The Republicans have successfully changed the economic debate from jobs to deficit control. Why the urgency? After all, this anemic “recovery” has been marked above all by the lack of job growth. Growth needs to considerable exceed 3% per annum if the private sector is to make any significant headway in reducing unemployment. Instead growth is actually trending downward from its post Great Recession peak. The intractability of long term unemployment now exceeds the duration experienced in the 1930s. Combine this with the fact that economy wide wage gains in the past decade have even lagged those in the Great Depression, when adjusted for deflation, and one can easily appreciate why workers’ portion of the national income has continued to drop consistently, since the recession was declared to have ended.
Yet the American right wing, including of course the business community, insists that deficit spending is already entirely excessive and is leading the country inadvertently down the path to socialism, by which they mean “statism.” This may appear absurd on the face of it, but let me try to put their argument in a coherent form, something right wingers — including right wing economists — seem incapable of doing, and to explain why this is a well-grounded fear.
The theory is that when government finances its activities by borrowing, for instance to alleviate unemployment, it increases the national debt. The increased national debt invokes additional interest payments necessitating government to jack up taxes still further to raise the money to meet its mounting interest obligations. This may not be in the immediate offing, but is, at any rate, eventually unavoidable. The higher taxes, or threat of higher taxes, in turn make investment still less profitable, by reducing the anticipated after tax returns. The private (nonfinancial) sector recedes, adding to the problem of private sector unemployment while generating a spiral of additional government sector borrowing, state expansion and private sector shrinkage. A willingness on the part of government to raise the debt ceiling moreover signals to the markets that the administration is not willing to arrest this cycle. This, in turn invokes a capital strike, wherein the private sector liquidate its inventories, and sits on its revenues, but refuses to broaden investment beyond, say, certain tech industries or foreign markets that promise exceptional short term returns sufficient to offset the anticipated additional tax burdens to come. In the context of a stagnant private sector, bond holders will come to fear a state default and therefore demand additional premiums in the form of higher interest payments before they will relinquish additional funds to the government. This eats further into the net profitability of the non-financial sector — which is now squeezed both by higher taxes (or the immanent threat of higher taxes) and the increased costs of financing its capital formation through recourse to the credit markets.
A mild depression is therefore postponed by government spending, only to give rise either to a more dramatic downturn or prolonged stagnation and paralysis.
Most leftish answers to this scenario are designed to appease the business community. As a practical political imperative, straying too far from this common understanding is expecting too much from political elites educated by the business class to view political economy in these terms. Political economy is fundamentally ideological. Its consequence is to present an evolving picture of reality that reflects how the ruling class perceives its place in the social order. Its basic thrust is to suppress the aspirations of the working class, which, as a propertyless class, can only challenge entrenched interests by wielding political force; by winning the battle for democracy. This means clinging to a framework in which the state is limited to maintaining a general legal and infrastructural framework favorable for accumulation with the flexibility to grant limited concessions needed to secure social peace, without abdicating terrain directly useful to the democratization of economic power. The principles of “sound finance” tethers the growth of state functions to that which can be financed out of profits without threatening capitalism’s ability to accumulate. So long as state finances find their immediate limit in the profit system, private property can hold the pretensions of the working class in check largely through instilling a sense of self-restraint and discipline in the face of overwhelming and impersonal market power. The threats of “outsized” deficits, “run away” entitlements, and unemployment consequential to wage demands nonresponsive to downward international competition are so much a part of the internalized view of society’s rank and file that they are largely drained of the capacity for fight back. It is the market itself that disciplines democracy.
Even progressives such as Paul Krugman, have found fit to work within this narrow compass of understanding — that there is no alternative. It is argued quite rightly, that in the short term the fundamental political and social problem that liberals and the Democratic Party face is chronic unemployment. Mainstream liberals have largely accepted the framework that as long as a reasonable (i.e., manageable) ratio can be established between additional employment — as a result of deficit spending — and debt, the interest payments on the national debt can easily come out of future taxes paid out of a growing national income. This therefore means that both taxes on the wealthy and reductions in spending will both be needed. The former now, with additional taxes to come from a broadened base; the latter down the road when economic momentum has been reestablished. This sort of Laffer curve Keynesianism, in which deficits are said to pay or largely pay for themselves through the economic expansion that deficits breed, still operates within the world view — if not the priorities — of the business class. But in the long run, the consensus of both wings of the establishment is that servicing an outsized state debt is unsustainable. It will be met — if not reined in — by draconian limitations imposed by a punitive bond market acting in preemptive fear of runaway inflation. The question is when to cut, not the certainty of doing so.
So too, the endless arguments over the health of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, one proposal no less unpalatable and reactionary than the next. Should taxes be raised in anticipation of future shortfalls? But what then becomes of an already anemic recovery? Should the age requirements be augmented or means testing be invoked to limit access to these programs or will a shift to private markets be preferable because it controls state costs by passing them on to the individual? But what then of the permanent spike in poverty among the elderly and infirm that will surely result from a market based voucher system? The Obama administration has fully accepted the premise that the budget deficit is an immanent flashpoint and has offered a program for reducing the debt by $4 trillion, while placing all social programs “on the table.” Even AARP has given the green light to throwing Social Security under the bus.
And if we don’t tackle these problems, aren’t we facing a sovereign debt crisis such as Greece and Ireland now experience with even more dramatic consequences to ourselves and world capitalism?
There is no satisfactory way out within the confines of the dominant parameters. And without an adequate and believable alternative, which socialist ideology no longer provides, the working class will acquiesce to its own victimization, each defeat further sapping its regenerative powers of resistance.
And yet on the face of it, this entire line of reasoning — which encompasses the omnibus of alternatives from A to B — is utter nonsense. Borrowing or taxing, the prior appropriation of funds, in order to finance government spending, is a self-imposed system constraint. So too are government imposed debt ceilings. They are not operational constraints. The ability of a society including a capitalist society to provide a decent existence for its elderly and disabled as well as for its working class wealth producers is not based on the ability of capital to finance state activities out of private revenues. Capital’s ability to keep economic demands held hostage to its priorities alone is. That is the reason for such prior constraint. Society’s actual ability to provide a decent and secure existence is only limited by its accumulated productive capacity, a capacity that is currently unused to the tune of approximately 25%. Even under the best of times 15-20% of capacity lies fallow. No economy can be said to be living beyond its means as long as there is excess capacity — unused factories, idle machines, and unemployed labor. So while the mainstream debates the level of austerity and sacrifice “we” should be willing to accept being imposed upon ourselves — naturally, for the sake of our “grandchildren”, the accumulated surplus labor extracted from the working class has produced a sufficient and ever growing productive structure that, if fully tapped, could readily be the source of more generous social benefits, including universal health care, deep anti-poverty programs and ample Social Security remunerations. Capital is unwilling to unlock that capacity simply because it lacks current profitable potential and because the resulting tight labor markets would embolden the working class to abandon its habits of submission and subservience to power. It has therefore so constrained the system through legal encumbrances prohibiting it for operating beyond these limitations.
More central is the ruling class concern that the output of idle capacity, once consumed by the state as a result of deficit spending, no longer functions as capital in process. Or worse still, if it were to be used by the state for commodity production, such production would introduce a form competition that would enjoy an enormous inbuilt advantage against the private sector. The bail out of the auto industry — which represented a crimped, anti-working class, microcosm of this possibility, generated howls of fear and outrage on the part of the broader business community. Either way, if consumed as revenue or put to use in state production, that excess capacity impressed into state service would be largely lost to the private accumulation process. Taxing idle balances(or borrowing, which assumes future taxes) and rechanneling them back to the private sector in the form of state purchases will, it is true, have a multiplier effect that will expand economic activity. But unless the additional profits generated through that activity exceeds the taxes needed to finance the process, the exercise has little attraction for capital beyond the immediate beneficiaries of state contracts.
And this is the crux of the matter. These constraints paralyze the public debate.
What is not clearly appreciated by the public is that current state operations are in no way operationally dependent on the prior withdrawal of funds from the private sector. Whatever may have been the true when currencies were backed by a fixed metallic content, modern money is a state issued, state enforced, fiat currency. It is no longer commodity money and is not exuded by the system through the spontaneous interfunctioning of the private sector. The historic function of the capitalist state, when currencies were gold backed, was to guarantee convertibility and thereby preserve the “soundness” (the commodity integrity) of its currency. This meant that the issuance of currency was constrained by the supply of gold in the state’s treasury. This tied the hands of government requiring it to appropriate funds (gold) from the private sector before undertaking or continuing any activity. The gold standard effectively subordinated the state to the needs of private accumulation and prevented the outsized growth of the state for fear of strangling the source of its revenue. A state which did not toe the line and debased its currency would ultimately face the prospects of insolvency. It would be compelled to transfer state properties to the financial system, thus allowing private capital to put such properties to profit-making use, before it could regain its ability to access credit markets. This reestablished the “proper” equilibrium between the state and capital.
But fiat currencies shatter and invert the inherited logic of the metallic based monetary system. Fiat currencies are not a byproduct of private commerce. They are a creature of the state, which has a monopoly on its issuance. Of course, the point of reference here are political entities that are sovereign, not in the juridical sense, but with respect to the issuance of currency. Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain for instance are no more capable of issuing fiat currency than are California or Wisconsin. That being understood, fiat issuing entities — such as the US, Britain, China and the EU — have to spend in order to inject liquidity into the system in sufficient quantity to accommodate the interests of commerce. They have to spend, that is, prior to their ability to tax; reversing the polarity of economic causality. With the advent of fiat money, taxation and borrowing no longer exist as necessary adjuncts of state appropriation.
That is, payment due for state wages, for the rental of state buildings, for the purchase of infrastructural products, to fund Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, to finance the interest due on the national debt, to share revenues with local governments, or, unfortunately, to fight imperialist wars do not require the state to mobilize funds, either in the form of additional taxes or by selling state bonds to the private sector — or foreign governments — prior to meeting its obligations. These obligations can be met simply by computer generated entries from the state into the ledgers of its private sector customers or its own self-administered trust funds, its private and foreign bond holders, and its employees’ payrolls. This adds to the budget deficit in a way that never has to be repaid, or paid down and does so at a zero rate of interest. This, as a practical fact, is how wars are financed until, that is, they become so unpopular or counterproductive that politicians conveniently awake to the discovery that the treasury is “out of money.” All of which suggests that even ruling class functionaries can with the proper motivation come to recognize that there is no functional requirement to maintain the fiction that a complex network of taxation and borrowing is the precondition for the state to function. The modern state cannot go bankrupt. The interest owed on the trade deficit is an accounting problem, not a social crisis waiting to happen. The state does not have to sell bonds to run a deficit. It does not have to tax its populace or borrow from them to pay the interest. The entire idiotic kabuki performance of haranguing over debt ceilings, debt defaults or government shutdowns, or of acquiescing to mass unemployment, or of negotiating down social benefits to keep the state afloat can all be dispensed with. There is no more imperative for the debate we are currently suffering through than there is a functional requirement to tie one’s hands behind one’s back and lap up food from a bowl like an animal. Unless, of course, one wants to experience life as a dog. Even so, reasonable individuals acknowledge that this is not a requirement of human existence. So too there is no functional requirement for workers to be kept at the level of animal insecurity merely to satisfy capital’s social need for a “sound financial policy,” a policy that periodically grinds the state under its heel, arbitrarily checking its ability to expand public consumption at the expense of capital accumulation. Once fiat money replaced commodity money, the genie of state reorganization was already released from the bottle.
This is not meant to imply that there is no further need for the state to tax and borrow. It is rather that these activities properly fulfill different functional requirements; namely to cool down an overheated economy by draining excess demand for consumption and assets that may have been induced by additional state spending. Functionally, these should be tools not for the appropriation of operating funds, but for the regulation of aggregate demand and the adjustment of interest rates needed to preserve price stability including an access to investment capital commensurate with cyclical moderation. The size of the government budget, in short, should only be determined by the shortfall of aggregate demand at levels that would otherwise accommodate full capacity utilization, with the understanding that there are no intrinsic financial constraints on federal spending, beyond those artificially imposed by capital and the political inertia yoked to it. Were these shackles not in place, resources idled by the lack of adequate profit potential could readily be translated into additional decommodified public goods and services with no cost to the consumer. Within this context, the struggle over budget priorities would take on an entirely different cast, not least of which would be the need to combine fiscal stimulus with progressive redistribution.
And if government estimates were to overshoot, building inflationary pressures, excess demand could be skimmed by introducing taxes starting at the top of the income/wealth chain and working their way down on a sliding scale, and through the sale of bonds to drive up interest rates. The government can, in other words, also run budget surpluses. But to reemphasize — the question of surpluses (or deficits) should relate solely to the management of aggregate demand, not to the financing of government operations.
The lack of aggregate demand is primarily a function of an insufficient rate of capital formation due to the chronic lack of adequate profitability. The Bush era boom masked this by means of a massive speculative housing bubble. This, like other financial bubbles, imparted to the falling rate of profit — the developmental trend of capitalism — a wave like character. But, the collapse should have been entirely predictable. The boom was based on asset stripping of the American working class, rather than on the buildup of productive capacity. Home equity was exchanged against surplus value so that declining wages could be offset and supplemented by debt fueled consumption. What remained was canalized into small business expansion and stock market purchases. The profit crises remained latent by the injection of an estimated $2.3 trillion in supplemental demand extracted from the housing market between 2003 and 2008. When this deflated, that is when the issuance of financial instruments outstripped the ability of capital to extract sufficient surplus value to service the accumulated pyramid of obligations, the financial system was forced to the brink of collapse. The hastily cobbled TARP program — a stunning exemplar in itself of ex nihilo money creation — recapitalized the hemorrhaging banks, but the restored financial system had no further interest in injecting capital back into a failing system of private production. The expansionary potential of almost half of the stimulus was thereby neutralized at inception.
Consider what might have occurred if the state had stimulated the economy from the bottom up: if the state had, for instance, abolished all taxes on the working class, including payroll taxes. And this is the most modest, most right-wing of populist friendly proposals. This would have constituted a massive wage increase at no additional expense to employers. Of course, this is simply a thought experiment. No wing of the ruling class would dare do that, unless it could also exploit the opportunity to defund the Social Security and Medicaid/care trust funds as a pretext to later abolish or diminish future benefits. But let us follow this through. Had the improbable happened, workers would have gained sufficient additional income to massively obviate the mortgage debt crisis, pay down credit cards, expand consumption out of income and build savings. As the financial intermediaries of the private sector, the banking sector would have been indirectly recapitalized and the economy massively stimulated. The imaginary responsive state would simply credit the trust funds electronically to compensate for the engineered shortfall insuring no future sacrifices could be retrofitted on a working class as it ages or becomes infirm. And, if the recapitalization of the banking system was not deep enough to penetrate up the ladder to the investment bankers and hedge fund jockeys, a layer of social parasitism would simply have been wiped out with minimal impact on the broader public.
Consider alternatively or additionally, if the federal government temporarily or even permanently assumed the financial obligations of state and local governments. These are entities that cannot create money. Again this would have involved a key stroke on the part of the federal government; entering a credit into the bank accounts of states, cities and municipalities. Like the tax holiday for payroll taxes, this proposal too would further recapitalize the banks and contribute to a meaningful reversal of the mortgage crisis as knock on effects. Demand would again be created by the feds without incurring additional tax or borrowing liabilities. There would be no loss of services, no layoffs, and no pension shortfalls. No raison d’etre for the Christies, Walkers, Kasiches and Cuomos. No answerability to Wall Street bond traders. The current capital strike would have been very effectively broken by the avalanche of additional aggregate demand that would compel idle capacity into play.
The state has the ability not to prevent but to radically reshape the character and impact of capitalist crises. But this requires in the first instance making proper use of the economic latitude accorded by the state monopoly over currency. It is this monopoly that fundamentally alters the mechanism of state operations. It liberates the state from the constraints of revenue, breaking the functional parallel between itself and the private sector where the necessity of financing its spending remains an inescapable constant. It is elite interests working their way through the political process that saddles that restraint on the system, long after its functional necessity has expired. Maintaining that symbiosis is crucial in preventing the emergence of the state as a semi-independent social factor. The point is to make that clear and to break that symbiosis. It requires the real democratization of the budget process.
And there is a mass constituency for this. It appeals not only to the working class, but to that section of the anti-tax crowd, not so drunk on racist poisons that it has lost its capacity to respond to overwhelming self-interest. It is the left and the labor movement that can provide a crucial role for this message by acting as a ginger group for this agenda. But it is equally unlikely that this will find resonance with Democratic Party elites. The Democratic Party remains a ruling class institution, not a rank and file controlled membership organization. Its pro-business agenda is set primarily by its financiers, who pepper its platform with sufficient offers of largess and decorative concessions needed to assure itself a reliable electoral base. It performs what the Republicans cannot: keeping society’s working and lower classes docile, lest their unruliness unleashes the far greater repression of Republican social thuggery. It has no interest in loosening the grip of entrenched interests over the state. The DP is a steam valve on the pressure cooker of capitalist society rather than an agent for fundamental redress. Failure to break with the Democrats, in part attributable to a lack of an independent economic perspective, chains labor to the hamster wheel of permanent retrenchment — where all previous social gains are both perpetually negotiable and all new gains vexingly provisional.
But the rationalization of the budget process combining all the modern financial tools at the state’s disposal, even if it were to open new terrain for public participation, would not be socialism. And we should be clear about this. Production and distribution would still not be managed democratically from below by society’s constituent elements. Market generated inequalities would continue to exist, though they could to a large extent be shrink fitted, and markets would continue to act in response to these disparities assuring that class privileges are faithfully reproduced. Neither would have capital relinquished its tentacled grip over the forces that shape public opinion and define the feasibility of social alternatives. And to the extent that political space is expanded, any vacuum not filled by greater democratic participation from below will be filled by managerial or bureaucratic “experts,” with the potential to develop and propagate their own independent class interests and to impose them on society. Though no panacea, unlocking the potential of modern monetary system nevertheless has the raw potential for a civilizational upgrade within capitalism.
More crucially, it in no way dispenses with the need for socialism. The functional basis of the entire system still rests on capital accumulation. The state can therefore never attain full independence from the laws that govern the contradictory process of value-expansion. The tendency to replace living labor with ever more automated production processes tends to drive down the rate of profit. Each unit of capital becomes associated with an ever declining base from which surplus value can be extracted. The NY Times, for instance, recently reported that spending on machinery and technology has increased by 26%, while spending on employees has inched up by just 2%. And the goods producing sectors of construction and manufacturing in particular have actually shed 26% of its workers. Still, as long as the rate of accumulation is sufficiently high, the fall in the rate of profit can be offset in practice by a rise in the mass of profits. When this is no longer possible, it signals the need for a purgative of excess capital values. This is the necessary deflationary function that accompanies economic downturns. It recalibrates the system by devaluing capital, allowing the aggregate production structure to recombine on a more efficient, leaner basis which leads to rationalization and the intensified exploitation of labor power. When this process works its way sufficiently through the system, it removes the previous barriers to production and reestablishes the ability to again accumulate on a profitable basis.
Effective countercyclical activity such as proposed here would paralyze that function. Removing the downward pressure on prices allows the least efficient capitals, which would otherwise first feel the brunt of the crisis, to maintain their pre-crisis values. Rather than be reorganized into a more productive capital complex, the equivalent output value of these sectors would be indirectly converted into public consumption. But capital formation is critically determined by the excess of production over consumption. The expansion of consumption without a parallel increase in productivity and capacity hinders the process of capital formation and moderates the critical rate of accumulation. And it does so in a context in which state buttressed demand creates tight labor markets compounding further the urgency to replace living labor throughout the reproduction process.
The crisis mechanism is part of the biological functioning of the system. It is the automatic feedback mechanism, the high fever, of capital that forces upon itself the need to exude the toxic poisons of excess capital before it can be restored to health. So too, the budget crisis, as it is currently waged, is an historic outgrowth of the genetic need for capitalism to suppress nonproductive state consumption and to reconcentrate, when called upon, economic resources from the state to the accumulation process. The modern state can temporize the nature of economic crises — as has been argued here — by directly, realizing a portion of produced goods outside the mechanism of the market. And it can do so effectively while dispensing with the entire labyrinthine and functionally superfluous process of budget appropriations now underway. But at length this neutralizes and reverses the function that crises otherwise perform of converting currently unprofitable capacity into conditions where its redeployment will again allow it to participate in the process of capital self-expansion
The state, therefore, can at length only expand the sphere of decommodified use-values if the accumulation of total capital is not impaired by their production. If capital cannot resume accumulation on its own terms, state-induced production will lose its driving force and become an obstacle to its resumption. This means that the state cannot avoid consciously assuming responsibility for the restructuring process that the crisis mechanism now periodically performs organically with such massive social disruption and dislocation. The alternative is long term stagnation. This of course would be a new type of stagnation — stagnation without mass unemployment, spikes in poverty and idled resources and, therefore, from an historical perspective, — a monumental step forward. But it would still be ultimately characterized by pitiably insignificant improvement in aggregate living standards; virtually a stationary state. The already low rate of capital formation in the Unites States exasperated by the claims of war, armaments production and the meager social benefits now in place have long enticed American capital to export surplus value to where more favorable investment opportunities await. A rationalized process of restructuring that supplants the haphazard social chaos of the business cycle necessarily requires a degree of social planning, an industrial policy, capital controls, aggressive infrastructural initiatives and a massive retraining program supported from below by an equally effective educational policy.
The question then unavoidably presents itself. If all this planning is needed to avoid the crisis mechanism of capitalism and to manage aggregate demand, while expanding the sphere of decommodified production and mass consumption, why should society continue to suffer the indignities, the inequalities, the oppression and exploitation of capitalism? Why not take democratic control over the sum total of surplus value and put it directly to social use?
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CPD Statements on Syria and Israel
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy issued two statements on June 9, one on the movement for democracy in Syria and the other on Israel’s brutal response to unarmed demonstrators.
CPD Salutes Syria’s Courageous Democratic Movement
June 9, 2011
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy expresses its deep admiration for the amazing courage shown by the people of Syria, struggling for democratic reforms in the face of horrific repression. Though they have been subjected to lethal force time and again, unarmed demonstrators have repeatedly taken to the streets.
Syria has been under brutal authoritarian rule for decades, and many Syrians, and others, had hoped that Bashar al-Assad would move to democratize the system. However, the past three months have shown that Assad is determined to maintain his dictatorial grip on power no matter what the cost in Syrian lives.
Despite the attempt by authorities in Damascus to prevent information from getting out, enough has been documented to show the criminal behavior of the regime.
Amnesty International has evidence of 120 people killed this past weekend alone and “has the names of 986 people reported to have been killed by the Syrian security forces during the past 11 weeks. Thousands have been arrested, with many held of them held incommunicado.”[AI, “UN urged to act following deadly weekend in Syria,” June 6, 2011.]
Human Rights Watch has reported: “Since the beginning of anti-government protests in March 2011, Syrian security forces have killed hundreds of protesters and arbitrarily arrested thousands, subjecting many of them to brutal torture in detention¼.The nature and scale of abuses, which Human Rights Watch research indicates were not only systematic, but implemented as part of a state policy, strongly suggest these abuses qualify as crimes against humanity.” [HRW, “‘We’ve Never Seen Such Horror,’” June 1, 2011.]
Among its more cynical pretenses to legitimacy, the Assad regime claims to protect the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. In response, opposition forces meeting in Antalya, Turkey, have affirmed that the Syrian people are of many ethnicities, and called for “the legitimate and equal rights of all under a new Syrian constitution based on national unity, civil state and a pluralistic, parliamentary, and democratic regime. “[Text.]
We stand with the people of Syria in their remarkable struggle for democracy.
CPD Condemns Israel's Murderous Attack on Unarmed Palestinians
June 9, 2011
Twice now, unarmed Palestinians demonstrators and their supporters from the refugee camps around Israel, adopting the tactics of the Arab Spring, have challenged the Israeli occupation and their own historic dispossession by marching on Israel’s occupation borders. And on both occasions, Israel has adopted the vicious tactics of the most ruthless Arab regimes by responding to these unarmed demonstrators with lethal force.
On May 15, Israeli officials hid behind the excuse of being unprepared for massive protests — as if they couldn’t read the same social media that the demonstrators used to organize their actions. Human Rights Watch reported: “In a too-familiar pattern, Israeli troops responded to stone-throwing youths with live bullets, with predictably deadly consequences. The evidence shows a disturbing disregard for protesters’ lives.”[HRW, “Israel: Investigate Killings During Border Protests; Troops Responded to Stone-Throwing With Live Bullets,” May 20, 2011.]
On June 5th, Israeli officials charged that the Syrian regime was responsible for the deaths because it didn’t keep people away from the Israeli-controlled frontier fence. No doubt, Damascus was happy to divert attention from its own atrocities. But this doesn't negate the fact that Israel's brutal actions were morally unacceptable — whatever Syria's motives might have been in allowing Palestinians to approach the territory that Israel has annexed in violation of Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. The demonstrators were killed in cold blood by Israeli snipers who were in no danger, acting on the orders of their superiors.
Washington too directed all its criticism at Syria. A State Department spokesperson declared: “we condemn what appears to be an effort by the Syrian Government to incite events and draw attention away from its own internal issues…. And I just would add that Israel, like any sovereign nation, has a right to defend itself.” A reporter asked, “Even if the people are unarmed?” to which the spokesperson replied in full: “But again, this is clearly an attempt by Syria to incite these kinds of protests, and they [the Israelis] have a right to protect their — this disengagement line.” [U.S. Dept. of State, Daily Press Briefing (Mark C. Toner), Washington, DC, June 6, 2011.]
The cruel and unjust Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories conquered in 1967 as well as of the Golan Heights must be ended. And so must U.S. support for the occupation.
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Hundreds of Bahrainis join call to end US support for Bahrain gov't
NEW YORK, N.Y., May 24 2011 — In a response that surprised U.S. organizers of a campaign calling on the United States government to repudiate its partnership with the Al Khalifa regime in Bahrain, hundreds of people from Bahrain joined in signing the Campaign for Peace and Democracy’s launching statement “End U.S. Support for Bahrain’s Repressive Government.”
“The statement was originally circulated for signatures in the United States, but we have been deeply moved by the fact that hundreds of Bahrainis have added their names,” said Joanne Landy, CPD Co-Director. “Given the violent government crackdown in Bahrain, the very act of signing is incredibly courageous. Bahraini signers have implored us to pressure the Obama administration to decisively repudiate its support of their brutal and authoritarian government.”
On May 16, the New York-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy (CPD) began circulating its statement, which has thus far gathered more than 1200 signatures including those of Ed Asner, Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky, Martin Duberman, Daniel Ellsberg, Mike Farrell, Chris Hedges, Adam Hochschild, Jan Kavan, Kathy Kelly, Dave Marsh, Frances Fox Piven, Katha Pollitt, Alix Kates Shulman and Cornel West. The statement is below and on the CPD website. Signatures are still being accepted. The statement will be sent to President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and key members of Congress, as well as to domestic and international media.
In the United States, Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) gave organizational endorsement to the statement. Stephen Soldz, PsySR president, stated, “We cannot be silent. Many of our members are health providers. The government of Bahrain has arrested nearly 50 doctors and other health providers, many of whom have been tortured. Their ‘crime’ is refusing to let injured protesters die and informing the world press about the abuses they witnessed. [See the report by Physicians for Human Rights.]
In the face of mounting complaints against Washington for muting its criticisms of repression in Bahrain, President Obama did say in his May 19 speech on the Middle East, “…we have insisted both publicly and privately that mass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain’s citizens. The only way forward is for the government and opposition to engage in a dialogue, and you can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail.” However, in the same speech Obama referred to Bahrain as a “friend” and partner” of the U.S., thus signaling that the massive human rights violations in that country would not stand in the way of continuing U.S. support for the regime or the continuing presence of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, a naval force supporting an interventionist foreign policy.
In words reminiscent of the Administration’s disgracefully neutral stand on the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt up until the last moment, when the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes were clearly no longer sustainable, President Obama has called on both the government and the opposition in Bahrain to “engage in dialogue.” What is needed now, however, is not episodic toothless reprimands to Bahrain’s government or pressure on the opposition to engage in dialogue with the regime, but a clear U.S. break with the Al Khalifa government. This would involve:
- An unambiguous statement from Washington that because of the atrocious government repression, Bahrain is not a “partner” or “friend” of the U.S.
- An immediate end to all U.S. aid to Bahrain
- Vigorous condemnation of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for sending in forces at the request of Bahrain’s government to back up the repression
CPD has launched this campaign in order to build pressure on Washington to stop propping up the Al Khalifa government. The brave people of Bahrain deserve no less.
For the full statement, click here.
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Swiss Labor Activists’ “Think Network” Proposes Alternatives on Public Policy
Swiss German labor activists on the left have over the last few years undertaken a project which might be of interest to those of us in North America. Denknetz or Think Network is a leftwing think tank created in 2004 by a group of labor union activists, staff members, and others to address policy issues. The fundamental principles of the group are the promotion of freedom, justice and solidarity and the view that those three things must be fundamentally linked to each other.
“We think that a collective like Denknetz can make a real contribution,” says Beat Ringger, staff member of the Swiss Public Employees Union and the Director of the project. “We recognize that some people work through building leftist political organizations and parties, and we think that’s fine—some of us are members of such groups. But we think this sort of project, that is, organizing political discussion and carrying out serious analyses, and developing alternative proposals an make a unique contribution. Since the 1990s, the Swiss German-speaking left has been fragmented, and we believe that this sort of project can help re-establish a common language, methods and ideas. We develop analyses and alternatives and off them to the left.”
The group now has 750 members, most of the German-speaking Swiss but also some French-speaking Swiss and others from Germany and other places. The group publishes articles and books and organizes about 5 to 10 forums a year on social issues of importance to the Swiss labor and social movements and to the Swiss people in general.
Since its founding Denknetz has created working groups on various issues which have published articles, position papers and books. The working groups tackle issues such as a guaranteed national income (called a “conditional income” in Europe), taxation policy, education issues, social security, informal and precarious work, the status of women and the “care economy”—child care, elder care and other issues.The organization has published a variety of position papers, six yearbooks, a book dealing with social insurances and a book on taxation to appear this summer.
“For twenty years we have had attacks on our social security system,” says Ringger. “We have a big problem with the general direction our society is heading. We argue that we have to take back money from the financial institutions and redistribute it to the society as a whole. Our first two books take up these issues.” The Great Reform: A General Earnings Insurance (Die grosse Reform: Die Allgemeine Erwertsversicherung) analyzes the current, complex Swiss workers’ insurance system and argues that it be streamlined and simplified by creating one insurance for unemployment, on-the-job injuries and health issues. A second book which is in the works The Right Course—The Right Taxes (Richtig Steuern) argues that the the Swiss people should take back five percent more of the annual GDP of the wealth of the rich to pay for social and ecological programs.
The Denknetz group also published proposals for the reorganization of the financial markets. “We believe that regulation is not enough,” says Ringger. “We think that basic banking functions such as savings and checking accounts should be in the hands of publicly owned financial institutions,” meaning something like our American credit unions.
“We need a new direction in our society,” says Ringger. “We believe that this project will help to begin to set us on a better course.”
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End U.S. Support for Bahrain's Repressive Government
[This sign-on statement organized by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy, “End U.S. Support for Bahrain’s Repressive Government,” will be of interest to many NP readers. Please support the statement by adding your name to the signer list by clicking here.]
End U.S. Support for Bahrain’s Repressive Government
Statement by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy
May 2011
On Feb. 13, 2011, inspired by the forced resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, peaceful democratic protests erupted in Bahrain. Protests grew and, in response, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa invited other Gulf states to send security forces into the country to assist in violently suppressing the demonstrators. The March 15 invasion by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates brought an intensification of torture, secret trials, demolition of Shia mosques, and repression against human rights activists, journalists, labor, lawyers, medical professionals, students, political figures, and others. On March 18 the regime destroyed the Pearl Monument that had served as the protest center.
Like many other autocracies in the region Bahrain has been a key U.S. partner. It has provided a home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, responsible for naval forces in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and the coast of East Africa as far south as Kenya. This is why Washington’s response to the vicious repression in Bahrain has been so muted and pro-forma, in contrast to forceful denunciations of repression in countries outside the U.S. orbit, such as Iran and Libya.
Richard Sollom from Physicians for Human Rights says health care workers in Bahrain have been targeted on a scale he has never encountered. Government forces have invaded hospitals; doctors have been dragged out of the operating room, abducted and detained for giving care to wounded protestors. The government says it will try 47 medical workers it accuses, incredibly, of causing the deaths of protesters by inflicting additional wounds on them.
Hundreds of workers, including union leaders, have been fired for striking for democratic change. Security forces closed down the General Bahraini Federation of Trade Unions headquarters. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights writes, “Bahrain is currently considered a dangerous zone for the freedom of press and journalists.” On April 3 the government suspended the country’s only independent newspaper, Al Wasat. On May 2 it arrested two politicians belonging to the opposition Al Wefaq party.
Bahrain’s population is 60 percent or more Shia, with the government dominated by a Sunni minority. There is systematic discrimination against the Shiite majority in political representation, employment, wages, housing, and other benefits. The government has tried to split the opposition along Shia-Sunni lines, but uprising leaders insist their struggle for democratic rights is non-sectarian.
Zainab Alkhawaja wrote to President Obama after her father, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, former head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, was beaten unconscious in front of his family and arrested by masked men: “if anything happens to my father, my husband, my uncle, my brother-in-law, or to me, I hold you just as responsible as the Al Khalifa regime. Your support for this monarchy makes your government a partner in crime. I still have hope that you will realize that freedom and human rights mean as much to a Bahraini person as it does to an American, Syrian or a Libyan and that regional and political considerations should not be prioritized over liberty and human rights.”
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, the International Crisis Group and many others have exhaustively documented the brutal terror of Bahrain’s government. No further evidence is needed. As long as the repression continues, the promise to lift the state of emergency is only an empty public relations gesture. The United States should end all aid to Bahrain, condemn the invasion by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and sharply denounce Bahrain’s horrific suppression of democratic rights.
As the Arab Spring has swept through North Africa and the Middle East, the role of the United States has been truly shameful. Washington’s rhetoric cannot conceal a deep fear of democracy. Its first instinct was to stand behind its old friends. Only when it became obvious that Ben Ali’s and Mubarak’s days were numbered were they abandoned. As for Saudi Arabia, this ultra-reactionary monarchy, with its appalling treatment of women and religious minorities, is almost never criticized by U.S. officials.
There are those who, while deploring repression in Bahrain, justify continuing U.S. support for that country’s brutal tyranny as “realism”; in a dangerous world, they argue, our security depends on having a Middle Eastern state willing to host the Fifth Fleet. This argument is profoundly mistaken. Interventionist naval forces are part of a foreign policy that, by siding with despots and pitting the United States against the Arab people’s longing for responsible government and a better way of life, guarantees endless terrorism and bloodshed and an even more dangerous world for everyone. For good reason, democratic movements around the world today do not trust the United States, which they see as motivated by imperial interest. That is why the U.S. desperately needs a new foreign policy, one that welcomes democratic forces — not hypocritically, in order to manipulate them and blunt their impact, but to stand in solidarity with their struggles to win political power for the people and achieve social and economic justice.
Ervand Abrahamian, Bashir Abu-Manneh, Frieda Afary, Janet Afary, Michael Albert, Greg Albo, Elahe Amani, Kevin B. Anderson, Stanley Aronowitz, Parvin Ashrafi, Ed Asner, Rosalyn Baxandall, William O. Beeman, Medea Benjamin, Ruth Benn, Norman Birnbaum, Blase Bonpane, Ph.D., Eileen Boris, Sam Bottone, Joan G. Botwinick, Laura Boylan, MD, Frank Brodhead, Stephen Eric Bronner, Richard J. Brown, MD, Gene Bruskin, Steve Burns, Beth Bush, Leslie Cagan, Antonia Cedrone, Noam Chomsky, Marjorie Cohn, Blanche Cook, Margaret W. Crane, Charles D’Adamo, Hamid Dabashi, Gail Daneker, Bogdan Denitch, Manuela Dobos, Tina Dobsevage, MD, Stephen R. Early, Carolyn Eisenberg, Michael Eisenscher, Daniel Ellsberg, Gertrude Ezorsky, Richard Falk, Samuel Farber, Thomas M. Fasy, MD, Dianne Feeley, John Feffer, Barry Finger, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Ron Forthofer, Ph.D., Jean Fox, David Friedman, Bruce Gagnon, Barbara Garson, Irene Gendzier, Jack Gerson, Joseph Gerson, Suzanne Gordon, John Gorman, Jules Greenstein, Arun Gupta, Ernest Haberkern, Mina Hamilton, Thomas Harrison, Nader Hashemi, Howie Hawkins, Chris Hedges, Judith A. Hempfling, Doug Henwood, Monadel Herzallah, Michael Hirsch, Adam Hochschild, Madelyn Hoffman, Nancy Holmstrom, Doug Ireland, Marianne Jackson, PhD, Melissa Jameson, Mark Johnson, Sally Jones, Toby Jones, Temma Kaplan, Jan Kavan, Kathy Kelly, Assaf Kfoury, Mina Khanlarzadeh, Ynestra King, Dan La Botz, Micah J. Landau, Joanne Landy, Roger E. Leisner, Jesse Lemisch, Traven Leyshon, Nelson Lichtenstein, Martha Livingston, Staughton Lynd, Betty Mandell, Marvin Mandell, Dave Marsh, Scott McLemee, David McReynolds, Deborah Meier, Martin Melkonian, Marilyn Morehead, Molly Nolan, Mary E. O’Brien, MD, Derrick O’Keefe, David Oakford, Rosemarie Pace, Mike Pattberg, Christopher Phelps, Charlotte Phillips, MD, Frances Fox Piven, Katha Pollitt, Charles Post, Danny Postel, Psychologists for Social Responsibiity, Bill Quigley, Saeed Rahnema, Judy Rebick, Leonard Rodberg, Richard Roman, Bruce Rosen, Ruth Rosen, Elizabeth R. Rosenthal, MD, Peter Rothberg, Matthew Rothschild, John Sanbonmatsu, Jennifer Scarlott, Jay Schaffner, Jason Schulman, Peter O. Schwartz, Azadeh Shahshahani, Stephen R. Shalom, Cindy Sheehan, Alix Kates Shulman, Gar Smith, Stephen Soldz, Stephen Steinberg, Cheryl Stevenson, Paul L. Street, Bhaskar Sunkara, David Swanson, William K. Tabb, Jonathan Tasini, Peter Tatchell, Chris Toensing, Bernard Tuchman, Adaner Usmani, Judith Podore Ward, Lois Weiner, Peter Weiss, Naomi Weisstein, Laurie Wen, Cornel West, Billy Wharton, Reginald Wilson, Sherry Wolf, Kent Worcester, Julia Wrigley, and Leila Zand.
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Human rights activist Mazin Qumsiyeh has been arrested by Israeli soldiers
Human rights activist, Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, was arrested by Israeli soldiers along with two other Palestinians on early May 15, 2011 (Israel time) as he took part in non-violent, peaceful civil disobedience with people from many countries. Mazin’s newsletter is one of the most valuable sources of information about the Palestinian struggle for justice I’ve come across. I think his courage, integrity, and empathic way of discussing the terrible treatment of the Palestinian people is a model for social justice activists throughout the world. Elsewhere in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and Golan Heights, dozens of people were wounded, including more that 150 at Qalandia checkpoint, during the Nakba events. (Nakba marks the creation of the state of Israel and is the occasion for protests against Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians.) The Israeli government is now debating legislation that would ban Nakba protests.
We are asked to contact the US State Department, Senators, and Congresspersons about Israeli violations of human rights during Nakba and Mazin’s continued detention.
A video of Mazin being arrested is on youtube. -
Harvard’s embrace of Christie – shameful but not surprising
Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) at one time had space for progressive ideas, (that’s where I earned my doctorate) but it was never a “liberal bastion.” True HGSE had space for critique of US society, but the culture and institutional structure were dominated by the very wealthy annoyed that their children had to be exposed to critiques of US society in order to get the Harvard credential to which they consider themselves entitled. As neoliberal thinking has permeated US society, HGSE has been making its ideological contribution to the struggle, on behalf of the advantaged, masking its shift in the rhetoric of supporting equal educational opportunity. HGSE gets much of its money from foundations funded by what Diane Ravitch has termed the “Billionaire Boys Club” (BBC hereafter) and directly from the guys themselves.
So the term BBC accurately conveys the class nature of the attack on public education. However, there’s much more to this mammoth social engineering we’re witnessing. As I explain in a panel with Ravitch and a piece for NP, this is an international political project that aims to satisfy capitalism’s most ardent desire, a compliant workforce. The project requires destruction of teachers unions, which are the most stable and potentially powerful force to protect the structures of public education and teachers’ potential to convey ideals of democracy and social justice that threaten the behemoth. Howard Stevenson puts this well:
“Teachers deal with ideas, and the importance of their ideological function is well understood. There is of course nothing inevitable about what teachers do or how they work – education has the power both to reproduce and transform, and will always contain elements of both and be a struggle between both. Teachers do not automatically work in progressive ways – but it is their potential to work in critical and transformatory ways that mean they are always a threat to the established social order.”
In welcoming a governor who has built his political career by bullying teachers and making clear his goal of destroying teachers unions, HGSE does not surprise. Of a piece with inviting an avowed union-buster is the refusal to tenure Mark Warren, a faculty member whose research and activity demonstrated commitment to democratic school reform. The sort of bastion HGSE is and has always been is one of social privilege. HGSE’s contribution on the wrong side of the class struggle has just changed along with the rich and powerful who have always controlled the media and institutions. They no longer think they have to allow space for critique.
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Rebels in Industry: A Story Told Well, and One Worth Telling
Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s
Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, and Cal Winslow, eds.
Verso, 2010. $29.95Wordsworth's paean to the French revolution, "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!" doesn't appear in Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s. It should.
The notion of rising with a people risen was as true for the radical generation of the 1960s, as it was for any period when rulers seemed incapable of ruling in the old way and the ruled — certainly a significant portion of young working people — refused to play along. Historian David Montgomery called the period of working class ferment "a rebellion from below." It was.
And it was an important decade, the long period roughly from the New York transit strike of 1966 to Reagan's crushing of the air traffic controllers' job action in 1981. In the early-to mid-1970s alone, miners, longshore, auto and railroad workers, teachers and construction workers went on both official and wildcat strikes not only for better wages and benefits but also for an end to hideous working conditions.
Jimmy Carter's calling out the federal troops couldn't get the mines working and even the air traffic controllers, whose union (PATCO) had endorsed Ronald Reagan, walked off their jobs. It took the virtual collapse of the manufacturing sector with its millions of permanent layoffs, a shift in investment away from manufacturing and the Reagan recession to drive that movement underground. It would be a mistake to read this valuable and exceptionally informed book as glorification of one more contender for the "Greatest Generation" prize, nor is it pure validation for "industrializing," one approach to labor organizing favored by some radicals of that period. With the exception of a passing reference in two of the 13 essays, no socialist groups are mentioned.
The emphasis is on, as co-editor Cal Winslow writes in his introduction, in words reminiscent of the late Edward Thompson, "a chapter in the history of an important decade," as well as "a rescue mission, a history of the workers movement in those years — from the bottom up." It charts, in 13 separate and well-informed essays covering industrial and social struggles and the larger national and international contexts, how an insurgent movement of workers was growing. It was a movement whose demands outstripped not just the politics of liberalism but the vision even of those labor leaders who — with the notable exceptions of the Machinists' William Winpisinger and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers' maverick Tony Mazzocchi — called themselves progressives.
There are lessons to be learned here for a new generation of militants, including what worked, what didn't and why. Certainly one weakness — which the authors don't adequately address because of their emphasis on self-activity, rank-and-file initiatives, and an evident reluctance to wage old wars by making convenient historical points about political strategy — was precisely the politics of the radicals who industrialized. Quite consciously guided by Rosa Luxemburg's wise maxims that "those who do not move, do not notice their chains" and that "chains must be broken where they are forged," many defined this condition narrowly, as forged only (or primarily) at the workplace.
They also prided themselves on an anti-electoral stance even as corporate America was consolidating itself around neoliberal policies that outsourced jobs and reasserted the primacy of finance capital. In effect too much of the industrialized left gave too little thought to putting forward and organizing for alternative policy programs or engaging in local political campaigns, even as many of their own prized rank-and-file militants did. Nor did they have a vehicle for selling those programs in the cases, especially in steel, where such plans were put forward.
But a more charitable view is that these young radicals (and I was one of them) were like Aesop's hedgehog — they knew one big thing. That big thing is common coin among community organizers today — that without a base of support the best plans of the most foresighted policy makers would die on the drafting table or in the seminar room or in a legislator's front office. They knew that government and corporations could only be forced to concede and initiate reforms with massive pressure, and at the workplace and not (or not just) at the ballot box. That's necessary if insufficient wisdom, but wisdom nonetheless.
This review originally appeared in the spring 2011 issue of Democratic Left.
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More national standardized testing is planned – but resistance is growing too
The Obama administration is surreptitiously moving forward with its program to increase, vastly, resources devoted to standardized testing. Stephen Krashen and Susan Ohanian explain the blueprint in their excellent post in Education Week. A counter-movement, SOS, (Save our Schools), has emerged among teachers, who are planning a march on and in Washington to save public education, on July 30. It’s truly astounding how little news about the growing opposition among teachers in the country, or the extraordinary resistance in the rest of the world, reaches us in the U.S. through our popular media.
Another heartening development is that teachers who have not before thought of unions as vehicles for organizing about social justice – or defense of public education for that matter – are realizing they have to “own” the unions, democratize them and make them use their (still) considerable resources to mobilize against these destructive policies being in put in place by President Obama.SOS has called on teachers to recruit their union locals to join the march. The AFT national executive board has given the march its official approval. Put one point in the common sense column. Whether the AFT national apparatus will actually do anything to build the march is quite another question. Its usual idea of “support” is to send staffers to appear at the rally in AFT T-shirts, have its PR people take lots of photos, especially if the union president is a speaker, then publicize its support in the union newspaper and website, and refer to this “support” when questioned about its lack of involvement in progressive causes.
Last I heard, the NEA national office had endorsement of the march on its agenda. If the NEA can be pressured to endorse and actually build the mobilization, the AFT will feel pressure to do likewise. This would be an important reversal of the “race-to- the-right” to gain political brownie points from the Democrats — and Republicans — that characterizes AFT and NEA politics.The July 30 march is an action that deserves support from anyone who cares about having a system of public education that does more than prepare kids to work as wage slaves, which is the real purpose of all this standardized testing. Can’t attend on July 30? Me neither so I’ve made a donation. I encourage you to do the same.
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Once Again on Libya
The basic issue for socialists in confronting the Libyan situation is this: we wish Qaddafi to be defeated, but we are not indifferent to who defeats him. That is because who defeats Qaddafi involves how the regime is brought down and the consequences of that downfall. We are not in support of capitalist imperialism being the agent of that defeat, even though almost any conceivable regime that replaces Qaddafi would most likely be a “lesser evil” to this, one of the world’s most horrific police states.
It follows that any alternative that imperialism would summarily impose on the Libyan people would subordinate the ability of that nation to fully exercise their freedom to develop to the needs of capitalist accumulation. That is also why we refuse to endorse any imperialist lashup, such as resulted in Iraq or Afghanistan or which imperialists may be cooking up for Iran. These are obscene regimes, but we cannot condone actions which would replace one exploiter with another under the guise of “promoting democracy” or “humanitarian interests.” We do not, in more general terms, recognize — much less endorse — the moral or political legitimacy of one set of exploiters and oppressors to selectively displace another under whatever clever packaging imperialists currently employ to market their ambitions.
How then do we apply these principles to a situation in which freedom fighters, heavily outgunned and struggling simply to survive, ask — in desperation — for a limited imperialist intervention on an “enemy of my enemy” basis, as opposed to offering a quid pro quo? How do we distinguish our response when imperialists are asked by a legitimate leadership group for limited assistance from those unilateral interventions in which these same imperialists simply arrogate to themselves the unquestioned right to impose their will, unchecked and unqualified, by a legitimate oppositional democratic force?
Historically, socialists have distinguished between calling upon their own capitalist governments to give arms and aid to insurgencies that we support and the right of these insurgencies to arm themselves through whatever channels they can establish, even with imperialist powers. We reject the first alternative because it entails taking responsibility for involving imperialism in the conflict. Were we to do that, we would also have to accede in how imperialism chooses to provide this aid and to accept as legitimate the advantages imperialism seeks to attain through its involvement.
Conversely, we accept the latter proposition in deference to the unchallenged right of all embattled democratic forces — including those fighting under authoritarian or bourgeois leaderships whose victory nevertheless does not foreclose broader democratic openings — to seek an edge wherever they can find it.
The Irish rebels of 1916, according to third camp lore, accepted aid from German imperialism. If that were true, no revolutionist would have questioned the right of the Irish rebels to accept such arms, which the German government offered for its own reasons. That is, it would have been unchallenged as long as no strings were attached. Needless to say, this did not mean that Liebknecht and Luxemburg were called upon to request this aid from the Kaiser. Similarly, no socialist would have repudiated the right of Hungarian revolutionaries in 1956 from calling for aid from anywhere they could get it, including the Western powers. This did not oblige American socialists to ask Eisenhower and the CIA, not to mention the American military to intervene on Hungary’s behalf. The point is not our attitude towards the revolution, but our attitude toward our own imperialist government. We cannot raise demands that we cannot support.
Along these lines, American socialists supported the call to lift the arms embargo on the Spanish loyalists during the civil war, while refusing to ask our government to send arms to the republicans.
The capitalist democracies famously refused to answer the call from the Spanish democracy. Had they done so, the capitalists would have been free to choose who among the rebels to privilege, what arms to furnish, the schedule of deliveries they would adhere to, as well as the political terms around which they were willing to premise their aid. The desperation of the loyalists would have provided imperialism with a powerful set of tools to exact concessions from the rebels. Needless to say, we socialists would have advised the revolutionists, that unless they — like the Irish rebels of 1916 — could accept such aid as democratic imperialism was willing to offer without making a political deal in exchange, they would have our full support.
But what if an insurgency is unable to satisfy these terms? How then would we gauge our response? What if “an enemy of our enemy” basis is insufficient and imperialism seeks concrete concessions, or seeks to shape outcomes or exploits openings to burnish its image?
This is the crux of our dilemma with the Libyan situation. Up until now we have been successfully spared this conundrum. But that is also our problem. There are no obvious historical precedents to guide us, no historical lessons upon which we can draw. The imperial powers stated, in essence, that they would not release Qaddafi’s funds to the rebels, nor would they relax the arms embargo to the advantage of the democrats. They refused, in effect, to engage the rebels on an “enemy of our enemy” basis. Otherwise it would have been a matter of indifference to the West as to how they channeled this aid. The Western powers agreed, however, to answer the desperate call — a call to which the imperialists themselves are deeply implicated for failing to eliminate the embargo — and provide a no fly zone. We do not know what, if any, deals were exacted, but we do know, assuming that an actual NATO ground invasion is out of the question, that this is where the principle danger resides. Otherwise the refusal to lift the embargo remains — if not to exert political pressure or condition outcomes, in no small part, a mystery.
Let us examine a few of the Left responses. Among anti-imperialist fundamentalists, Western aid in the form of direct military intervention at any level, either clarifies or redefines the dynamic. For that camp, it is Qaddafi who is seen as fighting an anti-imperialist war. And it is very difficult to understand why this conclusion would have been markedly different had imperialism simply lifted the embargo and either armed or allowed the insurgency to arm itself. It is not the nature of the intervention but the fact of intervention that is crucial to this position.
In its most primitive form, this anti-imperialist fundamentalism entails actively politicking for Qaddafi as a genuine face of Arab independence and dignity. At a step down are those who, recognizing the repugnant nature of the regime, would have socialists extend military, but not political support to the Libyan police state.
A somewhat weaker response along the same lines is the assertion that socialists no longer have a stake in this fight. Neither side, they argue, can any longer be relied upon to advance interests aligned to the needs of the Libyan people. The rebels by their choice of involving imperialism died a moral death and socialists have no obligation to save them from the physical destruction that they brought upon themselves.
All factions of this anti-imperialist fundamentalism would raise the demand for an immediate halt to the imperialist intervention.
These responses are distant enough from the traditions of third camp socialism as to not require any extended response here. This is not to claim that there are no self-identified third campists who lobby for these positions; only that they are no longer arguing within a tradition that we clearly recognize as our own.
More pertinent are those who do not withhold their support for the insurgency, but would also, and above all else, actively intervene to demand an immediate halt to the imperialist enforced no fly zone. They have balled themselves into a knot, insisting incoherently that actions which would cleanse the perceived political stain from the rebels, that restores their unchallenged revolutionary “agency” — even if it results in their certain demise — is an act, not of treachery, but of unvarnished even unparalled solidarity.
I think there is no escaping the conclusion that more crucial than the success of the rebels, from this vantage, is denying imperialism a platform to influence outcomes or repackage its image.
Perhaps I am being overly generous here. Most of those who make the demand to halt the bombings, but who also claim to support the rebels, have not spelled out why precisely they find one form of imperial intervention and intrusion acceptable — the delivery of arms, while condemning another — the no fly zone. Both forms of intervention are limited. They do not involve an imperialist invasion and the displacement of the rebels to auxiliary status It is still the rebels who are doing the fighting and dying. The distinction is therefore only rational under the unspoken assumption that an elimination of the arms embargo alone would have signaled a “no strings attached” policy, while the NFZ is indicative of something else entirely.
They have in any case confused themselves with the rebels. Socialists, having complete distrust in the motivations and designs of this intervention, did not call for a no fly zone and did not ask the imperialists to intervene. They are not implicated by the fact that an insurgency that they support did. They — and by that I mean, we — are similarly under no political obligation to call an immediate halt to activities that we did not call for, but which as things now stand permit the rebels to regroup, to consolidate and to extend their national alliances. And this is doubly so, if we have no viable alternative to offer.
We would not of necessity call a halt to the delivery of arms if the embargo had been lifted and imperialism had exercised its leverage through means of extortion on that basis, as it might equally have, the semi-apocryphal case of Ireland notwithstanding. And we need not do so now. The rebels have opened the door to the imperialists to shape the conflict, but not wide enough to determine and dictate the outcome. If we accept that proposition, as I do, then we are under no obligation to politically sabotage actions, from whatever source, that may permit the rebels a slim chance of military victory, and therefore, the hope for democracy. If we do not accept that proposition, if we believe that imperialism is now in complete control, we have no further justification for continuing to support the rebellion. Political choices seldom conveniently present themselves in black and white. It is through the murky grayness that we have to feel our way to creative alternatives.
That does not compel us to deny the real dangers that victory under such circumstances portends. This may be uncharted territory, but it is also the terrain in which the issue of revolutionary solidarity — of socialist internationalism — is decisive. We need, first, to forthrightly denounce the pretensions under which this intervention was undertaken. We must be clear that it has nothing to do with humanitarian interests and everything to do with establishing some level of imperialist credibility with the Arab masses in revolt. We can say in advance that we reject any imperialist mediation in the struggle and insist that this, should it come to a question of mediation, only be carried out under the auspices of regional elements sensitive to democracy such as NGOs from Tunisia and Egypt might provide.
Beyond that, it is our duty to proclaim that any concessions made to imperialism in exchange for the no fly zone, were made under duress and cannot be seen as a binding quid pro quo on any future Libyan government. We will do our best to expose these conditions as we become aware of them and will fight along with honest Libyan democrats and socialists to nullify them. If economic concessions were demanded, we will fight our ruling class, with whatever meager political resources we can muster, to annul them. If political concessions in the form of future alliances or military bases are expected, we will dedicate our assistance in breaking them. If imperialism seeks to raise the Karzais and the Chalabis from the nether ranks of the insurgency and impose them on the Libyan nation, we will mount a campaign to expose this for the democratic fraud it is and mobilize domestic and international opinion against it.
What I advocate here is that socialists show our support for the Libyan insurgency by actively fighting for the conditions under which a democratic foreign policy can be domestically understood and raise these issues in a way that clearly distinguished our position from the simple America first-ism of anti-war liberalism and the confused anti-imperialism of the “halt the bombings now” stripe. The point is to make our case to the vast majority of Americans who have no stake in the preservation of imperialism and do so in a manner commensurate with the aim of relocating them from the camp of dismissive cynics of Arab struggles to the camp of engaged allies of a democratic Libya and Arab East.
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Nasrallah on Libya
The left discussion on Libya has been informed by very few of the Middle East’s anti-imperialist voices. In an article posted on ZNet, I present extended excerpts from a March 19 speech by Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Hizbullah, on the Libyan uprising, the Arab revolts, and the role of the West.
Nasrallah dismisses the claim that the Arab revolts were choreographed in Washington. He expresses solidarity with the Libyan opposition, and warns of the dangers of Western intervention — whose motives are entirely hypocritical. He does not, however, condemn the no-fly zone or call for its immediate lifting.
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Libya: Another View
The Libyan intervention has challenged many on the Left. Of course there are those who cheer U.S. foreign policy everywhere and those who think Qaddafi is a left hero. But for those who reject both these points of view, the Libyan situation has still been very difficult to sort out. Mike Albert and I wrote a question and answer offering our views.
We take the position that protection of the rebels from imminent slaughter by means of a no-fly zone and a no-drive zone was justified in principle despite the sordid hypocrisy of the intervening powers. However, the actual UN Security Council resolution 1973 was far too open-ended and imposed too few constraints on the intervening powers to ensure that the moral and human benefits would exceed the moral and human costs.
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CPD Statement on Libya
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy has issued a statement “We Support the Libyan Democratic Revolution and Oppose Western Military Intervention and Domination.” Please circulate it widely.
We Support the Libyan Democratic Revolution and
Oppose Western Military Intervention and DominationBy Thomas Harrison and Joanne Landy
Co-Directors, Campaign for Peace and Democracy
April 6, 2011The Campaign for Peace and Democracy stands in solidarity with the Libyan revolution. Even the brutal Qaddafi regime, bloated with oil wealth, defended by thousands of mercenaries, and ruling over a hollowed-out civil society, could not prevent a challenge from below. As is the case with all the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, the Libyan revolt holds the promise not only of democracy but also, along with political freedom, the emergence of a new left and labor movement that can offer an alternative to today’s violent, exploitative and unequal world order.
At first, Libyans protested peacefully against Qaddafi’s regime. Then, in the face of a vicious attack, they defended themselves with their own arms, helped by numerous defectors from the Libyan army. As the Qaddafi forces reached the outskirts of Benghazi, the U.S. decided to support the calls from the rebels – and the British and French – for a no-fly zone. At that point, the Libyan Transitional National Council’s request was for a strictly limited intervention, explicitly excluding ground forces and aimed only at neutralizing Qaddafi’s air force. Since the Libyans believed they faced the threat of an imminent massacre, their appeal was totally understandable. Likewise, it was understandable that many progressive, normally anti-interventionist, supporters of the Libyan revolution throughout the world called for a no-fly zone as well, especially because the Libyans themselves had asked for it.
While respecting the impulse behind this position, however, we do not support U.S. and European air and naval operations in Libya. UN Security Council resolution 1973 provided for a no-fly zone, but military intervention by the U.S. and Europe was much more than that right from the beginning, as was predictable given their history, relationship to North Africa and the Middle East, and imperial appetites. The operation, which is now under NATO command, immediately became a campaign to oust Qaddafi on behalf of western interests.
NATO bombing is now forecast to continue for at least three more months, and an eventual invasion and occupation are possible if the situation isn’t resolved to the satisfaction of the western powers. U.S. and British secret service agents have been in eastern Libya for weeks, and appear to be assuming a growing role in military training, directing NATO air strikes, and perhaps political guidance for the National Council. Intervention may have prevented a massacre in Benghazi, but at the same time it has inserted NATO’s power into Libya, at the heart of a region in democratic turmoil, and dangerously compromised the political independence of the Libyan revolution.
A “surgical” strike, limited to protecting civilians in Benghazi, was never a real possibility; the U.S. and Europe are not available for one-shot genuinely humanitarian intervention in a major oil-producing region. Libya’s revolution needs to remain in Libyan hands; western military intervention directly contravenes that goal and paves the way for western domination of all or part of Libya.
In fact, NATO’s attack on Libya may well end up strengthening the hand of Qaddafi and other regional dictators by allowing them to pose as defenders of national self-determination, especially if air strikes end up maiming and killing large numbers of civilians, as they have in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In his relations with the west, Qaddafi went from pariah to partner, but Libya under his rule was never a dependable partner, like Saudi Arabia or Mubarak’s Egypt. There is no evidence that the United States or the European powers planned Qaddafi’s overthrow or even expected it before February 2011. But when the Libyan revolution broke out, after hesitating for a couple of weeks, they decided to intervene, reportedly working furiously behind the scenes to obtain Arab League support to legitimize their intervention – support which, incidentally, almost instantly evaporated once Operation Odyssey Dawn had begun. The western powers might well have been willing to deal with Qaddafi in power indefinitely, since he had granted plenty of access to Libya’s oil, collaborated in the sordid “rendition” program, and helped prevent African refugees from getting to Europe. However, once the situation became unstable they sought to assert more reliable control over Libya and its resources. With France and Britain pressing strongly for a no-fly zone, the United States may have felt that it was politically impossible to remain on the sidelines, both because Washington did not want to have its leadership position in NATO compromised by sitting this one out and because it wanted to assure that the U.S. would be in a position to reap the greatest gains in the aftermath of the conflict.
The United States and Europe both want to prevent the coming to power of a government that uses Libya’s oil revenues to satisfy domestic popular needs, not to enrich itself and western corporations. The intervention was an opportunity to try to gain enough influence over the revolution to steer it in a direction favorable to western interests. This is all the more important because western powers have suffered a major setback with the ouster of friendly dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, as a result of which their power in North Africa and the Middle East is shakier than ever. It is especially true for the United States, which has also bungled its attempt to establish stable, cooperative client states in Iraq and Afghanistan, and whose credibility will likely suffer further as newly democratized Tunisia and Egypt, under the pressure of public opinion, reassess their relations with Washington’s foremost regional client, Israel.
U.S. and European intervention is part of an emerging counterrevolution that threatens to blunt, or even reverse, the democratic promise of the Arab Spring. Despots in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and Syria have been increasingly cracking down on popular insurgencies, and in Egypt the military is moving to safeguard its power and curb radical reform, possibly in alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian military has so far refused to end the state of emergency and has tried, fortunately without much success, to ban strikes and demonstrations. Except in the case of Syria, all of this has almost certainly taken place with the tacit approval, and perhaps the direct connivance, of Washington – and even the repression in Syria has evoked only feeble protests from U.S. officials. In Yemen, Washington is reported to be moving away from support to President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the eleventh hour, as his rule becomes totally unviable, and favoring the transfer of power to a provisional government led by Saleh’s vice president, who the U.S. hopes will follow in the compliant footsteps of the present Yemeni government. Political leaders in the United States, and the corporate, military and political elites they serve, have a deep and vested interest in containing the revolutions now sweeping the Arab world. Lending support to their armed incursions would simply facilitate their success in this reactionary endeavor.
The Libyan National Council originally called not only for a no-fly zone, but also for western nations to hand over Qaddafi’s frozen assets so they could purchase arms. It is revealing that the U.S. and Europe have so far neither supplied arms directly nor provided an opening for the rebels to acquire the weapons they desperately need. Of course, channeling weaponry to the Libyan National Council would also be a means of acquiring political leverage for the west, but that could be mitigated by the rebels acquiring weapons from diverse sources. In any event, the Council is not definitively under the control of the west at this point; it still seems to rest on a measure of popular support and to be at least somewhat accountable to Libyans — NATO, obviously is not.
As long as the Libyan revolution expresses the striving of the mass of Libyan people for democracy and social justice, it must command the support of progressives everywhere. But that support cannot extend automatically to every political decision the Libyan rebels make, especially when we have good reason to believe that certain decisions undermine their ability to replace the cruel Qaddafi regime with a system of people’s power and enhance the retrograde influence of the western powers throughout the region; this is the great danger of the rebels’ willingness to accept NATO as a full partner. There can be little doubt that NATO’s increasing role in the struggle against Qaddafi helps promote the most pro-western elements in the National Council – former Qaddafi officials, emigrés with CIA connections, etc. – and strengthens them in relation to more progressive, anti-imperialist forces.
It should be remembered that other oppressed peoples have desperately called for great power intervention on their behalf – with fatal results. In 1994, in the face of ferocious repression, Haitians appealed to the United States to reinstall Bertrand Aristide; the result was an occupation (as in Libya, under the imprimatur of the UN) that persists to this day, a U.S.-sponsored coup that forced Aristide out of the country, a corrupt and undemocratic government, and ongoing desperate poverty arising out of U.S.-imposed economic policies. [Joanne Landy’s Op-Ed opposing U.S. intervention in Haiti was published in the August 7, 1994 issue of The New York Times.] Besieged Muslim Bosnians and Kosovar Albanians called for help from NATO; the results were permanent ethnic partition in Bosnia and the creation of a gangster state in Kosovo. Many Iraqis initially greeted U.S. troops as liberators from the hated rule of Saddam Hussein; but Iraq’s “liberation” immediately turned into a nightmare of bloody U.S. repression and sectarian strife.
Since the end of the Cold War, military interventions by the United States and its allies have become more and more frequent, with disastrous consequences not only for the populations involved, but also for the left and the antiwar movement globally. To the extent that progressives and antiwar activists defend these interventions, they provide unintentional political cover for what are in fact exercises in imperial aggression – and help justify future bloody interventions.
If our goal is a democratic world of self-determining peoples, free from imperialist domination, then the strategies we support should point with consistency toward the achievement of that goal. As long as the wealthy and powerful have the means to impose their will by force, they will prevent such a world from coming into being. NATO is one of their strongest weapons. We cannot support its incursions, even when they are disguised as efforts to protect civilian lives. This is especially important in North Africa and the Middle East, where western powers have a vital interest in preventing a real seizure of power by the Arab masses. The challenge that faces radical democratic movements around the world today is to find ways of offering meaningful solidarity and support to one another, rather than lending added legitimacy to the very forces that stand in our way. As future crises develop, this challenge will become more and more urgent.
The insurgency in Libya, and democratic movements throughout North Africa and the Middle East will undoubtedly face painful setbacks as well as heartening victories as the revolutionary process unfolds. In Libya, we hope that it’s not too late for the popular insurgency to retrieve its independence. Its true friends in the region and around the globe are grassroots movements, unions, peace and human rights activists, with similar democratic goals.
More than any event in decades, the Arab Spring has opened up the prospect of a better world, a world in which the fate of billions is no longer at the mercy of power-hungry, self-aggrandizing elites. At home, the wave of democratic revolutions offers an opportunity for those of us who have long opposed U.S. foreign policy and its reliance on authoritarian governments, military intervention, and reactionary economic policies to convince ordinary Americans that another road is possible and in their best interests.
The authors are thankful to Frank Brodhead for his help with this statement.
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Nuclear armageddon and the experts
New Politics readers will be interested in reading Mina Hamilton’s sharp analysis of Japan’s nuclear crisis in her recent article on Dissident Voice. Since the article was published on March 16, Mina has added the following note:
“The latest: radioactive steam continues to pour out of several stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex. All six reactors now appear to be in trouble. Gregory Jaczko, the Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, appears before the US Congress. Warning of ‘extremely high radiation,’ Jaczko says one irradiated fuel pool is totally without coolant. Meanwhile, Japan desperately tries to provide sea-water coolant via helicopters and water-cannons.”
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Solidarity With Zimbabwean Political Prisoners
[The following appeal has been endorsed by New Politics as well as The Nation, The Progressive, and the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, among others.]
Six people in Zimbabwe are now imprisoned on charges of treason for organizing a meeting to discuss the mass movements in Tunisia and Egypt. For this “crime” they face a possible death sentence. They have been tortured and are now in solitary confinement.
An international day of action to demand their release will be held on Monday, March 21, when they are scheduled for a court hearing.
Our message is simple and urgent: We demand that the government of Zimbabwe drop all charges and release them immediately.
Plans are underway for demonstrations in a number of countries. We urge concerned people everywhere to join us in organizing meetings and demonstrations in solidarity with the prisoners. Please translate and distribute this appeal as widely as possible. Let us know know what you are doing at the contact addresses below.
The worldwide significance of the struggle to free the Zimbabwean prisoners is reflected in a recent statement of support from the Congress of South African Trade Unions. “The Egyptian and Tunisian experience have inspired many workers and poor people all over the world to stand up and demand an end to dictatorship, corruption and injustice of whatever kind.”
The arrest and prosecution of the six may seem like only the latest round of repression by Robert Mugabe’s government against opponents. But it is also an attack on the spirit of Tahrir Square, which has inspired people all over the world. The six prisoners include trade unionists, intellectuals, and activists in the struggle for women’s rights. The effort to suppress them — and even to kill them, whether by execution or through torture and denial of medical treatment while in custody — is a vicious assault on all of us.
To learn more about the six prisoners and the struggle for their release, see the website Free Them Now! and the Facebook group (open to non-Facebook users) Calling for the Release of Zimbabwean Activists.
To join the March 21 actions, please send a message to both of these addresses: zimtreasontrial@gmail.com and solidarity@freethemnow.com
For more information on events in the United States, see this blog.
