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  • Cockroft: Mexico’s Revolution Then and Now

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

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

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

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

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

  • Support for Tunisia's democratic revolution

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

  • Invidious Comparisons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Explaining Poverty

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

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

  • Actually-existing Islamic movements and states

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

  • “Take a Hike, Gimpy”

    New York City plans to have even more inaccessible taxis

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Jesse Lemisch, jesse.lemisch@verizon.net.

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

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

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

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

    References

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

  • The political gangbang of WikiLeaks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Obama's Dangerous Escalations

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

  • Gloria Steinem and Diane Ravitch: Who's making the feminist case?

    Here’s how Gloria Steinem  announced her support of Bloomberg’s designation of Cathleen Black as NYC Schools Chancellor: “I’ve known Cathie Black for more than three decades, and I know she turns the impossible into success. In the beginning of New York Magazine and Ms. Magazine, she earned advertising support in a world still run by Mad Men, and at USA Today, she achieved a popular national newspaper that experts said couldn’t exist. As the first woman to be president of the Hearst Corporation, she initiated its most successful publication, “O” Magazine. Now, her abilities as a publisher are being held to a different standard than Joel Klein as a prosecutor, even though she is on the board of a Harlem magnet school. In short, she has a hard path to an impossible job — which is exactly why she’ll succeed. I support her because I know New Yorkers — especially students — will be very glad she’s there.”

    One irony in Steinem’s actions is that Diane Ravitch, now a relentless critic of the  Bloomberg/Klein reforms,  made her name in education as a neoconservative by blasting attempts of women and minorities to be included in curriculum. Much to her credit, Ravitch exposes the harm done by the reforms every place she can get a podium. Though Ravitch doesn’t cast her argument against the neoliberal reforms in feminist terms, her defense of teaching as a profession and the rights of teachers to have strong unions is what feminists should be saying and doing.

    Steinem’s clearly hasn’t learned what was wrong with a definition of “sisterhood” that excludes the economic concerns of poor and working women. Her defense of Black displays the same arrogant insularity and class hubris of middle class professional women displayed in the early days of the women’s movement.  I saw these attitudes up close when I became involved in a struggle about California’s protective legislation.  When the movement to adopt Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) went to the states, ERA supporters were often pitted against advocates (mainly trade unions) of laws that required employers to protect women against physical exploitation in the workplace. The ERA would have wiped out protective legislation.  Laws varied from state to state, but in California they required employers to give women regular breaks, drinking water and toilet facilities on the job site, and weight-lifting limits. Sometimes the laws were used as a rationale for discimination in hiring (“We have no toilet for women to use, so we can’t hire you.”) Sometimes the protections were extended to men because it was more practical for employers to do so. Labor union activists in California, under leadership of Anne Draper, tried, unsuccessfully, to have the laws extended to all workers. The affluent professional women who led the struggle for the ERA’s adoption sneered, literally and figuratively, at the need for laws that safeguarded workplace hygiene and safety. 

    Gloria Steinem’s very public support for Bloomberg’s appointment of Cathleen Black (and can we please call her by her full name and not “Cathy”? Was Joel Klein “Joey”?) is a sneer, intended or not, at lots of women who work for a living. It was feminist only in one sense: Black is a woman.
    This is feminism? Not to me.  Steinem supported not only an ill-suited candidate but also the Mayor’s right to make this decision without consultation with the people most involved in children’s education – women, teachers and mothers. They’ve been denied voice about their children’s fate – as have been New York’s citizens.  Probably about 50% of those citizens are women too.

  • Waiting for Superman? The title says it all

    The critique of “Waiting for Superman,” available mostly in the blogosphere, indicates that a backlash against the neoliberal project in education is developing. No doubt you’ve seen the barrage of propaganda for this ersatz documentary,  which touts charter schools as the solution to poverty and inequality and teachers unions as the enemy. But if you haven’t read the critiques by teachers and advocacy groups, be sure to look at the Rethinking Schools  webpage that refutes the film’s premises and conclusions. The site contains Diane Ravitch’s refutation of the charter school mythology, published in the New York Review of Books. TMI? Fairtest has a neat summary of the film’s inaccuracies.

    It’s disappointing that this newly galvanized opposition has missed the ways that gender should be considered. Much of the vitriol against teachers relates to the fact that teaching is women’s work. About 84% of all teachers K-12 are women. In “School work: Gender and the Cultural Construction of Teaching” Sari Biklen critiques the fact that superior teachers are often cast as heroes, like the Lone Ranger who rides into town and cleans up crime and mayhem. But in the real life of schools, teaching is best accomplished with the support and insights of others (often women) – parents, colleagues, students.  Maybe even administrators. For instance, good teachers take ideas from others – and readily acknowledge they do so.

    The movie and neoliberalism tweak  the “heroic model” of teaching while pressing for it to be the only way to construct teachers’ work. For instance, the Lone Ranger had Tonto. Superman has Lois Lane. True, Tonto was subordinate but he was present,  the helpful minority who could be a “cultural informant” if needed. But Tonto is gone, replaced by a white, female who hangs around but is never involved in the action, except to get in the way.

    This is neoliberalism’s new construction of gender, one in which race has been erased as a consideration, one that is intensely individualistic and competitive.  No where in this vast social engineering that is destroying public education is there acknowledgment of the need for collaboration among teachers or between parents and teachers. The nurturing traditionally associated with women’s paid labor outside the home (in careers like nursing and  teaching) has been pushed out of schools. When test scores are all that counts, there’s no payoff to consider children’s psychological and social needs.  But even Superman’s kids will need nurturing. After all, their dad is off saving the world and doesn’t have time to get refreshments for the bake sale or hear about the fight on the playground.

  • A Clash of Fundamentalisms

    In our previous articles, we emphasized the ideological nature of today’s problematic Islamic “threat.” Historically this “threat” fits into an established tradition of hysterical propaganda campaigns – whether against “Indians,” “Negroes” or “Reds” — which distort and exaggerate real and potential challenges to U.S. capitalism /imperialism so as to justify violence, state terror and wars of plunder. If the truth is “the first casualty” in war, then democracy is the second. Although framed by the U.S. in terms of defending (or spreading) “democracy,” today’s East-West conflict turns out to be not so much a Clash of Civilizations as an ideological Clash of Fundamentalisms. While hyping the threat of “Islamic Fundamentalism,” U.S. media and politicians conveniently fail to point out that their own outlook is based on the same kind of reactionary hard-shell fundamentalism as “Political Islamism.” Let”s call it “Political Christianism.” The Christian right in the U.S. aspires to the same kind of theocratic domination over government and peoples’ private lives as the Ayatollahs. It's members speak with the same hysterical absolutist certainty, believe the ends justify the means, and are willing resort to violent means – like murdering abortion-providers and bombing women's health centers. Both fundamentalisms offer identity and community to the disaffected masses while silencing opposition and bullying the hesitant through fear. The Zionists and the Jewish Religious Right are equally ruthless, and recently the U.S. Christian right has overcome its traditional anti-Semitism to form a reactionary pro-Israel, pro-U.S. alliance with right-wing, pro-Zionist Jewish organizations and leaders like the notoriously Jewish Senator Lieberman – much to the dismay of the vast majority of liberal, secular U.S. Jews. In this upside-down ideological world, the U.S. the domestic War on Terror seems to be aimed exclusively at hunting largely imaginary conspiracies among American Moslems and peace activists — to the exclusion of actually-existing white racist militias and violent rightwing Christian networks which operate with impunity. Thus, when the domestic terrorist Tim McVeigh, an avowed member of a network of right-wing Christian militias, bombed the Oklahoma City Federal building killing 168 people and seriously injuring 800 more, there was no broad conspiracy investigation or round up of suspects. Today, Christian anti-Choice organizations openly incite violence by posting “Wanted” posters of “Murderers” (abortion providers) on the Internet including the names and addresses of their families. The same groups regularly terrorize women's health clinics harassing personnel and prospective clients, all with impunity. And no one spoke of “terrorist conspiracies” when the saintly Dr. Tiller was gunned down in his church on a Sunday by a member of one of these fanatical anti-abortion organizations. Under George Bush, the “threat of Islamism” myth was evoked to justify the U.S.’s routine, brazen use of “secret” torture on captured Moslems. Of course, this torture was “secret” only to the U.S. media and public, not to the victims, their families and the rest of the world. Arabic broadcasters like Al Jazeerah gave U.S. torture-camps a big play all over the Moslem world. Machiavelli writes that cruelty is only useful as a deterrent to enemies if it is well-publicized. If letting potential “enemy combatants” know the fate awaiting them if captured by the Americans was the goal of the U.S. torture program, the “intelligence” community achieved it at the price of alienating a billion Moslems and eradicating any residual pro-American feelings dating from 9/11/01. The irony is that such “enhanced interrogation” methods have proven notoriously useless for actual intelligence gathering, since people will say anything under torture. Yet the torturers and their superiors in the Bush Administration who sullied America's reputation and who violated U.S. and international law remain unpunished. The new President was made to understand that the U.S. may need these guys in the future and so his Administration decided not to “look backward” only forward ! Forward to what ? More useless “intelligence” ? Further degradation of the image of progressive, liberal, Western democratic values exemplified by kidnappings, torture chambers and brutal concentration camps like Abu Graib? As we shall argue in our next piece, such extreme methods are evidence of desperation. With the oil-wars escalating and with U.S. and British voters less and less enthusiastic about paying for them, there is a need to ratchet up the pitch of anti-Moslem hysteria so as to “stay the course” in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan and Yemen. Given this ideological drive, it goes without saying that knowledge of the history, politics, sociology and even the languages of these threatening “others” would only get in the way. In fact, the CIA and State Department actually dismissed their staff of Arabic-language translators years ago, when “human intelligence” was replaced by spy satellites which capture megabytes of important information in Arabic which the Americans can't read. Who said: “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make blind”? Are not ideological constructions like the “terrorism” the blinders rulers put over their own eyes and the eyes of their subjects when they embark on a fatal course of hubris?

  • Contextualizing the Threat of Radical Islam: “Urgent Threats” of Yesteryear

    [Editor’s note: This is the second in a series by Richard Greeman.] To understand the lunacy of the problematic Islamic “threat” currently being hyped in mainstream U.S. political discourse, we need to place the concept in the historical context of Western, particularly U.S. imperialism’s collective self-image. White American identity has from the beginning defined itself in opposition a dangerous, threatening, darker “other” who had to be conquered, subdued, and/or exterminated : in the first instance the “savages” native to the Americas. Thus European invaders projected their own inner savagery on the “Indians” in order to brutally displace them in the name of “Civilization” as Richard Slotkin has demonstrated in his seminal Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier and subsequent works). After the “Indians” were deprived of their lands and nearly wiped out, the laboring classes replaced them as American capitalism’s terror-inspiring “other.” This “threat” was incarnated in two fear-inspiring images : the potent Negro slave ready to rape his mistress and slit his master’s throat in the South, and in the North the specter of bloody conspiracies among the immigrant workers, whether Irish (“Molly Maquires”), Italian (“anarchist bomb throwers”), Jewish (“subversive communists conspirators”) or just foreign-born (“disloyal”). These demonizing images of the “other” were useful for ruling class divide-and-rule domination, pitting native workers against immigrants and black bondsmen against free white labor – to the extent that even today labor in Dixie remains largely non-unionized under anti-labor “right to work’ laws. The Red Scare of 1919 mobilized these stereotypes to justify government roundups (the Palmer Raids) more violent than the Cold War witch hunts or the post-9/11 anti-terrorist campaign. At the end of WWI, returning black and immigrant vets were full of democratic aspirations. The high hopes inspired by Wilson's “self-determination of peoples” and ignited by the 1917 Russian Revolution were met with union-busting, mass arrests and massacres of strikers, deportations of the foreign-born, lynchings and race-riots against “Negroes.” A nation-wide campaign of Nazi-type raids on Socialists, Communists and Wobblies was organized, with the FBI, vigilantes and local police sacking offices, smashing presses, beating and arresting leaders. It wasn't until the Depression of the Thirties that the American Left came back to life. Likewise, in the Forties, after WWII had once again raised democratic aspirations, the FBI, HUAC and the Truman Administration came up with the mass anti-Communist hysteria of the McCarthyite “witch-hunts” — investigations aimed at hounding alleged Communists and subversives out of their government jobs, purging radicals from the unions, the schools, the entertainment industry, the universities, thus silencing any political debate about foreign policy – henceforth considered “treasonable.” Americans were forced incriminate themselves and rat on their associates through compulsory Loyalty Oaths taken under pain of Perjury. To be sure, there were actually-existing Communists in the U.S., and yes some of them did agree to collect information for the Russians – albeit at a time when the Soviets were U.S. allies against Hitler. But the CPUSA had at most 180,000 members at its height, and by the late Fifties it had dwindled to the point where it was said that the dues payments of FBI infiltrators kept the Party treasury afloat. Back when I was coming of age in the Fifties, the word “Communist” was the functional equivalent of “terrorist” today in the world outside our Left-wing family circle. The sensational Rosenberg atom-spy trial was the Fifties “9/11 wake up call,” alerting Americans to the “urgent threat” of us Commies. After the 1989 collapse of Russian bureaucratic state-capitalism parading as "Communism" and with "Red" China born again as a U.S. capitalist trading partner, a new demon was needed to deflect from unrest over increasing economic and social inequality in the U.S. and around the world. The War on Drugs worked for a while. It proved useful for sending U.S. military advisors and equipment abroad to prop up pro-U.S. governments in Latin America while profitably filling the U.S. expanding US private prison system with unwilling customers from among unemployed Black and Hispanic youth. But after Osama bin Laden and his cohort pulled off the attacks of September 11, 2001, the War on Terror took precedence and "Radical Islam" was suddenly discovered as the major threat to Western Civilization. This distant threat has proven a sufficient ideological pretext for curtailing democratic freedoms and creating a security state at home while using torture, terror bombing and outright invasion in pursuit of insanely unrealistic hegemonic foreign policy goals in the oil-rich Middle East. Next article in series: A Clash of Fundamentalisms

  • Contextualizing the Threat of Radical Islam

    Note: This article begins a series by Richard Greeman. Longtime socialist and international activist Richard Greeman is best know for his studies and translations of Victor Serge, the Franco-Russian novelist and revolutionary. His recent book Beware of Vegetarian Sharks: Radical Rants and Internationalists Essays (Illustrated) is available online at Amazon.com and may be downloaded for free at www.lulu.com923573 I have done my non-specialist's best to make comprehensive sense of a complex 'hot-button' issue, taking care to give empirical evidence and historical examples based on variety of accessible sources. My goal is to situate the dangerous escalation of the conflict between Western democratic imperialism and radical Islam – the so called War on Terror – in the various contexts of ideology, history, geo-politics and popular struggles for democracy in the Moslem world. Reviewing Surrender : Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom by Bruce Bower, (NY.Times Book Review, Sunday July 26, 2009, p. 12.) The Times’ critic Stephen Pollard, began breathlessly: ‘There is no more important issue facing the West than Islamism, Islamofascism or – to use another label – radical Islam. And there is no more necessary precondition to countering that threat than understanding it, where it springs from, how it is expressed, and the ways in which it is spreading. But before we do any of that, we have to agree that the threat exists.’ But does ‘the threat’ indeed exist ? And is it really ‘more important’ than catastrophic climate change, proliferating WMD’s, or the world economic crisis ? If we sincerely wish to analyze the social forces which express themselves under the various banners of what Westerners have lumped together under the heading of ‘Radical Islamism,’ perhaps we should begin by deconstructing the concept and to situating it in the context of the Orientalist ideology of Western colonialism/imperialism. And what better place to begin our study than America's moderate, middlebrow Sunday Times Book Review, a generally a good barometer of middle-of-the-road opinion in the U.S. and a publication which has reviewed one or more of the proliferating new books on the Islamic threat almost every week over the past decade? Returning to the Times’ 'Appeasers' piece, the ‘insidious problem' for Pollard is that ‘many liberals and others on the European left are making common cause with radical Islam and then brazenly and bizarrely denying both the existence of that alliance and in fact the existence of any Islamic threat whatsoever.’ Bower’s book Surrender : Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom supports Pollard's thesis by rounding up the usual suspects : the insidiously charming Islamic theologian Tariq Ramadan, the left-wing former Mayor of London Ken Livingston, and the unnamed ‘Western leaders’ who allegedly failed to defend the publisher of the anti-Moslem Danish cartoons. The Times' Pollard concludes somewhat hysterically: ‘Bower is unquestionably correct, and that fact is quite simply terrifying.’ Terrifying? To be sure the silver-tongued scholar Ramadan, does send different messages to the Faithful and to the kaffirs (Arabic for ‘goyim’) ; and Livingston was an unprincipled, opportunistic Left politician looking for votes among England’s fast-growing Moslem population (along with the British Socialist Workers’ Party and its erstwhile ally Respect). But this is old news. Neither has much influence any more, and although ‘insidious’ they were hardly ‘terrifying.’ On the other hand, equating Western leaders’ alleged ‘appeasement’ of political Islam with the appeasement of Hitler in the 1930’s is sheer hysterical (and historical) lunacy, as those of us who actually live in Europe can testify. * In any case, writers representing the ‘Appeasers’ school of anti-Islamism (not to mention the Times’ fact-checkers) can hardly be unaware that for at least a decade the U.S. and Britain (not to mention Israel) have been systematically boycotting, bombing, invading Islamic countries and assassinating Islamic leaders. They call that ‘Appeasement ?’ The ongoing wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have already lasted much longer than WWII, with concomitant waste of lives and treasure and no end in sight. Can Messrs. Pollard, Bower and the Book Review editors who commissioned, headlined and ran this hysterical propaganda piece really believe that the feeble, phoney left-liberal voices of Ramadan, Livingston and the like threaten to prevail over negative stereotypes with which CNN, Fox News, the N.Y. Times and Western leaders have been bombarding us for years as justification for hugely expensive oil-wars in the Middle-East ? What we read in their texts is not empirical argument but ideology which, like religion itself, is supremely indifferent to fact and logic. It is easy for us Westerners to laugh at the Ayatollahs' depiction of dear old Uncle Sam as the 'Great Satan,' but harder to see the ideological demonization of Moslems and Arabs in our own 'liberal' media. * Far from 'appeasing' Islam, the Swiss, after a virulently anti-Moslem right-wing campaign, have just voted by referendum to ban the construction of minarets. Meanwhile, at this writing the right-wing Sarkosy government is orchestrating a summit-level discussion of ‘French national identity’ while simultaneously demonizing and expelling non-white immigrants including long-time residents and human rights activists. Nor is there a dearth of French anti-Moslem books denouncing the ‘appeasement’ of Islamicism with titles like Conquering the West: the Secret Project of the Islamists and France Infected with Islamism: Terrorist Threats within the Hexagon. Sylvain Besson, La Conquête de l"occident: Le projet secret des islamistes (Paris, 2005), cited in Patrick Haenni and Samar Amghar, "Un spectre hante l"Europe: Le mythe renaissant de l"islam conquérant," ("A specter is haunting Europe: the rebirth of the Myth of Islam the Conquerer") Monde diplomatique, Jan. 2010. See also Mohamed Sifaoui, La France malade de l"islamisme : Menaces terroristes sur l"Hexagone (Paris, 2002). Next article in series: ‘Urgent Threats’ of Yesteryear

  • Why Socialists Should be Deficit Hawks

    Christina Romer, the former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, argues in today’s (October 24) New York Times that “Now Isn’t the Time to Cut the Deficit.” Her argument, which is unexceptional among liberal economists, is simply that “tax cuts and spending increases stimulate demand and raise output and employment; tax increases and spending cuts have the opposite effect.” This, she reassures her readership, is a “basic message of macroeconomics.”

    This reasoning arises from an analysis of the economic crisis that is based on a shortage of aggregate demand, specifically that component of aggregate demand emanating from the business class. They are not investing nor are they consuming in sufficient volume to lift the rate of economic activity. On the other hand it is equally clear that the business community has no faith in an economy that is stabilized by the growth of the public sector at the expense of the private sector, which is what Romer’s prescription would bring about and what the President’s stimulus package has already resulted in. Insofar as political disruption by a renewed left is not an immediate issue, capitalism only has faith in that recovery, and that recovery alone, which arises from the restoration of profitability where the expansion of demand is driven not by state purchases, but by the process of renewed capital formation. That is, capitalism has faith only in an economy that has been adequately restructured through the devaluation of surplus capital, by downward pressure on wages and by the minimization of government overhead costs. It looks forward to a revival of economic activity based solely on a firm capitalist footing — not one limping along on government crutches.

    Deficit hawks argue, as they have in Europe, that there is a structural component to the addiction to the need for chronic borrowing which threatens the long term viability of capitalism. They believe that a burgeoning state demand will ultimately crowd out private investment, raising interest rates and choking off economic growth. But the immediate problem is a cyclical problem and the structural problem lies not with state demand, but the hypertrophic growth of the financial sector. And this is where capitalism’s ideologues have turned a blind eye.

    The left, I would argue, should demand that the state sector grow by becoming the employer of the last resort, independent of its effects on profitability or on the relative growth of the state. However, there is no reason to buy into Romer’s argument that the deficit needs to be temporarily enlarged for that purpose. What advantage is there for the state to borrow from the wealthy? To do so would mean creating assets in the form of public debt held by a class that has will not relinquish its unused liquidity. It will simply borrow the money from the Feds at a virtual zero interest rate and sit back and collect a future windfall, that the working class will in part be taxed to honor.

    The flaw in Romer’s analysis is this. She assumes quite reasonably that taxing the public to finance state demand simply reduces private demand and therefore is not, on balance, expansionary. One effect simply neutralizes the other. And if her description of the spending behavior of the wealthy were accurate, her analysis would be convincing. But the wealthy are not spending their income. Their demand is a potential demand, not an actual demand. The wealthy are waiting the recession out and therefore contributing to its duration.

    They should therefore be taxed. Taxing the wealthy under these circumstances would be expansionary precisely because it would entail injecting unused cash into the economy to expand government purchases. The state would be doing what the wealthy are not — transforming their potential demand into actual demand. And this would not come at the future cost of increased taxes.

    This is how socialists might address Tea Party concerns that are seducing so many of the white working class. It clearly identifies one of the levels in which the behavior of the wealthy contributes to the economic distress of working people.

    The other long term issue is that of the structural deformity of capitalism. And this too speaks to the worries of those who so resent the Wall Street bailout. It is, of course true, that revenues taxed to support state purchases are lost to the accumulation process.

    But there is something far more threatening to capitalist expansion which is festering within the very anatomy of the private sector. The financialization of capitalism — at least in the US, Britain and much of Western Europe — arises out of capital’s drive to free itself from the perils of productive investment. But its implications are structurally disruptive. Instead of recyling idle balances of profit back into the real economy, this new financial system increasingly neutralized these balances by transforming them into ever new financial instruments of risk aversion. It securitized mortgages; it created new forms of risk hedging, it created new financial insurance policies, etc. This internal recycling of funds within the financial sector — first skimmed from the productive sector — permitted a growth in asset values not justified by a parallel increase in surplus value.

    Capitalism had—in other words — massively overissued claims on future profits that were unsustaninable in light of the flagging rate of accumulation, which the financialization of the economy itself massively contributed to. The financialization of the economy transformed the relationship of Wall Street to the productive sector from symbiotic to parasitic and its continuance in this form is an ongoing permanent threat to the resumption of anything resembling long-term business expansion. Rather than addressing this, the business class would prefer to dismantle working class gains in what is left of the welfare state.

    The shredding of the safety net, however, will leave the real structural vulnerability of capitalism largely unaddressed.

  • Campaign for Peace and Democracy Iran sign-on

    New Politics readers and friends are invited to sign the Campaign for Peace and Democracy statement “End the War Threats and Sanctions Program Against Iran – Support the Struggle for Democracy Inside Iran.” The statement is being circulated widely in the United States and internationally. To sign on or see the evolving list of signers go to http://www.cpdweb.org/stmts/1015/stmt.shtml.

    Joanne Landy and Thomas Harrison, Co-Directors, CPD, cpd@igc.org. The statement along with a selected list of signers is below:

    End the War Threats and Sanctions Program Against Iran
    Support the Struggle for Democracy Inside Iran
    Statement by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy-October 2010

            We, the undersigned, oppose the U.S.-led campaign to impose harsher sanctions on Iran, and the ongoing threat of war against that country. Despite Washington’s claims, its policy is clearly not animated by a genuine concern for protecting the world from the threat of nuclear war; otherwise how could Washington support such nuclear-armed states as India, Israel, and Pakistan, or maintain its own huge nuclear arsenal? Nor is U.S. policy driven by the goal of defending democracy. If it were, how could the United States support brutally authoritarian regimes such as those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt?

            Months after it began its recent program to sanction Iran for its nuclear activities, the United States, in a move described by The New York Times as “more symbolic than substantive,” denied visas to and froze the foreign assets of eight Iranian officials, citing their role in the post-election crackdown. This symbolic gesture cannot obscure the fact that Washington’s fundamental motivation for imposing the comprehensive sanctions aimed at Iran’s nuclear program is to neutralize or eliminate a major threat to its power in the region.

            In June 2009 people around the world were inspired by the courageous protests in Iran, when hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, took to the streets to demand their democratic rights. Since then the Iranian government has tried to repress the movement: hundreds of political prisoners remain behind bars, often tortured, deprived of medical care, and forced to live under dangerously unhealthy conditions. We support those who struggle for democracy and social justice inside Iran.

            Far from helping the Iranian people, sanctions and war threats strengthen Ahmadinejad’s regime, helping it to shift the blame for worsening economic conditions from itself entirely onto the external enemy. In the past the Iranian elite has proven able to circumvent sanctions, but if Washington actually succeeds in preventing Tehran from importing refined petroleum, exporting oil and other items, and conducting normal trade and banking activities, over time millions of ordinary Iranians will suffer.

            We don’t want Iran, or any other country, including our own, to have nuclear weapons. But even the U.S. government admits that Iran does not now possess nuclear weapons and has no imminent prospect of acquiring them. Moreover, Iran has no less right than any other nation to develop civilian nuclear power. Many of us oppose the use of nuclear energy by any country, both for environmental reasons and because of its link to nuclear weapons — but that is not the issue in the present U.S.-Iran confrontation. The United States, a major producer of nuclear energy and by far the leading nuclear weapons nation, which continually upgrades its own conventional and nuclear arsenal and tolerates the possession of nuclear weapons by other reckless and aggressive powers, has no moral legitimacy when it tries to punish Iran for its nuclear activities.

            U.S. belligerence — its continual warnings that “all options remain on the table,” possibly including acceptance of an Israeli attack — only creates strong inducements for Tehran to seek nuclear weapons for its defense, or to become, like Japan, “nuclear-weapons capable,” i.e. possessing all the elements necessary to make a bomb without actually manufacturing one. And it’s not just Iran: U.S. militarism has helped to create a Hobbesian world in which more and more countries come to believe that their survival depends on nuclear “deterrence.”

            The United States can best reduce the danger of nuclear war by taking major steps to divest itself of nuclear weapons as part of a new, democratic and socially just foreign policy. This would include initiating both nuclear and conventional disarmament, encompassing missile “defense” as well as more obviously offensive weaponry; ending its predatory wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan; supporting a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in the Middle East; giving real support to Palestinian rights rather than continuing one-sided support to Israel; and dismantling its more than 1,000 military bases around the world. Such steps would help undermine the rationale for Iran and other countries developing their own nuclear weapons. These actions would also be the most effective way to strengthen women’s, labor, and other democratic movements in the Middle East, and to promote the interests of ordinary Americans and real peace in the world.

    INITIAL SIGNERS: Bashir Abu-Manneh, Michael Albert, Greg Albo, Kevin B. Anderson, Stanley Aronowitz, Parvin Ashrafi, Ed Asner, Rosalyn Baxandall, William O. Beeman, Judith Bello, Medea Benjamin, Blase Bonpane, Eileen Boris, Sam Bottone, Joan G. Botwinick, Laura Boylan, MD, Frank Brodhead, Steve Burns, Leslie Cagan, Antonia Cedrone, Adam Chmielewski, Noam Chomsky, Margaret W. Crane, Hamid Dabashi, Gail Daneker, Bogdan Denitch, Manuela Dobos, Tina Dobsevage, MD, Martin Duberman, Lisa Duggan, Stephen R. Early, Carolyn Eisenberg, Michael Eisenscher, Mark Engler, Gertrude Ezorsky, Sam Farber, Thomas M. Fasy, MD, Dianne Feeley, John Feffer, Barry Finger, David Finkel, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Jean Fox, Dr. Harriet Fraad, David Friedman, Robert Gabrielsky, Bruce Gagnon, Barbara Garson, Irene Gendzier, Jack Gerson, Joseph Gerson, Sam Gindin, John Gorman, Greg Grandin, Arun Gupta, E. Haberkern, Thomas Harrison, Nader Hashemi, Howie Hawkins, Bill Henning, Michael Hirsch, Madelyn Hoffman, Iranian Centre for Peace, Freedom and Social Justice-Vancouver, Doug Ireland, Marianne Jackson, PhD, Melissa Jameson, Jan Kavan, Kathy Kelly, Tooba Keshtkar, Assaf Kfoury, Mina Khanlarzadeh, Jack Kurzweil, Dan La Botz, Micah Landau, Joanne Landy, Marc H. Lavietes, MD, Roger E. Leisner, Jesse Lemisch, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Nelson Lichtenstein, Amy Littlefield, Martha Livingston, Robin Lloyd, Jan Majicek, Betty Mandell, Marvin Mandell, Nasir A. Mansoor, Dave Marsh, Don McCanne, MD, Scott McLemee, David McReynolds, Debbie Meier, Martin Melkonian, Marilyn Morehead, Erika Munk, Ulla Neuburger, Mary E. O’Brien, MD, Derrick O’Keefe, David Oakford, Rosemarie Pace, Leo Panitch, Peace Action New York State, Christopher Phelps, Charlotte Phillips, MD, Frances Fox Piven, Danny Postel, Judy Rebick, Katie Robbins, Leonard Rodberg, Richard Roman, Elizabeth Rosenthal, MD, Matthew Rothschild, Saffaar Saaed, John Sanbonmatsu, Ajamu Sankofa, Jennifer Scarlott, Jay Schaffner, Jason Schulman, Peter O. Schwartz, Lance Selfa, Stephen R. Shalom, Cindy Sheehan, Stephen Soldz, Cheryl Stevenson, Bhaskar Sunkara, David Swanson, William K. Tabb, Hoshang Tareh Gol, Jonathan Tasini, Meredith Tax, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Chris Toensing, Bernard Tuchman, Adaner Usmani, Wilbert van der Zeijden, Steven VanBever, David S. Vine, Lois Weiner, Suzi Weissman, Naomi Weisstein, Laurie Wen, Cornel West, Billy Wharton, Sherry Wolf, and Julia Wrigley.

  • Marching with the Socialist Contingent

    Tomorrow, Oct. 2, I will be marching in the Socialist Contingent at the big march in Washington, DC.

    We will gather at 10am at 12th and Constitution and march with the Peace Table. Join us if you can!

    New Politics is one of the sponsors of the contingent, as you can see in this document. The contingent was sparked by Dan La Botz, Socialist Party candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio and a member of the New Politics editorial board.

  • Reply on the Abolition of the State

    Jason Schulman replies

    Like most left anarchists and too many Marxists, Wayne Price still holds to the vision of the councilist polity. But it is long since time to give up on this vision. Even in revolutionary Russia, workers' councils never functioned like a government in continuous session; they met discontinuously, with executive committees managing their affairs. The crisis of governmental authority in Russia in 1917 was “solved” not by soviets but by Sovnarkom, the government formed by the Bolsheviks (and, initially, their allies), and its ability to reach out through the Bolshevik Party as a national organization. Since 1917, soviet-type forms have appeared in many strike waves and revolutionary crises, but they have never in practice formed an alternative, authoritative decision-making center for all of society. The problem of institutional forms which will make authority truly accountable needs to be addressed in another way than that of fetishizing workers’ councils.

    I do not accept Price's definition of the state. Neither, in practice, did Marx or Engels, for what it's worth. Regardless of their not-very-well-thought-out ideas on the state's "withering away," Marx and Engels at least understood that the immediate goal of a workers' political revolution would be the radical democratization of the state, not its abolition — this is what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" amounts to. What would this require? For starters, the right to elect and recall all public officials; public officials to be paid only an average skilled workers’ wage; universal military training and service, democratic political and trade union rights within the military, and the right to keep and bear arms; the abolition of official secrecy laws and of private rights of copyright and confidentiality; self-government in the localities: i.e., the removal of powers of central government control and patronage and abolition of judicial review of the decisions of elected bodies; generalized trial by jury; and the abolition of constitutional guarantees of the rights of private property and freedom of trade. Such a state would be, in Mike McNair's words, an undiluted democratic republic, but it would still be a (workers') state. I realize this might not be enough for Wayne. Well, one can't please everyone.

    Jason Schulman

  • Letter on the Abolition of the State

    To the Editors of New Politics:

    In your last issue (#49), Jason Schulman takes Marvin Mandell to task for being "too kind to Wayne Price" in his discussion with me about his review of my book, The Abolition of the State. Apparently Jason Schulman believes that it is absurd to advocate abolition of the state. After an anti-capitalist revolution, "We are stuck with the state." He does not only reject anarchism, which wants to immediately eliminate the state, but also the views of Marx and Engels, and even Lenin, who thought that the state would gradually, eventually, be eliminated. This is so, he says, because there are political conflicts to settle, decisions to make and to implement, priorities to determine, and people to coerce. He claims that this requires "police…specialization…[and] hierarchy."

    However, most anti-statists do not deny that there will be decisions to argue out, conflicts to deal with, and even some coercion in order to implement decisions — and that some sort of institutions (a polity) will be needed to implement this. In a radically democratic, classless, participatory, communism, we believe that this can be done through some sort of federation of workers' councils and community assemblies, associated with an organized, armed, population (a militia). We do not call this a state because we define the state as a socially alienated, bureaucratic-military, machine, specialized, and hierarchical, standing over and against the rest of society. It is this — and not all forms of social coordination and coercion — which we believe can be eliminated. (I go into some detail about this in my book.)

    Our disagreement then, is not about whether to use the term "state" nor whether some form of coordination is necessary. It is whether this socially alienated, bureaucratic-military, institution can be replaced by a self-governing society. I understand that Jason Schulman does not think it can. But that is the issue.

    Wayne Price
    Bronx, NY

  • Fitch, Benson, and Early

         I read with keen interest 2 recent articles on the New Politics website: “Card Check: Labor’s Charlie Brown Moment?” by Robert Fitch, and “Does ‘Union Democracy’ Undermine ‘Solidarity?” by Herman Benson.

         I consider myself a life-long socialist activist, since high school, anyway. I’m retired now, but for the last 15 years that I worked, as a Respiratory Therapist, I participated in the Labor Party and wound up organizing the bargaining unit I worked in at Children’s Hospital in Seattle.

         I really agree with the sentiment expressed by both Bob and Herman, that Labor should be the fundamental building block for a movement to make America a progressive and decent society. I also agree with both of them, that the shrinkage of labor in the U.S. is a very bad thing. Getting so much smaller makes it harder and harder for Labor to play its progressive role, not to mention its role of protecting members’ interests on the job.

         Herman and Bob differ pretty strongly on the whys and what-to-do’s regarding the pickle unions find themselves in. After quite a bit of reflection, I find myself in more agreement with Benson than Fitch, but I want to emphasize how much respect I have for both of these two friends of Labor. The two articles are well written, and rich in ideas. I hope that they are widely read and studied by all who care about the strength and vitality of unions in America.

         I read Fitch’s book, Solidarity for Sale, a couple of years ago. I liked it a lot. It was a real breath of fresh air, and it was most enlightening about the problem of union corruption, which was always in the back of my mind while I was organizing at Children’s. Corruption is a scary thing for unorganized workers who are trying to decide whether or not to support a union. A friend of mine in the Labor Party told me one night at a meeting, that a president of the local we were working with had been found dead in a bath tub full of blood a few years back. Like I said, scary.

         I find Fitch’s ideas about dues check-off and exclusive bargaining rights interesting. The way I see it, Fitch would like to see American unions more like those in France, where dues are voluntary and workers can join any union that they want to. However, I agree with Benson, that taking up these exact positions would be suicidal for the left. Unions here have operated with exclusive bargaining and mandatory dues for a very long time, and a total change toward the French style would throw things into chaos and weaken unions in the U.S., when they’re already pretty far down.

         But we might want to take a look at dues check-off. Maybe we could make only a small portion mandatory, to be collected by the boss. 15 or 20 bucks a month could be subject to check-off, with another 20 or so collected by stewards. Asking people for money at work would be a great way to encourage communication among union members, and folks wouldn’t feel so boxed in.

         I totally agree with Benson, that union democracy is of paramount importance. Unless we have real democracy in unions, workers are not going to want to become members. I believe that having manageable-sized locals is an important part of union democracy. If the locals are too big, or national, nobody will ever be able to run for an important office by talking it up at work, and maybe organizing a committee for him/herself in the town where she or he lives. The crazy things we hear out of SEIU these days, about democracy not being as important as adding new members, should stop. Democracy is our lifeblood, and yes, Herman, it doesn’t belong inside ironic quotation marks.

         One of the things I love about democracy is how it encourages members to participate in their unions. The more labor takes on a non-professional face, the more comfortable everyday people will be with joining up. The most powerful words an organizer can say are, “I love the union, and I’m not getting paid to say that.” Professional organizers, important as they are, can’t say that. Unions that have a lot of member participation are going to be the most successful in the coming years, ,like the National Union of Health Care Workers (NUHW), in California.

         Another way of encouraging member participation, that’s a favorite of mine, is something called Stewards’ Councils. I’ve written about this idea in the past, on MRZine. The idea behind stewards’ councils is that you bring together elected rank and file leaders in a union local, or international, so they can have a voice, in the union, and to unorganized workers. I would like to see stewards’ council leaders have columns in local newsletters and the national labor press. I think that members would like to know what rank and file leaders think, not just paid leaders and staff, the way it is now.

         There is a recent article on the role of stewards in NUHW and elsewhere, on the MRZine website, by Steve Early. The Early piece reveals the power of the organized stewards in NUHW, which is allowing them to challenge the far richer SEIU this month at Kaiser, in what he calls the “the most important labor election in 70 years.” At stake in this election are Kaiser’s 44,000 SEIU members, and it looks like NUHW has a good chance to win, thanks to the support of the organized, volunteer stewards at Kaiser.

         What can the left do to help? We can help stewards’ councils get started throughout the Labor Movement. A national meeting could be held where stewards from unions across the country were invited to come and discuss the possibility of forming a National Stewards’ Council (NSC). The NSC could then take up the task of helping stewards’ councils get up and running throughout the Labor Movement. I bet there would be some interest in such an undertaking, from the NUHW stewards.

         It’s all a package, really:

    • Stand up for real union democracy.
    • Rely on support from the rank and file.
    • Make dues as low and voluntary as possible.
    • Organize the stewards, to make the unions more like their members. This will greatly help with organizing new members and help the Labor Movement become an even stronger progressive force in American politics.