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  • The New American Workers Movement and the Confrontation to Come

         The new American workers movement—born in the last few weeks in the giant protests in Wisconsin and Ohio—faces a fateful confrontation this coming week. In Madison and Columbus, Republican legislators are pushing to abolish public employee labor unions and tens of thousands of workers are protesting and resisting. We have seen nothing like this face off between workers and bosses in the United States since the labor upheaval of the early 1970s, though the issues in the balance are more like those of the 1930s. The very existence of the American labor movement is at stake. The question is: What will it take to win?

         What a movement this has become in just a couple of weeks. In the fight to preserve public employees’ right to unionize, tens of thousands—as many as 70,000 on one day—have demonstrated in Wisconsin. There they have maintained a permanent occupation of the state capitol building and sustained a mass movement seething around it. In Columbus, Ohio there have been several demonstrations at that state capitol building, one of as large as 10,000 workers. And there are plans for more demonstrations in Columbus to continue the pressure. In Indianapolis where thousands of steelworkers and autoworkers demonstrated and Democrats fled to prevent a vote, the Republicans have agreed to take their “right-to-work” law off the table.

    From the Midwest to the Coasts: Solidarity

         At the center of this movement, in Madison, Wisconsin, a new conception of the workers’ movement has been created. For decades American workers have fought to improve their lives within the parochial confines of a particular union. Each union largely ignored other unions (except when it competed with them) and often neglected the issues of the labor movement as a whole, to say nothing of the broader issues of the working class, most of which has no union. Suddenly we have a real labor movement again, where public sector unions join together with private sector unions, pipefitters march with professors, steel workers with secretaries, and computer programmers with the sanitation workers. And the unionized workers are often joined by non-union supporters.

         Not only that, but in Madison community members and college students have swelled the picketlines. Even high school students have come out in numbers. And everybody who stands on the right side of the class line is welcome. As the movement opens up, so do minds. Union members are snatching up the leaflets of their unions, but also taking copies of the union reform paper Labor Notes. Workers and supporters listen to the Democratic Party politicians who come through and they grab up too the newspapers of the socialist organizations and chat with leftists. Where the struggle is at its peak in Wisconsin, he labor unions are becoming a workers’ movement again and the old concept of labor solidarity, that “An injury to one is an injury to all,” has been reborn in the marches, the protest rallies, and the chants to “Kill the bill.”

         This movement is not confined to the Midwest. Around the country workers are showing solidarity and support this movement. California union members, at least 150 of them have flown two thousand miles to join the picket lines in Madison. Demonstrations have been held to support the Wisconsin workers from Vermont to Atlanta and in many other cities around the country. We now have a new national workers movement propelled from below by the energy, enthusiasm, and creativity of the rank and file.

    The Stakes: Enormous

         We had better have a big movement. The stakes in this battle between the right and the workers’ movement are enormous. The Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana would like to break the unions, to eliminate them altogether as a factor in American life. The proposed legislation would end public employees’ right to unionize, strike, and bargain. The legislative elimination of the unions would mean the end of “dues check off,” that is, the automatic deduction of union dues from members paychecks, undermining the economic viability of the unions.

         Some on the left argue, and with some merit, that dues check off itself has undermined the union movement. When, in the old days, union stewards collected due by hand, member by member, they had to listen and respond to members’ concerns and complaints. Once the boss was collecting the dues for the union, it was another story. The money went directly into the bank providing unions with a steady flow of cash but eliminating that direct relationship to members and the steady flow of comments and grievances that once came along with the dues.

         While there is some truth in that argument, the kernel of truth being the unions’ need for democracy and member control, to cut off the funding of the unions as they are now will be devastating. Union halls would close, union staff would be laid off, and union programs would fold up. The national unions would no doubt continue to support unions in states where they were broken, but on the state and local level unions, while continuing to exist, would be reduced to a hard core of dedicated activists with much less power.

         The breaking of these unions would also mean the ripping up of the contracts that protect their members. Many of these are contracts that not only insure decent wages, but also protect health benefits, working conditions, and provide grievance procedures for workers’ complaints. Union contracts have protected not only the wages, but also the rights of members. They have created a sense of workplace citizenship and of equality, one might say, that is, the understanding that we are all as workers entitled to the same rights and protections.

    What Would a Union Free Environment Mean?

         The Republicans want to break the unions because it would reduce the unions’ power both in politics and in the workplace. The Democratic Party would no longer be able to count on the unions’ treasuries and members to finance a good part of their election efforts and to provide the troops who do the calling and door knocking. Government supervisors could work workers harder and pay them less. The weakened public employee unions would mean less union influence in society, leading to an even further weakening of private sector unions. Because breaking the unions in the public sector, however, is only a first step. The real end goal is to finish them off the unions in industry and especially manufacturing where all the real wealth of society is actually produced.

         There are other implications as well. Unions, for all of their problems, and the problems are many—the national officers’ high salaries, the organizational bureaucracy, unresponsive officials, racial and gender inequities, political “less evilism” and subservience to the Democratic Party—still, the unions often throw their weight into the scales on the side of many important causes. Even while they may exhibit backwards racial and gender politics within the union, they still often support causes of racial and gender justice in society.

         With all of their problems, unions represent the weight of the working class in society and in politics. And even if their weight, because of their reliance on the Democrats, is not always translated into power, still the organization of the working class into the unions represents the most important factor in American democracy. Without the unions, the financial and industrial oligarchy, which already holds power, may wield that power with impunity.

    What Will It Take to Win?

         The movement has already exhibited great potential and shown some power. The demonstrations by tens of thousands who have participated in the Midwest supported by thousands in other states have been more than symbolic. This is a mobilization of workers who are also taxpayers and voters, and the Republicans know it and fear it. In Wisconsin, this mobilization has been accompanied by the occupation of the capitol and by what was for a day or two a virtual general strike by teachers in the state.

         The tremendous mobilization of tens of thousands of workers which has taken place so far is indeed impressive, but it is not clear that that alone can stop the Republicans and their corporate backers from passing the legislation. Workers have concentrated on the occupation of the capitol, but they also have still untapped power of numbers in the streets, using civil disobedience to disrupt government and business. Groups of workers prepared to go jail for their rights would raise the level of struggle in Wisconsin and throughout the state.

         Workers also have greater power both in the economy and in society which they have not used to the fullest. The strike is a powerful weapon in this struggle. Teachers in Wisconsin have already used it both in Madison and around the state. The South Central Federation of Labor in Wisconsin has raised the idea of a general strike of all unions in the state. To be effective a general strike has to be called before the legislature votes and it has to be organized in such a manner that it both shuts down government and business and simultaneously takes charge of protecting the safety and wellbeing of the people in Wisconsin.

         Around the country, hundreds of thousands of workers are looking to Wisconsin and to Ohio to take the bold steps needed to stop the Republican assault on our rights. We are watching you. We are with you.

     

    Dan La Botz is a Cincinnati-based teacher, writer and activist. He is a member of the editorial board of New Politics.

  • A Period of Revolutionary Fervour

    (Editor's note: Ali Kadri, presently a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE), has written this letter, received by a member of the New Politics Editorial Board.)
         Just a week after the Tunisian revolution, at a conference in Beirut, an astute Egyptian social scientist was asked, would the Tunisian contagion spread to Egypt? And his answer was a categorical, “It is not likely, Egyptians are religious, conservative and the security apparatus has a good grip on the country.” Not long after, of course, the Egyptian popular uprising had proven once more that not only cultural explanations of revolutions were inapposite tools of analysis, but it has also shown that when the time comes for people to rise up, they just do so unexpectedly. Suddenly, all the facts on the grounds explain the revolution. They fall into place like a two piece puzzle. It would thereafter be said that the revolution was historically overdetermined despite the most recognizable fact, which is, no one could have predicted it and the social seismic meter did not even record any serious pre-traumatic tremors. All the conditions for the revolution were there last year and the year before. So why now?
         For a long time, the Egyptian government, in cahoots with the World Bank and the IMF, had concealed the deteriorating social conditions by reporting a rosy economic picture. Until of late, only around five percent of Egyptians were reported to be living in abject poverty at below one dollar a day or so. Egyptian real GDP growth was on average six percent a year over the past six years. The long term story of economic growth is just as glowing; Egypt’s GDP grew yearly on average by about five percent in real terms since 1980. Few other developing countries can boast a growth record, which is nearly three percentage points above the population growth rate. For several years back, Egypt was exporting five hundred thousand barrels of oil a day, worth nearly 15 billion dollars a year and, to boot, huge quantities of gas.
         Over the last five years, average workers’ remittances were as high as 6 per cent of GDP and tourism provided an even higher rate. Egypt attracted more than 40 billion dollars in FDI between the years 2005 and 2009, which is incidentally high relative to the African continent. It also recorded huge market capitalization growth rates and, over the last five years, the average yearly value of the stock market was anywhere between 80 to 100 billion dollars. Public debt as a percentage of GDP went down from one hundred percent in 2005 to around 75 percent in 2010. The Current account deficit relative to nominal GDP was also insignificant at just one per cent last year. Egypt’s reserves could cover nearly a year of imports and the inflation rate went from around 18 percent, three years ago, to 10 per cent at the end of 2009. Unemployment was around nine percent. Egypt has steadily liberalized investment, ownership restrictions and trade and capital flows barriers. It further liberalized trade by doing away with quantitative controls and high tariff levels. And to top it all, its monetary policy successfully targeted inflation, which is the ultimate goal of the neoliberal arsenal. What more could an Egyptian citizen want from his or her government?
         Despite its apparently crystalline economic performance, Egypt could not be flaunted as the golden boy of free markets as was Tunisia. For the millions of tourists who visit Egypt each year, absolute poverty was too stark not to miss. The country’s poverty levels can be easily spotted. No control over news agencies could have covered up the brawls before the Cairo bakeries that led to the death of many when bread prices rose in 2008. It is one of the few countries in the world where rising food prices resulted in immediate casualties. While growth was proceeding steadily, income inequality as could be gleaned from the few measures that were reported, was growing at a faster rate than the growth in incomes. A recent article, which appeared in Arabic in Al Quds newspaper, warned that Egypt is becoming a two percent economy, as it was during King Farooq days, when two percent of the population owned 98 percent of the economy. Furthermore, its monetary policy, which was to reduce inflation in line with IMF recommendations, implied less spending on projects that would expand employment (fiscal contraction), and debt creation to expand the money supply available to the banks and rich. When disguised, hidden and under-employment are considered, the real unemployment rate in Egypt would easily surpass fifty percent. The mainstay of the labor market was not a market where labor services would be exchanged for a wage, but a market in which cronyism and consent were reproduced by a combination of clientalism, coercion or repression.
         The big news item that broke the silence over the cover up came at the end of 2009, when the UNDP says that despite a number of positive economic indicators, Egypt has a hunger problem: nearly a third of all children are malnourished, (As reported IRIN). Egypt’s recent economic and social history could be split in two phases. A golden phase of high equitable growth, which ended in the mid seventies, and a leaden period of lower inequitable growth- it was lower but still high growth relative to other developing countries as mentioned earlier.
         The first phase represented a tightly controlled economy with immense spending on social projects financed by local means. The second phase represented a period of social restructuring, openness and a reliance on the free market. It was Sadat’s Infitah (openness), which caused the prices of basic necessities to rise while wages remained stagnant in the mid seventies. The wrath of the Infitah, which had an immediate impact on the working class, was blamed on Nasser and the war fatigue. Sadat’s Infitah however, was more than just about letting prices and trade go free. It was about privatizing what was socialised, restructuring social classes and turning back the clock of history. Nasser’s social reforms, land reforms, universal health and free education, in a country that ranked poorly on the development scale under King Farooq, catapulted the nation into the modern age. The rate of literacy, life expectancy and real incomes soared in the first fifteen years pursuant to the Nasser revolution. The salary of a professional in those days, which was about ten Egyptian pounds, in socialized Egypt went a long way. One pound was paid for the monthly rent and around three pennies for public transport (a pound was a thousand pennies). A nationally produced soap bar would cost just few pennies. But after the Infitah, the national soap factories, as was the case for much of the nationally owned industry, were allowed to become run-down, and more expensive imported soap became available. In all areas, the national industry was coming under assault and dollar remittances from the Gulf exchanged on the black market created a model of earning without effort. Although by all accounts, the socialized anti-imperialist war economy delivered much more in terms of welfare and economic dynamism, the woes of the transition paved the way to reinstitute the dark past of King Farooq.
         There were two historical agents at work here that helped Sadat and his class roll back development. One was inherent in the half-hearted nature of the Nasser revolution, since Egyptian workers did not fully partake in the political process of social reform to later safeguard their achievements. Harry Braverman was somewhat prophetic in 1959 when he stated that: “Nasser’s regime is certainly a dictatorship masquerading as a revolution, but it is also a dictatorship fulfilling some of the obligations of a revolution, and initiating the trends and processes which will make for more revolution in Egypt . So long as the military can effectively substitute itself for the social struggle, keep the pot boiling, and give at least the impression of forward motion, it can hold sway. If it falters, the dispossessed nobles and landowners are on hand to take over again, with imperialist help, unless the Egyptian working class and peasantry have in the meantime so matured as to be able to make the Nile Valley the scene of Africa’s first experiment in socialism.”
         To be fair to the Egyptian working class, at the first sign of Infitah, in 1977, working people in Cairo rose up in a bread revolution, but the rebellion was brutally crushed by the army. The revolt centered in Cairo and was not all encompassing, meaning the conditions of maturity, as was hoped by Braverman, and the revolutionary moment did not yet dawn. The second agent to help Sadat and his class roll back history was of course no other than “imperialist help,” which, after Egypt’s two military defeats against Israel in 1967 and 1973, was waiting just around the corner. The 1979 Camp David accord culminated the surrender terms of the Egyptian people. Camp David was to offer a “peace dividend” that would allegedly alleviate Egypt’s economic problems. And, it did produce a dividend, but for Sadat and his class.
         For more than thirty years, income grew, but it grew along with class restructuring that stripped the working class from its earned rights and shifted resources to the top two percent. Everything was up to being privatized beginning with land reforms. The Camp David accord also made Egypt the second largest recipient of US aid, receiving around two billion dollars a year, two thirds of which went to the army, and the remaining one third went to buttress regime security and monitor the social conditions that might lead to rebellion. Little did the money spent on security inform of the rebellion. The revolution of today cannot be ascribed to a sudden fall in capital or portfolio flows. Central bank reserves and portfolio flows are still positive and high at this very moment. Revolutionary conditions took years in the making.
         Losing two wars to Israel compromised the security of the laboring classes in a good part of Africa and the Arab world, which for the last thirty years were exposed to imperialist plunder. A process of accumulation by dispossession and, de-development took hold of much of Africa and the Arab world. The US, by direct military intervention or the threat thereof, purposefully stripped peoples of the right to own and control their resources. The process was carried out by brute force and slaughter, especially in Iraq. Class cross-border alliance between ruling Arab autocracies and the US elite, became so well entrenched, that there is not a single Arab ruler who could retire in his own country, unless protected by tanks as the case of Moubarak is now. The Arab state was a subject of the security apparatus and the head of the state was simply the head of the security setup. In personalized institutions of this sort, economic growth that generates wealth does not trickle down; it trickles up. The Washington institutions, were themselves institutions, which knew that Arab states, were anything but formal institutions. They also knew very well that under these distributional and institutional arrangements, their policies would lead to this disaster.
         When the recent global financial crisis arrived to the Arab world, I was taken aback by the banality of the word crisis in an Arab context. In the preface to one report that remained unpublished, I wrote: There is a euro-centric tone to the word crisis in an underdeveloped region that has had the highest rates of conflicts globally. In the totality of existence, which is called underdevelopment, where wars and displacement rage in countries like Iraq, Sudan, Yemen and Palestine, and where after some three decades of high positive growth rates nearly a third of Egyptian children suffer from malnutrition, the word crisis has little or no meaning for it is an every day occurrence. This is rather reminiscent of Chekhov's words: “even an imbecile can cope with a crisis. It’s the everyday life that exhausts us.”
         But, the case may be that if economic wealth for the more developed world can be created by non-economic factors, by dispossession and dislocation of peripheral formations, then that could mean that the creation of wealth in the centre is positively related to pauperization of the periphery. If even remotely or partially true, then the road to peace should begin here. In an attempt to capture the developing conditions and reflect a real image of the situation, in the Summary of the unpublished report, which was incidentally published last year by the United Nations, Economic and Social Council, I tried to explain in the short space that I had the gravity of the deteriorating conditions and the relationships that were driving them, I noted for the summary: Certain Arab countries have been locked into a particular orbit of de-development. De-development depends on the extent to which the interplay between national and international forces allows for the retention of a bigger share of the social surplus in the national economy for the sake of industrialization and development.
         Certainly, cross-border class ties have come into play, facilitating the process of surplus usurpation. The development of the region in relation to security is therefore an outcome of the multi-tiered power structure; the continuing flux of international relations has thus far situated many Arab countries on the dispossession side of capital accumulation.
         Of the two paths of capital accumulation — accumulation by commodity realization and accumulation by dispossession — the region is subject to the diktat of the latter process. And, as to how I distinguished this Arab de-developmental process from other third world processes, I explained matters in view of the preponderance of American military presence in the region and the brutality of its sponsored dictatorships, by resorting to the use of the concept, the terms of power. In a way, I took Raul Prebisch’s contributions when he was at the United Nations a step further and situated the theory of dependency in an Arab context. I said: Terms of power in lieu of terms of trade offer us a new perspective for analyzing the determinants of the autonomy structure of Arab States. Those terms of power are determined by the interplay of national comprador forces and international forces within a context in which capital accumulation, rent-seeking and profiteering are predicates of, and hold primacy over, nationalistic forms of social organizations. Security arrangements in the Arab region are rarely the result of domestic developments or even of regional developments; they have to be understood in the context of the international division of political power, of which the Arab world represents the periphery. The geo-strategic importance of the area has meant that the international powers have, to a large extent, an interest in determining its security arrangements and thus its autonomy over its own policy. Such a focus on the international roots of the security arrangements in the Arab world does not, however, negate the effect of domestic and historical factors. Nevertheless, it provides a rudimentary framework which enables these factors to be distilled and reorganized for a better understanding of the issues.
         The reasons for the pervasively poor developmental showings are to be understood from a standpoint of imperialist power relations. Foremost among these relationships are the set of social relations, which are reared to generate divisiveness within and across Arab states and expropriate people. To turn things around, Arab people must ratchet up their anti-imperialist struggles to improve their lives through the political process. This takes us back to my first question, why did the revolution occur now, when evidently, the working class has been systematically pauperized for a long time. Much will be said about this momentous political epoch. Questions like where was the vanguard, when the people poured into the streets, where was the ironclad organization of the party, how did revolutionary consciousness come about and what was the alternative social model was being presented and how did it capture the imagination. I believe the answers to these questions will be in many parts straightforward.
         Humanity’s history is abounding with revolutionary experiments to generate analogies from, although no two conditions will be alike. On the straightforward side of answers, it may be said and, rightly so, that only a minority living in the Arab world do not feel the torture or the tortuous life under their autocratic regimes. In this regard, the Russian revolution of 1917 may serve to illustrate similar conditions of life under Tsarist Russia and how easily it would have been for the person residing under these immiserizing conditions to understand and absorb the values of a freer and more egalitarian way of life. Many other revolutions across the landscape of history will also serve to illustrate the point.
         At a later stage of revolutions, political gains will have to be translated into social gains. Social benefits are to be readily earned by the laboring class, which had sacrificed so much in the process. In the case where these benefits do not accrue to the laboring classes, the revolution succumbs. There will be another analogy to draw examples from, but this time explaining the failure: “the spontaneous movement, the movement along the line of least resistance, may lead to the domination of bourgeois ideology. For the simple reason that bourgeois ideology is far older in origin than socialist ideology, that it is more fully developed, and that it has at its disposal immeasurably more means of dissemination.” This could have been said in 1902, in 1989 when the Soviet Union collapsed, or it could be paraphrased in 2011. What I mean to say is that, unless there are immediate redistributions to the working class ensuring their inalienable human right to shelter, health, food education and work, we could go back to square one.
         Unless there is a successful transition from the political to the social revolution, professor James Petras concern that the US would have sacrificed the dictator to save the state, can turn out to be a real one. Egypt, one may do well to remind the reader, is key to American imperial strategy in the Middle East. The US can momentarily forfeit redistribution in favor of the Egyptian working class if it could continue to control Egypt and maintain the stature of US Empire and its associated rents. In the present epoch of imperial crisis and inter-imperialist competition, Egypt matters more in the way it buttresses control over the geo-strategic Middle East than the social surplus that would be extracted from the exploitation and pauperization of its laboring classes.
         The US has invested several hundred billions of dollars in the Egyptian army and the security apparatus since the inception of Camp David (imputed for inflation and capitalized over time). The upper ranks of the Egyptian army have declared that they will honor the terms of Camp David accord, which is the root cause of the misery in Egypt. The army should not be in a position to avow itself to this condition. Only a freely elected government can do that. The Camp David Accord should be suspended. The ancien regime edifice needs to be held to account for its transgressions and violations of human rights, including the suppression of the will of the people under Martial law, the building of the Gaza wall, torture and unlawful imprisonment and right to decent living standards, else much of the region will continue to sway under the yoke of US sponsored tyrants.
         There is, as I said, much in the ongoing political process that would resemble the past, but the ongoing events have reasons of their own, which are rooted and have matured in their own circumstances. The massive de-socialization of social programs, which were meant to support and maintain a decent standard of living for the working population, the pauperization of the working class, and the growth in relative surplus population (the unemployed) prove to be a blatant case of commodification of human life. The free laborer was reduced to a state of complete alienation. A human being is supposedly separate from the labor services he or she sells on the market for a wage, however, when there are too many idle people and a regime that has no respect for human life, there occurs a unification of the laborer with his or her capacity to labor (labor services). Working people get treated like the labor service commodity they sell on the market. The autocratic regime simply renders people dispensable as if they were commodities. The young people of working class origin who are willing to work for any wage, depress the wage of those already working. This downward spiral was self reinforcing. Already, there was a prevalence of geo-political rents and rent seeking in the Egyptian economy that obviated the prospect for a productive economy that could have produced jobs. So that was an economy that could not for structural reasons produce jobs, and where rent seeking or making profits without effort had gripped the mindset of the ruling elite.
         In this context, cheapening life and reducing people to commodities became part of the rent seeking process. To the ordinary worker, this was also a process that no religious belief or no shifting of worldly woes unto a supernatural power can redeem. The condition and frustration of many workers or people who seek work became intolerable from an “existentialist” point view. Even if an alternative model did not exist, there needed to be change; the case was no longer that of a shattered hope but of a pain that is so severe that only the person upon whom it was inflicted would feel what it is. The process that I just dubbed commodification represented a loss of humanity and human dignity.
         That is why, only days after the young graduate, Mohamed Bouazizi who sparked the Tunisian revolution by self immolation, was few days after, followed by several Egyptian young men who had set themselves on fire in protest of their living conditions across the country. One would have wondered how many human sacrifices would it have taken to ignite revolution in Egypt. The part of this revolution that definitely does not resemble any past is the one to do with the forms of organization and dissemination of information through the internet that has led to the demystification of the political process and the beginning of the dissolution of the repressive structure.
         Revolutions will always occur, but they succeed when the organizational and mobilization framework tallies with the frustrations and the dreadfulness of living conditions. For the time being, the Egyptian insurrection was dubbed an internet one. However, that is not the point I want to raise about the particularity of this insurrection. The novelty that is brought forth by the present rebellion is twofold, the resurrection of the social class as living real process that is the primary agent of history, and the socializing factory floor. These ideas have not died under capitalism. We have witnessed how a whole class, discussed, organized, mobilized and was capable of, for the time being, putting a dent into history. These were events that post-modernism would have confined to the history books.
         It is my contention that impersonal internet communication of the modern age became a surrogate factory floor, which served as the shop floor or socializing platform in days past. It was received theory that the growing division of labor, its becoming more discrete and the power of elites to divide and disperse labor have vitiated the chances of revolution. The old factory shop floor in which workers of similar skills organized, debated and formed a strategy for the struggle no longer represented the meeting stage of the working class. It was not possible to bring people together in a single space despite the massive commodification of human life. There was what appeared to be an insuperable sociological impasse until the virtual world provided a platform for participation. It also provided the possibility for communication to become impersonal and anonymous. Like any usage of a pseudonym, it furbished the grounds for wavering personal responsibility of individual action and dropping cultural inhibitions.
         There is no need to invoke Carl Jung here, although Zizek would probably revel at the idea, to tell us that talking from behind a mask allows people to bare the essentials and cut through the fog to reveal primary concerns. The living conditions and the demands of working people were legitimate bread and butter demands. The internet provided the capacity in terms of numbers for the individual to hide behind and the impersonal medium or “mask.” The debate that is now ongoing is shaping the alternative across the Arab world. Arab regimes are aware of the threat that this mass media poses to them.
         In the case of one regime, the scare tactic was elevated to the state of the surreal as it sentenced a teenage girl to more than five years in prison for having politically sensitive notes on her personal webpage. The bourgeoisie has inadvertently replaced the shuffle in the hands of its gravediggers with a jackhammer. And that is why the collusion of the heroism of Mohamed Bouazizi, the commodification of human life, and modern impersonal communication means made the revolution inevitable at this point in time!
         As of today, the real living conditions have not changed and food prices are at their highest since 2008 once more. Redistribution at a vast scale will inevitably entail class restructuring, which would not go down in history as an easy first. The US wishes to see the Islamic brotherhood step in because at a fundamental level they do not change the social structure or instill reform that would lead to further revolutions. At any rate, the rising tide of political Islam has long receded. The boundaries are already drawn. The suicide act that sparked the uprising was the ultimate blasphemy, and that explains in part why political Islam, joined late in the revolutionary process. But in principal part, the Muslim brothers were not a revolutionary vanguard. They did not provide an alternative social model to the existing one. They sanctified existing distributional mechanisms and, more importantly, placed obligations before rights, when the process of accumulation is one of forced dispossession and dislocation. They have never understood that historical conditions changed and that capitalism represents a completely different system than that of the middle ages.
         Lest one forgets, it was Anwar Sadat at the behest of the US who brought out the anti-Nasserite brothers and the regime cohabitated with them since. Already the hype of American media is attempting to dispel the notion that the brothers are their Trojan horse. The US is trying to fabricate for itself a most convenient enemy reincarnate in political Islam.
         But the present struggle is a struggle for rights. “The idea of rights empowers people, it gives them a sense of self affirmation. The language of rights establishes a framework for the allocation of resources. Without the rights rhetoric we will end up with a totally uncaring market system that will not solve our problems.” So which rights are to be restored?
         For now, wages should immediately rise to keep pace with rising prices. The clamp down on the right to politically organize and trade unionism under Marshal law was enormous. A recent report by the International Trade Union Confederation, for instance, indicates that “workers in the Arab region still have fewer trade union rights than anywhere else in the world”. Had unions been autonomous, nominal wages could have relatively kept pace with rising prices and the calamitous impact of inflation on the purchasing power of the working class would have consequently been less.
         At later stage, many wrongs of the ancien regime, which lingers to date, should be redressed. The expropriation of the robber barons is a right that would redress the wrong. Land reform bringing back the land to the people who toil it is another right. That a state has to incarnate the working class, is an ultimate right. Working people have the right to self-defense. If the revolutionary reform measures do not include the working class, then workers reserve the right to deploy whatever means they see fit in self-defense. There are so many other rights to be restored, but one thing is for sure: delay is a crime.
     
    Ali Kadri formerly served as Head of the Economic Analysis Section of the United Nations regional office in Beirut. He can be reached at A.Kadri@lse.ac.uk.

  • Audacity and Insolence

           According to the Israeli government, two Iranian warships plan to sail through the Suez canal en route to Syria. Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, declared that “this is a provocation that proves that Iranian audacity and insolence are increasing.” The international community, warned Lieberman, “must understand that Israel cannot forever ignore these provocations.”

           Every warship should be melted down for scrap metal, of course, but what is remarkable about this story (which is denied by Egyptian canal officials) is the incredible hypocrisy involved. Towards the end of the Reuters report we find this:

    “Most military ships that pass through the canal are American, along with some French and British. Two Israeli destroyers and submarine passed through last year.”

           And AP notes:

    “Meanwhile, the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Enterprise was transiting the Red Sea on Wednesday, after passing through the Suez Canal on its way to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet area to support combat operations in Afghanistan and other duties in the region, two officials in Washington said.”

           If Iran’s actions show audacity and insolence, then what must U.S. actions show? Or those of Britain or France? And what must be shown by Israeli threats to take military action in response to actions far less provocative than the routine behavior of Washington or Tel Aviv?

  • A New American Workers Movement Has Begun

             Thousands of workers demonstrated at the state capital in Madison, Wisconsin on Feb. 15 and 16 to protest plans by that state’s Republican Governor Scott Walker to take away the state workers’ union rights. Walker, cleverly attempted to divide the public workers by excluding police and firefighters from his anti-union law, and the media have worked to divide public employees against private sector workers. Yet, both firemen and private sector workers showed up at the statehouse to join public workers of all sorts in what has been one of the largest workers demonstrations in the United States in decades. Only California has seen demonstrations as large as these in recent years.

             Many demonstrators in Madison, taking a clue from the rebellions against authoritarian and anti-worker governments that are sweeping the Middle East, carried signs saying, “Let’s negotiate like they do in Egypt.” While the situation in Wisconsin is hardly comparable to the revolution in the Arab world, what we are witnessing is the beginning of a new American workers movement. Because this movement is so different than what many expected, it may take us by surprise.

    Not What We Expected

             Many of us, myself included, had for years expected a rank-and-file workers movement to arise out of shop floor struggles in industrial workplaces, out of the fight for union democracy, and out of the process of working class struggle against the employers. While that perspective still has much validity, something different is happening. The new labor movement that is arising does not start in the industrial working class (though it will get there soon enough), it does not focus on shop floor issues (though they will no doubt be taken up shortly), it is not primarily motivated by a desire for unions democracy (though it will have to fight for union democracy to push forward the leaders it needs). And it does not, as so many American labor movements of the past did remain confined to the economic class struggle (though that too will accelerate). It is from the beginning an inherently labor political movement.

             The new movement that is arising does not focus on the usual issues of collective bargaining—working conditions, wages, and benefits—but focuses rather on the political and programmatic issues usually take up by political parties: the very right of workers to bargaining collective, the state budget priorities, and the tax system which funds the budget. The new labor movement, because it has begun in the public sector, will not be so much about the process of class struggle as it will be about how class struggle finds a voice through political program. This will have tremendous implications for the traditional relations between the organized labor movement and the Democratic Party, especially since the Democrats, from Barack Obama to state governors like Cuomo, are also demanding that public employees give up wages, benefits, conditions and rights.

    Not Your Grandfather’s Working Class

             We have for decades in this country thought of the working class as being made up of those workers of railroad, mine and mill whose calloused hands produced the material wealth of this nation over 200 years, that is, since the first factories were opened in the Northeast in the 1790s. Industrial workers though have been declining as a percentage of the population since the 1920s and have diminished at an accelerated rate since the 1950s. Since the 1980s the decline of industrial workers as a proportion of the wage earning class has been dramatic.

             In the old days, skilled workers, almost all white men, came as immigrants from the countries of Western and Northern Europe, while the unskilled industrial workers were immigrants from the South and East of Europe, whites from Appalachia, and African Americans from the South’s plantations. While most of those industrial workers were male, millions of women also toiled in textile mills, garment shops, and other workplaces. Those workers created the Knight of Labor in 1869, American Federation of Labor (AFL) in the 1886, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1905, and finally in the great labor upsurge of the 1930s won the legal right to organize with the Wagner Act of 1935 and built the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO).

    The Rise of the Public Employees

             The post-war period saw the expansion of government as millions found jobs not only in streets and sanitation, the water works, and as teachers, but also as social workers, public health nurses, and college professors. Another labor upsurge in the 1960s and 1970s led to the establishment and rapid growth of public employee unions of all sorts: the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). These public workers were far more racially diverse than many of the private sector unions, made up white, African American, and Latino workers, of men and many women.

             Public employees in the 1960s and 70s won the rights to union recognition, collective bargaining, and the strike through hundreds of strikes, large and small during those two decades. The newspapers front page often carried the photo of some teacher or social worker, nurse or secretary, sanitation worker or park employee being carried off to jail for striking with the union. The most famous of these strikes, perhaps, was the AFSCME Local 1733 strike by African American sanitation workers of Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader of the civil rights movement, was there to help those workers with their strike, when he was assassinated.

    The Unions at a Turning Point

             Today we in the labor movement are at a turning point. American employers, political parties, and government at all levels have decided that the time has come to move against what is the last bulwark of American unionism: the public employee unions. As of the latest count by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 11.9 percent of all workers are in unions, and only 6.9 percent in the private sector. In the public sector, however, public employee unions represent some 36.2 percent of all workers, and the number is even somewhat higher among teachers. America’s political and economic elite are looking for the final solution to the labor problem—and we are not getting on the trains and going to the camps.

             Public employees, now finding themselves now on the frontline of the labor movement, are fighting back from one end of the country to the other and nowhere at the moment so dramatically as in Madison, Wisconsin. Just as the Arab revolution spread rapidly from Tunisia to Egypt, so we can expect to see this public worker movement spread from one state to another as it resists Republican and Democratic party governors and local officials who want to strip workers of their rights.

    What Sort of a Labor Movement Can We Expect?

             What does labor history teach us about labor movements? First, we know that when masses of workers go into motion, as they have now begun to do, political consciousness grows and changes rapidly. Workers who today simply fight to defend their union rights will, if they succeed in resisting the right’s attempt to destroy them, go on to fight to expand not only their rights but to improve their working conditions and standard of living. Most important, workers will fight to expand their power. We are just at the beginning.

             Second, when workers discover the strategy and tactics of their movement, those quickly spread to other groups of workers in society. When the rubber workers in Akron, Ohio discovered the sit-down strike in 1936, it quickly spread not only to the auto industry leading to the great strikes of 1937 and 38. Remarkably, the sit-down also spread to such unlikely workers as the “shop girls” of department stores. During the 1950s and early 1960s, African American civil rights activists rediscovered the power of the sit-down, transforming it into the sit-in in lunch counters, bus stations, and other private and public places across the South.

             Today public workers in Wisconsin are in such of the strategies and the tactics that can defend their rights, and they are using the mass rally and the camp out at the capital. When the discover or rediscover the strategy and tactics that work, those will spread like wildfire across the country to other public workers—and then jump to the private sector.

    The Movement is both Economic and Political

             Third, real labor movements ignore the artificial separation between economic and political, taking up either or both as they follow the logic of the struggle. Industrial workers struggles for higher wages in the 1930s became transformed into struggle for the employers’ recognition of the unions and labor legislation granting workers the right to organize. Similarly with public employees in the 1960s whose fight for the right to unions and collective bargaining might flow the other way, to a fight for higher wages. What is today primarily a political fight in Wisconsin, that is to defend the right of public employees to have a labor union, bargain collective and enjoy the right to strike, will inevitably become a struggle for better conditions, higher wages, and health and pension benefits.

             Fourth, when a real labor movement arises, that is, a movement not merely of thousands or even tens of thousands, but of millions, it necessarily becomes transformative. Labor union officials who hesitate, who waver, or who knuckle under will soon find themselves challenged by new, younger leaders who will either force those officials to fight or push them aside. Such a movement will change the unions—often by changing the leadership first and sometime by changing the very institutions themselves. Such was the case with the rise of the industrial workers movement in the 1930s which broke the shell of the old AFL to create the new CIO.

    A Political Alternative

             Fifth, and finally, a new American labor movement of millions will challenge the old political relationship between the unions and the Democratic Party. The unions will fight at first to force the Democratic Party to give up its own conservative budget, tax and labor policies, and failing to do that, will seek another vehicle. Unions may first attempt to change the Democrats by running union candidates in Democratic Party primaries, or they may attempt to take over the state party. Whether the new American labor movement will have the power to put forward a political alternative remains to be seen.

             Wisconsin though is famous for its long history of political grouping to the left of the Democratic Party which, from time to time, have shown considerable influence: the Socialist Party held power in Milwaukee into the 1960s, the Farmer-Labor Party was once a power in the state, Progressive Dane (county) thrived a couple of decades ago, and the Wisconsin, Green Party has over a score of elected officials throughout the state. None of these was or is what a workers’ movement needs to achieve real political power, but the presence of such political alternatives is indicative of a more tolerant and experimental attitude in the state. American workers have never in their history succeeded in creating a workers’ party of any power, with the exception of the Socialist Party of the early 20th century.

             Today, with the Democrats lowering taxes on the rich, cutting budget, and laying off public employees, we may be in for the kind of confrontation between workers and a pro-business Democratic party that can produce a political alternative. Certainly the struggle over politics and government is built into this contest as it seldom is so directly in the private sector. The task at the moment is to build the fight to defend public services and public employees unions and their rights, but it leads directly to political confrontation.

    Dan La Botz is a Cincinnati-based teacher, writer and activist. He is a member of the editorial board of New Politics.

  • CPD statement on Egypt

    The Campaign for Peace and Democracy issued the statement below about the democratic revolution in Egypt.

    Egypt After Mubarak

    Statement by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy
    February 14, 2011

             The Campaign for Peace and Democracy joins millions around the world in celebrating the great victory of the Egyptian people, whose unyielding courage and steadfastness succeeded in forcing Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak to resign from office. The inspiring democratic revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt — as well as the protests in Jordan, Yemen, Algeria, Bahrain, Iran and other neighboring countries — attest to the truth of CPD’s conviction that popular movements from below for justice and democracy have the potential to challenge the most seemingly invulnerable rulers. We enthusiastically support such movements, whether in countries whose governments have been allied with the United States, or in countries like Iran that are in the crosshairs of the U.S. imperium.

             For decades it was widely assumed that the Mubarak dictatorship was one of the world’s most solidly entrenched. The Egyptian people, suffering from massive landlessness, impoverishment, and unemployment, were seen as paralyzed by fear and passivity. But that perception changed virtually overnight after the Tunisian Revolution, which electrified Egypt, as well as the rest of the Arab world. Starting on January 25, day after day, for more than two weeks, Egyptians returned to the streets and the squares in ever greater numbers. Few popular uprisings in recent years have matched Egypt’s in terms of sheer dogged determination. The people could not be cowed, they refused to be driven back; instead it was they who drove back the vicious police and Mubarak’s paid thugs. A historic victory has been won, but much more needs to be done to assure freedom and democracy for Egypt. What has been accomplished, however, is enough to justify many times over the people’s proud slogan: “Lift up your head; you’re an Egyptian.”

             In fact, while Tunisia may have provided the inspiration, the revolution in Egypt did not erupt out of nowhere. In Egypt, as in many countries in North Africa, millions of young people were increasingly discontent, not only because of the dearth of employment possibilities, but because they were chafing at the harsh authoritarianism that constricted them culturally, politically and socially. Moreover, since 2006, the ground for protest had been prepared by a wave of strikes, some of them massive, against low wages and horrendous working conditions (click here to see CPD’s open letter of support to Egyptian workers in April 2010.).Workers’ action paved the way for the overthrow of Mubarak in more ways than one. Significant numbers of the young people who spearheaded the protests in Tahrir Square had previously been active in supporting the strikers. And there is good reason to believe that a new wave of strikes by textile workers, government employees and others, supporting the political demands of the demonstrators in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, Sinai and elsewhere, was the decisive factor in driving Mubarak from office. As yet, the Egyptian labor movement remains poorly organized, without a clear political profile. But, as even the Wall Street Journal acknowledged, it is Egypt’s “sleeping giant.”

             There can be no doubt that the revolution in Egypt has come as an unwelcome shock to Washington and Tel Aviv, whatever President Obama might say. The United States and Israel tried to keep Mubarak in power for as long as they could. Although Obama now shamelessly cheers the dictator’s departure and heaps commendations on the Egyptian people, his administration’s treacherous role in this crisis should never be forgotten. For days, the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of State refused even to label Mubarak a dictator and warned against his too hasty exit. All of this once again gives the lie to Washington’s pro-democracy rhetoric. Ever since the United States became deeply involved in the Middle East after World War II, it has operated on the assumption that Arabs — and Iranians — must be kept under control by dictators and autocratic monarchs.

             Washington must now be hoping for the success of its fall-back option: an explicitly military-dominated regime. While he may now have been sidelined, Omar Suleiman was the administration’s first choice to succeed Mubarak. The longtime head of the security apparatus and thus Egypt’s torturer-in-chief, Suleiman is the CIA and the Pentagon’s man in Cairo. According to testimony from prisoners who were delivered by the United States to Egyptian torture chambers, Suleiman even participated personally in interrogations.

             As for Israel, Netanyahu has made no secret that his government fears and opposes democracy in Egypt. In its war on the Palestinian people, Tel Aviv had a reliable ally in Mubarak. If popular sovereignty really does get established in Egypt, Israeli chauvinists will have good reason to worry. A government in Cairo that responds to the wishes of the Egyptian people is not likely to be willing to help Israel throttle Gaza or to continue legitimizing the phony “peace process.” The Mubarak regime, it must be remembered, was hated not only for its corruption and cruelty towards Egyptians, but also for its cynical partnership with Israel and the U.S.The revolution in Egypt makes it crushingly obvious, once again, that Israel’s real security depends on recognizing the rights of Palestinians and making common cause with democratic forces throughout the Middle East.

             Israeli leaders, and their neo-conservative U.S. supporters, warn that democracy in Egypt will enable the Muslim Brotherhood to transform the country into “another Iran.” Obviously, fair elections and freedom for all political parties will allow the Brotherhood to compete for power, and while it is more “moderate” than in the past, there is no proof that it has given up the goal of building an Islamic state under Sharia law, which would be disastrous for workers, women, gays,non-Muslims, and Muslims who don’t want the state invading their personal lives. But up until now, the Brotherhood’s strength has been a byproduct, in large part, of the decades-long repression of secular leftists, labor unions, and women’s movements, which might have posed alternatives. For nearly 60 years, secularism in Egypt has been tainted by its association with a repressive state. Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood was complicitous in perpetuating the Mubarak regime right up to the outbreak of the revolution, which caught it completely off guard and to which it extended only belatedsupport. Mubarak was driven from power, as was Ben Ali in Tunisia, by a movement that had nothing to do with the politics of religious authoritarianism. Once democracy is instituted, secular politics, and, we hope, a secular left, will finally be able to revive and contend for the support of the Egyptian people. In fact, a democratic system is virtually indispensable if Islamism is to be challenged politically. And this is equally true for other “secularist” dictatorships in the Middle East, where Islamist forces currently constitute the main opposition.

             The Egyptian people may very well put an end to a military-sponsored dictatorship (albeit with a civilian facade) that has been in power since 1952. It appears for the moment, however, that there are still widespread illusions about the Army’s “neutrality” — illusions that have been fostered by the Muslim Brotherhood as well as other political tendencies. Far from being a friend of democracy, the Egyptian military has been the central pillar — indeed the creator — of the police state, a vast apparatus that is believed to employ two million Egyptians, including informers. It controls a lucrative economic empire of farms and factories. But the Army is not a monolith; its soldiers and junior officers do not have a stake in the system of corruption and repression, and they can be won over to the side of the democratic movement. This is essential if the senior officers are to be prevented from hijacking the revolution. It is the Army command — doubtless in close consultation with the United States — and not the Muslim Brotherhood that constitutes the immediate threat to Egypt’s democratic future.

             On February 13, The New York Times reported: “The Egyptian military consolidated its control Sunday over what it has called a democratic transition from three decades of President Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian rule.” We hope that this is premature. In the days and weeks ahead, Egyptians will need to struggle to make sure that their country is controlled by its people and not the armed forces or the security services.This means first and foremost revoking the 30-year “state of emergency” law, which at this writing, the Egyptian military has refused to do. The country’s thousands of political prisoners must be released; All use of torture must be immediately outlawed. Mubarak cannot be allowed to escape with his billions; he and other top officials must pay for their crimes. The military has suspended the constitution, but Egyptians need to see to it that it is replaced by a new, democratic constitution that drastically reduces presidential power and guarantees human rights, including the rights of labor, women, and homosexuals. Democratic conditions are needed immediately and genuinely free elections as soon as possible, not after six months of military rule. Finally, if there is any hope for an end to the horrific poverty and exploitation of the Egyptian people, a new government will have to repudiate not only the corruption and cronyism of the Mubarak regime, but also the neoliberalism promoted by the IMF and the United States, which has done so much to bring about such gross inequality and popular immiseration.

             The Campaign for Peace and Democracy is fighting for a new, democratic U.S. foreign policy, one that will enable this country to stand in honest solidarity with the popular aspirations of people around the world — rather than being, as it is today, one of the most powerful obstacles to those aspirations. In the months ahead we will make every effort to see that our own government doesn’t succeed in working behind the scenes to derail the Egyptian revolutionby putting its puppets in power. On February 11, David Sanger reported in The New York Times that “the White House and the State Department were already discussing setting aside new funds to bolster the rise of secular political parties.” The sordid record of U.S. support for military dictatorship in Egypt for three decades, virtually up until the very end, stands as a compelling reminder that if they hope to build a truly democratic and just society the Egyptian people will need to reject U.S. government intervention in their affairs.

             Egypt’s young people have led a struggle with the potential to transform their country, the Middle East, and indeed, the world. Egypt’s workers have shown the tremendous social power labor can bring to the struggle for democracy. They are an inspiration to us all.

    * * * * * *

             Please donate now to support the work of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy. To learn more about CPD’s work, check out our website .

  • Moslem Disunity

    For a movement to be a serious threat to the imperialist West, it must be coherent and united, which is simply not the case of what is termed "Radical Islam." A united, militant Islamic world would indeed be a serious threat to the West, but nothing like that is in the offing, with the result that “Political Islam,” divided, remains weak and ineffectual. So much for the Clash of Civilizations theories, based on ideology rather than concrete history. To be sure, Islamicist terror is a very serious daily threat to its principle victims, Moslem civilians in the ME/A lands, as well as to its more occasional victims, civilians in Western cities. But the actually existing Islamisms within the divided Moslem world represent no serious threat to U.S./Western hegemony, only obstacles to its control of the extraction and transit of petroleum. The most dramatic evidence of continuing Moslem impotence is the freedom and impunity with which Israel was able to invade first southern Lebanon in 2006 and then Gaza in 2008-09, deploying massive bombardments of civilian areas and scandalous attacks on schools, ambulances, and hospitals. Ostensibly Moslem pro-Western authoritarian states like, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco et al. responded to these brutal aggressions “by tacitly supporting Israel”s offensive in the hope of weakening a resistance movement which they see as a proxy for Iran and Syria.” Moslem Egypt has even closed its border with Gaza to humanitarian aid. Only when faced with huge spontaneous pro-Palestinian street demonstrations at home did these U.S.-propped “Moslem” despotisms eventually consent to send some aid for the rebuilding of Gaza. Similarly, the U.S. occupiers in Iraq have successfully played the imperial divide-and-rule game by paying off Sunni militias to “keep order” and serve as a counterforce to the restive Shiite majority. Likewise in Afghanistan, the victorious 2001 US invasion was made possible by the divide-and-rule tactic of arming the Northern Alliance of Islamic warlords from the ethnic Tadzhik, Usbeck, Hasara nations against the Taliban government, whose ethnic base is the Pashtun nation, large but still a minority. I am not asserting here that all, or even a majority of Pashtuns supported or now support the Taliban. But when U.S. drones bomb Pashtun civilian villages or compounds on “intelligence” provided by locals (who might be personal enemies) asserting that “Taliban” (including relatives and fellow tribesmen) might be present there, the Pashtuns can only see this as a war against them as a nation.Moreover, the Pashtuns’ territory bleeds far into Pakistan, and the U.S.-supported Pakistani government quietly supports the Pashtun/Taliban cause in Afghanistan (though not within its own borders) so as to undermine a rival Afghan state allied with Pakistan’s arch-rival and nuclear nemesis India. This is a situation of immense complexity in which regional inter-state conflict and ethnic/national rivalry on the ground apparently trump religion.Thus, put to the empirical test, the concept of the “Islamic threat” as a Unified Actor simply falls apart – or rather dissolves into a nebulous. The word “nebulous” is apt, because it suggests a swarm of bees, in this case angry Islamic bees, including heavily armed Shiite wasps and Sunni hornets. Now the trick around bees is to move slowly and leave them alone. They become a “threat” only when you stir them up, which is exactly what Obama is doing in Afghanistan and now Pakistan and Yemen. It has become obvious to the world that every time the U.S. bombs Moslem civilians (or allows Israel to bomb Palestinian civilians) the imperialists create new Islamic militants who rise up and join the growing swarms of “political Islam.” Indeed, news anchor Tom Brokaw recently described what the US was engaged in as the “war against Islamic rage.” Would it not then be fair to conclude that in some non-metaphorical, non-ideological sense Western imperialism actually creates “the threat of political Islam"?

  • Schaar on Tunisia

    Stuart Schaar has written an especially astute analysis of events in Tunisia and beyond. His article was published on February 6 in Mumbai, India by the Economic and Political Weekly. Schaar is the co-author of THE MIDDLE EAST AND ISLAMIC WORLD READER. He is professor emeritus of Brooklyn College and is now living in Morocco.

  • Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis

        Carl Davidson, organizer for CCDS [Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism] and one of its four National Co-chairs, recently e-mailed me on what it was doing in terms of addressing the unemployment crisis in the U.S. today, that direct and nasty continuing fallout from the still-current recession. He wrote:

    “We have a campaign for jobs, George. We put out a theoretical booklet on the topic, by Randy Shannon, to guide the work. [The CCDS pamphlet, It’s Time to Fight for Full Employment] We’re working with John Conyers’s staff to shape and then fight for HR 5204 [the number of the bill was originally given incorrectly], the Full Employment’ Bill, and we have organized a national phone conference through PDA’s [Progressive Democrats of America] Economic Justice Issue Organizing Team, a list of some 1200 people nationwide, to prepare for town meetings around it, as well as organizing unemployed councils. There’s one off the ground in Chicago already.”

        While all of this is fine and worthy of doing, it’s also insufficient, woefully insufficient. If there is to be any hope of ending the continuing devastation of U.S workers by the still-continuing recession, it’s an advocacy program that addresses the vital need for good jobs now. Providing good jobs now is the necessity that’s been pointed out time and again by progressive economists Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, the Economic Policy Institute, and many others, but has yet to be formulated as an active programmatic proposal in any major way by the U.S. left as a whole. It needs to be done and done now, not only for the sake of devastated workers, but also as a display to the working class itself that the left is serious about fighting for it and its needs.

        That is why I offer what I do below. I also point out that such a program is not something novel; it’s been tried, and it worked: it was the WPA [Works Progress Administration], which was successfully put into practice during the New Deal.

        The WPA not only put millions of ordinary workers into productive jobs that benefitted the vast majority, it also enhanced our cultural life through the Federal Writers’ Project and other programs that put unemployed cultural and intellectual workers to work, e.g., writing journalism and documentaries, short stories and novels; writing and producing plays; painting murals; and creating recorded archives of American folk music through the Library of Congress, an invaluable preservation of people’s culture that would’ve otherwise been irretrievably lost. Further, it boosted both tax revenues and consumption, creating more employment. The WPA was an all-round benefit, economically, culturally, and in restoring hope and dignity to ordinary people. It worked then; a new WPA would work now, and is sorely needed.

        Fighting for a new WPA would also be a positive, direct, organizing tool for building the “unemployed councils” Davidson mentions. To date, and quite unlike during the time of the Great Depression, organizing the unemployed (which should extend to organizing the underemployed also) has been given only lip service, and what’s been done so far has attempted little more than to turn the unemployed into a voting bloc. Clearly inadequate, and even a disservice to the unemployed. It’s also failed to organize the unemployed in any meaningful way, unlike the Unemployed Councils of the 1930s.

        As for Green Jobs—yes, they’re needed, but they won’t appear in large numbers now, only in the future. Further, Green Technology is far more advanced in Europe, Japan, even China, than it is here, which would likely mean more Green Technology imports into the U.S., not new Green Technology-production jobs in the U.S., at least in the short run. Also, as related in the January 14, 2011 New York Times, Green Jobs can be shipped overseas, as government-subsidized Evergreen Solar of Massachusetts did when it shut its U.S. plant and moved production to China.

        As for “full employment” legislation such as Rep. Conyers’s new HR 5204, we’ve also had that proposed before, and even signed into law. There was the Humphrey-Hawkins “Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act” of 1978, and before that, the Employment Act of 1946. They’re both on the books, and both dead letters, as the actual federal response to the present, still-continuing economic crisis has shown. Rep. Conyers and others have also proposed other good legislation, all of it dead letters as well, at least for the time being: Conyers’s own previous HR 676, the “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All” Act, and the Employee Free Choice Act come readily to mind. Not that proposing and even working to enact progressive legislation is a bad idea; it’s just not a panacea, and merely being on the books does not ensure the measures legislated will be put into practice.

        The pundits and politicians will never tire of telling us that even proposing legislation such as the new HR 676 is “unrealistic,” especially given the present political climate. And yes it is, because the Republicans will certainly oppose it, and the Democrats (except for a handful) won’t fight for it, now or even later. Which means we won’t get it anyway. That’s why it’s long overdue for the left to be bolder and more intransigently “unrealistic,” to call for a new WPA instead—because it’s more desirable, it’s more needed and beneficial, and because what’s “unrealistic” is also what’s transformative. This has been noted by thinkers and activists from Max Weber to Martin Luther King; and King, too, was chided as being “unrealistic,” as asking for more than was “possible.” But nothing worthwhile ever gets simply handed down by the powers-that-be; it’s fought for, it’s demanded, and people go into the streets and demonstrate for it. A new WPA is just as “unrealistic” as any more tepid “full employment” legislation, but which would be the greater benefit? And when has “realism” usually not been a euphemism for sellout? We of the left should certainly know by now that the Democrats, and certainly the Republicans, are not going to hand us full employment; that’s not on their agenda. But unless we fight for the “unrealistic,” continuing high unemployment is what we’re going to get, simply by default—and I’d like the left to try and sell that to the unemployed and underemployed workers in the name of “realism”!

        Ironically, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama like to tell the story of FDR saying to progressive and labor groups, “I agree with you. Now make me do it.” Well, let’s, by organizing around something that will galvanize and excite even if (or precisely because) it’s “unrealistic;” just as “unrealistically” trying to end racial segregation did fifty years ago.

        Now to the concrete measures of what I propose. I propose that the broad U.S. left adopt as a programmatic proposal and organizing priority the establishment of a direct employment program by the federal government (something that could be put largely in place already by Executive Order, should Obama wish, or be pushed into doing) that would put the unemployed and underemployed to working full-time rebuilding our shattered infrastructure and performing other socially necessary and valuable tasks, providing workers “on loan” to state and municipal governments so that vital services don’t have to be cut or eliminated, and even provide interns to non-profit and community groups (who would be paid interns, of course; receiving wages from this federal jobs program) so that they can carry on their work and also provide usable vocational skills to the interns. The program would be open to any unemployed or underemployed person age 18 or over who desires full-time work, and is available for such work. A decent hourly wage would be paid, at least the $11.50/hour that the 2010 Census paid its workers, and serious attempts would be made to match potential workers to jobs properly utilizing their skills and education, but would provide work anyway if no such jobs were available. That’s because paying a Living Wage for work, and providing work that really pays, would be integral to the program.

        Needless to say, all antidiscrimination measures would apply and be fully enforced, and free day care provided for those wishing to work but having children. Discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, lack of previous work experience, previous criminal conviction if now rehabilitated, or physical or mental handicap for which “reasonable accommodation” according to law could be provided, would be illegal. There would also be positive provision for attaining legal immigration status, along such lines as those called for by the DREAM Act; i.e., one could successfully work or study to move from “illegal” to “legal” status. Speaking personally for myself and my fellow “overqualified” but grossly underemployed college graduate co-workers, discriminating against a worker due to “too much” education would also be prohibited, but jobs made available would not simply be unskilled or semi-skilled manual labor jobs. In other words, meaningful employment for intellectual and cultural workers would also be provided, as it was in the original WPA.

        There would also be provision in this program for providing part-time employment to youth under 18 but legally old enough to work, and who are high school students. For those who have not finished high school, it would be a requirement of any employment through this program to re-enroll and seriously pursue and attain either a high school diploma, if of high school age; or if older, a G.E.D.

        Not speaking English, or having only limited English capability, would also not be a barrier to employment in this new WPA. In fact, as I am a great proponent of bilingualism, among the jobs to be created would be those that taught English to non-English speakers, as well as those that taught foreign languages to English and other speakers. (Why not have jobs that might, for example, teach Chinese to Portuguese speakers! That would also be a positive social benefit.) Provision would also be made to advance adult education in this new WPA, and that itself could be a source of jobs.

        The original WPA, as did so much of positive New Deal legislation, had to make (according to the “political realism” of the time) rotten compromises to pass muster with the likes of Southern Democrats, who opposed benefitting African Americans and other racial minorities. However, the political climate has changed far to the better on this due to the vigorous struggle of the civil rights movement, and the same has also happened for women and gays because of their struggles. But as I indicated above, this new WPA would be vigorously anti-discrimination, and would enforce all anti-discrimination measures; thus becoming de facto an affirmative action and equality-enhancement-and-promotion program.

        While my proposal does not address Green Jobs specifically, it does so implicitly; how could a job that’s socially necessary and valuable not be a Green job at the present time? Further, I see no reason whatsoever why the workers in this new WPA should not be unionized, and suggest that organizing them be a goal of the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, or independent union organizations.

        Such is my “unrealistic” proposal, which is every bit as “realistic,” and every bit as “unrealistic,” as proposals that settle for much less; but settling for much less is only the “realism” of betrayal of the people’s real needs. So shoot for the top, and remember the words of Eugene V. Debs: “Better to vote for what you want, and not to get it, than to vote for what you don’t want, and to get it.” Same goes for organizing and agitating.

    George Fish is a socialist writer and underemployed worker in Indianapolis, Indiana. He may be contacted at georgefish666@yahoo.com

    Drafted February 2, 2011, to be circulated to the broader U.S. left of organizations and publications for consideration, comment, critique, discussion, publication, and if necessary, helpful modification.

  • Egypt's future

    Mazin Qumsiyeh writes about Israel and the Middle East. What distinguishes his writing is his fusion of sharp political critique and acknowledgment of our common humanity. His most recent commentary, on events in Egypt, contains valuable information and links, as well as his typically thoughtful, moving analysis. But what struck me most was the way he looks to education to prepare a new generation of citizens.  His language reverberates with the ideas John Dewey proposed, ideas the neoliberal project has tried to erase from our political vocabulary and imaginations.

     Mazin first describes the present reality “…But make no mistake about it: no power transformation happens without a period of unrest, instability, and pain.  I believe in these difficult periods, humans are tested.  Some are weak and may even try to use the situations to make some quick personal profit. Others are of strong and decent character and this shows in their watching for their neighbors and their community.  I have seen countless pictures and heard countless stories of acts that can only be described as heroic (e.g. people protecting the national museum in Cairo or their neighbors’ houses).  Intellectuals are stepping forward to articulate rational scenarios for the future.  People helping other people.   So I think we will weather the transition.  As to what the future holds.  Clearly, the era of ignoring the masses is gone.  It will not be easy since we have a legacy of decades of poor education (one that does not emphasize civic and individual responsibility etc). Getting rid of dictators is not enough. Building a civic participatory society is not easy (Europe’s enlightenment did not come just from removing a few dictators).

    Then he discusses the future and the role of education: “People’s expectation raised for change will dash against the reality that it will take decades to create systems of governance, accountability, economic justice, etc to allow for unleashing the great potential in the Arab world… It is critical that people begin to chart this future honestly and pragmatically.  Slogans will not work.  We the people must take responsibility for our own lives and for our communities. We need to take time to educate children in a very, very different way than we were educated.  The beginnings may be simple.  For example, in many Arab countries, people were thinking that as long as the country is not theirs (ruled by dictators), they can only watch over their own personal space and literally dump trash in the public space.  In the new era, they have to learn that public space is theirs too.  Order and respect for fellow citizens and for the country will have to be taught very early to our children.  This is but one example for laying a brick in the road to real freedom and real prosperity.  The bricks though are many and they will have to be fashioned and laid by the people.  It is very hard work but it is the only way forward.”

  • Climate wars

         The international climate change summit in Cancún in December 2010 produced an agreement that host president Felipe Calderon of Mexico declared a “success for humanity and reason”. All the major economies pledged to reduce carbon emissions and agreed to establish a ‘Green fund’ to financially help developing countries adapt to climate change. One country however, remained deeply critical of the document and refused to ratify the agreement.
         Cutting a lonely figure, Pablo Solon, the Bolivian ambassador to the UN, said: "Responsibly, we cannot go along with a situation that my President has termed 'ecocide and genocide'." The Bolivians’ dissent was based on calculations that the measures agreed on could lead to an average temperature rise as high as 4C. The consequences of such a rise would be catastrophic. What such a world might look like has been vividly depicted by Canadian journalist, lecturer and historian Gwynne Dyer in his latest book, Climate Wars.
         A geo-political analysis of climate change, Climate Wars is underpinned by a series of future scenarios based on military planning and scientific projections. These bleak visions portray a world of militarised borders, resource wars and natural disasters. Famine, drought and death stalk most of the planet, while those countries that avoid the worst, the US, the UK, Russia, Northern Europe, jealously guard their precarious position with nuclear weapons. I spoke to Dyer before the Cancún summit. It was the discovery that the Pentagon was advanced in its plans for operating in a climate-change-ravaged world that first drew Dyer into researching the subject. The journey he subsequently embarked on, talking to military planners, scientists, think-tanks and environmentalists, took him on a tour of possible futures that included the US military gunning down Mexicans on the border, climate ravaged countries independently releasing clouds of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere to try and reduce global temperatures, a new cold war between the West and Russia and nuclear devastation as Pakistan and India clash over dwindling water resources.
         Each of the scenarios is set in a world where the average temperature rise has exceeded 2C — the rise that signatories of the Cancún agreement have pledged to prevent. A 2C rise is widely considered to be the ‘tipping point’, at which point positive feedback, such as the melting permafrost emitting methane, will kick in and the process will spiral out of human control. Despite the prominence of the 2C target in the ‘Shared Vision’ of the Cancún text, the planet remains on course to breach the threshold. Dyer said: “If we follow the current trend which says our emissions are not shrinking, not stable but growing as the economies in the developing countries grow, we’re going to hit 4 degrees by the 2050s – that’s game over, it’s way past game over.” The source of Dyer’s pessimism is not technological or financial – he claims the necessary changes could be made with current technology and at a cost of 1-2 percent of annual GDP. Nor is it caused by political skcepticism, “There is not a government on the planet that doesn’t take this seriously,” he insisted. Instead, he believes it is the competitive protection of national interests that is scuppering the chances of progress.
         In Climate Wars, Dyer quotes David Keith, Canada research chair in energy and the environment at the University of Calgary, who said: “The sad fact is that the optimal strategy for each country is to get other countries to cut their emissions while each country does nothing.” In Cancún, agreement was only made possible by a diplomatic dance that neatly sidestepped the main obstacle. The question of the renewal of the Kyoto agreement, with its requirement that developed countries reduce emissions but not developing countries, had threatened to derail the whole process.
         The final text of the agreement allowed for both sides to keep to their positions and defer a final decision. At the forefront of the confrontation between the developed and developing world are the world’s top two emitters of greenhouse gases, the US and China. In Climate Wars’ future scenarios, China is devastated by a decline in rainfall, a collapse of its glacier-fed river systems and escalating insurgencies in Tibet and Xinjiang. While the US just about retains the capacity to feed its people, it is rocked by civil strife as the growing Hispanic population react to the government’s violently protectionist response towards the collapsing Mexico.
         In Cancún, the two super-powers inched their way towards agreement, eventually reaching a compromise on the thorny issue of verifying carbon cuts. Dyer believes the Chinese are acutely aware of the dangers they face but will not publically commit to any action until the Americans do. The American situation, according to Dyer, is more complex and, potentially, more dangerous. “The Americans are almost uniquely into climate denial” he said. “They have been the subjects of a 15-year long campaign to persuade them this is all some conspiracy by 30,000 scientists trying to get grants.”
         In addition to a sceptical electorate, the US government has to contend with a domestic scene dominated by bitterly divided partisan politics with the opposition dominated by climate change deniers. Dyer said: “In the United States you can barely be on the right unless you publically disbelieve in climate change. It has become this sort of badge of membership.” This environment, Dyer believes, has left Obama shackled and impotent when it comes to striking international deals he knows will be shot down by Congress.
         Outside of the small circle of developed and developing economic powerhouses, the very objectives of the negotiations are being questioned. Bolivian president Evo Morales said: "We came to Cancún to save nature, forests, planet Earth. We are not here to convert nature into a commodity. We have not come here to revitalise capitalism with carbon markets." Morales’ belief that capitalism, as the engine of climate change, cannot be trusted to now solve the problem is one shared by many in the environmental movement. It is not a viewpoint shared by Dyer. “We are going to live or die with a solution to this problem that is achieved within the present political and economical context”, he said. “You are not going to change the corporate structure of the universe. You can on the other hand change the incentives, the tax structure and everything else to make it more attractive to corporations to behave responsibly about the environment. There is no point in trying to make the revolution happen next week, next month, next year, next decade.”
         While politicians continue to struggle to come to terms with the reality of climate change, it seems the militaries of the world are acting more decisively. According to Dyer, the nightmarish scenarios of an imploding civilisation in Climate Wars were constructed almost entirely from information from military sources. “That is the sort of thing they are thinking about,” he said. “They all know, to a remarkable degree, what this is going to do to food production, what damage this is going to do to water availability, which countries get hammered hard, which countries get away easy.” The American military is already prepared for the failure of the international community to act in time. Dyer claimed the Pentagon believes it will be ordered to close the Mexican border in the near future. “It will do it”, said Dyer. “It can do it. You build a wall and you shoot people trying to come over it.” It is this militarisation of borders that Dyer believes will signal the end of the window of opportunity for international cooperation and action on climate change. “The retreat into nationalism goes when the borders start to slam shut and the countries are shooting other people’s citizens [then] you get a general collapse in the will to do things globally.”
         This is no vision of the distant future, though. According to Dyer: “That is probably ten or fifteen years away.”

  • The Media, the Poor, and SSI

             I wrote a letter to the Boston Globe in response to a series of 3 articles that appeared in the Globe describing how parents are desperately trying to get their children on SSI (Supplemental Security Income) and are persuading doctors to prescribe medication so the children will be eligible.

             The Globe articles said that SSI rolls have increased dramatically, and emphasized how parents are gaming the system. It mentions that the parents are desperately poor and some have lost their welfare assistance, but the article doesn’t go into what has happened with TANF (called TAFDC, Temporary Assistance to Families with Dependent Children, in Massachusetts). The pictures that accompanied the article showed Hispanic and black mothers. I wrote to Patricia Wen, the author of the articles, and protested this. She replied that she is a member of a minority group and “sensitive to those issues.”

             The day after her articles appeared, another article appeared saying that Senator Scott Brown, newly elected Republican Senator from Massachusetts, plans to take up the SSI issue in Congress.

             I wrote an earlier letter to the Globe saying they should study TAFDC in order to understand why mothers are so desperate to get their children on SSI, but the Globe didn’t publish it. I have a large file of unpublished letters to the Globe, and I don’t expect they will publish this one.

             Following is the letter I wrote:

    To the Editor:

             When I saw Patricia Wen’s series of 3 articles on SSI (Supplemental Security Income), I said, “Here we go again. This is the opening salvo against SSI.” President Reagan slashed SSI, and conservatives have been hacking away at it ever since.

             Scott Brown, sniffing away like a bloodhound for a conservative cause he can champion, saw his chance in those articles and is leading the charge in Congress to slash SSI.

             If the Globe did a series on TAFDC, assistance to low-income families, we would understand why mothers are so eager to get SSI assistance. Many mothers have been cut off TAFDC due to the 2-year time limit, and if they can’t find a job or are unable to work, they need help.

             Media coverage leading up to the 1996 welfare “reform” bill featured stories about welfare cheats. Now we are hearing about mothers cheating on SSI. But the real cheats are the vendors (pharmacies, doctors, dentists, nursing homes, hospitals, and makers of medical equipment). A Massachusetts study found that 93 percent of welfare cheating was done by those vendors.

             Conservatives slash means tested assistance programs first because poor people have no political clout. Then they attack the universal programs of Social Security and Medicare. The current talk about means-testing Social Security is the opening salvo in the war against Social Security.

    Betty Reid Mandell

  • Cockroft: Mexico’s Revolution Then and Now

    James Cockcroft, Mexico’s Revolution Then and Now (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), 160 pages.

    James D. Cockroft’s Mexico’s Revolution Then and Now, written for the centennial of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, is a radical scholar’s guide to radical Mexico and well worth the read. Both a scholar and a political activist, Cockcroft writes as a partisan of oppressed and exploited and an opponent of capitalism. Inspired in large measure by the thought of Ricardo Flores Magón, Mexico’s anarchist revolutionary of the beginning of the last century, the book is, on the one hand, a breathlessly romantic account of the struggle for justice, and, on the other hand, the story of the defeat of the movement, punctuated with dark passages describing the repression of the past and the difficulties facing the nation today.

    One could look at this little book as the condensation of what are the three most important of Cockcroft’s books on Mexico written over the last 40 years: 1) Intellectual Precursors of the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1913; 2) Mexico: Class Formation, Capital Accumulation and the State; and, 3) Mexico’s Hope: An Encounter with Politics and History. Retracing the major themes of his earlier and more theoretical books, the author wants us to recognize the anarchist and libertarian roots of the Mexican Revolution, to understand that its history has been the history of class struggle between capital and labor, and to see and appreciate the role of women and the indigenous people in this complex history.

    The author’s sympathy for the underdogs, his admiration for the luchadores sociales (the social strugglers), and his enthusiasm for revolutionary change carry the reader along at a dizzying pace. At times, Cockcroft seems to suggest that Mexico is 2010 is not so different in some ways from the Mexico of 1910. And one might be swept along by that analogy to think that we are on the brink of revolution in Mexico today. Yet Cockcroft also recognizes the reality of the current situation, as he writes: “Mexico’s new popular protests are mainly defensive, however much they are spiced by calls for a ‘revolutionary offensive,’ a ‘Constituent Assembly,’ and ‘national sovereignty.’ Right now the correlation of forces does not favor the protestors.” The reasons are the power of capital, conservative trends in the society, the corrupt official labor unions, and divisions on the left. Things could be changed by a sudden and unforeseen explosion, he concedes, but, “With or without such sudden turning points, the struggle in Mexico will be long and hard.” And in another passage he write, “One thing is clear: there are no easy or obvious solutions when so many factors are complicating the situation nationally and internationally.”

    While it is written in accessible prose, readers who are not familiar with modern Mexico may find it challenging because of the densely packed pages filled with the scores of names of activists and political leaders, dozens of important happenings, and allusions to various interpretations of those events. Unlike Cockcroft’s earlier books which raise and develop important economic, social and political ideas, this book only alludes to political ideas and social theory—a brief description of anarchism, a reference to Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, emphasis on the importance of feminism and the role of native peoples, the absolute necessity of internationalism—hardly stopping to explain the references. The book is a tightly packed compendium of Mexico’s revolutionary history which will no doubt encourage readers to study Cockcroft’s weightier tomes mentioned above.

  • Support for Tunisia's democratic revolution

    The Campaign for Peace and Democracy (CPD) has issued an informative and politically important statement about events in Tunisia.
    CPD’s eloquent and persuasive letter contains helpful historical and political analysis to support the call for  “Washington and Paris, the two major props of the regime,to keep their hands off Tunisia” and allow “the Tunisian people to establish a society that provides full democratic rights and social justice.” The statement ends with the reminder that we cannot predict what will result from this new social movement but that the events pose a danger to authoritarian regimes throughout the Middle East. The courage and desire for freedom expressed by the people of Tunisia is an inspiration “for real democracy everywhere, from Egypt to Jordan to Saudi Arabia to the United States.”
    I just wrote a check to support CPD’s work and encourage readers of my blog to do likewise. You can learn how to donate on the CPD website.

  • Invidious Comparisons

           The New York Times ran a truly despicable story on its front page today. The article, by Scott Shane, argues that Pfc. Bradley Manning is not being treated so badly. But what moves this piece from the category of apologetics to contemptible is its opening paragraphs that try to contrast the plush circumstances of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with the grim conditions under which Manning is being held:

    “Julian Assange, the flamboyant founder of WikiLeaks, is living on a supporter’s 600-acre estate outside London, where he has negotiated $1.7 million in book deals and regularly issues defiant statements about the antisecrecy group’s plans.

    “Meanwhile, the young soldier accused of leaking the secret documents that brought WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange to fame and notoriety is locked in a tiny cell at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia.”

           The implication here is that Assange is nothing but a sleazy opportunist, benefiting from Manning’s misfortune. But Assange is hardly in clover. Sweden is trying to extradict him, with no assurance that he won’t then be turned over to the United States, where public officials are terming him a terrorist and calling for his assassination.

           But let’s see, are there any other people who might have been trying to cash in on Manning’s heroism? Well, what about the editors and writers of the New York Times? Are they going to decline their Pulitzer prizes that might result from the publication of documents that it is alleged came from Manning? WiliLeaks donated $100,000 to help Manning’s defense. How much – from all the added sales and internet hits that the Times garnered from its WiliLeaks stories – did the Times donate to Manning? It seems the Times’ sole contribution to Manning has been articles saying he’s being treated just fine, thank you.

           And while Assange can’t leave the country he’s currently in, have Times editors had to surrender their passports? Is the Justice Department feverishly preparing a case to charge them with espionage or terrorism?

           But, yes, it’s true, Assange has been able to issue “defiant statements.” It’s a real shame that the New York Times’ editors have no way to issue statements of their own.

  • Explaining Poverty

    Stephen Steinberg’s Boston Review article “Poor Reason: Culture still doesn’t explain poverty“ is a breath of fresh air, reminding us that the path toward ending poverty is creating decent jobs for everyone.

    The pervasiveness of neo-Moynihanism today is revealed by the fact that politicians of both parties talk only of the needs of the “Middle Class” and virtually never about the poor, as though the economic needs of the poor aren’t legitimate. To the extent that the poor are noticed at all, it is to justify pouring money into charter schools and privatized education, especially for African American children, at the expense of our nation’s scandalously deteriorating public education system.

  • Actually-existing Islamic movements and states

    Editor's note: This is the seventh article in a series by Richard Greeman about Islamism. U.S. imperialism, deluded by its own ideology, has joined the March of Folly in Afghanistan/West Pakistan — following in the illustrious footsteps of other would-be conquerors including the Persian Emperor Darius I, Alexander the Great, the British Empire under Queen Victoria and Brezhnev's Soviet Russian empire. All these great powers lost whole armies in the region before being driven out by the fiercely independent natives, as we have seen in previous articles. The U.S. Government, dominated by powerful lobbies whose special interests trump the national interest, appears unable to change its irrational course. American imperialism justifies its dangerous and self-defeating policies through ideological constructs rooted in America's long history of conquest, projecting white American aggression outward onto a series of threatening 'others' from the 'Indians' to the 'Commies' and most recently the 'urgent threat' of 'Islamism, Islamo-fascism or […] radical Islam’ (to quote the Times article with which we began our analysis). Having thus deconstructed and contextualized the contested concept of the Islamic 'threat,' we now have a more objective perspective from which to examine Islamism empirically, on the ground as it were. Here we must account for two distinct, but related geographical and political phenomena. 1) militant Islamic movements, parties and states in the Moslem Middle East/Arab world (ME/A for short) and 2) Islamic fundamentalism among immigrant or immigrant-descended youth in Western countries – to whom Islamic radicalism appeals as expression of their alienation, humiliation and need for cultural identity. Naturally these two strands are intertwined. Radical Islamic states and movements in the ME/A seek to influence and recruit among the Moslem diaspora in the West; they weave international propaganda networks aimed at gaining cultural and political hegemony over communities of often indifferent or irreligious Moslem immigrants, where family, cultural and emotional ties with the homeland nonetheless remain strong. Such networks may also be used to recruit militants for combat and suicide attacks among the disaffected masses of unemployed youth in the ME/A world and the frustrated, humiliated, educated elites in both Europe and the Moslem countries. Taken as a whole, these state and non-state actors form what has been described as a ‘nebulous,’ and the most striking thing about this nebulous is it’s lack of internal unity and coherence. To begin with, the Islamic world with its 1. 6 billion inhabitants (1/5 of the world population) is itself as various as the so-called ‘Christian-heritage’ world with its right-wing Evangelicals and its politicized Vatican at one extreme and its vast un-churched European majority at the other. Similarly, Islam as it is lived and practiced by millions of South and East Asians has a much less significant political role than in the Middle East/Arab (ME/A) lands, where it has become the ideological expression of exacerbated nationalism and a vehicle to political power. And even within this geographical area, it is division – or rather violent schism – among Moslems that predominates over unity and coherence. The 1200-year rivalry between Shiite and Sunnite factions of Islam — each with its alliances of states and insurgent groups — reminds me of the European inter-Christian religious civil wars between Catholics and Protestants, which continued through the 17th Century here in France and were bloodier and more destructive than the Christian versus Moslem Crusades of the Middle Ages. And à propos of the Crusades, the fact that the Christians were organized under the Popes in a united Catholic Europe accounted for much of their success against the more civilized Moslems, who were divided, then as now. Indeed, since the 1980’s the Sunni-Shiite rivalry for dominance of the ummah (the global community of Islam) has intensified with new revolutionary Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran challenging the dominance of Sunni fundamentalism. The Sunni counter-attack is centered around the Moslem holy cities of Mecca and Median in the Islamic Monarchy of Saudi Arabia, where the Wahhabi clergy actually consider Shiites to be kaffirs (‘infidels’) and prefer the Americans. Meanwhile hundreds of millions of Moslems in South and East Asia practice traditional local forms of Islam with little regard to the bloody quarrels among Arabs and Iranians in faraway West Asia and North Africa.

  • “Take a Hike, Gimpy”

    New York City plans to have even more inaccessible taxis

    With a knee problem and a walker, I have found more and more New York City cabs inaccessible. The new hybrids (good for anti-pollution) are high off the ground, with difficult sliding doors. Drivers are as helpful as they can be, but they pass me by, knowing that I can't safely climb in or out. So, as the taxi fleet moves more and more to hybrids, phasing out more accessible cabs, I have found it harder and harder to get a taxi that I can use. One of the glories of New York — mobility — is increasingly lost to me. (Subways, with only a sprinkling of elevators here and there, are pointless.)

    Some City agency, presumably the Taxi and Limousine Commission (hereafter, ironically, TLC), has to have approved this design. (In other disability-related areas, I have found the NYC Commission on Human Rights useless.) This is unspeakable, and probably illegal under the Americans With Disabilities Act. In a city with cut-out curbs, ramps and kneeling buses (which show that hybrids can be designed to be accessible), this is a surprising anachronism, and it should be opposed. The City should bring to an immediate end the filling of our streets with a design that is hostile to the elderly and disabled. Better designs should be developed and scrutinized with accessibility as a criterion — something which the T LC clearly ignored with the current hybrids, and continues to ignore in the selection of future cabs (below).

    I have been trying to organize a campaign along these lines and have finally found a fine ally. Disability Rights Advocates is a Berkeley-based non-profit "dedicated to securing the civil rights of people with disabilities . . . through high-impact litigation, as well as research and education." (They do not charge clients.) They are now opening a New York office. DRA is diligently gathering information about inaccessible taxis, preparatory to taking action. I have found them easy to talk with, knowledgeable, and respectful of confidentiality for those who want it.

    It is urgent that critical voices be heard right now: the TLC is considering three new designs, from which, early in 2011, they will choose one to replace all current cabs. But only one of the three finalists is described as "fully accessible," so accessibility is clearly not a mandatory criterion. TLC, you obviously don’t get it.

    As I write this, they are openly throwing in the towel on wheelchair accessibility: "While I [TLC Commissioner David Yassky] want to reiterate the TLC’s ongoing commitment to our longtime goal of full accessibility . . . the practical reality is that it does not make sense to have each car service company maintain its own wheelchair accessible fleet as our regulations now provide." So Yassky proposes a Rube Goldbergesque (and Orwellian) "Accessible Dispatch Program" — essentially, call for one of the 240 accessible cabs that presently serve this city of eight million, including an estimated 60,000 wheelchair users, not to mention an uncounted number of others, like myself, using walkers or other such contraptions. A pilot program indicated that cabs showed up an average of 34 minutes after being called, and the proposed program would absolutely insist that cabs show up in less than one hour. Meantime, they are suspending a rule requiring livery cab bases to provide accessible service. This shameful press release is co-signed by Matthew Sapolin, Commissioner of Mayor Bloomberg’s Office for People with Disabilities.

    (If you have first-hand experience of inaccessible cabs, I urge you to contact DRA: in New York City, 212-644-8644 mpuleo@dralegal.org or jpinover@dralegal.org; or, in Berkeley, 877-603-4577 kwerner@dralegal.org. I would appreciate cc’s of emails that you send them.)

    Jesse Lemisch, jesse.lemisch@verizon.net.

  • Liu Xiaobo and the Nobel Peace Prize – Debate within China

    A fascinating analysis of Liu Xiaobo and the Nobel Peace Prize has been circulating in Europe but has not, to my knowledge, been reprinted in the US, in print or online. Au Loong Yu, who wrote about China for the New Politics symposium on labor’s response to the global economic collapse, rejects the premises of a debate that is “primarily between the liberals who support Liu Xiaobo and the nationalists is essentially a debate of either Washington or the Chinese party state.”  Neither pole supports democracy, which Au Loong Yu argues is essential for democracy and workers’ rights.

    The piece continues, “While “liberals welcome this as encouragement for fighting for democracy in China, there are people who claim that Liu is not the proper candidate for the prize. They have a loud voice especially among those who are exiled in the west. In a petition letter to the The Norwegian Nobel Committee, a group of exiled dissidents wrote that they thought Liu is not the appropriate candidate for the prize because he has not been standing firm in upholding human rights, and has even practically cooperated with the authorities by inappropriately praising the CCP’s human rights rhetoric. On the other hand, on the Utopia (Wuyouzhixiang) website, which is well known for being associated with some of the ‘new leftists’, articles were posted echoing the authorities’ attack on Liu, suggesting that Liu is an agent of US imperialism. In one of these articles, the author Xibeifeng denies that Liu’s sentences has anything to do with freedom of speech, arguing that Liu’s advocacy for Charter 08 is as criminal as a drunk driver demanding freedom to violate the rules of traffic.

    Those Who Act are Spared, Those Who Talk are Indicted
    Not everyone who criticizes Liu share Xibeifeng’s crude defense of the authorities’ absolute intolerance though. Two professors in Hong Kong, Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong, agree that ‘there was no need to imprison Liu’. ‘Rather, there has only been a need to bring to light Liu’s self-proclaimed goals. If most Chinese, especially the non-elite majority, knew about his prescribed path for China, they would turn away from him as from someone with ignoble things on offer.’ By this they mean that Liu’s pro-US and pro-market position is not something beneficial to the Chinese people.
    In a certain sense it is true. We do not entirely share the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s statement on its decision to award the prize to Liu. The Committee praises China for having ‘achieved economic advances to which history can hardly show any equal’, but regrets that .it is in breach of several international agreements on human rights and also its own constitution concerning these rights. We must say that anyone who praises China’s economic achievement without at the same time qualifying this with the fact that labor’s share of national income has dropped 15 percent in the last 20 years for the benefit of profit, a necessary outcome being political repression concerning workers’ right to association and to strike, cannot be said to be a real friend of the Chinese working people who constitute the majority of the population.
    Further down the statement praises Liu as having been ‘a strong spokesman for the application of fundamental human rights also in China. He took part in the Tiananmen protests in 1989; he was a leading author behind Charter 08, the manifesto of such rights in China’. We have written some time ago that Charter 08, while supportable whenever it advocates basic civil liberties, is severely limited by its call for the privatization of farm land and further privatization of state owned enterprises. This, along with the obvious negligence of labor rights, leads us to believe that the Charter is far from being one for the working people.
    Sautman and Yan pointed out the same limitation regarding Liu, but they lost sense of proportion in their accusation. If Liu’s advocacy for privatization should be criticized, then by logic the CCP must be treated more harshly for actually pushing through two gigantic waves of privatization — first most state and collectively owned enterprises, resulting in more than 50 million workers being dismissed, then a second wave of privatization which targets urban lands, resulting in price hikes in the property market which most people cannot afford. While Liu boldly calls for privatization, but without the power and money to implement it, it has been the CCP which has acted boldly but silently (privatization is still a banned word in China). Curiously Sautman and Yan do not criticize the CCP. If they do it is just to remark that ‘there was no need to imprison Liu’; in other words the CCP’s only error was having taken a slightly superfluous step. One may wonder if there is more miserable misjudgment than this.
    The same goes for their criticism of Liu’s support of the US war in Iraq. In their second article published in the Guardian, they accused Liu’s ‘stand for war not peace’. We do not share Liu’s position on the Iraq war, but again our criticism must be fair. While his support of the war carries no weight at all both in China and the international community, the Chinese government, with its power to veto, abstained from the vote in the UN Security Council in 1991, which thus practically credited the US and its allies with UN legitimacy to go to war against Iraq. It was done in the sacred name of expelling the invader from Kuwait, but only resulted in allowing another invader — the US – to enjoy an even more dominant role in the region, which led to the second Gulf war in 2003. If Liu should be indicted for his views supporting the US war effort, should not the Chinese government also be criticized for its action?
    ‘Democracy is Bad for You’
    What is more troubling is that Sautman and Yan went even further when they condemned Liu ‘who has long been financed by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy, proposes an instant shift to electoral democracy as the solution to China’s problems.’ We do not share Liu’s pro-American government position, but it has no bearing on the question of whether ‘electoral democracy’ is desirable or not. Sautman and Yan see electoral democracy as bad for China because ‘states that have made the transition to electoral democracy at low levels of wealth (and China is still very much a developing country) have low levels of development and considerable instability… In many cases the transition to electoral democracy in developing countries worsens rights.’ In arguing this they are taking the side of the CCP’s continual denial to the Chinese people of basic democratic rights. We believe free elections are a basic right of the Chinese people and the CCP has owed this to the people for too long. Apart from this moral imperative behind the demand for democracy, there is also an issue of political necessity. It is necessary, now more than ever, to put the CCP under democratic control before one can seriously talk about controlling the plundering of public wealth by the bureaucracy. Any attempt in minimizing the importance of advocating democratic rights, including free elections, is objectively justifying the absolutism of the one party state. Sautman and Yan went even further than the CCP indeed; whereas the latter justified its despotic rule by saying that Chinese people do enjoy all rights enshrined in the constitution — an absolutely stupid defense, Sautman and Yan provided the CCP a more sophisticated argument by telling Chinese people that fighting for electoral democracy now jeopardizes their own interests. This is especially harmful in a China context where awareness of popular sovereignty and democratic rights is at its all time low since the 1911 revolution.
    Re-Colonization a Real Threat?
    A common trait which runs through those who are associated with the Utopia is the ever stronger statist and nationalist arguments. They are statist because they fall into the false dichotomy of state versus market, hence in opposing, rightly, the privatization of public assets they come to embrace the state as the only viable vehicle to fight privatization — not only the state in general but first and foremost the one party state, despite the fact that it is this very state which pushes forward privatization in the first place. They are nationalist, not only because they allege that the supposed value of national interest overrides all other values, be it working class interest or human rights in general, but also because they wrongly judge the present situation. They often argue, in the light of the 150 years of contemporary Chinese history when China was invaded and humiliated by imperialism, that the greatest danger at all times for China now is the danger of re-colonization by Western or Japanese influence, not only in an economic sense but also a political sense — hence they echo the CCP’s repeated alarm regarding ‘color revolution’. There is a grain of truth in this argument, but only a grain. There has been features of dependent accumulation in China’s economy since the 1990’s, in relation to Western and Japanese economy, and correspondingly there has been growing sections of the bureaucracy and the new rich who have acquired features of a comprador mentality. However, since 2003, the bureaucracy finally settled on a decision for a more independent economic growth, with special emphasis on ‘autonomous innovation’. Features of dependent accumulation in the economy still exist, but are not dominant. For instance, the 2 trillion US dollar exchange reserves which China accumulates are both a sign of dependent accumulation and a factor in the rise of China. It is a sign of dependent accumulation because it is a result of over-reliance on exports, made possible only by surrendering China’s resources and surplus value to the West and Japan. However it also enables the CCP to import ambitiously modern foreign techniques and to enjoy a strong bargaining position in relation to global competition. For instance, the 2 trillion US dollar exchange reserves which China accumulates are both a sign of dependent accumulation and a factor in the rise of China. It is a sign of dependent accumulation because it is a result of over-reliance on exports, made possible only by surrendering China’s resources and surplus value to the West and Japan. However it also enables the CCP to import ambitiously modern foreign techniques and to enjoy a strong bargaining position in relation to global competition. Henceforth there is even less chance that China will be re-colonized economically in the strict sense.
    If China had not been colonized, as India was, between 1840 and 1949 when it was much weaker, it would be equally difficult for Western countries and Japan to dominate China economically now, in face of a China which is much stronger. The party state draws its strength from China’s contemporary glorious history of anti-imperialist struggle, including fighting the US in Korea. It also benefited from the achievement of Mao’s enormous industrialization drive in a vast country, which has given the party state exceptional power to bargain with the developed countries since the reform period. The first factor determines the party state’s deep seated distrust against foreign influence, especially when it targets Chinese people, while the second gives the CCP enough power to fend off foreign competition, politically and economically. Hence the CCPs opening up of the market to foreign capital is always restrained by the need for the maintenance of its grip over the society. Although attacked by the nationalists for abandoning Mao’s self reliance strategy, the top leaders really never went that far; on the contrary, despite internal squabbles and vacillation, they have been keen for China to develop its own domestic players in all key industries. The CCP has promoted a second wave of even more rapid industrialization, outstanding if not exceptional among the so called transitional economies, and put itself as the ultimate ruler of the most strategic industries. In order to gain a more autonomous position for its industries, the party state often go one step further by developing its own industry standards, often in defiance of foreign capital and its governments, from a VCD, mobile phone, Wifi to a credit card standard,.  
    The self interest of the bureaucracy also determines its decision for a relatively autonomous path of development. Increasing sections of the bureaucracy clenched its teeth at the scenario where huge profit were garnered by foreign capital; they vow to seize back at least a part of this profit for themselves. With the help of the alignment of exceptional advantages peculiar to China (which we have discussed in earlier articles), they succeeded, even if within limit.
    China is deeply integrated within a global economy; hence its autonomous path of development must be highly qualified by this. There is also no doubt that China is now encountering a bottle neck for its growth model in the midst of global crisis, but how much it will hamper China’s rise still remains to be seen.  Even with a slower rate of growth China is already a great power. As an economy ranking second in the world, any talk to suggest that China is under threat from economic re-colonization makes no sense.
    The major threat for Chinese working people today is less re-colonization than the plundering of the wealth by the ruling party and a break- down of social fibers resulting from this. To argue the otherwise is simply providing support to the party in its attempt to divert attention from domestic corruption to an alleged re-colonization threat.
    As to the threat of a color revolution, again it is grossly exaggerated. There are no signs at all that the US has enough support in China so as to put a color revolution in China on the agenda, nor is it true that the party state is so weak that even the smallest political liberalization will end up in the CCP losing power. Despite economic decentralization since the market reform, politically the CCP’s grip over society only grows stronger. There was and is no real civil society, no real social movement, no organized opposition. If China ever has a color revolution like those in Kyrgyzstan in a distant future, it is not because of people like Liu Xiaobo or because of free elections, but because the party state is hated so much by the people that they think any other party taking power will be better than the CCP, hence they are either indifferent to its downfall or act to make it happens. So it leads us back to the basic question which the nationalists try to avoid: the chief threat today in China is not foreign aggression, politically or economically, but the CCP dictatorship, a dictatorship which is corrupt to the core but armed to the teeth. It must be noted that it is also a dictatorship which also benefits the US ruling class, without it, it would not have been possible to hold back both wages and the Chinese workers movement for so long.
     
    The debate between the liberals who support Liu Xiaobo and the nationalists is essentially a debate of either Washington or the Chinese party state. For us working people this is a false choice.

    References

    Liu Xiaobo huojiang shi xinzhiminzhuyi zai zhongguo zouxiang zhibian de biaozhi  (Liu Xiaobo being Awarded with the Peace Prize Signifies Neo-Colonialism in China Now Reaches Qualitative Changes) , http://www.wyzxsx.com/Article/Class4/201010/190345.html
    Liu Xiaobo Deserves Nobel Peace Prize South China Morning Post, Oct. 12, 2010
    A Human Right Charter that Excludes the Working People, http://www.worldlabour.org/eng/node/36
    http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-10-25-liu-xiaobo-stands-for-war-not-peace
    China: End of a Model or the Birth of a New One?http://newpol.org/?p=88
    See also Post MFA era and the Rise of China,  http://www.asienhaus.de/public/archiv/post-mfa-era-china.pdf

  • The political gangbang of WikiLeaks

    I’m with Peter Tatchell in supporting WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, who are exposing the U.S. government’s lies and its support for human rights abuses. Tatchell wants Brits to protest the U.S.-led attacks on WikiLeaks and argues that the charges against Assange have to be pursued in the court of law.  Where I disagree is in estimating the probability of a frameup, and I think comparison with  Daniel Ellsberg and the  Pentagon Papers supports my case.
    Glenn Greenwald’s updates about the anti-Assange and WikiLeaks frenzy being fed by liberal media outlets, like the NY Times and NPR, expose the government-media collusion in doing away with WikiLeaks – and Assange.  Greenwald’s posts show why comparison between treatment of Daniel Ellsberg and Assange has to take into account a terrifying change in the political climate. After Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, the US government launched a media campaign to portray him as mentally unstable and thereby discredit him and the information he made public. The liberal media defended Ellsberg. Timidly, reluctantly, to be sure, but nonetheless the NY Times stood up to the government’s bashing of Ellsberg and the argument that he was a murderous traitor.
    Greenwald’s email exchange with Todd Gitlin exposes the political rape, a gangbang of the media and government, liberals and conservatives alike… against WikiLeaks. Confronted with the falseness of their charge that WikiLeaks has endangered people, contemporary liberals, like Gitlin, rise to their full moral stature as pygmies* and press for pursuing the war against WikiLeaks. 
    I concur with Tatchell that the rape charges against Assange have to be pursued to provide legal redress for the women who have charged Assange with this crime. But I think we should assume that Assange is being framed and contribute to his personal defense fund. An imperial mindset gives whomever resides in the White House (regardless of whether it’s a Democrat or Republican) the “responsibility” to do what’s necessary to safeguard what are cast as our nation’s interests. In fact, what is being protected is U.S. capitalism’s global hegemony.
    Bravo to Glenn Greenwald, Operation Payback and the Anonymous hacktivists, for their non-violent resistance to U.S.government-led censorship!. There’s a political rape occurring – a gangbang of the media and government, liberals and conservatives alike… against WikiLeaks. I signed the online petition in support of WikiLeaks and Assange and have contributed financially. I encourage NP readers to do likewise.

    * Wasn’t “moral pygmies” Pauline Kael’s apt phrase to describe pornographers battling censorship of “Last Tango in Paris”?

  • The U.S. March of Folly in the Middle-East

    Does desperation alone account for reckless escalation of U.S. military aggression in the Middle East for which the “threat” of an aggressive Islamism provides the rationalization? To be sure, the  worsening world economic crisis directly conditions the international context, aggravating U.S. capital’s frantic rush to control the world’s remaining oil reserves. America's willingness to use excessive force and to go it alone also serves to intimidate would-be imperialist rivals like China, Russia and France, so as to retain its lion’s share. But it makes little geo-political sense for U.S. imperialism to have become so obsessively focussed on its Middle-Eastern crusade that it apparently lost sight of the main prize in its own back yard, Latin America. Thus Yanqui imperialism’s oldest and most important sphere of influence has been quietly slipping out of Washington’s grasp. North American capital now faces regional rivals like Brazil and heavy-duty competition from China. An expanding coalition of more or less democratic regimes backed by popular movements has shown itself determined to break free from U.S. economic and political hegemony.  Indeed, the U.S. has only two reliable allies left in Latin America, Colombia and Mexico, and both are hopelessly corrupt semi-dictatorships bemired in bloody drug wars. This major setback for U.S. global interests is further proof of the irrationality of the ideologically-driven U.S. campaign against “Islamism.”

    Another explanation for the U.S. government continuing blindly to pursue failed polices was put forward most recently by the Nobel prize-winning liberal economist Paul Krugman who explains that beginning in the 1970’s, the enormous cost of political campaigns, the growing power of corporate lobbies, the direct and overwhelming domination of big money over every aspect of government has made reform impossible. Today, the demands of individual special interests predominate over the collective national interest, even over those of U.S. capitalism taken as a whole. The government is thus reduced to the role of hired “enforcer” for the coal, petroleum, arms, pharmaceutical, insurance and banking industries in their frantic rush to accumulate short-term profits.
    Although Krugman – who is a Keynsian, not a Marxist – doesn't go quite that far, he does conclude that this system of legal, quite open corruption has led to a paralysis of the U.S. political system, which is no longer able to change course or even to make token reforms to satisfy the aspirations of Obama’s multi-class, multi-ethnic, heavily feminine, youthful and anti-war electorate. Within this corrupt system, the petroleum-military-industrial complex is by far the most powerful lobby and the one most deeply invested in continuation of that multi-billion-dollar boondoggle known as the crusade against radical Islamism  — at whatever cost to the taxpayer and to U.S. long term political interests. Apparently Obama believes “no man can serve two masters” and he has chosen to serve the money that paid for his campaign over serving the voters that elected him. A year after the popular groundswell that overcame American racism and swept the first African-heritage president in office, Barak Obama remains a vassal of the Pentagon and the lobbies, dependent on their favor. Trapped in the system, he has proven himself unwilling or unable to satisfy the vast popular expectations for peace (as well as for jobs and affordable health insurance) that got him elected. As his disillusioned, disappointed supporter decline into apathy, popular discontent gets channelled into support for the Right, only a year ago discredited by eight years of Bush.

    The domination of the Religious Right over American political system is yet another factor limiting U.S. imperialism’s ability to correct its course. During the Bush years, it spoke directly through the drawl of the born-again Texan in charge. Since losing the White House, a headless Republican Party has now apparently been taken over by the hydra-headed Christian Right. Its deafening noise machine barks a crypto-racist message of hate through the halls Congress and the media, harping on Obama’s “foreign birth certificate,” his “forced-euthanasia communist healthcare plan,” his Arab middle name, his “appeasement” of the Islamists. What should objectively be termed “Political Christianism” (to balance “Political Islamism”) is arguably in an even stronger position under a Democratic President dedicated to “bi-partisanism” who will predictably hold out his hand to the rabid, no-compromise Republicans and get his arm bit off. These economic and political pressures combine with ideological rigidity to make rational reform possible.
    Given this delusional and self-defeating outlook, I can only conclude that the U.S. Establishment (dare I say “Corporate Ruling Class”?) and its noble-brow’d factotum Barak Hussein Obama are literally on the Road to Folly – a mental state defined as pursuing an irrational course without regard to the predictable consequences, refusing to listen to critics, and making the same mistakes again and again without drawing the lesson of past failures. The erudite military historian Barbara Tuchman studied five historical examples of such disastrous “Pursuits of Policy Contrary to Self-Interest.” Her brilliant 1984 March of Folly, From Troy to Vietnam concludes with mad King George III’s loss of his American colonies and (then) contemporary America caught in the Vietnam quagmire. To crown eight years of failure in Iraq and Afghanistan by destabilizing Pakistan and invading Yemen seems the height of folly, yet it is the (ideo)logical consequence of today’s Clash of Fundamentalisms.`”Those whom the gods wish to destroy, the first make mad.”
    Am I suggesting that a “saner” U.S. imperialism, while remaining U.S. imperialism, might pursue alternate polices that would not damage its interests? Not really. By adopting Barbara Tuchman’s Vietnam-era notion of “folly” I am approaching the subject from a psychological or rather psychopathological viewpoint. Why not? The actions of both individuals and societies are the dialectical results of their inner conflicts. We consider individuals mentally ill or simply “mad” when their actions and addictions threaten their own survival and endanger others. By drugging them or locking them up we recognize that they can’t help themselves. Today’s capitalist society is definitely sick, indeed moribund. It is like a senile miser who is in denial of his own death and who piles up hordes of riches, marries ever-younger bimbos, and disinherits his children. Capitalism is “knowingly” destroying the planet’s environment in a last orgy of plunder. If the system is not overthrown soon, the children of today’s billionaires will inherit a climate holocaust. Capitalist imperialism is addicted to oil, addicted to gambling (dependence on speculative bubbles to keep up its rate of profit) and addicted to violence (domination by the military-industrial-prison complex).
    The ruling class has no collective vision. Global capitalism’s leaders – the likes of Bush, Berlesconi, Sarkozy, Blair – are grotesque clowns compared to the statesmen of my youth like Roosevelt, Churchill, De Gaulle. According to my friend Immanuel Wallerstein, who studies the world economy over the historical longue durée, global capitalism has apparently reached the end of its 500-year historical cycle of birth (1492), growth and death. Having reached its limits as a productive system, 21st Century capitalism is returning to its 1492 methods of “primitive accumulation:” plunder, slavery, usury and other regressive forms of appropriating wealth. Today, the alternatives are socialism or barbarism: high-tech, market-driven barbarism, a mechanical monster without a heart that kills at a distance via drones and toxic mudslides.  It will take a global mass movement of “billions against billionaires” to overthrow it from within and replace it with a saner, more peaceful, cooperative, earth-friendly society.

    This completes our deconstruction of the “Threat” of  Radical Islam in the Western imagination and of the U.S. political and military follies it both justifies and engenders. Having established the context, we turn in our next blogs to understanding Radical Islamism as it expresses itself on the ground, both in the Middle-East/Arab world and the Moslem diaspora.   

  • Obama's Dangerous Escalations

    Obama’s decision to radically escalate the wars he was ostensibly elected to terminate is a measure of U.S. imperialism's desperation. It’s not just that our erstwhile peace candidate and future Nobel peace laureate is withdrawing exhausted U.S. troops from the frying pan of Iraq only to transfer them into the fire of Afghanistan, although that itself was an act of desperation. Many of these “volunteer” soldiers and reservists, shattered after several devastating tours of duty in Iraq, are being forced to remain in the service years beyond their contracts. Blackwater and other mercenaries now outnumber U.S. troops in Afghanistan with more escalation in sight. A new and highly dangerous stage was reached in January 2009 when Mr. Obama officially extended the “anti-terror” oil-war into unstable, corrupt, nuclear-armed Pakistan. And if that weren't enough, as our 2009 Xmas present from the CIA, we have received a new war in Yemen. Thus our new President rounds out his first year in office, which began last January with the drone attacks on Pakistani civilians. Obama’s radical escalation into Pakistan’s nuclear danger-zone is arguably even more irrational than Bush II’s Iraq occupation or Johnson’s Vietnam escalations. Yet this new folly was accepted as a matter of course, without any serious discussion, by the U.S. mainstream media and politicians of both parties – the same way they accepted Bush’s Saddam=Osama and WMDs lies and Lydon Johnson's “Bay of Tonkin Incidents.” Today, after these gross deceptions, dangerously aggressive irrational policies can no longer be sold on rational political grounds to the wary, anti-war silent majorities in the U.S and Britain. The enemy must be demonized and the threat must be magnified in an atmosphere of a hysterical, irrational Islamophobic and anti-Arab propaganda. Under Bush II, we had an explicit Clash of Fundamentalisms, Judeo-Christian versus Islamic. Yet paradoxically it was born-again Bush who finally signed off on U.S. withdrawal from Iraq just before slinking out of office, leaving his successor a free hand – one hoped to make peace, but in the event to escalate ! Was a deal with the Pentagon made quietly behind the scenes during Obama’s “seamless transition ?” In any case, we quickly learned the truth when Obama launched a Predator attack on Pakistan during his first week in office, “blooding” himself as Commander-in Chief and setting a hawkish precedent for his Administration. Thanks to this “seamless transition” Obama gave new political legitimacy to the hawks in the CIA and the Pentagon – the very people who got Iraq wrong in the first place. And now, in the wake of the botched Xmas Day bomb attack, another “secret” U.S. war has come to the surface in Yemen, a strategic country divided by decades of civil war, with rival factions armed by Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States. On January 7, Yemen's Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al-Alami reported declared, “If there is direct intervention by the United States, it will strengthen al-Qaeda. We cannot accept any foreign troops on Yemeni territory.” Time for “regime change” in Yemen? Yet how many Vietnamese puppet presidents did the U.S. remove or assassinate before finally withdrawing, humiliated by defeat, abandoning its Vietnamese allies to their fates? The Obama Administration’s fuite en avant Afghan offensive — escalating a losing Mideast campaign into dangerous new territory — makes about as much sense as sticking one’s member into a beehive. Yet Mr. Obama is no gross fool, unlike his predecessor. The President is socially aware enough to know that every time he orders another CIA-Blackwater Predator drone to drop out of the sky over Pakistan and blow up a village or family of traditionally warlike Pashtuns, ten or a hundred new dedicated “enemy combatants” rise from the ashes swearing (by Allah, who else?) eternal vengeance on the West. The President has enough imagination to visualize the consequences, yet like King Cadmus in the Greek myth, Obama is “sowing dragons’ teeth” and “reaping armed warriors” – myriads of whom spring up from the soil for each cluster-bomb sown. Militant Islamic groups like the Taliban stand ready and eager to inspire and direct such potential martyrs. Angry poor men, particularly warriors from “honor cultures,” are always eager to listen to ministers of religions that sanctify Holy War. In any case, the fierce tribes who inhabit Afghanistan and West Pakistan have never been conquered, having defeated invasions by Darius the Persian, Alexander the Great, the British and the Soviet Russian empires. Are they likely to be conquered by NATO under Obomber the First?