Socialists and the Rank-And-File Strategy

By: February 6, 2019
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Sean Petty describes the approach that socialists have developed over generations for being a socialist at work and in the unions, in an article based on a presentation at Socialism 2018 in July. Sean is a registered nurse in New York City and member of the board of directors of the New York State Nurses Association.

This article is part of the International Socialist Organization’s (ISO) Socialist at Work Toolkit assembled by the ISO’s Labor Working Group. We hope this collection of articles — as well as the experiences of socialists that went into it and will come out of it — contributes toward reconnecting today’s revived socialist movement with the rich history of labor struggle in the U.S. Only in the U.S. is socialism seen as foreign to unions and shop-floor struggles. It’s high time that changed.

At SW, we’re publishing articles from the Toolkit along with contributions from our readers about their own experiences, collected in a series called Socialists at Work. Please consider contributing your own stories and the lessons you’ve drawn from them in an e-mail submission to SW — or just tell us what liked, or didn’t, about this series.

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IN THE last year, we have seen some very important developments in the labor movement in the U.S.

Last spring, the teachers of West Virginia, 55 counties strong, kicked off an actual strike wave, the first of its kind in the U.S. in decades. These “red state” teachers’ strikes were led, first and foremost, by pockets of militant rank-and-file teachers who organized a struggle that pushed past anti-union laws andthe conservatism of their own union leaderships to directly confront their state governments’ latest criminal devaluation of teachers’ and students’ lives.

A short time later, the U.S. Supreme Court, as expected, dealt the single largest legal blow to unions since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, with the Janus v. AFSCME decision, which overturns the requirement that workers in public-sector workers covered by a union contract but not members of the union pay contributions.

Without an ongoing rank-and-file upsurge in the public sector, this decision will fundamentally and critically weaken unions’ institutional ability to protect workers’ wages and working conditions. It will also weaken public sector unions’ ability to fight against the ongoing dismantling of public services — whether in education, health care or the myriad of other necessary social services.

Postal workers on the picket line in 1970 during the largest wildcat strike in U.S. history
Postal workers on the picket line in 1970 during the largest wildcat strike in U.S. history (American Postal Workers Union)

So it is a very good time for socialists and other union and left activists to take a step back and take a deeper look at some of the structures and dynamics of unions under capitalism.

I want to articulate some theoretical guideposts for how we in the ISO, other socialist and radical left activists, and fellow union militants can navigate important questions about how to best rebuild and extend working-class power in this country.

UNIONS ARE the main organizational forms resulting from working people’s perpetual struggle to have some control over some of the most important aspects of our lives — namely, our economic well-being and how we are treated at work, the place where we spend a significant amount of our waking lives.

The fight for unions can involve both economic and political demands — meaning the fight for immediate economic improvements from employers, as well as, if we’re lucky, demands on the state to increase rights on the job, tackle particular attacks against sections of workers, and create better conditions in our communities.

Unions under capitalism are a self-limited project, meaning that they exist because socialism doesn’t. They are ultimately necessary because of the exploitative and oppressive working conditions that are necessary for capitalism to exist.

Therefore, unions as institutions don’t have an inherent interest in uprooting the social relations of capitalism. In fact, their existence is built on them. They exist to negotiate the conditions of exploitation and oppression, not to end their root causes. They are organizations designed and developed to reform present conditions.

It takes conscious socialist political organization to overcome the limitations inherent in trade union organization and ultimately push beyond the see-saw of organizing for and winning better conditions, only to have them taken away or conceded years later.

Using strikes and other forms of mass collective working-class struggle and organization to confront capital and the state are the only ways that working people can ultimately shift the balance of power permanently in our favor.

Recognizing this does not mean that socialists should be dismissive of unions in any way. We know that unions are also some of the important schools of struggle, organization and power for working people.

Even smaller battles short of strikes, both inside and outside the workplace, can mightily help advance class consciousness and create the conditions for the development of revolutionary socialist consciousness and organization.

Union struggles can bring many things to light for us and our co-workers — first of all, the true colors of our bosses and our governments. They force us to think about what ideas we need — and what ideas we have to combat — to truly bind ourselves together as working people in order to be stronger and more successful.

UNIONS HAVE been developing under capitalism since its birth. They now exist in most countries and have for some time.

Most unions, especially in more developed countries, have developed elaborate structures, with full-time officials, elected leaders and paid staff members. Over time, these structures — because of their degree of removal from the life of the rank and file, and because of pressure from capital — become ossified and bureaucratized, meaning they develop and take on interests and a life of their own apart from the objective interests of the rank and file.

How socialists understand this bureaucracy factors heavily into how we develop strategies within union work. To quote British socialists Tony Cliff and Donny Gluckstein, in the second chapter of their book Marxism and Trade Union Struggle: The General Strike of 1926:

The trade union bureaucracy is a distinct, basically conservative, social formation. Like the God Janus it presents two faces: it balances between the employers and the workers. It holds back and controls workers’ struggle, but it has a vital interest not to push the collaboration with employers and state to a point where it makes the unions completely impotent. For the official is not an independent arbitrator. If the union fails entirely to articulate members’ grievances, this will lead eventually either to effective internal challenges to the leadership, or to membership apathy and organizational disintegration, with members moving to a rival union. If the union bureaucracy strays too far into the bourgeois camp it will lose its base. The bureaucracy has an interest in preserving the union organization which is the source of their income and their social status.

There are a number of different ideas to unpack from this passage.

For starters, because of its profound contradictions, nothing is static under capitalism — everything is in constant motion. The voracious needs of capital to constantly increase profits and economic growth clash with the constant struggles and degrees of organization of working people who are trying to fight against this organized theft.

From the standpoint of the bureaucracy, the goal of unions is their continued existence, so this layer is compelled to try and balance this contradiction. Sometimes, this means waging a fight, which involves agitation and increasing expectations and organization. But most of the time, it means dodging a fight, which involves organized passivity, willful ignorance, lowering expectations and even undermining rank-and-file organization.

THE POLISH revolutionary Marxist Rosa Luxemburg was one of the first to recognize the character of this new layer when unions apparatuses became more established in Germany in the 1890s. She wrote in The Mass Strike:

[T]he naturally restricted horizon which is bound up with disconnected economic struggles in a peaceful period, leads only too easily, amongst trade-union officials, to bureaucratism and a certain narrowness of outlook. Both, however, express themselves in…the overvaluation of the organization, which from a means has gradually been changed into an end in itself, a precious thing, to which the interests of the struggles should be subordinated. From this also comes that openly admitted need for peace which shrinks from great risks and presumed dangers to the stability of the trade unions, and further, the overvaluation of the trade-union method of struggle itself, its prospects and its successes. (emphasis added)

We have only to look at the massive bureaucracies of unions like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters or Service Employees International Union to know that there’s not much distance between German in 1890 and the United States in 2018 in this regard.

Luxemburg’s recognition of the bureaucracy’s “narrowness of outlook” is also singling out another conservative influence on trade union officials: that they are compelled to represent the interests of a politically heterogeneous working class in a given workplace or sector of the economy. This creates a political framework that skews their approach toward the lowest common denominator of working-class consciousness in a given time and place.

In addition, professional trade unionists, especially at the higher levels, are at least a significant step removed from the lives of the workers they represent. They are not subject to the same oppression of supervisors, they usually make significantly more money, and they are immune from layoffs and other threats to job security that are routine for the rank and file.

Their degree of distance from rank-and-file life, their role negotiating the terms of exploitation, and their actual lack of control over economic conditions means they take on the characteristics of the middle class under capitalism, which includes attempting temper its central contradictions and vacillating in the wider class contest.

This is just a starting point. There is wide variation in the character of trade unions and among officials within particular trade unions across time and space. But they all operate under this broader dynamic.

There are officials with more left-wing or more right-wing politics. There are smaller union locals where the officials and union structure have a closer connection to rank-and-file interests and/or are more democratically controlled.

And there are important differences between full-time elected officials, elected officials who maintain rank-and-file jobs, senior staff, lower-level staff, etc.

But as Cliff and Gluckstein write:

[T]he bureaucracy is not homogeneous. Union officials in different industries find themselves under varying pressures from below and above. Again, ideologically, union officials are not the same. The division between left- and right-wing union officials is significant. Splits in the bureaucracy — between unions or within a union — can weaken its conservative influence.

The fundamental fact, however, overriding all differences between bureaucrats, is that they belong to a conservative social stratum, which, especially at times of radical crisis — as in the 1926 General Strike — makes the differences between left- and right-wing bureaucrats secondary. At such times all sections of the bureaucracy seek to curb and control workers’ militancy.

AS LONG as there have been unions for any length of time, they have developed bureaucracies. And as long as there have been bureaucracies within unions, socialists and revolutionaries have developed strategies to deal with them.

There are at least four major trends in how the left has approached this question, and I will try to touch on each in turn: syndicalism, red unionism, permeationism and the rank-and-file strategy.

Syndicalism is an idea that is rooted in revolutionary working-class anarchism that had significant influence at the turn of the 20th century in places like Russia, Spain and the U.S., among other places. Here in the U.S., syndicalism was organizationally expressed by an incredibly important radical union movement called the Industrial Workers of the World — the IWW, or the Wobblies.

The IWW’s approach to the conservatism of bureaucracy was simply not to have one. The Wobblies organized massive, heroic strikes and trained some of the best working-class radical organizers of the early 20th century. But they intentionally established no formal union structures or permanent contracts between employers and workers.

This solved one problem, but created another. As soon as the level of militancy among rank-and-file activist died down and the IWW left town, the employers quickly regrouped and immediately clawed back most of the gains made in previous strikes.

Red unionism was another response to the political conservatism of union bureaucracies.

This was a policy pushed by different revolutionary socialist and anarchist groups, most famously by the Communist International from 1920 to 1923, when it established the Red International of Labor Unions, and then later, for very different and fundamentally flawed purposes, by the Stalinized Comintern after 1928, during the so-called “Third Period” where all Communist Parties (CP) internationally were directed to pursue a policy of dual unionism.

Syndicalism and revolutionary or dual unionism are two sides of the same coin: They involve abstention from and avoidance of the messy and challenging world of building consistent socialist rank-and-file organization within a broader union movement.

PERMEATIONISM IS a more straightforward idea that is the default practice of reformist socialists throughout the late 19th century up to the present day. But it was also utilized by the Comintern between 1923 and 1928, and then imposed, after the disastrous dual unionism of the Third Period, by Stalin after 1933 and 1935 with the introduction of the Popular Front strategy.

I can’t go into an extended discussion of the Popular Front strategy, but suffice is to say that it was implemented directly out of the needs of Stalin’s foreign policy to build an international alliance with capitalist governments against Nazi Germany.

In the case of the U.S., this meant the Communist Party emphasizing the primacy of building an alliance with the Roosevelt administration and the newly formed industrial union movement called the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO.

Permeationism simply means having socialists insinuate themselves within the union bureaucracy in order to try and shape its politics and practice.

This became the default strategy of the social democratic-led unions within the Second International because there was no contradiction between the vision of reforming existing capitalism through parliamentary means and economic advancement through unions. The bureaucracies of unions were well suited to the idea of focusing uniformly on reforms and developing or winning over reformist organizations to do so.

In Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, unions and labor-based reformist political parties went hand in hand. In the U.S. prior to the Popular Front period, this had an expression early on in the Socialist Party, which had trade unionists who did electoral work within unions.

In the mid-1930s, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt began to implement the New Deal and the CIO was on the rise, the CP oriented heavily on taking the CIO’s top leadership positions, achieving “left-hand man” status to the three leaders of the CIO: John Lewis, Sidney Hillman and Philip Murray. CP members or former members were the chief counsel and publicity director for the entire CIO.

More pervasively, the CP oriented on taking staff jobs in individual CIO unions, winning the leaderships and staffs of CIO locals, with the goal of helping to organize the upsurge in unionism and binding that to the left wing of the Democratic Party.

The CP still had thousands of rank-and-file militants who did amazing work, but ultimately, that work was circumscribed by the larger goals of the Popular Front — and when the Second World War came along, subordinated to winning the war.

The CP and CP union activists supported and enforced the no-strike pledge during the war, defended state repression of Trotskyist labor militants, abstained from important struggles for racial justice and supported Japanese internment. Then, after the war, they were purged out of the labor movement by the McCarthyite witch hunts, as the U.S. ruling class shifted toward the Cold War.

Len De Caux, the former CP member who was publicity director of the CIO, gave an ironically apt description of what the CIO would became in the postwar period after the defeat of the CP’s permeationist strategy, as quoted in Kim Moody’s essay “The Rank and File Strategy”:

Once the CIO won all that capitalism would allow it…sit-downs and mass struggle gave way to union administration, dues collection, labor board briefs, detailed negotiations. The swivel-chair tribe began its own long-lasting sit-down in union office. This tribe rode to office on the broad shoulders of Lewis and the backs of the agitators, the militants, the reds. Once they arrived they turned — dutifully, patriotically, devoutly — to kick in the face those on whom and over whom they had scrambled.

Permeationism continues to this day as a de facto strategy of groups that are the inheritors, in one way or another, of the Socialist and Communist Parties. The modern U.S. labor bureaucracy is chock-full of former and current members of the Communist Party, Maoist groups and social democratic organizations — some of whom have made their peace with the system and others who continue to fight, even if they tend to be boxed in and accept the constraints of their positions at times.

What these left organizations share is a uniform strategy of seeking top-down reform within unions, a more militant business unionism and left realignment within the Democratic Party.

THE RANK-and-file strategy, by contrast, flows from the vision of the revolutionary socialist transformation of society, a project long abandoned by the CP and never adopted by social democracy.

It is a strategy for how socialists orient within the labor movement and how they build socialist politics and organization within it.

This should first be distinguished from a broader conception of a rank-and-file strategy to rebuild the labor movement. The two are related, but nonetheless distinct.

Many non-socialist union militants are clear that any change in the labor movement must come from the shop floor. They are correct, but the strategy they project within the labor left in the U.S — as exemplified by conferences and projects such as Labor Notes, the Center for Workers Democracy and others — has relatively little to do with building socialist organization directly.

Our more specific conception of the rank-and-file strategy is rooted in an early 1920s project of the Communist Party called the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL).

Led by former syndicalist William Z. Foster, the strategy was based on an uptick in strikes allowing for revolutionary socialists to attempt to build a broad socialist current within the union movement, using socialist politics, workplace struggle, and both rank-and-file and socialist organization.

This strategic orientation was revived most famously by Trotskyists in Minneapolis, who not only helped lead one of the three major general strikes of 1934, but built socialist politics and organization while doing so, which then helped them advance class power within the regional trucking industry.

One of the Trotskyist leaders in Minneapolis, Farrell Dobbs, wrote two important books on the period, Teamster Rebellion and Teamster Power, which provide an invaluable case study in the successful implementation of a socialist rank-and-file strategy.

The socialist rank-and-file strategy was carried through on a much smaller scale throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, mainly through individual socialist militants and the Trotskyist group, the Workers Party, which was the loose predecessor of the International Socialists (IS).

One of that period’s most prominent and successful revolutionary socialist organizers, Stan Weir, has a great book of essays called Single Jack Solidarity, which details the struggles of that era.

Moving into the 1970s, a major rank-and-file upsurge began to take shape as capital began to embark on what is now known as the neoliberal period. This was marked by production speedups and increasing attacks on what remained of shop-floor organization, combined with the near-universal collaboration between big labor and big business.

The International Socialists participated in advancing this rank-and-file rebellion, which is detailed well in the books Rebel Rank and File, edited by Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner and Cal Winslow, and Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

THE RISE and fall of these struggles produced a tension in how socialists should relate to this upsurge.

The IS — drawing from the experience of TUEL, the Minneapolis Teamsters, the Workers Party and the Black-led Revolutionary Union Movements of the late 1960s — initiated or were involved in a number of rank-and-file formations in the Teamsters, United Steel Workers, United Auto Workers and several other unions.

These formations differed in their character, but the IS attempted to develop and win a politically left and socialist orientation in many of these formations.

A similar development was already underway in Britain, where the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) also succeeded in developing a socialist current within the emerging Shop Stewards Movement.

The SWP systematically recruited radicalizing workers and built factory branches that then helped to shape the broader Shop Stewards Movement. This was one significant part of a broader approach to building socialist organization in Britain.

Facing a much greater challenge, given the absolute segregation of the socialist and labor movements from each other, the IS, by and large, chose a strategy of industrialization, which meant that the vast majority of activist work by the early to mid-1970s was within unions, carried out by younger radicals who had hired in to those industries.

A debate emerged within the IS about how open revolutionary socialists should be within this work and how exactly to introduce politics within workplace organizing.

This, among other issues, led to a split in the IS that resulted in the founding of the International Socialist Organization — which favored a more explicit and open approach to being socialists in the union movement.

The remnants of the IS was regrouped with other socialist organizations in a new group called Solidarity. The group retained the IS’s version of the rank-and-file strategy and continued to carry out the Labor Notes project, named after the labor column in the IS’s socialist newspaper Workers Power.

When the momentum of the rank-and-file movements was brought to an abrupt halt by the onset of recession in the late 1970s and early 1980s, radicals remaining in union work found themselves increasingly surrounded by a conservatizing and demobilized working class in the Reagan era — which led to even more intense pressure to play down explicitly socialist politics.

Kim Moody argues in his essay on the rank-and-file strategy that a higher level of class consciousness than exists in the U.S. is required as a precondition for rebuilding a socialist current within unions. Following this lead, many remaining socialists in unions operated on a stage-based approach of building rank-and-file union organization as a necessary step toward a later project of building socialist organization.

The ISO attempted to develop an approach that stressed the centrality of politics, even if the audience for those politics was temporarily shrinking. In the weakened state of the left in the 1980s, the ISO placed a premium on rebuilding revolutionary socialist cadre, and the prospects for that project did not lie primarily in the union movement during that period.

Even so, the ISO carried out important union work as socialists, organizing both inside and outside the workplace — helping to organize unions and build union struggles as open socialists throughout the 1980s and up to the present period.

These debates and divergent strategies continue today. The main difference now, however, is that socialists are on a much stronger footing as the U.S. is experiences the beginnings of most widespread political radicalization since the 1960s. The new radicalization is more class-conscious and socialist-oriented, with the rise of groups like the DSA.

In fits and starts, this radicalization has found an expression in union work, with the Wisconsin Capitol occupation, the Chicago teachers’ strike and, most recently, the “red state” teachers rebellion being prime examples.

The ISO’s work in teachers’ unions, health care and a number of other important areas, combined with political and organizational developments of the labor left, offer new opportunities for revolutionaries to rebuild a socialist current within unions and the broader working-class movement.

We think the theory and practice of an explicitly socialist rank-and-file strategy is the best way to make sure this happens.

Originally posted at Socialist Worker.

A Trusteeship Diaspora: How SEIU’s Self-Inflicted Loss Became Labor’s Gain

By: February 6, 2019
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Ten years ago this month, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) shot itself in the foot, big time.

To silence internal critics, then-SEIU President Andy Stern imposed the largest trusteeship over a local union in the history of U.S. labor.

SEIU headquarters in Washington dispatched hundreds of national union staffers from around the country to seize control of Oakland-based United Healthcare Workers (UHW). Among them was current SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, Stern’s devoted follower and later successor in Washington, DC. With muscle provided by hired security guards and local cops, Stern’s occupying army ousted UHW’s popular president Sal Rosselli, other top officers and rank-and-file executive board members.

Hundreds of shop stewards representing 150,000 members in SEIU’s largest California affiliate quit in protest or disgust. Others were purged from their shop-floor leadership roles, along with scores of full-time UHW organizers and contract negotiators who refused to pledge allegiance to Stern’s appointed trustees.

SEIU then spent tens of millions of dollars trying to prevent thousands of angry nursing home, hospital, and home care workers from joining the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), a rival union formed by pre-trusteeship UHW activists. More than $10 million was squandered on a single federal court lawsuit that sought $25 million in damages from 28 NUHW founders.

Stern’s military style take-over of UHW greatly tarnished SEIU’s reputation for being “progressive.”  It generated bad press for the entire labor movement because the trusteeship lent credence to anti-union propaganda about “union bosses” running roughshod over the rank-and-file and misusing their dues money.

As I documented in a 2011 book, Stern’s costly warfare with NUHW (and its labor allies, UNITE-HERE and the California Nurses Association) definitely diverted organizational resources from a national union campaign for private sector labor law reform in 2009-10. That crucial lobbying effort faltered during President Obama’s early years in office, with the result being further erosion of union bargaining strength ever since.

Stern’s trusteeship left SEIU badly weakened as a political force in California, particularly around issues affecting nursing home and hospital patients and their care-givers. Post-trusteeship UHW quickly lost the respect of other California unions and their political friends in Sacramento. In recent years, the Stern-installed leadership of UHW helped fracture a multi-union bargaining coalition at Kaiser Permanente, wasted more than $30 million on failed ballot initiatives, and lost a third of its membership, due to the forced transfer of home care workers to another SEIU local.

A Decade of Damage

Nevertheless, during a long decade of self-inflicted damage in California, SEIU’s loss of dedicated members, talented elected leaders, and effective organizers has become a net gain for labor as a whole. After being thwarted in their original project of reforming SEIU, Rosselli and other UHW members succeeded in building a new statewide healthcare workers organization that is independent of any national labor union.

Much like the influential alumni network spawned by the United Farm Workers (and profiled in Randy Shaw’s Beyond the Fields), full-time staffers once employed by UHW have gone to work for other unions, central labor councils, labor reform struggles, community organizations, and political campaigns across the country. This new diaspora—from a once exemplary SEIU local– is helping thousands of workers win high profile organizing campaigns and strikes, like the recent LA teachers walk-out, and rejuvenate the unions involved.

In California, hospital and nursing home workers voted to replace SEIU with NUHW in many bargaining units which had strong indigenous leadership before the trusteeship. NUHW now has a statewide membership of 15,000 in about forty bargaining units. The union is known for its militant contract campaigns and involvement in progressive causes like Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and the on-going fight for single-payer healthcare.

In December, NUHW conducted a five-day strike that focused public attention on the need for improved mental health care delivery and better staffing at Kaiser, the state’s largest hospital chain. Four thousand psychologists, social workers, and other therapists rallied and picketed with union and community allies from San Diego to Sacramento. Like recent teachers’ strikes, their work stoppage generated widespread and favorable press coverage. As part of its on-going contract campaign, NUHW has created a “Kaiser Don’t Deny” website, which enables patients to speak out about the impact of treatment delays, due to understaffing.

Meanwhile, in facilities like Oakland Children’s Hospital, NUHW membership has tripled to 1,200 in recent years as a result of bargaining gains that inspired non-union staff members to join their unionized co-workers.  Ruth Kees, a laboratory worker at Children’s, helped 450 other service and technical employees change unions—a struggle to decertify SEIU that took six years. “SEIU is a union where staff in Washington, D.C. call all the shots and backroom deals are the order of the day,” says Kees. “We have a union that we can control again, where all members are treated with respect.”

“Red For Ed”

Among the many former SEIU-UHW staff members who quit in protest over the trusteeship ten years ago was Samantha Winslow. After working for NUHW, she moved to New York City and joined the staff of Labor Notes, a promoter of union democracy and revitalization since 1979. In her new role, Winslow assists rank-and-file networking among public school teachers which helped lay the groundwork for multiple red state teacher strikes last year and now the work-stoppage by 34,000 teachers in L.A.

As she reported this week, “the first strike in 30 years by the second largest teacher union in the country…was a longtime in the making. It’s been 20 years since some of these same teachers started building a caucus to transform United Teachers Los Angeles in the spirit of other reform movements they had read about in Labor Notes, including Teamsters for a Democratic Union.”

Among the UHW alumni helping to strengthen the UTLA are Glenn Goldstein, Brian McNamara, and Grace Regullano. Before becoming a key organizer of charter schools in Los Angeles, Goldstein spent three decades doing successful healthcare industry organizing for SEIU. His career was cut short by the UHW trusteeship, after which he was punished financially for trying to make his old national union more democratic and accountable to its membership. SEIU’s costly and retaliatory lawsuit only succeeded against 16 defendants. But it left Goldstein personally responsible for paying $73,850 in monetary damages as part of a larger $1,578,000 judgment, half of which was covered by UNITE HERE, as an expression of solidarity with NUHW. (For more on this legal setback for union democracy, see: https://uniondemocracy.org/who-will-be-the-next-nuhw-16/)

Elsewhere in California, John Borsos—another target of SEIU’s punitive litigation—is now aiding public school teachers in Sacramento. Laura Kurre was pre-trusteeship educator director of UHW and today plays the same role at the California Federation of Teachers. Sarah Callahan has held top positions in both CFT and the Courage Campaign. In Milwaukee, two veterans of the UHW trusteeship fight, Ben Ward and Ed Sadlowski, are the new director and deputy director, respectively, of the Milwaukee Teachers Association.

Other UHW alumni have taken their experience in health care and put it to good use on behalf of RNs in Californa, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Rhode Island. For example, Dana Simon helped build UHW prior to the trusteeship and then went to work for its east coast counterpart, known as SEIU 1199. He was one of several SEIU organizers who resigned from 1199 in protest over the national union trusteeship in California. Today, Simon is a leading contract campaign organizer and negotiator for the Massachusetts Nurses Association.

Two former UHW activists have been hired by central labor bodies in the Bay Area. Kim Tavaglione is the new political director of the San Francisco Labor Council and Liz Ortega serves as Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Alameda County Labor Council. In Spokane, Liz Moore directs the Peace and Justice Action League, which promotes the principle of non-violence in social change organizing, while seeking an end to police misconduct and mass incarceration.

Among other UHW alumni, who switched to community organizing, is the Tenderloin Housing Clinic’s own Pratibha Tekkey. Tekkey directs multiple programs as THC Organizing Director; in her new role, she has become a leading local defender of affordable housing. Former UHW researcher Emily Gordon now overseees strategic research at the Center for Popular Democracy, which defends public education, workers’ rights, economic justice, and fair treatment of immigrants. Post-trusteeship, Ben Eichert became a campaign staffer for a US Senator and now directs Greenpower, a leading advocate for community choice aggregation (aka clean energy) in California.

Some ex-UHW staffers migrated to academia and now hold faculty positions at the University of California, Brown and Columbia Universities, and Middlebury College. One casualty of the trusteeship, Charlie Eaton, teaches at UC-Merced, where he has become an expert on the student loan debt crisis and other higher education trends. At Columbia, assistant sociology professor Adam Reich drew on his experience as a UHW organizer when he wrote With God On Our Side (Cornell University Press, 2007).

This in-depth study of Catholic hospital worker organizing focuses on Santa Rosa Memorial and a union drive there that began before the UHW trusteeship. Reich documents how rank-and-file initiative, community-labor coalition-building, and a sophisticated “corporate campaign” strategy overcame daunting obstacles to unionization, including SEIU’s post-trusteeship abandonment of the workers involved. They re-organized under the banner of NUHW, won bargaining rights in their own hospital, and then aided the unionization of three other facilities in the same Saint Joseph Hospitals’ chain.

In the field of journalism, former UHW (and then NUHW) communications coordinator Leighton Woodhouse has become an acclaimed documentary film-maker and political correspondent for The Intercept.

Contributing to Labor Resurgence

According to former UHW legislative/political director Paul Kumar, pre-trusteeship UHW was an invaluable training ground for union staffers, even before the conflict with SEIU headquarters led to trusteeship. Before 2009, some UHW alumni moved from healthcare to the entertainment industry, where Steve Sidawi and Lauren Perez became top organizers for SAG-AFTRA and John Kosinski became a staffer for the Writers Guild of America. After John Marshall left UHW, he was hired as a researcher for the UFCW and worked on its Wal-Mart campaign. Richard Barrara became Secretary Treasurer of UFCW Local 135 and Jim Araby, another UHW alumni, continues to serve UFCW Local 5 as its strategic campaign director.

Kumar was still on the UHW payroll at the time of the trusteeship and paid a heavy price for siding with the membership. He and others similarly purged experienced what they believe was a concerted effort to “blacklist” them from other union employment. SEIU’s costly attempt to win money damages from Kumar ultimately failed in court, as did any efforts to block him from doing further government affairs work, after 18 years of dedicated service to SEIU affiliates on both coasts.

In the past decade, Kumar served as political director for Save the Bay, a leading environmental group. He has provided health policy advice to the San Francisco Labor Council and been a paid consultant for NUHW, various non-profits, and many political campaigns. For Kumar and others driven out of SEIU by Andy Stern, the experience of the 2009 trusteeship was politically painful and personally bruising. Yet they find consolation—and political vindication—in the fact that so many past UHW members, staffers or elected leaders have continued to play productive roles in labor and related movements.

“The history of success we had, before the trusteeship, lives on its alumni network,” Kumar contends. “UHW was an incubator of talent, organizers who are still bargaining for the common good, utilizing the power of the strike, and promoting a political agenda for labor that’s focused on issues, rather than personalities. The union culture that SEIU tried to destroy has survived in NUHW and been infused in other resurgent unions.”

Steve Early is a former organizer for the Communications Workers of America and a longtime supporter of the National Union of Healthcare Workers. His book The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New Workers Movement or Death Throes of the Old? (2011) dealt with the SEIU-UHW trusteeship and related conflicts a decade ago. He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com.

Originally posted at BeyondChron.

LA Strike: Self-Mobilization of Workers and Communities

By: , , , February 3, 2019
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In January 2019, a massive strike of over 30,000 public school teachers stunned the Los Angeles power structure when it received massive, almost unanimous public support, especially in the city’s large Latinx and Black communities.  Latinx students now make up 75% of the city’s over 600,000 public school students. Even the anti-labor Los Angeles Times, which had issued dire warnings ahead of the strike, felt compelled to run a front-page headline on the third day that began with the words, “L.A. Teachers Bask in support for strike.”

This support, and the sustained pickets and rallies of teachers, students, parents, and other community members, forced the school board of the LA Unified School District (LAUSD) to concede considerable ground.  Everywhere, the union placards of the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) were printed in both Spanish and English. The mass outpouring in favor of the strike also helped change the national conversation about the privatized charter schools that are eating away at public education. And just as the West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona teachers’ strikes of 2018 paved the way for this one in LA, so the LA strike is very likely to be followed by major teacher strikes in Oakland, Denver, and other cities.

What Teachers and Students Are Facing

Public schools are underfunded, overcrowded, lack adequate social services and are subject to the worst impulses of neoliberalism. These attacks on public education disproportionately affect poor students, students of color, immigrant children, students whose primary language is not English, and those with disabilities. For months and years, LA teachers have been demanding a modest wage increase along with lower class size, accountability for charter schools, more support staff (nurses, counselors, librarians, etc.), less standardized testing, re-investment in education programs, and a stop to random searches and policing of students. A previous strike in 1989 demonstrated how demanding only a wage increase was short-sighted. LAUSD did meet teachers’ demands in ’89 but also increased class size, cut down on support staff and programs, and heavily charterized the district.

By 2014, a slate backed by progressive caucuses brought a new leadership to the UTLA. Moreover, the reinvigorated union lost hardly any members despite the reactionary Supreme Court decision making it harder for public sector unions to maintain their membership by making it “voluntary” even for workplaces with union contracts.

As a result of the January 2019 strike, the teachers won something on all of these issues, although in some cases only marginally. The seven-day strike commenced on Monday, January 14, Teachers wore #redfored, in/with the spirit of their fellow teachers in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Arizona who had engaged in similar labor struggles in 2018. Teachers would report to their respective school site at 6.30 am and picket heavily during school drop-off. A daily rally was held in downtown LA at the LAUSD headquarters. After the rally, teachers would return to their schools to picket at the end of school. Other actions involved protesting at the homes of school superintendent Austin Beutner and Monica Garcia (one of the more obstinate board members). Beutner the new superintendent is an investment banker with no teaching or education administration background.  He was also a deputy mayor under Antonio Villaraigosa and has ties to billionaire Eli Broad.

Supporters from many political leanings joined teachers on the picket lines. In particular, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-LA, the International Socialist Organization (ISO), and Black Rose/Rosa Negra (BRRN) were among the leftist groups that were conspicuously in solidarity with teachers picketing and offering resources, while several from the International Marxist-Humanist Organization (IMHO) participated as individuals. Teachers also coordinated their strike activity with other labor actions across the city.

Strike Day # 5 with Jason Torres-Rangel, LAUSD teacher, and activist. After a day of picketing schools, teachers marched some more to support a labor action at a hotel in Koreatown with Unite Here!

Southeast LA

At an elementary school in a mainly Latinx neighborhood in southeast LA, parents and community members, many of whom were Spanish speakers, sustained a daily teachers’ picket line by joining it and by offering food, drink, and a place to meet. A home near the school was volunteered as an impromptu strike headquarters, where teachers could rest, hold discussions, and get food and drink.  At this school, both the teachers and the community were almost 100% Latinx.  In the early days of the strike, the union representative announced that their demands for a raise had been won, but that they were holding out for other issues, that “We need to fight for the kids.”  In this spirit, they stayed out another week in order to win some gains on issues like librarians, nurses, and reduced class size.  A handmade sign by a young teacher stated: “I Miss My Students but I Love Them Way Too Much to Not Fight for Their Future.” Community members were solidly in support of the strike too, stating over and over again that “the kids are the future.”  There didn’t seem to be a single parent who didn’t support the strike at a school where the teachers were also overwhelmingly Latinx.

During the first days of the strike, a few thousand teachers, parents, and community members also rallied in predominantly Latinx East LA at LAUSD’s Local District on Soto Street. There were lots of speakers as demonstrators took over the streets.  Signs included “Honk for Public Education,” which almost all passing cars did, and the bilingual “El Maestra Luchando Tamibien está ensenando–Teachers Protesting are still teaching.”

South LA

Intense picketing also took place at Augustus Hawkins High School in South Los Angeles. This school is comprised predominately of working-class Latinx students and is not unlike others in the district. Teaching has traditionally been a white middle-class female profession. Indeed, in a nation where 50% of the public school students are people of color, 80% of the teachers are white. These demographics are vastly different in the LAUSD, however, where Latinx educators account for 43% of all LAUSD teachers, with the rest mainly white, Black, and Asian.

Finding themselves on the intersections of race, class, and immigration status, Latinx parents and students encountered at the teachers’ strike considered this struggle to be both an economic and racial justice matter and were very supportive of the teachers’ actions. Again and again, the Latinx teachers reminded attendees that the struggle was about students, their communities, and their futures. There was little emphasis on teacher wage increases. The language of “class struggle,” “ruling elite,” and “racial justice” was evoked in many public spheres, in a way not witnessed before. One teacher stated that this was a “righteous struggle towards the liberation of working-class people everywhere”.

Others have commented on the racial aspects of this strike here.

West LA

In relatively affluent West LA, the strike also proceeded with great enthusiasm.  At one elementary school, teachers, parents and students kept up a spirited picket line, even on cold and rainy days.  Some parents brought food and drink for the teachers, who were also invited to rest at a home near the school gate. Passing cars often honked in support, and no animosity toward the strike was expressed.

Afterwards, Latinx working women at a drycleaners in the area said that they had kept their children home during the strike “because we have to show solidarity with the teachers.”

Downtown LA Demonstrations

In the lead up to the strike, 50,000 teachers and community members rallied on December 15 to put forth their demands. Once it was clear that a settlement between Superintendent Austin Beutner, the LAUSD board and UTLA was unlikely, teachers began preparing to strike. The first important action involved a UTLA-led city-wide rally to garner support from the general public. The giant rally of 50, 000 educators and their supporters was held in Downtown LA in late December of 2018 Teachers marched from city hall to the Broad Museum, financed by billionaire Eli Broad, chanting, “When our students and teachers are under attack, what do we do? Stand up. Fight back!”

Part of the reason the destination was the Broad museum is that Eli Broad has spent a lot of his time and money on neoliberalizing education in Los Angeles and promoting charter school expansion. This great “philanthropist” has opposed tax increases on the wealthy. He also donated over $2 million to secure a reactionary, pro-charter majority on the LA school board in the 2017 elections. Turnout was a dismal 17%, allowing Broad and his friends to basically buy the election.

These pre-strike activities were very important in ensuring success and public favor in this struggle. While a fight for equitable wages is more than enough reason to strike, teachers saw this as a myopic goal. They understood that the district, the charter school machine and the media (Beutner is a former CEO of the LA Times) would put out a counter-narrative to suggest that vulnerable children were now at the mercy of uncaring educators who had walked off the job. Teachers are supposed to be altruistic, making it difficult to challenge anyone who appears to be working against the interests of kids. They knew that the lack of a cohesive movement and public buy-in would open the door for more school privatizers in the future who would employ the language of school choice to convince communities they are offering a better education, which of course they are not. Before this strike, the union and many grassroots organizations spent many weeks reaching out to their communities to discuss the full scope and nature of the strike.

A grassroots organization working on this very issue emphasized the economic and social harms that come to children who do not have adequate services and offered local public education workshops on why/how charter schools exploit communities. It also worked with groups the union has historically had a difficult time reaching, such as undocumented immigrants. Finally, it mobilized and established a fund for striking teachers along with community resources for parents in need of childcare.

During the strike, another massive rally was held on Friday, January 18. Again, there were 60,000 or more participants, stretching all the way from the western edge of Grand Park to City Hall and taking over the surrounding streets as well.  The mood was boisterous and upbeat, with teachers and the community smelling victory as the school board’s attempts at anti-teacher propaganda continued to fall flat. Handmade signs read, “I Am More than a Test Score,” “California is 46 out of 50 in school funding,” “On Strike for Our Students,” “Respect for me and my students,” and “I Stand with LA Teachers.”

Charter School Strike

One charter school that has gained union representation by the UTLA, Accelerated Schools in predominant Latinx and African American South LA, also experienced a strike, which ended in victory after eight days, a little longer than the large public-school strike.  In addition to wages and health benefits, these teachers won somewhat greater job security after having been subject to a harsh system where they were not notified until April if they were going to be teaching in the next school year. Many were let go without explanation at the end of each school year, helping to create a 50% turnover from 2016-18.

While they did not gain tenure, a new severance package for teachers who are not retained is intended to mitigate somewhat the current atmosphere of fear, of a Trumpian “you’re fired.”

Other Sectors of Labor

On Tuesday, Jan 22, the last day of the strike, another layer of labor came onto the streets to support the teachers. Some 1600 firefighters marched at 6AM alongside the UTLA “Red for Ed” marching band, along with a fire truck.

They were in town from all over the US for a convention of the International Association of Fire Fighters.

Overcoming Anti-Labor, Anti-Student Charter Schools

Over the past two decades, mainstream political forces have supported charter schools, whether rightwingers like George W. Bush, or liberals like Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, not to speak of Democratic Governors Jerry Brown (CA) and Andrew Cuomo (NY).

The charter school lobby has bestowed hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions on these and other politicians that support them.

The LA teachers’ strike is a turning point in the defense of public education carried out by unionized teachers who have some autonomy, allowing them to raise the kinds of critical questions in their classes that create greater awareness of social issues and problems, without fear of arbitrary termination. While control over new charters lies at the state level in California, the teachers succeeded in forcing the previously pro-charter LA school board to pass a resolution calling upon the state government to stop new charter schools in the district, where at present they control about 20% of the students. This vote, carried out over the objections of 1000 angry pro-charter demonstrators, suggests that the worm has turned in terms of public opinion about charters, and not only in LA.

Charter schools pay their CEOs (basically private owners of the schools) extremely high salaries, instead of putting the money where it needs to go. They also tend to teach to the tests (English and math only) so that they skew their “success” rates. Their primary focus is only English and math, since this is what the state of California is now requiring for competency. Charter schools only get state funds based on attendance and test scores. They’ll often have no physical education, no art, and no music programs, but they will still find money to pay for attendance officers to make sure every kid is in school every day.

They can kick kids out for basically any reason, including illegal reasons (has an Individualized Education Program, usually for a disability) which means they keep the kids they want to make them look good. However, test scores overall STILL have not improved despite their own false reports.

Most charters are non-union, which means high teacher burnout, something they cover up. Not having a union is also a way billionaires can chip away at union rights across all sectors, not only teachers, as anti-labor Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker did for eight years, until his stinging defeat last November.

That said, there is a small, small fraction of charters that fills a needed niche in public education, but these charters tend to have unions, and are typically started by teachers or educational professionals that have an educational philosophy they believe works. These are not common and hard to run since it’s all about how much money you get per student that enrolls.

What Was Achieved and Where to Go from Here

The LA teachers’ strike officially ended on Tuesday, January 22, 2019, with the district meeting some teacher demands. While there is somewhat of a public consensus that the district and the union came to a historic agreement, many teachers are not completely satisfied with the deal that UTLA negotiated on their behalf. The deal promises a class reduction of one student for every school year (two for special classes) and minimally increases the number of support staff, like librarians, nurses, counselors, and psychologists. The deal also includes some provision for expanding green spaces in schools, reducing standardized testing, and involving UTLA in decisions concerning the accountability of charter schools among others.

As Maricela, a Chicanx woman, artist, activist, and Language Arts teacher at Hawkins High School in South LA stated concerning the deal that UTLA negotiated on their behalf.: “We go to work tomorrow no matter what! A no vote means the contract isn’t adopted. 50% plus 1 vote is needed to adopt the tentative agreement. Teachers are pissed  and feel like higher ups sold them out by announcing it to the public before bringing it to a vote first.”

According to Mel. T., immigrant from Fiji and homeless rights activist and organizer: “Frustrating! The news coming through is that UTLA members voted to accept the deal. What’s frustrating is that with the amazing protest turnout by UTLA members in one of the hardest rain-hit weeks in LA, they could have asked and got so much more for our students, including the removal of Beutner, a hedge fund manager who has no business being a county school district superintendent.”

“Regardless of how I feel about the UTLA negotiations and agreement I want to make one thing clear. The teachers strike these past 1.5 weeks has been one of the most inspirational events I have ever witnessed. I’ve been to a few marches and demonstrations but to see our teachers out in the freezing cold, shivering in the rain, losing thousands of dollars but doing it all for the love of their students was magical. You galvanized Los Angeles and this will lead to many more actions on so many human rights issues because of your Sacrifice and Courage. And those are exactly the 2 words you deserve. Sacrifice because you knew you would lose so much and did. Hanging on by a thread from losing your paychecks to knowing your students would lose schoolwork and the heartache of knowing some would go hungry because they can’t afford to eat but having the Courage to go through with it because you knew you had to do it for their very future.”

A Last Word… On Schools and Capitalism

Public schools are important sites for struggles for both students and workers, be they teachers or support staff. The #redfored wave continues with public schools in Colorado, Oakland, and  Virginia preparing to take action in their bid to save public education. But what is the relationship of these teachers’ strikes to the larger struggle for a humanist alternative to capitalism?

In their 1848 Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels include among the demands of the communists something that was very radical for those times, when even a basic education was a privilege of the wealthy: “Free education for all children in public schools.” Three decades later, in the Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx specifies that he does not support turning over the schools to the capitalist state: “‘Equal elementary education’? What idea lies behind these words? Is it believed that in present-day society (and it is only with this one has to deal) education can be equal for all classes?” and also, “Elementary education by the state’ is altogether objectionable. Defining by general law the expenditures on the elementary schools, the qualifications of the teaching staff, the branches of instruction, etc… is a very different thing from appointing the state as the educator of the people! Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school…”

Public school is an extension of the bourgeois government, an institution that often serves dominant class interests; nevertheless, it is very much a compromise born out of the struggles of working-class folks. What that means is that we have to theorize what school can be in a new society. It also means that means we consistently fight for and defend public, free, and secular education.

The mass teachers’ strike in LA and the equally massive community participation it generated show that the working people of LA want to defend, expand, and improve public education for all of our youth.  The scent of a larger change also hangs in the air, as both the teachers and the community now view themselves in a new way, as empowered drivers of positive changes in our educational system.

Will a well-organized labor union like UTLA, now under the leadership of progressives, continue and deepen the struggle, helping it to spread across the state and the country?  Will UTLA find more ways to reciprocate the support it received from some of LA County’s most oppressed sectors — low-wage service workers, for example — by using their organizational resources to help these workers to gain union representation?  Will UTLA speak out more forcefully on issues around Black Lives Matter or the movement to abolish ICE?  Will the teachers find a way to speak out on capitalism itself, even as they rightly concentrate their fire on some of its most hypocritical and noxious local representatives, like Beutner and Broad?

Originally posted at The International Marxist-Humanist. 

On Capitalism, Authoritarianism and What Is New about Trumpism

By: February 1, 2019
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Below is a revised version of a presentation given to a panel on “Mass Incarceration and the Global Rise of Authoritarian Capitalism” at the Los Angeles Peace Center on September 23, 2017.

In this paper, I would like to address four questions:

1. Is capitalism inherently authoritarian, and if so, why?

2. What economic and ideological factors can account for the current rise of authoritarianism in the U.S.?

3. What is new about Trump’s Authoritarianism?

4. How can it be effectively challenged?

Unknown ObjectIs Capitalism Inherently Authoritarian?

If we begin with Marx’s Capital and his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, we will learn that capitalism is not simply an unjust mode of distribution. It is a mode of production based on alienated labor, an extreme mental /manual division of labor that turns work into a meaningless, undifferentiated, monotonous activity, and turns the human being into a cog in a machine. It alienates us not only from our products but also from our potential for free and conscious activity and from other human beings. Since labor under capitalism is alienated and mechanical, it is expressed in a uniform and undifferentiated symbol such as value or money.

Based on Marx’s Capital, we can sum up the logic of capital in the following way: Alienated labor (not limited to factory or manufacturing labor but also including a variety of service sector jobs) which produces value leads to a system in which the goal becomes the expansion of value as an end in itself. To meet this goal, capitalism introduces more and more machinery and technology to increase labor productivity and extract more and more surplus value from human or living labor.

This process also leads to the concentration and centralization of capital in fewer hands to the point where within a single country, Marx anticipated, capital could even be accumulated in the hands of a single capitalist or a single capitalist corporation.

At the same time, this process leads to an imbalance for capitalism itself. Relatively more and more technology and machines are used at the expense of living human labor which is the only source of value. This imbalance leads both to an increasing rate of unemployment relative to investment, and a tendency toward a decline in the rate of profit and periodic economic crises. These crises can lead to war between competing capitalist entities or states.

Even without an outright war, in order to overcome crises, capitalism needs to resort to more and more authoritarian means, physically and ideologically, to extract more surplus value from labor and to quell the dissatisfied unemployed.  These means can be seen in the form of using slave labor, a more extensive use of the prison-industrial complex, more policing, and in general greater militarization of society in life and in thought.

However, there is more to why capitalism leads to authoritarianism. The logic of capital also promotes authoritarianism by devaluing critical and independent thinking. Its reduction of the concept of time to value production time, devalues the time spent on thinking and analyzing issues outside the context of profit.  It reduces thought itself to mathematical formulas or computer algorithms. It reduces human reason to the application of formulas and to calculation for pure and narrow self-interest or what the Frankfurt School thinkers have called “instrumental rationality.”

Marx thought that capitalism, by bringing workers together, would create national and international solidarity among them to uproot the capitalist system and to replace it with a humanist alternative of which he had given us some signposts in his work.  At the same time, he as a Hegelian dialectical philosopher was able to see that reality develops in contradictory ways and that racism, sexism, intra-class divisions and ideological brainwashing are used to divide the working class and all those who suffer from capitalism’s ills.  We can still learn from his writings and activities to address these issues and to offer solutions.

In that spirit, let’s analyze some of the reasons for the current rise of authoritarianism in the U.S.

What economic and ideological factors can account for the current rise of authoritarianism in the U.S.?

According to the Marxist economist, Michael Roberts, author of The Long Depression (2016), after the “three glorious decades” of the post-World War II boom in economic growth in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, a crisis of profitability caught up with the Western economies.  This, he argues, is what led to what we know as the “neoliberal reforms” starting in the early 1980s. Neoliberalism included an assault on labor rights and regulations and massive cuts in social services through privatization of the state sector of the economy which provided these services.  It also included “globalization,” the flight of capital to Mexico and then mostly to China, India and South East Asia in search of cheaper labor costs and higher profits.

Roberts shows that capitalism’s incessant drive to cut labor costs and increase the rate of profit is also the basis for what some economists are calling the “Second Machine Age” in which computers and robotics are being used to replace living human labor on a scale much greater than the First Machine Age in the 19th Century. This phenomenon however, he argues, will lead to deeper crises of profitability for capitalism.

The above-mentioned changes in Western economies since the mid-1970s/early 1980s have been accompanied by a massive decline in formerly “good paying” manufacturing jobs, longer recessions characterized by rising unemployment/underemployment, and a sense of increasing alienation and hopelessness on the part of the U.S. working class.

The 2008 global economic crisis was also a major turning point for capitalism. It showed that even the neoliberal reforms were not sufficient to generate high enough profits to overcome the depth of the crisis of profitability.

According to Ryan Avent, the author of The Wealth of Humans (2017), it is the search for a higher rate of profit that explains why some U.S. and European multi-national companies which had gone to China during the past 30 years to benefit from the cheap labor and lack of regulations, are now returning to build or re-open manufacturing plants in their home countries. They have discovered that there is much more value to be made from the proximity of production to research and development. (pp. 173-177)

Avent explains that this proximity of production to research and development however, will not lead to mass employment in manufacturing in the economically developed countries because the new jobs created are too high-skilled and relatively too few. Thus, what he anticipates as the future for Western economies is that a small sector of high-skilled professionals will benefit from the return of manufacturing jobs. The low-skilled laid off workers however, will continue to compete for low-skilled work. (pp. 45-46)

Thus he argues that today the problem is not only that in the industrially developed countries, well-paying manufacturing jobs have severely declined and that in Europe unemployment is on the rise (in Europe 20% of adults over age 25 are unemployed and even in Germany where the unemployment rate is low, job security is low) or that the share of income going to workers as opposed to businesses and property owners has fallen. (p. 3)  It is that the idea of a career will not even be a meaningful concept in 50 years.

It is in the context of these changes that we need to understand the rise of Trump in the U.S. and the appeal of authoritarian state capitalism in the formerly welfare state or liberal and neoliberal models of the West.

What is New About Trump’s Authoritarianism?

In the words of Jamil Khader, Professor of English literature at Bethlehem University in Palestine: “Trump’s objection to outsourcing, rejection of free-trade treaties, and his call for more government economic intervention are all symptoms of the fact that neoliberal economic policies and the democratic values associated with them can no longer drive capitalist growth. As a result, the crisis of global capitalism today is driving nations worldwide toward new forms of politico-economic organization—namely authoritarian capitalism.”

While one can challenge Khader’s association of neoliberal economic policies with democratic values, Khader’s claim about the inadequacy of neoliberal policies in driving capitalist growth is an important one. It helps us see that Trump’s economic promises represented a global phenomenon. It reflected the current stage of capitalism and its need to go beyond neoliberal globalization toward further concentration and centralization of capital in the form of monopoly capitalism and state capitalism in order to increase capitalism’s insatiable drive for the self-expansion of value.

A careful study of the current direction of the U.S. economy and the global economy (which is outside the scope of this presentation) can show that monopoly capitalism and state capitalism dominate the world economy today. Indeed, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century argues that today states have more influence over the global economy than ever before. (p. 473) Even as the public sector shrinks, state-owned enterprises are becoming more powerful globally. Monopoly capitalism dominates not only manufacturing but also the service sector in the U.S.

Thus, Trump did not only use racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, immigrant bashing and xenophobia to appeal to large segments of the white working class. Trump’s talk of anti-globalization and his promise to bring good-paying manufacturing jobs back to the United States also appealed to 30% of Latino voters, 15% of African American male voters, 45% of women voters, and many of the white working-class voters who had voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012.

However, Trump’s victory can still not be adequately explained by the above arguments. His victory was also very much rooted in the “instrumental rationality” and the devaluation of thinking itself which the logic of capital promotes. He used the concept of “post-truth” to devalue any idea of objectivity and reason and to free himself of the need to prove his claims and offer logical arguments.

David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist who thoroughly supports capitalism, nevertheless offers an instructive critique of Trumpism and warns Trump’s opponents not to follow the same model: “The modern lowbrow (think Sean Hannity or Dinesh D’Souza) ignores normal journalistic or intellectual standards. He creates a style of communication that doesn’t make you think more; it makes you think and notice less. He offers a steady diet of affirmation, focuses on simple topics that require little background information and gets viewers addicted to daily doses of righteous contempt and delicious vindication.”

How to Challenge the Current Rise of Authoritarian Capitalism

I would argue that a successful challenge would require addressing these issues:

1. Understanding Marx’s critique of capitalism as a mode of production which is based on alienated labor and hence leads to the logic of capital.

2. Understanding how the logic of capital uses racism, sexism and homophobia.

3. Reclaiming the concepts of reason and objectivity to promote critical and independent thinking.

First, a critique of capitalism that only demands a more equitable distribution of wealth without challenging the very alienated labor that is at the root of the logic of capital, cannot challenge the authoritarianism emanating from this system. It will only limit our goal to another version of state capitalism.

Secondly, opposing racism, sexism and homophobia needs to also address the ways in which capitalism uses them to make people from oppressed and exploited sectors of society act against their own interests.

Thirdly, we need to critique capitalism’s “instrumental rationality” and the limitations of positivist and capitalist versions of reason and objectivity, without falling into mere relativism and the dangerous concept of “post-truth.”

In sum, opposing the current rise of authoritarianism and creating global solidarity between labor struggles, the movements for social and environmental justice, for an anti-racist multiracial and multi-ethnic existence, and for an end to patriarchy, sexism and homophobia cannot take place without understanding the logic of capital and developing a humanist alternative to it. If our anti-capitalism does not offer an alternative to alienated labor and does not promote critical dialectical reason, we will never be able to overcome the logic of capitalism and its consequent authoritarianism.

Frieda Afary, Philosophy M.A., M.L.I.S, writer, translator and producer of Iranian Progressives in Translation, is a founding member of the Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists.

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Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the 21st Century. Bellknap, 2014.

Smith, Daniel J., review of Liberalism: The Life of an Idea, by Edmund Fawcett, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books. October 9, 2017.

Morrison, Toni. The Origin of Others. Harvard University Press, 2017.

Reimann, John. “‘Antifa’, the Working-Class Movement and the Far Right.” Oakland Socialist, September 1, 2017.

Roberts, Michael. The Long Depression. Haymarket Books, 2016.

Sethness, Javier. “Exposing and Defeating the Fascist Creep.” Review of Against the Fascist Creep by Alexander Reid Ross. Truthout, April 7, 2017.

Originally posted at Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists.

Venezuela: The Hour of the Lackeys

By: January 31, 2019
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The tremendous economic, political and moral crisis that Venezuela is going through has not only sunk millions of people’s living and working conditions, but also the political programs that appear confronted to the death in a highly politicized stage. It is the hour of the lackeys. Both sides of the stand-off are in the service of big multinational capital, as bidders of the free exploitation of our enormous natural resources.

The “pitiyanki” right, previously organized in the MUD (Democratic Unity) and now dispersed around Juan Guaidó, plays out a strategy that attempts to produce a change in government in Venezuela, from abroad. The open and impertinent manner that the foreign intervention is being carried out in unprecedented, with U.S. president Donald Trump and the pro-U.S. governments that promote Guaidó’s rise to power from the OAS and the Lima Group, supporting his self-proclamation as “interim president” and publicly calling for a military mutiny to carry him into office.

The parties and social forces of this pro-yankee right once again demonstrate its position of lackey to U.S. imperialism, reviving in the 21st Century the treacherous and subjugated conduct that the parties of the Punto Fijo Pact (principally Acción Democrática and Copei) carried out from 1959. Juan Guaidó and his followers act as if following the instructions of a handbook written abroad by Latin American oligarchical governments grouped around their imperial master in the North.

The huge mobilizations that have taken pace this Wednesday, January 23, promoted by the National Assembly as part of its plan to delegitimize Nicaolás Maduro, have an undeniable popular content and have been possible because of the widespread discontent of the people due to the brutal effects of the economic crisis on the living and working conditions of Venezuelan families. Given the absence of a classist, popular and revolutionary political alternative, the people have had no choice but to mobilize, once again, under the banners of the “pitiyanki” right, not to strengthen a political sector that they consider defeated and failed, but to make a new effort to remove those who they consider most responsible for all the wrongs that working people suffer from power.

The lackeyism of the right that Joan Guaidó now leads, reaches the extreme of entertaining the idea of a scenario of foreign military intervention in Venezuela, which could unleash a civil was and bloodbath in which the people – as always – would pay dearly. In a political procedure of evident treason (and, for the record, I don’t at all agree with Maduro’s version of this concept of treason), Guaidó and the other pro-Yankee forces repeatedly promote foreign intervention, something rarely seen in our republican history.

On the other side, the Maduro government has demonstrated beyond a doubt in these six years in government, its position as lackey to multinational capitalism, by carrying out openly neoliberal economic programs to exploit our main resources, like oil, gold and coltan. Maduro has signed contracts that copy the main anti-national companies that held previous oil concessions under dictator Juan Vincente Gómez in the second and third decades of the 20th Century. Maduro has also implemented economic plans inspired by neoliberal measures, like the flexibilization of labor relations as “bait” for attracting foreign inversions: unacknowledgement of work contracts in state companies; opening of special economic zones in which the labor laws of the LOTTT (labor legislation) are not applicable; suppression of union elections with the objective of illegalizing classist unions and imposing a union bureaucracy; military and police persecution of class-struggle union leaders, who have even been prosecuted by military courts (repeating this practice applied by Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1977); collapse of real wages to critical levels of poverty which places Venezuela among countries with minimum monthly incomes of $10 (the continent’s supposedly poorest country, Haiti, has a minimum monthly income of $80).

Maduro’s program is lackey to the multinationals of the western world (U.S., Canadian, European), as well as of the emerging multi-polar globalization (China, Russia, Iran, Turkey). Maduro has no problem with embracing Manuel Rocha, ex official of George Bush’s State Department, now president of Barrick Gold, contractor of the Orinoco Mining Arc) in the presidential palace of Miraflores; of with giving interviews to the ultra-right Maria Eliva Salazar, of the neoconservative Fox News, to ask the chief of U.S. imperialism, Donald Trump, for dialogue.

In fact, the breaking of diplomatic relations with the United States stands in stark contrast to that plea for “dialogue,” less than a week prior. The worst part being that any possible “negotiated” solution to the current crisis, implies forfeiting national sovereignty, since it would place the destiny of internal affairs that Venezuelans should resolve on our own, in the hands of foreign powers.

From the first meeting of Elias Jaua with John Kerry in December of 2013, or the secret meetings of Diosdado Cabello with Thomas Shanon in Haiti in 2015, the Maduro government has maintained secret diplomacy with the U.S. government (which contrasts with its anti-imperialist discourse). This diplomacy has apparently cracked apart as the the contradictions between the main capitalist empire and other, equally capitalist economies like China and Russia, have sharpened. One of Maduro’s big mistakes was to tie us to the cart of the inter-imperialist confrontation that is brewing between United States and its western allies against China and its emergent capitalist allies.

Like a joke that circulates in social media, the “gringos” come for our oil, gold, diamonds, iron, aluminum, coltan, etc. But the Chinese and the Russians are here for exactly the same things. They are not looking for mamones or guayabas. No one should believe that the powers that appear to back Maduro do so for ideological reasons of “solidarity” with the Bolivarian Revolution. Putin, Erdogan and Xi Jinpin could not care less if an ultra-neoliberal like Macri (with whom the Chinese government does very good business) or a progressive-leftist like Evo Morales, governs here in Venezuela. What the Chinese (and the rest of the “friendly” governments) care about, is to conduct business with us, because they have a global dispute with the West over the access to natural resources for their constantly growing industries.

One thing is to use global geopolitical contradictions to obtain benefits for our country and avoid being trampled in the economic and political relations of the global order, by doing business with powers that are confronted with our traditional enemy in the North. Quite another thing is to make people believe that those economic relations with non-occidental powers are favorable for our country on their own. The Chinese and Russians simply conduct business with Venezuela. The more benefits they can get out of us, the more inversions will come. In the end, they operate under the same logic as global capital. And the anti-national contracts signed by Maduro with Gold Reserve and Barrick Gold have the same format as those signed with Chinese, Turkish and Russian companies.

There is no doubt that the current crisis was generated by the government of Nicolás Maduro. In 2012, when Chávez died, the opposition was completely defeated electorally and the country’s economy was doing much better than the debacle we have gone through these last six years. Without denying that the roots of the debacle lie in fatal mistakes committed by Chávez himself, and recognizing that the political foundation of the PSUV-military government, with all its vices and perversions, were defined during Chávez’s time, it is necessary to state that Maduro developed all the bad and did away with the popular and revolutionary conquests of the Chavista process. The incapacity for running the economy and the huge corruption extended across the government, led the Maduro government to the complete failure of all the plans and all the goals lined out in its national plan.

The cherry on the top was placed by Maduro when the PSUV lost the 2015 legislative elections, implementing a series of measures that violated the Constitution and ended with an arbitrary election to a constituent assembly, without a previous referendum. From there, Maduro, with the backing of the TSJ and the CNE, carried out a coup that violated the 1999 Constitution and inaugurated a de facto government, with phony elections, also conducted in violation of constitutional rule. This is why the legal situation of the Maduro government cannot be considered “constitutional,” but rather a de facto government, like that of Pérez Giménez, to reference the most recent example in our history (Pérez Giménez called his own “constituent assembly” and wrote his own constitution, which he nonetheless violated four months after approving it).

The finishing touch has been the economic plan that the government has implemented since last August 20, which unacknowledges all the labor rights contemplated in the 1999 Constitution and the labor law of 2012, important conquests of the Bolivarian Revolution that Maduro has destroyed with the objective of making our labor force more attractive – cheap and without rights – to the savage investors of Russian, Chinese and other capitalist countries who are in “solidarity” with Venezuela.

This is the hour of the lackeys. Guaidó and Maduro are both lackeys of global capitalism. Both are anti-national. Both act against the interests of the Venezuelan people. The political strategies of these two lackeys lead us to a possible civil war which would bring further calamity to our already suffering population.

The very real perspective of situations of violence, which have already occurred this week, with the murders of almost 30 people in the protests held around the country. This violence, as well as the mutiny of National Guards that occurred in Caracas on Monday, January 21, does away with the only justification that the fraudulent National Constituent Assemble had left: having achieved a supposed “peace” and avoided a violent confrontation. It now looks like we have regressed, in even worse conditions, to the situation of violent repression of popular protests that took place in the first half of 2017.

Maduro’s failure is evident, and Guaidó’s pro-Yankee submission simply contributes to deepening an unfortunate polarization that impedes working people from formulating a program of urgent transformations to overcome the economic crisis and stabilize the political debacle that we are living.

The demands of the Platform of Defense of the Constitution – a referendum to decide the calling of elections to reelect all public powers – appears to be the only viable proposal that can save Venezuela from armed confrontation that the extremists of Maduro and the equally extremist lackeys of the pro-Yankee opposition are planning.

Originally posted at Anticapitalist Network. 

Inequality and the Ecological Transition

By: January 29, 2019
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Last month Branko Milanovic published a blog post about the Yellow Vest movement against the fuel tax in France.  He was worried – like many analysts – that the uprising proves it will be virtually impossible to roll out the policies necessary to reduce carbon emissions.  He’s convinced that people simply won’t accept it.

Unknown ObjectHe also took the opportunity to hit out at myself and Kate Raworth.  “Proponents of degrowth and those who argue that we need to do something dramatic regarding climate change are singularly coy and shy when it comes to pointing out who is going to bear the costs of these changes.  As I mentioned in my discussion with Jason and Kate, if they were serious they should go out and tell Western audiences that their real incomes should be cut in half and also explain to them how that should be accomplished.”Let’s deal with these issues one at a time.

First, the Yellow Vests.  Don’t get it twisted: the French began rioting not because of the fuel tax as such, but rather because it was extremely regressive.  The burden of the tax fell disproportionately on rural and peri-urban workers who, already struggling to make ends meet under a government that is openly disdainful of working class people, were suddenly forced to pay more at the pump simply in order to get to their jobs.  Meanwhile, the elites of Paris and other cities, who get to use public transportation, were less affected.  The Yellow Vests felt this was unfair.  And they are right.

The Yellow Vests are not against environmental policy.  In fact, they highlight ecology as a top priority, and have even called for stronger climate action, accusing Macron of fiddling around the edges with “piecemeal measures”.  Real climate policy, they say, requires widespread economic changes, and should target the real drivers of climate change: rich consumers and, above all, corporations.  I agree with them.

There are many ways to make a carbon tax fair and progressive.  One obvious step would be to tax carbon at source and distribute part of the yields back to working-class households in the form of a dividend or rebate.  The effect would be to ensure that the costs of the energy transition are borne by the rich and by corporations, as it should be.

So, my response to Branko: it’s not the gas tax that’s the problem.  It’s inequality that’s the problem.

Branko’s post indicates that he is aware of this dynamic… so one wonders why he is so confused about the way forward.  It’s simple: reducing inequality needs to be at the very heart of climate policy.

abstract-landscape-following-your-fascinations-oil-painting-by-holly-van-hart-30-x-40-900-px.jpg

This brings me to the next point, about degrowth.

It is increasingly apparent that Branko has read very little in the field of post-growth or ecological economics.  There are literally hundreds of peer reviewed articles and books that explore exactly the questions he’s asking here – including this new economic model that investigates policies for a de-growth scenario in, of all places, France – and yet it seems Branko can’t be bothered to engage with them.

Instead, he continues to misrepresent our scholarship.  Literally no one has ever argued that we should just cut everyone’s income in half.  That is a ridiculous assertion.  Repeating this straw man over and over won’t somehow magically make it true.

Post-growth policy begins with the very principle that – as the Yellow Vests themselves have pointed out – should inform all ecological policy: greater equality.  Indeed, the post-growth movement has long argued that equality can be a substitute for growth.  By sharing what we already have more fairly, we won’t need to plunder the Earth for more.

The objective of degrowth is to scale down aggregate resource use, energy demand and emissions, focusing on rich, high-consuming nations, and to do this while improving people’s well-being.  How do we make this happen? Here are five first steps:

1. Abandon GDP as a measure of progress and either replace it with a more holistic alternative (like the Genuine Progress Indicator) or focus public policy on a series of social indicators to be improved (like well-being, health, good employment) and ecological footprint indicators to be reduced (like resource use, emissions, waste).

2. Scale down throughput by introducing progressive taxes on resource use, emissions and waste, or impose caps on these activities and tighten them each year.  Require manufacturers to offer extended warranties on all material products in order to encourage longer lifespans.  Legislate a “right to repair”, and introduce laws against planned obsolescence.  Ban advertising in public spaces, as Sao Paulo and other cities have done.  Prevent supermarkets from trashing food, as France and Italy have done, and impose fees on food waste while banning it from landfills, as South Korea has done.  Etc.

Reducing the material throughput of the economy not only takes pressure off ecosystems, it also reduces energy demand, which – as the recent IPCC report points out – makes the transition to renewable energy much more feasible.

3. Shorten the working week and distribute available work more equally in order to ensure full employment.  Not only does a shorter working week have all sorts of positive ecological and social benefits, it also relieves pressures for growth. In the existing economy, as labour productivity improves people get laid off, and we have to generate more growth in order to create new jobs and mop up unemployment. Shortening the working week allows us to create jobs without the need for growth. It also ensures that if aggregate economic activity slows down (which it likely will as material throughput declines) then workers laid off from dying dirty industries can get jobs in cleaner ones, even as total labour requirements diminish.

To offset reductions in working hours, either increase hourly wages with a living wage policy or (to avoid hurting small businesses) introduce a universal basic income, as per proposals by Andre Gorz.

4. Expand universal social goods and reinstate commons, to ensure that people can access the resources they need in order to live well without high levels of income.  This means generous, high-quality public healthcare and education, rent controls, affordable public housing and transportation, and access to public parks and recreational facilities.  It could also mean a system of universal basic services, as UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity has proposed.

Scaling down aggregate economic activity might reduce private riches, but – as I have argued before – it needn’t reduce public wealth.

5. Distribute national income more fairly by introducing either high marginal tax rates on top incomes (like the 80% top marginal tax rate the US averaged from 1943 to 1983), or a maximum wage policy.  Roll out a wealth tax, as Thomas Piketty has proposed, and a financial transaction tax.  Close down secrecy jurisdictions and introduce a global minimum corporate tax to wipe out tax evasion. Use the proceeds of these taxes, and of the above-mentioned fees on resource use, emissions and waste, to (a) help fund the rapid rollout of renewable energy infrastructure, (b) contribute to a universal basic income, and (c) invest in public goods.  Democratise workplaces and encourage co-operative ownership structures for businesses.

Branko says that I am “singularly coy and shy when it comes to pointing out who is going to bear the costs” of transitioning to an ecological economy.  I have no idea where he gets this notion.  On the contrary, I have always been clear that the transition requires justice as a core principle: that we create a fairer, more equitable society.

Originally posted at jasonhickel.org.

Why no socialism in Sweden?

By: January 27, 2019
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The Wage-Earner Funds in Sweden is one of the few serious attempts in an advanced capitalist society to socialize the means of production. Developed by Rudolf Meidner and Anna Hedborg, two economists at the powerful social-democratic union confederation LO, the plan envisioned a gradual, long-term transition to worker control of the whole economy through regular, continuous transfer of shares to union-owned funds. While it is commonly believed that the plan failed due to intransigent and well-coordinated capitalist opposition, my research demonstrates that its failure was primarily due to the high degree of centralization of the labor unions pushing it.

Unknown ObjectThe Meidner-Hedborg Plan (MHP) proposed to gradually and cumulatively transfer control of most companies to organized workers. The plan would accomplish this by mandating most Swedish firms (except those with less than 50 or 100 employees) to transfer a certain portion of the profits every year to the worker-controlled Wage-Earner Funds (WEF), as newly-issued shares. At the report-recommended transfer rate of 20%, it would take around 20-35 years for them to attain majority ownership of Swedish capital by society, depending on the level of profits during the period of transfer. Released in August 1975, MHP was an immediate public sensation; the bourgeois-liberal newspaper of record, Dagens Nyheter, proclaimed “Revolution in Sweden.” The LO-organized mass educational campaign in the fall was met with enthusiastic support from union members, to the degree surprising even to Meidner and Hedborg, which created the momentum and swayed the LO President Gunnar Nilsson to support the plan. At the LO Congress in June 1976, the delegates overwhelmingly endorsed MHP. They concluded the debate by singing the Internationale.

But the socialist transformation of Sweden through WEF failed to occur. The dominantexplanation of the failure attributes it primarily to political and ideological mobilizations by the employers. Indeed, WEF case is often treated as the quintessential case of impossibility of the social democratic path to socialism to overcome the irresistible wall of capitalist counter-offensive, failing on the shoals of “massive, hostile reaction by the Swedish capitalist class”. However, this interpretation does not portray the events as they unfolded accurately. In 1978 the LO had already significantly back peddled on its more radically transformative original plan, before Swedish capital launched an intensive campaign against the fund. Most instances of the intense business countermobilization, such as the multimillion-kronor anti-fund campaign that the SAF ran during the 1982 election and the infamous anti-fund “October 4th demonstration” of 1983 that brought 75,000 protesters on the streets, occurred after WEF had become moderate and non-threatening to the capitalist relations of production. While this chronology does not necessarily invalidate theories of structural capitalist power to obstruct a democratic socialist transition in general, the Swedish case hardly demonstrates its impossibility for that reason.

After the euphoric LO Congress, long negotiations between LO and the Social Democratic Party (SAP) began to unfold. The SAP leadership, having embraced peaceful class collaboration for many decades, never supported MHP. The LO-SAP joint working group developed a new, compromise WEF plan in 1978, which dulled the original’s radical edge. The 1978 plan restricted obligatory share transfer to firms with more than 500 employees, precluding worker ownership in many industries (such as construction, restaurants) dominated by smaller firms. Furthermore, it added the goal of increasing capital formation and investment to the original aim of achieving workers’ power and equitable property distribution, which led to a proposal for the parallel fund to be financed from wage deduction. This further diluted the proposal’s transformative potential. Despite the compromise though, the Party leadership still refused to support the 1978 version.

The next WEF plan in 1981, primarily influenced by the SAP’s neoliberal future finance minister Kjell-Olof Feldt, entirely eliminated the obligatory profit-based share transfer. The core mechanism to achieve workers’ majority ownership was now gone. Only the capital formation fund, which could purchase shares on the open market based on cash transfers from both wages and profits, remained. The Feldt Plan took a pro-business turn, primarily focusing on supplying sufficient capital for the industry. A version of it was eventually enacted by the SAP government in 1983. The social democratic leaders took the proposal down a rightward path after 1976, either enthusiastically as in the case of the social democratic party or reluctantly as in the case of the union federation. In my view, this was largely due to the absence of mass mobilizations from below to hold the leadership accountable to the original MHP. Recall that the union base strongly supported it. I posit that centralization of the Swedish labor movement undermined both the capacity of pro-MHP rank-and-file workers to actively mobilize beyond passive support, as well as their interest in MHP as a socialist plan.

Firstly, the emergence the original plan was not spurred by a significant leftward shift within social democracy, but by the radical and strategically placed left intellectuals, Meidner and Hedborg. The plan did not emerge organically from labor militancy or New Left radicalism, neither of which were significant at the time in Sweden. It came from above, while workers supported it only when they were introduced to it by LO-coordinated study groups. As the party leadership dragged its feet, the grassroots discontent grew; when they rejected the 1978 plan, a widespread expression of discontent erupted from below, as grassroots activists wrote resolutions and newspaper columns to protest the decision. However, there was no independent institutional vehicle from below to channel discontent with the leadership towards mobilizations for the MHP on their own, due to the top-down structure of social democratic institutions in Sweden.

Secondly, centralization of the Swedish labor movement cast doubt on the radically democratizing potential of MHP itself. Union ownership of firms would not lead to workers’ democratic control over the means of production, if the unions themselves weren’t democratic. Therefore, the plan awakened little enthusiasm, if not outright skepticism and hostility, in circles further to the left of social democracy. Considering the sheer dominance of social democracy in the Swedish labor movement, these forces were marginal; nevertheless, as militants who were opposed to social democracy, they constituted plausible alternative poles around which the pro-MHP forces could have coalesced. Those who were skeptical of the social democratic leadership were also skeptical of the proposal’s promises, while those who believed in MHP could not openly challenge the leadership in an organized manner.

This problem is related to weakness of MHP’s articulation in terms of a broader vision of a transformed society. The plan was clear about its transformative implication, not just economically but also socially. The plan stipulated that dividends be used to provide education in political economy for union members and for expanding cultural and artistic life through the workers’ educational association. They also argued that such empowerment through education was “the most effective counter to any bureaucratic tendencies in the unions,” and that the Funds “will stand or fall with the prospects for raising the level of education among those who one day will assume part of the functions of ownership.” However, not only was the plan oblivious to the existing bureaucratic tendencies in the Swedish unions, it offered no concrete ideas on how the entire society could be transformed as a result of the workers’ control over the means of production. The growing feminist and ecological movements provided an opportunity to articulate it in terms of becoming the linchpin of a whole alternative system of social production and reproduction. But such an articulation did not occur. The debate became too bogged down in complex and arcane technical details that few people understood or took interest in, let alone mobilized en masse to fight for it.

If we need today a “left that can learn from 1917 Russia and 1976 Sweden”, what is the main lesson of the latter? MHP failed on the shoals of social-democratic bureaucracy, though it was itself a product of its radical wing. The Swedish case casts a doubt on a sharp, anti-prefigurative separation of the end from the means. Democratization of the economy could not be achieved hierarchically. Today, the politics of worker ownership is back on the agenda. John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor of the British Labour Party, announced plans to create “a new workers’ fund for each large corporation, which will place a part of that corporation directly into the collective ownership and control of the workforce.” If such a plan for a democratic economy is to succeed in the post-neoliberal era, it is a matter of political strategy that the movement itself must be democratic, based on autonomous activities of productive and reproductive workers.

Shannon Ikebe is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Originally posted at the Marxist Sociology Blog.

The People No Longer Want Maduro–and No One Chose Guaidó

By: January 27, 2019
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The following statement was issued by Marea Socialista, a Venezuelan organization.

Only the sovereign mobilized people can decide its destiny, in a referendum and general elections

The Venezuelan people, mobilized along all social sectors and taking to the streets from the poor neighborhoods, are demonstrating that they are fed up with Maduro. The people will no longer tolerate the policies of hunger and the destruction of labor rights, the elimination of the right to healthcare and shortages of medicine, the degradation of public services, extreme corruption and routine repression.

This explains why a large part of the population joined the marches called by the self-proclaimed Guaidó. Not because they are prepared to recognize whoever wants to snatch power, but because broad sectors of the population are fed up and don´t want any more of this. Even those who work in the public sector who remain silent or are forced to go to the government´s mobilizations to avoid retaliations at work are seeing their financial subsidies affected, or endangering their Misión Vivienda homes. Word of mouth, within Chavismo, also reflects exhaustion, annoyance and the progressive loss of fear.

Workers the people more broadly have not been able to build an independent alternative of their own to represent their real interests and to express their anguish; and they are trapped between the bureaucracy and capital. The result of this is the resurgence of polarization between the politicians of a corrupt government that controls power, and the parliamentarians of the parties of the capitalists that exploit workers.

The bosses that finance and promote the opposition parties of the traditional right have also benefited by paying the miserable wages imposed by the government of Maduro, the PSUV and the military. And their proposal is no different in this respect, as they continue unloading the cost of the crisis on the people while they secure their profits.

From the National Assembly, they aim to form a new government and use the people´s energy in their favor, because we lack strong organizations of our own to channel the struggle against Maduro´s government. But the National Assembly and the United States cannot impose governments on the Venezuelan people; neither can Maduro. They are all usurpers and they fight over the control of the state to keep the people subdued and exploited.

Our unions and popular organizations are largely destroyed, corrupted or subordinated to the state apparatus, and another part of them has ceded its political independence to the leaders of the capitalist class that exploits us. This is why, not having yet escaped the authoritarian trap of Maduro, we are already falling into the trap of the coup by Guaidó and the Voluntad Popular party backed by the United States, which defends its own interests, opposed to those of the Venezuelan people.

We are now in danger of a confrontation between two governments—both illegitimate, and one of them supported by the United States- escalating into a civil war, or more direct forms of imperialist intervention by the Trump administration. We must also alert that the government takes advantage of each attempted bower grab by the right to unleash a wave of repression to submit the people and silence all protest.

In this situation, Marea Socialista calls on people to continue on the streets protesting against the oppressive government, but we must move with our own working class and peoples´ agenda, and not behind the right wing parliamentarians or the PSUV bureaucracy, and we must not accept any foreign intervention.

Marea Socialista calls for uniting all who understand the necessity of building our own fighting organization, to raise a new political alternative of our class and popular sectors who are suffering, to defend our interests and rights.

  • The people no longer want Maduro, and no one chose Guaidó.
  • Popular referendum for the people to legitimize all powers (Art. 71 of the Constitution).
  • Renovation of the National Electoral Council to reclaim its independence and call for new elections.
  • Emergency economic plan in favor of workers and the people, to confront the crisis, recover wages and access food.
  • No to the relinquishing of sovereignty.
  • No to the intervention and meddling of the United States and the Lima Group.
  • Let´s continue the struggle for our living conditions: wages, labor rights, public services, democratic rights.
  • No coup or negotiations behind the peoples´ backs.
  • Political autonomy for workers and popular sectors.
  • No more following the politicians of the ruling bureaucracy or the capitalists.
  • Not bureaucracy, nor capital!
  • They must all go!
  • The people must exercise its sovereignty.
  • No repression: liberation of all political prisoners, respect for human rights.
  • For a government of the workers and the people, not of the traditional bourgeoisie nor of the “reddish” bourgeoisie.

Who Shut Down the Shutdown?

By: January 26, 2019
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Who ended the shutdown? The Democrats? Nancy Pelosi? Mitch McConnell? None of the above.

The shutdown got shut down when workers took Laguardia Airport off-line on Friday, January 25. A rolling disaster of massive commercial disruption was about to unfold for capitalist America and that pushed the GOP over the edge.

Disgusted and outraged employees – TSA security and FAA air traffic controllers – did what their unions should have done at least two weeks ago.  We don’t know what positive role IF ANY their national union leadership played here. More likely, as with all great accomplishments for workers rights, the real leadership probably came from the bottom, from the workers collectively voting with their feet.

In past momentous worker actions (like getting the 8 hour day) what typically happened was some outrage finally broke the camel’s back and thousands of workers hit the streets, with their leadership frantically racing to catch-up with the members. We’ll have to watch and see if the current union leadership at the top even bothers to get out and walk quickly, let alone run; to acknowledge the profound lesson we just learned, again.

What happens in three weeks? Maybe the next shutdown should be pre-empted by a strong credible threat: next time it won’t take three weeks to stop it. We’ll stop it on day two. The federal unions should sign on to a pledge:  “You want shutdown, you’ll get shutdown, motherfucker.” They could even toss out the idea of a general strike so that the rest of us can get involved in determining our future.

It’s about time the labor movement showed the Democratic Party for what it is. Why didn’t THEY call for a walk-out and promise protection? This would have been a great opportunity to encourage a lot of Trump’s base to re-think their worldview.

The federal unions that should have immediately responded to the shutdown include: the American Federation of Government Employees (TSA, IRS, Social Security, Homeland Security, CDC..), National Treasury Employees Union, National Air Traffic Controllers Association. And of course the AFL-CIO  – the American FEDERATION of Labor – itself should have been there instead of doing nothing like they did when Reagan fired our air traffic controllers years ago (1981).

This isn’t just about Trump or the GOP, or even the pathetic Dems; the labor movement needs house-cleaning, redemption  and resurrection.  They could set the agenda for America if they wanted to.

* Robert Park is a federal employee and AFGE member in Cincinnati, Ohio. He describes himself as a life-long activist, schooled in imperialism (Vietnam) and class-analytics; trained in science and public health; waiting for the tipping point.

The Venezuelan People Must Decide, Not Trump

By: January 26, 2019
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Right-wing opposition leader Juan Guaidó has declared himself interim president of Venezuela against sitting President Nicolás Maduro, and he was immediately recognized by the U.S. government and a range of authoritarian leaders in Latin America. Here, the International Socialist Organization states its opposition to this new assault against the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people.

AS INTERNATIONALISTS and anti-imperialists, we look to the people of Venezuela to defend their own sovereignty. We recognize that the greatest threat to peace, democracy and prosperity in Latin America has always been the U.S. state and U.S. big business.

President Donald Trump must have choked on his words when he claimed to stand up for “freedom and the rule of law.” This from a man who has imprisoned thousands of Central American children in cages. We hold him and his administration responsible for the deaths of 8-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonzo and 7-year-old Jakelin Caal.

And Vice President Mike Pence’s accusation that “Nicolas Maduro is a dictator with no legitimate claim to power” rings hollow from a man who, along with Trump, won office after losing the popular vote, and who regularly defends the reactionary monarchy in Saudi Arabia.

We unconditionally oppose all U.S. aggression against the people of Venezuela and demand that the Trump administration refrain from any provocative military actions. Unfortunately, there is broad bipartisan consensus in Washington, D.C., to target the people of Venezuela. Let us not forget that almost two years ago to the day, President Barack Obama declared Venezuelaan “unusual and extraordinary threat.”

These external threats have only intensified the economic and political crisis ravaging Venezuela. As an article in Socialist Worker reported last month: “The UN estimated in 2017 that over 1.4 million Venezuelans had migrated. The IOM’s statistics are much higher. By early 2018, it counted more than 2.3 million migrants, a 900% hike from 2015. This amounts to around 7 percent of Venezuela’s population.”

The Venezuelan right has sought to weaponize this crisis for its own purposes. Not only do they wish to force President Nicolas Maduro out of power, but they aim to tear up all social gains that the people have made over the last 20 years.

Let us speak clearly. Self-declared “interim President” Juan Guaidó is playing the role of U.S. puppet. And when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declares that “All OAS member states must align themselves” with Guaidó, it is clear who is calling the shots.

We note that the neo-fascist Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro rushed to embrace Guaidó, while IMF representative and Argentine President Mauricio Macri extended his recognition, as did Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who owes his own power to a U.S.-backed military coup.

WE HAVE always defended the right of the people of Venezuela to elect their own leaders. We opposed the attempted coup against the democratically elected President Hugo Chávez in 2002, and we have supported the important anti-poverty reforms his government made over the years.

As the same time, we have clearly stated our opposition to the bureaucratic definition of socialism advocated by former President Chávez, and we pointed to the dangerous bureaucratic and anti-democratic path followed by President Maduro and his regime. So while we stand against U.S. intervention and interference, we also recognize the social crisis on the ground facing millions of ordinary Venezuelans.

We note that Maduro’s government has lost support, as is obvious by the low turnout of the last elections and the wide array of people who attended the January 23 protest against him. Many people in Venezuela are fed up with the situation and see no clear solutions coming from the government. But their opposition to Maduro does not mean the people agree with the right and with the U.S.

We defend the right of Venezuelans to choose their leaders, but as one solidarity statement put it: “The people no longer want Maduro, but no one chose Guaidó.”

The Venezuelan people have suffered enough. We demand an end to U.S. interference. We say:

No to the Guaidó-Trump coup
End all U.S. sanctions on Venezuela.Withdraw all elements of the U.S. Navy Fourth Fleet
End all U.S. economic, political and diplomatic aid to the right-wing opposition.
Economic refugees should be welcomed into the U.S.
Abolish all debt held by U.S. and European banks, the World Bank and the IMF

Originally posted at Socialist Worker. 

A Labor Movement 2020 Election Strategy

By: , January 24, 2019
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Organized labor has an opportunity to play an important role in the upcoming selection of a presidential candidate in the Democratic Party’s primaries and the eventual November 3, 2020 U.S. presidential election. The stakes couldn’t be higher, not only for the future of the labor movement but for the entire U.S. working class.

The Iowa, New Hampshire and California Democratic primaries are more than a year away. (The Iowa contest is February 3, 2020 and early voting in California will begin that day; New Hampshire is set for February 11.) But the volume of commentary and speculation regarding the selection of a candidate is already at a high level. Perhaps because of the general panic about Trump and the obvious mandate to defeat him, many union leaders appear to have lost their class perspective on the election. Very few comments we’ve seen reflect the importance of taking a strategic approach to the 2020 political process and using the primaries as an arena for struggle with the corporate Democrats.

Regardless of who the Democrats pick, the primaries should be viewed as an opportunity for the labor movement to gain strength. That’s why it’s imperative for labor to define and advance working class values and priorities before making any union endorsements.

Well before the primaries begin, our objective should be to unite around a forward-looking political program and provide members and elected union officials as much time as possible to evaluate the candidates based on these positions. Absent a bold, well-articulated working-class program, labor’s agenda risks being crushed by the Democratic Party’s traditional pro-corporate and discredited neo-liberal ideology.

Dramatic Labor Movement Successes

The labor movement has been the subject of oft-written obituaries over the last thirty plus years. But our organizations soldier on as the largest force for positive change not funded by billionaire- and millionaire-backed philanthropic foundations.

Despite historic low union density (private sector membership is now down to 6.5% of the workforce), labor and our allies are continuing to have great successes. For example, through its innovative “Fight for $15” campaign, SEIU has succeeded in winning significant raises in the minimum wage at the state and municipal level for millions of low-wage American workers. The hotel workers union just conducted a multi-city strike against corporate giant, Marriott. Workers won a resounding victory with sizable wage increases, no cuts in health care, new protections against sexual harassment and innovative policies to deal with workload and scheduling.

The wave of teacher strikes in states like West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and beyond with workers wearing “Red for Ed,” demonstrated the power of organized workers in states that are thought of as conservative and where Trump carried the popular vote in 2016. On January 14, Los Angeles teachers followed in their footsteps by striking and waging an heroic battle for the future of public education. Finally, labor helped power the recent Blue Wave that flipped 40 House seats and gained a record setting 9 percent margin in the aggregate Congressional popular vote nationwide. Labor’s money, ground troops and organizing expertise were crucial to winning these victories.

2020 IS NOT 2016

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was the anointed choice of the corporate elites. Many labor unions also rushed to endorse her because they saw no alternative. But when Bernie Sanders announced in May of 2015, there was a groundswell of support for him in the ranks and disgruntlement with union leadership’s early endorsements of Clinton. Thankfully, six national unions and over 100 local unions had the courage to endorse Sanders. That labor support and nearly 50,000 union members who were part of the Labor for Bernie network helped propel Sanders to win over 13 million votes in the Democratic primaries. The Sanders’ candidacy and his continuing activism (along with Our Revolution and other grassroots insurgencies) have pushed an anti-corporate, populist agenda that has now made issues like Medicare for All and free college tuition mainstream. Their work has also bolstered the fight for immigrant rights and is contributing to rebuilding a vibrant movement against militarism and war.

Partly because of Sanders’ success and the revulsion against Trump, several candidates will emerge in 2019-20 carrying part or most of his progressive platform. Inevitability, labor unions won’t coalesce behind one candidate. Given the disastrous results of the early Clinton endorsements, there should be no rush to judgment this time in the endorsement process.

STAND ON PROGRAM, NOT PERSONALITIES

If labor is to gain strength while weathering the onslaught of candidates and confusion, union leaders will need to:

  • Begin maximum consultation with — and the involvement of — union members in shaping a broadly appealing working-class platform; and
  • Use that broad platform as a key threshold that candidates seeking labor’s support must meet.

And while labor unions may have to “agree to disagree” on particular parochial planks, they should strive for broad unity along these lines:

  • Strengthening labor laws and the right to organize;
  • An array of economic demands like $15 per hour minimum wage, expanded Social Security and retirement security
  • A “Green New Deal” with a Just Transition program for displaced workers
  • Civil Rights, Immigrant Rights and Women’s Rights
  • Support Medicare for All, not military budgets and endless war

UNITE THE WORKING CLASS; BUILD POWER IN THE PRIMARIES

Armed with a program — and the support of the members — unions can enter the primary election fray and winnow-out genuine pro-labor candidates from the corporate Democrats. (A perfect opportunity will be to hound and challenge any candidates who support charter schools and education privatization.) Candidate forums and endorsement questionnaires are essential tools in this process. Unequivocal support for labor’s strikes, contract and organizing campaigns should also be used by unions as a key benchmark for earning an endorsement. Our experience in the 2016 Democratic primaries showed how these tools provide an important route to genuinely building working class electoral power. For instance, last time around Bernie Sanders’ support for the Verizon strike proved to CWA members and many other workers his sincerity and credibility as a candidate.

The eventual effort in the Democratic Party to defeat Donald Trump in a “united front” with others is not diminished by this engagement but is, in fact strengthened. Look how far the Medicare for All campaign has penetrated the political discourse because of Sanders’ candidacy in 2016. Similarly look how the newly elected, anti-corporate House members are setting the agenda in the House of Representatives now run by Democrats.

LABOR CAN PLAY A UNIQUE ROLE IN WINNING BACK TRUMP VOTERS

Labor unions are membership run, democratic institutions with their leaders subject to votes of the membership. As such, union leaders must succeed in uniting a broad array of member viewpoints. That makes labor organizations an important force to challenge the Trump phenomenon with our members and especially with white male working class voters. Labor will be more credible in so-called “red states” if our leaders are armed with a program that speaks directly to the needs and interests of the multi-racial working class.

The natural diversity in union workplaces provides union members a golden opportunity to contend with their fellow workers who supported Trump. Often those eventual Trump supporters were originally Bernie backers in the primaries. Political scientists estimate that 12% of Sanders supporters in the primaries then voted for Trump in the 2016 general election. In a close election to be decided in a small number of swing states, the opportunity to win back Trump supporters should not be overlooked.

People’s Action is organizing in some “red” states with grassroots door-to-door organizing in rural areas. (See “Winning in Trump Country” here.) Labor unions can have the same positive conversations about race and class and the same possible effect with our members – but only if union leaders focus on issues and commit to having a genuine consultation with members. Early endorsement of a corporate candidate only because of “electability” will undermine the credibility of our message and spoil the opportunity for membership engagement. Nothing could be more instructive than our unions’ experience with the botched 2016 primaries and the disastrous election of Trump. Let’s not jump the gun that way again in 2020!

The authors are indebted to Tom Gallagher’s insightful political analysis in The Primary Route: How the 99% Takes on the Military Industrial Complex, Read Peter Olney’s review on the Stansbury Forum here; the book can be purchased here.

Rand Wilson is Chief of Staff at SEIU Local 888 and a former volunteer organizer for Labor for Bernie. Peter Olney is retired ILWU organizing director and a labor trainer and consultant.

Orginally posted at Orgainizing Upgrade.

Forgotten voices in Venezuela crisis

By: January 24, 2019
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Things are approaching a crisis point in the long battle of wills between Venezuela and the White House. Juan Guaidó, president of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, swore himself in as the country’s “interim president” before a crowd of tens (by some accounts, hundreds) of thousands of supporters in Caracas on Jan. 23.

Perhaps in an abortive move to pre-empt this, the SEBIN political police detained him on his way to a rally three days earlier, but later released him without charge. At his auto-inauguration, he declared President Nicolás Maduro’s re-election last May illegitimate, and himself the only legitimate executive authority in the country. Donald Trump immediately announced that he is recognizing Guaidó—quickly joined by Canada and several Latin American governments.

“In its role as the only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people, the National Assembly invoked the country’s constitution to declare Nicolas Maduro illegitimate, and the office of the presidency therefore vacant,” Trump said in a statement. “The people of Venezuela have courageously spoken out against Maduro and his regime and demanded freedom and the rule of law.”

Seeming to anticipate Guaidó’s move, Vice President Mike Pence one day earlier condescendingly intoned, adding a phrase in stiff and poorly prounounced Spanish: “As the good people of Venezuela make your voices heard tomorrow, on behalf of the American people, we say: estamos con ustedes. We are with you. We stand with you, and we will stay with you until Democracy is restored and you reclaim your birthright of Libertad.”

The Lima Group of regional governments seeking regime change in Venezuela mostly fell into line. In a statement, 11 of the 14 members called upon Guaidó to oversee a political transition “in order to hold new elections, in the shortest time.”

Maduro responded by breaking ties with the US, and ordering its diplomatic staff to leave the country within 72 hours. Trump is ordering them to remain at their posts. (Global News, Reuters, InfoBae, Miami Herald, Miami Herald, NYT, The Hill, CNBC)

Guaidó’s grab: a soft coup?

Guaidó is protege and heir apparent of veteran opposition leader Leopoldo López, who has been under house arrest and barred from political office since 2014. López gave the nod to Guaidó to lead his Popular Will (Voluntad Popular) party when its mandate began on Jan. 5—five days before Maduro was inaugurated for a second six-year term. Guaidó had just finished his first full term as a legislative deputy, having been elected in 2015. His self-inauguration was symbolically timed for the anniversary of the 1958 uprising that ended Venezuela’s military dictatorship. As his supporters have mobilized in their thousands, so have those of Maduro—sometimes wearing paramilitary uniforms. (The Guardian, NYT)

A few obvious points. It is hopefully superflous to comment on the irony of Trump, the great enthusiast for dictators, suddenly developing a touching concern with democracy in Venezuela. And however dubious Maduro’s re-election may have been, Guaidó’s self-inauguration is also on thin constitutional grounds. The New York Times reported back on Sept. 8, citing Washington and Caracas officials, that the Trump administration had held secret meetings with rebellious Venezuelan military officers over the past year to discuss plans to oust Maduro—inevitably raising memories of the attempted coup against Hugo Chávez in April 2002.

All that said… the rush to call what is underway a “coup” is premature. One may be in the works, but the model is certainly not Chile 1973, nor Honduras 2009—nor even Venezuela 2002. Widespread (and not merely oligarchical) rage against Maduro is obvious, spurred by the country’s ongoing and deepening food crisis, human rights crisis and general crisis of legitimacy. Maduro continues to have his support base but even this has been eroded by the ironic neoliberal turn of his government in response to the crisis (and in spite of the incessant populist and anti-imperialist phrases).

The dissident left: it exists

Predictably overlooked in the world media’s Manichean view of the crisis are voices of Venezuela’s dissident left that takes a neither/nor position opposed to both the regime and the right-wing leadership of the opposition.

On Jan. 17, six days ahead of Guaidó’s attempted power-grab, the Citizen Platform in Defense of the Constitution (PCDC) held a press conference at the Central University of Venezuela campus, saying “No to the parallel state imposed by the United States, the European Union and the Lima Group,” but also registering its rejection of the “sell-out [entreguista] and unconstitutional regime of Nicolás Maduro.” The statement called for a popular referendum to “renovate all the public powers” in the country. The PCDC is made up of long-time social leaders of the left, including former cabinet ministers under Hugo Chávez and followers of the Socialist Tide (Marea Socialista) party. (Apporea)

Indigenous resistance to extractive agenda

Also unheard are voices of indigenous dissent and resistance. In an episode that received shamefully little coverage either in Spanish or English, December saw protests in the remote Orinoco Basin after a leader of the Pemón indigenous people was killed by elite Military Counterintelligence troops. Pemón leader Charlie Peñaloza Rivas was shot dead and two others wounded in the Dec. 8 confrontation at Campo Carrao, an outpost within Canaima National Park, in the Guayana region of Bolívar state. Amnesty International found that the troops opened fire “without any justification.” Members of the Pemón Territorial Guard subsequently took five hostages at the outpost, including personnel of the state power company Corpoelec. The military operation was ostensibly aimed at clearing the region of illegal gold mining—while the Pemón themselves had been protesting the mining. (EcoPolitica Venezuela, Apporea, BellingCat, Caracas Chronicles, Publico, Efecto Cocuyo)

Indigenous and environmental leaders in the region issued a statement in the name of the Venezuelan Political Ecology Observatory after the confrontation. The statement blamed the violence in the region on the “extractive” agenda of the government’s Orinoco Mineral Arcdevelopment plan, and treatment of the territory as res nullius to undermine indigenous rights. Citing the indigenous autonomy provisions in Venezuela’s constitution, the statement asserted: “Contrary to the position demonstrated by sectors of the government and its armed forces, the principal guardians of the national territory are the indigenous, and in the case of Guayana the Pemón people.” (EcoPoliticaVenezuela)

It is clear that the illegal mining in the Guayana is fast expanding, driven by the economic desperation in Venezuela. A study just released by the Amazonian Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information Network (RAISG) has identified thousands of illegal mining sites across the Amazon and Orinoco basins—with the big majority in Venezuela. Of the 2,312 “extraction points” across six countries, 1,899 are in Venezuela. The runner up at 312 was Brazil—with a far greater territory. (SciDev.Net)

Whether or not the Maduro government is viewing the illegal mining as a kind of social safety valve, keeping a sector of the economically displaced isolated in the rainforest, or (more cynically) viewing the outlaw miners as the advance guard of the “official” extractive agenda for the region, one thing is clear: the illegal extractive activity provides a pretext for militarization that can ultimately be used to repress indigenous opposition to the coming exploitation under corporate auspices.

Inherent contradiction of bolivarismo

As with the constitutional autonomy provisions, the government has of course sought to build support among the indigenous—especially those in places less remote than the Orinoco. Amid this week’s political showdown, the government handed over more than a hundred collective property titles to indigenous peoples. The move was announced by the Indigenous Peoples Commission of the National Constituent Assembly, the body charged with rewriting the constitution—and accused of usurping the authority of the National Assembly. The Commission’s Clara Vidal said the move was part of the government’s “decolonization” policy, adding: “This implies reinforcing and bringing back indigenous peoples’ way of life through intercultural bilingual education, ancestral medicines and foods, among others.” (Prensa Latina)

But in a contradicton also seen in the hydrocarbon-rich Sierra de Perijá along the Colombian border, extractive agendas undermine the very indigenous support the government has sought to build. The government clearly has far less indigenous support in the remote Orinoco, where the autochthonous inhabitants see their rights less in terms of “land” than of territory. And the sacrifice of these territories is essentially mandated by the Bolivarian Revolution’s fundamental strategy of winning popular support through a clientelist distribution of the proceeds of resource extraction.

There is nothing to be gained by overlooking these contradictions in the name of anti-imperialism. On the other hand, the condition of Venezuela’s indigenous peoples, as well as workers and peasants, clearly stands to worsen (certainly not improve!) if an openlyneoliberal reactionary regime were to take power.

Can progressives around the world possibly walk this line?

This article originally appeared in Countervortex.

Against the coup intervention in Venezuela!

By: January 24, 2019
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This statement was issued by the PRT, Mexican section of the Fourth International, on 23 January 2019.

The Workers’ Revolutionary Party (PRT) stands emphatically against the new attempted coup d’état and imperialist intervention against Venezuela. In an open and cynically orchestrated campaign called by the Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence (given Trump’s discredit to Latin America) in a video circulated during the night of 22 January, to give the starting flag to a strategy that led in a matter of hours to self-proclamation – without anyone voting for him – of the real usurper Juan Guaidó as “president” of Venezuela. Following this self-proclamation, there was an avalanche of “recognitions” of the supposed new government by presidents and governments all over the world, some openly neofascist, and with no democratic tradition at all, from Trump himself to Macri and Bolsonaro.

We resolutely join the national and international campaigns condemning this attempted coup d’état and imperialist intervention that violates the minimum basis of national sovereignty, for which the peoples of our America have fought for more than two centuries. We call for the broadest popular, unitive, internationalist and democratic mobilization against the coup, which means that – regardless of all differences, criticisms and oppositions – the government has democratic legitimacy based on the ballot box and, in any case, cannot be overthrown by means of an imperialist coup. Let it be the Venezuelan people, free, sovereign, and democratically who decide their future.

No to the coup d’état in Venezuela!

For an anti-imperialist and sovereign solution to the Venezuelan crisis!

Partido Revolucionario de los y las Trabajadores Mexican Section of the Fourth International Mexico City 23 January 2019

Originally posted at International Viewpoint.

What do Trump’s ‘withdrawal’ from Syria and the Gulf’s rapprochement with Assad have in common?

By: January 20, 2019
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In the days since Donald Trump’s announcement that the US was to rapidly withdraw its 2,000 troops from Syria, an enormous amount of speculation about what this means has taken place. In my initial piece, I expressed a number of views that are not widely shared.

First, I gave more credit to Trump having a valid position, from the point of view of US imperialism, than what was generally conceded. Overwhelmingly Trump’s move has been viewed as a pure personal whim, which is allegedly in conflict with what all other US ruling class circles prefer to happen.

Secondly, while almost every analyst claimed this move was a sell-out of the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to the Erdogan regime in Turkey, I stressed that it was just as much, if not more, a green light for the Bashar Assad tyranny to take control of the SDF-controlled regions.

With masses of contradictory information, it has been difficult to make coherent sense of the developments; none of us are seers. In this follow-up piece, I hope to shed more light on what I think is occurring.

Did Trump’s move contradict US ruling class interests?

On the first question, it is of course true that Trump acts on whim, and has a tendency to speak jibberish, which might well suggest that his orders came from a place of complete ignorance and be at variance with US ruling class interests. However, the idea that momentous decisions are made entirely by one guy with quasi-dictatorial powers is problematic. I will argue here that, Trump’s idiosyncrasies aside, the decision to withdraw, and the consequences thereof, are entirely within the bounds of US ruling class interests, so whether or not it was entirely accidental is not so material.

As Steven Simon, who served on the National Security Council in the Clinton and Obama administrations, puts it succinctly, Trump’s “impulsive and uncoordinated move” nevertheless “coincided with strategic imperative, even if the president himself was unaware of it.”

Of course, one could argue that a 24-hour withdrawal would indeed be destabilising, but it was naïve to believe that an order to withdraw would automatically mean that all US forces, weaponry, bases, aircraft and intelligence are gone the next day, whatever a tweet may say. Between Trump’s impulsive statements and the realities and complexities of actually withdrawing, there was plenty of wiggle room for Trump’s “immediate” withdrawal to turn into a four-month timetable, involving negotiation between Trump and other ruling class figures, such as Senator Lindsay Graham.

Graham got Trump to agree that complete withdrawal should only take place once ISIS is totally defeated in Syria, which has always been Trump’s own condition (though Trump is basically correct that the US and SDF have driven it from 99 percent of the country), and that “our Kurdish allies are protected.” Similar statements were then made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Meanwhile, the US military is reportedly establishing new military bases just across the Syrian border in Iraq, from where it can continue to bomb the last tiny piece of ISIS remaining. Despite alarmist forecasts that Trump was even selling out to ISIS, “between December 16 and December 29, US-led coalition military forces conducted 469 air and artillery strikes targeting ISIS in Syria.” The last major towns occupied by ISIS, Hajin and Kashmah, were captured by the SDF on December 25 and January 2 respectively.

Of course, none of the statements extending the withdrawal said anything whatsoever about pressure on the Assad regime. That has simply never had anything to do with the US presence, one way or another.

‘Withdrawal’ a green light to Assad, not Erdogan

On the second question, I am now even more convinced of the correctness of my initial view, that the ‘green light’ is mainly aimed at the Assad regime, and its Russian backers, rather than Erdogan, as I will explain in detail below.

However, some clarification may be in order: how can a US withdrawal favour Assad and Russia if the US presence in Syria was never opposed to them in the first place? Here we need to understand the US relationship with its ground ally, the SDF, which controls northeast Syria since driving out ISIS. The key basis of the US choice of the SDF, rather than Syrian rebels, as its ally against ISIS was that the SDF does not fight the Assad regime; and dropping the fight against Assad was the key demand the US had put on FSA units if they were to be armed against ISIS, a condition the FSA, while actively fighting ISIS itself, refused to accept.

This meant the US and SDF could fight ISIS in the east in a war completely separate to Assad’s counterrevolutionary war against the rebellion in western Syria. But while the SDF was not anti-Assad, nor was it pro-Assad; rather, it was interested in building its own project, the ‘Rojava revolution’, in its own space, separate to both Assad and the rebels. Therefore, the US was maintaining a region outside Assad’s direct control; but it is important to understand that this was never the ultimate US aim; the US aim was merely to use the SDF to defeat ISIS. Therefore, the current processes of the US abandoning the SDF to Assad, and the SDF itself trying to negotiate a deal with Assad, are essentially in perfect harmony, but in these “negotiations” it is the regime, not the Rojava project, that will eventually come out on top.

Israel, Gulf states, welcome back the Assad regime

According to a recent article entitled ‘We had an opportunity to assassinate Assad, top ‎Israeli official reveals’:

“…prolonged conflict in ‎Syria saw Israel often hold negotiations with the ‎regime in Damascus in order to reach an agreement in ‎Syria. … the (Israeli) Diplomatic-Security Cabinet held extensive ‎discussions on the situation in Syria and decided ‎that Israel would not allow an Iranian military ‎presence there. Since then, Israel has invested ‎considerable efforts in preventing Iran and ‎Hezbollah from establishing themselves in Syria, ‎while making sure it [Israel] inflicts minimal ‎damage to the Damascus regime.”

This long-term Israeli position – yes to Assad, no to Iran – was stressed even more strongly last year as the Assad regime reconquered the south from the FSA Southern Front. While Israeli prime minister Netanyahu declared “We haven’t had a problem with the Assad regime, for 40 yearsnot a single bullet was fired on the Golan Heights,” and Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot stressed that Israel will allow “only” Assad regime forces to occupy the Golan “border”, ultra-right defence minister Avigdor Lieberman told the full truth that “Israel prefers to see Syria returning to the situation before the civil war, where the central rule under Assad leadership.”

Returning to the ‘assassination’ article, the senior Israeli official “refused to comment on ‎the decision by some Arab states, such as Bahrain ‎and the United Arab Emirates, to reopen their ‎embassies in Damascus, saying only that the ‎rapprochement between Arab states and Syria was ‎‎“less dangerous for Israel because these Arab states ‎also want to see Iran out of Syria.”‎

This Israeli strategy of trying to separate Assad and Iran, in collaboration with Assad’s major patron, Russia, is now in line with the increasingly assertive position of the Gulf, as seen in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – always a bastion of regional counterrevolution – being the first to re-open its embassy in Damascus on December 27. Actually, the UAE has been pushing for this for over two years but tried not to act unilaterally, till now; last June 8, UAE Foreign Minister Dr. Anwar Gargash declared “I think it was a mistake to kick Syria out of the Arab league,” referring to the Syrian opposition as “al-Qaida-based.” The UAE was followed almost immediately by Bahrain, which referred to “brotherly Syria,” with similar hints coming out of Kuwait; these moves were preceded by the visit to Damascus by Assad’s fellow tyrant, Omar al-Bashir, fittingly the first Arab head of state to visit since 2011, along with the high-level visit to Cairo by Assad’s security chief Ali Mamlouk on December 22 (though in any case al-Sisi’s brutal Egyptian dictatorship has been pro-Assad ever since the UAE-backed bloody coup in 2013), and Jordan’s re-opening of its border with Syria. Meanwhile, these states are pushing to have Syria’s membership of the Arab League restored.

Therefore, while Trump’s “withdrawal” may have been a mere personal whim, it happens that it is fully aligned with this trend, with the strategy of these states which have been strongly allied with Trump since the onset of his presidency. Not coincidentally, all these states – UAE, Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain – also have close ties with Putin’s Russia, and first three welcomed the Russian invasion of Syria in 2015, as did Israel of course.

In retrospect, the well-publicised semi-secret meetings that took place before and since Trump’s election, between Trump and Putin personnel and involving the UAE, the UAE-backed Palestinian thug Dahlan, Israeli officials and even Blackwater folk had a clear logic: push back the oversized Iranian influence by moving to bolster the Assad regime’s counterrevolutionary “stability” so that it is no longer in need of so much Iranian rabble to do its fighting for it. According to David Hearst writing in Middle East Eye, a more recent meeting between intelligence officials of Israel, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia “hatched a plan to welcome Syrian President Bashar al-Assad back into the Arab League to marginalise the regional influence of Turkey and Iran.”

Or, perhaps, this is not so clear after all; because maybe it is the reverse: use the rhetoric of pushing back the Iranian “threat” (really, as if the Iranian contra gangs were ever a threat to anyone but the Syrian people) to justify their main aim anyway, ie, bolstering Assad’s victorious counterrevolution, putting the final nails – or what they hope to be final – in the coffin of the Arab Spring, which Assad, Sisi, the UAE, the Saudis, Netanyahu, Trump, Putin and the Ayatollahs are all united in hating with a passion.

This is even more significant now with Assad’s need for “reconstruction” funding, which neither Russia nor Iran will be able to provide enough of, while western countries are (currently) sticking to the line that the Geneva process of political settlement needs to get off the ground first. The move by the Gulf is a signal to Damascus, push Iran aside somewhat, we’re here to provide the funds you need. A recent high-level visit by one of the UAE’s largest real estate companies to meet Syrian partners in Damascus underlines this dynamic.

The wild card is the big state behind UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait: Saudi Arabia. Gang-land leader Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) is strongly aligned with his UAE counterpart and the Sisi dictatorship, and cares nothing about either the Syrian or the Palestinian people; these more forward moving states almost certainly have Saudi backing, and there have been hints coming out of Riyadh that it is also willing to accept Assad without Iran, with MBS stating that “Bashar is staying … I believe that Bashar’s interests are not to let the Iranians do whatever they want they want to do.”

However, Riyadh is more tempered about this due to its special position as religious head of the Sunni world, and the fact that it has more at stake in its regional rivalry with Iran than its underlings do. The UAE for example has a raging economic relationship with Iran, and only uses the ‘push Iran aside’ rationale to butter up its Saudi allies; and there are no Shia in Egypt for Sisi to care anything about Iranian influence. But there is little doubt that MBS is behind the scenes part of the picture.

“Analysis” that may have been useful about half a century ago

Much binary, mechanical “geopolitics” in recent years imagined the moves by some of the Gulf states to mend ties with Israel as representing a “US-backed axis” as opposed to a “Russian-backed” Iran and Assad etc. Imagine, this even passes for “analysis” in some quarters. Take a breath, dear Manicheans: exactly the same Gulf states and their regional allies that are carrying out rapprochement with Israel are carrying out rapprochement with Assad. The closest to both Israel and Assad is al-Sisi’s Egypt; the race to the finish-line states in both cases include the UAE and Bahrain; the more cautious behind-the-scenes power is Saudi Arabia, again in both cases.

This even includes the less expected: Sudan’s reactionary ‘Islamist’ regime that just visited Assad, and that fights for the Saudis in Yemen, has also been moving towards normalisation with Israel; three delegations from the pro-Assad Iraqi regime recently visited Israel; while the strongly pro-Iran and pro-Assad Sultan Qaboos of Omanrecently hosted a state visit from Netanyahu.

It is something of a pity that countless left analysts, alongside much of the mainstream media, continue to write things that suggest they are living about 50 years in the past, even now, 30 years into the post-Cold War world. It is mind-boggling how such “analysis” imagines it can deal with such elephants in the room as the raging Israeli-Russian relationship (especially Putin-Netanyahu), not only over Syria but also Crimea etc; the raging Egypt-Russia relationship (discussion about Russia building a nuclear plant for Egypt); the UAE concluding a declaration of “strategic partnership” with Russia; the growing Saudi ties with Russia, especially over oil politics; and the US-Iranian joint-venture regime in Iraq, a key Assad ally. Really, why should Trump’s alliance with Putin seem odd?

Forget absurd Cold War fantasies; what we’re dealing with here are not even clashes of “rival empires.” As always, imperial rivalries do explain some of what is going on, of course. But even this is essentially a sideshow compared to the principle dynamic, the alliance of counterrevolutionary powers, for counterrevolution, the burial of the Syrian revolution symbolising the burial of the Arab Spring.

Where does Iran fit in?

One problem with this analysis, however, is that both Turkey and Iran are also counterrevolutionary powers, yet both are seen as enemies by these Saudi-aligned states, and by Israel. Let’s take them one at a time.

If Iran is to be pushed aside – regardless of whether one believes this is due to it being a genuine “danger” to these states, or merely as an excuse to bolster Assad – then certainly, it is the fall guy.

However, on the one hand, Iran has overreached anyway; what has caused the heightened rhetoric of Iranian “threat” in Israeli and Saudi discourse is quite simply that a large regional rival, which uses a particular rhetorical flourish, however toothless, that targets these regimes, has become too big for its boots; pushing it back will therefore be their “victory.” But it will be impossible for Iran to dominate Syria anyway, let alone afford the costs of reconstruction; it will have to be satisfied with some presence, and some reconstruction contracts, whatever its Russian rival doesn’t edge it out of. Iran is much more heavily invested in neighbouring Iraq, yet even there Iran is unable to exercise economic domination.

On the other hand, we have continually heard warnings that Iran will not leave “completely,” and so the Gulf states and Israel are kidding themselves by relying on Assad. This however reveals some fundamental misunderstandings. As stated above, Iran is just another counterrevolutionary state; it is a threat to no-one except the Syrian people who it has helped brutalise on behalf of the Assad’s genocide regime. Iran’s rivals do not need all Iranian forces, companies and influence to leave Syria “completely,” as if Iran were some kind of unique virus; “victory” in such “wars” of position is gained via the clipping of wings; victory is symbolic, about prestige, about appearance.

According to David Hearst, the Israeli, Egyptian, Emirati and Saudi intelligence chiefs at the alleged ‘welcome back Assad’ meeting discussed above, “did not expect Bashar to break relations with Iran, but they wanted Bashar to use the Iranians rather than be used by them.”

Israel has reacted to Trump’s withdrawal threat by announcing it will step up its bombing of Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria, tolerated as always by the Russian air defences in Syria. The idea of an “Iranian threat” takes on its most laughable version when it comes to Israel; the nuclear-armed First World state has hit hundreds of Iranian-backed targets in Syria (while being careful always to not weaken Assad in the process), while the far weaker Iranian regime has almost never even returned fire, let alone initiated it, yet Iran “threatens” Israel? Extraordinary imagination. Iran doesn’t even threaten the illegal Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan (which is often now referred to as “Israel” in much commentary), let alone Israel.

Israel hits Iranian targets because the biggest bully on the block doesn’t like the affront to its power of a bunch of unruly militias running around its “backyard” shouting empty “death to Israel” slogans, not because these, relatively speaking, street thugs are actually a threat to the regional crime boss.

A gift to Erdogan?

Meanwhile, states such as the UAE, Egypt and Jordan are far more invested in confronting Turkish influence than in confronting Iran (and the Saudis are equally interested in confronting both). These states view the Sunni-populist Muslim Brotherhood (MB) – connected to Qatar, Turkey and Hamas – as their key enemy, rather than Iran. Notably, the intelligence officials at the alleged ‘welcome back Assad’ meeting “considered Turkey, rather than Iran, to be their major military rival in the region … the Israelis told the meeting that Iran could be contained militarily, but that Turkey had a far greater capability.” There is some logic in this. Iran’s rhetoric is loud in proportion to its hollowness; as an outsider to the Arab world, its only real influence has been gained on sectarian grounds, among the Shia populations of Iraq and Lebanon. The only place Iranian influence was ever a danger was among the Shia majority that rose up against the minority Bahraini monarchy at the onset of the Arab Spring, swiftly crushed by the Saudis. By contrast, by playing the populist card via the Muslim Brotherhood, especially throughout the Arab Spring, Turkey and Qatar were engaged in what these other conservative states consider a dangerous game among the Sunni masses of Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt and the Gulf.

For his part, Trump has been strongly associated with the Saudi-UAE-Egypt axis, while the US alliance with the YPG-SDF in Syria placed it in conflict with their Turkish opponent. The Saudi pledge to provide $100 million to the SDF-ruled, US-occupied zone of northeast Syria several months ago was considered an affront by Turkey.

Yet Trump’s sudden announcement of withdrawal has been widely seen as a pro-Turkey move, enabling Erdogan to attack the Kurds. This interpretation is understandable; it was preceded by Turkey’s decision to buy US patriot missiles, widely believed to have sealed the deal.

Of course, this does not have to be a contradiction; after all, Putin’s Russia has been coddling both Erdogan and MBS-Sisi, and Iran and Israel, at the same time. Larger imperialist powers are quite capable of playing with both or all sides among regional rivals.

Turkey, an outlier from the counterrevolutionary dynamic?

Moreover, despite the rivalry between the Saudi-led and Turkey-led blocs, Putin’s coddling of Erdogan highlights the fact that Turkey’s own direction regarding Syria is not that different.

It is true that Turkey is still supporting the Syrian opposition’s control of much of northwest Syria, and therefore may be seen as an outlier in the regional counterrevolutionary dynamic. And certainly Turkey’s pro-rebel position appears positive in comparison to the UAE’s role in cynically encouraging the rapid surrender of the FSA Southern Front to Assad. While Turkey’s aim there is hardly to encourage revolution, nevertheless it wants to avert a brutal Assadist conquest that would send hundreds of thousands more Syrian refugees into Turkey, which already accommodates 3.7 million refugees.

But Turkey’s current main use for many of its weakened and dependent rebel allies is to use them as cannon fodder for its threat to drive the YPG-SDF out of northeastern Syria, as many were earlier used in the plunder and “cleansing” of Afrin. From Putin’s point of view, as long as the rebels are held back from any active front against Assad, Turkey is effectively doing much the same as the Gulf; and by setting the rebels and the YPG-SDF against each other – a dynamic which the YPG has also been guilty of feeding – both can be weakened against Assad in the long run.

Indeed, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s recent oxymoronic statement that Turkey can “work with Assad” if he wins a “democratic election” represents Turkey’s own overture to the regime; and in any case, its close ally Qatar is following the same path of accommodation with Assad as its Gulf rivals, while the MB-ruling party in Tunisia is now in discussions with the Sisi regime – ie, the regime that slaughtered thousands of MB supporters in streets and outside mosques – about inviting the Assad regime to the Arab League summitin Tunis in March.

Or a green light to Assad?

But while these moves parallel those from the Saudi-led coalition, this does not reduce their rivalry, and thus would hardly placate Turkey’s regional rivals if Trump’s move really were primarily a gift to Erdogan. And here we return to where we started; the idea that Trump’s withdrawal is mostly a gift to Erdogan, rather than to Assad, is seriously misplaced. Being a green light to Assad, rather than primarily to Erdogan, puts Trump’s move more clearly in line with the new moves from the Gulf and Trump’s traditional allies.

Trump’s initial withdrawal tweet even suggests this: “Russia, Iran, Syria & others are the local enemy of ISIS. We were doing there (sic) work.” In other words, the Assad regime should be allowed into the east to continue supposedly “fighting ISIS.” This was soon followed by movement of Assadist forces towards eastern Deir-Ezzor to “fight ISIS,” ie confront the SDF. However, the main theatre of interest was in Manbij in the north.

As Trump’s announcement was followed by Turkey’s threats to enter northern Syria and expel the YPG from the Arab-majority city of Manbij (the only SDF possession to the west of the Euphrates river), the SDF, feeling vulnerable to abandonment by the US, called in the Assad regime to try to thwart Turkish intervention. The regime then sent troops to nearby Arima to block a possible Turkish offensive against SDF-held Manbij.

To this, Erdogan’s reaction was most interesting. Basically, Erdogan indicated that he has no real problem with Assad taking over Manbij, as long as it means the YPG are gone! And the regime claimed that the YPG had left Manbij upon their entry into the region, though the YPG itself claims to have left the city in 2016, leaving behind only Arab members of the SDF.

This suggests is that both the Turkish-backed rebels and the SDF were being played; Trump’s withdrawal threat merely strengthened Assad’s hand in the region vis a vis the SDF, and the great rebel-backer Erdogan is OK with that!

The SDF holds a vast area of northeast and central-east Syria; it is not as if Turkey was ever likely to invade as far south into Syria as Raqqa, let alone Deir Ezzor! Turkey would face massive difficulties trying to occupy such a large region, confronting widespread resistance; it is not like isolated Afrin. The focus on this move being a green light to Erdogan only, rather than above all to Assad, is therefore misplaced. And this development in Manbij suggests that even in the northern border region where one might expect a withdrawal to favour Erdogan, it looks more like a stunt to browbeat the SDF – never particularly anti-Assad in the first place – into caving in further to Assad.

Possibly some small-scale Turkish operation may still take place in some part of the northeast close to the border, so that Erdogan’s rhetoric does not appear too hollow, but even this could only occur if coordinated with Moscow, which also happens to be coordinating with both Assad and the SDF. This is because, as with both other Turkish operations in northern Syria, it will be essential to acquire Russian permission to use Syrian air space (assuming, that is, that US forces do actually leave). This will give Russia to ultimate control over the extent of such an operation.

‘Protect the Kurds’ as they go under to Assad?

The ‘re-balancing’ of Trump’s order has made all this clearer, with the arch-hawks, Bolton and Pompeo, both warning Turkey not to attack the SDF and declaring defence of the SDF a red line; Pompeo even spurted out most undiplomatically ‘Don’t let the Turks slaughter the Kurds’, for which both he and Bolton were roundly scolded by Turkey. Meanwhile, the Pentagon will allow the SDF to keep US-supplied weaponry when it withdraws.

Another clue to this general orientation is the discussion over many months, since Trump first raised the issue of withdrawal almost a year ago, of Arab troops from the Gulf replacing US troops in eastern Syria. At that time, the Assad regime reacted with hostility. In the context of the current Gulf recognition of Assad, however, this idea takes on a new meaning, especially as the discussion allegedly involves pro-Assad Egyptian and Emirati troops alongside Saudi troops. This is even more significant considering these states’ hostility to Erdogan’s Turkey, giving the notion of US “withdrawal” a whole new dynamic. There is also discussion of an upgraded role for the Saudi/Egyptian-backed Elite Forces in the largely Arab-populated Deir Ezzor province, led by SDF ally Sheikh Ahmed al-Jarba.

Of course, US calls to protect its Kurdish-led allies, and the continued delivery of arms to the SDF, potentially pose a problem for Assad as well as Erdogan. Currently, however, Assad’s strategy is not to openly attack the SDF – a massive operation which the regime does not likely have the capacity for at present – but rather use the atmosphere of the Turkish threat and US withdrawal to “negotiate” with the SDF from a position of strength. With Assad-SDF negotiations likely to be overseen by Russia, which wants Assad to recover control of all of Syria, the flavour of such negotiations is obvious.

And this is also the SDF strategy; and in case anyone might think this was due to having few options at the present juncture, some SDF leaders have sought to clarify that they aim for deal with Assad regardless of US moves. Essentially, the US, its Gulf allies and the SDF leadership are on the same wavelength when it comes to the Assad regime, preferring a ‘soft reintegration’ of the northeast into the Assadist state. SDF spokesperson Jia Kurd explained that the main enemies that a joint Assad-SDF state needed to defeat were Turkey and the remaining rebel-held northwest: “This [agreement with Assad] will give a big push towards ending the occupation and terrorism in Syria” (the PYD leaders of the SDF generally refer to anti-Assad rebels collectively as “terrorists,” and rarely list the regime as an enemy).

Of course, at this stage the SDF hopes to maintain some degree of autonomy for its Rojava statelet, and that this policy will save them the fate that they offer to the rebel-held northwest. However, Assad’s bargain will be for significantly reduced autonomy now, and then once his state is more secure and ‘normalised’ and the opposition in the northwest crushed, he will turn and crush Rojava and any hint of autonomy as well, as he has always promised to.

But surely, this is conspiratorial – why would the US want to hand back Syrian territory to the Assad regime? To ask such a question reveals fundamental misunderstandings about US policy in Syria. Why wouldn’t Trump want Assad to reconquer Syrian territory, is a better question; at times, the US has directly helped Assad do so. The mistake was to assume that the US presence in northeast Syria, aiding the SDF, had any purpose other than that endlessly stated by all US leaders – to defeat ISIS. “That’s it,” as Trump has continually said. While of course the US presence never had anything to do with putting pressure on Assad, and still less helping the rebels, nor was it ever aimed at helping the SDF build its own alternative.

Returning to former Obama advisor Steven Simon, he explains what he believes the US needs to do to enhance its interests at present:

“ … persuade the Kurds to get rid of non-Syrian operatives, while shrinking their military capacity, and accept that they are not going to get the same deal that their Iraqi cousins have won from Baghdad. The imminence of an American withdrawal, combined with Mr. Erdogan’s suggestions that he could soon invade the Kurdish regions of Syria, will probably convince the Kurds that they have little choice. But the Syrian regime could provide meaningful incentives, such as integrating the Kurdish forces into Damascus’ chain of command …. then, either directly or through the United Nations, the United States will have to talk to the Assad regime on the premise that a restoration of Syrian state authority in northeast Syria, including the re-entry of Syrian government forces, is required to stabilize that part of the country over the long term. To this end, the United States will have to deal with the Russians as well, so there is a coordinated approach to both the Turks and the Syrian regime.”

Right now, US leaders fear the loss of US credibility that would result from the US precipitously dumping its SDF allies in the face of any brutal attempt at reconquest, either by Assad or Erdogan, while Assad also wants to avoid direct confrontation until other enemies are defeated; but eventually the SDF’s usefulness to both US imperialism and Assad’s tyranny will run its course.

The inability of both major rebel and Kurdish leaderships to patch up their differences and present a united front against all the enemies of the popular masses has been a decisive card in the hands of Assad and the regional counterrevolution.

Originally posted at Syrian Revolution Commentary and Analysis.

New York Progressives Must Demand More

By: January 20, 2019
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I campaigned for governor with the slogan of “Demand More!” because Gov. Cuomo has governed as a social liberal but as an economic conservative. Although he touts the agenda he outlined in his January 15 State of the State and Budget presentation as “progressive,” New York progressives should not be satisfied. It is still a conservative economic program. Progressives must demand more.

Any agenda worthy of the label progressive in New York must include a progressive economic program. It would start with three demands progressives have been pushing for years in New York that Cuomo has not accepted: the New York Health Act for a universal public healthcare program, full Foundation Aid funding for public schools, and tuition-free public college for all in-state CUNY and SUNY students.

It would accelerate the increase in the minimum wage, which, despite the governor’s claims, is not $15 an hour in most of the state today and, by the time it is, it will remain a poverty wage. It would have a much stronger affordable housing program.

It would encompass the Green New Deal that the Green Party has advocated for years, not the watered-down “Green New Deal” that Cuomo is now promoting. The Green Party’s Green New Deal would guarantee the economic human rights to a job, income, housing, health care, and education and embark on a rapid rapid transition to 100% clean energy by 2030 as the economic stimulus and sustainable foundation for economic human rights.

Progressives should not let progress on social issues obscure the economic problems so many New Yorkers face every day. Inflation-adjusted wages have been stagnant for decades. Today more than 2 in 5 New York families suffer through periods without food, health care, housing, and/or utilities. 1 million New Yorkers lack health insurance. More than half of children in our cities are poor and attend segregated, underfunded public schools. Over half of New Yorkers pay a third or more of their income on rent. Gentrification and displacement is driving working class New Yorkers out of their own neighborhoods in the cities, while chronic rural depression in upstate New York is driving family farmers and small-town businesses off the land.

Yet since Cuomo became governor, funding for social programs has been cut by a third. Economic development funds have been targeted to the corporate rich as tax breaks, grants, and subsidies. Working people have paid this corporate welfare with their taxes, but have seen little of it returned as new good jobs with higher wages.

With the Democrats now in firm control of that chamber, progressives should expect passage of a big backlog of progressive social reforms that were blocked for years by Republican control of the Senate. These social reforms include abortion rights, gender equality, gun safety reforms, voting and campaign finance reforms, bail abolition, speedy trials, discovery reform, marijuana legalization, the Dream Act, and the Child Victims Act.

Cuomo was never in the vanguard fighting for social reforms, from gay marriage early in his administration to marijuana legalization today. But he is a politician who moves in response to public opinion and the balance of power in the legislature. That should give progressives hope that we can push Cuomo further.

The progressive agenda on social issues is far from exhausted. Glaringly absent from the Democrats’ agenda is a program to reverse the increasing segregation of New York’s metropolitan regions. New York’s schools and housing are the most segregated in the nation by race and income. Despite recent small gestures toward controlled choice for school integration in New York City, progressives have yet to push hard for a desegregation policy agenda that can move public opinion and force Cuomo and other politicians to “evolve” on this issue, too. School desegregation will require the redrawing school district lines and controlled choice within them. Controlled choice assigns students to schools based on a combination of their preferences and making all the schools relatively balanced by family income. Housing integration will require stronger enforcement of fair housing laws, inclusionary zoning, and a public housing program that builds high-quality mixed-income developments in the cities and the suburbs.

Segregation is deeply implicated in the state’s economic inequality and insecurity where Cuomo’s economic conservatism is part of the problem, not the solution. New York State has the highest income inequality of any state in the nation. The share of income going to the top 1% has more than tripled from 10% in 1980 to 33% in 2015. By isolating minority and low-income communities from educational, employment, and cultural opportunities and resources, segregation feeds the growing economic inequality.

A progressive economic agenda would go beyond Cuomo’s limited agenda on affordable housing. His call for closing vacancy decontrol and other rent control loopholes in New York City is only a start. Progressives will have to push hard to win those reforms against resistance from the powerful real estate lobby. A full progressive housing program would also include repeal of the state’s Urstadt Law to re-establish home rule on rent regulations, extending rent control authority to local governments statewide, and a public housing building program, rather subsides to private developers to build affordable units. Public housing is the most economical way to expand affordable housing and can play a significant role in integrating housing.

Cuomo’s “Green New Deal” call for 100% renewable electric power by 2040 only addresses 20% of the state’s carbon footprint. We still need to see his definition of clean — and a detailed plan with benchmarks. We need him to be clear that natural gas is not a bridge to a clean energy future but a gangplank to climate disaster. Cuomo’s diluted Green New Deal could give the concept a bad name.

The Climate and Community Protection Act many Democratic legislators are pushing largely codifies Cuomo’s climate dangerous energy policies, which are flooding the state with fracked-gas pipelines and power plants. The CPPA’s goal of zeroing out carbon emissions by 2050 is too late. It does nothing to stop the increase in the state’s carbon footprint from the fracked-gas power plants Cuomo is pushing, from the corruption-ridden Competitive Power Ventures plant in Orange County to the state-sponsored environmental racism of powering state capitol buildings by the Sheridan Avenue plant, which has poisoned of the Arbor Hill black community for a century.

Progressives and climate activist should get behind — with the same laser focus we pushed the fracking ban in 2014 — the New York Off Fossil Fuels Act. NY OFF will stop new fossil fuel infrastructure and build out a 100% clean energy system in New York by 2030 with provisions for a Just Transition to include low-income and minority communities and protect communities now dependent on fossil fuel and nuclear plants for employment and tax revenues.

Particularly conservative is the embrace by Gov. Cuomo and Senate Majority Andrea Stewart-Cousins of making the 2% tax cap on local property taxes permanent. The tax cap is Cuomo’s signature economic austerity measure, a top-down, one-size-fits-all imposition on local governments and school districts in the name of property tax relief. In reality, the tax cap means the state budget is balanced on the backs of local property taxpayers who then suffer from underfunded local governments and school districts. A permanent cap will make permanent New York’s high property taxes and the fiscal austerity burden on municipalities and school districts.

The progressive way to cut regressive property taxes and give local governments and school districts the resources they need is for the state to pay for its unfunded mandates, to fully fund Foundation Aid, and to restore state revenue sharing with local governments. Cuomo is fighting lawsuits for full school funding in the courts and has frozen revenue sharing.

To raise the revenues for these and other needed programs, there are many progressive tax reforms that should be enacted. For starters, the income tax structure should be made more progressive by several progressively marginal tax rates for multi-millionaire incomes. Another progressive reform would be to keep the stock transfer tax, rather than rebate all of it to Wall Street traders.

The central conservative economic feature of Cuomonomics that progressives must challenge is his supply-side, trickle-down policy of subsidies, grants, and tax breaks for the rich and corporations. The benefits have not trickled down to working people or depressed cities, towns, and neighborhoods. It only feeds the pay-to-play culture of corruption where economic favors flow to big campaign contributors.

The progressive alternative is to revitalize the public sector with demand-side, bottom-up economic planning aimed at raising the incomes and living standards of working people and economically-depressed communities. Economic stagnation is an issue of insufficient demand, not insufficient capital in rich people’s hands to invest. The state should fully fund public services and invest more in physical and social infrastructure, including clean energy, sustainable agriculture, mass transit, public housing, broadband, education, health care, and environmental protection. This approach will increase effective demand and stimulate business expansion and jobs to meet the demand.

Progressive will have good reason to celebrate the progressive social reforms we expect to achieve this year. But we are not done, especially on the economic issues. We must demand more.

Keep up with Howie Hawkins on Twitter or Facebook.

100 years after the death of Rosa Luxemburg

By: January 20, 2019
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The deaths of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht have haunted the imagination of the left for a century. Joe Sabatini reviews a recent publication exposing the events of their deaths, Klaus Gietinger’s The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg, as well as providing an introduction to some of the literary works inspired by the events of 15 January 1919.

 

 

The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg, in a new translation by Loren Balhorn, published by Verso

On 15 January 1919 Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were brutally murdered by a group of far-right paramilitaries, acting on instruction from the government.

The events surrounding the killings have remained shrouded in controversy. A particular sore point has been the degree to which the killings were the random result of far-right paramilitaries exceeding their brief, or a direct result of the Social Democratic Party government’s wish to rid itself of its far-left. Even 100 years on the Social Democrats have refused to come clean about the killings, neither apologising nor condemning key leaders in the party who were responsible for putting down the German Revolution of 1918-19.

The German documentary maker Klaus Gietinger has spent much of the past 20 years unearthing details. His book Eine Leiche im Landwehrkanal: die Emorderung Rosa Luxemburgs (A Corpse in the Landwehr Canal: the murder of Rosa Luxemburg) is the most painstaking account of the events, drawing on meticulous archival research and interviews with some of the last surviving participants in the events.

The work forensically unpicks the events of the night, and exposes the cover ups that followed. Most crucially Gietinger follows the subsequent careers of the unit involved in the killings, showing both their links to the German deep state, but also the growing fascist movement and how they sustained those links across an international network up to and beyond the second world war. In other words, his book underscores the alliance of Social Democrats and a particularly hard-core far-right element in the military who were responsible for the killings 100 years ago.

Political events leading up to the killings

In November 1918 the Germans were defeated in the First World War. Rather than admit defeat, the generals handed power to the Social Democratic Party to negotiate an armistice, while the military line disintegrated as German soldiers embraced the red flag of revolution and made their way back to their homes to set up Soldatenräte, or Soldiers Councils. The naval garrison in Kiel were ordered to set sail to fight a suicidal last stand against the British and mutinied, taking over the town and marching on Berlin.

By 9 November the capital was awash with crowds, the Kaiser had fled and the Social Democrat Scheidemann declared a republic from a balcony in the Bundestag to a cheering crowd. Unbeknownst to him the revolutionary Karl Liebknecht declared a socialist republic from a balcony of the Kaiser’s palace that had been occupied by sailors. This set in-train a division between the Social Democrats who supported the military and the internationalists who had taken inspiration from the Russian Revolution.

Liebknecht and Luxemburg had been political prisoners and were released as the prisons were broken open. Once released they promptly got to work, networking leaders of radical shop stewards and other groups sympathetic to the Bolsheviks to form a new German Communist Party.

Their activity took place amidst the most militant mass mobilisations Germany had ever seen. On Christmas Eve, the sailors who had occupied the Kaisers palace were attacked by loyalist troops under orders from the Social Democrats. Amidst the shootings, massive numbers of workers came out in support of the sailors beating back the loyalists.

Just over a week later, the government’s next move was to sack Berlin’s revolutionary chief of police who been installed during the November events by workers and soldiers occupying the police headquarters. Again, the masses turned out, waiting for instructions. But this time there was no flashpoint, and most of them drifted home, leaving a smaller more militant core to attempt an insurrection.

The young Communist Party backed the insurrection and found themselves suddenly fighting against the Freikorps – paramilitary units made up of elite officer corps and far-right elements. With the full support of the Social Democrats, the Freikorps were given a free hand to clean up the city, and within days thousands were rounded up and many summarily executed.

Top of the wanted list were Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Since before the First World War both had been the most outspoken political figures against German militarism. Despite being marginalised during the war years, many viewed the events as vindicating their position and they had become figures of hatred both for the right and the Social Democrats who saw them as a thorn in their side.

The events of 15 January

On 15 January Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were apprehended and taken to the luxury Hotel Eden, where a colonel Pabst and his division of the Freikorps had established their base.

On apprehending them Pabst telephoned Emil Noske, the Social Democratic Party minister responsible for putting down the revolution and asked if he was to have them shot. Noske informed him to do what he has to do. Pabst then ordered in several of his entourage to make arrangements to have Liebknecht taken out by one group and executed and then another group to take Luxemburg and have her executed.

Liebknecht was led out to a car and smashed over the skull with a rifle butt, before being bundled inside and driven to a park where he was shot, then dumped at the door of the Berlin morgue.

Luxemburg was defiant to the last, insolently replying to the questions put to her by Pabst during her interrogation. Then she was led out through the lobby where guests taunted her calling her a whore, before being dragged out to a waiting car, where she was cracked twice on the skull with a rifle butt and then was driven off. As the car rounded the corner a figure jumped on the runner board and, at close range, reached through with a pistol and shot her through the head. This killed her instantly and she was then taken to the Landwehr Canal and dumped into the icy water. Her corpse remained undiscovered until the summer.

Controversy

Immediately on the announcement of their deaths, the German establishment began a cover up that continues to this day. First, they tried to blame the crowd of guests in the Hotel, then when a Communist Party investigation resulted in the discovery of potential suspects and their temporary imprisonment, the soldier thought responsible for Luxemburg’s death, was sprung from prison by a leading jurist who had falsified papers and shipped the suspect out of the country (the same network in the deep state scuppered attempts to have him extradited).

Several investigations were conducted by supporters of Luxemburg during the Weimar Republic, but they led to inconclusive results.

During the Nazi period the suspects who were briefly imprisoned were financially compensated, and most involved went on to have important careers in the Nazi movement, and especially in making contacts with international fascists.

After the war most of the key suspects continued to operate, many involved in international arms trade deals, building on the shadowy far-right networks they had nurtured during the Nazi years.

In the 1950s and 1960s Pabst went on the record for the first time to confirm that officers acting on his instruction had carried out the killings and that he masterminded the operation. He also identified the identity of the unknown person who had killed Luxemburg, Hermann Souchon, who went on to live until 1982.

Souchon vehemently denied this, and a TV dramatization of the events based on Pabst’s account resulted in a legal case which the TV station lost, resulting in the series remaining banned in Germany.

To this day, the German state and the SPD has failed to take responsibility for the killings of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

Alfred Döblin’s Karl and Rosa

Alfred Döblin was one of Germany’s great modernist writers, whose Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) carried out similar literary experiments as James Joyce had done with Ulysses. As a left-wing Jew and modernist, he fled the Nazis and ended up in Hollywood in the same émigré group that included the Frankfurt School, Thomas Mann and the composers Schönberg and Stravinsky. In exile, he wrote a four-volume work on the German Revolution – November 1918. Stretching to about the same length as War and Peace the novel gave the same scope and depth to the German Revolution as Tolstoy did to the events around the Napoleonic War. Added to this there is an element of magical realism and surrealism that make this work extraordinary for its time.

The final volume Karl and Rosa gives a close-up version of their final days. The novel is one of the finest historical novels of the 20th century and deserved a far greater readership. A translation was produced in the 1970s, and copies can be found second-hand.

Jonathan Raab’s Rosa

For those wanting a quick page turner, I’d recommend Jonathan Raab’s Rosa. Raab uses the basic tropes of a police procedural to link up the mysteries surround Luxemburg’s death. It is based on the historical fact that when looking for Luxemburg’s corpse in the Landwehr canal, the authorities found the corpses of three women and one man. Rosa takes the step of introducing a serial killer motif.

The novel stages tensions between the Kripo and the Polpo (that is, the criminal and the political police) with the Kripos being the good guys wanting to catch a serial killer, even if he is one of the Freikorps, and the baddies being the Polpo, who want to limit any political damage.

Sadly, by throwing in serial killer motifs, the treatment detracts from the shocking reality of Social Democrats commissioning fascists to murder leading figures on the left.

One good thing about the novel is its rehabilitation of Leo Jogiches, who deserves a chapter in our memories of the period. In many ways he was a better organiser and strategist than Luxemburg and Liebknecht, had bitterly opposed the ultra-left turn of the early Communist Party, that exposed their leadership and was left to try and do something to bring the killers to justice. Sadly, in March 1919, he was tracked down by the same network behind Luxemburg and Liebknecht’s killings and was murdered in police custody.

Biographies of Luxemburg

There are three main biographies available in English. Paul Frölich’s Rosa Luxemburg is written by a fellow member of the Spartakusbund, the group that helped to form the German Communist Party and combined first hand recollections and historical research. The second, John Nettl’s Rosa Luxemburg, provides a more comprehensive account of her thought and influence. Elizabetta Ettinger’s Rosa Luxemburg: A Life is less politically committed than the other two, but more grounded in archive research and presents the most detailed biography in English to date.

Verso Books have published Red Rosa, a graphic biography by Kate Evans, as well as a new series of Rosa Luxemburg’s letters and her collected works, which is running so far to its third volume.

Meanwhile work is ongoing among German scholars who are unearthing previously unpublished writings in German and Polish, that may continue to shed new light on the most inspirational revolutionary leader.

Originally posted at rs21.

What LA Teachers Have Already Won

By: January 19, 2019
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ImageThe United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), the city’s teachers union, has now reentered negotiations with a school board chastened by a strike that has shown the movement’s political power in massive demonstrations with community members and parents.

Only a few days into its strike, UTLA has already altered the political landscape of Los Angeles and California, and rekindled the energy of a national movement to reform both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) from below. In doing so, Los Angeles teachers have become a beacon for the rest of organized labor.

The energy of the “Red for Ed” teacher walkouts last spring in West Virginia, Arizona, Oklahoma, and elsewhere was channeled into electoral activity by both the AFT and NEA, with an unrelenting refrain that achieving the demands that had led angry teachers in those states to strike could only be made by electing friendly politicians. UTLA’s strike has shown, as did Red for Ed walkouts and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) 2012 strike, how mobilizations and direct action nurtured with an eye to building community and parent support are far more effective than an exclusive focus on electing “friends.”

Though incremental gains may have been possible in recent decades, even with a largely passive membership, a narrow definition of members’ interests to bread-and-butter issues like wages and no more, and a hierarchical organizational structure, teachers unions have been unable to win meaningful economic gains, let alone stanch deteriorating working conditions, for at least a decade. Capitalism has changed, radically; the unions have not. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported policies of austerity like privatization and union-busting, which have led to the well-documented transfer of wealth and power from working people to wealthy elites. The idea that education is a market that has to be opened to profit-making is central to this offensive of wealthy elites to overturn social and political gains of the past fifty years.

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) assertion that money does not exist to fund the union’s demands is based not just on the district’s unwillingness to part with its reserve fund of nearly $2 billion but on the false premises of austerity, claiming scarcity for the poor but unlimited resources for the rich.

Teachers are angry and frustrated because they have been held “accountable” for students’ academic success, measured by standardized test scores — over which they have little control. The Right orchestrated a witch hunt to weaken their resistance to privatization and standardized testing. Changes in teachers’ work mirror the degradation of work in the private sector, through, for example, outsourcing and use of data information technologies for surveillance and control.

But the psycho-social demands of teaching have simultaneously been greatly intensified. As is the case in “women’s work” throughout the world, cuts in social services have been exacerbated by increases in students’ needs at a time of increasing poverty, gentrification, and austerity. The women who do care work suffer the dual effects.

The UTLA strike should also put to rest liberal analysts’ specious analysis that “red-state” walkouts could be explained in isolation from the vast changes in teachers’ work related to privatization of education. In the “red states,” teachers who had no collective bargaining rights had no collective voice. They organized direct action independent of the tiny state affiliates of NEA and AFT with direct action that the unions were unwilling to organize or lead. At the same time, many teachers in school districts in “blue” states with collective bargaining, especially those in cities and the low-income racially isolated suburbs that now ring urban areas, have felt that while they have unions in name and pay dues, they have little union protection or representation.

Though this history is often ignored, courageous struggles of women, especially Latinx and African-American women, fighting for their children’s education preceded and educated the union reform movement. Parents and activists of color, mostly low-income women, organized to oppose school closings in Chicago and other cities throughout the US well before teachers unions. The first people to flag the harm done to children by standardized testing were white, middle-class parents, mostly mothers, and teachers. They created the “opt out” movement and were ignored or overtly rejected by the unions until students’ test scores were used to evaluate teachers; they were ridiculed by politicians like Arne Duncan, who derided them as “white suburban moms.”

But in the past fifteen years, nodules of teacher activists have built on and learned from these struggles.

The first iteration of the now-burgeoning national movement to create fighting unions that defend social justice was in LA, which encouraged the formation of the Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators (CORE), a rank-and-file reform slate that argued for alliances with community groups against free-market reform in education, in Chicago. CORE’s election to the CTU leadership and its 2012 strike put teacher unionism back on the map as a progressive force for change in education. It also sparked reform efforts in other unions, including Union Power, the slate of officers which now leads UTLA.

The 2016 presidential election challenged the political status quo, from the Right with Trump and the Left with Sanders; this destabilization created fertile ground for popular movements. In the “red states,” teacher frustration, long stifled, took the form of walkouts organized by teachers who were mostly new to union work. But as the walkouts developed, “red state” walkout leaders and participants learned from a national network of union reformers.

Now, UTLA’s strike can further energize the movement to remake teachers’ unions from the bottom up, fusing a commitment to union democracy and social justice struggles to traditional economic union demands. Signs are promising: already, a new group called California Educators Rising has urged teachers throughout the state to have their schools “adopt” a striking school so as to create contacts and expand the network of teacher activists. “Walk-ins” — demonstrations of teachers, students, and parents in front of schools before the school day begins — are being organized throughout the country in support of UTLA. From Louisiana to California, the national movement of teacher activists is expanding at such a breathtakingly rapid pace, its spread is difficult to track.

Strikes draw a physical line. The tally of those who cross and those who do not is forever remembered by those involved. But UTLA has drawn a political line as well. The strike has already pried loose money (somehow not available on the day before the strike began) from the LA County Supervisors for mental health counselors for LAUSD. The strike forced Democrat Tony Thurmond to break his silence on the contract struggle and issue a statement of support. LA’s mayor, Eric Garcetti, shifted from his silence about a contract struggle that affected more than half a million LA children to belated verbal support of the strike aims after the strike’s first day and the show of enormous popular support for the teachers. In so doing, however, he also bowed to LA’s power elite and Beutner by warning “we must also ensure the long-term fiscal health of the district” by having a “responsible” contract. Garcetti has now been forced to move further in support of the union, serving as a mediator in resumed negotiations.

Though we do not know what occurred in private discussions within California’s Democratic Party, the strike has further forced California’s Democrats to risk losing support of the wealthy, powerful business interests who fund their campaigns and mostly control the party apparatus. Hence UTLA has accomplished what neither NEA or AFT has: make the Democrats support a popular movement to fight Trump’s and the GOP’s transfer of wealth and the bipartisan project to transform education into a profit center controlled by elites.

Education is not and can’t be the “one true path out of poverty” as Obama’s secretary of education insisted in selling charter schools and “choice” to low-income parents of color whose neighborhood schools were far inferior to those in affluent suburbs. Education cannot replace full employment, universal health care, affordable housing, improved wages, and good unions to improve our livelihoods and quality of life. What public education can do under capitalism is democratize the competition for the rapidly diminishing number of “good” jobs by giving all students schools that can equalize outcomes. Equally important is our educating the next generation of citizens to understand and defend democracy and social justice.

As we have seen in the strong support UTLA has received, the struggle for quality schools for all students is a powerful and popular pushback to political and economic forces that deepen inequality. Some of UTLA’s original contract demands, like having green space in city schools that lacked neighborhood parks, were not within the legal scope of bargaining and had to be taken off the table. Yet in taking these issues into bargaining (despite knowing they were verboten), the union pushed the envelope in using collective bargaining to reimagine public education for children who live in poverty.

A lobbyist once told me that politicians don’t care about poor people because they don’t vote. While no one can predict the outcome of any strike, we can say with certainty that UTLA has already changed the political equation in California and the nation so that the needs of children and working people are being heard. Their movement, demanding a new kind of labor union and unafraid to strike, is growing by the day.

New Politics has long been an outlet for analysis about labor from the left, my own writing on teachers unions included. If you find this article and the others I’ve written for New Politics informative, please donate or subscribe. We depend on readers like you for financial support.

Originally posted at Jacobin.

Money-Launderer-in-Chief Trump, the capitalist media and socialism: A time-line

By: January 19, 2019
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ImageHere is a timeline of how the mainstream U.S. capitalist media has covered the issue of Trump’s financial ties with the Russian mafia capitalist class. This timeline is significant, because it provides a clue to the thinking of the mainstream of the U.S. capitalist class as well as how that thinking is now changing.

  • In April of 2017, the online web site whowhatwhy.org published the first report (that Oaklandsocialist knows of) on Trump’s role as a money launderer. Oaklandsocialist reported on it, but obviously, if we were able to find and report on this story, then so were not only others on the socialist left, but also the capitalist media in general.
  • In July of 2017, the left-liberal New Republic published an article by contributing writer Craig Unger, author of “House of Trump, House of Putin,” on which he was apparently working at that time.
  • Later that same month, Unger was interviewed on MSNBC.
  • Also in July of 2017, the New Yorker did a piece in relation to Trump’s financing of his golf club in Scotland.
  • On January 9, 2018, Tom Adams and Dennis Aftergut published a memorandum outlining the major evidence for Trump’s money laundering role.  Aftergut is a former top federal prosecutor. The memorandum was sent to U.S. Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA). This writer also sent that memorandum to U.S. Representative Barbara Lee, who did not respond.
  • On December 2018, the SF Chronicle published an article by Adams and Aftergut  summarizing their memo.
  • Around August of 2018, Craig Unger’s book House of Trump House of Putin was published. See oaklandsocialist’s book review and summary here.
  • On December 15, 2018, Speier authored an article in the SF Chronicle which summarized the Adams/Aftergut memo.
  • On January 12, 2018, Vox.com had a story on the issue.
These stories focused on Trump’s role as a money launderer for the Russian mafia capitalist class. To our knowledge, nobody else in the capitalist media – nor on the left – commented or picked up this story at that time.

In July of 2017, Trump had a private conversation with Putin outside of the G20 meeting. Nobody else was present except for Putin’s interpreter. Not even Trump’s interpreter was present. There was a mild flurry of comment in the capitalist media on this, but it soon died down.

Putin-Trump Meetings
The next major event in this unfolding scandal was the July, 2018 Helsinki meeting between Trump and Putin. This provoked a storm of criticism, especially when Trump sided with the representative of a rival capitalist power – Putin – vs. his own intelligence sources. However, none of the major media touched the underlying issue – Trump’s role in his previous life.

In late November, when it seemed that the Mueller investigation might be killed, the Washington Post had a few articles that hinted at the issue. For example, on Nov. 29, the Post published an editorial  and an opinion piece  stemming from some of the testimony of Michael Cohen. But what these dealt with was Trump’s interest in investing in Russia, not his getting investments from Russia.

Trump Troop Withdrawal announcement
Then, the dam broke.

On December 18, 2018, Trump announced he was going to withdraw all troops from Syria “now.” The announcement came within days of his having had a private phone conversation with Putin’s ally, Turkish President Recip Erdogan. This prompted the resignations of three of the most direct representatives of the mainstream of the U.S. capitalist class – Defense Secretary James Mattis, Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Brett McGurk, and sped up the resignation of Chief of Staff John Kelly, all of whom left the Trump administration within a matter of days after the announcement. (Oaklandsocialist commented on the event here.)

On January 11 of 2019 – almost immediately after the holiday season had ended and everybody was back to “normal” and paying attention – the New York Times published an article that opened the floodgates. “FBI Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly working on Behalf of Russia” their headline read. That Trump was financially linked with the Russian mafia capitalist class was already known (although not really discussed) by the US capitalist class as we have shown. It seems highly, highly unlikely that they hadn’t known that the FBI had been investigating Trump as a “security” risk prior to this date. The article focused on Trump’s interest in investing in Russia, not his role as a money launderer for the Russian capitalists.

The very next day, the Washington Post exposed a potentially even more explosive story. “Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration” trumpeted the headline. The article explained that Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to hide what he and Putin discussed in several meetings. This includes confiscating the notes of his interpreter in his Helsinki meeting. In the case of his meeting with Putin in Hamburg in July of 2017, as we pointed out, Trump couldn’t confiscate his interpreter’s notes because he had no interpreter there.

The same day, the Post published an opinion piece by Max Boot. The piece was entitled “18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset.” For those unfamiliar with him, Boot is a central figure on the Council on Foreign Relations, which is probably the most influential US capitalist think tank. He was a lifelong Republican until about a year ago, when he split from that party over its takeover by Trump. Again, it is not credible that Boot – who has strongly condemned Trump in the past – was not aware of Trump’s connections with the Russian mafia capitalist class prior to this date.

Also on that date, the Post published another opinion piece by Anne Applebaum. “The Trump-Putin revelations tell us what we knew all along was the title.” The piece concluded, “so, yes, bring on more evidence, which will reveal more of what we already knew.” In other words, from its headline to its conclusion, this was an admission that they had known of these connections for a long time.

What do these revelations amount to and why have they only come out now?

Money laundering still untouched
Serious as they are, all these articles discuss is his interest in investing in Russia, not his money laundering past. As we have said many times (see this article), the main reason the U.S. capitalist class does not want to discuss the money laundering issue is that money laundering for the drug cartels is rampant in the real estate industry. Any revelation of Trump’s money laundering would threaten to reveal this fact.

The dangers (to them) are shown by their reluctance to start down that slippery slope by discussing his interest in investing in Russia. But once they do so, it will be difficult to prevent a fuller discussion of the money laundering issue. Consider one political implication:

Oakland Mayor Libby “Yuppie” Schaaf.
Her main campaign donors come from the real estate industry.

The City of Oakland is basically run by the real estate developers. They compose the main donors to the campaigns of its mayor, Libby “Yuppie” Schaaf, for example. Oakland is probably no exception. The question is how many of these donors have been involved in this money laundering, meaning how many city politicians (and those politicians who arose from city politics) have been getting money from money launderers for the drug cartels? Today, being linked with the drug cartels is “worse” than being linked with the Commies in the 1950s! Image the scandal that would erupt. Maybe it won’t be fully revealed, but maybe it will.

More generally, such a scandal would vastly accelerate the discrediting of capitalism, especially among millions of younger people, who are already showing increased support for socialism.

This extreme political risk was only undertaken by the mainstream of the U.S. capitalist class because Trump’s unilateral decision to remove the U.S. troops from Syria (tiny in number as they may be) convinced them that they cannot restrain this Russian capitalist class linked president, nor can they tolerate him in office for another two years. Something must be done now, however risky.

Socialists
There is another issue: Why has nearly the entire socialist movement (such as it is) been silent on this issue? Why has none of the socialist groups nor any prominent individual socialists raised the issue? In fact, why have such prominent “left” figures like Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, or Chris Hedges also been silent? How about Jacobin or Counterpunch? None of them knew? Please. If Oaklandsocialist, with its minute resources, could get this information, then they all could. Some of the left journalists, like Hedges, actually works for the Russian mafia capitalists (through his show on RT). Others more or less support them. But that doesn’t explain it all.  The only explanation is two-fold:

First, they are all terrified to being linked with anything that remotely sounds like U.S. patriotism. But this has nothing to do with patriotism; it’s a revelation of the deep crisis for the U.S. capitalist class, the fact that they’ve largely lost control over the executive branch of their own government. It also shows the deep divisions within that class.

And that gets to the second aspect of the issue. It is not enough to simply simply raise the issues that arise from the direct class struggle – the injustices of capitalism, the struggle of workers, etc. What also has to be raised is the relations inside of the capitalist class. Simply looking at the injustices and exploitation by the capitalist class always leaves the working class looking upwards at the rulers over society. Considering what is happening within the capitalist class means regarding society with a bird’s eye view, regarding it from above. From that perspective, the working class starts to see itself as the potential ruling class, instead of the class that is in perpetual struggle against the ruling class.

In other words, this is the difference between reformism, or social democracy, and revolutionary socialism. The fact that the overwhelming majority of socialists have ignored this issue does not speak well for them.

That is why it is important for socialists to take up this sort of issue and shout it from the rooftops.

Reposted from Oaklandsocialist.

 

 

On Revolution and Internationalism: Socialist Strategy Today

By: January 14, 2019
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With the revival of the socialist movement in the U.S., and the phrase “political revolution” having briefly entered the political mainstream as a result of Bernie Sanders’ Presidential campaign, it’s a good idea for contemporary socialists to look back upon the political strategies of our predecessors to examine what they thought “revolution” signified, and to draw appropriate conclusions.

Given that the current Socialist International (SI), which DSA exited from in 2017, simply doesn’t act like a real International—a “world party” committed to a specific set of political principles which cooperates across borders—and that even avowed democratic socialists like the UK’s Jeremy Corbyn are committed to “social-nationalist” projects like a supposedly left-wing version of “Brexit,” U.S. democratic socialists (and not just us) must take seriously what Michael Harrington wrote in Socialism Past & Future (1989): “[A] Belgian socialist…once made the biting commentary that the only thing that the socialists had ever really nationalized was socialism itself. If that judgment stands in the twenty-first century, then socialism will be, and deserves to be, finished.”

The Fate of Parliamentary Gradualist Socialism

If political revolution means, as it should, the full rewriting of the constitutions of existing states—the replacement of “bourgeois democracy” (or flat-out dictatorship) with workers’ democracy, far more thorough and delegative than any existing government—then most social democratic parties haven’t been interested in it since the very early 20th century. In the late 1890s, when many parties of the Second (Socialist) International—an alliance of socialist parties which, in theory, all shared the same Marxist principles—were quickly growing in Europe, the “revisionist controversy” in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) initiated a debate over whether socialism could be accomplished peacefully through routine trade union activity and election of socialists to office, or if the working class would have to overthrow the capitalist state. The main question was whether or not the capitalist class would respect its own legal order if the socialist movement became popular enough to try to legislate capitalism out of existence. The British Fabian Socialists and the German revisionists saw no political revolution as necessary; they even saw class struggle itself as outmoded or having no innate connection to “socialism” as a goal.

Decades later, left-wing social democrats who recognized the persistence of class conflict, in response to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s, put forward more radical plans for the parliamentary road to socialism. There was the “Meidner Plan” in Sweden to “transfer a proportion of annual profits to union-controlled ‘wage-earner funds,’ incrementally increasing this stake until they had majority control. The process would be gradual, but if implemented as designed the Swedish economy would today consist of firms primarily owned by union-dominated social wealth funds…[this] would have gradually socialized the Swedish economy.” Tony Benn of the British Labour Party advocated an Alternative Economic Strategy which, while not a plan for total economic socialization, “proposed a National Enterprise Board…  empowered to ‘take over profitable sections of individual firms in those industries where a public holding is essential to enable Government … to plan the national economy in the national interest.’” (The use of national economy and national interest is no accident.) The Chilean Popular Unity government led by Salvador Allende advocated a “peaceful road to socialism” and “launched an agrarian reform program, recognized the right of workers to take over factories and run them collectively, took control of most of the country’s banks, and expropriated multinational corporations…all within the framework of the Chilean constitution.”

Neither Meidner, nor Benn, nor Allende believed a political revolution was necessary to move beyond capitalism. Allende, an avowed Marxist, did speak of “the necessity of replacing the present Constitution, with its liberal foundations, by a Constitution of a socialist nature.” But he also assumed that the Chilean military would remain faithful to constitutional norms—a fatal miscalculation that led to the deaths of thousands after General Augusto Pinochet assumed power. Both the Socialist and Communist Parties had members and sympathizers in the Chilean armed forces who could have organized rank-and-file opposition to the commanding officers. Many wanted to do just that but were discouraged from doing so by the Popular Unity leadership in order to not alienate “constitutionalist” generals…like Pinochet.

By now, given the capitalist class’s historical support for dictators ranging from Hitler in in the 1930s to Pinochet in the 1970s, we can be certain that if capitalists feel sufficiently threatened by a socialist movement, they’ll support fascist and military dictatorships, and accept limits on their own civil and political rights, if that’s what it takes to save their system. For that matter, economic sanctions by the big capitalist powers, even against a Global North country like Sweden, would be enough to undo the “gradual socialization of firms,” even without violence. A purely peaceful and electoral transition to socialism assumes the loyalty of the military and sees no need to drastically change state structures to ensure that the working class can actually govern as the ruling class. It just isn’t feasible—especially if the strategy has no international component. One would be hard-pressed to find anyone who seriously promotes such a strategy today, their rhetoric notwithstanding.

Taking Power by “Taking Away the Army” from the Ruling Class

That said, a significant part of the revolutionary left should’ve realized the need for strategic rethinking decades ago. It isn’t simply that German workers steadfastly refused to join ill-conceived attempts at insurrection by the Spartacus League in 1919 and the German Communist Party in 1921—both efforts were deemed “ultra-left” by the leadership of the early Third (Communist) International, made up of Marxist parties that split from the Second International because of its leaders’ support for the First World War. It’s that as early as 1895 Frederick Engels noted how conditions in Europe “since 1848 have become far more unfavorable for civil fights, far more favorable for the military.” Conditions for armed insurrection today are even worse, frustrating old visions of splitting away a percentage of the ranks of the army to the left and/or arming workers outside of the army. Certainly, due to the end of the draft in 1971, the average U.S. worker has never learned how to use Abrams tanks, armored personnel carriers, or fighter-jets or bombers. Historically, yes, growing revolutionary movements face repression, which leads to increasing conflict and a struggle over the state; this in turn leads to insurrection and to civil war. But today the U.S. capitalist state—among others—has nuclear weapons, and we should put nothing past the ruling class’s political representatives doing whatever they deem necessary to prevent the victory of socialism.

The taking of political power by the working class now requires a greater critical mass than was necessary a hundred years ago. The transition to socialism requires the winning over of the vast majority of rank-and-file soldiers in order to ensure that they will disobey orders given by right-wing putschists against the socialist supra-majority. Hence, socialists must take seriously recruitment and education within the armed forces—and this is something we must discover how to do now, far in advance of a revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situation in the U.S.  (It’s been rarely mentioned on the U.S. left since the Vietnam War that some leftists concluded that the best way to resist the war, when their draft numbers were called, was to join the army and organize within. The antiwar movement in the armed forces—including the civilian-led GI coffeehouses that supported the ranks’ revolt against the war—is a historical example we should study.)

We Need a Real International – and a “Strategy of a Patience”

Provided we have a powerful enough socialist (and labor) movement, achieving radical economic—and to some degree, political—reform is possible solely within the borders of the extremely wealthy U.S., a country which—of course—controls its own currency. The problems which Syriza immediately faced in governing Greece will never appear here. But “socialism in one country” is as impossible in the U.S. as it is in the rest of the world. As a global system, capitalism can only be superseded globally.

Consider the dilemma that a Jeremy Corbyn-led UK Labour Party government will find itself in. Despite inevitable capital flight, a Corbyn-led Labour government might be able to renationalize the British railways, nationalize the energy sector, and fully fund the National Health Service (NHS). It might be able to remove anti-trade union laws and it might make UK taxation rates more progressive. But that’s about the full extent of what a Corbyn government could do in terms of “taking capital away from Capital.” Those expecting more radical policies, such as expropriation and public ownership of the banking system, are going to be disappointed.

Even though the UK isn’t in the Eurozone and is therefore able to control its own currency, Corbyn’s desire to rebalance Britain away from financial services, even as the UK remains a special tax haven, involves continuing to subsidize British productive industries. The problem is that, as the head of a capitalist nation-state committed to a fundamentally national project of reform, Corbyn has no choice but to engage in such policies. British industry is unable to compete “fairly” with the cheap labor and favorable conditions of business that are available to capital in the Global South. The result, at best, would be to export British unemployment and poverty elsewhere. Furthermore, Corbyn is committed to “Brexit,” and while there’s clearly nothing innately pro-socialist about the European Union, a pro-worker Brexit is impossible. As Urte Macikene says, the reason for the UK to stay in the EU “is not support for EU institutions, or even a statement of a concrete hope to reform them from within, but a commitment to forging fighting alliances with labour movements across Europe to stand up to neoliberal institutions at all levels, beat austerity, address the refugee crisis, oppose militarism and imperialism, and take bold action on the climate.”

What Macikene strongly implies is that socialists in Europe and elsewhere, including the U.S., have no choice but to do the hard work of constructing a truly anti-capitalist International—something very different from the Socialist International or even the Party of the European Left—made up of sincerely radical and internationalist parties that will live up to the example of the Second International at its best moments, but also go beyond the mostly symbolic internationalism of the International before 1914. It will have to cooperate across national borders on common projects. This may be very difficult but that doesn’t negate its necessity.

The new International will have to engage in a “strategy of patience” quite different from parliamentary-socialist gradualism, even in its most radical form, but also different from the far-left belief—more common in the 1970s than today—that partial, especially trade unionist, struggles can be led into a generalized “mass strike” challenge to the capitalist state, and in the course of that challenge (“a non-stop series of mobilizations that make the working class aware of the necessity of taking power for real social change,” as one current recently put it), the members of the would-be revolutionary party can guide the movement to the seizure of power in the form of “all power to the soviets” despite their marginality before the crisis breaks out (assuming soviets/workers’ councils appear at all).

In socialist politics there’s just no way to “get rich quick,” to take power without engaging in the hard slog involved in building a mass party and associated organizations (cooperatives, workers’ educational institutions, workers’ media, etc.) long before anything like a revolutionary situation emerges. Moreover, there’s no way to “con” workers into taking power by making economic demands that can’t be implemented under capitalism (for certain Trotskyist groups this is what “transitional demands” have become—“nationalization of the Fortune 500” and the like).

Despite the party’s continuous right turn from 1906 onward, there’s still much to learn from the strategy of the early SPD and the writings of Karl Kautsky through 1909. The SPD refused participation in coalition governments with “left” bourgeois parties as a way to achieve reform. Marxist SPD members knew that participation wouldn’t lead to significant reform, let alone anti-capitalist revolution. It was a “get rich quick scheme” that would never pay off. This is where the Kautskyan “strategy of patience” comes in, where the socialist party-movement builds up its forces over the long term to the point when it’s able to take power with majority working-class support. The party rejects cross-class coalition governments as well as “non-stop mobilization” fantasies. It instead fights for an opposition that will openly express the working class’s independent interests. Without starting with the struggle for an opposition (something U.S socialists have been trying to do for a long time, in a sense, as we never believed that we would be governing the country any time soon) there’s no chance of confronting, in the future, the issue of building an alternative governing authority to that of the capitalist state. The oppositional socialist party doesn’t fetishize forming a government (or electing a President); it doesn’t see forming a government that would govern the capitalist state as the most important component of making the transition out of capitalism. The class struggle outside of governmental structures is of a higher priority than that within them.

Day-to-day, before the working-class seizure of power, our socialist commitment to political revolution will consist of demanding radical political reforms. As Mike Macnair makes clear in his book on revolutionary strategy, these reforms will never all be enacted by any capitalist state, certainly not all at once. Some surely can’t be enacted by a capitalist state at all, though others have existed at different times in different capitalist countries. Taken altogether, they would establish a polity where, in addition to a solidification of the political liberties partially provided by liberal constitutionalism (freedom of speech, assembly, association, movement, etc.) there is:

  • universal military training and service (for those who desire it) and democratic political and trade union rights within the military (as once existed in West Germany);
  • election and recallability of all public officials; public officials to be paid an average skilled workers’ wage;
  • abolition of official secrecy laws and of private rights of copyright and confidentiality;
  • abolition of judicial review of the democratic decisions of elected legislatures;
  • abolition of constitutional guarantees of the rights of private business property and freedom of trade.

This, sadly, is where the SPD’s “Marxist center” eventually fell down. After 1909 Kautsky and others fostered the illusion that socialists could capture and use the liberal-democratic state for working-class political power. They ignored Marx’s insight that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes,” that to actually rule we need a radically democratic “social republic.” The national limits of their strategy ultimately helped support the feeding of workers into the “human-being lawnmower” of the First World War.

This is still a relevant political issue today. The majority of existing left parties around the world use nationalist arguments and seek to “simply” take hold of and use the existing bureaucratic-coercive state, even if some in them want to do so for socialist purposes. But since the “stagflation” crisis of the 1970s the electoral cycle has repeatedly produced “center-left” and even “radical reformist” governments that end in disillusionment, the victory of ever more right-wing conservative parties, and now the increasing rise of the far right. The need for an alternative to capitalist society is clear—quoting Rosa Luxemburg on “socialism or barbarism” has become a cliché. But to be a revolutionary today requires understanding that the current main task of socialists in liberal democracies is not to fight for an alternative government. It’s to fight to build an alternative, internationalist opposition, inside and outside of legislatures, that commits itself explicitly to self-emancipation of the working class through “extreme” democracy, as opposed to all the state-loyalist parties and politicians, right or moderate-left.

Workers of the World…

To sum up, “national socialism” is a contradiction in terms. We need a genuine International of socialist parties which, politically, are in practice all on the same page, and which can work together on projects across borders. Capital is international—working-class organizations have to be just as international, and beyond just the symbolic level. Otherwise, no political revolution—in the U.S. or elsewhere—is possible. Relatedly, a precondition for political revolution—the taking of political power by the working class through the dissolution of the coherence of the armed forces of capitalist states—is a “strategy of patience” as outlined above. This strategy must be internationalist and radical-democratic, not one that accepts the existing order of nation-states. We must take “workers of the world unite” with the greatest seriousness. And given the current stakes, no matter the difficulty, our patience must be combined with a sense of urgency.

I’m seventy-two, and must still work

By: January 14, 2019
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full-time,

and work out of

pressing financial

necessity for the

rest of my life.

No true retirement ever

for me!

Should I ever become

unable to work, I will

fall into abject poverty.

Currently, even at

seventy-two.

my wages account for

over three-quarters

of my income; my

remaining income,

from Social Security,

accounts for less than

a quarter.

Can you imagine what

would happen to me

should that less than

three-quarters become

the whole of my income?

When it doesn’t even come

to $10,000 annually?

The proverbial up the

shit crik without a

paddle, right?

Well, that is the

ugly reality of my

seventy-second

birthday.  Lest

anyone forget,

lest anyone facilely

think of trying to

join me in “celebrating”

this ugly milestone

on my well-advanced

road to death.  Where

death might be

more of a relief

than life.

But don’t worry:

I’m not suicidal,

just grimly resigned.

Small comfort that is,

but I guess that will

“assure” you, all of you

so much better off

than I’ve ever been,

ever will be; even though

for the past two years

I haven’t had to eat shit

nearly as much as I did

the first seven

decades of my life.

But could that not be

but the proverbial

illusory calm

before the oncoming

raging, tumultuous,

out-of-control storm?

Why the LA Teachers Strike Matters

By: January 12, 2019
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The January 14 strike date announced by the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) has heightened tensions in an already contentious dispute with Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner, who represents the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in negotiations. However, far more is at stake in Los Angeles and for the rest of us than a traditional contract struggle.

Given how many students LAUSD educates, the possibility of a strike by its union is huge news. LAUSD has 694,000 in its schools. The entire state of Oklahoma educates about that same number of students in its public schools.

The reforms LAUSD has demanded in Los Angeles schools are based on the bipartisan project to convert public education into a lucrative market for wealthy investors. Merrill-Lynch heralded this change in a 1999 report for prospective investors: “A new mindset is necessary, one that views families as customers, schools as ‘retail outlets’ where educational services are received, and the school board as a customer service department that hears and addresses parental concerns.”

Networks of wealthy billionaires and the foundations they create have advocated and imposed reforms nationally, even globally, we see today in LA schools: using standardized tests to control what and how children learn; creating charter schools to weaken neighborhood schools and undermine parent loyalty to public education; creating new revenue sources for corporations to profit from education; and weakening teachers unions. The “portfolio model” LAUSD has announced it will adopt fragments the school system into networks operated by private charter management organizations.

The explicit rationale for the portfolio model is enhancing “choice,” providing more and better educational options for low-income children of color. But research by scholars who work independent of think-tank funding documents that privatization has increased school segregation and racial disparities in educational outcomes. Its main achievement has been to “plunder” public education.

In New Orleans, Detroit, and other cities in which states have imposed the “portfolio model”, creation of charter networks may have given a small number of students increased educational opportunities, but as we have seen in the most extensive “experiment” in charterization, in New Orleans, the vast majority of schools and teachers receive inadequate funding and support. Schools that have become more racially isolated train students for low-paid jobs and “push out” those who are dissatisfied. A select number of elite and well-funded public schools are maintained in the richest and whitest parts of the city, and a few lucky working-class students of color find spots in these schools.

As teacher union influence has waned, especially among Democrats, who have adopted the pro-privatization views of their largest donors, teachers have become angry about their unions’ inability to stem deteriorating conditions in schools. A vibrant reform movement has formed in both national teachers’ unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Activists are challenging the model of “business unionism” that NEA, AFT, and their state affiliates embrace. Reformers see the union’s strength in mobilizing members and making alliances with community, not relying on political “friends of labor” who will reward the union’s loyalty with economic improvements for members.

The current UTLA leadership campaigned and won office with ideas that put it solidly within the reform movement, where it is allied with the Chicago Teachers Union. Though the “red state” teacher walkout movement last spring was cast by media as a peculiarity of states that had exceptionally poor funding for schools and low teacher salaries, #RedforEd was actually a response to conditions that are national and have been festering for years. The conditions were felt first and most intensely in urban schools and sparked formation of a reform caucus that won office in the Chicago Teachers Union, transformed it, and organized an electrifying strike.

Acting on principles of “social justice unionism,” UTLA has consciously built the union’s presence in the schools and has reached out to community groups, working to develop mutually respectful alliances that acknowledge racial and class inequality in the city’s schools. Hence UTLA’s current contract demands include reducing student-counselor ratios and lowering class size, as well as ending punitive disciplinary procedures that feed the “school to prison pipeline” and do nothing to improve school climate, essential for safe schools.

The battle between UTLA and LAUSD is over contradictory visions for the role of public education in a society that claims to be democratic. LAUSD wants a privatized “public” system funded by tax dollars that its supporters say will simultaneously boost profits and allow “the best” to succeed in a competitive system. UTLA sees a teachers union’s responsibility to its members and the society as creating a system of public education that is controlled democratically, empowering parents, students, and teachers to transcend the role of consumers to create “choices” that serve all elements of its diverse population equally well.

Though this seems to be a contract dispute, the battle between UTLA and Superintendent Beutner and the economic and political interests he represents is something far bigger. It’s a turning point for Los Angeles in deciding its future.

Originally posted at Jacobin.

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