Desactivar el fascismo.”

    [30] Information in the last three paragraphs is drawn in part from Ricardo Martínez, “Los actores del golpismo en Venezuela,” RT Actualidad, February 18, 2014. Available online at: http://actualidad.rt.com/blogueros/ricardo-martinez/view/120209-actores-golpismo-venezuela. Accessed on February 23, 2014.

    [31] Susan Spronk and Jeffery R. Webber, “Sabaneta to Miraflores: The Afterlives of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela,” New Politics (Winter), 2014. Available online at: http://newpol.orgsabaneta-miraflores-afterlives-hugo-ch%C3%A1vez-venezuela. Accessed on February 23, 2014.

    [32] Andrés Schipani, “Venezuela: Amid Unrest, Another Forex Mechanism,” Financial Times, February 20, 2014. Available online at: http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/02/20/venezuela-amid-unrest-another-foreign-exchange-mechanism/#axzz2u4V0vinF. Accessed on February 21, 2014.

    [33] Manuel Sutherland, “Siete apuntes sobre las protestas en Venezuela,” Aporrea, February 17, 2014. Available online at: http://www.aporrea.org/ideologia/a182254.html. Accessed on February 22, 2014.

    [34] George Ciccariello-Maher, “#LaSalida? Venezuela at a Crossroads,” The Nation, February 21, 2014. Available online at: http://www.thenation.com/article/178496/lasalida-venezuela-crossroads#. Accessed on February 23, 2014.

    [35] Manuel Sutherland, “Siete apuntes sobre las protestas en Venezuela.”

    [36] Manuel Sutherland, “Siete apuntes sobre las protestas en Venezuela.”

    [37] Marea Socialista, “Rectificar y avanzar hacia la revolución económica.”

    [38] Marea Socialista, “Rectificar y avanzar hacia la revolución económica.”

    [39] Spronk and Webber, “From Sabaneta to Miraflores.”

    [40] González, “Is Venezuela Burning?” See also, Mike González, Hugo Chávez: Socialist for the Twenty-First Century, London: Pluto, 2014.

    [41] Denis, “Desactivar el fascismo.”

    [42] Denis, “Desactivar el fascismo.”

    [43] Denis, “Desactivar el fascismo.”

    [44] Carlos Carcione, “El Proceso Bolivariano en la hora de verdad,” Rebelión, February 20, 2014. Available online at: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=181061&titular=el-proceso-bolivariano-en-la-hora-de-la-verdad-. Accessed on February 21, 2014.

    [45] Luciano Wexell Severo, “Golpe de Estado suave,” Rebelión, February 21, 2014. Available online at: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=181112. Accessed on February 21, 2014.

    [46] Denis, “Desactivar el fascismo.”

    [47] Marea Socialista, “Rectificar y avanzar hacia la revolución económica.”

    [48] This paragraph draws on proposals that conclude Denis’s extraordinary essay cited throughout this work.

     

  • Ukraine, Coup or Revolution?

    The Ukraine is no longer ‘in flames.’ With the hurried flight of the detested Yanukovich, peace and order have descended on Kiev (except for some fistfights in the Parliament!) There is no looting. Self-organized popular militias protect the luxurious Presidential Palace (privatized by Yanukovich) as crowds of citizen file through to gape at his collections of antique and modern automobiles.

    These orderly crowds have lived through the experience of months of revolutionary activity in support of the constantly renewed Kiev occupations. They are conscious and discipline. All through the cold winter they have organized a continuous mass occupation, including the provision of food, hygiene, safety, and self-defense under the discipline of units of one hundred (‘Hundreds’). They have improvised nation-wide network of smaller occupations and support groups providing the Kiev occupiers with food, medical assistance, rotating re-inforcements, and recently the weapons (‘liberated’ from the Army in Lviv) which, although never fired, turned the tide in favor of the revolution.

    These military firearms were only ‘liberated’ and brought to Kiev in response to Yanukovich, who clumsily raised the level of violence by ordering his elite snipers to use live ammunition on the occupiers, who had been defending themselves for the most part with shields and clubs.[2] The symbolic arming to the masses, re-established the balance of opposing forces, opening the way for the negitations between the leaders of the “100s” on the one hand and the Army and Police on the other. Many among the latter had relatives among the occupiers, none was ready to kill or be killed to save Yanukovich’s ass. The blood of the 84 fighters who fell to sniper bullets in defence of the occupation was not shed in vain.

    Today, no longer confined behind barricades, Ukraine’s citizen activists have jubilantly taken over the city. For the moment, they are the only power, and they have the right to chant, echoing the slogan of Occupy Wall St : ‘This is what democracy looks like.’

    The Ukrainian demonstrators Like ‘Occupy’ and the Indignados,also reject the corrupt, entrenched, oligarch-financed political parties who are trying to patch together a new government in a Parliament (whose doors are carefully guarded by citizen defense forces). They have no more use for the leaders of what the media call the ‘opposition’ then they did for Yanukovich. Their contempt echos the Argentinian masses whose street protests unseated a series of governments in the early 2000s: ¡Qué se vayan todos!(“Throw ALL the bums out!”).[3] They have in their memory the lived experience of 2004, when their mass occupations preciptated a previous democratic revolution, rapidly highjacked by corrupt politicians and billionaire oligarchs. They are not prepared to be bilked a second time, and they have so far had the good sense to remain armed, organized and vigilant.

    Nationalism and Internationalism

    The crowds who have accomplished this victory for ‘peoples’ power’ unite people of all classes and all ethnicities, including not just native speakers of Russian and Ukrainian, but also Moslems, Jews, and various nationalities of the Caucuses.[4] A recent interview with a marvelously lucid and well-informed Ukrainian revolutionary syndicalist named Vlatislav, who has been in the thick of things, confirms the spontaneous, self-organized, multi-class and multi-ethnic composition of the revolutionary crowds. He dismisses the idea that the people are ‘pro-Europe’ as anachronistic, dating from the early days of the occupation, when it was largely symbolic.

    As for the divide between the Russian-speaking East and the Ukrainian-speaking West, Vlatislav thinks it is “often exaggerated to the point where the existence of a single Ukrainian nation is even denied. I think Ukraine is still a more unified nation-state than Belgium, for example.” This is confirmed by polls that show fewer than 9% of Ukrainians in both geographical areas want to see Ukraine divided. Indeed, Vlatislav explains how this linguistic division has actually been favorable to the Ukrainian working people, for “it was the main reason why in Ukraine the ruling class failed to establish an authoritarian regime in the mould of Russia or Belarus: it ensured that no politician has ever had support from the majority of the population. Therefore, they had to balance and make concessions to the weak working class: bourgeois democracy was retained, and welfare state elements are much more generous than in Russia.”

    No wonder the US and Europe are calling for a strong central government capable of imposing IMF-style austerity! No wonder the NY Times laments that no such unity emerged from the ‘Orange Revolution’ of 2004. One hopes that a more democratic Ukraine will be able to continue playing off Russia and the West against each other to keep its independence. Otherwise the choice is grim: on the one hand return to neo-Stalinist semi-dictatorship under a Putin clone, on the other IMF-imposed austerity and eternal debt servitude to the German banks.

    Neo-Liberalism Eastern and Western-style

    In any case, once in power Yanukovich introduced anti-worker austerity and neo-liberal reforms, privatizing everything in sight, often (like the Presidential Palace) to his family’s enormous profit, which explains why he was universally hated. As Vlatislav testifies: “The natural gas tariffs were growing; the government launched medical reform which will eventually lead to closure of many medical institutions and to introducing the universal medical insurance instead of the unconditional coverage; they pushed through extremely unpopular pension reform (raising pension age for women) against the will of more than 90% of population; there was an attempt at passing the new Labor Code which would seriously affect workers’ rights; the railway is being corporatized; finally, they passed a new Tax Code which hit small business.” Vlatislav’s interview is worth reading in full.[5]

    Another observer who stresses the autonomous character of the Ukrainian revolution is Adrian Ivakhiv, who blogs at Ukrainian Temporary Autonomous Zone and discusses “The ‘Threat’ of Direct Democracy in Ukraine.” Ivakhiv makes a useful distinction between three types of democracy: authoritarian (à la Putin), liberal (the EU), and direct, exemplified by people power in Ukraine. He also deals with the question of nationalist and right-wing influences in the revolution, pointing out although the neo-fascists, who love to fight, were well-represented on the barricades, the percentage of voters identified with far-right parties in the Ukraine is lower than that in France and Austria. And ‘nationalism,’ which is near-universal in this land that has been dominated and fought over by Russians, Poles, Austro-Hungarians, Swedes, Rumanians and Germans for centuries, has a different resonance in Ukraine than elsewhere. His piece is also well worth reading.[6]

    Media Propaganda Right and Left

    In contrast to these creditable on-the-ground reports, what we find in the media is mostly sheer propaganda. The Times and the networks portray this revolution as a defeat for Russia and a victory for Western neo-liberal capitalism. Period. On the other hand, part of the Left sees it more or less through the Cold War lens as a ‘right-wing coup’ engineered by US imperialism. Pacifica Radio’s ‘War and Peace Report’ headlined ‘Ukraine: a coup or a revolution?’ and described (three times) Yanukovich as the ‘democratically elected president’ as if the Ukraine were Chile in 1973 or Honduras two years ago.[7] A previous show featured an interview with pro-Russian professor Stephen Cohen under the headline “A New Cold War? Ukraine Violence Escalates, Leaked Tape Suggests U.S. Was Plotting Coup.” Cohen stressed U.S. aggression (real enough) against Putin’s Russia, the omnipresence in Kiev of right-wing fascists and nationalists, concluding on the danger of a Ukrainian Civil War between East and West which would lead to a new violent confrontation between Russia and the West.[8]

    Prof. Cohen is someone whose scholarship (his biography of Bukharin) I admire, who has been critical of both Stalin and Putin, but who has retained his pro-Russian 'patriotism' from the Cold War days. His theoretical frame, like many other left-liberals, does not recognize Russian imperialism along with other imperialisms (from Chinese to German and US) in what is increasingly a multi-polar world, similar to the world of 1914 on the eve of WWI with its complex and shifting alliances. Throughout the Cold War, many still defended the Soviet Union as the 'underdog' and more 'progressive' than the US, but this attitude is sheer nonsense today when Russia is ruled by oligarchs and mafia under a neo-Stalinist police state; today when there is an active, autonomous democratic, revolutionary labor movement with which we can identify.

    What Next?

    To conclude: the first phase, democratic of the Ukraine’s ongoing revolution is now complete. The tyrant, abandoned even by his own party, has fled. The repressive apparatus as been neutralized, and the former Defense Minister responsible for the sniper shootings of dozens of demonstrators is on trial. The Constitution of 2004 has been restored in satisfaction of a major popular demand. Today’s Ukrainians remember their so-called Orange Revolution, which soon mired in corruption. The masses, although peaceful for the moment, remain armed and mobilized. The question is, What will happen in the next, in the social phase of this revolution?

    Chris Kinder, on the Eco-Rev list serve, has raised some very serious problems, impossible to dismiss as propaganda, about the history of fascism and right-wing nationalism in Ukraine and the many threats to a possible democracy there which need to be taken into consideration.[9] As Victor Serge observed during the failed German Revolution of 1923, the rise of fascism depends on two factors: 1) dispair among the active, youthful, combattive elements of society of a liberal or communist solution to capitalism’s problems, and 2) the backing of big capital and the military.[10]

    To me, the ultimate outcome largely depends popular struggles and solidarity on the international scene. The potential tragedy of the Ukrainian revolution (and indeed mutatis mutandi of all the 'successful' popular uprisings since 2011 from Egypt on) is that confined to the national context the political leadership gets taken over or overtaken by a rival section of the local ruling class (military, religious, nationalist), normally backed by a rival imperialism. We have seen this happen twice in Egypt, just has we have seen Syria’s original citizen uprising for human and democratic rights turned into a reactionary military holocaust with the interference of at least five imperialisms, secular and religious, world-wide and regional.

    The one thing all these conflicting bourgeois interests have in common is the will to defeat and destroy the popular, democratic uprisings which, if allowed to come to power, would inevitably, being majoritarian, demand more social equality and thus threaten the interests of the rich and power elites. Such a successful revolution would set a very ‘bad’ example for the planet’s billions. As Victor Serge reminds us, in 1917-18 during the First World War, fourteen imperialist nations put aside their deadly conflicts in order to crush the Russian Revolution, while in the Ukraine (whose name means ‘Borderland’) White Russias, Germans, Rumanians, French and Poles intervened militarily and financed local parties.[11] Today we have the same actors interfering Ukraine, plus the U.S. (not always aligned with the ‘fucking’ European Union…)

    To survive, revolutions must spread, or retreat….

    Given this tragic situation, should we consider the participants in the Ukrainian mass democratic movement (and for that matter their counterparts in Egypt, Tunisia Turky, Russia, Brazil, Spain, Grece etc) naive and mistaken whenever they rise up in indignation to demand human rights? Do we not, at the least, owe them a duty of international solidarity? Must we not follow the example of Egyptian Teachers’ Union showing support to the teachers occupying the Wisconsin State House in 2011? Of our worldwide support for the Zapatistas’ unlikely uprising a decade earlier? Did not our own organization, Praxis, present in Kiev and the Crimea since 2004,grow out of such a network in the 90s? Such networks of support and exchange are the seeds from which international solidarity can grow, indeed, that revolutions can spread, as they must if they are to survive.

    Like Serge, indeed like every socialist from the First International on up, I have always believed that revolutionary movements can only succeed when they become international, and today, with capitalist globalization, that means planetary. Indeed, only a planetary uprising against capitalism can save the planet from industrialized eco-cide in the very near future. Our only chance is to rise up together in one long ‘rolling revolution;’ and today we can actually create such solidarity in real time thanks to the World Wide Web, social media, alternate media and machine translation.

    Planetary revolution? One chance in a hundred! Maybe, but what if there is no other survival solution for the planet’s inhabitants? (for more, please see my “Ecotopia: A Bet You Can’t Refuse”).

    Notes

    [1] Secretary, Victor Serge Foundation (Montpellier, France); founding member of the Praxis Research and Education Center (Moscow), www.praxiscenter.ru, which co-sponsored the first International Congress of Independant Labor Unions last November in Kiev.

    [2] Some of the demonstrators did, at one point, fire pistols and shotguns.

    [3] Andrew Higgins, "Ukrainian Protesters See Too Many Familiar Faces in Parliament After Revolution," New York Times, Feb. 24, 2014.

    [4] According Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University, author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, who is studying the composition of these crowds.Democracy Now

    [5] "Maidan and Its Contradictions: Interview with a Ukrainian Revolutionary Syndicalist". Thanks to Loren Goldner for bringing it to my attention.

    [6] Direct democracy in Ukraine?. Thanks to Brain Tokar.

    [7] Democracy Now .

    [8] Democracy Now.

    [9] here.

    [10] “Fascists and Communists,” Sept. 29, 1923 in Serge,Eyewitness to the German Revolution, Ian Birchall, TR. Haymarket Books.

    [11] Victor Serge, Year One of the Russian Revolution.

  • People Took to the Streets to Defend Their Rights and Freedoms

    **Update, March 12, 2014: A reader pointed out that we incorrectly described this as a statement from “the Ukrainian labor movement”; in fact, it is a statement from one conservative component of the labor movement, one that likes to see itself as speaking for all of Ukrainian labor. (For some background, see Oleh Vernick, “‘All-Ukrainian Strike’ as the big fake of Euromaidan,” LeftEast, March 5, 2014.) We regret the error. Nevertheless, the statement highlights some important issues.—Eds.**
     
    While this statement was published a week ago, on February 19, we think it important to call it to the attention of our readers as a statement of the Ukrainian labor movement. – Dan La Botz
     
    Thousands of peaceful demonstrators yesterday at the Verkhovna Rada were provoked by the riot police followed by violent clashes between the protesters and the police.

    Open warfare broke out on the streets of Kyiv yesterday, with at least 25 persons reportedly killed and more than 1,500 people injured. It was a day of non-stop bloodletting, smoke, fire and screeching ambulances. 

    The death toll was likely to rise as police went on the offensive after sundown, advancing on thousands of protesters on Independence Square in the evening with gunshots, a water cannon and an armored personnel carrier. Tents housing protesters were burning on the main square, a fire fueled by protesters with tires as a defense against police attacks. 

    Many buses, trains cars are stopped by road police today on approach to Kyiv, preventing people from the regions to support protesters.

    The Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (KVPU) is deeply concerned with the critical situation which may further result in chaos and blood. Three months of protests against the current government have resulted in nothing but mass bloodshed and deaths. The government and the President don’t show any reaction and don’t take into notice the demands of the protesting people in entire Ukraine.

    The KVPU condemns the evil actions of the government and special police forces and calls upon the international community to immediately impose sanctions for the high officials who are involved into the bloodshed as well as consider the possibility of providing humanitarian assistance to those who defend democracy and human rights values.

    Sincerely,

    Mikhailo Volynets

    Head of the KVPU

     

  • A political earthquake strikes Ukraine

    UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT Viktor Yanukovich appears to have been driven from power after the mass protest movement that has occupied Kiev’s Maidan (Independence Square) since November survived a deadly crackdown last week. In a matter of days, the country’s corrupt and autocratic regime was overwhelmed.

    The parliamentary opposition to Yanukovich—dominated by center-right and even far-right parties, backed by the European Union (EU) and U.S. government—is moving quickly to establish its authority, ahead of new elections planned for May. Their goal is to head off any further action from below that might undermine their claim to speak for the uprising—and that might target the country’s elite beyond Yanukovich and his ruling party.

    Contrary to this aim, however, the Maidan occupation grew larger over the weekend as masses of people celebrated reports that Yanukovich had fled the capital late Friday night. In scenes reminiscent of insurrections past, demonstrators poured into Yanukovich’s abandoned private estate in Kiev, complete with a luxurious residence, zoo and carefully manicured golf course.

    The masses of people who participated in the Maidan movement did not endure months of encampments during a frigid winter and repeated assaults by the regime’s riot police in order for a new political leadership to take charge and preside over the same neoliberal policies that have impoverished ordinary people. Whatever happens now, the memory of how mass resistance forced out a tyranny will stay burned in the minds of Ukrainians.

    Nevertheless, at this point, the conservative, pro-Western parties that have claimed leadership of the movement are pressing their advantage.

    As a consequence of the upheaval last week, Yulia Tymoshenko, the imprisoned leader of the opposition Fatherland Party, was freed from jail. The Western media showcased a sympathetic image of Tymoshenko, frail from years behind bars and speaking to 50,000 people in Maidan. But more honest reports noted she got a “cool reception” from the occupiers. According to the Wall Street Journal, a volunteer security officer admonished her, saying: “Yulia Vladimirovna, remember who made this revolution.”

    Tymoshenko herself is no stranger to political power or corruption—she is a former prime minister, and she became one of the richest people in Ukraine by brokering insider deals in the energy industry. Other leading figures of the former opposition parties have similar backgrounds.

    Equally menacing is the high profile of the far right—in the form of both Svoboda, a political party with representatives in parliament that has ties to the British National Party and France’s National Front; and the extra-parliamentary Right Sector, a tightly organized street force that reportedly took the lead in the confrontations with riot police when the crackdown came last week.

    The far right doesn’t care about democratic rights or challenging the power of the wealthy oligarchs—any more than Yanukovich did, or the more conventional conservative parties that have taken control in parliament.

    ————————-

    THE MAIDAN occupation was sparked off in November by the announcement that the Yanukovich government was rejecting a proposed “association agreement” with the EU, apparently in order to join the Eurasian Customs Union, led by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

    The center-right parties that dominated the speakers’ platform in Maidan continued to portray themselves as pro-Europe, and the widespread desire for a break with Russia has been a factor throughout. But other issues quickly gained in prominence—the impoverished conditions for the majority of the population, in contrast to the incredible wealth of the oligarchs; the corruption of the Yanukovich regime; and pro-democracy demands against the state’s harsh repression.

    Yanukovich attempted to balance between promises of change and threats of imprisonment and worse for demonstrators—all while struggling to maintain the support of the wealthy elite. But each time Yanukovich ordered repression, the riot police were repelled, though at the cost of scores of people killed.

    The conflict reached a new pitch on Tuesday, February 18, following the announcement of the resumption of Russian aid to Ukraine. The government unleashed the most violent crackdown yet on protesters. After 36 hours of intense battles that left more than two dozen people dead and hundreds injured, a truce was announced on Wednesday night.

    But events had spiraled beyond the control of the regime. The seizure of government offices in western Ukraine began to spread, while members of parliament from Yanukovich’s ruling Party of Regions started defecting, along with the mayor of Kiev.

    The truce was shattered the next morning, and acting Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko announced he had authorized police to be equipped with Kalashnikovs and sniper rifles. Security forces and the now armed self-defense units of the Maidan fought pitched battles, using live ammunition—news footage showed downtown Kiev transformed into a war zone.

    This was the setting for Yanukovich, having announced another “agreement” with opposition parties, to flee Kiev for the east of the country, where he has his political base of support, close to the border with Russia. Other political officials followed his lead and fled, or defected to the Maidan opposition. Security forces abandoned the fight in Kiev, and the numbers in the square swelled, demanding that the police chiefs responsible for the deaths of protesters be held accountable.

    Because of the defections, the trio of conservative and far right opposition parties achieved a majority in parliament and voted unanimously to return to the 2004 constitution, which grants parliament greater powers. Over the weekend, votes were taken to impeach Yanukovich and to hand over his powers to the speaker of parliament, Aleksandr Turchinov, who is now acting president.

    What will happen is far from clear, but there is a real possibility that Ukraine could break apart. The last week’s upheavals has accelerated the process of western cities and regions, beginning last week with the city of Lviv, shaking off the control of the central government in Kiev. Meanwhile, in the Eastern city of Kharkiv, a congress of the country’s Southern and Eastern regions passed a resolution last Saturday rejecting the authority of the now-opposition-controlled parliament in Kiev.

    ————————-

    THE POLITICAL forces poised to take control of Ukraine after Yanukovich’s fall aren’t looking out for workers, in any way, shape or form. As a statement from the anarchist Autonomous Workers Union of Ukraine bluntly put it:

    Besides the fascists, old and experienced Oppositionists will also attempt to seize power. Many of them already have some experience with working in government, and they are no strangers to corruption, favoritism and the use of budget funds for personal purposes.

    As Russian socialist Ilya Budraitskis explained in an interview with the German magazine Marx21, the wealthy elite “has influence not only on the economy and society, but also has direct control over one or more political parties. An oligarch can therefore translate their finance capital into direct political power.”

    Yulia Tymoshenko is a creature of this system. She played a leading role in Ukraine’s 2004 “Orange Revolution,” when mass protest against a stolen election succeeded in overturning the result. Tymoshenko became prime minister under President Viktor Yushchenko, who was widely seen as a pro-Western reformer. But Yushchenko failed to reverse Ukraine’s economic inequality or democratize the political system. Disillusionment with him paved the way for Yanyukovich and his party to make a comeback six years later.

    Before 2004, Tymoshenko first rose to prominence as the head of an energy company following the breakup of the old USSR in 1991 and the declaration of an independent Ukraine—she proved a savvy operator in the new era of privatization and free-market “reform.” She and the other leaders of the parties now in control in Kiev are no more concerned today about the economic and social needs of ordinary Ukrainians—their negotiations with the EU so far have been focused on opening up Ukraine’s market to EU businesses.

    A government led by Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party will lead to a deepening of neoliberal measures, only this time with international connections to the EU and International Monetary Fund, rather than Putin’s Russia. Indeed, some on the left are already calling this prospect a “Second Orange Revolution”—in recognition that it is bound to disappoint the hopes of the wider layers of people that brought them to power.

    ————————-

    ANOTHER THREAT to working people in Ukraine comes in the form of the far right.

    The influence and perceived respectability of the right in the Maidan movement needs to be understood in its political and historical context. Liberalism, as one might understand it from the U.S. context, does not exist as an independent force in Ukraine. Instead, the political landscape is composed of various shades of conservative populist parties.

    At the website LeftEast, Ovidiu Tichindeleanu explained that “popular movements have exploded all throughout Eastern Europe [in the last three years], and all expressed an anti-systemic discontent.” But because these movements “failed to produce a common constitutional moment,” Tichindeleanu argues, many of them, “whether from Ukraine or Romania, have come to be dominated or marred by nationalists and the far right.”

    The size and influence of fascist forces in the Maidan movement is frightening. For example, members of the Antifascist Union Ukraine estimated in an interview that extreme right-wing nationalists made up about 30 percent of protesters.

    Among the fighting forces that defended Maidan against the crackdown—and that now guard parliament, instead of the state police—the Right Sector, with its highly coordinated organization and disciplined command structure, is in strict control, even preventing left-wing attempts to organize defense groups.

    Right Sector was increasingly at the forefront of the clashes with government forces, but its aims are not at all in conflict with those truly in power in Ukraine. In the midst of the most intense battles last week, for example, Right Sector issued an appeal to the oligarchs around Yanukovich, asking them to support the protests and the formation of a government led by technocrats. Fascists have always relied on the backing of big capital to come to power—their appeal should be seen as a bid to build relations with the ruling class.

    The menace of the far right in Ukraine cannot be understated. But it would be wrong to dismiss the protest movement wholesale because its presence.

    The fascists won’t be stopped by shoring up the repressive state apparatus around the oligarchs. On the contrary, the capitalist state typically uses such opportunities to limit the democratic rights of ordinary people, and especially to ramp up the repression of the left, thereby creating even more favorable conditions for the far right to grow.

    Confronting the threat of fascism will require a grassroots effort involving independent workers’ organizations, trade unions and a strengthened left establishing an atmosphere of solidarity within the Maidan, in which the toxic message of hate will whither and die.

    ————————-

    PRIOR TO the crackdown on February 18, the socialist left, though small and not well organized, was gaining a hearing in the Maidan, according to reports. According to Zakhar Popovych, a member of Left Opposition, thousands of copies of the “Ten Theses of the Left Opposition in Ukraine” had been distributed and discussed among demonstrators.

    Unfortunately, whatever progress the left had been making was largely disrupted by the crackdowns. The left in Ukraine remains very small, as one sober report from before the crackdown put it, with “no organization that can carry out planned strategic activities, nor media resources able to communicate to our position to the public, nor sufficient research capacity able to competently analyze our activities.”

    At the same time, however, the development of the Maidan movement was leading to a shift in the class composition of the demonstrations. Writing before the crackdown, a member of the Autonomous Workers Union reported that:

    the protesters [initially] were mainly students and urban “middle classes”: petite bourgeoisie, bohemian circles, office workers. Right now, the class composition of the protests has definitely shifted to the more universal one. I’m not sure about the exact proportions, but it’s doubtless that the protest has become more “proletarian”—although the share of workers is still low, and when they are present, they are there as “Ukrainians” or “citizens,” not as “workers.”

    At the front of the Maidan, leaders of center-right parties dominated the speakers’ platform, and the far right controlled its self-defense units. But a large majority of the rank-and-file participants in the Maidan have legitimate grievances—against the impact of neoliberal capitalism, against state repression and their lack of a political voice, against endemic corruption that ultimately serves to amass more wealth for the oligarchs—which put them at odds with both the mainstream right and the far right.

    Building on the basis of these grievances, around the principle of solidarity, offers the hope for confronting both the agenda of a new government led by the mainstream conservative parties and the threat of a further growth in influence for the fascists—and for creating the conditions for the emergence of a future revolutionary movement.

     

    This article originally appeared in Socialist Worker.

  • Three Amigos Summit: Reaffirmation of NAFTA’s Neoliberal Agenda

    This article was written for Mexican Labor News and Analysis and therefore emphasizes NAFTA’s impact on Mexico.

    The Three Amigos summit meeting of President Barack Obama of the United States, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, and President Stephen Harper of Canada just held in Mexico amounted to little more than a reaffirmation of the neoliberal agenda represented by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that took effect twenty years ago.

    Or, as Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s leading leftist politician put it, the meeting only “legitimated the unjust relationship” between the three countries and the giving up of Mexico’s natural resources to the corporations of the U.S. and Canada.

    The political and economic elites of all three countries remain mostly happy with the agreement that did so much harm to the working people of their countries. As usual, human rights, labor rights, and environmental issues were not on the agenda, the promise to protect the monarch butterfly serving as a poor substitute for addressing global warming and climate change.

    Aside from their agreement on NAFTA, there was little amity among the amigos. Harper was rebuffed in his attempt to get Obama to accept the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry synthetic crude oil from the tar sands of Canada deep into the United States. Environmental groups have been pressuring Obama to kill Keystone, though so far he remains uncommitted.

    Obama hoped to use the summit and the celebration of NAFTA’s twenty year anniversary as a launching pad for the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP that would create a super-NAFTA for twelve Pacific Rim nations. But Democratic Party leaders and members of the House oppose a “fast track” approval for TPP and the party’s base is also hostile to the plan.  

    Peña Nieto, who has had a remarkable string of political successes, passing a series of reforms culminating in an energy reform that opens Mexico to foreign oil companies, nevertheless presides over a country facing very serious economic and social problems.

    Mexico Agonistes

    While the world financial powers-that-be were thrilled with Mexico’s economic reforms, the country is far from healthy. Economic growth this year of 1.1 percent is the worst since 2009, far below what would be needed to provide jobs for the unemployed, the underemployed and those new, young workers coming onto the job market. A recent report also indicates that in the previous six-year term of President Felipe Calderón, the Mexican economy grew at only 1.9 percent. The lack of growth has meant that there are not enough jobs and those there are don’t pay enough. Half of Mexico’s population lives in poverty and about 13 percent lives in hunger and malnutrition.

    NAFTA – No Need to Celebrate

    Various reports in Mexico and the United States argue, correctly I think, that NAFTA not only failed to improve the lot of North America’s working people, but actually worsened conditions. Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch’s report “NAFTA’s 20-Year Legacy and the Fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership” in which it argues that NAFTA devastated Mexico’s rural sector, increased poverty, led to higher food prices and hunger, contributed to falling wages, drove migration to the United States, caused Mexican small- and medium-sized businesses to fail, and contributed to the growth of economic inequality.

    Similarly, a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research titled “Did NAFTA Help Mexico: As Assessment After 20 Years” found that:

    ·         Mexico ranks 18th out of 20 Latin American countries in growth of real GDP per person, the most basic economic measure of living standards.

    ·         From 1960-1980, Mexican GDP per person almost doubled, growing by 98.7 percent.  By comparison, in the past 20 years it has grown by just 18.6 percent.

    ·         Mexico’s per capita GDP growth of just 18.6 percent over the past 20 years is about half of the rate of growth achieved by the rest of Latin America.

    ·         According to Mexican national statistics, Mexico’s poverty rate of 52.3 percent in 2012 is almost identical to the poverty rate of 1994. Meanwhile, the rest of Latin America saw a drop in poverty that was more than two-and-a-half times as fast as that of Mexico.

    ·         Real (inflation-adjusted) wages for Mexico were almost the same in 2012 as in 1994, up just 2.3 percent in 18 years, and barely above their level of 1980.

    ·         Unemployment in Mexico is 5.0 percent today, as compared with 2.2 percent in 1994; these numbers seriously understate the true lack of jobs, but they show a significant deterioration in the labor market during the NAFTA years.                  

    “Mexico did all the things that Washington wanted and was supposed to be the big winner from NAFTA,” said Mark Weisbrot, one of the authors of the report. “But after 20 years, it’s pretty clear that although some billionaires did remarkably well, the Mexican people lost. There should be more discussion of what went wrong, especially in light of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which is modeled on NAFTA.”

    And the billionaires have done astoundingly well, in spite of Mexico’s slow growth. Financial groups in Mexico over the last decade had, according to Mexico’s National Commission of Banking and Stocks (CNBV) a rate of profit of 20.7 percent, sixteen times the rate of growth of the economy.

    NAFTA and the Narcos

    NAFTA arguably also contributed to the expansion of the drug trade with the United States and the accompanying violence. Jeff Faux argues that the vast expansion of trade across the border created the conditions which overwhelmed the U.S. inspectors making it possible for tons of marijuana and cocaine to cross the U.S. border. At the same time, the lack of economic growth and the high levels of unemployment drove the poor to seek their fortunes as drug runners or gunmen for the dealers.

    The drug lords’ struggle to control the trade led to wars among them, between them and the government, to the corruption of government officials and police and army commanders, and finally to the rise of local armed self-defense groups (that may in actuality be controlled by rival drug dealers). While the government puts the number killed since 2006 at 47,515, others estimate somewhere between 60,000 and up to 1000,000 have been killed or disappeared.

    The Three Amigos’ smiles, handshakes, and vapid discourse dealt with none of the problems of the working people of their countries. But then no one, I think, expected them to.

  • A Reply to Julia's Letter on Ukraine

    My problem with Julia's analysis is that it repeats the standard line that is being repeated throughout the press regardless of political point of view. I think there are two main problems with this party line.

    1) It ignores the fact that, like several of the African and Middle Eastern countries in which similar uprisings are occurring, Ukraine is an artificial state. A creation  of colonial powers which ignored the national, ethnic, and cultural differences of the subject peoples, or more often exploited those differences in their own interests. Ukraine is in fact two countries. The Russian speaking southeast and the Ukrainian speaking northwest. That Yanukovich publicly ignores this fact while exploiting the differences for his own purposes does not excuse the fact that his pro-EU predecessors did the same in the interest of the pro-western sentiments of their followers. The organizers of the protest movement, like their predecessors in the Orange Revolution are just as dependent, politically and economically,  on the colonial powers of the west as Yanukovich is on Putin.

    2) The most important fact about the EU proposal which in the reports of the western media is mentioned, if at all, in paragraph fifteen floating amongst the lingerie ads is that it was tied to an IMF austerity program. Given this fact to compare the Ukrainian movement, in a footnote, with that taking place in Greece is pure demagogy.

     

  • Manifesto: 10 Тheses of the Leftist Opposition in Ukraine

    While we recognize that the following statement represents the point of view of a small minority both within the Ukrainian rebellion and in Ukraine at large, we reprint it here nonetheless, thinking that it is an important statement of the left. – Editors.

    Euromaidan and a Program for the Left

    Euromaidan’s popularity has nothing to do with Ukrainians finding the question of free trade with the European Union so significant that it emboldened them to survive sleepless nights on the square. The country’s socioeconomic problems, which are much more acute than those of its neighbors to the East and West, gave the protest its meaning.

    The average salary in Ukraine is 2 to 2.5 times lower than in Russia and Belarus, and much lower than in the EU. The worldwide economic crisis affected the Ukrainian economy much more drastically than almost any other economy in Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals. Economic growth after the crisis nearly froze, and industry will most likely continue to decline in 2013.

    Furthermore, Ukraine’s economic system more or less exempts oligarchs from paying taxes. One can completely legally export tens of billions of dollars’ worth of minerals, metals, ammonia, wheat, and sunflowers, and report no profit. All earnings are stashed in offshore jurisdictions, where almost all of Ukraine’s functioning enterprises are formally located. Any profits earned by an enterprise inside the country can be legally and effortlessly transported to offshore locations by reframing them as a fictitious loan, for example.

    Is it any surprise that the Ukrainian government systematically has trouble replenishing the budget? At the end of last year, Ukraine was in a pre-default stage. Withholding wages owed to state employees became common practice, and the budget practically stopped allotting funds to social programs. The situation was exacerbated by a trade war with Russia, when Gazprom forced Ukrainian gas prices to record heights in Eastern Europe.

    Oligarchs drove the country into a corner; even after endless discussion, they could not formulate a coherent development strategy, avoiding any investment in the state while systematically draining it. Any development strategy must include a curbing of their appetites – it must at least partially ban offshore schemes and enforce minimum tax payments. But that’s exactly what oligarchs cannot accept, even though they understand that if they don’t change the rules of the game, they will drive the state into socioeconomic catastrophe, chopping off the branch where they themselves sit.

    The right-wing opposition, when speaking about economic problems, focuses almost exclusively on the themes of corruption and ineffective rule. And if the conversation does turn to oligarchs looting the state, then it limits itself to the businessmen who are close to the Party of Regions, and most often does not delve further than the business that belongs to Yanukovich’s sons. From the right wing’s point of view, the other oligarchs are not a problem, because they have national consciousness. By this logic, when Ukraine is plundered by a “щирый” (Ukr. for “authentic”– editor’s note) Ukrainian, it is still beneficial to the national cause.

    A paradoxical situation is unfolding. All conscientious economists (even quite neoliberal ones like, for example, Viktor Pinzenik) agree that the tax and regulatory systems of the country were built to completely exempt oligarchs from paying taxes. Everyone can see that this system won’t last much longer, but none of the politicians in the Parliament have dared to offer the obvious and realistic systemic alternative.

    Almost nobody dares to publicly admit that the most pressing issue facing Ukraine is not the EU or the trade union, but simply that oligarchs should start paying their taxes. The apparatus of the state is perfectly capable of forcing them to do so since the oligarchs’ functioning assets are all located in Ukraine. However, as Andrei Hunko recently pointed out, the oligarchization of Ukrainian politics has reached such proportions that not a single one of the existing parliamentary parties can even mention this matter.

    Sadly enough, only radical leftists voice these minimal and obvious demands. I emphasize that these demands must be seen not as the agenda of the Left Opposition, but as first steps toward the formation of policies that could gather together all anti-oligarchic forces, who don’t consider an ultra-right fascist dictatorship to be any kind of solution – the kind of dictatorship the All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” so insistently pushes us towards, while the official opposition leaders sit by and watch.

    The glaring absence of any coherent plan of action to help Ukraine out of its crisis has become so pressing that even quite liberal, almost right-liberal publications have started discussing our “Ten Points” – such as, for example, Lvov’s zaxid.net. – Zahar Popovich, “Left Opposition”

    Plan for Social Change, in ten points.

    Foreword, by the Left Opposition.

    We submit to your attention a document titled “Plan for Social Change”, which outlines ways to increase the well-being of the citizens and ensure social progress. It was created partly because most socio-economic demands at the Euromaidan demonstrations have been ignored. Our hope is that this document might serve as a platform to unify a wide range of social, leftist, and trade-union initiatives. This document was written by activists belonging to the Left Opposition, a socialist organization that aims to unify all those who belong to the community provisionally called #leftmaidan.

    It goes without saying that political parties transform the protest movement and direct it toward electoral politics; they try to find new voices, instead of making significant changes to the system. We do not support the ideas of liberal structures, which propagandize free market economics, nor do we support radical nationalists who push discriminatory policies.

    Our hope is that the protest movement, spurred to action by social injustice, might ultimately eradicate the root causes of this injustice. We believe that the cause of most social problems is the oligarchy that formed as a result of unbridled capitalism and corruption. It is important to limit the egotistic interests of our oligarchs, instead of relying on the help of Russia or the IMF, with the consequent national dependence. We believe that it is harmful to add our voices to the demands for Euro-integration; instead, we need to clearly delineate the changes necessary to support the interests of ordinary citizens, especially hired laborers. On several occasions, we cite the progressive experiences of a few European states that have taken similar measures.

    The goals we’ve created are relatively moderate, so that they might appeal to the widest possible range of organizations. We won’t conceal the fact that, for us, this plan is less a reaction to current events than a step toward the formulation of a contemporary leftist political force – a force that is capable of influencing those in power and offering an alternative to the existing social order. The Left Opposition considers the proposed plan to be the minimum for building socialism on the principles of self-government: the socialization of industry, the allocation of profit for social needs, and the appointment for citizens to government functions.

    We welcome you to subscribe to our Facebook and VKontakte pages to voice your opinions there, or to email us at gaslo.info@gmail.com.
    Replacing one set of politicians and oligarchs with another without overall systemic changes will not improve our lives. Instead, our group of social and union activists is proposing ten basic conditions for overcoming the economic crisis and ensuring Ukraine’s future growth.

    The Left Opposition Collective

    1. GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE, NOT BY THE OLIGARCHS      
    There must be a transition from a presidential to a parliamentary republic, in which presidential power is limited to representative functions on the international stage. Authority should be transferred from state administrators to elected regional committees (soviets). Authorities should have the right to fire delegates who have not met expectations; judges and police chiefs should be elected, not appointed.

    2. NATIONALIZATION OF PRIMARY INDUSTRIES
    Metallurgy, mining, and chemical industries, along with infrastructural enterprises (energy, transport, and communications) should contribute to social welfare.

    3. WORKERS SHOULD CONTROL ALL FORMS OF OWNERSHIP 
    Following successful European examples, we should construct a wide network of independent workers’ unions, which will control management and guarantee workers’ rights. Workers should have the right to strike (refuse to work when payment is not received). Workers should also have the right to take out loans at the employer’s expense if wages are delayed (following Portugal’s example).  Production, accounting, and management data of all enterprises that employ more than 50 people, or have a capital turnover of over $1 million, should be published online.

    4. INTRODUCTION OF A LUXURY TAX
    We should instate a 50% tax on luxury items – yachts, elite automobiles, and other items that cost more than 1 million gryvna. A progressive personal income tax should also be introduced. Individuals with an annual income of more than 1 million gryvna should be taxed up to 50%, following Denmark’s example (in such a system, Renat Ahmetov alone would have paid 1.2 billion gryvna to the federal budget, as compared to the 400 million he actually paid in 2013 on a 17% tax).

    5. PROHIBITION OF OFFSHORE CAPITAL TRANSFERS
    The bylaws that exempt Ukrainian enterprises from taxation in a number of offshore countries should be revoked, in order to prevent the transfer of capital offshore. The assets of offshore companies in Ukraine should be frozen, and a temporary administration should be appointed until the legality of the investments can be proven.

    6. SEPARATION OF BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT   
    Citizens with incomes that exceed 1 million grivni should be banned from government positions and seats in local government. Nationwide reelections should be held in compliance with this rule.

    7. REDUCTION OF SPENDING ON THE BUREAUCRATIC APPARATUS
    Government spending should be controlled and transparent. Administrative reforms should take place, resulting in a reduction in the number of managerial employees. Today, whole departments could be replaced by computer programs. But instead, in the last eight years the number of bureaucrats in the government has grown by almost 10%, comprising more than 372,000 people (in Ukraine, there are 8 bureaucrats for every 1000 people – in France, there are only 5 per 1000!).

    8. DISSOLUTION OF BERKUT AND OTHER SPECIAL FORCES
    Beginning in 2014, there should be subsequent reductions in spending on the sercurity apparatus of the state: the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service, the Office of the Prosecutor General, and special police forces. It is unacceptable that the Ministry of Internal Affairs was allocated more than 16.9 million grivni in 2013 – 6.9 million more than all public health expenditures!

    9. ACCESS TO FREE EDUCATION AND HEALTHCARE
    Funds for this initiative should come from the nationalization of industries and reduced spending on the security and bureaucratic apparati. To eliminate corruption in education and medicine, we must raise doctors’ and teachers’ salaries and restore the prestige of those fields.

    10. WITHDRAWAL FROM OPPRESIVE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS We support the termination of further cooperation with the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions. We should follow the example of Iceland, which refused to pay debts accrued by bankers and bureaucrats (under government warranty) for the purposes of personal enrichment and “social handouts”, rather than for the development of industry.

    Published in Russian on the Open Left platform: http://openleft.ru/?p=1157

    Translated from the Russian by: Jordan Maze and Helen Tsykynovska

    Reprinted from LeftEast

  • Essential ingredients versus recipes: social movement teachers unions and granola

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    There’s no single recipe for building the social movement we need to make public education what it should be, to nurture and protect democracy and kids’ well-being.  But we can see essential ingredients coming together in many different places.

                In their contract talks, Portland teachers demanded what unions need to be advocating.  Portland is an NEA affiliate (PAT) so it’s significant that they borrowed from the Chicago Teachers Union in formulating their (excellent) program, which compares what they want from contract talks to what the school board and contract insist they negotiate.  From what’s on paper, it looks like the union leadership understands that their struggle has to have deep roots in the schools as wells as parents and community.  To have a friend and ally, you have to be one. (At this writing, a tentative agreement had been reached between the union negotiators and the board. I’d be more reassured that members are running the show if the tentative agreement had been taken to members, as was done by the CTU.)

                Elsewhere in the NEA, teachers in North Carolina have developed a grassroots organization, Organize2020 that aims to reinvigorate their state affiliate.  The group is growing by leaps and bounds, allying itself with campaigns of Moral Mondays. A renewed civil rights coalition has developed, to push back against the overtly racist legislative and political attacks. Teacher activists, still somewhat isolated in locals, are using a state-wide strategy to support organizing in cities as well as suburbs.

                In Colorado pushback comes mainly from activists who have organized to stop standardized testing by encouraging parents to “opt out” of the tests.  They realize they must challenge both AFT and NEA, in their locals and state organizations. In Los Angeles, the Union Power slate in UTLA, a merged NEA/AFT organization, has learned from mistakes made when reformers first won office eight years ago and has developed a collective leadership, energizing the chapters. When the slate wins the upcoming election, officers will take leadership of a newly mobilized union.

                In each situation, activists have adopted different strategies, based on their widely-varying histories, circumstances, and resources. There’s been no recipe but they share this ingredient: A realization that the unions’ failure won’t be solved by electing a single strong leader or persuading existing union officials to act differently.  Union members have to be educated and mobilized, in a social movement that develops mutually respectful alliances with parents and communities.

                I’ve been told that I’m not realistic about the conditions in schools and I’m setting the bar too high. I think what’s happening nationally, which is under the radar of the media, disproves my critics.  At the same time, I acknowledge that the ideas I’m advocating are not widely held and that teachers are frightened. Organizing under these conditions is not fun. We have to treat ourselves and one another well.

                To me caring means food.  Like movement-building, granola doesn’t have a single recipe but it does have essential ingredients. Here’s a recipe for granola, printed in a cookbook produced by family friends.  I wish I could deliver a batch in person to Jackson Potter. He, his family, and the movement lost Pete Camarata recently.  The granola I’d give to Jackson would contain nuts and other dried fruit, maybe cranberries, because my recipe is low cal but Jackson is not watching calories.  When you add fruit and nuts, just wait until the granola has cooled.  We need to take care of ourselves. We’re going to see defeats as well as victories. Savor the victories and restore yourselves after a defeat with some granola.

               

                I invite reader responses at drweinerlo@gmail.com.  Is there a subject you want me to tackle? Let me know. You can follow me on twitter and Facebook, as well as my blog every Wednesday here at New Politics.