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  • Global Economic Volatility and Sociopolitical Reactions

    Global Economic Volatility and Sociopolitical Reactions

    Trade and currency wars, financial volatility and economic turbulence are now the most important features of the world economy.

    The elements of a new international financial crisis are in place. Although we do not know when it will break out, it is unavoidable, and its impact on world economy will be as significant as the 1880s-90s, 1930s-40s and more recent 2008-09 meltdowns. Worse, far fewer of the global capacities of the latter period – rapid lowering of interest rates, printing of money to buy up state debt (‘Quantitative Easing’), and sufficient fiscal space for bailouts – are available to global crisis managers. And most troubling, many more of the proto-fascistic political characteristics reminiscent of the 1930s are looming, especially in the new contextualisations of the Global South.

    Part 1 South African Special Economic Zones : History of Limited Successes

    Part 2 Global Economic Volatility and Socio Political Reactions

    The contributing economic factors include:

    • sharply increased private debts of corporations;
    • speculative bubbles in financial asset prices: stock markets, debt security prices, and in some countries, the real estate sector (at the end of December 2018, a major stock market crash almost broke out in the United States and the contagion effect was immediate, an additional signal that a major crash will have as great a global impact as did 2008-09’s);
    • the major banks remain extremely fragile, with share values falling in the United States and Europe since the second half of 2018;
    • the US real estate market has become fragile again, overall global prices up by 50% since 2012, with lev- els in excess of those reached just before the crisis that began in 2005-2006;
    • Quantitative Easing policies in Europe and their return in the US (as the Federal Reserve eases interest rates in mid-2019 under pressure from President Donald Trump, running for re-election) represent further factors that have the effect of pushing ‘risk on’ funding into South African securities, but at the expense of further rapid outflows when ‘risk off’ sentiments dominate.


    Total Debt (Corporate, Household, Government) in the World Economy, 2012-19

    Source: Institute of International Finance 2019

    Economic growth in the most industrialized “old” countries remains weak. Especially in Europe after low growth in 2017, the year 2018 ended with stagnation and in the case of Germany, a fall in industrial production in the 4th quarter. German authorities lowered their growth forecasts for 2019 to 1% (while in 2016-2017 the annual growth rate exceeded 2%). In the euro zone, growth in the third quarter of 2018 was only 0.2%, the lowest in 4 years. In Japan, growth over the year through period April 2018 – March 2019 was around 0.9%, also down on 2017. The US economy is also in a slowdown phase; the IMF forecasts growth of 2.5% in 2019 compared to 2.9% in 2018. In other words, the North continues to suffer sustained stagnation.

    Moreover, Chinese growth is still slowing, as discussed below, as are the economies of the other BRICS, except for India, which is growing at just over 7% annually. Russia is experiencing very weak growth, of the order of 1.2% in 2018 and a forecast of 1.3% for 2019. South Africa was in recession in the first half of 2018, and again in 2019 was likely to fall into a technical recession thanks to -3.2% GDP growth rate in the first quarter. Brazil, which experienced a severe recession in 2015-2016, has regained some growth, but it is very low, at just over 1% in 2018, and out of desperation, the Bolsonaro government authorised a large interest rate cut in mid-2019.

    Other so-called emerging countries are also suffering profound economic crises, especially Turkey, Argentina and Venezuela. The symptoms include devaluation of the currency, great difficulties in repaying public and private external debt, and rising joblessness; these are also the kinds of conditions that generate political instability, which all three countries have suffered in different ways in recent years.

    To complete the set of gloomy indicators, we will consider the African continent in more detail below, where South Africa’s comparative advantage rests in exporting automobiles, construction and mining services, banking, cellular phones and other consumer goods through Johannesburg-based retail networks (in one case, Massmart, controlled from the US via Walmart). As discussed later, economic conditions are even worse for imports and FDI profit repatriation in Africa than in the rest of the world, as a result of structural exploitation, over-reliance on primary export orientation, and a new debt crisis.

    The above remarks relate to the geographical categories within the world community of nations. When we expand our perspective to look at marginalised and oppressed peoples, along the lines of class and other categories, the picture appears even gloomier as a result of neo-fascistic tendencies in many parts of the world. All over the world, economic austerity and political offensives against workers, marginalised and oppressed peoples continue and worsen.

    Women are the hardest hit, together with people of colour, indigenous peoples, migrants and young workers. In many instances, women will suffer multiple oppresions if these categorisations are inclusive (for example, young migrant women workers). In the case of all the above groups the offensive is partly a result of the position of these groups in the labour market, for example in historically worse paid jobs. In the case of women and also disabled workers, the impact of the offensive against public services also has a disproportionate impact. Women, who even in times of boom continued to have the major responsibility for caring for children, sick people and elderly people, are adversely affected by cuts in those services, resulting in them often being forced into even more marginal employment or out of the labour market all together. Disabled people who relied on the availability of certain services to work or live independently are similarly impacted.

    At the same time there is an ideological offensive against all the groups referred to above and also LGBTIQ people driven by the political and religious rightwing, internationally, forces that are increasingly in the driving seat in many key countries. This offensive operates on different levels:

    • repressive policies, including the tightening of immigration rules, attacks on abortion and contraception services, the abuse of indigenous lands for the extraction of extreme fossil fuel or biofuels against the wishes of those communities, etc;
    • the emboldening of the extreme right through hate offensives against those groups, including murders in indigenous communities in Brazil by ranchers, official Islamaphobia and anti-semitism, growth of ‘militant’ mobilisations against abortion clinics, increasing violent attacks against LGB and particularly trans people, and mass shootings;
    • diminishing support for the most marginalised sections of working people, in part by an aggrieved working class failing to provide solidarity when feminism, anti-racism, LGBTIQ liberation, immigrant rights are labeled as merely ‘identity’ politics, especially when this entails blaming the loss of jobs and services on migrants, women.

    Apart from a very minority category of workers whose wages are very high – which makes them prone to allying with big business – almost all categories of waged workers are targeted by economic austerity. These include sectors that had historically succeeded in winning important rights, whether in the industrial sector, in public services, in the financial sector (banking, insurance) and in the commercial sector. Examples include:

    • the new precariousness of working conditions and contracts;
    • the facilitation of dismissals in part through technological change;
    • stagnation or a fall in the purchasing power of wage-workers and popular sectors in general;
    • increased retirement ages, with stagnation or fall in pensions;
    • decreased access to and quality of public services;
    • the reduction in the number of employees protected by collective agreements;
    • attacks on the rights of union members and the rights to organise and strike;
    • increased indebtedness of working class households all over the world (through consumer loans, mortgage debts, student debts, tax debts, microcredit for survival – and women represent more than 80% of the 120 million people who use such high-priced services worldwide – and rising peasant debts not only in countries like India where the phenomenon has taken on dramatic proportions but also in northern countries.
    Source: Branko Milanovic

    To some extent, e.g. in the case of those who lost well-paying jobs and are resentful of perceived competition, this helps explain the working-class votes for Trump, Brexit or other right-wing causes. There is not only an economic, racial and national offensive underway due to these global trends, but also one based on patriarchal power :

    • precarious work, especially the increase in part-time work by women in services (cleaning, catering, personal care);
    • destruction of public services such as public transport, childcare and healthcare, resulting in an increased unpaid workload for mothers; women’s pensions are structurally very low because of the years not worked (because of the need for care for small children at home);
    • discriminatory measures in the unemployment system include less income for “non-head of households,” who are mostly women;
    • sexual harassment of women in many sectors and in precarious employment (male power in hiring women, which were unveiled in #MeToo);
    • decline in access to abortion and contraception rights, in the United States at both local (city) and state levels; closure of family planning centres; non-reimbursement for contraception, lack of sexual education in schools; rise of anti-abortion religious groups in both the US and Latin America with the extreme example of Brazil (Poland and Ireland represent contrary forces given victories in reproductive rights mobilisations);
    • the rise of fundamentalism in India, Bangladesh, with more frequent public punishment of “adulterous” women or young women with non-approved sexual contact; but also revolt of young women against the extremely harsh family regime, e. g. Saudi Arabia;
    • calls for women to have more children in Turkey, Hungary, Poland, for nationalist reasons;
    • the Russian Federation’s Duma, under pressure from the authorities and the Orthodox Church, decriminalized domestic violence in 2017;
    • countries where 40% of serious crimes, primarily against women but also against children, occur in the family environment;
    • growth of the sex industry worldwide includes sale of women in Libya, slavery of immigrant women, growing pornography in prostitution, amongst other aspects;
    • ongoing inequality of women farmers even in small family farms, as Via Campesina regularly reports;
    • violence against women, including femicide, domestic violence, harassment of women on the streets;
    • in Italy, under pressure from lobbies of very virulent separated fathers, portrayed as as “masculinists”, fundamentalist components of the Catholic Church and a government formed by a coalition between an extreme right-wing party and the Five Stars movement, a project was launched to reform family law to make divorce much more difficult; and
    • in Argentina, in August 2018, parliament rejected the bill that legalized abortion.

    All of these social processes combine home-based patriarchal power and a wider attack on the rights of women and the LGBTIQ movement by an authoritarian state. Globally, authoritarian forms of government are being strengthened without, so far, taking the form of military dictatorships. In spite of winning electoral contests, the new rightwing leaders are curtailing fundamental democratic freedoms. The means of the repressive forces have greatly increased, which allows for an increased intrusion into the lives of individuals and organisations. The use of preventive arrests is spreading, even in the “old” bourgeois democracies. Legislative and judicial powers are being reduced in many places to the benefit of executive power.

    There is, of course, political resistance to all these trends. The various forms of attacks on workers’ rights, women’s rights, the rights of migrants, and on all categories of the oppressed and oppressed fortunately provoke many struggles all over the world. Feminist mobilisations are the most encouraging, but there are many others. Labour struggles are less important than before in a number of countries, but they are progressing in others such as China and Bangladesh. The new forms of organisation or mobilisation that partly respond to the loss of political weight of the organized workers movement are developing and making it possible to build new blocks of the working classes: there are similarities between the mobilisations of the Argentine piqueteros (2001-2003) and those of the Yellow Vests in France (2018-2019), as well as the 2011 movements of the ‘Arab Spring’ and the Occupiers, or the mobilisations in Greece (2011-15), Turkey (2013), Mexico against the increase in gasoline prices (2017), and those of Nicaragua (2018), Haiti (2018-2019), the Moroccan Rif (2018), Puerto Rico (2019), Hong Kong (2019) and many other places, including 18 African countries, as we see below. There are also regular mobilisations among school children in parts of the world; we are witnessing increasing mobilisation on the issue of climate, the environment and common goods.

    Source : Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Policy Paper #1/2 on South Africa’s Special Economic Zones in Global Context September 2019 By Eric Toussaint, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson and Patrick Bond.

  • Education Workers in Chicago Are Challenging the U.S. Ruling Class

    Education Workers in Chicago Are Challenging the U.S. Ruling Class

    Though the media is casting the strike of education workers in the Chicago Public Schools as (just) another episode in the wave of teachers’ strikes, and the press in Chicago is doing its best to defeat the union, this contract campaign has already set a new bar for resistance to policies on education and the economy in place for decades.

    Two unions whose members are mostly women, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the union representing Chicago Public Schools support workers, SEIU Local 73, are directly challenging not only the billionaires who control the GOP and want policies that benefit their profits and strengthen their hold on government, but also the Democratic Party’s shell game of claiming to be friends of labor and education while continuing the disastrous bipartisan policies that have fostered inequality and degraded public education, especially in low-income communities of color.

    Since publication  of  “A Nation at Risk in 1983, which launched what in hindsight we know was the U.S. iteration of the neoliberal project in education, schools and teaching throughout the U.S. have been transformed.  Supported by liberals, labor, and the education establishment, which bought the rationale schools and teachers could save the economy by adopting “excellence” reforms and later, privatization. Though groups of activist teachers and parents have been struggling to make schools more than joyless sorting machines based on standardized tests, economic austerity has intensified the pain and unfairness of a narrowed curriculum tied to testing. Cutbacks in social services in the schools and in communities have made conditions in classrooms even worse.

    Damage is most intense in the low-income Hispanic and African American communities that most depend on schools to be a refuge and  help some students climb out of poverty.  Chicago is no exception. Its  schools  are dirty, cleaned less often and less well, often by janitors working for private companies with whom principals and teachers have no contact; school buses are less safe because aides aren’t present to protect kids from bullying or get help if there’s a medical problem; as class sizes grow, unchecked by law or union contracts, students who have questions or feel lost in an assignment are left to flounder without help from aides or teachers.

    One factor  virtually ignored by media coverage of the Chicago strike or in the “teacher revolt” sparked by the Chicago Teachers Union 2012 strike, is how bipartisan policies have pushed to destroy teaching as a career, making the occupation a revolving door of barely-trained college grads.  As the World Bank’s rationale for its education reforms in the global South explains, the well-orchestrated attacks on teachers unions are intended to curtail expenditures on teachers’ pay and benefits.  Hence in the U.S. we have seen teachers’ pensions cast as as unaffordable, a strategy accompanied by pay practices to rescind or limit salary increases based on years of experience and education. The intent is to push out older, experienced teachers, making the teaching force cheaper and more compliant,  in the process eliminating what has historically been a path for working class women to move into the middle class.

    What makes the CTU’s contract campaign so singular is its simultaneous pushback on so many elements of this project and its willingness to take on Lori Lightfoot, who has assumed responsibility for what the Democratic Party, represented in Chicago by Arne Duncan and Rahm Emanuel began and oversaw.   The campaign embodies an understanding that the morass of neglect in Chicago and its schools is not an accident, nor the result of reformers’ good intentions gone awry, but the product of a project to refashion education to serve the needs of transnational corporations that want a docile populace, profits from the education sector, and a workforce whose education is synchronized with the desires of capital in the new global economy.

    Every CTU demand hits the mark, addressing the nitty-gritty of school life. They have called for class size to be reduced, including untenable teacher-student ratios in early childhood education. They have insisted on testing being curtailed. They want experienced teachers to be paid a salary that defends teaching as a profession and a career. They want social workers and support personnel hired to help students who  face social problems that would make many adults break. They insist on help for special needs students, a librarian and a nurse in every school, and want written commitments for more schools to become sanctuaries for immigrant students and families. CTU has called  for community schools that are truly rooted in what communities want and need, rejecting the programs CPS has pushed in services for early childhood education that give big profits to companies that keep kids from receiving services, in a model called “Pay for Success” that includes data-mining.  They want programs that make schools safer by supporting  students’ social needs, rather than making schools more prison-like. Most recently the union bargaining team had coaches explain the human cost of the district’s financial neglect of athletic programs.  In sum, this union insists on learning and teaching conditions the affluent take for granted for their children.

    And they also insist that Chicago students should have conditions outside the school that support learning. Facing ridicule about its “far-fetched” contract demand for Chicago to confront the crisis of affordable housing – the conditions producing homelessness –  the CTU has simultaneously insisted on and won more support for schools to help  students and their families in temporary living situations.  In asserting their power and responsibility as union members to improve what goes on in schools and classrooms as well as the city outside, Chicago’s education workers are showing us how to use union power to confront and turn back the conditions so many Americans now see and abhor. Following Sanders’ lead, Harris, Warren, and Biden, have expressed support for union demands, exposing Lightfoot’s pro-big business economic program.

    CTU is standing up to the Democrats and the  U.S. ruling class as it did a decade ago, on behalf of children who live in conditions we should not countenance, morally or politically. Again the union is leading a struggle that is a watershed for labor and for popular resistance to neoliberalism.  Chicago’s education workers, many women of color, are at the front. We need to have their back because their fight is about our children’s well-being and our collective future.

    Note to readers: New Politics is having its annual fund-raising appeal. Aside from the annoying box you have to close to read articles, we only ask once a year to help us continue our work, mainly because  our volunteer editorial board  can’t force ourselves to take over the endless fundraising that has become the reality for non-profits. 

    Few publications are open to the range of opinions and topics New Politics has carried over the years, including education and what unions need to do better and differently, the subjects I most often tackle.  If you follow my work, please take out that credit card or write a check now to New Politics. More information here on how to donate. And if you’re not a subscriber, please do that now.

     

  • We Should Critique the NBA as a Cultural Product

    We Should Critique the NBA as a Cultural Product

    In an interview with the New Yorker this past June, former National Basketball Association (“NBA”) player Jalen Rose criticized the NBA’s ‘data analytics movement’ for how it incentivizes organizations to “funnel jobs” to people with advanced technical degrees, but without basketball experience. Bomani Jones and Pablo Torre subsequently devoted an entire segment of their

    ESPN show “High Noon” to discussing Rose’s qualms, and whether the movement signified that “the rich guys” or “the nerds” had won. This led to a follow-up New Yorker interview between Jones and staff writer Issac Chotiner in which they discussed, among other things, the lack of opportunities for people of color within NBA data analytics departments and front offices.

    This article will make the case that this series of exchanges, both what it helps to clarify and what it conceals, harbors important lessons for those of us on the Left. It will analyze the data analytics movement as well as the issues taken up by Rose, Chotiner, Jones, and Torre, situating both within the contested landscape of neoliberal ideology.

    The Data Analytics Movement, and the NBA as an ISA

    The data analytics movement (“DAM”) refers to the NBA’s widespread adoption over the last twenty years of advanced statistical modeling and data analytic methods, in the context of both basketball operations management and gameplay strategy. The adoption of DAM has been concurrent with a “revolution” in how the game of basketball is played, and the steady growth in the NBA’s popularity. Still, debates over the overall benefit of the movement persist. Just this past year, Kirk Goldsberry, the former Vice President of Strategic Research for the San Antonio Spurs, wrote a book critiquing DAM for its adverse impact on the game. Goldsberry ultimately argues for “an analytical supplement to our rule making and to our game’s engineering that can create a very beautiful version of the sport.” While Goldsberry’s critique is as radical as they come, his prescription is managerial technocracy in its purest form. It accepts that DAM is problematic but never entertains a broader paradigm shift. Teams now invest heavily in internal data analytics departments and tailor their respective rosters according to the dictates of these new analytic methods and statistical models.

    In this sense, DAM should be understood not as a development unique to the NBA, but as an outgrowth of capitalism as it works through its latest stage of development.

    Here, the work of Louis Althusser on ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) can be helpful. Broadly speaking — and so as to stay away from the myriad disagreements and theoretical entanglements which follow from Althusser’s earlier writings — ISAs are distinct institutions which primarily function as sites through which social and political actors actualize the ideology of the ruling class and reproduce the relations of production. ISAs become increasingly vital as the internal contradictions of capitalism manifest in crises, and reconcile in new relations of production and new productive technologies. They function as sites through which the ruling class can preserve the conditions necessary for capitalism’s continued existence. Just as Goldsberry cannot think past the technocratic logic foundational to his position as a managerial technocrat, crises of capitalism are routinely addressed through technocratic solutions. If ISAs are performing their functions, structural solutions to structural problems are routinely framed as too destabilizing to warrant serious consideration.

    ISAs and capitalist class relations have a mutually reinforcing relationship. That relationship is worth a deeper analysis in order to understand how the NBA functions on behalf of the preservation of capitalism.

    Interpellation, and the Logic of Optimization

    The latest era of capitalist accumulation has been called “surveillance capitalism,” or “big data capitalism.” Whatever its name, it treats in the production of surveillance and data intelligence technologies which commodify behavioral data, whether collected in physical workplaces or digital spaces. This new form of capital accumulation grew out of the totalizing social and economic system of financialized capitalism. The highly profitable but more volatile system of financialized capitalism, necessitated what Barbara and John Ehrenreich called in 1977 the professional-managerial class (PMC), a class of people whose interests comport most closely with those of capital, and whose productive activity is to manage and optimize that of the working class. After the digital and technological development boom, the PMC grew into an ever-expanding panoply of managers and bureaucrats who use advanced technologies to surveil workforces and redistribute behavioral data to third parties, among other things.

    Whether as ushering in a new era of personal freedom in the case of the neoliberalization of the global economy, or aesthetic brilliance in the case of the NBA’s DAM, both shifts in productive development were celebrated. They also both operate on the assumption that the point of their respective enterprises is to optimize workplace productivity — in the NBA’s case, the on-court product. In the NBA, the logic of optimization is anchored to a similar set of productive technologies and production relations: the production of advanced algorithms and statistical models with which to analyze game-play; the recruitment of a technically skilled managerial class who reproduce and improve those models; the recruitment of players based on skill-sets the models deem optimizable; in turn, the creation of a labor market shaped by those models’ outputs, etc. The NBA’s PMC has expanded into a variegated strata of managers and data analysts who determine the career status and futures of the NBA’s labor class. In order to achieve optimization, the PMC surveil, scrutinize, and manage the NBA players’ experience as laborers. There is an entire conference, the Sloan Sports Analytic Conference (SSAC), where front office employees, journalists, academics and statisticians congregate to network and share insights and strategies. It is one of the key networking events for the NBA’s PMC.

    However, as with any of capitalism’s stages of development, eventually its internal contradictions rise to the fore. Political and social arrangements under neoliberal hegemony construct human beings as atomized subjects in a marketplace of self-interested, rational consumers; they render widespread problems solvable only through means-tested, technocratic solutions; they cause depression and cast it as our own fault; they even jab their grubby tendrils in our dating lives. In the NBA, players who oftentimes overcome dire circumstances in order to reach the league, face similarly alienating conditions once there. They navigate a thoroughly bureaucratized market system which does not work on their behalf, only to have their attempts at exercising individual autonomy within that system referred to as “obnoxious” or as structurally destabilizing instances of “player empowerment.” Their playing experience is determined less by their own collective talent and more by the dictates of advanced statistical calculations and predictive models. They specialize their skill development from an early age in order to mold their games to the dictates of these models, leading to taxing effects on the body which are only now being understood.

    These contradictions might lead to change, maybe even emancipatory change, but ISAs play an instrumental role in maintaining ruling class ideology by mystifying class conflict. The Marxian economist Richard Wolff, and others, demonstrated how a similar process of mystification precipitated the rampant consumerism of the postwar era. Through what Althusser, Wolff, and others call interpellation, a process by which otherwise free subjects become, instead, constitutive subjects within, and subordinate to, ruling class ideology, workers were “called to think of (identify) themselves and everyone else as free market participants striving to maximize the consumption they could achieve from work.” Through interpellation, NBA fans, as consumers of a massively popular global entertainment product, have united with NBA front offices in thinking of NBA players as individual assets in the optimization project of the PMC, rather than as laborers embedded in a contingent system of labor relations.

    Instructively, at the same time as data analytics movement has assumed a hegemony within the league, the NBA has morphed into a panoptic entertainment experience which hides the actual game — and certainly the labor relations under-girding its production — under layers of commodification. During the league’s trade deadline every February and free agency period every July, a flurry of transactional activity thrusts players onto new teams at the whim of their respective front offices. On Twitter, fans, reporters, players, managers, and other assorted entertainers all interact and participate in turning this process of worker upheaval into a virtual soap opera. Content creators turn gameplay into the proper object of reasoned, data-centric analysis. Fans either passively participate in this analysis, or develop commoditizable skills as armchair analysts or commentators. Twitter is effectively shut down every July during the NBA’s free agency period, as fans and media types alike revel in the crude inner workings of the NBA’s (restrictive and

    exploitative) labor market. NBA players, thrust into situations of increased precarity, report increased levels of anxiety or depression only to have their salaries (tied to the 50-50 revenue split between players and owners) used to silence their testimony. NBA fans have effectively become handmaidens to the league’s foundational logics, which are themselves derivative of ruling class ideology.

    The aforementioned media circuit is instructive. ESPN and the NBA are partners, having recently agreed to a $24 billion broadcasting rights deal. There is also a pipeline to and from the NBA and ESPN, with former league executives routinely finding second lives as talking heads, and vice versa. Through these reciprocative relationships, the NBA’s PMC shape the broader conversations around the league — always around the ideology of the ruling class.

    Just as mainstream media ignore and even exacerbate conflict, they cling to the obfuscating promise of inclusion within unjust or exploitative systems. For example, in their show’s treatment of Rose’s New Yorker interview, ESPN’s Jones and Torre end up ignoring the substantive critique under-girding Rose’s concerns. Rose is primarily concerned with technical skill carrying more weight on the job market than “being in the foxhole, in the huddles, and out on the floor.” Rose is asserting the normative worth of playing experience and its being most essential to the sport, per se, in comparison to the “productive activity” of the owners and managers. On their show, Jones and Torre started a conversation over whether the data analytics movement is sufficiently inclusive of technically skilled people of color. The logic here hearkens back to the “diversity and inclusion” programs and discourses which have historically collapsed systemic structural critique into, instead, calls for a more diverse PMC.

    Jones and Torre even stumble upon a useful description of the PMC when they discuss whether “the nerds” (the managerial class of data analysts) or “the rich guys” (the capitalist class of owners) had won. Clearly, both had won. After the aforementioned broadcasting rights deal, the NBA was flooded with money and became an attractive speculative endeavor for rich venture capitalists. As team valuations exploded, each team was able to significantly expand their front-office staff and invest in newer surveillance and intelligence technologies. In the words of Bomani Jones, as “a lot of private equity money is now buying these NBA teams,” the owners “are taking the approaches they learned in the [private equity world], and then applying it … to basketball.” In an episode of his

    ESPN-affiliated “The Right Time” podcast, Jones details the cold logic of DAM, which turns players into “puzzle pieces” within a larger team-building operation. This has culminated in a marriage between the investor and managerial classes and a hegemony of optimization logic, both of which redound to the benefit of ESPN and its affiliates. Unsurprisingly, Jones and Torre both gloss over the essentially alienating quality of that system, instead offering the fully neoliberalized critique of racial liberalism.

    Searching for Worth, Challenging Neoliberal Hegemony

    In the NBA, an expanding but ultimately contingent PMC routinely clash with an indispensable class of laborers. Historically, these tensions between the league’s PMC and players tend toward crisis. In between formal clashes or labor disputes, these crises uncover chinks in the armor of data analytics hegemony and reveal the merits of potential alternatives.

    The Houston Rockets and Philadelphia 76ers both made analytics and asset-maximization their raison d’être, and they serve as cautionary tales. The Rockets, run by Daryl Morey, a co-founder of SSAC with a background in computer science and consulting, dragged the insights of advanced analytics to their extremes. Their fidelity to player efficiency models incentivized their near habitual chase of star players, with the long-term effect being their players working in a perennial state of precarity; writers put together entire flow charts to track all of the players traded by Morey. Morey once described his job as the Rockets’ general manager to be fundamentally about how to “better understand and manage the risk” of building teams according to quantitative analytics. While their playing and managerial style afforded them a modicum of success, the team has been defined by near-constant squabbling and chemistry issues. At the same time, fans criticize the team and its star, James Harden, for their playing style and shameless focus on prioritizing scoring efficiency over aesthetic brilliance. The team recently acquired Russell Westbrook, their third co-star for Harden, after previous co-stars Dwight Howard and Chris Paul wore out their respective welcomes. On their part, the 76ers were run from 2013-2016 by Sam Hinkie, a Morey protege described as “fluent in the dispassionate language of expected value and probability.” The 76ers were mediocre by NBA standards, and Hinkie, most influenced by the Silicon Valley start-up mentality according to which the “mediocre middle is to be avoided at all costs, immediately sloughed off the team’s established players in exchange for future draft assets. His team-building strategy even earned the kitchy name “The Process” due to its grinding, long-term focus. Hinkie’s teams won only 47 of the

    246 games played under his watch, and his players openly wondered whether they would be the next martyr to The Process. While it drew far too much attention to the ruthless NBA business — the league’s owners literally staged a coup d’etat of Hinkie’s position, installing in his place Bryan Colangelo, the failson of friend-of-the-NBA Jerry Colangelo — Hinkie’s strategy has become the league’s dominant operating method.

    If the Rockets and 76ers are cautionary tales in the cold, dispassionate logic of the data analytics movement, the San Antonio Spurs and Memphis Grizzlies may serve as examples of the value which its hegemony conceals. While the Spurs won a championship in 2014 and have maintained two-decades of sustained brilliance, their coach Greg Popovich has railed against increased

    three-point attempts and the heavy focus on data analytics. He attributes the Spurs’ success to their having built a team culture which makes players feel a part of something greater than themselves. The Memphis Grizzlies played a notoriously antiquated style and never won at the highest level.

    Still, the team cultivated a powerful relationship with Memphis by playing a style which reflected that of the city. The team’s era of success was dubbed “Grit and Grind,” a mantra which became a lasting ethic even after the team’s core players departed.

    The Spurs and Grizzlies can’t be replicated through the transactional logic of “The Process,” nor through the mathematism in Houston. Still, they demonstrate the value of workplace arrangements premised on continuity and which function in the service of their players. Throughout NBA history, there are a bevy of examples of teams who never won at the highest level, but who maintained close ties both among themselves or among their fan-bases. Those close ties, the camaraderie, and the sense that everyone’s collective activity is going to something greater than the sum of their parts — those are what persist as team-building norms irrespective of the tools and methods in vogue at a given time.

    It matters that we take heed of that lesson.

    In the 1980s, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher infamously earned herself the nickname “TINA” for insisting that “there is no alternative” to the neoliberal free-market economy. While defeatist, her sentiment was broadly felt at the time. Later that decade, Fredric Jameson said that “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism,” and Francis Fukuyama declared just a few years after that the Soviet Union’s collapse signaled the triumph of capitalism and “the end of history.” In many respects, the feeling persists in the present moment — certainly in the United States, where calls at the national political level for basic social democracy are met with cynical haranguing over divisiveness and pleas for pragmatism.

    While these declarations have proven wrong, they extended out of the totalizing nature of what some call neoliberal hegemony: a set of normative assumptions about the world which the dominant classes asserted after rejecting Keynesianism in the late-1960s, and which have been naturalized in the structure of existing financial, political, and social institutions. Under neoliberal hegemony, our governing institutions mediate human experience through increasingly individualizing bureaucratic structures. Economic and political inequality, a collapsed union movement, the descent of the political state into fascism, and individual alienation from social and political life, among other things, have all followed suit.

    Apart from its implementation in and through concrete social, political and financial institutions, neoliberal hegemony is also expressed and routinized through social and cultural production. Our music, movies, art, and sports all deal in the conditions of our daily lives. If they function properly, they express the same message: there is no alternative. Not only does the NBA as one such cultural product reproduce itself by adapting and naturalizing existing labor relations and productive technologies, but it tests these relations and productions for other industries, like energy and healthcare. In so doing, it serves as one area through which capitalism reproduces its fundamental class relations.

    The late Mark Fisher wrote extensively on neoliberalism’s intractability, but he also implored us to remember that what now seems inevitable was once considered impossible. Basically, that there is an alternative to neoliberal hegemony, and it can be culled together by establishing what Nancy Fraser calls a “counterhegemony” — a set of assumptions asserted by the dominated classes to undermine and replace those established by the ruling class to naturalize its domination. In both the NBA and in our broader political and economic situation, laborers are subjected to a system of production which does not work according to their interests. In the NBA, of course, the stakes are much lower than in politics; players are paid handsomely, and the league is an entertainment industry that might actually be too big to fail.

    However, the low stakes are exactly why we should be critical over the league’s hegemonic logics. If we accept our political order’s internal contradictions when it might not matter, we prefigure our resignation when it does. At the political level, nothing less is at stake than the livelihoods and futures of those excluded from profiting off of the scant fruits of neoliberal hegemony, or from determining the trajectory of its development. Insofar as the NBA is one site wherein neoliberal hegemony is produced and reproduced, its tensions, contradictions and crisis points should be challenged and excavated for the values otherwise concealed. By that same token, we can and should be critical about existing workplace arrangements and bold about formulating alternatives.

    Investigating the aporia of neoliberal hegemony is our best chance to contest its status as a system without alternative. Insofar as exposing the contradictions of the NBA can help us to chip away at the foundational assumptions of neoliberal hegemony, we can posit the NBA, as an ISA, as a potential site of class struggle. Eventually, we can outright replace neoliberal hegemony with social and political arrangements that follow out of a different set of assumptions. We can build a world premised on the value of collectivities, interdependence and freedom from need.

  • The Irishman Cometh: Teamster History Hits the Big Screen (Again)

    The Irishman Cometh: Teamster History Hits the Big Screen (Again)

    When I was working with the Teamster reform movement forty years ago, truck drivers concerned about union corruption had to proceed warily.

    In the late 1970s, too many affiliates of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) were run by grifters or autocrats of the usual business union sort. If you crossed them, the result might be collusion with management to get you fired and then blacklisted.

    In other locals and joint councils, located in areas of organized crime strength, some Teamster officials were actual associates of the mob. Their reputation for violent retaliation against union rebels, who dared to challenge Teamster corruption and racketeering, was even more intimidating.

    Frank Sheeran, a 6-foot-4, 250-pound Teamster official in Delaware  was definitely in the latter category. After serving in heavy World War II combat, he became a loan shark and mob muscle man, truck driver, and labor organizer, and ultimately a convicted felon who served 15 years in federal prison.

    Sheeran was once little-known outside of Teamster circles. But then former prosecutor Charles Brandt published a book about Sheeran’s close relationship with Teamster President James R. Hoffa, linking him to America’s most famous cold case, the disappearance and presumed murder of Hoffa in 1975.

    Entitled I Heard You Paint Houses, Brandt’s biography was optioned by director Martin Scorsese, who has now made The Irishman, Hollywood’s third major film about Hoffa and the Teamsters. It opens in theatres on Nov. 1 and on Netflix later in the month.

    Teamster History Retold

    The two earlier Hoffa films were F.I.S.T., a lightly fictionalized account of his career starring Sylvester Stallone, and Hoffa, a 1992 production featuring Jack Nicholson in the title role. Both did well at the box office, while recycling Hoffa’s own factually-challenged explanation for Teamster-mob connections (namely, that workers needed organized crime muscle to overcome management violence against them during organizing drives).

    The Irishman has a similar Teamster history narrative; it’s already being hailed, by reviewers, as a “majestic Mob epic” and a candidate for multiple Oscars. According to the New York Times, Scorsese’s latest is “long and dark: long like a novel by Dostoyevsky or Dreiser, dark like a painting by Rembrandt.” The Atlantic calls the $160 million film “a ruminative and rueful viewing experience…an attempt to understand a man who lived in the background of history while apparently having significant influence over it.”

    With Al Pacino playing Hoffa and Robert DeNiro in the role of Sheeran, the latter is about to become a far better-known U.S. labor figure. I first learned more about Sheeran during a furtive 1977 meeting with two Teamsters who belonged to Local 326 in Wilmington, Delaware. A decade earlier, Hoffa had personally installed Sheeran as president of this 3,000-member local to reward him for helping the IBT maintain control over Teamsters Local 107 in Philadelphia.

    During the late 1950s and early 1960s, many truck drivers in Philly opposed Hoffa’s heavy-handed rule. After the IBT was expelled from the AFL-CIO for corruption in 1957, thousands of them tried to replace the Teamsters with a federation-backed union but failed to win a decertification election.

    In Sheeran’s view, this challenge to Hoffa was tantamount to treason. “Once you allow dissension and rebel factions to exist you are on the way to losing your union,” he told his biographer. “You can have only one boss. You can have helpers. But you can’t have nine guys trying to run a local. If you did, the employer would make side deals and split the union.”

    As the Local 326 dissidents I met with confirmed, Sheeran was quite adept at making “side deals” himself, as the “boss” of Local 326. Like many other members of the Professional Drivers Council (PROD, a reform group) and Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), they sought legal help and organizing advice about reforming the union and ridding it of crooks and gangsters. They suspected, rightly as it turned out, that Sheeran was on the take.

    For example, as Sheeran later confessed to Brandt, he liked to grant “waivers” to newly organized trucking companies so they could avoid making pension fund payments normally required under a first contract. This enabled a friendly employer “to put his savings on the table [so] you both share it under the table—and everybody’s taken care of that way.”

    Thanks to driver complaints, related lawsuits, and investigative reporting by the Wall Street Journal, we also knew, by 1977, that Sheeran was negotiating sweetheart contracts that undercut the Teamsters’ National Master Freight Agreement (NMFA) in much more damaging fashion.

    A Labor Leasing Scam

    The NMFA was, at the time, one of the biggest industry-wide union contracts in the country, covering 450,000 Teamsters, including members of Local 326. Its signatories included both inter-state freight haulers then regulated as common carriers and “private carriers” as well.

    A private carrier was a retail store chain or manufacturer with a sufficiently high volume of shipping to employ Teamster drivers directly and maintain its own fleet of trucks. Rather than try to keep these employers under the NMFA, some Teamster locals like Sheeran’s encouraged them to use a labor broker named Eugene Boffa, Sr.

    Boffa and his son owned labor-leasing firms that supplied drivers for big companies like Avon Products, Iowa Beef, Continental Can, Crown Zellerbach, and J.C. Penney. Boffa’s contracts with Local 326 and other Teamster affiliates allowed him to provide pay and benefits far below NMFA standards and shed Teamster drivers as direct employees. At Iowa Beef, then the nation’s largest meat packer, a cut-rate agreement between Boffa and the Teamsters required no pension fund contributions at all and paid drivers 70% less than the NMFA rate.

    Outsourcing appealed to Teamster employers forty years ago for the same reason that management likes “flexible hiring” arrangements today. As Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny wrote, “workers regarded by the company as troublesome can be dumped regardless of legal justification. And a company that hires Mr. Boffa can expect freedom from grievances, picket lines, and bothersome Teamster business agents.”

    When Teamster drivers protested this lack of representation, the vocal ones—like PROD member Don Harper—got fired. “These two companies framed me because I was a shop steward,” Harper told me. “I was only doing my job trying to get them to honor our contract.”

    Sheeran, meanwhile, was riding high in a Boffa-supplied Lincoln Continental, while enjoying other perks as well. His longtime mob godfather, Russell Buffalino also benefited from being “connected with the two major labor leasing companies that had been allowed by the union to prosper,” according to Steve Brill, author of a best-selling 1978 book called The Teamsters. As Boffa told the Wall Street Journal: “I am not averse to doing people favors.”

    Rank-and-File Whistle Blowing

    PROD tried to blow the whistle on Boffa, Sheeran, and Buffalino in its national rank-and-file newspaper read by thousands of Teamsters. “IBT Freight Workers Sold Out by Deals with Labor Broker,” the front-page headline screamed. While reform candidates backed by PROD or TDU (which later merged) were able to oust incumbents in other locals, Frank Sheeran was forced out four years later, only after being convicted of labor racketeering, mail fraud, obstruction of justice, and taking bribes from an employer.

    At age 61, Sheeran’s prior luck—in beating two labor-related manslaughter raps—had clearly run out. He was sentenced to 32 years in federal prison. Buffalino, the Pennsylvania Mafia don played by Joe Pesci in The Irishman, also spent his dotage in jail, after being convicted of extortion and conspiracy to murder. As recounted in the movie, Hoffa’s own 13-year sentence for jury tampering and pension fund fraud was cut in half by Republican President Richard Nixon, in return for Teamster political backing (before Nixon left office in disgrace over the Watergate scandal).

    During most of Hoffa’s time in federal prison, he remained Teamster president, while also collecting salaries for four lesser union positions. When he finally retired as part of his White House commutation deal, he cashed out of the Teamster officers’ pension plan with a lump sum of $1.7 million (in 1971 dollars!). Teamster dues money was also spent on the enormous cost of defending him in multiple criminal cases. As a Teamster retiree, out on parole, Hoffa immediately began plotting his return to power, a fatal move because his longtime mob allies were not in favor of it.

    Meanwhile, Hoffa’s major collective bargaining achievement—the National Master Freight Agreement—was on the road to ruin. Today, it covers only 50,000 drivers and loading dock workers. De-regulation of interstate trucking, under President Jimmy Carter, did far more damage to the NMFA than any corrupt scheming by Teamster locals that became “mobbed up,” with Hoffa’s help during his rise to power or under his presidency. But Sheeran-style “sweetheart contracts” definitely helped undermine freight industry labor standards.

    Hoffa also created a top-down union structure that still concentrates enormous power and privilege in the hands of the Teamster president. That man is now Hoffa’s son, a 78-year old union lawyer from Detroit, who makes about $400,000 a year. Last fall, he decreed that national contracts covering 260,000 UPS workers were ratified even though a majority of the members voting on them rejected the unpopular settlement he negotiated. (For details, see here.)

    TDU members have jousted with “Junior Hoffa” throughout his 20 years in office, in many other bargaining situations where IBT leaders similarly failed to mount an effective contract campaign, thwarted strike action, and then “settled short.” Says TDU co-founder and national organizer Ken Paff: “The idea that the Teamsters belongs more to the top officials than its working members is a legacy of the mob era that we continue to struggle against today.”

    The Untold Story

    The deadly feuds and personal betrayals recounted in Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour film took place during the union’s scandal scarred heyday, when Teamster clout could have been used for many good purposes, like improving truck driver safety.

    Once again, Hollywood fails to show how Teamster members were the most betrayed in that era—by lax contract enforcement, frequent violations of the Landrum-Griffin Act, outlandish Central States pension fund fraud, the looting of local union treasuries, and corrupt but perfectly legal practices that persist to this very day (like Hoffa’s awarding of multiple salaries to already over-paid full-time Teamster officials to secure their political support).

    Also missing from The Irishman is any hint that threats, intimidation, and physical violence failed to deter the development of a Teamster reform movement, which is still alive and kicking today. That singular organizational achievement will be on display in Chicago, Nov. 1-3, when several hundred leaders and activists from TDU chapters around the country gather for their 44th annual strategy session on union democracy and reform struggles in the IBT.

    In 1996, a low-budget independent film called Mother Trucker: The Diana Kilmury Story showed what it was like to be part of this brave rebel band during TDU’s early years, when repression by Teamster officialdom was particularly intense. (It’s viewable, in its entirety, on the web.) DSA member Dan La Botz’s 1990 book, Rank-and-File Rebellion, covers much of the same historical terrain, as does his essay in Rebel Rank-and-File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the 1970s (Verso, 2010).

    Forty years ago, most Teamsters cared far more about their own working conditions and union representation than who killed Jimmy Hoffa in a mob plot to prevent his political comeback. The same is true today, when the only Hoffa many Teamsters know about is the son of the one gone missing.

    Nevertheless, that unsolved mystery has long been a subject of mass media fascination and looms large again in The Irishman. Viewers should remember that the mob influence, once present in America’s largest private sector union, manifested itself in far more ways than a former leader’s disappearance. And it was always most malign in its impact on rank-and-file Teamsters, who need leaders they can trust and a labor organization they can control.

     

    In the late 1970s, Steve Early worked as an organizer, legal advisor, and newspaper editor for the Professional Drivers Council (PROD) and has been a longtime supporter of Teamsters for a Democratic Union ever since. He is the author of four books on labor or politics and can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com.

  • Support Rojava Against the Erdogan-Trump Unholy Alliance to Crush the Kurds!

    Support Rojava Against the Erdogan-Trump Unholy Alliance to Crush the Kurds!

    On October 9, Turkish armed forces began bombarding Rojava, the autonomous self-governing Kurdish enclave in northern Syria and are poised to cross over with ground troops as well. This attempt to wipe Rojava off the map is the product of a dirty deal between Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Donald Trump. In giving the green light to Erdogan, Trump has pulled the rug out from under the very forces that have done to most to defeat and contain the Islamic State.

    Over the past several years, the valiant Kurdish forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), both women and men, have defeated and contained the brutal, misogynist Islamic State (ISIS), liberating parts of northern Iraq from ISIS as well. The latter battle freed thousands of Yazidi women from from enslavement by ISIS at a time when the rest of the world stood by and did nothing.  In the past several years, the Kurdish Rojava enclave in Syria has enjoyed limited air support from a small contingent of US forces. In this period, the YPG drove ISIS out of its capital, Raqqa, and other important territory, to the point where it has been driven underground. This US presence also gave Rojava a degree of protection from their mortal enemy, the Turkish regime, which views all struggles for Kurdish autonomy as “terrorism.”

    Whether by whim or design, or both, Trump has now put the Kurds in the crosshairs of the large, well-equipped Turkish army.  The Kurds seem determined to fight, but they are armed only with light weapons against tanks and planes.  Therefore, the very existence of the self-governing Rojava entity of northern Syria is in question.

    This is therefore a very sad day for the Kurds, for the wider revolutionary movement in the region, and for the global left more generally.  For Rojava was not only a question of ethnic self-determination by an oppressed minority, as important as that is, but also an experiment in gender equality and Kurdish-Arab solidarity.  The gender dimension of Rojava is surely its most important revolutionary achievement, with women officers leading mixed-sex units against reactionary Islamist forces, and winning.  Evoking Karl Marx’s famous statement about the need for Black troops in the US Civil War at a time when the Lincoln administration was not yet ready to go that route, one could surely say that these women-led units had a remarkable effect on the nerves of all reactionary forces in the region.

    The Assad regime in Syria, and its allies Russia and Iran, all supposedly support the Syrian Kurds, but in fact would not be unhappy to see any kind of independent revolutionary force crushed.  The same goes for the Saudi and the Israeli regimes, and for global capital as a whole.

    It remains to be seen whether Erdogan can actually carry out the destruction of Rojava, however. It is one thing to bomb or invade, another to actually hold and administer territory. Erdogan’s stated plan of moving Arab refugees into what is today a primarily Kurdish-populated area would amount to ethnic cleansing and is sure to meet stiff resistance.

    But one thing is clear: Rojava, a beacon of human and women’s liberation, is now in mortal danger.

    We therefore call upon all Marxist-Humanists and the global left in general to defend Rojava by whatever means are at our disposal.  Turkish consulates and embassies should be picketed and aid extended in all ways possible to the defenders of Rojava.

    — Steering Committee of the International Marxist-Humanist Organization

    Originally posted at the International Marxist-Humanist Organization website. 

  • On Gutter Journalism and Purported “Anti-Imperialism”

    On Gutter Journalism and Purported “Anti-Imperialism”

    Gutter journalism is unfortunately not the preserve of openly right-wing tabloids. There has existed since the advent of Stalinism a “left-wing” strand of public mudslinging: Zhdanov was the counterpart of Goebbels. The Stalinist slander apparatus originally targeted the USSR’s left-wing critics, who were labelled “Hitlerists” in the 1930s-40s and “CIA agents” thereafter. This tradition did not vanish, alas, with the demise of the Soviet Union, although it has much less impact nowadays than it used to have when the Stalinist state’s propaganda machine was behind it at full blast.

    The propaganda machine of present-day Russia promotes a far wider range of  professional mudslingers and conspiracy theorists, in which the far right occupies central place. This is only normal since Putin’s Russia has infinitely more affinities with the far right than it has with the far left. And yet, Moscow does not shy away from using a few purported leftist propagandists as pawns in the inter-imperialist competition between it and the USA – or, more precisely, between it and the traditional mainstream US establishment, since the US far right, and Donald Trump himself, have shown their admiration for Putin on numerous occasions.

    As a result, one finds a purportedly “left-wing” cohort of writers and publicists who systematically stand with Moscow and its dictatorial allies, such as the murderous Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, while describing themselves as “anti-imperialist” – as if “anti-imperialism” consisted in siding with imperialist Russia against the imperialist USA. Indeed, their purported “anti-imperialism” is predicated upon the designation of Washington alone as the imperialist enemy, along with a knee-jerk attitude conforming to the morally corrupt maxim: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Moscow and Damascus thus receive frequent visits by representatives of the global far right, including prominent figures such as the French Marine Le Pen or the Italian Matteo Salvini, along with occasional visits by people who describe themselves as left-wingers.

    One example of pro-Putin, pro-Assad “left-wing” propaganda combined with gutter journalism is the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), run by a “Trotskyist” cult led by a political sicko named David North, which perpetuates a long worn-out tradition of inter-Trotskyist sectarian quarrels in fulfilling its role as apologist for Putin, Assad, and their friends. Another example is Grayzone, a website founded by a particularly versatile character named Max Blumenthal.

    These websites have in common the habit of demonizing all left-wing critics of Putin and the likes of Assad by describing them as “agents of imperialism” or some equivalent. The main “target market” assigned to them is naturally the left-wing readership. This implies that they must strive not only to convince their readers of the virtues of Moscow and its clients by a resort to fake “left-wing” and “anti-imperialist” arguments, but also and most importantly to discredit their left-wing critics. In doing so, they resort to the oldest trick of the slandering profession: outright lies.

    As a Marxist critic of all imperialist powers and tyrannical regimes, and therefore a critic of Moscow as much as of Washington, and of Israel and the Saudi or Egyptian regimes as much as of the Syrian or Iranian ones, this writer has been a choice target for the pro-Putin/Assad professional slanderers. However, I have hardly ever replied to the tons of filth thrown at me over the years by all sorts of people belonging to that galaxy, especially the lunatic WSWS for whom slandering me seems to be a priority, judging from the incredible number of articles in which they hurl insults at me. These people are not worth a response; short of time and resources, I count on readers’ intelligence and ability to identify such a website for what it is: a contemptible sectarian enterprise.

    Recently, however, Grayzone devoted to the job of smearing me a very long piece written by Ben Norton, one of their collaborators. Blumenthal, the founder of Grayzone, might be mistaken for a genuine left-wing person since he has denounced in the past the very same ideas that he is championing now, after seeing the “light.” Moreover, Verso, a well-known left-wing publisher, recently published a controversial book authored by him. Since Ben Norton too may be mistaken for a genuine left-wing reporter, I decided to make an exception this time and take the trouble to show how the Grayzone piece fully belongs to the Stalinist school of falsification. This is for the sake of any reader who may have come across that scurrilous piece and believed in good faith that it was motivated by left-wing values.

    The lies in the Grayzone piece start blatantly from the onset, in the worst sensationalist tradition. Its title is “Elite UK military unit secretly trained by leftist regime-change advocate Gilbert Achcar and other academics.” Its lead sentence says that I, along with other academics, have helped “the British military enhance its counter-insurgency tactics”; and the article begins by referring to “Declassified British government documents obtained by The Grayzone.” This is sheer rubbish: there is strictly nothing “secret” about the courses that SOAS (University of London) provides to the British ministry of defence (MoD); the documents pertaining to these courses were never “classified” (otherwise, SOAS would not have provided them to the group of students who requested them); the description of those who attend the lectures as “elite” is baseless (they are members of the cultural adviser units and various other military personnel, including reservists, as the courses are open to whoever is interested); and the courses that I provide do not in the least enhance any “counter-insurgency tactic” (that’s quite grotesque indeed). On the contrary I sharply criticise UK-US interventions in the Middle East, as any intelligent person would guess from the title of one of my lectures that Norton himself quotes half-wittedly: “Oil and US Hegemony.”

    I will not repeat here what I wrote elsewhere in reply to the group of students to whom I alluded above, after they published a report that included a distorted account of the courses SOAS provides to the MoD’s Cultural Specialist Unit (DCSU), and gave it wider exposure through an article in the British left-wing daily Morning Star. Instead, I will briefly comment on a few samples of the gems contained in Norton’s article.

    • The Grayzone piece describes me as someone who “publicly identified himself as a Marxist while vehemently advocating for the overthrow of independent post-colonial governments in Libya and Syria.” Forget the inept description of the Libyan Gaddafi regime and the Syrian Assad regime as “post-colonial”. What the article doesn’t say, of course, is that I advocate just as vehemently the overthrow of US-sponsored Arab regimes, especially those of Egypt and the Saudi kingdom – overthrow by the people, of course, not by foreign intervention in any case.
    • The Grayzone piece says that I signed, in 2018, an open letter “calling for foreign intervention in Syria, citing the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine in order to ‘forcibly stop’ the war”. What it doesn’t say is that the open letter was not urging the world to intervene militarily, but to “demand an immediate ceasefire, an immediate lifting of all sieges, immediate access for relief aid agencies, release of political detainees, and immediate protection for all Syrian lives”. Had it advocated direct Western military intervention in Syria, I would not have signed it for the simple reason that I have consistently argued against such an intervention from the early stage of the war in that poor country. I first argued against this perspective in a discussion with members of the Syrian left opposition. Then I developed my position in an article published in the Beirut daily Al-Akhbar in November 2011. It was translated and published into the English edition of that daily, which no longer exists (a copy of my article has been reproduced by what seems to be a Turkish academic website).
    • The Grayzone piece says that SOAS, the University where I am based, “is known for hiring and producing post-modernist scholars who are progressive but staunchly anti-communist, and often supportive of NATO-backed regime-change efforts and Islamism.” As anyone familiar with SOAS would know, this is an utterly ridiculous depiction of an institution that is regularly denounced by all sorts of reactionaries as being a hotbed of left-wing, anti-imperialist, and anti-Zionist scholars.
    • The Grayzone piece adds (the embedded links are in the original): “Almost nothing Achcar says challenges American and British foreign-policy designs in the Middle East, save for his criticism of Israel. This might explain why a soi-disant ‘Marxist’ scholar linked to numerous Trotskyite groups enjoys positive book reviews in mainstream pro-NATO newspapers like The Guardian.” Anyone familiar with my writings and lectures will realise how far the first sentence is from the truth. As for the “pro-NATO” Guardian, everyone knows that some of its journalists and contributors are staunch anti-NATO writers: people such as Seumas Milne, now Jeremy Corbyn’s director of communications, Owen Jones, or my former PhD student David Wearing whose thesis has become an excellent book. The link provided in the Grayzone piece leads to a rather neutral review by Ian Black of my 2016 book in the Guardian (it wasn’t reviewed in any other mainstream newspaper). Grayzone did not refer of course to the far more positive review of a previous book of mine in the same “pro-NATO” Guardian by Tariq Ali, hitherto unknown for being a NATO fan.
    • The Grayzone piece affirms that “in an interview published on ZNet on the day NATO military intervention began in Libya in March 2011,” I “strongly supported UN Security Council resolution 1973, which imposed a so-called ‘no-fly zone’ over Libya and opened the door for NATO military intervention” and that I “condemned anti-war skeptics who warned that the Security Council resolution would be used to justify a war of regime change.” Had anyone had the curiosity to check that interview by clicking on the link, they would have found that what I actually said is that “there are not enough safeguards in the wording of the resolution to bar its use for imperialist purposes. Although the purpose of any action is supposed to be the protection of civilians, and not ‘regime change,’ the determination of whether an action meets this purpose or not is left up to the intervening powers and not to the uprising, or even the Security Council.” No one in their right mind can mistake this for a “strong support” to that resolution and to “regime change” – no one, except a professional slanderer deliberately distorting the record.
    • The Grayzone piece quotes me as saying that “There are in fact cases where the United States supports, as in Syria today, a progressive force in its fight against a reactionary enemy.” The full quote is: “There are in fact cases, which are certainly exceptional, where the United States supports, as in Syria today, a progressive force in its fight against a reactionary enemy.” And the reference was to the support provided by Washington to the Kurdish YPG in its fight against the so-called Islamic state. Which of the two assertions does Grayzone disagree with: that the YPG is a progressive force, or that IS is a reactionary one?
    • One final quote, which does not relate to me, but to my long-time friend and excellent expert on Yemen, Helen Lackner, whom I was keen to add to the team that provides the lectures contracted by SOAS with the DCSU after I was asked to replace a retiring colleague in convening the Middle East sessions. I was eager to get Helen on board precisely because she is one of the foremost critics of the role of Western powers in that other poor country in whose destruction Britain colludes. The Grayzone piece, which includes the two links above, blames Helen for taking “a liberal ‘plague on both your houses’ stance,” therefore also “attacking the revolutionary anti-imperialist armed group Ansarallah (known informally as the Houthis),” which, according to Ben Norton, takes its “inspiration from Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez,as well as (its) modeling of resistance tactics after the Vietnamese national liberation front.” This is probably the most hilarious statement in an article that combines blatant dishonesty with crass ignorance. The Houthis, of course, are an ultra-fundamentalist sectarian group that launched an offensive in 2014 to conquer power in Yemen. Until two years ago, it did so in alliance with former Yemeni president, Ali Abdallah Saleh, who was forced to resign by the Yemeni popular uprising in 2011 after years of dictatorship and close collaboration with the U.S. and the Saudis.

    These are but a few examples of the lies and slanders contained in a 4,800-word piece, which typifies the purportedly “left-wing” version of gutter journalism. As for myself, I will continue to act in full accordance with my political conscience and ethical values – as I have always done at the cost of becoming a target of choice for the Stalinist and quasi-Stalinist left (including some who call themselves “Trotskyists”).

    I will therefore continue to provide lectures, on behalf of my university, to the military personnel (soldiers, low-ranking officers and reservists) who wish to attend them, and will carry on explaining to the audience my views on Islamophobia and racism, Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, the disastrous role of British imperialism in the Middle East, especially its role in creating and upholding the Gulf oil monarchies, the calamitous consequences of Western complicity with despotic regimes in the Middle East, the disastrous results of the US-UK invasion of Iraq, etc. I will continue to do so until the MoD, listening to the likes of Ben Norton and the occasional right-wing attendees of my lectures who complain about my left-wing views, vetoes me out or cancels wholesale its contract with SOAS – to the great relief of my detractors who are keen on keeping the British military safe from exposure to critical and truly anti-imperialist opinions.

     

    Gilbert Achcar teaches Development Studies and International Relations at SOAS (University of London). His books include The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (2010), The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (2013), Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism (2013), and Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising (2016).

  • Ecuadoran Women Protest Government’s Economic Policies and Repression

    Ecuadoran Women Protest Government’s Economic Policies and Repression

    We, the women who resist – in the streets, in our territories, from our spaces and communities – we are the feminist sisters from Abya Yala, those who combat with our bodies, and sustain life; We sympathize with the criminalized, detained, repressed and persecuted in these days of protest against the neoliberal economic measures (paquetazo) of Lenin Moreno´s government. Since the announcement on Tuesday, of the structural adjustment measures in Ecuador, the different organizations and popular movements, indigenous and social, called for an indefinite strike against the economic violence exerted by the Government / International Monetary Fund / Business Partnership, that fundamentally affects the popular sectors, the most impoverished and the middle classes.

    Because of the national mobilizations, the Lenin Moreno government yesterday decreed “State of Exception” and enabled the Police and Armed Forces to assume control and order throughout the national territory, suspending the right to freedom of association and meeting to preserve the security of the State, limiting the right to freedom of transit, and determining that necessary requisitions are executed to maintain the services that guarantee order and internal security.

    The result of this State of Exception, on noon October 4, is 267 detainees nationwide who have reported gunfire shots, hits, motorcycle violence and inhuman treatment by the Police; two fellow indigenous leaders arrested (Marlon Santi, coordinator of Pachakutik; Jairo Gualinga, youth leader of CONAIE); a young man who, due to the impact of police repression, is in a severe condition; Luis Timpantuña, a university student who lost his eye due to the impact of a tear gas bomb; a young man injured in Cuenca with a tear pump on the cheekbone; and many people we don’t know yet, since the mass media in the country is hiding this reality from the world. Both the Office of the Ombudsman and the IACHR have pronounced themselves denouncing the excessive and disproportionate use of the state apparatus against the protesters, and have urged the Ecuadorian government to guarantee the right to protest and human rights.

    We know that it is the state policy that has violated Ecuadorians, by restricting not only our legitimate right to protest but also our possibilities to realize dignified lives. The signing of an agreement with the IMF and the neoliberal policies imposed by the Government constitutes a hard blow against the Ecuadorian people, and against those who are historically in situations of greater inequality, injustice and violence: women, young people, peoples and nationalities, the working class.

    The more social injustice and alliance of the government with the national and transnational ruling classes, the greater discontent in the streets of organizations, movements, groups and popular sectors. The more politics of fear and repression, the more voices demanding that human rights be respected.

    Given the Police and Armed forces brutality … We hold President Lenin Moreno and his Minister Maria Paula Romo directly responsible for the physical and emotional integrity of the detainees; and we demand their immediate freedom.

    We demand that the right to protest of the entire Ecuadorian people be guaranteed and the State of Exception be withdrawn throughout the national territory.

    We call on the international community, feminist, women, popular and indigenous organizations to pronounce themselves on the severe situation of Ecuador and to be vigilant for the fulfillment of human rights.

    We will continue together, until dignity becomes customary!!!

    Collective signatures from Ecuador

    ALAMES Ecuador

    Movimiento de Mujeres de Sectores Populares Luna Creciente

    Asociación Femenina Universitaria

    Colectivo Desde El Margen

    Mujeres por el Cambio

    Colectivo de Mujeres Universitarias

    Mujeres de Frente

    Ruda Colectiva Feminista

    Plataforma Nacional por los Derechos de las Mujeres

    Coalición Interuniversitaria contra el Acoso Sexual

    Organización Ecuatoriana de Mujeres Lesbianas – OEML

    Frente de la Mujer Trabajadora de CEOSL

    Colectiva Runa Feminista

    Colectivo Feminista

    Colectivo Simpatizantes de VI Internacional – Ecuador

    Colectiva Lilas en Acción

    Eco-Justicia Abya Yala

    Plataforma Vivas Nos Queremos

    Colectivo de Antropólogas del Ecuador
    Campaña Aborto Libre Ecuador

    Las Comadres

    Federación de Estudiantes Secundarios del Ecuador

    Colectiva Escuela Viva

    Juventud Revolucionaria del Ecuador

    Pueblo Shuar Arutam

    Mesa de Género de la Universidad de Guayaquil

    Plataforma de Mujeres Caminando Hacia la Igualdad-Imbabura

    Fundacion Dayuma

    ALDHEA

    Surkuna

    Colectivo de Geografía Crítica del Ecuador

    Asociacion de Estudiantes de Gestión Local-UPS

    Movimiento de Mujeres de El Oro – MMO

    Coordinadora de Mujeres Fronterizas – CODEMUF – Loja
    Colectivo de Mujeres Interuniversitarias
    Secretaría de la Mujer de la UNE

    Centro de Estudios del Trabajo Memoria

    Organización Feminista Luchar

    Red de acompañamiento en aborto –Las Comadres

    Taller de Comunicación Mujer

    Plataforma por la Tierra y Territorios Sostenibles

    Sistema de Investigación sobre la

    Problemática Agraria en el Ecuador -SIPAE

    Instituto de Estudios Ecuatorianos -IEE

    Corporación de Gestión y Derecho Ambiental ECOLEX

    Fondo Ecuatoriano Populorum Progressio FEPP

    Coordinadora Nacional de Mujeres Negras CONAMUNE – Capítulo Carchi Fundación ALDEA

    Movimiento de Mujeres Guayaquil
    Asociación Femenina Universitaria- AFU Nacional

    CEPAM Guayaquil

    Plataforma de Mujeres Caminando hacia la Igualdad

    Colectiva Carishinaenbici

    Individual signatures Ecuador

    Milena Almeida, 0913869889

    Manuela Villafuerte Merino, 1714999990

    María de Lourdes Larrea

    Martha Arotingo, 1003176722

    Gina Benavides

    Lina María Polo Rojas

    Natalia Sierra

    Natalia Alexandra Angulo Moncayo

    Karla Calapaqui

    Maria Paula Granda

    Cris Vega

    Tania Bichara

    Milena Almeida, 0913869889

    Manuela Villafuerte Merino, 1714999990

    Maria de Lourdes Larrea

    Martha Arotingo, 1003176722

    Lina Maria Polo Rojas

    Natalia Alexandra Angulo Moncayo

    Annabelle Arevalo

    Cristina Morales Saro

    Estefanía Alejandra Espín Armas

    Ana María Morales

    Cristina Vera Vega

    Paulina León Crespo, 1707878763

    Bertha Díaz Martínez, 0922023684

    Rocío Martínez. Ecuador, 0905848099

    Amaranta Pico Salguero, 1716026305

    María Auxiliadora Balladares, 0909835407

    María Fernanda Moscoso, 1705375119

    Glenda María Rosero Andrade, 0915856421

    Tatiana Elizabeth Ugalde Ortega

    Matilde Ampuero Ochoa, 0907730741

    Verónica Burneo Salazar, 1715194592

    Carlina Lucia Derks Bustamante, 1716056377

    Mónica Mancero, 170895756-6

    Cristina Álvarez Vivar 1713280939

    Guadalupe Vernimmen Aguirre 091866292-5

    Tamara Mejía. 0925754160

    Bertha Martínez Peñafiel, 0913117156

    Melissa Moreano

    Geovanna Lasso

    Diana Vela Almeida

    Milena Paola Almeida Mariño, 0913869889

    Paulina Palacios Herrera, 1706316666

    Sandra Elisa Castillo Atehortúa, 1751554658

    Zaida Almeida Gordón, 1716117435

    Cristina Álvarez Vivar, 1713280939

    Kati Alvarez

    Mariana Alvear

    María José Gutiérrez Guzmán, 1726227992

    Flor Toapanta Tumipamba,1720029089

    Viviana Elizabeth Herrera Ayala, 1720114402

    Monica Alejandra Rojas Puente, 1719370353

    Silvana Haro Ruiz,1414127295

    Marcela Arellano Villa, 1709414658

    Erika Ramos Rubianes, 1710685270

    Marcela Arellano Villa

    Andrés Fernando Rodríguez, 1715817464

    Andrea Lecaro Briones, 0928811504

    Lila Penagos, 1750231969

    Nancy Burneo Salazar, 1714194584

    Cristina Burneo Salazar, 1713670758

    Andrea Villarreal Donoso, 0602910382

    Marisol Rodríguez Pérez, 1709801219

    Ivette Vallejo, 1705357844

    Nathalia Bonilla, 1710576735

    Lisset Coba, 1709196974

    Cecilia Jaramillo Jaramillo

    Paola Maldonado Rivadeneira

    Alexandra Gisela Bueno Dumes

    Lady Calderón Desiderio

    Fanny Susana Silva Barreno

    Aura Isabel Carrillo Unda

    Miryan Loor Bravo

    Marjorie Lopez Merchan

    Graciela Ramirez, 1714639133

    Lidia Marina Ayala Ortiz

    Joselyn Alexandra Pispira Espinoz

    Erika Arteaga Cruz

    Silvia Bonilla

    Alejandra Yépez Jácome

    Lilián Basantes, 1001991155

    Nalda Bustamante Apolo

    Soledad Angus Freré 0930330741

    Valeska Chiriboga Escobar 0923517031

    Patricia Gálvez Z, 1703757773

    Johanna Romero Larco, 0104736160

    Fanny Elizabeth Herrera, 1713471413

    Annabell Guerrero ,0801826785

    Verónica Potes , 0911100881

    María Fernanda Recalde, 1712333408

    Samay Schütt, 1757377773

    Vanessa Bósquez Salas, 0201576667

    Sybel Martinez Reinoso, 1709662975

    Lizbeth Zhingri, 0106550783

    Laura Patricia Villacís Luna,1709600124

    María Melina Wazhima Monné, 0103557385

    Jahiren Noriega Donoso, 1721921359

    Sonia Sobrino Andrade, 1725958134

    Cinthya Raquel Bailón Herrera, 0924873672

    María Almeida Montúfar, 1716042492

    Collective international signatures

    ALAMES El Salvador

    Movimiento por la Salud Salvador Allende – El Salvador.

    Red Latinoamericana Feminista

    Colectivo Miradas Criticas del Territorio desde el Feminismo -Uruguay, Perú, México, Brasil, España y Ecuador.

    Malandra Colectiva Feminista – México

    Colectiva Feministas con Voz de Maíz México

    Colectivo de Igualdad de Género (CIGO) de la Nueva Central de Trabajadores – México

    Mujeres Transformando el Mundo -Chiapas, México

    Centro de Educación Integral de Base -México

    Colectiva Voces en Aquelarre-Colima México

    Coordinadora Nacional de Usuarias y Usuarios en Resistencia (CONUR) – México

    Las Libres Organización feminista – Guanajuato México

    Investigación y Diálogo para la Autogestión Social – México

    Asociación Civil feminista de Oaxaca – México

    Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social -México DF

    Educación y Ciudadanía A.C.- San Luis de Potosí, México

    Coordinadora Socialista Revolucionaria (CSR)-México

    Movimiento al Socialismo – MAS

    Espacio Feminista – Brasil

    Jusfeminina, UFBA – Brasil

    Comuna – corriente interna del PSOL, sección brasileña de la IV Internacional

    Mujeres del Movimiento Izquierda Socialista

    Feministas del Movimiento de los Pueblos

    Por un socialismo feminista desde abajo Frente popular Dario Santillán -Corriente nacional

    Movimiento por la unidad latinoamericana y el cambio social

    Izquierda Latinoamericana Socialista-Movimiento 8 de abril Yonofui, Argentina

    Frente Autonomía, Territorio y Revuelta (ATR) – Argentina

    Frente de Trabajadoras de la Comunicación Chaco (FTCC) – Argentina

    Red de Género y Comercio – Argentina

    Asociación Lola Mora – Argentina

    Revista Amazonas

    Grupo Salud Autonoma de la Cazona de Flores

    Plurales – Argentina

    Economía Feminista Emancipatoria – GT CLACSO

    Colectiva Actoras de Cambio -Guatemala

    Asociación Feminista La Cuerda

    Colectiva de Mujeres Feministas de Izquierda

    Mujeres con Valor construyendo un futuro mejor -MUVACOFUM – Asociación de Mujeres de Peten Ixqik

    Asamblea Feminista de Guatemala

    Colectiva Agroecofeminista Casa Colibri/Rochoch Tz’unün Asamblea General de Trabajadores (AGT), Venezuela

    Grupo LUCHAS – Venezuela

    Colectivo Feminista Ecorazonar – Perú

    Asociación Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER) – Peru

    Centro de Estudios Regionales de Tarija (CERDET) – Bolivia

    Grupo de Trabajo de Geografías Críticas de las Desigualdades Mundiales – Alemania

    Colectivo Sin Fronteras – México

    Remjina – Red de Mujeres Indígenas y Afroamexicanas- MEXICO

    8M Migración/Antirracismo Madrid o 8M– España

    Democracia Socialista – Argentina

    Colectiva Feminista Socialista Las Voces de Lilith – México

    Sindicato Independiente de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores Académicos de la UNAM –
    México

    Tercer Encuentro de Mujeres de América Latina y el Caribe

    Red Jarilla de Plantas Saludables Patagonia – Argentina

    Alkarama – Movimiento de Mujeres Palestinas en España

    Union de Mujeres Campesinas de Honduras

    Mujeres Bicibles Iberoamérica

    Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular (CINEP) – Colombia

    Iniciativa Mujer Rural y Derecho a la Tierra – Latinoamérica

    Articulación Feminista Marcosur (AFM)

    CISCSA – Argentina

    SOS Corpo – Brasil

    CDE – Paraguay

    Cotidiano Mujer – Uruguay

    Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristán Perú

    CPM Micaela Bastidas – Perú

    CLADEM –Perú

    Paro Internacional de Mujeres – Perú

    DEMUS – Perú

    Grupo regional de Salud Internacional y Soberanía Sanitaria CLACSO

    Red Latinoamericana de Sistemas y Políticas de Salud ALAMES

    Colectivo de Salud ELAM – México

    Rosas Rojas – México

    Individual international signatures

    Nancy Fraser – New School for Social Research, Nueva York, EEUU

    Amaia Pérez Orozco – España

    Ana Silvia Monzón, socióloga feminista

    Xochitl Morales Alcantar

    Sandra Iventh González, docente UNAM

    María Enriqueta Burelo Melgar, Grupo Amplio de Mujeres, Chiapas, México

    María Vázquez

    Ana María Cerón Cáceres – Colombia/México

    Diana Rodríguez Vértiz estudiante de posgrado, UNAM – México

    Sara Lua González Forster

    Libertad García Sanabria

    Wendolin Arenas Morales

    Gabriela Huerta Tamayo

    Alicia Hopkins Moreno

    Lilian Balderas García

    Noelia Correa García

    Alí Aguilera

    Mina Navarro, docente UABP México

    Juliana Vanessa Maldonado Macedo (CIESAS)

    Sandra odeth Gerardo Pérez. (CIESAS)

    Gabriela Zamorano – México

    Maria Teresa Sierra – México

    Rosa María Cabrera Lotfe

    Yeny Charrez Carlos, fundadora del Movimiento Mujeres con Poder.

    Rodrigo Castillo Aguilar – México

    Viviane Espírito Santo Rodrigues, professora do Instituto Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

    Julia Matos de Pina – Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

    Caio Leonardo Bessa Rodrigues Presidente da Comissão de Relações Institucionais e Governamentais Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil

    Daniella Meggiolaro Paes de Azevedo

    Fabiano Silva dos Santos, advogado, doutorando em direito pela PUC-SP. Graziano, advogado, Vice Presidente da subcomissão de Direitos Humanos da OAB/SC Thayná Jesuina França yaredy advogada Vice presidente da comissão de igualdade racial da ordem dos advogados do Brasil Gisele Cittadino

    Assino Tayná

    Ana Amélia Camargos Professora PUC/SP e vice presidente da CDH da OAB/SP

    Cheron Moretti, educadora, feminista de MMM y Comuna-Psol, Brasil
    Tárzia Medeiros, feminista militante de la Marcha Mundial de Mujeres, PSOL en Brasil

    Jacqueline Parmigiani – militante feminista, Antropóloga – executiva do PSOL Paraná

    Rosa María Marques – economista, professora da PUC/SP e militante do PSOL

    Téssie Oliveira dos Reis – militante- Diretório Estadual do PSOL Ceará.

    Maria da Consolação Rocha – professora, presidenta do Psol Minas

    Ana Carolina Andrade – militante feminista e membra do Diretório Nacional do PSOL

    Anita Prosperi Queiroz – militante feminista y ecosocialista del PSOL Brasil

    Tuanne Almeida de Souza – feminista e do Diretório Municipal de Vila Velha – ES

    Sâmia Bomfim, Diputada Nacional de Psol en São Paulo – Brasil

    Fernanda Melchionna, Diputada Nacional de Psol en Rio Grande Sul -Brasil

    Luciana Genro, Diputada distrital de Psol en Rio Grande do Sul – Brasil.

    Nathalie Drumond por la Direccion Nacional de PSOL

    Manuela M. M. Silveira, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro – Brasil

    Natalia Quiroga economista feminista UNGS

    Karina Bidaseca (UNSAM/UBA)

    Melisa Sotelo

    Delfina Magnoni

    Fabiana Andresen. Argentina

    Sandra Gil Araujo, Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani – Argentina

    Lilia Parisí –Argentina

    Magali del Valle Marega – Argentina

    Paula Cainzos -Argentina

    Patricia Castillo

    Mirna Ramírez

    Maya Alvarado

    María José Rosales Solano

    Diana García

    Asamblea General de Trabajadores (AGT),-Venezuela

    Esmely Marilú Coello – Venezuela

    Nieves Tamaroni – Venezuela

    Vilma Vivas – Venezuela

    Zenaida Montero – Venezuela

    Yajaira Coello – Venezuela

    Rosalía Zingales De San Cristóbal, Valencia, Pto. Ordáz y Caracas

    Luz Palomino de Caracas – Venezuela

    Alí Marcano – Venezuela

    Rosa Montalvo Reinoso – Perú

    Diana Miloslavich -Peru

    María Susana Paponi -Perú

    Claudia Ayola Escallón – Organización Caribe Afirmativo

    Marcela López Villa – Colombia

    Sandra Rátiva -Colombia

    Juliana Gómez -Colombia

    Orfa Margarita -Colombia

    Briseida Barrantes de Polo Ciudadan -Panamá

    Ana Harcha Cortés – Chile.

    María Luisa Garita – Costa Rica.

    Andrea Gómez Jiménez – Costa Rica,

    Carmen Delcid Misericordia Tejedora de Sueños.

    Rosa Aurora Espinosa Gómez

    Alison Frye, Profesional de Salud Pública-EUA

    Cheryl Martens – EUA.

    Paola Cabello, Colectiva con Letra F – México

    Leticia Hernandez Salinas. Cuernavaca Morelos – México

    Aime Jezabel Pérez Godinez militante del PRT- México

    Griselda De Fuentes Rojano-Profesora de la ENAH – México

    Nadia Violeta Cangas Montelongo -Coordinadora Socialista Revolucionaria México

    Paola Castañeda – Bogotá – Colombia

    Andrea María Navarrete Mogollón – Colombia

    Josefina Chávez, feminista mexicana

    Tania O. Valadez George- Médica y Profesora de la UNAM-México

    Guadalupe Quijano García. Colectiva Voces en Aquelarre – México

    Blanca Radillo Murguía. Estudiante de la Maestría en Ciencias Matemáticas, UNAM

    Wendy Araceli Hernández Martínez-Psicológa – México

    Lesly Elizabeth Solís Mendoza, estudiante de posgrado UNAM-México

    Heather Dashner Monk-activista feminista- México

    Ana María López Rodríguez-Profesora en Universidad Chapingo- México

    Dayana Sevilla Osornio- Mexico

    Alicia Mendoza Guerra, feminista, militante del PRT -México

    Andrea Medina Rosas abogada feminista -México

    Osmayra Solorio Loeza – Feminista Morelia Michoacán México

    Verónica Cruz, Las Libres Guanajuato -México

    Sara Lovera periodista – México

    Melisa Morán Esteban, Comisión de Trabajo Feminista Partido del PRT – México

    Mónica Jiménez Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME)

    Elizabeth Montaño del SUTIEMS (Sindicato de la Unión de Trabajadores del Instituto de Educación Media Superior)

    Ana Laura Ramírez Huitrón de la Red de Trabajadoras de la Educación – México

    Norma Camacho de Asociación Sindical de Trabajadores del Instituto de Vivienda del Distrito Federal – ASTINVI – México

    Margarita Estrada Iguíniz, CIESAS-CDMX

    Melania Hernández, México

    Leticia Padilla Ciudad Juárez – México

    Mary Carmen Larralde Hurtado, Secretaría de Genero Sindicato de la UNAM – STUNAM

    Graciela Delgado de Ciudad Juárez

    Carolina Robledo Silvestre, Catedrática Conacyt Ciesas Ciudad de México

    Adriana Zárate Escobar, FLACSO – México

    Dra. Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo

    María Isabel Cedano – Perú

    Ibis Fernández – Perú

    Cecilia Olea Mauleón – Perú

    Diana Miloslavich Tupac – Perú

    Gonzalo Basile – República Dominicana

    This article appeared in International Viewpoint on October 9, 2019, here.

  • The Future of Black Leadership

    The Future of Black Leadership

    What is the future of black leadership? In the wake of the Movement for Black Lives on the one hand and the “election” of Donald Trump (and the forthcoming presidential election) on the other, a range of intellectuals, pundits, activists, and organizers have begun to ask “what next”?

    Some suggest that black populations would be better served by organizing around class lines as opposed to purely racial ones. What I want to do in this essay is take a stab at this issue by going backwards. My attempt here is not abnormal by any stretch of the imagination–many who examine black politics with an eye towards problem solving it tend to look backwards. But in many if not most cases that move backwards tends to end at the beginning of the post-civil rights era.

    What I’m going to do below is go back a bit further, back to the end of the 19th century. That moment arguably represented one of the best opportunities to build a black institutional apparatus that combined the intellectual arena with the political arena focused on black workers. And to the extent this moment requires anything I’d suggest that it requires “black leadership” far less than it requires a set of institutions that can in turn redevelop a robust democratic political culture as well as generate intellectual leaders and political organizers from black working class communities.

    Before I take you to that moment, first I briefly examine what I think the Movement for Black Lives has done for us in combination with Occupy Wall Street, and then address one of the strongest critiques of the movement against police violence.

    When we look back on Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street–and although some don’t take them in tandem I think we should as they represent related responses to the neoliberal turn. The relationship between police and black populations has historically been contentious, but we do not see significant growth in the carceral state until the late seventies/early eighties. Relatedly this is the moment we begin to see significant increases in inequality. Although the victims of the carceral state are disproportionately black it is worth noting that the poor are even more disproportionately represented among this group than black people are. Because black people on the wrong end of police violence, and people on the wrong end of the economic inequality, had for decades been held responsible for their own condition, it was difficult if not impossible to get the type of traction required for political action. But in part through egregious murders like those of Michael Brown, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray, in part through the 2008 crash, and in part through technological advances (that made it far easier to mobilize and galvanize communities), we had widespread protest and civil disobedience the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades.

    Ideationally the movement for black lives specifically changed the way we thought in a few different ways.

    It changed the way we thought about black bodies. In the early years of the twentieth century, black elites developed what later scholars called “uplift ideology”. One of the most important functions of this ideology for the purposes of this paper was to make clear distinctions between black populations able and willing to uphold the norms and ideals of mainstream (white) society and those unable and willing to do so. This had significant political consequences–during the Civil Rights Movement individuals like Rosa Parks stood out over individuals like Claudette Colvin because Parks upheld the standards and norms of mainstream society even as she violated Jim Crow segregation laws, while Colvin (who was unmarried, younger than 20, and pregnant) did not. The majority of the victims of police violence were individuals who arguably did not uphold mainstream societal norms, and the human rights approach activists took on their behalf turned the idea of respectability on its head. Leadership in traditional civil rights organizations tended to be male, straight, and Christian, and as a partial result tended towards the charismatic. The leadership of many if not most of the organizations broadly considered part of the Black Lives Matter movement tended to be not only female, but queer. The victims no longer had to be perfect. The leaders no longer had to be straight. With these two moves the movement expanded what Cathy Cohen calls the “boundaries of blackness” in important ways.

    It changed how we thought about black institutions. One of the reasons that leadership of the civil rights organizations tended to be male, straight, Christian, and charismatic was because of the role individual black churches played in the movement–the churches involved were the closest thing blacks had to autonomous organizations. However as a partial byproduct of relying on these institutions civil rights movement organizations tended to reproduce these churches institutional culture, and as a result focused (with exceptions like SNCC) more on mobilizing individuals than developing their capacity to organize themselves. The bulk of the various organizations that constitute the Movement for Black Lives tended to be non-hierarchical, in fact taking something close to an anti-institutional position, being incredibly wary of charismatic leadership, and wary of traditional institutional structures in general.

    Finally, in as much as culture plays a critically important role in communicating ideas about politics, the market, and civil society, arguably black lives matter has indelibly changed popular culture. In the music of a Kendrick Lamar, a DeAngelo, a Kamasi Washington, Beyonce, JayZ, in the movies of Ryan Coogler (who just signed on to film a movie about the life and death of Fred Hampton), in the actions of athletes like Colin Kapernick, LeBron James, and others, we see a black popular culture far less interested in reproducing some of the elements of the neoliberal turn than before.

    These ideational shifts were accompanied by political shifts. At the state and local level a number of individuals have been elected to office on what could be called Movement for Black Lives platforms. In centers of activism like Ferguson and Baltimore we saw significant turnover in City Council elections. In Chicago, Cleveland, Saint Louis, and Philadelphia, voters removed prosecutors unwilling to take police brutality seriously. Individual police officers have begun to be successfully prosecuted for police violence, and police corruption in places like Baltimore and Chicago has begun to be dealt with, this in addition to Justice Department consent decrees generated partially by activists and organizers. Finally, for the first time in decades the Democratic Party was forced to move away from the tough on crime approaches it began to embrace aggressively in the late eighties and early nineties.

    These changes are not radical by any stretch, but in comparison to the decades before–we used to write about the Reagan-Bush years, but in a way we’re talking about the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years–what we saw constituted change. However, over the same period we’ve seen the presidency of Donald Trump and a marked increase in racial terrorism. As a partial result we’ve seen a decrease in Movement for Black Lives activism, as well as a decreased focus on black activism and organizing more generally.

    Where do we go from here?

    Some, like Adolph Reed and Cedric Johnson suggest that a multi-racial class coalition be developed, one that takes organizing around the types of structural violence committed against working class populations more broadly seriously. For them, doing so would have a few benefits. Intellectually it would move us away from the types of transhistorical approaches towards race and racism that has some thinking that contemporary forms of police violence are uniquely anti-black and can be traced neatly back to the Jim Crow order if not before. Police victims do tend to be disproportionately black, but they are far more likely to be poor than they are to be black–indeed while we can point to instances like that of Henry Louis Gates, who was accosted by Cambridge police officers while trying to get into his own home, we cannot point to an instance of police violence meted upon a black professional that comes close to that meted upon an Eric Garner or a Freddie Gray. Politically it would allow for a more robust political movement that can generate substantive changes not just in the carceral state but in the neoliberal state more broadly. Although I do believe we should take Occupy Wall Street and the Movement for Black Lives in tandem, activists organizing against police violence have not been as robust in examining economic inequality. Finally, and relatedly doing so would enable blacks to move more aggressively against the type of black class politics that often sees what could be called “the black agenda” co-opted by a strata of black professionals and managers in such a way as to render it useless for progressive (much less radical) change.

    I agree that intellectually we would do much to move past the types of New Jim Crow approaches that characterize some forms of black activism in this moment. It not only gets the story wrong, but it leads to a form of politics that moves us backwards not forwards. I agree that activists need to better connect contemporary police violence to the types of economic violence associated with the neoliberal turn. While we definitely cannot solve police violence with the types of technological fixes proposed by elites–cameras won’t solve our problems–we also cannot solve police violence without tackling economic inequality. Finally I agree that the black political agenda to the extent one can be said to exist, has been dominated by class concerns.

    With this said, neither Reed or Johnson fully reckon with hypersegregation. The areas that have served as the center of the movement for black lives, Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago, are areas defined not just by racial segregation but by race and class segregation. Further the standard labor condition in these spaces is not under-employment but long term unemployment. Moreover, not just long term unemployment, but long term unemployment structured by carceral state employment. The neighborhood Freddie Gray was murdered in spends more money incarcerating its residents than any other neighborhood in the state of Maryland.

    (What does this mean?)

    First it means that the black populations hardest hit by police violence are in some real ways uniquely cordoned off from other poor populations. Because the populations in these areas aren’t working in the formal economy, they aren’t in the types of workplaces in which bonds of labor solidarity can be easily be established with other populations. And as they live in hyper segregated neighborhoods these neighborhoods by definition are not ones that easily allow for bonds of solidarity to be established with white populations outside of them. The police violence meted upon these populations represent a combination of attempts to keep them away from capital (the police district Freddie Gray was murdered in abuts the central business district) and to expropriate fines and fees from them to bolster dwindling municipal coffers (before the Justice Department decree Ferguson collected more than 20% of its municipal revenue from fines and fees).

    There are instances of police brutality involving whites–police have murdered more whites than blacks over the past decade or so–however these other instances have rarely resulted in white protest. This is, in significant part, a spatial matter–given the reality of rural spaces it would seem to be difficult if not impossible to generate the types of political protest that would bring widespread attention to a given instance of rural police violence. More importantly, because the areas poor whites live in do not appear to be beset by the types of concentrated policing the areas poor blacks tend to live in whites simply don’t see police violence as an issue. They may see state encroachment as an issue, but this does not tend to translate into antagonism towards police in general nor towards individual acts of police violence. In fact given the economic opportunities the carceral state may provide for poorer whites (in the form of prison and police employment) their support for police and the carceral state in general may be significant.

    Over the past few years we’ve seen a resurgence in conversations about populism. I suggest that the populist movement might give us some traction as to how to think about this.

    A quick primer. The civil war, won by the North as a result of the “great strike”, brought about and exacerbated two important changes. First, it further spread the democratic impulse brought about by extending the right to vote to non-propertied men in the 1830s by giving black men the right to vote and by giving blacks full political citizenship. Second, it brought about significant economic changes by first moving to a paper currency and then to a hard currency. The first change led to some of the first broad attempts to enact what Du Bois would call an abolitionist democracy, using taxing power to create some of the nation’s first public schools and what could be thought of as a progressive government. The second change, alongside the 1877 Hayes-Tilden Compromise, significantly exacerbated the economic hardship faced by individuals in the agricultural sector, as the shift to a hard currency reduced the power of debtors in favor of creditors.

    The industrial and communication sectors grew during these changes. Industrial workers and agricultural workers alike began to feel the pinch generated by reduced currency (which increased their debt) and by poor working conditions. Industrial workers sought to use the strike to bring about better working conditions. Agricultural workers at first sought to create cooperatives that would give them better negotiating power, but came to realize that the cooperatives they wanted to create had little weight without political power. And came to realize they had common cause with industrial workers in the north and the spreading west. Realizing that the only way they could accumulate the political and economic power they needed was by organizing a broad political movement they created the People’s Party, with a platform that called for a silver backed currency, term limits, direct elections for senators and presidents, state ownership of the telegraph, and worker’s rights (among other things).

    The People’s Party had a brief but significant effect on American politics. People’s Party candidates either by themselves or on fusion tickets won important victories throughout the south. But in the face of growing opposition and an attempt by the democratic party to co-opt much of the populist movement’s energy (with only a little bit of the platform) the People’s Party gave way to a white supremacist movement that ended up transforming the South and hamstringing progressive politics in the south for generations.

    Many recognize the role race played in the end of the populist movement, but few recognize the importance not just of race but of black populism in the beginning of the populist movement. It is here I want to turn.

    At the same time white agricultural workers in the south began to create worker cooperatives and white workers in the north began to create the first industrial unions, black workers in the north and the south began to organize as well. Black workers in the north joined the Knights of Labor by the thousands, creating their own chapters in instances and joining pre-existing white ones in others. Black workers in the south created their own cooperatives. In as much as there were far more black workers in the south than in the north–the great migration was a few decades away–it was this move that became tremendously important. The “Colored Wheels” black workers created generated the backbone of what would become the Colored Farmers’ Alliance. This organization, like its white counterpart, had a few moving parts. It was formed of individual chapters each comprised of dues paying members. Its leadership was elected by these chapters and held accountable by them. It had a communication organ that spread information about the activities of various chapters. Finally, it developed a network of cooperatives that enabled members to reduce costs and increase profits of their agricultural labor. The success of the populist movement in general depended upon this segment of workers–black workers constituted a significant portion of the agricultural worker sector in general as a result of slavery. Both the transition into the People’s Party and the electoral victories the People’s Party ended up getting came largely from the support given by black members. With the death of the people’s party came the rise of the Jim Crow regime designed not primarily to segregate blacks, but primarily to concentrate political and economic power within the hands of planters through segregating and disfranchising blacks. One of the primary byproducts of this regime was the development of a political culture within black communities that increasingly focused on extra-political means of generating political accountability.

    The most important aspect of the Jim Crow regime was its disfranchising black (and many white) voters. These citizens couldn’t vote, serve on juries, elect representatives, articulate and fight for policy. This dynamic concentrated political power in the hands of the Democratic Party and then within the Democratic Party the planter class, who used their power to stave off union development and any instance of progressive government that might benefit working class citizens in general and black citizens (regardless of class) in particular. Furthermore though, in as much as black communities were still large enough to require some means of management, a black broker class developed comprised largely of black religious and educational leaders. This broker class received much of their social power from their ability to not only provide services to black communities in a segregated economy, but for their ability to negotiate between white economic and political elites and black communities. Arguably what peace existed during the south at this time existed in part because this broker class was able to often garner and distribute enough resources to black communities on behalf of blacks while at the same time “cooling out” radical elements in black communities on behalf of whites.[1] Even as we now have thousands of black elected officials and in the 2008 and 2012 elections blacks outvoted whites for the first time, what could be called “a black agenda” still reflects the residue of this period.[2]

    It is this dynamic that Cedric Johnson and Adolph Reed (among others) rightly critique, hand in hand with the transhistorical framework many in the movement adopt when describing the causes of police violence. If the Movement for Black Lives continues to think of police violence primarily in racial terms then it not only opens itself up to the possibility of intra-racial cooptation, working class black populations are opened up to the possibility of yet more brokerage. Indeed, to an extent we saw this happen during the last Obama term. However, what they ignore is that the police violence meted upon urban communities segregated by race and class is disproportionately meted out upon these communities where they live as opposed to where they work. To conduct the type of political movement that would transform the nation we require a political infrastructure that would have every black neighborhood, every block, every household politicized. Doing so would not just allow for expanded mobilization against the types of egregious murders that police have been causing, it would allow for the development of a cadre of leaders who can self-organize both against these egregious murders and against the types of routine state violence and corruption that ends up hurting poor black populations the most, and it would give black working class populations the ability to shape what we think of as “the black political interest” in their favor. And it would give black working class populations the ability to work across racial lines with other communities beset by equally pressing issues.

    Looking backwards to the Populist Party, we did have a brief moment in which black and white workers came together on behalf of their shared economic interests, and in doing so radically expanded the what was politically possible in an America that was barely 100 years old. However what also stands out about that period is that blacks were the victims of a particular form of state violence that whites tended to ignore.

    Now I recognize that this attempt to look backward is fraught. The populist moment happened long before the nation industrialized, long before cities much less metropolitan areas became the central space of American development. It happened long before advances in communication technology–the telegraph was barely being used and the telephone was decades away. It happened long before advances in transportation technology. Finally, it happened a few decades before unions took hold. Yet and still I think the fundamental aspects–the fact that blacks and whites had common economic ground but very different relationships with the state on the issue of racial violence, the fact that blacks were able to create local groups that organized around their interests but that these groups were fraught with intra-racial class tension–point us both to the continued necessity of multi-racial class based organizing and intra-racial class based organizing.

    Notes

    [1]. Truth be told southern blacks and blacks in general were not bereft of a political infrastructure. Two decades after the end of the populist movement we see a significant increase in black only organizations. But these organizations were largely populated by black middle and upper income men and women. The black fraternities and sororities mostly created between 1906 and 1922 by definition excluded individuals without a college education. Neither the NAACP nor the Urban League were exclusive but its leadership (when not white) was primarily upper class. Both the United Negro Improvement Association and arguably the African Blood Brotherhood stood as exceptions, but the UNIA largely eschewed formal politics and was stridently capitalist while the African Blood Brotherhood was not an organization with a large membership base.

    [2]. The political infrastructure I note above as important as it became during the civil rights years skewed what could be called a black political agenda towards the interests of middle to upper class blacks, and then created a leadership class that had few formal mechanisms of accountability. Indeed thinking about the post-civil rights era we can almost draw a straight line between individuals like Jesse Jackson jr., Louis Farrakhan, and Al Sharpton, to the largely unaccountable broker dynamic, and thinking about the post-post civil rights era we can draw a straight line between Barack Obama’s presidency and this dynamic. A number of instances stand out, but I’ll point to one–after a wave of police killings a number of prominent black intellectuals visited the White House to get Obama to be more aggressive. Obama deployed Al Sharpton to tell the group in no uncertain terms that it was their responsibility to support Obama, not the other way around.

    This article originally appeared in Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture.

  • The Class Struggle and the Yellow Vests: Where Are We Headed?

    The Class Struggle and the Yellow Vests: Where Are We Headed?

    We have never seen so many upheavals in so few years in France.

    Society has been turned completely upside down in a way that is totally unprecedented. The social programs won after the Second World War have been savaged and democratic rights won even earlier have been shattered. The executive branch abuses the legislative and judicial branches, thus interfering with governmental checks and balances, and it stifles the role of the media, and dominates society through violent police repression, attacks on freedom of expression, and restricts the right to protest or even to criticize. The radical or extreme right is fully engaged in taking advantage of the openings of the current upheaval and it is the far right that tries to shake things up even more, something that in the past we expected from the far left.

    On the other hand, the old leftwing trade union and political organizations are sinking on their own, and many militant trade unionists and even those on the far left are struggling to navigate and to react.

    The upheaval is not just French and doesn’t just have to do with Emmanuel Macron, there are also Donald Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson in England, Minister of Justice Matteo Salvini in Italy, and others elsewhere. The old Western world is shaking rapidly in ways that work to the advantage of the powerful.

    The social movement itself, however, does not remain sluggish or silent, quite the contrary.

    The tremendous uprising of the Yellow Vests takes up the glove, reinvents in a thunderclap the class struggle, and by its “uprising,” it invites us to put revolution and the construction of a better world back on the agenda.

    We have seldom seen such a mass politicization in so short a time.

    In fact, alongside the Yellow Vests, who have been fighting for the last ten months and who are drawing hundreds of thousands of people into the struggle, popular resistance has become massive and diverse, with protests by environmentalists, migrants, women, and the traditional trade union demands. In the wake of the Yellow Vest uprising of the most exploited classes, these other movements are led to ask themselves the question of pushing further their determination and their demands. The bridges between the different sectors in struggle are built, moreover, under the impetus of Yellow Vests. Many understand that there will be no turning back and that it is no longer possible to defend achievements here and there in disparate struggles. Many fighters are slowly gaining confidence in themselves to ask the global question about the society we want and the means to achieve it.

    The uprising of the Yellow Vests politicizes large marginal groups and re-initiates the class struggle, its methods, its solutions and develops the class consciousness that has always been built in the most determined struggle. Class consciousness is not something that one finds ready-made or that is transmitted as a treasure from generation to generation. It happens, unfolds, becomes stronger in the course of many varied events, in conflicts that oppose different interests, in the storm, amidst shouts, insults, blows and tumults. It never “defines itself” in an isolated, abstract way but in the concrete struggles by some of its “figures,” by its environment, its edges, its evolution, the people and the organizations that it involves as allies or that it fights.

    Class-consciousness can be read in the tactical intelligence of the Yellow Vest movement that aggravates the growing the crisis at the political summit. And this permanent crisis at the top drives the movement as Macron fuels and strengthens class-consciousness and the current uprising. The class-consciousness that is built up through combat and practical experiences is not given as a whole but is lived. It can be first through a sense of class, then a stammering consciousness and finally a consciousness to the end. Moreover, this class consciousness as it becomes fully developed does not invent everything from scratch but is heir to a past common consciousness, the meaning of which we will try to decipher by situating the current movement in the history of the workers’ and popular struggles in recent years in France and describing the consciousness born from it.

    Different from the 1930s

    The historical scale of the current social and political counter-revolution, led by the bourgeoisie, creates the principal characteristics of today’s social resistance.

    Since Macron, we have experienced the destruction of the world in which we have lived since the gains of the popular uprisings that followed the Second World War from 1944 to 1948 and later the events of 1968. There is, of course, continuity between Macron and what began with former French presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande as well as their predecessors, but there is also a break. What Macron wants to do—and which is a process underway in the entire Western world—is not quantitative but qualitative.

    Macron’s objective isn’t only a question of the legal order, but he wants to change the laws of life itself, to bring about a change in working class mentality, justifying it in all aspects of everyday life even in one’s most personal, intimate experiences.

    Nothing says that such a qualitative leap backward is possible or feasible in France, or in the Western world as a whole without major conflicts. We have been living for more than 70 years a daily life based everywhere—in manners, customs, habits, feelings and traditions—on the “social welfare state,” an arrangement that is unique in history. We can hardly imagine a setback of the sort that Macron, Salvini, Johnson and other Trumps would like to inflict upon us without major explosions far beyond what we know today. The struggles of the Yellow Vests give us a little taste.

    In fact, we have never known in history such a conjuncture, such a unique moment, or such a brutal calling into question of a way life developed over a very long time. And up until now where there has been such a questioning—one thinks of the 1930s—this only happened when there was a major event, such as an economic crisis or a war, which have enabled the wealthy to justify all their savagery to a fraction of the popular classes themselves plunged into misery and distress. Today, as the entire sovereign state has moved to the right and become more brutal, still we do not see the appearance of mass fascist militias even if small fascist groups are more active and aspire to greater power.

    It is hard to imagine the forces state repression alone being able to overcome major social crises of any scale.

    The fear of a massive Yellow Vest movement and an explosive social anger can of course push the bourgeois classes to choose the fascist solution. We see this moreover in France since it appears obvious since the demonstrations of September 21, 2019 that the uprising of the Yellow Vests will not stop but on the contrary they bring in their wake other movements, so that the bourgeois press openly gives voice to fascists. But their problem is that it takes men for that and they do not have them in quantity; the small fascist groups can not play that role today. Whenever they tried to go to the streets to oppose the migrants, they mobilized more counter-demonstrators who were more determined than themselves and they had to back down and then give up.

    Faced with the rising social unrest, the bourgeois classes are left for the moment with only their police forces and the trade union leaderships. But will they remain reliable if the determination, radicalism and consciousness of the popular classes increase?

    Without catastrophic events, like some crisis that would allow a nationalistic or racist deluge to prevail over reason, Macron’s policy seems all the more a “cold-hearted” policy with no real apparent reason…if not that of enriching the richest and perpetuating their capitalist system to the detriment of human beings and the planet. Because, with the destruction of the social and democratic gains, it is also the future of the planet that is at stake. The historical stakes then are double.

    Economic disasters can happen, alas, very quickly—and the current warnings about the crisis that is coming are worrisome—but, for now, this is not the case. One can clearly see the chauvinistic and anti-parliamentary attempts to appeal to Johnson’s people with Brexit or Salvini’s racist attacks on the migrants. But we also see their difficulties in realizing their projects “cold,” without justifications of greater scope. The current struggle, therefore, takes place in this time, which gives rise to many resistances and from which in turn there are many awakenings of consciousness.

    On the other hand, it is no longer a question, as in the 1930s, of the parties and unions that lead the resistance; there are none today of that type, but rather of the whole social body, infinitely more cultivated and “organized” than in the 1930s, that resists and fights. The social body is very organized by its multiple communication networks, its free time, its means of transport, its general culture, its social protections, all of which makes it terribly effective. Seventy years of the welfare state with protection against sickness, unemployment and retirement—which is certainly not perfect—but which grants between 15 and 20 years of free time at the end of life—that is something which has never been seen before and has effects.

    There is no organization, there are no leaders, just a multitude of individuals, small groups and multiple networks—not just on the Internet—that resist and advance. The representatives of power have chained the union leaders to their chariot, but those leaders have lost their authority. The owners would like leaders they could negotiate with, could bribe, or convince to stop, but in the Yellow Vests there are none.

    The current uprising eludes them. The water of the movement goes everywhere. This may be a weakness in certain circumstances, as we have seen in Egypt or Tunisia, but it is safe to say that when necessary the uprising will find people within it who are fit for another type of organization. We must also prepare for that.

    The Collapse of the Big Business Ideology

    The duration of the Yellow Vest uprising, 10 months to date, is explained by the magnitude of what Macron wants to take away from us; the resistances are proportional to what’s at stake.

    But the movement’s longevity is also explained by its consciousness, its ability to spot a number of false friends, its ability to avoid the pitfalls and to disbelieve the lies of the powerful, and finally the willingness to understand its own weaknesses. This explains the fierce refusal of the Yellow Vests to build a centralized organization or to have national leaders, in order to prevent such potential leaders from changing sides and turning the movement around. In the same way, their discussions about the Citizens’ Referendum Initiative (RIC) continue, even though most people know very well that no power will permit this, but it is a way of constantly reminding everyone that they no longer believe in the current representative electoral system and its representatives.

    What is at the base of this understanding of the collapse of the big business ideology inherited from the preceding period? The big business ideology was founded on three ideological elements that dominated the 1980s and worked against whatever emancipation the workers had won earlier, but they have progressively lost their effectiveness. They are: the fear of a depression, the superiority of the private over public enterprises, and the effectiveness of social dialogue.1

    After 1968, the big bosses began to develop a body of thought around the “crisis” and indoctrinated the minds of journalists, thinkers, economists and left- and right-wing politicians, thereby generating a fear that made them accept everything.

    Thanks to this fear, big business was able to lay out in a very broad way the solution, namely the importance of the “private sector,” which was supposed to be much more effective than all that is “public” because of its supposed spirit of innovation, its so-called “work ethic,” and its rather hazy “entrepreneurial spirit.” Finally, to attract the employees and chain them to this conception, big business gave a central place to the “social dialogue” and role of union officials to “improve the situation” to the point that business erased the statistics of labor disputes to replace them with the quantification of the employer-worker agreements. According to the employers, labor struggles were no longer necessary, but there was even more! The union leadership to justify this practice of “social dialogue,” let it be said given the supposed absence of struggles they no longer need to report strikes.

    As time passed and the attacks got worse, everyone saw from their own experience that this was not a better way, but rather that big business approach brought about a continuous destruction of all the social gains of the past while the business leaders, the bankers, the rich got rich as ever. At the same time, profits and dividends exploded while employers carried out mass layoffs in the name of the “crisis.” At the same time, CEOs received huge salaries and the rich escaped taxes through the growth of tax evasion. The state provided billions in financing for big business while it squeezed the population and destroyed public services.

    The crisis was obviously not for everyone. As a result, the crisis served as a mask used to shift the increased exploitation of large numbers of people to the benefit of a minority. In the same way, the so-called superiority of the private sector over the public sector that has been plaguing people’s minds since the 1980s has emerged more and more as the mask of corporate selfishness. The glory of the personal success of the private entrepreneur is now becoming replaced in peoples’ consciousness by the praise of the solidarity that has still been maintained even in a distorted way through the public services and especially by the spirit of public service, a step towards another sort of society. There is an increasing defense of public services—local hospitals, maternity hospitals, emergency services, schools, railway stations, transportation, universities—by employees and by the users as such services are scuttled because of this myth of the superiority of the private sector. Large private entrepreneurs are now seen more as gangsters than as saviors of humanity in a crisis.

    In the wake of this realization, the so-called social dialogue between employers, government and trade unions has fizzled out. As a result, the union leaderships appear as complicity with the employers in organizing the decline and paralysis of the employees.

    Moreover, while the rigged statistics found a so-called absence of struggles and thus an alleged acceptance of the situation by the exploited, though there had never been as many conflicts breaking out during these years, though they remained invisible to most people. Those struggles brought about a discrepancy in perception between those who experienced them, including many activists, and the commentators or analysts who no longer saw them in the press or the union reports.

    Thus, little by little, a spirit of class warfare emerged at the base displacing the reliance on class dialogue at the top. The fear of the crisis was replaced by the hatred of profiteers and the “private.”

    Conflicts multiplied in the public services that had been particularly attacked by the governments of Sarkozy and Hollande. The defense of the public services conceived as solidarity and responsibility became the flag of another society, more benevolent and supportive especially toward the weaker and the older, the sick and the homeless, the disabled and the young. The image of the lazy and ineffective public servant gradually gives way to that of the devoted nurse, the brave fireman, the helpful house cleaner …

    The ideology of personal success took a hit with the growing sense that future generations will live less well than past generations.

    At the same time, a fourth dogma of the ideological system of employers collapsed, that which separated politics from the social, where the first had to do with elections and the second referred to strikes, suggesting that the vote was a best political outlet for social movements. The policies of Sarkozy, Hollande and Macron showed that both the left and the right, in fact, put forward the same policy in the service of the rich. Abstention has become by far the first party in working class and poor neighborhoods, far ahead of all others, including that of Marine Le Pen, head of the right-wing and anti-immigrant National Party. And today, beyond abstention, the idea has developed that the representative bourgeois system is not really democratic and that the movement will require a different electoral system.

    The Yellow Vests have inherited this discovery of the bankruptcy of the employers’ ideology. This explains the peculiarity that the Yellow Vest movement began as a protest against rising taxes. Many, seeing this anti-tax movement, which was joined by some employers’ organizations road and right-wing activists, there was the repetition of the earlier Poujadiste. [Pierre Poujade organized an anti-tax movement in France in the 1950s that became politically significant. The Poujadist movement, which hailed the common man, was a rightwing movement that also opposed the decolonization of Algeria and exhibited anti-Semitism. – DL.]

    But if some bosses and extreme right groups engaged in this adventure and thought to use it for their own benefit, they quickly turned around and deserted the movement because for the Yellow Vests it was not so much about not paying taxes but about whether or not the taxes would benefit the richest or the poorest people. And besides that, the Yellow Vests carried out an incessant denunciation of those who do not pay their taxes to the detriment of hospitals and schools and hide their money in tax havens.

    From 2017 to 2019: The Independence of the Movement and Its Confidence in Struggle

    Two major social movement experiences prevailed before the Yellow Vests. First, in the old days, the unions played leapfrog without a global plan of struggle. Then more recently we’ve seen a multitude of struggles that crumbled but within which there developed an awareness of the need for one big struggle, “all together,” though without yet achieving that.

    The national agenda of social struggles was dominated by the trade union leaderships and by their days of action. This disjointed agenda was accompanied by its justification: according to the union leadership, the workers would not want to fight.

    But the second movement of dispersed struggles proved that that was false, but that could not be heard and could not express itself.

    I did my own count and found that more than 4,000 hospitals experienced conflicts and strikes in the year 2017-18. More generally, in all sectors, I recorded 270 struggles and strikes per day in the first half of 2017. This is considerable … but remained invisible in the face of the union steamroller, the media’s silence and the false strike statistics.

    In early 2018, a major change took place that would gradually revive the perception of workers’ struggles and the confidence that comes along with them.

    In February 2016 the social movement as a whole awakened and took on a new dimension through struggles that have continued until now. But already in 2014, 2015 there had been rank-and-file rebellions in the unions. In their wake there emerged in the spring 2017 the Social Front, an alliance regrouping 200 radical union organizations. During the elections of the spring of 2017 the Front organized events involving up to 20,000 people that targeted candidate for president Macron and the beautiful neighborhoods in which he campaigned, shouting after his election, “One day is enough, Macron must resign.” Against this revolt, the officials of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT), the largest labor federation, and other unions and political parties organized in the fall of 2017 a multitude of scattered, competing, chaotic action days without any plan in order to let off steam. After a few months, activists became discouraged and in November 2017 the CGT called an end to the mobilization, announcing that Macron had definitely won … blaming workers who would not fight. Macron was triumphant, the activists were beaten.

    At the end of January 2018, however, against all odds, a new popular mobilization arose. It came from one of the most exploited groups of wage workers and unpaid workers, the most invisible, the least organized, the most feminine and of immigrant origin.

    In January 2018, the “zadistes” or squatters occupied a protected nature zone near the airport to force Macron “the invincible” to back down. In that same month, a strike by prison guards broke out, and then there were struggles of high school students and others students across the country; demonstrations by retirees were well attended. and next a growing, angry movement against taxes and the proposed speed limit of 80 kilometers per hour (50 miles per hour) arose in small towns in the provinces among bikers, pensioners, employees of small businesses, independent workers, small craftsmen, the self-employed…

    This “angry” movement (which had some 90,000 followers on Facebook) brought together those who opposed the increase in the Contribution Sociale Généralisée (CSG), an income tax, the destruction of pensions, rising prices … and from the many events from February to May. Most of the “angry” group, later came to form the core of Yellow Vests. Already, they had begun to block roundabouts and supermarkets on Saturdays and some were already wearing the yellow safety vests that all French drivers are required to carry in their cars. They brought together some 250 000 people in the most important of their demonstrations. The leadership of the unions of the old workers’ movement began organizing a counter attack by declaring that the angry ones were “fascists”…

    In this context, it was the strike of the retirement home workers of Ehpad2 that effectively unified all of the strikes and precipitated the awakening. It began in November 2017, at first invisible to the media, but then activists burst into the open in late January 2018 with more than 2,000 Ehpad workers on strike at the same time. The Ehpad sector was particularly sensitive. It is made of low-wage women workers, precarious, very often provincial, over exploited, often women of color who work in small broken-down structures. Because of its size, it brought to light an important change in the structure of the work in France.

    The female proletariat has exploded in number in various sectors—health, cleaning, personal service, fast food or hospitality—bringing together more than 500,000 women at work in the worst conditions, experiencing “Macronian” super-exploitation before it had a name. Although invisible and scorned, it is this sector of women workers whose struggles and victories characterized the period, proving the falsity of the union leadership’s claim that working class was demoralized and demonstrating that those who are at the bottom of the ladder, who are the most exploited, are also often the most determined in the struggle.

    This sector is also significant because it imports the struggles of other countries of the world to France (especially from Africa) and adopts and modifies the experience of migrant workers. This is very scary to the authorities who live from their super-exploitation and who assert their political domination through racist demagogy against them. It is significant as well because this is the same super-exploited female working class that will play a key role in organizing the many of the groups and assemblies of the Yellow Vests.

    The Ehpad retirement home sector is significant too because of its residents, the seniors. It involves an emotional terrain that affects a large part of the population and also represents a social problem: the inhuman way in which old people are treated in this society. Also, when the Ehpad strike broke out on January 31, it enjoyed a huge boost of popular sympathy and received coverage by local media, which through multiple interviews and testimonies combined the questions of the working conditions of the employees in the sector with the question of the kind of society we want.

    Based on this public sympathy, the organizers of the Ehpad strike called for a big national protest on March 15, the day when retirees had already planned to demonstrate. It was a first step towards the convergence of struggles, awakening a new impulse towards a sense of all of us being in this together that could regroup all the angers of the moment and it was beyond the control of the union officials. Immediately, the union leaders put out an alternative call for a mobilization of public services on March 22, while conducting a strong and violent campaign against the March 15 of the Ehpad senior home care workers, even accusing its organizers of sowing division and serving Macron!

    The irruption on the social and political scene of the poorest workers took place in a torrential and subversive way from November 17 to December 8, 2018. Faced with this sudden, massive and massive popular surge, the power of Macron wavered and he nearly fell. But he held on. And the uprising of the Yellow Vests held on too. This created an unprecedented situation.

    The uprising of the Yellow Vests never regained the strength of its first outburst, but it has lasted a long time and still continues even if it has slowly declined. Having kept its original subversive character, and thanks to that, it continues to have an impact on all of French society by attracting little by little the base of the entire traditional labor movement but also of the activists in the environmental movement and feminists and leads them all to take more radical positions. However, the uprising of the Yellow Vests had no party, no organization or even activists to give a conscious expression of what it was and what it might become. The organizations and most activists of the old workers’ movement—even revolutionary ones—did not join it at first. Hampered by their very defeatist conceptions of the situation, they took a long time to understand what was happening and only finally joined the movement cautiously and belatedly.

    Like most Yellow Vests, their spokespeople had never campaigned before. As much as their class instinct was right, they often spoke haltingly in the face of a society whose complexity they had only just discovered. To affect the situation, they had only their momentum, their spontaneity, and their radicalism. They maintained the struggle week after week with stormy demonstrations every Saturday, which earned them fierce police repression. More than 1,000 of them have been sentenced to prison, 400 are still in prison, dozens have lost an eye or a hand, and thousands have been injured in clashes with the police.

    Faced with this insurgent “party” in the making—but a party without leaders—the bourgeoisie, in addition to the repression, tried to buy and corrupt the “spokespersons” as soon as they sprouted up or even used its own media to create Yellow Vest “leaders.” To keep its subversive spontaneity, without any help from the old labor movement, the uprising of the Yellow Vests defended themselves by refusing any centralized organization, any national leader, any spokespeople, and authorized keeping a strictly horizontal organization.

    The rank-and-file activists of the old workers’ movement became hopeful again. However, the vast majority of them—even those most critical of the trade union leaderships—belong to the most skilled sectors of the working class and have a certain contempt for the less qualified and less organized sectors. Moreover, they do not yet perceive the new global and political dimension of the situation that is taking shape then, as Yellow Vests will express it a little later. And even if the most advanced among them are campaigning for a general strike, they only see it as a classic generalized economic strike. They do not see it as a period when partial economic strikes, the denunciation of a scandalous social situation like that of the elderly, the struggles for a less inhumane prison system, the demonstrations of the students for a better future, or the demonstrations of the retirees in defense of their retirement will altogether form a whole called a general political strike because its logic and its outcome are political and not simply for the obtaining of partial economic demands. They do not see that such a general strike would be about the question of power.

    So, instead of supporting both the Yellow Vests’ March 15 demonstration and the labor unions March 22 protest as part of the same movement, the union activists just came out for the March 22 behind the union bureaucracy.

    It is also these old social habits and this misunderstanding of the situation that will made these workers accept the slander of the trade union bureaucrats who called the uprising of Yellow Vests a Fascist movement during its emergence, a slander intended to prevent the coming together of the union rank-and-file with the fighting popular uprising during its insurrectional phase from November 17 to December 8, 2018 when the power of Macron wavered (Macron had planned to flee by helicopter from his palace of the Elysée).

    At that moment, in March 2018, in the wake of the spirit expressed by the Social Front of 2017, there was a strong desire for a general movement to overturn Macron “and his world” that affected all mobilizations of the moment. Railroad workers, students, electricians, postal workers and leftist activists then went on strike in the spring of 2018, with hope, but without having sufficiently digested the totality of the attacks and the duplicity of the devices they faced. In a few months, the union leaders succeeded in dividing the movement into multiple narrow union struggles carried out through separate strikes, drowning the aspiration to overturn Macron. In early July, the momentum given by the Ehpad retiree home care workers had been dispersed.

    Activists were again discouraged and once again the union leaders sang their little song about “the workers not wanting to fight.”

    For its part the “angry” movement continued on a parallel path, erased by trade union mobilizations but proposed with the summer holidays to resume its mobilization in October with a new impetus having particularly integrated and matured, the base prepared to overturn Macron and to block the economy, resist the treachery of the union leadership, overcome the inefficiency of leapfrog actions, scattered struggles and negotiations with the government.

    The Yellow Vests pull the whole working class forward by raising general class awareness

    On the basis of the loss of influence of the business ideology and the awareness gained in the struggles of 2017 and 2018, the uprising of the Yellow Vests added to the loss of confidence in the representative democracy, its police, its system of justice, its elections, and its press and contributed to a growing confidence in the autonomy and capabilities of the working class.

    Police violence such as we had not seen in a long time, grew; judicial injustice and its “double standards” depending on whether one is rich or poor, honest-demonstrator or ugly boss; its rigged elections where a president like Macron is elected by only 18% of the registered voters; a press that lies as it always breathes for the benefit of the powerful; all this is no longer written in the underground press of the far left but was seen by millions in the Yellow Vests social media and above all experienced in the street by hundreds of thousands of people engaged in class struggle. Thus we moved from traditional “movements” to an “uprising” to overthrow Macron and his world.

    Still, many “protected” social categories still tried to play the old game of “every man for himself” within the system. For example, in the ongoing struggle of hospital emergency physicians, despite having a leadership that escaped the union bureaucracy, they did not try to extend their fight to the rest of the hospital services in struggle. On the contrary, they maintained the hope that the government could give a few billions that would save the service of the emergency physicians. The firefighters’ current struggles are not immune to this approach, nor are those of tax officials and teachers. Employees who have a stable job, a salary and a status, are still trying to save the latter in the general decline.

    The Yellow Vests themselves, however, without being deluded, continue to seek an overall convergence. Many Yellow Vests lend their support to the struggles of hospital or firefighters despite the frequent reluctance of the latter and even more often of the trade unions.

    Under this influence, these social movements are evolving.

    All these movements have the capacity to last a long time, between six months and a year for teachers, hospital agents, tax agents, or firefighters even if the strikes are scattered, fragmented. But this duration translates something and it has effects.

    The duration shows that those involved in these struggles are not discouraged. This is one of the striking elements of the situation.

    These struggles make one think of long and determined fights against plant closures. But it is the entire public services that are threatened with closure so that there is a displacement of the local struggle to the national struggle but with a “corporatist” character.

    At the same time, with the closure of this or that public service, everyone understands that in fact it is a whole type of society that is shut down. This means that the idea is gradually spreading that it is no longer a question of fighting to limit the setbacks while trying to return to the past, but that it is a question of fighting for the future, in short, for another world in which social solidarity would first assert itself and not “the icy waters of selfish calculation.”

    This means that the idea is gradually spreading that it is no longer a question of fighting to limit the setbacks while trying to return to the past, but that it is a question of fighting for the future, in short, for another world in which social solidarity would first assert itself and not “the icy waters of selfish calculation.”

    Thus after the movement of local struggles was pulverized by “global consciousness,” there appeared a moment of national corporate struggles with the same spirit: we save what we can while waiting to be stronger. These categorical “corporatist” struggles, with the same background of global consciousness, encouraged each other and the whole thing in turn weighed on other sectors trained to do the same, while the duration of the uprising of the Yellow Vests came to affect all of them. And the defense of retirement that began could further amplify this character.

    Thus, before others the inter-emergency collective called the entire hospital profession to the common struggle of September 26, at the same time there were a number of joint actions between emergency doctors, Ehpad retirement home care workers, and firefighters, perhaps most notably the national protest on October 15th, always with the presence of: the Yellow Vests.

    Teachers’ struggles had also started to emancipate themselves from the union leaderships through the formation of various collectives. Their fight, on October 3 in honor of a teacher who committed suicide at her workplace, took on a general character of a workers’ political response to the government tribute mourning deceased former president of the French Republic Jacques Chirac.

    In this context, the tactic of total dispersion of the response by the trade union leaderships during several days of action in September and October had an unprecedented effect and brought new sectors into the process of convergence.

    This is what we saw with the strike for retirement at the RATP, the state-owned Parisian public transport system, on September 13 with a rare participation rate of almost 100% and the desire to put defend the retirement benefits by an unlimited strike that began on December 5, 2019.

    In addition, on September 13, the public finance workers’ strike in defense of public services reached historic rates of mobilization. The same day, the mobilization of lawyers, pilots, nurses, physiotherapists and liberal health professionals in defense of pensions was massive; same thing again on September 19, with the mobilization of the electricians. The same thing is still happening on the September 21, when the Yellow Vests and ecologists for the climate made that date the first major convergence of struggles; and finally on September 28, the Sound Systems to get justice for Steve Caniço, killed by the police on the night of the Music Festival, brought together 300,000 people in Paris alone, opening the politicization to new environments. And it continues in October, retirees, firefighters, hospital workers …

    And then, especially, under the pressure of the rank-and-file, the RATP unions called for an indefinite strike from December 5, followed by sectors of railroad workers, road transport, aviation workers, education … and of course the Yellow Vests supporting this initiative by stating that the defense of retirement or other claims are legitimate … but that to win, we will have to overthrow Macron.

    By making the social movement itself push to the end its own political horizons, the Yellow Vests imperceptibly move the social question and raise the larger question of who has the power. By doing so, they aggravate the crisis of classical political representation at the top. They are intensifying the crisis of traditional trade unionism, which has no political perspective, leaving it only a more and more residual place alongside the powers that be. Overall, they are gradually integrating all struggles into this awareness of the need for a general struggle that raises the question of power.

    Gradually the laid off workers, the employees of the public services that have been contracted out, the young people without a future, those who have only a small job to survive, the more and more numerous precarious workers, the rejected students, all of these form an immense social soil which, with the Yellow Vests, has become a formidable campaigning ground far exceeding all the organizations.

    For the moment, this environment needs a horizontal structure to take control of its destiny, because of its distrust of the union and political machines. But just as for the emergence of the uprising of the Yellow Vests, the massive participation of millions of people in taking control of their own life, any party is useless or even harmful; so too in the final stages of confrontation with power, the regrouping of the initiative and the organization of the forces are vital.

    But it is only in the course of the first phase that the party, in the sense of “partisans of one and the same cause,” can understand the situation and the common task that flow from it, at the moment the economic strike, the ecological mobilization, and indignation at the political scandals.

    The general strike: the revolution precedes the strike

    What is remarkable in this period is that we have had two experiences, one social and the other political. The social experience has gone on since February 2016 when the struggles against the challenges to the labor laws protecting workers began and has been continuous. And the political experience began in November 2018 when the Yellow Vests marched to protest at the presidential palace of the Elysée and that movement has continued for more than 10 months to pose the question of power.

    The current uprising is not prepared to end, whether it continues in the form of Yellow Vests or in some other form. Awareness of time is no longer measured in weeks but in months or perhaps years. This duration of the social movement and its growing consciousness become in this situation a deadly element for the Macron regime, a threat which risks dividing the administration on the solutions to be offered.

    There is a rise to “something,” to the construction of means for a global response. This is how we can speak of a General Strike in the sense of a period such as Rosa Luxemburg described and as the Yellow Vests and the most conscious militants of this period have understood it. In this General Strike one sees the alteration of failed economic strikes, general or local demonstrations, political struggles, emotions related to scandals, riots, broader strikes, etc. In this period, the politicization of our entire class gives common sense to all the events so far separated, a general march towards a culmination, the seizure of power for a better life. These elements form a whole and this consciousness, pushed to its end, slowly becomes class-consciousness. The current general strike gradually defines its program by integrating the particular battles into a general fight, the dispersed militants adopt general objectives. The strike trains and groups its activists based on its experiences, using all the tools at at its disposal, defeating illusions and the peddlers of illusions along the way, marginalizing trade union leaderships, dissolving their influence on their bases and defining itself and thus forging its own “party.”

    In this context, to accelerate the organizational shaping of what historical struggles have brought them, we must call to regroup in the construction of a party all those who have this general awareness of the situation, in order to be, even in the most intense moments, able to give the ultimate power to the current dynamic, to pose the question of power concretely in the most efficient and democratic way.

    Jacques Chastaing, September 30, 2019

    The French text of this article can be found on Mediapart.

    Translation by Dan La Botz

    1 “Social dialogue” which might also be translated as “social negotiation” refers to the practice in France of holding high level talks and agreements between the government, the employers and the labor unions, or sometimes just the bosses and the unions. These negotiations often set the terms of wages and conditions, though if the government is also involved, they may also determine the requirements and benefits of social programs. – DL

    2 Ehpad = Établissement d’hébergement pour personnes âgées

     

  • On Socialist Electoral Strategy

    On Socialist Electoral Strategy

    Much has been made of a supposed leftward shift in the Democratic Party over the last three years. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, four new Democratic congresswomen known as “the Squad,” began capturing widespread media attention, many treated the 2018 midterm elections where Democrats won the House as a turning point for the party, where the left wing of the party was on the rise, leaving the Third Way era behind. A new strategy began to be promoted and championed by groups like the Justice Democrats, that of challenging incumbent Democrats in safe-blue districts with volunteer armies from a group we’ll call progressive activists, borrowing a term from a recent study on polarization in the United States from a group called More in Common. This group comprises only around eight percent of Americans, and is disproportionately white, secular, and college educated.

    The thinking behind this strategy came from establishment Democratic disapproval of progressive candidates running against Republicans in swing districts, due to a perception that doing so could result in Republican victory. Hailing the victories of progressives in 2018, Data for Progress co-founder Sean McElwee wrote that “Democratic primaries offer the best hope to get insurgent candidates in office and pull the party left.” In the same piece, he argued that progressives had lost against Republican candidates simply because general election voters in the districts did not want what Bernie Sanders was selling.

    McElwee and the establishment Democrats he purports to oppose are probably correct that candidates like Ocasio-Cortez could not win many districts outside of urban cores in the United States. According to a CBS News poll conducted in July, the most popular and well-known member of the Squad, Ocasio-Cortez, has an abysmal net favorability rating of -14 percent, close to Donald Trump’s -15 percent. However, Nancy Pelosi is even more unpopular, sitting at -21 in the same poll. Meanwhile, single-payer healthcare continues to command majority support among Americans even in the wake of attacks from the right and center. While Bernie Sanders’ favorability rating has dropped over the last several months, he is still consistently more popular than any of the aforementioned politicians. So where is the disconnect between the popularity of social democratic demands and the unpopularity of Democrats?

    They Blue Themselves

    The four members of the Squad each won their elections in heavily Democratic districts. However, this does not necessarily mean these districts were more left-wing than others. As Benjamin Studebaker points out, only Omar won a district which voted for Sanders in the 2016 primary. Of these, Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez both beat longtime incumbents in primary elections. Contrary to popular media narratives, both figures came from established professional class pipelines. Despite Ocasio-Cortez’s much touted work history as a bartender, it was often conveniently left out that she had been an intern for the late Senator Ted Kennedy (though one could argue the jobs were one and the same). Additionally, Ocasio-Cortez was “honestly questioning” over whether to support Clinton or Sanders in the 2016 primary, further reflecting her professional class background.

    Although mostly unreported on at the time, Ocasio-Cortez attracted significant financial support from the nonprofit, financial, and technology sectors in her 2018 run, taking in more donations from California than New York City. When discussing Ocasio-Cortez’s early proposal of a 70% top marginal tax rate, one of her financier donors remarked that “in [his] experience, that’s where [her] liberalism ends: As soon as any significant redistribution is in sight, they turn very quickly toward the center.” Her eventual victory over Crowley in the 2018 Democratic primary was largely powered by neighborhoods dominated by white gentrifiers, indicating a failure to connect with older working-class residents. This is not to say the downwardly mobile urban professionals that disproportionately compose the gentrifying residents are not working class, but it does demonstrate the troubles her campaign had attracting a demographic outside of progressive, professional class activists.

     

    Pressley’s rise to prominence as a “progressive champion” is even more baffling. Originally a Boston city council member, she became a surrogate for Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 Democratic primary, decrying Medicare for All and efforts to overturn Citizens United. Her opponent, Mike Capuano, had virtually identical policy positions to Pressley, and where there were differences, she was more often than not to his right, repeatedly equivocating on foreign policy and signaling openness to public-private partnerships, which Capuano opposed. Pressley additionally attracted the support of the wealthy Democratic donors of Massachusetts.

    These paths to Congress contrast sharply with the one Bernie Sanders took. After years of unsuccessful campaigns at the fringes with activists and academics in the Liberty Union party, he emerged victorious in Burlington’s 1981 mayoral election with a base of working-class voters rather than the activists that made up Vermont’s third parties, even attracting a number of conservatives who opposed regressive property taxes.

    This base allowed him to sometimes take positions at odds with the activist left, including opposing a direct action at a union Gatling gun factory due to what he saw as “’blaming the workers’ and not focusing their attention on the federal centers of strategic thinking on U.S. foreign policy.” Sanders did not have to compromise his anti-imperialist principles during this time, visiting Sandinista Nicaragua against the wishes of the Reagan administration in 1985 and making fiery speeches opposing American intervention in Latin America. This earned him the scorn of ultra-leftists around Vermont like eco-anarchist Murray Bookchin, but his commitment to bread and butter, working class politics over middle-class activist concerns eventually propelled him to his position today as one of America’s most popular politicians, despite lacking a party.

    It’s The Economy, Stupid

    The Squad have attempted to cast their opposition as motivated by racism and misogyny, casting the large number of Americans who oppose their politics into the same basket of deplorables Clinton infamously referenced in 2016. They routinely espouse academic concepts and social values the vast majority of Americans oppose.  While it wields disproportionate influence in media and urban centers where the Squad is based, eighty percent of Americans oppose political correctness, with people of color opposing it more strongly than white people per the aforementioned More in Common study.

    Matthew Yglesias of Vox found more data suggesting white liberals had moved “further to the left” on some issues of race and immigration than even people of color. McElwee is enthusiastic about this shift, openly touting a left driven not by the working class but by the college educated white professionals that currently dominate it. “I don’t ascribe in any way to these ideas that identity politics is bad for us. I think I can take someone who is deeply concerned about patriarchy and I can make them understand how patriarchy intersects with capitalism much more than I can take someone who’s mad because GM took their job away and make them understand socialism,” he told New York magazine, highlighting how immaterial this so-called left has become.

    It is true that social democratic economic demands like Medicare for All are broadly popular among voters, with minimum wage increases and Medicaid expansions winning on the ballot even in red states. However, some of the more radical liberal policies the Squad champions are incredibly unpopular among all voters. Abolishing Immigrations and Customs Enforcement became such an unpopular idea even among self-identified Democrats that most 2020 presidential candidates, including those who previously supported the idea, have since backtracked.

    The identitarian issues the Squad has promoted in their racialized rhetoric contrast sharply with Sanders’ universalist message of social democracy. Despite the fact that the marginalized groups the Squad is concerned with will be the disproportionate beneficiaries of universal policy, they continue to focus on narrow constituencies based on identities at the expense of appealing to broad majorities. Their audience of young urban professionals applaud at the Squad’s denunciations of white privilege while the rest of the country sees its wages stagnate, life expectancies drop, and costs of living rise, no matter their race. Walter Benn Michaels put it best when he declared that “identity politics is not an alternative to class politics but a form of it: it’s the politics of an upper class that has no problem with seeing people left behind as long as they haven’t been left behind because of their race or sex.”

    How to Win

    Focusing a socialist electoral strategy on the deep-blue Democratic areas the Squad won forecloses the possibility of ever building a movement of the working-class. These elections can only be won through primaries, dominated by already politically involved and liberal voters. This forces socialists to pander to a narrow slice of the electorate, one which has vastly different preferences the rest of the country. These low turnout elections primarily attract existing and already engaged voters, when socialists need to be reaching out to those who don’t vote or are alienated by existing party structures.

    Instead, socialists need to be running candidates to reach the working class, wherever they may be. More campaigns must be run like that of Kristin Seale, a candidate in the southern suburbs of Philadelphia who came within 500 votes of winning a district that had been Republican since its founding in 1969. With a focus on issues like Medicare for All and a $15 minimum wage, she was able to bring class politics to a district that had lacked it, and surely laid the groundwork for future socialist success in the district.

    Additionally, socialists need to be better at assessing what matters to working people, and where they are out of touch with the sentiments of the working class. Campaigns must be focused on material demands like Medicare for All and not on divisive social issues which can only fracture working class coalitions. Socialists will never be able to overcome the unpopularity of a radical liberal cultural politics, and it has no reason to saddle itself to it when universalist social democracy will do a better job of addressing the inequalities cultural liberalism concerns itself with. As Walter Benn Michaels said, “the relation between fighting discrimination and fighting exploitation is asymmetrical”. That is, redistributive economics will improve the conditions of victims of discrimination, but even if discrimination were eliminated, the working class would still be poor, only with misery distributed proportionately.

     

    Despite the Squad’s missteps and unpopularity among most Americans, socialists have an enormous opportunity to build a working-class movement with the Bernie Sanders campaign. His independence will also prove useful when the time comes for the socialist left to break with the Democratic party. Democrats currently represent 54 of the wealthiest 66 districts in the House of Representatives, doing so touting increased representation of minority groups over progressive policy. Their focus on identity at the expense of class was a deliberate decision, and socialists do not need to repeat it. A vacuum currently exists in the United States for an anti-capitalist working-class politics, and if the socialist left does not provide it, the right will happily do so.

    In contrast to Sanders’ working-class base, Elizabeth Warren’s campaign is firmly rooted in the professional-managerial class. As Politico observed, “In poll after poll, Sanders appeals to lower-income and less-educated people; Warren beats Sanders among those with postgraduate degrees…Younger people who vote less frequently are more often in Sanders’ camp; seniors who follow politics closely generally prefer Warren.” Sanders’ donors have come from everywhere in the country, particularly in the exurbs and heartland, while Warren’s donors have mostly come from newly gentrified neighborhoods in urban areas. And although Warren has sworn off corporate donations in the primary election, she has announced she will use them in the general election, which will tilt her base even further away from the working-class.

    If socialists are to win a majority in the United States, candidates cannot continue to be from the academic or non-profit centers which so many Americans rightfully disdain as out-of-touch. Those on the left recognized the unpopularity of Hillary Clinton’s elitist background, and we should recognize this and reject it even when it comes from those ostensibly “on our side” like the Squad or Elizabeth Warren. We must remember the popularity of Bernie Sanders’ universalist demands and reject the professional-managerial class’s candidates of choice. No matter how many times the stakes are obfuscated by Beto O’Rourke decrying a “racist capitalist economy” or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying you can be both a capitalist and a democratic socialist, the working class and the capitalist class have fundamentally different interests. Workers recognize this, and it is time American socialists caught up.

     

     

  • Dear Liberals, Greta Thunberg is Talking to You!

    Dear Liberals, Greta Thunberg is Talking to You!

    When 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg ascended to the helm of climate politics, the American right naturally assumed that her words were leveraged at them. And who could blame them? As the only major group of people on the planet still in denial about the impending ecological crisis, American conservatives are paranoid that every mention of climate change is a rhetorical assault on conservatism itself. Fox News and the like responded by comparing this 16-year-old girl to the Children of the Corn and by calling her “mentally ill” in a not-so-surprising display of tasteless insults and ad hominem attacks.

    This time around Fox News was mistaken, and so were the enlightened liberals that attended her speech at the UN. Of course, both groups were too absorbed with narcissism to notice that they had misinterpreted Thunberg’s speech, which is why the UN found her charming while Fox News found her repulsive. But those of us that are not steeped in the establishment circle jerk could hear Thunberg loud and clear. She was talking to the liberals.

    Greta Thunberg opened her speech by saying “my message is that we’ll be watching you,” and this was met with applause and laughter from the audience, who clearly didn’t understand the gravity with which Greta spoke. She then continued, saying “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean. And yet, you all come to us young people for hope? How dare you?” She says, her voice quivering with emotion. The audience has grown silent now. They likely expected this girl to give a naïve but inspiring speech about how “everyone can make a difference if they just believe.” And yet, here’s this little girl sounding rather accusatory. The UN summit agrees with Greta on one thing: this is all wrong.

    She continues: “you have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet, I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing, we are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy-tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?” She says. The second “How dare you?” manages to be more impactful than the first but, for reasons that can only be attributed to the vast stupidity of modern liberals, the uncomfortable silence that has sunken in is broken by applause from the very people she’s railing against. Her speech continues to be abundantly clear in its message. She speaks with apocalyptic dread, like a doomsday prophet condemning the sinful before the end times. And she speaks right past Trump’s conservatism, directly to the heart of liberalism, the heart of the problem.

    Thunberg understands something that scientists, politicians and activists have misunderstood about climate politics for decades now. Thunberg understands that the problem isn’t with delusional conservatives who would deny the existence of a basic scientific fact, but rather, the problem is with those politicians who “accept the science” but are too spineless and cowardly to put forward solutions that are radical enough to actually solve the problem. The Nancy Pelosi’s of the world, who would admit that climate change exists but would shy away from a Green New Deal program in favor of meager solutions that no serious person believes will even leave a dent in our outsized carbon footprint. Thunberg understands that Laura Ingram, Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump are too far gone to be worth trying to convince of anything.

    The Democrats on the other hand, should know better. This is their issue after all. Thunberg sees this and it’s why her speech doesn’t aim to convince anyone that climate change is real, she knows she can’t convince those people. Instead, she speaks with anger and disgust at a generation of ineffectual liberals who pretended to care about the environment but were too cowardly to propose real solutions. Instead, she points out all the failed policies that have been put forward and she reminds her audience that it’s her generation who will be cleaning up after their irresponsible behavior.

    Thunberg doesn’t offer us solutions and while I would take her solutions over anyone in congress, it’s disturbing that we live in a world that needs to seek answers from a teenager. She may be too young to have a structural understanding of the politics but only a teenager could possible articulate the anger and frustration of a generation that was born to die. A generation who was cursed to watch their parents fuck it all up and then leave the mess for their kids to clean up. While she is young, Greta’s not the naïve one, instead her audience has all the naivete that she was expected to have. It reminds me of a passage from Elie Wiesel’s Day.

    “The young today don’t believe that some day they’ll be old: they are convinced they’ll die young. Old men are the real youngsters of our generation. They at least can brag about having had what we do not have: a slice of life called youth.”

    This quote was written for another generation, but it seems to capture the essence of Greta Thunberg’s speech perfectly. It’s no longer the young people that are drunk on optimism, but rather the old people. The old people know they’ll die before humanity suffers the consequences of its own avarice, so they can afford to have the blissful optimism required to believe that this problem will go away without a mass mobilization of our economy. They’ll never watch portions of the Earth become unlivable, they’ll never experience mass extinction, mass migration or starvation the way that their children will, so when someone comes along with a truly radical solution to the ecological crisis that involves a radical restructuring of our economic and social lives, that solution is simply too scary for people who won’t have to deal with the consequences of failure. And so, the old people move along with stars in their eyes, certain that innovation and technology will save them so long as they keep their faith in capitalism.

    If we’re lucky, when capitalism’s belligerent and destructive lifespan comes to a close, there will be a world left for Thunberg’s generation to put back together. Unfortunately, I’m not old enough to be optimistic, so I don’t have any faith that liberals will wake up and smell the fire and brimstone in time to prevent this crisis. The only rational hope that’s left is that the youth can seize the reigns before it’s too late.

  • Neither the Establishment Nor its Money Can Oust Trump in 2020

    Neither the Establishment Nor its Money Can Oust Trump in 2020

    With Democratic primary campaigns in full-swing and the 2020 election just over a year away, I thought I’d take a look at some of the reports on available data that could shed light on the motives and actions of the American electorate in 2016. In particular, I wanted to consider which observed trends seemed to play a role in the unlikely victory of Donald Trump in 2016 to think about which candidate (or candidates) would have the best shot of beating him in 2020. Of course, just because there was an observable voter trend in one election does not mean it will repeat four years later. Also, it’s certainly possible that unforeseen developments or turnout (or lack thereof) from some un-predicted composite of voters could affect things in unforeseeable ways in 2020. So, in short, one never knows for sure. The outcome of the 2016 election is itself an indication of this. This is not an attempt to exhaustively flesh out substance from numbers or a consideration of every possible theoretical contingency. Rather, it’s simply a little dip into some data and a bit of reflection.

    One significant factor which played a role in Trump’s victory was the turnout of improbable voters in 2016 – either first-time voters or those who did not vote in recent presidential elections. Like it or not, Trump inspired these folks to show up for him at the polls. He represented an option for many disaffected voters, a candidate for whom they could cast a protest vote as an expression of their discontent with the political establishment. Since exit poll respondents who identified as first-time voters turned out for Clinton over Trump by a three-to-two margin, one may be inclined to think that these improbable voters didn’t help nudge Trump to a majority in the states where he prevailed. In some states, he just scarcely did so, indicating just how volatile and unpredictable those outcomes were. However, this three-to-two margin is a slimmer majority that broke for the Democratic candidate compared to the last two elections. A greater proportion of first-time voters turned out for Obama the two elections before, with a two-to-one margin over his Republican opponent in 2012 and a 2.2-to-1 margin in 2008. Also, there were more first-time voters in 2016 – 15%, an increase from 9% in 2012. So the portion of first-time voters that voted for Trump in 2016, while a minority of such voters, was a larger statistical minority than that of the previous two years who voted for the Republican candidate. Also, more actual voters turned out overall in 2016 than both 2012 and 2008.[1]

    A recurring narrative for those who cast their votes for Trump, especially White working class voters, was frustration toward the political establishment. Based on a large post-election poll, White non-college graduates in particular represented a 14% larger portion of voters in 2016 than 2012, and voted for Trump over Clinton 63% to 32%. Another post-election poll by the Center for American Progress found that 50% of Trump voters responded that the most important factor shaping their decision to vote for him was to “shake up the political establishment.” A study which drilled down into a relatively small cohort of 20 white working class men showed that Clinton was broadly seen as the status quo candidate and that voters for Trump were motivated by his self-presentation as a political outsider who was in it to shake up politics as usual. With reservations expressed about both candidates, the men interviewed overwhelmingly either voted for Trump or didn’t vote at all. A larger qualitative study of White working class communities across multiple regions of the country indicated the same finding, that for many of these voters, Trump inspired them by tapping into an “insurgent, anti-establishment rage against ‘politics as normal.’”

    There’s obviously more to it than this. With Trump’s overtly racist and xenophobic rhetoric in relation to immigration, depiction of American society and values as under attack, and promises of greater prosperity for those who felt left behind, these “dispossessed” voters, as sociologist Daniel Bell once referred to them, were willing to take a chance on Trump, the populist self-styled outsider vowing to shake up Washington, drain the swamp, and “Make America Great Again.” Diana Mutz’s analysis of a large pool of voter data showed that a sense that “the American way of life is threatened” was a reliable predictor of support for Trump. As dominant groups (Whites, men, Christians, etc.) perceive a decline in their status and privilege, this experience of status threat makes traditional and hierarchical social arrangements more attractive. A report by the North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research comprehensively outlined the bases on which Trump came to symbolize “the candidate of change” for voters. Namely, he appealed to those who were apprehensive or fearful of social transformations with regard to the economy, cultural life (LGBTQ rights, contemporary struggles for racial justice, “PC culture,” etc.), immigration, public safety with regard to violence and terrorism, and the standing of the U.S. in the world.

    The composition of voters who stayed home in 2016 and their rationale for doing so are also informative for understanding how the election tipped in Trump’s direction. The two most unpopular candidates in the field faced off against each other, and predictably the most frequently given reason for not voting was dissatisfaction with both choices. Eligible voters who did not vote were more likely to identify as independents and Democrats. Independents who did vote were slightly more likely to vote for Clinton. If independents who stayed home and voters who identified with one of the two major parties turned out and voted along party lines, Clinton would have won. Trump would have been edged out in enough states for Clinton to win the Electoral College, especially considering the razor thin margin by which Trump won in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Voters who disliked both candidates who did vote, were more likely to vote for Trump.

    A blend of white racial resentment, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and cultural and economic insecurity undoubtedly contributed to many voters’ sense of social and political disaffection and to Trump’s appeal. Clinton being a standard bearer of the Democratic Party establishment and favorite of the liberal donor class and corporate media did not ingratiate her with those looking to vote against the status quo or to those susceptible to the sort of ethnonationalist appeals and promises of swift and miraculous socioeconomic transformation that Trump was making. However, implicit and explicit sexism directed toward Clinton was unmistakable and also a factor. Outrage and hostility toward Clinton surged from the right. There were certainly legitimate populist grievances in relation to Clinton and the Democratic Party in the run-up to the 2016 election. Though, given the depth of Trump’s duplicitousness and corruption, this was a selective hostility. In other words, a level of perceived corruption and cronyism, compromised integrity, or opportunism that is routinely tolerated with more traditional candidates, when apparent with regard to Hillary Clinton, at least for a segment of the electorate, was intolerable. It should be mentioned that the Clintons evoke an almost mythical level of sniveling anger from the right, and it’s hard to say to what degree another woman in the 2016 presidential race (of either party) would have produced a comparable level of opposition. Nevertheless, hostility toward women in professional roles indicated that voters were less likely to vote for Clinton (or Jill Stein) in 2016 in particular, a trend which was more prevalent among whites, men, and Republicans. That said, a vote for Donald Trump or staying home and withholding one’s vote for either candidate in 2016 were ways for voters to express their angst. This was an anti-establishment angst, to be sure, but also one mediated by a growing sense of status threat for dominant social groups.

    While much is rightly made about the seemingly unconditional support for Trump among his core supporters, his reelection also rests in the hands of those whose support is more apprehensive. A FiveThirtyEight-commissioned SurveyMonkey poll drilled down into more “reluctant” Trump supporters. The survey showed that this contingent represented about 1/5 of his 2016 turnout. Respondents in this group were slightly more likely to be college educated, self-identify as independent, and describe themselves as moderate. Within this category 57% continued to maintain their support just over a year after Trump’s term began while 28% weren’t sure. The economy was a major determinant in whether these voters maintained their support. They were also frustrated with the media establishment, especially what they saw as “overblown” coverage of the Mueller inquiry. A nationwide poll conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for the Associated Press observed a similar proportion of voters (18%) who described themselves as “somewhat approving” of Trump. The poll showed that these respondents were more likely to disagree with Trump on key issues like healthcare, immigration, climate change, and gun control. Issues which nudged them toward a Trump vote were their rejection of the political and Democratic Party establishments, the economy, and potential Supreme Court vacancies. However, 64% of them felt that if the Meuller probe found that the president obstructed justice in the investigation of Russian election interference, that it would be at least a “somewhat” serious matter. Now, with the impeachment inquiry into Trump’s soliciting of Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden, who Trump likely sees as his most formidable political opponent, this sector of potentially wavering supporters of Trump may be even more inclined to be among those who stay home in 2020. Perhaps they’d even vote for a maverick Democrat. However, the impact of Trump’s actions on Biden’s reputation for these “moderates” remains to be seen. It’s important to keep in mind that Hillary Clinton’s perceived moral and political corruption and lack of integrity was a recurring justification for those who voted for Trump, even though they were dissatisfied with both candidates.

    Concerns with corruption and that the system is “rigged” are not unfounded. Much has been written about the influence of money in politics. Also, as touched on in the paragraph above, Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, joining the board of Burisma in Ukraine and making millions due to his father’s connections while VP, is just one example of the moral corruption (though legal) that has been largely normalized among elites who nimbly pass through the revolving door between politics and business. Such influence-peddling has rightly frustrated Americans. This culture of legitimate grift in a society that is so rich yet unequal is fundamental to understanding the cynicism and despair which led to a Trump victory. Everyone knows Donald Trump and his family are no strangers to these sorts of conflicts-of-interest and ethically problematic connections, which is why it is essential for the Democrats, if they want to beat Trump in 2020, to nominate someone largely seen as an honest outsider to the political establishment. Joe Biden isn’t that.

    Notably, there has been a recent rise of independent and progressive figures in the Democratic Party, like Bernie Sanders in 2016 and midterm Congressional candidates in 2018 like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar (among others). Bernie saw an unlikely burst of support, especially among young voters, and he unexpectedly positioned himself as a viable contender to Hillary Clinton, pushing her to the left of her usual policy positions contributing to perceptions of her as disingenuous and morally corrupt (e.g. her alignment with Wall Street firms, entrenchment and loyalty to the intelligence and Pentagon systems, support for past wars, support for the Patriot Act, past opposition to marriage equality, support for Bill Clinton’s neoliberal assault on the safety net, support for the 1990s crime bill that accelerated the mass incarceration of poor, black, and brown people, etc. etc.). Omar and Ocasio-Cortez, along with other progressive congressional contenders, won their primary races and ultimately seats in Congress. The appeal of such insurgent progressives and their bold policy ideas has shifted the entire conversation among Democratic presidential hopefuls during the string of recent primary debates. This has upset the establishment. Various billionaires, Democratic Party donors, and prominent centrist Democrats have warned the party of its embrace of “political extremes.” Michael Bloomberg and Starbucks mogul Charles Schultz even publicly considered running as independents on pro-business, centrist tickets if the Democrats failed to nominate a centrist. Bloomberg came close to running in 2016 as well. Such actions are cynical, alienating, and patronizing, implicitly communicating that voters should just let the big boys who know better tell them what’s best. The public be damned, and if they don’t listen, the billionaires and donor-class will get involved directly.

    With the leaking of private Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails in the summer of 2016, it was evident that top officials in the DNC were disparaging Sanders, despite presumptions of impartiality. This was seen as a clear indication of preference for the centrist, establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton. This internal DNC documentation revealing that the Party was operating to move Clinton forward as the nominee actually damaged the Democratic Party’s chances at winning the election. Many (across the political spectrum) saw this a just another piece of evidence that the game was “rigged” and that Clinton was the presumptive favorite even before the process had a chance to fairly shake out. Aside from centrists already in the Dem/Clinton camp, to many from the center out to the hard right of the political spectrum, this disenchantment translated to a vote against the establishment either by staying home or turning out for Trump – a decision for many voters that was only solidified in the week before the election. These “late-deciders” who voted broke for Trump by 11% in Michigan, by 17% in Florida and Pennsylvania, and 29% in Wisconsin, representing yet another significant trend in relation to Trump’s unexpected victory by such slim margins in the swing states.

    The display of Party elites and donors working to sway opinion away from popular policy proposals like Medicare For All and a Green New Deal indicates a tone deaf elitism that will take work and time to challenge and change but in the meantime will make the Democrats’ road to beating Trump in 2020 more difficult. In an April 2019 New York Times piece, it detailed an event organized by a former Democratic Party official, Leah Daughtry, where she held a closed-door event in San Francisco in March 2019 with 100 wealthy liberal donors. She described her affect on attendees as having “freaked them out” by warning that Sanders may be among the top candidates come convention time. Many Party-insiders and centrist donors see the recent progressive ascent as a threat and are organizing to obstruct it. David Brock, a polarizing party operative has been enlisted to organize the 2020 anti-Sanders operation. Brock is somewhat infamous. He coordinated networks of social media trolls to attack Sanders supporters in coordination with the pro-Clinton super PAC, Correct the Record, during the runup to the 2016 election. Before aligning with the Democrats and Clinton, he waged a viciously misogynistic campaign to discredit Anita Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas shortly after Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

    ThinkProgress, website and appendage of the think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), ran a smear video against Sanders earlier in the year when his most recent tax returns showed that he’d become a millionaire from the sales of his books. CAP was started by John Podesta, former chief of staff for Bill Clinton and campaign chair for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Neera Tanden is the current head of the think tank and is a fierce Clinton ally. Under her direction, she has noted that CAP is focusing on addressing antagonisms with “millennial agitators” in the Party and working on pitching watered down, more market-based versions progressive initiatives like Medicare For All.

    Warren has also been a target of concern recently. A recent CNBC story reported that Wall Street and other corporate Democratic Party donors are threatening to “sit out the presidential campaign fundraising cycle” or even support Trump if Elizabeth Warren is the Democratic nominee. The report noted Warren’s criticism of big banks and corporations, support for a wealth tax, and her recent surge in the polls against Joe Biden. One wealthy donor noted, “I want to help the party, but she’s going to hurt me, so I’m going to help President Trump.” To more disenchanted voters in the political center and right (regardless of party affiliation) who are rightly concerned about their economic and social well-being, all this is just more evidence that Democratic promises to address their problems are empty. For many on the progressive left, it shows a willingness of the ruling-class flank of American liberalism, Democratic Party bosses, and wealthy donors to risk empowering an ascendant proto-fascism instead of even considering modest policy alternatives to neoliberalism or taking seriously popular demands for economic, gender, sexual, racial, and climate justice.

    Trump has his work cut out for him, especially now as he’s embroiled in the Ukraine scandal and facing the impeachment inquiry in the House. His reelection, to some extent, relies on a delicate balance. He needs to continue to signal his usual toxic blend of coded and not-so-coded racism, elitism, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQ bigotry to his MAGA hat-wearing base while not pushing away his reluctant, more moderate supporters. His winning key swing states again in 2020 is, in part, dependent on this juggling act. He also has to maintain enough legitimacy for his supporters overall as more and more information is revealed about the depths of his criminality and corruption. However, there’s still a lot of time between now and November 2020.

    If the Democratic Party and American voters more generally want to defeat Trump, an establishment candidate awash in establishment money isn’t going to get the job done. Democratic primary voters need to make sure an establishment outsider seen as honest and smart with a track record of advocating in good faith for the public is the nominee in 2020. Either an honest, consistent, progressive populist like Bernie Sanders or a liberal, policy savvy, advocate like Elizabeth Warren are the best shot for the nation at defeating Trump at the polls. Of course, we don’t need a populism that appeals to the lowest tendencies of our society and empowers forces of hate. Rather, a principled candidate running on bold policy initiatives which address injustice without appearing to be delivering finely tuned, focus group-tested sound bites could peel away some of those disgruntled, anti-establishment voters that turned out for Trump in 2016. Warren and Sanders, though different, can do this.

    I feel that a person would stand an even greater chance of beating Trump if they transparently addressed the Democratic Party’s elitism and its shameful pursuit of large donor, special interest, and Wall Street support at the expense of the interests of the Party’s base and of the American public. This would be damaging for the Democratic Party machine as it currently exists, but would deeply ingratiate the candidate with voters exasperated with politics as usual and be good for the party and country in the long run. Trump upended the GOP machine by taking on politics as usual, and he’s, well, Trump. Imagine if a progressive with integrity who wasn’t self-serving or stoking social divisions within the populace gave it a shot. Joe Biden is not the person for the job. Sanders could take on Democratic machine given his vast grassroots funding base and still prevail. This would be trickier for Warren, and it could come across as largely rhetorical and superficial, given reports that she’s quietly assuring Democratic Party insiders behind the scenes. This makes Sanders the more broadly appealing candidate in 2020 if we’re thinking beyond just traditional Democratic voters. Though, either can potentially win. Taking on the establishment in either capacity could even inspire more Democrats and independents to show up on Election Day, which, if trends repeat from 2016 (and there’s no guarantee that they will) would favor the Democratic candidate. As for the potential of centrist and conservative Democrats sitting out the election if a progressive gets the nomination, Trump should provide enough of a unifying force to bring enough of them out either way. After all, centrist and conservative Clinton supporters were keen on disparaging Sanders supporters in 2016 based on the notion that they did not turn out to support Clinton in the election. Hopefully Democratic establishment loyalists will walk the walk in 2020 if Biden fails to win the nomination of their party.

    If we look at current data, the major and most recent polls based on the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average, show that Biden has a +7.7% advantage against Trump in the general election, compared to a +4.8% advantage for Sanders and a +4.0% advantage for Warren. Given that, it’s tempting to conclude that, of course, Biden would be our best shot at beating Trump. However, consider that this time in the last presidential election cycle, Clinton showed a +5.0% advantage based on the RCP average. By the time of the election, that spread thinned out to +3.2%. Sanders terminated his candidacy in July 2016 and endorsed Clinton, but polling through May and early June of that year showed that he was favored over Trump with a +10.4% advantage. There’s no way of knowing if that lead would have held through November would Sanders have been the nominee, as polls at this juncture are not so predictive, something for which 2016 has provided a sore lesson.

    Trumps’ most recent woes will hopefully discourage his voters whose support and inclination to come through for him on Election Day are far from certain. Anything can happen between now and then, but Biden is not up to the job of facing Trump, and there’s no telling how things will shake out with the Ukraine scandal in relation to either of them and how that might impact Biden as a candidate. In this atmosphere, a democratic candidate who is visibly and genuinely concerned with and shows a track record of addressing the environmental crisis, poverty, healthcare, war and violence, unchecked corporate power, social injustice, and the corruption of the political establishment may compel those who somewhat approve of Trump but are averse to voting Democratic to sit this one out or perhaps even vote for the Democratic candidate in the next presidential election.

    Though there are substantive difference between them and given what we know at this point in time, only a Sanders or Warren candidacy, despite their differences, can defeat Trump in 2020. Biden’s policy history is problematic, and his establishment pedigree and frequent mentions of his time as Obama’s VP will only take him so far in a general election campaign. While they shouldn’t, optics do matter, and he’s not the Joe Biden that brashly trounced Paul Ryan in the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate. Donald Trump will bluster and shout, and a soft-spoken Biden who is easily flustered and needs time to fish for words will be soundly dominated on the public stage in such a venue, and he will appear weak, all else equal. Not to mention, Biden’s strategic shift to the left may play in a similarly disingenuous way in the run-up to the general election as Clinton’s did in 2016, but as mentioned above, this discrepancy may be somewhat mitigated since he wouldn’t face the implicit and explicit sexism that Clinton experienced. Sanders more than Warren can run insulated from the corrupting forces of the DNC and Democratic Party establishment in terms of public perceptions of his integrity and motivations, but that establishment can continue to make things hard for Sanders (or any candidate who doesn’t play ball). Warren or Sanders would offer a much stronger show of force against Trump and are largely understood by voters, regardless of politics and party, as having integrity, grit, commitment, and a genuine concern for the public – things that Trump can’t compete with.

    [1] A larger portion of eligible voters voted in 2008 than 2016, but more actual voters turned out in 2016.

  • Bulls-Eye: Why Democracy by Lottery is Right for DSA

    Bulls-Eye: Why Democracy by Lottery is Right for DSA

    In his analysis of the procedural shortcomings at the Democratic Socialists of America’s national convention, Andrew Sernatinger calls for the organization to imagine “a theory of democracy beyond voting.” Democracy is a “moving target,” he notes, and while he doesn’t stipulate where the arrow should land, he pleads for a process that allows for multiple levels of engagement. What Sernatinger seeks, the ancient Athenians provided two and a half millennia ago: Democracy by lottery. In their system, any eligible citizen could serve in government via civic lotteries that chose them. While the power to pass legislation resided in the Assembly (open to all) a Council of 500, selected by lot, developed the proposals. Lotteries also chose magistrates and even judges. Only a few positions, like generals, relied on voting. Why? Because the Greeks understood a truth we’ve bitterly come to learn—wealthy elites control elections and the politicians they produce. This domination isn’t a perversion of the system, but inherent to it. “The appointment of magistrates by lot is democratical,” Aristotle observes in Politics, “and the election is oligarchical.”

    The Athenians harbored a realistic view of human nature. On the one hand, they knew that when placed in adverse circumstances, people succumb to corruption. On the other, they believed that ordinary citizens—no matter experience, status, or education—can make sound judgments when set up for success. Contemporary democratic innovation vindicates their view. Through a process of stratified selection, modern civic lotteries create a Citizens’Assembly, a representative cross-section of the populace. After consulting experts, its members work together to identify the pros, cons and trade-offs of policy options. They then render high-quality public judgments backed by considered, easily understood reasons. In this way, democracy by lottery achieves greater diversity, effectiveness, and credibility. It gives every citizen an equal chance of governing; allows them to develop an informed understanding of complex issues; and promotes long-term thinking and solutions that garner public trust.

    Today, governments in Ireland, Belgium, Britain, and more are all experimenting with civic lotteries. Leftist political parties in other countries have adopted similar processes for their internal operations. In Spain, Podemos has used lotteries to pick 17.5% of the members of its standing committee in several provinces. The radical political movement La France Insoumise did the same to select the twelve-hundred delegates to its 2017 national convention. And Mexican President Obrador’s MORENA party uses a combination of elections and lotteries to fields its candidates for the national legislature.

    If DSA wants to improve future conventions—and transform our oligarchic political system—we must follow the lead of our comrades abroad and embrace democracy by lottery. Moving to an allotted system to generate delegates, committees, and leadership could happen swiftly, with sweeping results. We could then call for the implementation of the same structures in the State, doing so with integrity and boldness. To that end, we should work to elect politicians who agree to call Citizens’Assemblies once in office. In fact, we should make a pro-democracy by lottery position a requirement for candidates seeking our endorsement. Unions and cooperative businesses should adopt the method, too, along with universities, schools, and religious bodies. The more people become exposed to real democracy in all areas of life, the more it will whet their appetite for it in politics.

    What might such a system look like for DSA? In a 2013 article for the Journal of Public Deliberation, Terrill Bouricius offers a game-changing idea: multi-body democracy by lottery. He breaks up the journey of a law into stages, assigning each stage to a separate Citizens’ Assembly. In the first stage, an Agenda Council acts as a “meta-legislative” body. This Council’s work would serve as the pre-convention, so to speak, and all DSA members would be eligible to serve (with the option to opt-out). Using a stratified civic lottery, the selected members (about 1,000) would constitute a statically representative sample of DSA. Using techniques pioneered by the Dutch organization G1000, they would identify issues needing attention and put them on the docket, under the guidance of facilitators. But they would not draft policy or vote on resolutions. To maintain accountability, openness, and universal access, all DSA members could watch the proceedings and submit petitions; petitions crossing a threshold of signatures could automatically make it onto the agenda. The Council could also solicit feedback during their sessions using crowdsourcing technologies.

    Several weeks later, the agenda items would move to a second stage for deliberation and draft resolutions. Here, fresh DSA members selected by lot would sit on Review Panels, smaller assemblies (thirty-five to fifty) focusing on each policy area designated by the Agenda Council— healthcare, education, transportation, etc. Again, all DSA members would be eligible to serve, (except those picked for the Agenda Council) and, again, members could opt out if they chose. The Review Panels would consult policy experts, engage in research, and conduct substantive deliberations. Facilitators could design the process to promote seeking common ground, while avoiding group-think, polarization, and domination by vocal individuals. The deliberations would emphasize critical thought, open-mindedness, and a civil dialogue of ideas.

    To ensure broad participation, all local DSA chapters would have the opportunity to pitch policies to the Review Panels. Each would create an Interest Panel for the respective agenda areas in the weeks leading up to this stage. Chapter members could join as many Interest Panels as they wanted; together, they would research and develop proposals. The Review Panels would then conduct hearings, either online or in-person, with each Interest Panel from each local. Com-bined with their own research, the Review Panels would coordinate and collate the various proposals into comprehensive resolutions, debating and refining them in the process. After a final vote, the Panels would issue both a majority and minority reports, making the former give an ac- counts of its decisions, and the latter a formal opportunity for dissent.

    They would not make the final decisions, however. That responsibility would fall to Policy Juries. These bodies would again be constituted through civic lotteries, with new DSA members populating them (barring those who served in the previous stages). Numbering several hundred people each, these Juries would meet online or in person and serve anywhere from a few days to a week or more. An individual Jury would convene for every policy platform and con- duct a trial of the proposed resolutions. Proponents from the Review Panels would defend the policy’s merits, while opponents would argue its defects. Upon conclusion, and without debate among themselves, the Jury would vote via secret ballot. This would avoid factionalism and interference with a member’s conscientious choice. To promote unity, resolutions receiving sixty percent of the vote or higher would pass; those receiving forty percent or less would die. Any- thing in between would kick back to the Review Panels for reconsideration. The result would reflect what DSA as a whole would decide if all its members had the information and time to reflect. But even if the Jury decided purely on the grounds of self-interest, “at worst we arrive at the ideal outcome envisioned by adversarial liberal democracy,” Bouricius explains, “which is finding the majority preference among competing interests.”

    As for terms of service, veterans of the Agenda Council and Review Panels would have to wait at least one whole convention before being eligible for selection again. E.g., a member who sits on a Review Panel in 2021 would be automatically ineligible for the Review Panels or Agenda Council in 2023 (but could serve on a Policy Jury). This limit would both reduce corrupting tendencies associated with incumbency, and ensure broad participation by the member- ship. A Rules Council, also constituted via a civic lottery, would establish and update the procedures of the whole process, without knowing how changes would affect particular resolutions. To avoid abuse, it would not have the authority to increase its own power, and any rule changes would take effect only once it achieved complete turnover in membership. They would also hear complaints of biased or unfair behavior—e.g., charismatic but misleading presentations to a Policy Jury.

    As for DSA’s National Political Committee, its members would also be chosen by lot, and limited to a single term. Like now, the NPC would guide DSA, populate the various steering committees, and hire staff. Plato knew that philosophers make for the best rulers but will never seek power, out of fear of corruption. With that in mind, the NPC would conduct a thorough vetting process when selecting personnel, people at once highly qualified, yet who do not proactively seek the job. After selecting a batch of experienced candidates, the NPC would make the final selections by lot. A separate Oversight Council, also allotted, could act as a watchdog of the NPC and the various committees and commissions. This Council would evaluate the performance of leadership and staff, removing incompetent or abusive office holders. To avoid conflicts of interest, the Oversight Council would be repopulated with new members before seeking any replacement.

    Along with the civic lotteries themselves, the key to the success of this system is the quality of the deliberations. Rather than engage in the adversarial, gamesmanship approach engendered by Roberts’ Rules of Order, Citizens’ Assemblies investigate various perspectives by hearing from experts. They then explore ideas and establish common ground before finally reaching a decision. And instead of a zero-sum objective, the process seeks and strives for consensus. Facilitators help the group identify and counteract common biases, while also training them in the art of collaborative inquiry and joint questioning of specialists. The group learns how to call on their own experts, too. But the deliberations don’t paper over substantive differences or aim for the lowest common denominator. Quite the opposite—facilitators help the members surface disagreements and engage conflicts. Resolution is desirable, but consensus is not a must. If after much effort the group remains divided, they can take a vote via secret ballot, employing one of the various tools available: the Condorcet method, multi-option voting, preferential voting, etc. The group then produces both a majority and a minority report.

    A multi-body approach along these lines would mark a watershed in the history of DSA, of the American left itself. Bouricius’s design isn’t the only way to implement democracy by lottery, nor does it achieve immaculacy. None does. Our fallible human nature will find ways to weaken any process. The structure contains vulnerabilities, points where corrupt actors could throttle the system. Like any form of government, its success depends on the ethics of its partici-pants. This concession makes the Rules and Oversight Councils such critical additions. These bodies provide the means of improving the system and fixing flaws. A self-learning, self-correcting intelligence animates the whole apparatus as a result. It’s difficult to imagine a more effective conception. In considering it, DSA shouldn’t ask, “Would this be perfect?” We should ask instead, “Would this be better?” And the answer, resoundingly, is yes.

  • Palestinians in Israel at the Polls

    Palestinians in Israel at the Polls

    Who could have missed Ayman Odeh’s eloquent op-ed piece in the New York Times, where he rightly asserted that “Arab-Palestinian citizens have chosen to reject Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his politics of fear and hate, and the inequality and division he advanced for the past decade”? Or his explanation of why he and the coalition he leads chose to nominate Benny Gantz—an IDF chief accused of war crimes against fellow Palestinians—for prime minister. It was on this promise, and with the full knowledge that the Joint List will never be part of the emerging future ruling coalition, that sixty percent of Israel’s’ Arab citizens voted, making the Joint List coalition of Palestinian-Arab-led parties the third-largest list in the Knesset and the leading oppositional force in Israel.

    This needs some unpacking. Palestinian-Arabs within pre-1967 Israel face Jewish chauvinism on two levels: as individual citizens and as a national minority.  The Declaration of Independence and the Basic Laws of Israel, however, preclude the construction of apartheid, a condition characterized by institutional restrictions imposed on individuals due to their racial, gender, religious or national origin. Resident Palestinian-Arabs, in contrast, have the right to be citizens; to obtain an education; to participate freely in the political life of the country; to practice their religions; to retain the right to immigrate and emigrate; and the right to choose where to live and ones’ job and place of work.

    That these rights are often poorly enforced or enforced in bad faith, or with a blind-eye toward specific violations, does not change the fact. The legal system of Israel stipulates its non-apartheid character, which is why Palestinian political life in Israel is not primarily oriented around the struggle for civil rights.

    Palestinian oppression inside Israel is primarily and systemically rooted in the national question, at the level of the collectivity, not of the individual. In context, all existing Arab majority states arguably oppress both on an apartheid (individual, e.g., by withholding equal gender or religious minorities rights) and on an Arab chauvinist (communal/national, where minority Kurds and Berber communities, for instance, have no national rights) level. Israeli Palestinian-Arab parties reject the Zionist character of the Israeli state for its failure to their community as a legitimate national minority.

    The Communists seek a non-national state, a state of its citizens such as exists in the U.S.—where the state defines the nation, rather than where the dominant nation defines the state. The other parties exist to advance an assertion of Palestinian nationalism in one form or another. That is the common reason why the ruling Zionist parties have always refused formal electoral coalitions with these groups. It is understood that a Zionist coalition with any Palestinian party would be a slippery slope functional concession to the bi-national reality of Israel. It would challenge the existing Jewish power monopoly over political life, a challenge that the Zionist structure of Israel seeks to suppress. Israel is not an apartheid state, but it is a Jewish chauvinist state.

    That is not to deny that Zionist parties, even settler parties, have and have always had Arab lists. But these slots exist to cement loyalties based on patronage. Israel functions as a Jewish chauvinist state, not as an apartheid state, precisely because its dominant Jewish circles are unwilling to adopt the conditionality of any Palestinian-Israeli party’s national platform as a basis for an electoral alliance. Israel is willing to accept, and at times even actively promote, the social and economic integration of Palestinian-Arab citizens, but draws a line at their political integration.

    As long as Israel remains in a cold war with its Arab minority, it will be unable to reach real peace with the Arab world. Not even if it successfully navigates formal power accords from on high with neighboring Arab ruling classes. Real peace between separate states no less than between nations within a bi-national or multi-national state framework can only be cemented from below; not by superior force of numbers or of arms, but by democratizing the relations among peoples.

    That unwillingness to seek a democratic accord internally effectively locks out the Arab community from full participation in the governance of society and deprives that community from an equitable distribution of state funds—both developmentally and culturally—needed to put it on an equal footing with Israel’s Jewish majority. This democratic deficit has habitually bred a cynical contempt—even resignation—on the part of the Arab community within Israel that no gains can be leveraged through electoral participation and has been reflected time and again in low voter turnout. Avenues of advancement could only be personal—through credentialization, entrepreneurship, or artistic and athletic achievement.

    That is, until now.

    The point is this. It was not the seemingly endless occupation that brought Palestinians to the polls in near record numbers. If that were the decisive issue, they might have been electorally engaged and committed long ago. They might have selected to support dovish Zionist parties that were in a position to place the occupation center stage as they did years ago when they backed Rabin. A poll conducted in April notably found that far more of them prefer to self-identify as Arab Israelis than as Palestinians.

    No, it was rather on a far more intimate level that the loathsome Netanyahu regime threatened its Arab citizens. With the Nation-State Law, and with his attempt to permanently restrict and circumvent the legal system as a check against legislative excess—and to inoculate himself against serial law breaking—Palestinians began to see the outline of Netanyahu’s ultimate nullification of the legal proscriptions against apartheid. Finally fed up with Netanyahu’s Arab-baiting, racialized “othering” and unhinged chauvinist demagoguery, a continuous incitement that portended an immanent rollback of whatever social gains Palestinians have attained, Israeli Palestinians took matters into their own hands.

    The election was a fight-back. Palestinians sought to preserve and extend their hard-fought individual rights in the only way they could, by asserting their collective political rights to a shared future with Jews in this part of their common homeland.

    Such is the background to the Arab vote. But before romanticizing this choice, it is necessary to understand that this is a devil’s bargain. Benny Gantz, the leader of Kahol Lavan, who 11 out of 13 Arab parties on the Joint List recommended to form the next government, is no leftist, no liberal and no centrist. He is a soft Likudnik. The party he leads is a right wing party led by generals, and certainly not dovish generals. Gantz boasted in his campaign about the hundreds killed under his command in two Gaza incursions. He is hardly likely to restart peace talks with the Palestinian Authority and is ambiguous, in the most optimistic of readings, at a future two-state solution.

    That the Joint List’s Balad party refused to recommend him is cynically, but realistically seen as a feather in Gantz’s cap, saving him from the charge of being an “Arab-lover” and thereby burnishing his hardline appeal. The Joint List’s recommendation, even in its dissent, are two-prongs of a desperate ploy to put an end to the Netanyahu era.

    Israelis—Jewish and Arab—are undoubtedly among the most misled peoples of any democracy. With the decades old dismantling of Israel’s bureaucratic collectivist social democracy—in a process not utterly unlike that which transpired in Eastern Europe and Russia—state and Histadrut (Israel’s Mapai-controlled labor union federation) properties were auctioned off at bargain basement prices to would be oligarchs. Celebrated in the long aftermath as a “start-up” economy, it is now one of the most unequal among advanced economies in the world. Its wealth is concentrated within a handful of families, who dominate the political process to the detriment of any progressive social agenda. The manifest inability to find affordable housing has driven hordes of Israelis, who have no real ideological or religious commitment to colonialization, to settle in the occupied territories.

    And the Arab parties are really not much more appealing. Its leading faction, Hadash, led by the now celebrated Ayman Odeh, is, as are most Arab Communist Parties, staunchly pro-Bashar al-Assad. It even staged a demonstration in Tel Aviv calling for the investigation into the world wide “conspiracy against Syria.” The rest of the Joint List also contains an amalgam of Nasserists and Islamists, some of whose prominent representatives are repugnant even to Jewish leftists for their repeated public celebration of the murder of innocents Jews as a legitimate form of national self-expression and their retailing of blood libels such as the harvesting of Palestinian organs.

    Still, and for better or worse, these parties are the legitimate representatives of the overwhelming majority of Israel’s Arab population, and certainly no more odious than Jewish-Israel’s long dominant political parties.

    It seems likely that this election will end in a unity government led by Gantz and Likud. But if it were a Likud shorn of or with a massively disempowered Netanyahu, Israelis Arabs would have done themselves, Israel and the world a tremendous service.

  • One Member/One Vote: CA Health Care Workers Show How To Endorse, Democratically

    One Member/One Vote: CA Health Care Workers Show How To Endorse, Democratically

    At the national, state, and even local level, union political endorsements are often made with insufficient membership involvement.

    Union leaders and legislative/political directors like to get their favorite candidates endorsed, without too much debate or discussion.

    Instead of giving every member a voice in such decisions, a pliant local executive board, a meeting of union delegates, or an appointed political action committee decides which candidate to back—and support financially.

    As Labor Notes just reported, this top-down approach is increasingly controversial, particularly among Bernie Sanders supporters who were not consulted about their unions’ ill-fated embrace of Hillary Clinton three years ago.

    To avoid being by-passed again, some union activists are demanding a bigger say in 2020 presidential primary endorsements.  Now, thanks to the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), they have a good working model for making candidate endorsements more democratic, by opening up the process to all members.

    NUHW represents 15,000 hospital and nursing home workers in California. Like the United Electrical Workers (UE), it’s not affiliated with the AFL-CIO. And, along with the UE, NUHW was one of only seven national unions that backed Sanders in 2016.

    A Dual Endorsement

    On Thursday, Sept 26, the NUHW announced that it was endorsing both Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren because “the union’s executive board decided that [was] the most appropriate reflection of the will of the membership.”

    But, to determine the will of the members, NUHW didn’t just rely on the judgement of a few union officials. Every NUHW dues payer was invited to designate his or her first choice for president or top three picks.

    This on-line voting was conducted by email or text and overseen by an outside firm. Balloting was held after information on presidential candidates was posted on the union’s website, utilizing their own responses, if any, to a detailed NUHW questionnaire.

    In the results just announced, the final tally showed what percentage of the ballots mentioned each candidate’s name. The names of Warren and Sanders appeared on 61 and 50 percent of the ballots respectively, resulting in the NUHW decision “to offer grassroots support to both the Warren and Sanders campaigns” (along with a $5,000 donation to each).

    Kamala Harris and Joe Biden were listed on 34 and 32 percent of the ballots respectively, while Pete Buttigieg appeared on 21 percent of the electronic votes cast.

    President Donald Trump’s name appeared on 12 percent of the ballots, even though his campaign declined to answer the NUHW candidate questionnaire or send a video message to its annual stewards’ conference (for the full tally, see: https://nuhw.org/nuhw-members-endorse-warren-sanders-president/).

    Direct Questioning

    At that statewide meeting in Anaheim on Sept. 20-22, four hundred NUHW stewards were able to question Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders directly via a live hook-up. Other candidates sent prerecorded video messages that to, varying degrees, addressed the union’s top queries about health care, immigration, and labor law reform.

    At the stewards’ conference, Sanders, received the strongest audience response, followed by Warren. Both made a convincing argument that strengthening the labor movement would be a central goal of their administrations, although Sanders’ explanation of his proposed Workplace Democracy Act provided a more detailed road map for doing that.

    In a later open-mic discussion of the relative merits of various contenders, some NUHW delegates, like Marie Chavez, seemed to favor a dual endorsement of Sanders and Warren.

    “Bernie has really shifted the conversations were having about economic inequality and single payer healthcare,” Chavez said. “I also appreciate the things Senator Warren is doing.”

    Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden each came under fire for a damaging faux pas involving the very union they were wooing.

    A Private Insurance Defender

    In her endorsement pitch, Harris stressed her long history of involvement with California healthcare workers but made the mistake of repeatedly referring to her audience as “UHW,” rather than NUHW.

    NUHW became an independent union rival to the SEIU-affiliated United Healthcare Workers ten years ago after many of its leaders were removed from office and their statewide local put under trusteeship by then-SEIU President Andy Stern. Some of NUHW’s largest bargaining units had to wage bitter fights to leave UHW.

    On the issue of health care reform, Harris was similarly tone-deaf. She explained that her proposal for a “universal system that gives us choice” preserved a role for private insurers during a “10-year transition period” because union officials have urged her not to “give away our chance to negotiate on health benefits.”

    That didn’t go over well because NUHW is a longtime Medicare for All supporter and heavily involved in healthcare industry disputes—including strikes—over benefit issues. None of its activists or leaders seem particularly eager to have President Harris help perpetuate these nightmarish bargaining situations for another decade.

    In fact, one of NUHW’s on-going contract campaigns involves the hugely profitable but still concession seeking Kaiser Permanente. As part of a long struggle by Kaiser mental health professionals for better staffing, some NUHW members in LA picketed a political fund-raiser hosted by Dr. Cynthia Telles, a UCLA medical school professor and board member of the Kaiser Foundation.

    Who was the special guest at Dr. Telles’ gathering of wealthy corporate Democrats? None other than former Vice-President Joe Biden, a regular at such “high dollar donor” affairs.

    “Say No To Joe”

    For that reason, viewers of Biden’s video message were doubtful about his claim that, “under a Biden Administration, collective bargaining and the right to organize will be a sacred.”

    Several speakers recalled that Biden never responded to NUHW requests that he encourage his friends and donors in Kaiser management to settle their long-running conflict with the hospital chain’s mental health therapists.

    “Not only did Joe cross our picket line, he flat out refused to even acknowledge us,” reported Kaiser worker Stacy Cohen. “He does not love us, doesn’t care about us, and he is not with us.”  After Cohen spoke, Deborah Silverman, a fellow Kaiser employee, took the floor, aired the same grievance against

    Biden, and led a rousing chant—“Say No to Joe!”

    According to NUHW President Sal Rosselli, this kind of open debate (and related rank-and-file endorsement vote) is essential to making political action “member-driven,” rather than leadership directed. When union activists are questioned by skeptical co-workers about how and why the union is taking political stands, they can reply, as mental health therapist Marirose Occhiogrosso does, that she’s “proud to belong to a union where we decide which candidates to support.”

    Although a longer voting period might have enabled more membership participation, NUHW’s unusual exercise in democracy stands in sharp contrast to organized labor’s usual endorsement procedures, not to mention the controversial method just used by the union-backed Working Families Party (WFP)

    To engineer an endorsement of Warren, instead of Sanders, fifty WFP local and national leaders gave their candidate preference the same weight as the total vote by hundreds of Party members and supporters who participated in an on-line presidential poll.

    This “super delegate” travesty generated membership complaints, bad press in the mainstream media, and sharp criticism on the left (see: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/09/working-families-party-elizabeth-warren-endorsement and https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/09/working-families-party-endorsement-elizabeth-warren-bernie-sanders).

    If unions and organizations allied with them, like the WFP, are serious about internal democracy and restoring membership confidence in their political endorsements, they need to give rank-and-file members the final say.

    And that means discontinuing their traditional top-down decision-making and not resorting instead to electronic balloting rigged to insure the preferred outcome of the officialdom.

  • An Open Letter to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

    An Open Letter to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

    In Resolution 62 of the Atlanta Convention of DSA you asserted your support for the Cuban government and condemned the U.S. policy of economic sanctions on that country.

    I who write to you, a Cuban formed in the struggle by trying to create for his country a better society, consider this letter a greeting of solidarity among all of us in Cuba and the United States who fight for the ideal of social justice. I agree with you in your opposition to the politics of the economic embargo against Cuba and, in particular, oppose the indirect backing by the darkest currents of neo-fascism and the white supremacy of the Trump administration. But it is also my desire to warn you of the danger that because of a lack of information and despite you best intentions, you may fall into the historic error of adopting positions and making judgments that don’t coincide either with Cuban reality or the ideals that you yourselves claim to defend.

    The economic system installed in Cuba, without any popular vote, was copied from the Russian Stalinist model, an arbitrary and opportunistic interpretation of the Marxist theory of socialist revolution, that returned to the most reactionary elements of Hegelian thought embodied in his Philosophy of Law regarding a state that should absorbed all of civil society and all individual wills. In Cuba this took the form of a state that took over the confiscated latifundios (large plantations) of the great landlords and instead of dividing these lands among the dispossessed peasants, became itself the “supreme landlord,” as Marx himself called it in the third volume of Capital, to continue exploiting the day laborers in the countryside. In the cities the same thing took place with industries, business, banks and other enterprises, giving the state the absolute monopoly and generating a corrupt bureaucracy that has arisen in the midst of the poverty of the country. And not satisfied with all of that, in 1968 it took from independent workers their modest means of survival.

    That leadership, in the name of a so-called socialism, jailed and shot many veteran comrades in the sruggle for oppose this model imposed by force, and then censured and gagged those intellectuals who proposed to make their model of more democratic, shutting down magazines, publicly insulting them, jailing them, sending them for long period of time to do hard labor or forcing them to pronounce humiliating mea culpas.

    Not only did they violate the citizens’ fundamental rights, but they institutionalized these violations in coth the constitution of 1976 as well as in the constitution adopted this year, in 2019, in which there are no constitutional guarantees in defense of such rights. The executive, judicial, legislative, and electoral branches of government are all placed under the control of the Communist Party, which also enjoys a monopoly power over the means of communication. In the so-called elections, the citizen really has no right to elect candidates, since they have been preselected by candidate commissions, which themselves were not elected by the citizens.

    Moreover, the leadership has raised the flag of anti-imperialism not principally to defend national sovereignty but to turn attention away from the real contradiction that Cubans face today between a group that converted a country into its own fiefdom and a people that has had its fundamental freedoms and rights sundered. José Martí, who is considered as the inspiration of our independence struggle, had already pointed out in 1894 one of the dangers of the socialist ideals: “that of the violence and disguised rage of the ambitious who to lift themselves up in the world, begin to pretend that on their shoulders they will raise up fanatical defenders of the dispossessed.”

    I who am writing to you could not defend such a system and at the same time hold up the banner of democratic socialism, and it is my duty, out of solidarity, to advise you that you should be better informed before you take a position in favor of what in reality has meant treason to the dreams and ideals of some many generations that fought an died for liberty and social justice.

    This article was originally published in Cubaencuentro on Sept. 17, 2019. The English translation above is by Dan La Botz. The original Spanish version of the article is found below.

    Carta Abierta los Socialistas Democráticos de América (DSA)

    Ariel Hidalgo

    En la Resolución 62 de la Convención de Atlanta ustedes manifestaron su respaldo al gobierno de Cuba y condenaron la política de Estados Unidos de restricciones económicas a ese país.

    Quien les escribe, un cubano formado en el fragor de intentar crear para su país una sociedad mejor, considera esta misiva como un saludo de confraternización entre todos los que tanto en Cuba como en Estados Unidos, luchamos por el ideal de la justicia social. Coincido con ustedes en su oposición a la política de embargo económico sobre Cuba y, en particular, al respaldo indirecto a las corrientes más oscuras del neofascismo y de la supremacía blanca de la administración Trump. Pero también es mi deseo alertarles sobre el peligro de que por falta de información y a pesar de sus nobles intenciones, caigan en el error histórico de adoptar posiciones y emitir juicios que no se ajustan con la realidad cubana ni a los ideales que ustedes dicen defender.

    El sistema económico social instaurado en Cuba sin una consulta plebiscitaria, fue copiado del modelo estalinista ruso, una interpretación arbitraria y oportunista de la teoría marxista de la revolución socialista, que retornó a los aspectos más reaccionarios del pensamiento hegeliano plasmados en La Filosofía del Derecho acerca de un Estado que debía absorber a toda la sociedad civil y a todas las voluntades individuales. En Cuba esto se materializó en un Estado que conservó los latifundios confiscados a los grandes terratenientes en vez de repartir las tierras entre los campesinos desposeídos, para convertirse en el “supremo terrateniente”, como lo calificara el propio Marx en el tercer tomo de El Capital, para continuar explotando a los jornaleros del campo. En las ciudades repitieron lo mismo con las industrias, comercios, bancos y otras empresas para hacer del Estado un monopolio absoluto y generar una burocracia corrupta que ha sumido en la miseria a todo el país. Y no bastándoles con todo lo anterior, despojaron en 1968 a los trabajadores independientes de sus modestos medios de supervivencia.

    Esa dirigencia, en nombre de ese supuesto socialismo, encarceló o fusiló a muchos de sus antiguos compañeros de lucha por oponerse a este modelo impuesto por la fuerza, y luego censuró y amordazó a los intelectuales que proponían un modelo de socialismo más democrático, cerrando sus revistas, insultándolos públicamente, encarcelándolos, enviándolos por largos períodos a realizar duras labores u obligándolos a bochornosos mea culpas.

    No sólo se violaron los derechos fundamentales de los ciudadanos, sino que estas violaciones fueron institucionalizadas, tanto en la constitución de 1976 como en la del presente año, 2019, por lo que no existen garantías constitucionales para la defensa de esos derechos. Los poderes ejecutivo, judicial, legislativo y electoral, se colocaron bajo el control del Partido Comunista, quien también goza del dominio monopólico de los medios masivos de comunicación. En las llamadas elecciones, el ciudadano no tiene realmente el derecho a elegir a los candidatos, los cuales son preseleccionados por comisiones de candidaturas que tampoco han sido electas por la ciudadanía.

    Por otra parte, la bandera del antiimperialismo ha sido enarbolada por dicha dirigencia, no tanto por defender la soberanía nacional como para desviar la atención de la verdadera contradicción que enfrentan hoy los cubanos, entre un grupo que convirtió al país en un gran feudo, y un pueblo al que se le han cercenado sus libertades y derechos fundamentales. José Martí, considerado como el numen de nuestra lucha independentista, ya había alertado en 1894, de uno de los peligros del ideal socialista, “el de la violencia y rabia disimulada de los ambiciosos que para ir levantándose en el mundo, empiezan por fingirse, para tener hombros en que alzarse, frenéticos defensores de los desamparados”.

    Quien les escribe no podría defender semejante sistema y al mismo tiempo enarbolar la bandera del socialismo democrático, y es mi deber, por solidaridad, aconsejarles que se informen bien antes de emitir un juicio favorable a lo que en realidad ha significado una traición a los sueños e ideales de tantas generaciones que lucharon y murieron por la libertad y la justicia social.

  • Sunday September 22: Livestream International Labor Solidarity Dialogue

    Sunday September 22: Livestream International Labor Solidarity Dialogue

    Sunday, September 22, 2019,  from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Geneva time

    Sponsored by the Alliance of Middle Eastern and North African Socialists

    Endorsed by New Politics 

    For the link to the livestream on the day of the event,  go to https://www.facebook.com/Alliance-of-MENA-Socialists-2196931800604746/

    Speakers:

    Kevin Lin is an activist and researcher of China’s labor movement. He co-edits the open-access journal Made in China (https://madeinchinajournal.com) that analyzes labor and social movements in China. He works on building international labor solidarity and is a contributor to Jacobin, Labor Notes, New Politics and New Labor Forum.

    Raga Makawi is a Sudanese labor activist and liaison for the Sudan Workers’ Restoration Movement.

    Kamal Aissat is an Algerian university lecturer, trade unionist and has been a member of the national bureau of the higher education lecturers’ union. He was also a founding member with other trade-unionists of the Solidarity Committee with workers’ struggles in 2012. He has been very active in the current ongoing popular movement in Algeria.

    Jose Bodas is the general secretary of the Unitary Federation of Oil Workers in Venezuela.

    Frieda Afary produces Iranian Progressives in Translation and  is a member of the Alliance of MENA Socialists. She has written articles in English and Persian about labor and feminist struggles in Iran, socialist feminism, Marx’s Capital, and Marxist critiques of state capitalism in the former USSR and Maoist China.

    Ellen David-Friedman is a retired organizer with the National Education Association in Vermont. She is a founding member of Vermont’s Progressive Party and a member of the Labor Notes policy committee.

    John Reimann has been a union activist for 35 years. He is the former recording secretary of Carpenters Local 713 in the U.S. He helped organize a wildcat strike of San Francisco Bay Area carpenters in 1999 which led to his expulsion by the union bureaucracy. He produces the blog  Oaklandsocialist.com and has written various articles about solidarity with international labor struggles including Iran and Venezuela.  He has visited the workers’ movement in Mexico, Pakistan, Egypt and Venezuela.

    Moderator:

    Selma Oumari is an Algerian French member of the New Anticapitalist Party in France and a member of the Alliance of MENA Socialists. She is involved in anti-racist struggles as well as international solidarity.

    The following questions will be discussed:

    1. What are the various labor struggles taking place in each country represented.  These will include women and oppressed minorities, migrant and slave labor?
    2. What is the specific character of capitalism and imperialism  in each country. To what extent have labor struggles responded to these realities?  To what extent have labor struggles fallen short in responding to these realities and why?
    3. How can labor struggles in the countries represented on this panel help each other?
    4. We live in an age in which state capitalism is on the rise. What types of concepts and struggles are needed to overcome both private and state capitalism?  What does emancipated labor mean?

    The last 25 minutes of the livestream will be for answering questions from the Facebook audience sent through the Facebook page of the Alliance of MENA Socialists.

    For the link to the livestream on the day of the event,  go to https://www.facebook.com/Alliance-of-MENA-Socialists-2196931800604746/

  • Global Warming, “Grass” Farming and a Planned Economy

    Global Warming, “Grass” Farming and a Planned Economy

    As the Global Climate Strike date (Sept. 20) approaches, the question that will be on the minds of millions will be: “Is there a possible way to avoid a disaster that could threaten the existence of life on earth?” Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma helps provide an answer, and that answer is “yes,” but with some qualifications. Here’s why:

    A short history of corn
    Pollan starts with an explanation of corn, which is the largest crop grown in the United States. Corn seems to have evolved from the grass called teosinte. It is a most unusual plant, starting with the unusual way in which it recruits carbon from the atmosphere, also known as photosynthesis. Most plants create carbon compounds that have three carbon atoms. Corn has a simple trick: It creates compounds with four such atoms. That sounds like a minor detail, until one realizes that the process of photosynthesis also involves the plant’s releasing water into the atmosphere. Since corn absorbs one-third more carbon atoms for photosynthesis than do most other plants, it also is far more efficient in relation to how much water it releases. Also, whereas a single seed of wheat produces about 150 wheat seeds, a single corn kernel produces up to 300 new ones.

    Then there’s the evolution aspect. Corn has evolved to be completely reliant on human beings. That’s because its seeds (kernels) are tightly encased in leaves and cannot be released on their own. Also, because the corn seeds grow half way up the plant, they absorb more of the plant’s energy, meaning that the growth of the plant, itself, takes up less energy related to the production of the corn seeds (the kernels) than in other annuals (wheat, barley, etc. all of which die at the end of their growing season).

    These features (plus a few more) made early societies like the Aztecs dependent on corn. As Pollan puts it, “corn has succeeded in domesticating us.” And because of its complex pollination system, corn proved easy to hybridize. The Native Americans hybridized thousands of different species of corn, adapted to different soils and climates. Also, corn is an easy crop to store for long periods of time.

    US Agricultural policy and corn monoculture
    Under FDR, US agricultural policy was to keep the small farmers in business by in effect paying them not to grow too much in order to keep prices higher. Under Reagan, that changed to direct price subsidies. No matter how much a farmer grew, a certain price was guaranteed and if they got a lower price, the federal government paid the farmer the difference. This induces the farmer to grow ever more. Economies of scale means that growing massive amounts of a single crop creates more profits. Corn is a natural for monoculture because of the amount it produces from a single kernel. The fact that it depletes nitrates from the soil at a higher rate than other crops is not a deterrent because of the development of modern chemistry; chemical fertilizers take care of that (to a point). And if monoculture attracts pests, then modern pesticides can take care of that too. The resulting soil depletion (also due to plowing the soil) are compensated for by ever increasing doses of chemicals. These facts lead to a policy that rewards the huge growers.

    “So the plague of cheap corn goes on, impoverishing the farmers (both here and in the countries to which we export it), degrading the land, polluting the water, and bleeding the federal treasury, which now spends up to $5 billion a year subsidizing cheap corn,” writes Pollan. In 1970, the US produced 4 billion bushels of corn. By 2005, that was 10 billion, according to Pollan. (By 2013-14 it had increased to 13 billion bushels.)

    As for what to do with all the surplus corn, again modern chemistry takes care of that, partly through breaking down the corn into such products as high fructose corn syrup, which is added to huge numbers of processed foods. But the single greatest user of corn and corn by-products is the beef industry; 60% of the corn produced in the US goes to feed cattle on the feed lots, known as “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations” or CAFO’s.

    Here, the cattle are concentrated by the thousands in huge, open air pens and fed a mixture of products, most of which cows did not evolve to eat. Corn and corn by products are the major ingredient. Because cows (which are ruminants) evolved to eat grass, not corn, they do not digest the corn easily and are subject to infection and disease as a result. That’s partly why they have to be fed antibiotics on their way to their date at the slaughter house.

    These methods not only produce unhealthy meat, they also deplete the soil by killing off the bacteria and insects that maintain soil fertility and health. By plowing the earth, they help increase erosion. There is also the run-off of nitrates and pesticides which damage the environment, including causing algae bloom in oceans.

    Not directly mentioned in Pollan’s book, but of significance here, it is estimated that 9% of global greenhouse gas emissions comes from agriculture. We will see the relevance below.

    Organic farming

    Organic farming, which as of 2005 was an $11 billion per year industry, has been popularized as a solution. Although in some ways it is really a fraud (such as with “organic, free range chickens” who are cooped up in a hen-house and given access to a tiny patch of bare dirt which qualifies them to be labeled “free range”), it is a step forward. For one, it doesn’t damage the soil as much. Also, the farm workers aren’t exposed to as many chemicals, nor are those who eat the product.

    Pollan also says that it has been shown that organic vegetables are, in fact, higher in nutritional value. That may be because the plants are forced to produce their own defenses against pests – defenses which translate into nutrition for us. Another possible reason might be that the soil is healthier and provides more nutrients.

    It does little or nothing for the issue of global warming, however. That’s because, according to Pollan 80% of the fuel used for agriculture is used to bring food to the market. According to the US Department of Agriculture, 30% by weight of all hauling by rail, roadways and waterways is so used. The transport sector is the single largest emitter of greenhouse gas (at 29% of the total). But these figures are misleading; they underestimate how a transformation in agricultural practices can be a huge step away from global climate disaster.

    “Grass farming”
    No, we’re not talking about growing and smoking pot! We’re referring to what is also known as regenerative farming. To understand this, we have to return to the beginning.

    And in the beginning, there was… the bison. And there were the wolves. And there were thousands of square miles of grasslands at least in North America; similar conditions existed elsewhere. It is estimated that in the US these grasslands (and some other areas) supported up to 60 million bison, which are also a ruminant, like cattle. The bison were forced by predators – mainly wolves – to bunch up together and also to frequently be on the move. This accomplished several things: It prevented the bison from grazing the grass down to the very roots, which would have prevented the grass from regenerating itself as well as from the more ground-hugging types from growing altogether. It also meant that the bison were a constantly moving fertilizer (manure) spreader.

    Joel Salatin
    Enter Joel Salatin, about whom Pollan spends a major portion of his book. Although he calls himself a “grass farmer”, Salatin raises not only beef, but hogs, chicken (both broilers and egg layers), turkeys, rabbits and vegetables. Salatin mimics nature by how he raises his animals through “managed grazing”. He divides his pastures into small “paddocks” enclosed with mobile electric fences and moves the cattle from one paddock to another every few days.

    How does all this relate to the issue of greenhouse gas emissions and global climate disaster? Let’s get back to the roots, literally – the roots and the dirt they grow in.

    Joel Salatin with his contented cattle

    When Pollan visited his farm – named “Polyface Farm” – the first thing Salatin did was take him out to a field and get him down to dirt level. He emphasized that healthy soil is not simply a soil with proper NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium) amounts and balance (as modern chemistry claims). Nor is it inert; rather it is in constant change, more like a living organism than a “thing.” Pollan explains the importance of humus, which is “what’s left of organic matter after it has been broken down by the billions of big and small organisms that inhabit a spoonful of earth – the bacteria, phages, fungi and earthworms responsible for its decomposition” if they haven’t been killed off by harsh chemicals. Pollan explains that this decomposition is only part of the process. “A whole group of other organisms slowly breaks humus down into chemical elements plants need to grow, elements including but not limited to, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. This process is as much biological as chemical, involving the symbiosis of plants and the mycorrhizal fungi that live in and among the roots; the fungi offer soluble nutrients to the roots, receiving a drop of sucrose in return…. [Humus also enables the soil to]hold water in suspension so that rainfall remains available to plant roots instead of instantly seeping away.” Think: water and soil retention vs. water runoff and soil erosion.

    Salatin explains to Pollan that grass grows in phases – slowly at first, then a sudden spurt and then another slow stage where it becomes “woody” and less sweet. He explains that it’s vital to have the cows graze at the peak of the first growth phase, after it’s started to grow but before the growth levels off. This accomplishes a couple of things: It allows the lower-to-earth grasses such as clover to grow. A legume, clover fixes nitrogen to the soil with its roots. This rotational grazing also stimulates the just grazed grass to grow again. In doing so, the grass puts most of its energy into growing above the soil, shedding much of its roots, which then decay below ground, enriching the soil.

    First cows, then chickens
    After the cattle, Salatin brings in the chickens who, among other things, eat the fly larvae growing in the cow manure. Scratching and clawing at the manure to get at the larvae, they also help spread it. Also, by eating the larvae, they eliminate a huge mass of flies, thereby eliminating the need for Salatin to bathe his cattle in pesticides. They, too, leave their nitrogen-rich droppings in the paddock as they happily run about doing what chickens were born to do.

    Carbon “sequestration” (removal)
    Here’s where the issue of carbon emissions and sequestration (removal of carbon from the atmosphere) comes in.According to Pollan “if the sixteen million acres now being used to grow corn to feed cows in the United States became well-managed pasture, that would remove fourteen billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking four million cars off the road.” Given that there are about 270 million cars in the US, that is just a drop in the bucket. But it shows how “grass farming” could be a major step in the right direction, if combined with other fundamental economic and political changes.

    These changes include one that Salatin insists on: Selling locally only. Since as Pollan explains, 80% of the fuel used in bringing food to the market is used by processing and transporting the food, consuming locally grown foods would be another important step.

    Up to individual consumers?
    Simply leaving it up to individual consumers to “consume locally” is a non-starter. It might make a few people feel morally just doing so, but it won’t counter all the pressures that agribusiness and their allies bring to bear. In addition, businesses from Cargill to Dow Chemical have too much influence to ever allow such methods to become generalized. From imposing all kinds of “health” requirements on slaughterhouses that enable only the biggest to survive, to socializing the real costs (in terms of environmental degradation, human health, etc.) thereby enabling them to sell cheap, industrial agriculture will remain the order of the day under capitalism. But Salatin’s “grass farming” (he actually backtracks and says he’s not even farming grass; he’s farming solar power!) shows what’s scientifically possible.

    The largest recipients of farm subsidies. It’s big business.

    Harvesting subsidies
    There are powerful interests opposed to these methods. First are the recipients of agricultural subsidies. According to Forbes, by 2018, “Over $11 billion in farm subsidies flowed to just 6,618 lucky recipients who received at least $1 million since 2008.”Of the 23 largest recipients, these subsidies ranged from $10 million to $23.8 million. Nor did the money even go to rural residents. “Residents living in America’s five most populated cities received $18 milion in farm subsidies” and 25% of the subsidy money went to somebody who received at least $250,000.

    As for the smaller farmer, like a drug addict hooked on meth, once she or he is hooked on government subsidies to raise corn, it’s nearly impossible to get off. That’s because after just a few years the soil has become so depleted (and also compacted by the use of heavy equipment) that it would take years to recover. Meanwhile, the mortgage and other debts have to be repaid. And big farm or small, the over 90 million acres of farmland devoted to raising corn involve massive investment in that particular crop.

    According to Pollan, just two companies – Cargill and ADM – buy one-third of all the corn produced in the US. They control the corn-growing process from start to finish. All this means that there are powerful investments in keeping US agriculture as it is.

    Chemical industry
    Then there is the chemical fertilizer industry, which invests $3.8 billion annually in new facilities (according to their report). As far as pesticides and herbicides, the EPA stopped releasing reports on their total sales 20 years ago, according to Pesticide Action Network. However, they report that in 2012, agribusiness spent $12.6 billion on pesticides (90% of the total) and the expenditures for pesticides as a percentage of overall farming costs is increasing.

    Corn is also essential to the food processing industry, as Pollan explains. He also explains the profits involved. Whereas 40% of the retail price of an egg (= unprocessed food) goes to the farmer whose chickens laid the egg, only 4% of the price of the ubiquitous corn sweeteners go to the corn farmer. (This also proves the labor theory of value!) As Pollan quotes farmers, “there’s money to be made in food, unless you’re trying to grow it!”

    According to the capitalists – including Bill Gates, who salutes the chemical fertilizer industry – all these methods are necessary in order to provide inexpensive food. But is it really so cheap? The reality is that they have once again privatized the profits while socializing many of the costs – costs which include algae bloom from nitrate runoff into lakes and oceans, health care costs, and the costs of long term environmental damage including but not limited to global climate change.

    Two truly revolutionary steps
    Two revolutionary steps are necessary: One is to gear food production to social – including environmental – need rather than private profit. This would have to coincide with a conscious and systematic plan for such production. But neither of these steps is possible in isolation; they could only be realized in the context of a planned economy based on social and environmental need. And in any case, even if it were possible to plan food production based on human and environmental need inside a profit-driven (i.e. a capitalist) economy, just that change alone wouldn’t solve the global climate change crisis. What’s needed for that is the transformation of the entire economy, including transportation, industrial production, etc. through such planning.

    Such a plan would have to include an integration of the countryside with more urban areas. True, more labor is required for grass or regenerative farming, but huge amounts of labor are potentially being freed up through the introduction of computers and mechanization in other industries.

    Then there’s another issue: This writer, who grew up in New York City, worked for a couple of summers on dairy farms as a teenager. My experience tells me how enormously healthy, both physically and mentally, such work is, especially for young people. Yes, “getting back to nature” should be part of a planned economy!

    Another part would have to be preserving wilderness areas. Three quarters of Polyfarm is actually forest. And Salatin explains how the forest areas are necessary for soil and general environmental health of the rest of the farm.

    All of this and more would have to be considered in planning an economy.

    As shown by the failure of the Soviet Union and similar governments, such a plan can only succeed if it is managed and controlled by the workers themselves, including such farmers as Joel Salatin. In other words, through a workers’ state.

    And how we get there is a whole other topic!

    Further reading
    If you found this article interesting, you would be interested in the following:

    David Walters has written further on the topic of regenerative agriculture. See Developing a Marxist approach to global agriculture: A primer on the role of animals in maintaining soil health.

    Also relevant is the article Can the green new deal save the planet?

    In The Environmentalist Manifesto we expose the role of the non profits and the union bureaucracy in tying the environmental movement to the Democratic Party and to big business, thereby watering down that movement.

    Finally, for a Marxist approach to how a workers state can develop, see our pamphlet What is Revolution?

    Originally posted at Oaklandsocialist.com.

  • Review: Can the Left Learn to Meme?: Adorno, Videogaming, and Stranger Things

    Review: Can the Left Learn to Meme?: Adorno, Videogaming, and Stranger Things

    One of the biggest complaints leftists make about progressive activism—at least in more candid moments—is a failure to communicate effectively. Since Newt Gingrich and Fox News fundamentally changed the dynamics of political agitation in the 1990s through amping up the spectacle and doubling down on hyper-partisanship, many have complained that progressives simply couldn’t compete in terms of political optics. This discrepancy was nicely spoofed by Contrapoints in her early video “The Left,” which opens with a simulated debate between a fascist and a leftist.  The fascist goes to the podium and makes grandstanding, rhetorical, and alarmist statements that are almost entirely empty of content and receives tremendous applause.  The leftist goes on stage and starts talking about how the Hegelian for itself will only be realized in itself through the individuation…one gets the picture.  The leftist is quickly ignored and even booed offstage.  The reputation of leftist political agitation as dull and intellectualized is of course well exploited by the political right. Websites like Prager U feature amusingly simplistic graphs depicting alarming levels of masculinity falling and femininity rising along with pundits who mock liberals and leftists as people with “useless degrees” who have “never done a proper day’s work in their lives.” And of course there is the constantly recycled rhetoric about the “humorless, out of touch” left.

    These issues raise a fundamental dilemma for leftists. How can one address these accusations by becoming more media savvy while not giving up on substance? And in particular how can one appeal to millennials and other young people while countering the growing presence of the political right in digital spaces? These questions are at the heart of Mike Watson’s very interesting monograph for Zero Books Can the Left Learn to Meme?: Adorno, Videogaming, and Stranger Things (available here).  The stakes are well established by Watson from the get go, as he describes the efforts by reactionaries like Steve Bannon to capture the “souls” of millennials in the brave new online world:

    “…There exists a fight being waged for millennials’ souls (and electoral votes) as their vast undirected energy, conveyed across the internet on social media, image boards and Massive Online Battle Arenas, is sought by political players such as Steve Bannon, so as to direct it to right-wing ends. Bannon’s premise is that the millennial, unchastened by rules and traditions, needs harnessing and putting to work in the service of a conservative revival. What this book proposes, utilizing the best of Theodor Adorno (his unerring yet understated hope in spite of the odds) against the worst of Adorno (his uncouth cultural elitism), is an embrace of the abstraction of the new media landscape, as millennials refuse to surrender to the cynicism of the markets or of right-wing populism, by out-weirding even the world-at-large.”

    Drawing on the dense but fascinating theories of the Frankfurt School and other thinkers, Watson takes a serious step towards reconceiving left-aesthetics for the Twitter and 4Chan era.

    Stranger Things and Left-Aesthetics

    The main part of Watson’s book begins with an analysis of the hit Netflix show Stranger Things. The main setting is the town of Hawkins in 1980s USA. The plot involves a group of pre-teens who discover that the government has been operating a secret research lab near the town, accidentally opening a gate to inter-dimensional terrors who disrupt the melodramatic normality of middle class America. Watson sees the existence and narrative of Stranger Things as indicating a dark truth about American culture; in its depictions of an initially idealized United States one senses a yearning for a “stable reality that remains ever elusive.” These shows become popular, especially amongst Millennials, because they depict in fantastic form the loss of innocence many of us went through concerning liberal democracy and the morality of American global power. The result is a nostalgic impulse to always want to reconstruct the past since “the young have all but given up on utopia.” This might seem like a pessimistic conclusion, but Watson cautions against despair, because these products of the cultural industry do depict an “imagined otherness” that the young still wish to be delivered from.

    Watson then goes on to examine what role a left-aesthetics could play to energize these feelings and direct them into political action. This is obviously a very difficult task, since Watson points out that while progressive art is necessary to imagine a different future, by itself it can “dream anything but act on nothing.” It also has to wrestle with two competing forces. The first are counter-democratic forces with an interested in maintaining the hegemonic status quo. And the second is democracy itself in the digital age. Left-wing aesthetics has to compete with an endless barrage of cat videos, selfies, and pornography which serve to neutralize efforts at politicization. This is one of the downsides Watson notes to the emergence of digital spaces; what Jean Baudrillard might call the “ecstasy of communication.” Rather than directing their energy towards changing the world, the mass of people have become focused on managing their digital images through a rampant process of categorization, and one might add, social capitalization. But alongside these challenges, Watson points out that this emphasis on digital media can be channeled to emancipatory purposes. These efforts to match the “madness of our media world” through image creation also create the conditions for these aesthetic and creative efforts to be turned towards “creative deliverance from human-made tyranny.”

    Art and the Left in a Digital Era

    Watson then proceeds with a series of different critical looks at the art world, contemporary pop-culture like Mad Men and Stranger Things, and gaming. These cultural products are analyzed through an Adornian lens, and are often as cynical as one might expect given that. Even high art has lost much of its critical potential, having been swallowed within the mechanisms of capitalist production. Shows like Mad Men claim to be critical of the commodification of human life, but can only ever operate from within that system. They require massive amounts of money and time to create, indicating that such high-brow aesthetic critiques of society must depend on the unequal conditions of that society to get going. This is why Watson encourages a turn towards digital media and its democratic production, despite all the aforementioned problems.

    “Given that all creativity is both controlled and abstracted at source, meaningful or truly ‘free’ production seems near impossible. It would appear then that the only option we have is to bastardise the mechanisms of capitalist cultural production and reception from within, over and over, knowing always that the machine is too vast, too all-encompassing to overcome entirely. As pieces of that machine, we do have a right to help reconfigure it with shocks and shudders that might reverberate and rejuvenate the audience at least temporarily….Whether or not this seems palatable, the world of high art has lost its mantle of progressiveness within visual culture to the YouTube video, the meme, social media and gaming culture. If there is a spiritual-revolutionary path for the millennial perhaps it resides here, in a cynical DIY production of culture that is inextricably tied, via appliances, to the materialist path. Some freedom resides in the myriad choices denied to our forebears.”

    Helpfully, Watson goes on to describe these new forms of production in digital media at length in Chapter Six before going on to discuss its political potential in Chapter Seven. He argues that there are “two ways an image can come into being without being immediately co-opted by the capitalist system.” The first are that technological conditions emerge which enable individuals to produce images and aesthetic products cheaply and quickly. This helps counter-cultural and esoteric groups produce an aesthetics which doesn’t need to have mass appeal. The second way an emancipated aesthetic product can come into being is a pscyho-social indifference to the demands of consumer culture. The occasionally bizarre and uninterpretable products that come from the deep internet demonstrate an intransigence towards becoming incorporated into the broader culture industry. These can range from Youtube videos about puppets dealing with existential crises to Vaporwave.  But if the political possibilities of these conditions are left untapped, it is only a matter of time before mass media co-opts them and they lose their emancipatory potential.

    Here Watson is at his most practical. He encourages progressives to take several steps to harness these energies and “learn to meme” as the title of his book goes. To start Watson says we must move from shaming millennials and other youth for failing to “take up” where progressives left off and instead wasting their time in digital spaces, and instead draw value and inspiration from their aesthetic efforts. He points out that the political right has historically been savvier on these fronts, with the American military investing millions to produce pro-service video games and post-modern conservatives like Steve Bannon venturing into the murky world of online gaming at one point. The almost paradoxical willingness of conservatives to venture into the realm of hyper-modern media has given them a temporary advantage in appealing to youth in digital spaces. It is also partly why the right has been moderately successful in rebranding itself as quasi-punk contrarians, despite a law and order agenda that contemporaneously seems determined to return to a nostalgic pastiche of the 1950s as quickly as possible. Prolific Youtuber and far right conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson once opined that “conservatism is the new counter-culture.” While this is substantively ridiculous, the left needs to counter the cultural conditions which made such a conceit plausible to millions of reactionaries. He also encouraged progressives to look at the potential of digital media and games to bring individuals together, including for political purposes. Images of solitary and resentful young men living in their mother’s basements still predominant when we think of the individuals who inhabit digital spaces and game. Instead Watson points out that many of these individuals are involved in robust and highly active communities, and will often socialize and play together on a regular basis. A left which is attentive to these groups could rally their support for progressive causes.

    Conclusion

    Watson’s book is impressively eclectic, bringing together a lot of different influences and topics that one wouldn’t expect to see together. These range from Adorno to World of Warcraft, Jordan Peterson to Tom Huett. This didactism can be difficult to manage, but Watson’s passion and conviction make it very readable throughout. Including in some of the denser passages on aesthetic theory. Beyond that it raises many provocative questions about how the left can present itself in a more aesthetically appealing manner. Especially to young people who may already associate progressivism with moralizing judgement of their way of life and style.

    I think there is growing evidence that many are already taking a stab at this reorientation. YouTubers like Cuck Philosophy, Three Arrows, and Contrapoints herself have produced attractive content that draws in thousands of views per video. Intellectuals in the vein of Zizek and Watson have taken it upon themselves to litter their writings with accessible and informative pop culture analysis, bringing dense topics to life in a way Adorno et al themselves struggled with. And of course outlets like Zero (full disclosure, I have a book coming out for them on post-modern conservatism) and Repeater Books have readily adopted an aesthetic designed to appeal to millennials, including going into the trenches to knock down favored right wing pundits like Ben Shapiro. Whether this indicates we’re at the opening of the kind sea change Watson desires is of course impossible to answer in advance. It will only be in hindsight that we’ll see whether such efforts continue, and if they have a constructive impact. But books like Can the Left Learn to Meme provide a guide on how we can get to a point where leftism is hip enough to move in the most cynical digital circles and radical enough to get people off the computer and into the streets.

  • How the Youth-Led Climate Strikes Became a Global Mass Movement

    How the Youth-Led Climate Strikes Became a Global Mass Movement

    It began as a call to action from a group of youth activists scattered across the globe, and soon became what is shaping up to be the largest planet-wide protest for the climate the world has ever seen.

    The Global Climate Strike, which kicks off on Sept. 20, will not be the first time people all over the world have taken action for the climate on a single day. But if things play out the way organizers hope, it could mark a turning point for the grassroots resistance to fossil fuels.

    “Strikes are happening almost everywhere you can think of,” said Jamie Margolin, a high school student from Seattle who played a role in initiating this global movement. “People are participating in literally every place in the world.”

    “Suddenly there’s this entire new generation of activists calling out everyone no matter who they are for not doing enough, and that’s woken people up.”

    Starting Friday and continuing throughout the following week, thousands or possibly millions of people will participate in actions calling on governments to address the climate crisis. From elementary school students organizing walk-outs, to experienced activists planning nonviolent disruption in major cities, people will call attention to the moral urgency of climate change by interrupting business as usual.

    “It’s a galvanizing moment for the climate movement, which frankly has been losing the battle up to now,” said Jake Woodier of the UK Student Climate Network, which is organizing for the strike in London and other cities across the United Kingdom. “Suddenly there’s this entire new generation of activists calling out everyone no matter who they are for not doing enough, and that’s woken people up.”

    As is nearly always the case for large social movements, momentum for the Climate Strike came from many different people in different places. But if its origins can be traced to a specific event, it would probably be a 2018 march spearheaded by the youth-led organization Zero Hour, which Margolin co-founded a year earlier with a small group of other young activists — mainly students of color.

    The Zero Hour youth climate march took place on July 21 of last year in Washington, D.C. and was preceded two days earlier by a day of lobbying on Capitol Hill, along with other student-led events all over the United States. Hundreds of young people joined the D.C. action despite rainy weather, drawing considerable media attention and shining a spotlight on how Generation Z is disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis. But what hardly anyone could have guessed was that behind the scenes, Zero Hour had put in motion a series of events that would lead to an even larger, worldwide mobilization led by young people.

    Jamie Margolin speaking to a crowd of youth climate activists. (Facebook/Zero Hour)

    On the other side of the Atlantic, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, 15 years old at the time, had been reading news about Zero Hour online and was inspired by its leaders’ vision of a distinctively youth-led movement. She began following organizers like Margolin on social media, and soon the teens from different continents were communicating about climate activism over the internet. On August 20, 2018, Thunberg staged her first “climate strike,” skipping school to protest for climate action outside the Swedish parliament. The following month she launched the ongoing “Fridays for Future” strikes, inviting other students to join her in holding school walkouts every week.

    “Greta Thunberg’s actions sparked a movement,” Woodier said. “In a world where we’re often made to feel individualized and atomized, that we’re small and can’t make a difference, she has been a massive inspiration to many young people.”

    In late 2018, Thunberg began attending intergovernmental climate meetings in Europe, including a U.N. summit in Poland. She wasn’t the first young person to show up at the United Nations and call on leaders to take action, but there was something unique about her approach.

    For one thing, Thunberg was decidedly more pointed than her predecessors in calling out policymakers’ inaction, telling the leaders in Poland, “You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess. You are not mature enough to tell it like it is.” For thousands of people around the world who were fed up with decades of government inertia, her tone was a welcome change.

    Moreover, several converging factors contributed to Thunberg’s activism coming at the perfect time. The climate movement has — over the last decade — been getting gradually better at organizing coordinated actions across continents, making possible the rapid spread of new tactics. At the same time, in the United States, the high school student-led March for Our Lives against gun violence provided a model for what a mass youth movement could look like. Finally, with extreme weather hammering nearly every part of the world, more people are waking up to the urgency of the climate crisis, making them receptive to Thunberg’s message. As a well-spoken member of the generation that will bear the costs of climate change more than any other alive today, Thunberg was the perfect movement spokesperson to harness the opportunity created by these events. Soon her addresses to world leaders were going viral on YouTube.

    Meanwhile, the Fridays for Future movement was growing — especially in Europe, where it has had the most influence so far. In July, German Chancellor Angela Merkel cited pressure from youth activists as one reason her government plans to move more aggressively to curb carbon emissions. Across much of Europe, the strike movement has helped put climate change higher on the political agenda for both policymakers and voters. A Green Party surge in May’s E.U. parliamentary elections is possibly the most concrete sign yet of the movement’s impact. But the strikes quickly spread beyond Europe.

    By early 2019, school strikes were taking place in countries including the United States, Brazil, India and Australia. Then, over the spring and summer, calls started coming for a new escalation of the movement — one led by youth, but with participation from people of all ages. The idea was for a worldwide strike where people would leave school, work or other daily tasks to join protests for climate action.

    The date chosen to kick off the planet-wide strike coincides with the lead-up to an emergency climate summit, called by U.N. Secretary-Gen. António Guterres and is scheduled to begin in New York on Sept. 23. Many see this U.N. gathering — intended as an opportunity for countries to strengthen their goals under the Paris climate agreement — as being itself a direct reaction to the grassroots pressure governments are feeling.

    “This climate action summit was called in response to the worsening climate crisis and pressure from the strike movement,” Woodier said. “That’s a reversal from the past, when climate organizers planned demonstrations in response to official events set in stone long beforehand.”

    Greta Thunberg (center) joined other climate striking youth in New York City last month. (Twitter/@GretaThunberg)

    Thunberg has been invited to address the U.N. meeting, and a special youth summit will be attended by teens from around the world, including Margolin. On Aug. 28, Thunberg arrived in New York after crossing the Atlantic in an emissions-free yacht. She had barely set foot on U.S. soil before joining a youth-led climate protest outside the U.N. headquarters. Meanwhile, the Global Climate Strike has been endorsed by close to 200 organizations in the United States alone, and hundreds more internationally.

    While the largest demonstrations will take place in major cities, strike actions are also making waves in smaller towns, even within fossil fuel-producing states. “I expect our growing local climate movement will bring out more people for the strike than we’ve ever seen before,” said Jeff Smith, co-chair of 350 Montana, one of several organization involved in planning a series of strike actions in Missoula. “I expect the crowds alone will be enough to dominate our local news cycle.”

    In the United States, national organizations encouraging their members to join the strikes include Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Sunrise Movement, Oil Change International, MoveOn, Food and Water Watch and many others. According to the international climate group 350.org, there are now nearly 700 strikes scheduled in the United States, and hundreds of others in 117 countries across the globe.

    350.org has a good amount of experience with this type of international climate mobilization. The organization initiated the first truly large-scale day of action specifically devoted to climate change in October 2009. It took place in the lead-up to that year’s U.N. climate negotiations in Copenhagen and was meant to push delegates to adopt a strong, binding international climate treaty. The idea that such a goal could have been successful at that point may appear naïve in hindsight, but at the time it didn’t seem so unreasonable. The United States had recently elected Barack Obama as its president, and even many climate activists had yet to realize just how deeply entrenched fossil fuel money was in the halls of government.

    Indeed, the 2009 day of global action was largely a festive, celebratory affair. Groups posed for photos with banners in front of melting alpine glaciers and other landmarks affected by climate change. There was lots of artwork and relatively few truly large marches. This made sense for a global movement that was just finding its feet — at a time when it genuinely seemed like world leaders might be gently prodded into doing the right thing. But with international progress on climate change largely stalled, legislative action in the United States nonexistent, and the ascendancy of right-wing leaders like Donald Trump, the mood of the climate movement has changed dramatically.

    “Folks watching the science understand we are now in the runaway phase of climate catastrophe,” said Nadine Bloch, an organizer with #ShutDownDC, which is planning an action to bring work in the U.S. Capitol to a standstill next week. “The urgency of being on fire has finally been heeded by folks outside traditional activist communities.” The Global Climate Strike will take place just 10 years shy of the 2009 mobilization, and it will include larger and more escalated demonstrations. Its message — that action on climate change takes precedence over school and day jobs — reflects this increased urgency.

    Yet, while the word “strike” connotes a more militant type of nonviolent action than photo shoots and rallies, not everyone shares the same vision of what it looks like. “In the United States in particular, a lot of people don’t understand what a strike actually is,” Bloch said. “They’re still talking about getting permits for protests, which isn’t a true strike.” #ShutDownDC envisions something more disruptive, though nonviolent. “We’re planning to interrupt business as usual in the seat of government power where leaders are refusing to acknowledge the climate crisis or take responsibility.”

    Jamie Margolin also sees the strike as a way to bring larger numbers of young people into the climate movement. “A lot of people aren’t initially attracted to the nitty gritty organizing, which is the vast majority of the work that goes into climate activism,” she said. “But if you say to them, ‘Hey do you want to join this mass action?’ — that attracts nearly everyone. Mobilizations like the strike are a point of entry to the wider movement.”Activists are also planning for how to carry momentum from the strike forward into other youth-led movements. “Dismay at government inaction has led people to get involved in the climate strikes,” said Gracie Brett of Divest Ed, which works with over 70 campus-based fossil fuel divestment campaigns. “This same urgency has led to the divestment movement getting a second wind recently. It offers an opportunity to be involved beyond the strike.”

    Margolin, who originally helped inspire Greta Thunberg’s activism, has since followed her lead by regularly striking from school. She has relatives in Colombia and is motivated by the knowledge of how climate change will impact both her current home and the place of her family’s origins. In this sense, she has much in common with other young people in an increasingly diverse and international climate movement — where teenagers and young adults use the internet to coordinate actions across continents and oceans.

    “I’m motivated by two things: What I’m for and what I’m against,” Margolin said. “I’m fighting to protect the beautiful Pacific Northwest where I live today, and the beautiful Amazon Rainforest in the place my family is from. But I’m also fighting against the handful of people at the top of a handful of corporations who are literally destroying life on Earth for the other seven billion of us.”

    Originally posted at WagingNonviolence.org. 

  • The Revolution has Emerged: Sudan’s Acute Contradictions

    The Revolution has Emerged: Sudan’s Acute Contradictions

    In April, Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, was ousted in a military coup. With the head of the regime cut off, a power struggle ensued between the military junta and the popular movement demanding civilian rule. In August, the main opposition coalition and the transitional military council formally signed a power-sharing agreement following nine months of nationwide protests and brutal repression by paramilitary forces. The massive struggle from below offers a powerful example of how to fight against authoritarianism and for democracy.

    Sudan’s uprising was one of the most well organized and advanced revolts in the region. At its peak, millions were participating in sit-ins, the country was paralyzed by a general strike, and military discipline was breaking down among the rank and file. Women and union leaders were at the forefront of demonstrations. In a widely circulated video that captures the spirit of the revolution, an unnamed woman leads a march, chanting: “From Kordofan [the revolution] has emerged, after we have been hit by gunfire. This is a government with no feelings … and the Nuba mountains, like Darfur their blood is very expensive. We will protect our land, oh farmer. Our Sudan will be set free!”

    This blogpost will focus on the roots of the uprising then examine the events of the 2018-2019 revolution itself with a particular focus on revolutionary agency.

    The roots of Sudan’s uprising

    The neoliberal restructuring of the Sudanese economy began during the 16-year dictatorship of Nimeiry (1969-1985). At the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he liberalized the economy, curbed food subsidies, and increased privatization which benefited his political Islamist party.

    Rejecting the IMF measures and the implementation of sharia law, a popular uprising toppled Nimeiry in 1985 and ushered in a short-lived democratic government. In 1989, the Islamists retook power through a military coup, bringing Bashir and his National Congress Party to power. They continued to implement neoliberal policies, and the process of privatization enriched a small group of military generals. Bashir devoted an estimated 70% of the national budget to the military and security sector. Overtime, the highest strata of the military developed a significant degree of economic and political power.

    In 2003, Bashir relied on the Janjaweed, a notorious group of Arab militias, to push back rebels in Darfur as part of the ongoing civil war over resources and land allocation. The resulting campaign has been called a genocide. The Janjaweed were transformed into a state-sanctioned paramilitary force called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo (commonly known as ‘Hemedti’). Hemedti uses the RSF as a personal militia to defend his massive business empire or gold mines and airlines.

    Decades of authoritarian rule, repression, racism, and crony neoliberalism wrecked Sudan’s economy and exacerbated social tensions. In 2013, people rioted over bread prices, in a prelude to the recent protests. The RSF crushed the protests, killing over 100 people and arresting hundreds more. During this wave of civil unrest, neighbourhood resistance councils developed, and these small groups of friends and neighbours worked together to share information and coordinate protests.

    Sudan’s economic woes, due in large part to exorbitant military spending, were exacerbated following the succession of South Sudan in 2011. Sudan lost 75% of its oil revenue. Additionally, twenty years of U.S. sanctions largely cut Sudan off from the global financial market. Bashir responded by ramping up austerity measures, with the IMF’s encouragement. The privatization of public assets and the slashing of government food and fuel subsidies contributed to social unrest. In response to soaring commodity prices and repression by the RSF, demonstrations became a consistent feature of Sudanese civil society.

    The 2018-19 revolution 

    In mid-December 2018, people in Atbara, a small town far away from the capital Khartoum, rioted over an increase in bread prices and burned down the headquarters of the ruling National Congress Party. An army colonel defected to the side of the protesters and prevented the RSF from entering the city. In other towns and cities, simmering economic frustration and resentment towards the regime boiled over.

    Though formal trade unions had been infiltrated by the regime, independent labour organizations played a pivotal role in the uprising. In particular, the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) took a lead in coordinating protests and came to be seen as the organic leadership of the movement. This network of banned trade unions formed through struggle in 2016, is composed of professional workers such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and journalists. These workers led increasingly precarious lives as wages declined, working conditions worsened, and the lifting of government subsidies threatened their social position.

    The demands for economic justice quickly broadened to calls for the regime to fall. On the 1 January, 2019, the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), a broad opposition coalition spearheaded by the SPA of workers associations, liberal and leftist political parties, feminist groups, and armed movements, published a list of demands. At the top was the end of Bashir’s presidency.

    The revolt continued to gain momentum, reawakening old networks and drawing on experience from past struggles. On 6 April, the anniversary of the 1985 popular uprising, protesters began a massive sit-in at the army headquarters in Khartoum. Similar sit-ins began in other cities. They became a gathering place for millions of people to debate the way forward, share community meals, and sing revolutionary songs. The outpouring of creative resistance and solidarity offered a glimpse into another possible society.

    Though the regime has systematically disenfranchised rural parts of the country and used racism to reinforce the urban/rural divide, the movement permeated rural communities as well. Unlike in 2013, urban resistance was matched by rural struggle. In many places, student led the way with mass marches, and the armed movements followed this non-violent lead. The FFC included the Sudan Revolutionary Front, an alliance between armed rebel groups largely based in peripheral areas. When the regime attempted to use racism divisively, the chant went up, “Ya onsori wa maghroor, kol albalad Darfoor!”/“Hey racist [Omar Al-Bashir], we are all Darfur!” in an extraordinary show of anti-racist solidarity.

    The regime responded to the movement with violence. On 6 April, military and security forces attempted to violently disperse the sit-ins, killing dozens of protesters. Called to fire on fellow citizens, some junior army officers and lower ranking soldiers refused their orders, and several were killed defending the popular movement. The revolutionary consciousness spreading among the lower ranks of the army terrified the high command.

    On 11 April, the generals disposed Bashir, gambling on a coup in order to avoid a collapse of the army and placate the people. The military announced a Transitional Military Council (TMC) headed by Defence Minister Awad bin Auf, a man with direct connections to atrocities committed in Darfur. He was forced to step down within 36 hours. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Bashir’s former chief of staff and head of ground forces, took his place. Hemedti, head of the RSF, emerged as the de facto leader of the TMC.

    The formation of a military junta did not quell the protests. Having learned the lesson of Egypt’s revolution, the movement refused to leave the streets until the military ceded power. In the words of Sudanese activist, Mohamed Mustafa Diab, ‘The Sudanese people understand that the enemy is not a single man; it is the whole regime and everything it represents…“A civilian government or an eternal revolution.” That is one of the most popular slogans right now. As long as we maintain pressure, we — the Sudanese people — will have the final say.’

    Foreign powers quickly backed the Sudanese military, hoping to preserve the structure of the state. Saudi Arabia has benefitted from thousands of RSF troops fighting in their bloody war in Yemen. European nations rely on RSF soldiers to patrol the desert and prevent migrants from reaching Europe. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s military dictator and head of the African Union, eased political pressure on the TMC in an effort to promote stabilization.

    In late April, the FFC and the TMC entered into a stormy process of negotiations brokered by the African Union and Ethiopia. The negotiations were compromised from the start. In May an article by a small group of socialists in Egypt clearly articulated the contradiction:

    the problem is not so much the personalities of the negotiators as the overall strategy of the opposition. By agreeing to negotiate with Al-Bashir’s generals, and allowing them to participate in the transition period, the leaders of the opposition are trying to reconcile the demands of the revolutionary street on the one hand, and the counter-revolutionary generals on the other. This strategy is suicidal for the revolution. Regardless of who the negotiators are, they will betray the hopes of the revolutionaries.

    The TMC threatened its negotiating partners with arrest and, when talks broke down, conditioned resumption of discussion on compromise. They repeatedly demanded an end to the sit-ins and a dismantling of the barricades set up around Khartoum. Whenever the FFC called off negotiations, they came back to the table before winning significant demands or conditions.

    Much of the negotiating process was opaque. According to Hajooj Kuka, a neighbourhood resistance committee activist, this lack of transparency was frustrating for the movement. He explained, ‘the people who are on the street, who are organizing these protests, who are out and protesting, and putting their lives in danger, don’t really know what’s happening. And this attitude that there’s a few elitists who know better and who should negotiate in hiding… is really against the revolutionary feel of what’s happening on the ground.’

    This negotiation strategy can be explained in part by the political parties within the FFC that have traditionally functioned as the institutionalized opposition to Bashir. Their method of negotiating with the regime and participating in parliament primed them for a compromise with the military. Additionally, the class position of many of the FFC members and explicitly those within the SPA influenced the negotiations. As professional workers, they were more willing than the movement in the streets to trust the generals.

    In organization and in rhetoric, the SPA did not pose itself as a political alternative to Bashir’s neoliberal, autocratic regime. The organization was strictly not a political party. The seemingly apolitical nature of the SPA likely appealed to many people who distrusted political parties. Though the SPA impressively united the resistance to Bashir in the FFC, it missed the opportunity to reclaim or redefine leftist politics in this moment.

    The mobilization rhetoric of SPA derived from Sudan’s effendiya, a nationalist ideology of the small class of Sudanese who were educated to fill the ranks of the civil service during colonialism and who were prepared for post-colonial rule. This framework was too narrow to speak to the diversity of the Sudanese people and reimagine a Sudan that embraces all, across ethnic, racial, religious lines. The dominant slogans of “peace, freedom, and justice” and ‘mandaniyaa’ (civilian) fail to wed political demands with class demands in a moment ripe for a revolutionary message. Rather than drawing from alternative frameworks of the working class or the feminist movement, the SPA appealed to the universal rights and freedoms of citizens, using language that is not incompatible with the neoliberal state.

    The failure to centre class demands and implicitly or explicitly raise revolutionary slogans may partially explain why Khartoum’s peripheral neighbourhoods of poor and displaced people did not join in the protests as enthusiastically as the middle-class neighbourhoods.

    Turning point and road to constitutional agreement

    As negotiations unfolded after April, the popular movement continued to express itself in the streets, demanding civilian rule. The security forces and the RSF continued their repressive campaign of intimidation, arrests, and murder. In late May, the country participated in a 2-day general strike.

    3 June marked a turning point in the revolution. On this day, the last day of Ramadan, the TMC imposed a countrywide internet blackout and sent in the RSF to clear the Khartoum sit-in. The paramilitary force massacred over 100 people, raped dozens, and injured over 500 others. According to eyewitness Mohammed Elnaiem, ‘[The RSF and army] started shooting at us and we all started running away from the barricades, and running into houses to hide. I haven’t been brave enough to go outside to rebuild the barricades like some other people have been since then. It’s terrifying. There’s gunshots everywhere. In my neighborhood there is reports of a sniper in an abandoned building. I don’t know where specifically so it’s really risky. They want to terrorize us at home.’

    In response, the FFC suspended negotiations. The SPA published a list of immediate demands to be met before talks resume. They called for an open-ended political general strike. From 28 May to 29 May, over 80% of the population participated in the strike, shutting down most of the country. Three days after the start of the strike, the SPA called for it to end. The FFC re-entered negotiations with the very forces that were responsible for 3 June massacre before they had been brought to justice.

    But in the streets, the masses advanced ahead of the leadership of the movement. They insisted on retribution for the killing and wounding of protesters. The TMC had lost its moral authority, and mass demonstrations for civilian rule and justice for 3 June martyrs took place across Sudan. On 1 July, the SPA published a 2 week-long plan that matched the militancy of the street. Marches and demonstrations were to culminate in a general strike on 14 July.

    However, four days later, the FFC and TMC reached a verbal agreement to share power. The FFC cancelled protests for the upcoming week and organized demonstrations in support of the deal.

    Immediately, some of the FFC coalition members publicly condemned the tentative deal. A statement from the Darfur Displaced General Coordination (DDGC) read, ‘The aim of this agreement is also to block the realisation of the goals of the revolution: to bring down the regime, prosecute its criminals, achieve freedom, peace and justice, establish a civilian-led government, resolve the civil wars in the country and restore the rights of displaced people and refugees.’ The Sudan Revolutionary Front, a coalition of armed movements, rejected the deal as did the Sudanese Communist Party who withdrew from negotiations and called for popular protests to continue.

    The struggle advances

    On 4 August, the FFC and TMC signed a constitutional declaration that marked the beginning of a 39-month long transitional period. Until elections in 2022, Sudan will be governed by a sovereign council composed of 5 civilian members, 5 military members, and 1 member chosen jointly. A military member will lead for the first 21 months, and then a civilian member will lead for the last 18 months.

    The declaration establishes a council of ministers tasked with implementing its mandates during the transitional period. The FFC nominated economist Abdalla Hamdok as prime minister, and he will select ministers from a list prepared by the FFC. The defence and interior ministers will be appointed by military members of sovereign council.

    The declaration also establishes an appointed transitional legislative council that will be majority civilian with 67 members from the FFC and 33 members from other political forces that were not part of the FFC. In a significant victory, no fewer than 40% of the council members must be women.

    All potential ministers and legislative council members must be confirmed by the sovereign council, and decisions on the sovereign council must be adopted by a two-thirds majority. This means that the minority of military members can veto decisions, in essence nullifying the rule of civilians on the country’s highest authority.

    A few days after the signing of the accord, the SPA announced that it would not take any of the civilian seats on the sovereign council. They intend to participate in the legislative council ‘as an independent regulatory authority’ and ‘watchdog’ to ensure the mandates of the declaration are carried out during the transitional period.

    The declaration did not include concrete economic reforms, specific mandates to improve the rights of women and youth, a plan to prosecute those responsible for war crimes, nor a rigorous investigation of 3 June massacre. The failure to include social and economic reforms leaves many of the movement’s central demands unrealized. The deal also dodged larger questions of war and peace, racism and marginalization, and the rights of displaced persons and refugees.

    Despite its limitations, jubilant crowds gathered in Khartoum to celebrate the signing of the deal. Sara Abdelgalil of the SPA told the New York Times, ‘It’s a very tough compromise. We just hope that we will achieve a civilian-led government at the end of the three years. And if we fail, we will go back to the street.’

    Ordinary activists expressed similar resolve. Ramzi al-Taqi, a fruit seller in Khartoum, told Agence France-Presse, ‘If this council does not meet our aspirations and cannot serve our interests, we will never hesitate to have another revolution. We would topple the council just like we did the former regime.’

    Conclusion

    Sudan is in a state of acute contradiction as popular forces share power with the very actors that repressed the movement. As Sudan enters the next phase of its revolution, much hinges upon whether the FFC can win over a majority of the rank and file soldiers in support of the people.

    Bashir’s trial has begun over corruption charges, but many question whether he will be held accountable for his greatest crimes. Some suspect that the military is using the trial to deflect attention away from 3 June massacre.

    Newly appointed Prime Minister Hamdok has approved 14 civilian minsters from a list provided by the FFC. He reiterated that this is meant to be a government of ‘technocrats’ rather than politicians. Among his selections are Asmaa Abdallah as Sudan’s first female foreign minister and Ibrahim Elbadawi, a former World Bank economist, as finance minister. Hamdok has also reached out to the World Bank and IMF to discuss Sudan’s debt.

    Many of the problems that led millions of Sudanese to revolt – decades of repression, lack of democracy, neoliberal austerity, the unrealized rights of refugees – have not been resolved. Bread and fuel queues have already begun to reappear. The revolutionary process is not over and, as it unfolds, the Sudanese people who have now felt their power, will undoubtedly fight to shape their own destiny.

    In the midst of the 6 April sit-in in Khartoum, a mass movement in Algeria overthrew long time, autocratic president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, imbuing Sudanese protesters with confidence. The emergence of these concurrent movements indicates that the conditions that gave rise to the Arab Spring and protests in Burkina Faso and Senegal will continue to spark resistance.

    Assessing and learning from these movements remains an urgent task. They raise important questions about the level of trade union and working-class involvement, the weakness of organizations and political parties, the ‘absence of ideology’ of the main opposition groups, and the role of the organized left and its revolutionary wing.

     

    This article originally appeared on The Review of African Political Economy. Featured Photograph: A work by Khalid Kodi showing a Sudanese woman in front of the military HQ in Khartoum; the RSF militia raped dozens of women and killed more than 100 protesters on 3 June as they broke-up the sit-in at the military HQ (16 July, 2019).