Popular power is the essence of full democracy

From Venezuela Analysis today (Oct 11, 2007):

Chavez Outlines Proposed Social and Economic Structure for Venezuelan Socialism

"With the approval of the Constitutional Reform, with the power that it will give to the people, we will break from this straightjacket that the colonial model imposed upon us," said Chavez on Sunday from the Humboldt Hotel on the mountain above Caracas.

Chavez spent much of his show this week explaining what he calls "the new geometry of power," which will reorganize the political, territorial, and economic structure of the country. Chavez has said that these changes will be fundamental to the planned transition to a socialist system in the country.

The president explained the proposed territorial distribution, which will be made up of states, federal districts, municipalities, communes, federal territories, and island districts. Chavez has explained before that organized communities will unite to form communes throughout the country, which will basically be self-governing entities.

As for political organization, the communities will exercise power through the communal councils, workers councils, and farmer and producer councils. Chavez emphasized that in this way the communities will have increased decision-making power with regards to the administration of public resources and public works.

"It's not bringing power closer to the people, but rather giving power to the people," emphasized Chavez.

The national government will be assigning a total of Bs. 3.2 trillion (US$ 1.4 billion) to communal councils in 2008, according to Chavez. He said that the money would be progressively administered to the communities over the next year as they get organized.

"For next year, once we have popular power included in the constitution, the government will be ready to transfer resources, duties and responsibilities to the communes, starting in January of 2008," said Chavez.

He went on to explain the proposed economic configuration that will set up productive units under the management of communes and in the form of socialist enterprises and cooperatives. Chavez emphasized that the economy would be centered on satisfying the needs of the Venezuelan communities and decreasing inequality in the population so that "there are not such extreme differences among Venezuelans."

"Popular power is the essence of full democracy, of socialism, of socialist democracy. Only in socialism can we achieve it," he said.

Full story...

IMF Warns of Serious Crisis

Kevin Depew of Minyanville, quoting from the Financial Times, today offers:

1. IMF Warns of "Serious Crisis"

Rodrigo Rato, outgoing managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned that the credit squeeze was a “serious crisis” that was not over yet and would curtail growth worldwide, the Financial Times reported.

• “Policymakers should not think that the problems will stay at the desk of the bankers,” Rato told the FT.
• “Problems are going to come to the real sector, come to the budgets – that is something we keep telling people.”
• The outgoing IMF chief said many of the big emerging markets are growing rapidly, but “to what extent they will keep that momentum will depend on how long the slowdown is in the US and Europe."
• Wait a minute, did we say, "outgoing" IMF director?
• Indeed we did, which admittedly takes some of the sting out of Rato's warnings.
• It's a bit like when you take a new job, get drunk at your celebratory party, and blab to everyone about how your old firm is horrible and will probably collapse into bankruptcy without your genius to rely on anymore.

2. But Wait, There's More

Outgoing IMF Director Rodrigo Rato also told the Financial Times the U.S. dollar is now “undervalued” on many measures, a statement which the FT gushed is "an unusually bold assessment."

• Is it? Is it really an "unusually bold assessment"?
• We're not so sure.
• First, the U.S. dollar index is down more than 2% in the past 30 days alone, and down nearly 6.5% year-to-date.
• Over the past 18 months it's down 14%.
• And now we're seeing the inevitable stories rushing to embrace the decline as positive for business.
• Bloomberg boasts "Weak Dollar Boosts Growth Without Fueling Inflation."
• "The dollar is in a quasi-sweet spot,'' Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at Bank of America (BAC), told Bloomberg.
• "It's dropped enough that it's creating an earnings upside for U.S. multinationals, while I expect many foreign companies to hold the line on prices they charge U.S. consumers.''
• Too bad those those are two different and unrelated things: earnings upside for multinationals, and domestic pricing power.
  

Meanwhile, I'm reading Sweezy & Magdoff's "The Irreversible Crisis" (Monthly Review Press). They offer an incredibly compelling framework for understanding exactly what the heck is going on in the world economy. Best 10-bucks you'll ever spend, irregardless of your politics.

Working Class Defined

So, what is the official definition of "working class"?

Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus
Main Entry: plebeian
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: lower-class
Synonyms: banal, base, coarse, common, conventional, humble, ignoble, low, lowborn, lowly, mean, ordinary, pedestrian, popular, proletarian, traditional, uncultivated, unrefined, unsophisticated, unwashed*, vulgar, working-class
Antonyms: aristocratic, cultivated, refined
Source: Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.3.1)
* = informal or slang

Makes you wonder what the ignoble lowborn who wrote this entry for Roget was thinking, eh? Mind was fixed on pelf and place (see this, and this) perhaps.

Ken Loach - Which Side are You On?

The Rochester Labor Council and the George Eastman House's Dryden Theater (http://dryden.eastmanhouse.org/) have been running a series of labor films this fall. Laura and I went to see Ken Loach's (biography/filmography) "Which Side Are You On" - an account of the 1984 UK miners strike that lasted for over one year. For me the film was quite moving.

The miners and their families were fighting for their jobs as Thatcher proceeded with completely destroying the entire coal industry in the UK. At least 190,000 (one hundred and ninety THOUSAND) jobs were lost in under 5 years time. Hundreds of communities were destroyed, schools closed, towns and factories demolished and, of course, the lives and futures of over a million people ruined.

Loach tells the story through the songs and poems of the people who were affected, the mining families themselves. He also captured on film the brutal police actions against the 100% legal pickets with many strikers being beaten with clubs and subjected to massive police terror tactics. One scene shows hundreds of police occupying a small village night and day with shields, and clubs on the ready. Every bit of pavement was covered by police.

Other scenes show the police breaking up pickets to let scabs into coal pits. Every tactic was used to incite riot. To the credit of the miners there was little hostility form their quarter. Nevertheless they had to suffer brutal attacks, terrorism and even cavalry charges.

The film was made all the more poignant since many of the miners and their families were so hopeful of victory, even as they lived in poverty, faced eviction from their homes, had their belongings repossessed by creditors, and were eating most of their meals at soup kitchens.

Still they put on a brave face. Ultimately they all lost their jobs, the industry was dismantled, and the union destroyed.

(scene pictured in the photo appears in the film, the policeman doesn't miss; it is displayed here courtesy of libcom.org)

When all was said and done, Prime Minister Thatcher had declared a victory over socialism in the UK. But it was a very narrow victory indeed:

The Tories later admitted that it cost nearly £6bn to win the dispute, which they saw as a political attempt to break the power of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). In the ten years following the end of the strike, the continued war against the miners cost a further £26bn in redundancy and benefit payments, keeping pits mothballed and lost revenue from coal.

Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet were desperate for victory and prepared to go to any lengths. For the first time in a post-war national strike the police were openly used as a political weapon. Agents provocateurs and spies were deployed and the state benefits system used to try and starve the miners back. Former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson subsequently admitted that preparations for the strike were, "just like rearming to face the threat of Hitler in the 1930s". Evidence emerged – after the event – about the role of MI5, MI6, the CIA and ultra-right wingers like David Hart and Tim Bell, who advised Thatcher during the dispute.

Yet despite the extraordinary lengths the Tories went to, by October 1984, six months into the strike, the future of Thatcher’s government hung in the balance. The proposed strike by the pit supervisors’ union, NACODS, threatened to close down all working pits in the Midlands – when there were less than six weeks’ coal stocks.

03/04: Socialism Today: Miners strike revisited

The Dryden will be showing a number of Ken Loach's films over the next few weeks including Cathy Come Home and the US premier of Its a Free World, both on October 10th. Ken Loach also released an excellent film in 2006 called The Wind the Shakes the Barley.

Note: Anarchist pop-group Chumbawamba was actively supportive of the miners strike as were other groups. A tribute album to the miners is available here.

Ron Paul Wins Landslide!

Ron Paul today won by a landslide in an Oregon straw poll. From the LRC Blog today:

Writes Scott Sutton: "Here are the results from today's straw poll in Portland -- yet another landslide victory for Dr. Paul.

Ron Paul 77 votes, 67%
Mitt Romney 18 votes, 16%
Fred Thompson 12 votes, 10%
Mike Huckabee 5 votes, 4%
Rudy Giuliani 2 votes, 2%
John McCain 1 vote, 1%

"Kyle Saners, a member of the Salem Meetup group and an OR National Guard member who served in Afghanistan, gave a tremendous speech on behalf of Ron Paul."

LewRockwell.com Blog: Ron Paul Wins Oregon Straw Poll

I'm not surprised. He is the only Republican candidate who doesn't pander to the fascist right. I have been consistently impressed by his position on the war (see my post Giuliani vs Kucinich). The media is starting to take notice. ABC New reported today:

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul announced this week that he raised more than $5 million in the third quarter, a figure that put him in the orbit of Arizona Sen. John McCain ($6 million) and far ahead of Mike Huckabee ($1 million). [The former is considered one of the leading contenders for the Republican nomination, and the latter was identified by former President Bill Clinton as the only "dark horse that's got any kind of chance" for the GOP nomination.]

Not bad for a guy who has generally been treated as a fringe candidate whose only impact on the race would be as a punching bag for more legitimate candidates looking to score political points. For example, in one of the early Republican debates, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani attacked Paul for saying extremists "attack us because we've been over there."

Paul is far from a typical Republican presidential candidate: He has been against the war in Iraq from the outset and embraces a libertarian platform that includes dismantling the Department of Education. His support is largely Internet-based, with 70 percent of his donations coming online, according to Paul's communications director, Jesse Benton. His passionate supporters regularly bombard online news stories with comments on why Paul is the only candidate worth considering in the GOP field.

06-Oct-07, The Ron Paul Factor, ABC News

There has been a consistent and vocal group in the grassroots of the Republican that has been pushing for common sense and a more liberal outlook. Ron Paul is their standard-bearer. If he continues with this momentum, it will be very interesting to see how these people react when the RNC crushes Paul's campaign. My guess is that it will create a mass-exodus from the party to the Democrats. Hillary will present the strong, common-sense candidate they are looking for who is solidly center-right.

If Ron Paul stays a blip, however, the trend will be slower as the more rabid right-wingers in the RNC continue to cannibalize themselves and alienate their base.

Either way its bad news for the RNC leadership. They should be especially troubled by the coming investigations into computerized election fraud. They certainly have a lot to worry about over the next decade...

But obviously there is still very little choice for the voter. An interesting thought experiment is to imagine Ron Paul running against Hillary Clinton. Here we would have essentially a liberal Republican running versus a conservative Democrat. This goes to show the fundamental problems with the two-party system - namely that it is corrupt and only serves the interests of capital, while marginalizing any voices of dissent.

Anyone who wants to have a chance of a political career must operate within the machinery of the parties, where their ideals are wrung out of them. The conservatives have seen this with the Bush administration. They thought they were getting a conservative Christian into office who would enact radical social change according to their agenda.

In fact all they got was a capitalist tool who's every single decision was based on servitude to oil and military supplier interests, domestic and foreign. This being in accordance with the traditional role his family has played geopolitically for over 50 years.

The two party system is rigged and must be ended. A true democracy, a direct democracy, where dialog between political parties elected by and for the people is our right. Decisions must be made, not by small circles of the rich and powerful controlling vast the machinery of the two-party system, the bureaucracy and the media, but by people's parties in dialog with each other to reach compromises that meet everyone's diverse needs.

As a socialist I believe in radical democracy, an everyday participatory democracy in which we all engage. In America, we have democracy once every two years if we are lucky, for the several minutes we spend in the voting booth. Is it any wonder our government is so foul?

New Diner Blog

To any who are interested, I've launched another blog focusing on diners in the Rochester, New York area. Its going pretty well so far, with the launch story getting quite a few hits. Please take a look!

http://dinermite.blogspot.com

Jammie Thomas vs RIAA

From Tim Worstall's blog:

Jammie Thomas has lost the first case against music file sharing to actually come in front of a US court.

A single mother has been ordered to pay $220,000 (£110,000) to the music industry after losing a test case trial in which she had illegally downloading songs from the internet.

A jury in Minnesota ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay an alliance of six major record companies $9,250 for each of 24 songs for which they sought damages. They could have awarded damages as low as $750 per song.

Thomas, a Native American and mother of two, made legal history by becoming the first of 26,000 people sued by the Recording Industry Association of America over alleged use of filesharing software to take the case to court.

05-Oct-2007 : Tim Worstall, Jammie Thomas

A great of example of how the crime doesn't fit the punishment. Why go after a single user who may have had Kazaa installed versus going after pirate rings that manufacture and sell CDs for profit? The laws need to be changed. Anyone who distributes content without gaining financially should be exempt from this RIAA witch-hunt.

Giuliani vs Kucinich

Which side you on, boys, which side are you on?

"This attempt to foment a war is really against the best interests of America, it is against the spirit of the country, it is against the economic interests of the people." - Denise Kucinich, 2002

The New York Times "Election Guide 2008" lists the views of the candidates on a variety of topics. Specifically I was interested in the candidates' take on the war against Iraq. The opposite poles turn out to be Dennis Kucinich and Republican Ron Paul on one side, with Rudy Giuliani and John McCain on the other.

How anyone in their right mind can claim that Giuliani or McCain are moderates is beyond me. In fact, reading Giuliani's take on things, I am pretty convinced he has gone mad. All this guy thinks about is the "War on Terror."

Want an expanded police state? You can't do better than voting for Giuliani, thats for damned sure!

Meanwhile, Kucinich running what has become his expected protest campaign (but among the candidates, he easily wins in the hottest wife category), is right on the money and consistent over time. It is sad that neither the interests of the corporate media nor our government are not in alignment with those of the masses.

Only when the power is taken from the hands of the few and restored to the collective will of the many will peace prevail. We must end arrogant capitalist rule and the vanity of nationalism. Only a socialist reordering of society will bring about an end to war and the lies that lead to them.

From the New York Times:

Dennis Kucinich, Democrat

VOTED NO IN 2002, STILL OPPOSED
This attempt to foment a war is really against the best interests of America, it is against the spirit of the country, it is against the economic interests of the people.
-- In an Interview, Sept. 21, 2002

OPPOSED TO TROOP INCREASE
This escalation means a continuation of the occupation, more troop and civilian casualties, more anger toward the US, more support for the insurgency, more instability in Iraq and in the region, and prolonged civil war at a time when there is a general agreement in the world community that the solution in Iraq must be political not military. What is needed is a comprehensive political process. And the decision is not President Bush's alone to make.
-- In a Speech, Jan. 8, 2007

DE-FUND AND WITHDRAW NOW
I think it's inconsistent to tell the American people that you oppose the war, and yet you continue to vote to fund the war, because every time you vote to fund the war, you're reauthorizing the war all over again.
-- At the Democratic Candidates Debate, April 26, 2007

Rudy Giuliani, Republican

SUPPORTIVE OF DECISION TO INVADE
I think it's quite appropriate to go back and explain, 'Well, I might have done it this way, or I might have done it with more troops, or I might have done it some other way.' But here's the reality of it: We're at war. And we're at war because they're at war with us. They want to come here and kill us so we've got to put Iraq in the context of a much broader picture than just Iraq.
-- On " Hannity and Colmes", Feb. 6, 2007

IN FAVOR OF TROOP INCREASE
I support what the president asked for support to do and what General Petraeus has asked for support to do, not because there's any guarantee it's going to work. There's never any guarantee at war. But if we can come out with a correct solution or a better solution in Iraq, it's going to make the whole war on terror go better.
-- On " Hannity and Colmes", Feb. 6, 2007

MAINTAIN TROOP LEVELS
I detect in the Democrats a kind of attempt to go back to a pre-September 11 mentality in which we're not anticipating. And I also believe that they would not have made the mistake of wanting to force us to give our enemies a timetable of our retreat I've never heard of an army in the history of the world being required, if it's going to retreat, to give its enemy a timetable of that retreat..
-- On " Fox News Sunday", May 14, 2007

Productivity and the Crisis of Capital

It is truly telling when even capitalist wonks are making the same critiques (with some of the same conclusions) of the financialization of capital as Marxists have been all along. The fellows at Minyanville fall into that category and have these interesting posts over the past two days:

Kevin Depew:

Eric Weiner in an article published in Tuesday's LA Times (Use time wisely -- by slacking off) writes, "Attitudes toward work differ not only across time but also place. Corinne Maier's appropriately slim volume, "Bonjour Laziness: Why Hard Work Doesn't Pay," advocated that workers resort to "active disengagement" at the office. It was a bestseller in France but didn't resonate on these shores."

• Yes, when it was published a year ago, Maier's book advocating laziness didn't resonate on these shores.
• But that is already changing.
• Weiner writes in the Times:
  "In his essay, "In Praise of Idleness," British philosopher Bertrand Russell proposed reducing the workday to four hours, convinced that "the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work." I agree. So be creative, be happy and waste some more time. Read this article again and again. Try reading it backward. E-mail it to co-workers. Translate it into Mandarin, then back into English. Then grab a coffee and enjoy some down time."
• What is the connection with financial markets?
• Think back for a moment to the Greenspan Productivity Miracle.
• Well, the former Fed Chairman was certainly right about that.
• The U.N.'s International Labor Organization recently issued a report that found that the U.S. leads the world in worker productivity -- and by a wide margin, Weiner notes.
• So why would it change?
• Productivity, like most "financial virtues," is the products of positive social mood trends.
• As social mood transitions to negative, we can expect to see less and less "virtue" in hard work.
• Think about it: real wages are virtually stagnant, so it's not as if people have experienced real reward for their work.
• What has been experienced is an unconscious and shared herding impulse trending upward; a shared optimistic mood finding "joy" and "happiness" in work and denigrating the sole pursuit of leisure, idleness.
• If social mood has, in fact, peaked, we can expect to see a different attitude toward work and productivity emerge.
• Note that Weiner's article doesn't simply value leisure - it values "slacking off."
• The phrase itself carries negative connotations:
• Slacking - loosening, becoming less tight, less taut
• Off - disengaging, dropping, deflating
• These are not accidental connotations.
• Within a positive social mood regime this might instead be called "pursuit of leisure."

13-Sep-2007: Minyanville, Five Things You Need to Know

And later:

Prof. Depew,

I think you've hit on one of the major causes of the productivity backpedaling when you point out that workers have long been receiving deteriorating real compensation. I think that as credit dries up, they will be left to face the impact of this lack of real income growth. Credit has simply masked that impact for years (indeed, the deteriorating real incomes have probably spurred the very same runaway consumer credit growth).

But I think there is another side to the drop in productivity, which I also expect to continue in force: the business world in general seems to have forgotten how to create progress at its financial core (wisely financing innovation). If too much malinvestment predominates, then you have entire enterprises of people running around to no profitable end, regardless of how "hard" they work. Ultimately, the debt tied to malinvestment does not get paid back, at which point it effectively subtracts from the GDP, and shows up as lower bulk productivity in the economy.

In a series of mass economic bubbles, such as those which have come to dominate the U.S. economy, you have a rolling pool of malinvestment, which remains even if the current bubble changes. The bubble sucks millions of people into fictitious bubble jobs, all of which are essentially malinvestment. Just think of the hundreds of thousands of pointless and unnecessary jobs and trillions of dollars of fictitious wealth created in the housing finance bubble (ignoring the companion home building bubble).

I would place the number of such jobs in our economy at at least 5 mln, including the housing bubble, the (overpriced) health care bubble, and the Homeland Security bubble. That's a lot of productivity decline baked into the cake...

14-Sep-2007: Minyanville, Malinvestment Behind the Return of the Slacker

Pretty amazing stuff. Of course, these guys are very faithful to their religion, and believe strongly that allowing the "free-market" to work without interference from central banks (such as the Federal Reserve) or from the governments would solve all the ills of the world. They believe that the crisis is an exception to the rule, rather than the rule itself.

This is plain wrong. The financialization of capital is a natural outcome, predicted by Marx, of the capitalist system rooted in the M-M¹ circuit of money capital.

So we have:

The monetary crisis referred to in the text, being a phase of every crisis, must be clearly distinguished from that particular form of crisis, which also is called a monetary crisis, but which may be produced by itself as an independent phenomenon in such a way as to react only indirectly on industry and commerce. The pivot of these crises is to be found in moneyed capital, and their sphere of direct action is therefore the sphere of that capital, viz., banking, the stock exchange, and finance.

Capital Vol. I, Ch. 3, Karl Marx, 1967

and:

It is to finance-capital that the capitalist future belongs. But this, both in the international struggle of competition and in the internal class struggle, means the most brutal and violent form of capital.

Finance-Capital and Crises, Karl Kautsky, 1911

The best solution is to overturn the system itself and replace it with a socialist system based on the logic of human need, as opposed to the exploitive capitalist system which is only interested in profit.

Who Manufactured Bin Laden?

A 50-year old web designer who works from her home in South Carolina!

Suprised? Today the Washington Post reports that "Laura Mansfield" has been behind the release of many Bin Laden videos since 9/11/2001.

From an article by Joby Warrick:

Early yesterday morning, a South Carolina Web designer who works at home managed to scoop al-Qaeda by publicly unveiling its new video, a feat she has accomplished numerous times since 2002. Within hours, cable news stations were broadcasting images of Osama bin Laden commemorating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and crediting the 50-year-old woman, who uses the pseudonym Laura Mansfield.

9/12/07 Washington Post: Bin Laden, Brought To You By...

How did she do it? The article reports that she and others like her scoure the internet network of terrorist web sites to find the video images, scooping the rest of the media, especially the sluggish "MSM".

One of these spooks, Ben Venzke, says "It's not about bragging rights, it's about the mission." Of course, the money probably doesn't hurt either. But his statement begs the question - what is the mission?

Doing some biographic research on Mansfield shows that she has been involved in Middle Eastern operations since the 1980s. According to her website, she was in Beirut working at the embassy when the terrorist bombing hit the Marine barracks.

But it seems likely that she is a plant and her entire story is made up. At this point I would not even be suprised if she or those she works for actually manufactured the videos.

Do the research and judge for yourself.

Union Busting USA

As union membership in the United States declines, support for unions continues to rise. A recent Gallup Poll shows that although union membership has declined to 12% of the working population in the US, 60% of Americans support unions and would join one given the chance (Unions garner public approval, Randolf Heaster, Kansas City Star).

Although a paradox to the capitalist press, it seems quite obvious why this is so. More people than at any time in the past 35 years need unions, but aggressively anti-union tactics in the private sector have taken away or suppressed worker's rights to organize. This process has been greatly assisted by a mass media which is extremely hostile to organized labor across the board (newspapers, magazines, television, radio and movies). Finally, the linking of liberal and Democratic Party causes to organized labor has made labor's political agenda subservient to these other forces.

The private sector has a low 7.4% of workers organized (compared with 36.2% in the public sector). This is a direct result of the private sector routinely breaking labor laws, using intimidation tactics and firings, and all with a blind eye from the so-called Department of Labor - more of a joke than ever under the Bush administration.

From an article by Cosmo Garvin in Union Review:

As a rule, they don't shoot workers in the fields and at the loading docks anymore [as long as they are white Americans, workers in the US and throughout Latin America are frequently beaten, forced to live in labor camps, held in slave-like conditions, and even murdered - RiR]. This Labor Day, we can all be thankful for that. But trying to form a union can make your life miserable still.

Just ask Gene Esparza, a forklift driver who’s been with Blue Diamond, the international almond exporter headquartered here in downtown Sacramento, since 1969. That’s 38 years. Esparza makes $15.45 an hour, and he pays $500 a month for health insurance for himself, his wife and his two kids.

Esparza is among the workers trying to organize a union at Blue Diamond. “We’re not trying to hurt the company,” he says, “but I’ve got a family to raise. My kids want milk in their cereal. I need to put gas in the car.” He said he hadn’t gotten a raise for 15 years, until the International Longshore and Warehouse Union started helping workers organize a union in 2004. For Esparza and other plant workers, unionization is a no-brainer. But the campaign has been bitter.

The company sends out regular anti-union memos and makes attendance to meetings with supervisors about the union mandatory. Bosses constantly dog workers to make sure they aren’t talking about union business, Esparza claims. “I’ve had bosses come up to me and ask me who I was talking to, how many minutes I was talking to them for. Every time that happens I whip out my little notebook and I say 'I feel you are harassing me right now.’

“There are a lot of people who aren’t very happy. The morale is low. And some people won’t talk to me anymore because they are afraid they are being watched,” Esparza said.

Union Review: Holding All the Cards

With the structural crisis in capital coming to a head over the housing crisis, it is only a matter of time before workers will turn to themselves and form unions to protect their interests.

Its time to fight for union rights now and to break the stranglehold capital has on our work and our lives.

Its time to force the government to enforce its own good labor laws and repeal the bad ones (such as the egregious Taylor Law in New York State, a favorite of Democratic governor Elliot Spitzer).

Its time for a socialist alternative, a true friend of labor, instead of the two-headed capitalist duopoly of the Democrats and Republicans, which has worked tirelessly and brutally to deny the rights of working people for over 150 years.

Subprime Plot Thickens

I found out about Minyanville today, a website by investing guru Todd Harrison. He is hardly a progressive, but he writes with candour and wit, both rare commodities in the financial journals.

Part of a recent article of his is posted below; in it he covers the past few months of financial machinations connecting the dots and it is is well worth the read.

If you have any retirement whatsoever, READ IT.

As for me, I'm moving everything into cash and bonds (see Strategies for a Bear Market) until things shake out. It seems very clear that this going to be much worse than the dot.com bubble burst.

David Walker, the U.S. comptroller general, proclaimed that the U.S government was on a "burning platform of unsustainable policies with fiscal deficits, chronic health-care underfunding" and "chilling long-term stimulations" as he mapped the parallels between modern-day society and the fall of the Roman Empire.

These are not my words. They come from a nonpartisan figure in charge of the Government Accountability Office, which is often described as the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress.

"I'm trying to sound an alarm and issue a wakeup call," he said in the midst of his 15-year term, which began during the Clinton administration. "The U.S is on a path toward an explosion of debt."

Excerpt of the article by Todd Harrison:

NEW YORK -- They say that if you're playing poker and don't know who the sucker is, chances are it's you. For those currently holding trading cards, the stakes have never been higher.

Over the past few weeks, as risk chips stacked around the table, investors have been forced to call the bluffs of some of the savviest players in the global game.

The winners will walk away with a royal flush of profits, smiling all the way to the casino pool. The losers? They'll self-loathe and second-guess themselves on the hitchhike home, hungry for redemption and wanting for more.

Let's review the series of seemingly inconsistent hands we've been dealt during what was supposed to be a quiet stretch on the summer deck.

At the beginning of the summer, when "collateralized debt obligations" and "subprime mortgages" were first introduced into the mainstream vernacular, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was quick to assure us that the problems were "contained."

To be fair, Mr. Paulson wasn't alone. In fact, he was in very good company. See Minyanville article. San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher and Federal Reserve Governor Fredric Mishkin were unanimous in their assuring voices that we had nothing to fear but fear itself.

Fast forward a few months. That's when things really started getting strange.

[...]

Two days after the FOMC meeting, BNP Paribas, France's largest bank, halted withdrawals from three funds because it couldn't fairly value holdings tied to the stateside subprime mess.

IKB Deutsche Bundesbank confirmed that it was holding special meetings to discuss
its "financial situation."

The U.K. issued a statement that its subprime crisis might be worse than the one in the U.S.

Those concerns, on the margin, were disconcerting. But as actions speak louder than words, the sequence of events that followed offered a more telling view that strange things were afoot at the Circle-K.

The European Central Bank, in an "unprecedented response to a sudden demand for cash," injected $130 billion into the financial machination. The U.S., Japan and Australia also stepped up to the plate with piles of dough, upping the ante to more than $300 billion.

Even Canada -- Canada! -- chimed in to "assure financial-market participants that it will provide liquidity to support the stability of the Canadian financial system and
the continued functioning of the financial markets."

MarketWatch: If the wheels fall of the financial wagon, you were warned

Weeping Man

From an article by author Steve Ryals:

President Harry Truman said that, "a weeping man is an abomination." Truman was president from the close of World War II into the early 50s. I saw this quote
just the other day, and was reminded of my grandfather, Oren Ryals. Oren was my
father's father, and when I was a boy I idolized him. He ran a chicken farm on a
seven acre spread near McMinnville Oregon in the 50s and early 60s. I got to go
down and spend time working there just about every summer between 1956 and 1963.

Oren loves his grandchildren very much and I'm sure from his perspective
he spoiled us rotten. He built a bunkhouse out of the bar and stayed out there
with my brothers and I we came to visit. He told us tall tales of Bigfoot and
other legends, and we had great time. He taught me the value of working hard and
enjoying the fruits of my labor. It seemed as though he could fix anything from
repairing a building to repairing a truck or a tractor. He also worked hard on
his chicken farm, establishing an egg route in Portland as a market for the
14,000 or 15,000 eggs the chickens is produced every week.

When I was quite young, before the age of 10 and remember grandpa being quite affectionate. However, at the conclusion of a trip my mom, my brothers and I had taken to visit with grandma and grandpa, I was deeply shaken by the way he said goodbye. We were standing in the train station in Portland. It was the summer of 1960, and here was heavy with diesel fumes and sticky heat. I remember the massive engine throbbing just behind us as though breathing. I loved trains, and was so excited to be heading home to Seattle on one.

There we were, say goodbye to grandma and grandpa. Grandma hugged everybody of course, and grandpa of my younger brothers. I thought he was saving me for last because I was his favorite, but think that was just a fantasy I had. The conductor's voice rang out, calling everyone to board. I stepped towards grandpa and put my arms out to get out just like I always had, but he stuck his hand out to home raise and shoved against my chest, stopping me cold. Shock shuddered through me and I
wondered what I might have done wrong.

I looked up into his face, tears welling, and he said rather roughly, "big boys don't cry, and they don't hug either. Men shake hands." With that, he stuck out his hand for me to shake. Numbly, fighting back tears, I shook his hand, then turned without another glance and climbed into the train. My brothers and I settled into our seats, and I looked out the window. Grandma and grandpa waved to us, smiles on their faces, as though nothing had happened.

I sat there feeling crushed. I sniffed once or twice as I wiped away the remnants of my tears. I vowed then and there never to cry again. If grandpa said it wasn’t okay to cry or hug him, then that must be okay. I would just have to get over my hurt. It would be six long years before my tears again graced my cheeks.

I tell you this story because, as I read, President Truman's words that I quoted you at the beginning of this essay, I was reminded of my grandpa. He turned 50 years old in 1952, and I realized that this was the reality that my grandpa lived in. He really did think that a weeping man was an abomination, and he was trying to protect me from being thought of it that way. He was just doing his best. Today I picked up my grandpa with great affection and love. He taught me so much, and he really did love me the very best way he knew how.

Tears flow easily for me now. I consider them sacred. I know in my heart, the tears are not a sign of weakness. Instead, they are a sign of strength. I honor them in myself and in others. My heart breaks open for all of the people who do not feel as though they can afford to cry. Part of my mission is to teach people that feeling is healing, that any feeling fully felt shifts. It took me a long time to learn to laughter
is connected to tears just as rain is connected flowers. One enhances the other, creates a context, provides perspective. Tears are healing. Trust your tears, and trust your heart.

A Weeping Man

So basically Truman and all the other Cold Warriors and their ilke (NeoCons anyone?) were assholes. Sure he did some good stuff, but really, no big surprise eh?

Global Climate for Socialism

Global climate change is obviously recognized by the vast majority of people as a fact on the ground. If Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami disasters did not convince everyone, the increasingly bizzare weather patterns affecting most if not all parts of the globe, have done so.

With increasing flooding not just in the hurricane affected zones but also south Texas and England, the question of whether capitalism has what it takes to handle this crisis becomes all the more pressing.

An interview with Marc Brodine in Political Affairs calls for a concerted, socialistic world effort united to combat world climate change before it is too late:

[...]

Capitalism is a significant part of the cause of the environmental problems that we are facing. Because we can’t separate out how we produce things and how we finance things, and how we distribute things, and how we sell things, from our interactions with the natural world. That is why we are burning all this carbon to produce lots and lots of commodities that capitalists think they can sell profitably, whether that’s actual goods like plastic bags or little toys, or the gas that we put in our car, or use for chemical processes like making plastic for example. So capitalism is part of the cause, and we have to change our economic system, because it is directly linked to why we have these problems. However, socialism does not automatically solve such problems for us. We have to unite socialism with the latest in science.

[...]

"We Can't Wish it Away": Climate Change and the Human Prospect

Real-Estate Meltdown, Just the Beginning?

Yesterday I posted on the mortgage crisis and the effect on the credit market and homeowners. The other side of the finance equation is of course real estate values. Today the Wall Street Journal reported that real-estate mutual funds (or 'REITs' in the finance world parlance) are posting huge losses with no end in sight.

From a Wall Street Journal article by Tom Lauricella:

Mutual funds specializing in real estate are getting clobbered, hit by a one-two punch of woes in the property markets and the tumult in the debt markets.

Although real-estate stocks staged a late rally yesterday, their recent troubles were highlighted this week by a 31% one-day drop in the stock of KKR Financial Holdings LLC Wednesday, a real-estate investment trust, after the company reported financing problems.

The result is that after seven years of spectacular gains, funds investing in real-estate investment trusts are posting huge losses -- some with losses topping 15% over just the past month. That is particularly bad news for investors who poured nearly $18 billion into these funds in the past year and a half.

Meeting Redemptions

As some investors sell, fund managers are forced to sell holdings to meet those redemptions.

The average real-estate fund investing primarily in the U.S. has lost 17.2% over the past three months and is down 16.5% so far this year, according to Morningstar Inc. In contrast, the average diversified U.S. stock fund is up 0.7% so far this year and down 5.9% over the past three months.

[...]

The average global real estate fund -- which will invest both in and outside the U.S. -- has shed 15.2% over the past three months and is down 10.3% since the start of 2007.

Wall Street Journal: Real-Estate Funds Are Hit Hard

Lets face it folks, we are at the beginning of a serious crisis in capital. Where will the bailout come from this time?

The end of the 90s saw the 'dot com' bubble burst which affected millions but was relatively isolated to a specific sector (information technology) and confined to specific urban markets, such as San Fransisco. This was a stage in the increasing finanicialization of capital.

Now capital needed a new outlet for reinvestment and real-estate provided the perfect opportunity. Combined with the massive boost given by investments in the war sector, the real-estate boom provided the much needed new outlet for capital investment.

It was clear from the outset, however, that with real wages decreasing and job growth static, that the real-estate investment strategy required cheap credit and lots of it. This, as we have seen, has been achieved through a combination of extremely low interest rates with increasingly aggressive (until recently) lending practices.

The current crisis is huge. Nearly every financial institution will be affected. Nearly every country will be affected. Consumer demand will be affected on a global scale. Real estate prices will deflate on a global scale.

It seems increasingly likely this very irresponsible and unsustainable run-up will lead to a global depression with dire consequences for all.

The financial capital sector must be reigned in. A socialist program for managing and regulating the financial sector is the only way to prevent such irresponsible behavior and prevent the cyclical boom and bust pattern that is inherent to capitalism, and which has (as we have seen) and will continue to, become increasingly painful with each subsequent cycle.

Give Me Mao Better Statistics

Since the 1980s the propaganda campaign to discredit the achievements of socialistic states has intensified in support of the neo-liberal TINA ("there is no alternative" to capitalism) agenda.

A recent article in the Monthly Review (September 2006) by Joseph Ball picks apart the pseudo-science of the anti-Mao revisionist history movement:

Over the last 25 years the reputation of Mao Zedong has been seriously undermined by ever more extreme estimates of the numbers of deaths he was supposedly responsible for. In his lifetime, Mao Zedong was hugely respected for the way that his socialist policies improved the welfare of the Chinese people, slashing the level of poverty and hunger in China and providing free health care and education. Mao’s theories also gave great inspiration to those fighting imperialism around the world. It is probably this factor that explains a great deal of the hostility towards him from the Right. This is a tendency that is likely to grow more acute with the apparent growth in strength of Maoist movements in India and Nepal in recent years, as well as the continuing influence of Maoist movements in other parts of the world.

[...]

[I]n 1973-5 life expectancy in China was higher than in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and many countries in Latin America. In 1981 she co-wrote an article where she described the People's Republic of China as a 'super-achiever' in terms of mortality reduction, with life expectancy increasing by approximately 1.5 years per calendar year since the start of communist rule in 1949. Life expectancy increased from 35 in 1949 to 65 in the 1970s when Mao’s rule came to an end.

[...]

Monthly Review: Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?

Subprime Capitalism

" All contradictions of bourgeois production collectively come into eruption in the general crises on the world market." (Marx, Theories on Surplus-value, Vol. II, Part II, P. 318.)

Today CountryWide Financial Corp, one of the largest mortgage lenders in the United States, announced that it is tapping a $11.5 billion loan to stay out of bankruptcy due to overextending itself in the sub-prime lending market (full story). The stock of this company slid 13% on the news, after shedding nearly 50% of its value already this year.

CountryWide is one example of many mortgage companies which are teetering close to failure because of overextending themselves with sub-prime loans which fueled the "housing bubble."

This had been widely reported as a looming disaster by progressive socialist publications, because housing prices were forcing low and middle income people out of cities, because people were being saddled with unmanageable debt, and because the cyclical nature of capitalism naturally produces crises (see below) which disproportionately affect the working and under-classes.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story today describing the plight for one couple which reflects the stark reality for tens of millions of Americans:

Nearly two years ago, Mario and Leticia Montes found a home they loved, a gray stucco bungalow with a hot tub in the backyard in a middle-class neighborhood of Orange County.

The price was a major stretch at $567,000. But the couple, who had sold a home a few years earlier to move to a better area, was tired of renting. Mr. and Mrs. Montes convened a meeting with their two teenage daughters around the kitchen table to hash out the implications. "We agreed we wanted to be homeowners again," says Mr. Montes, "even if it meant the end of vacations and not eating out as often."

[...]

With a December "reset" on their loan looming, however, the refinancing option now looks impossible. A friend who works as a loan officer called with some bad news this week: Similar homes in their area have been selling for $535,000 to $565,000 recently. That means the Monteses' loan balance may exceed the value of their home.

[...]

"We have a disaster on our hands," says Mr. Montes, a 48-year-old warehouse manager. He fears he won't be able to handle the payments after the December reset and wonders whether the family can avert foreclosure. "At this point," he says, "we really don't have a plan."

Wall Street Journal: One Family's Journey Into a Subprime Trap

The Montes annual income is $90K whereas their yearly mortgage loan payments (sans-taxes) are nearly $40K. They are in terrible shape, have no equity in their home and have very difficult decisions ahead of them. However, their plight could be considered relatively good news in the sub-prime market. Why?

A large percentage of sub-prime loans are "refis" - refinancing an existing home with a second mortgage against the "equity" in the house due to increased property values.

Alexander Gourse describes the practice in a recent In These Times article:

When the housing market began its rapid ascent in the mid-’90s, many observers waxed rhapsodic about the potential of high-interest, subprime loans to merge the financial interests of investors and low income and minority communities.

[...]

Industry representatives typically cite the poor credit histories of most subprime borrowers to explain increasing foreclosure rates. Consumer and community advocates, however, paint a darker picture. “Predatory lending is definitely a systemic problem within the subprime mortgage industry,” says Al Hofeld Jr., a litigation attorney and chair of the South Side Community Federal Credit Union in Chicago (SSCFU). “There are very few subprime lenders who will make a subprime loan where the interest rate actually reflects the risk involved.”

According to Smith, predatory lenders put borrowers into loans that they cannot afford. While blatant fraud, such as the falsification of a borrower’s income to justify a larger loan, is becoming less common, the misrepresentation of a loan’s characteristics, like the concealment of a fixed rate “teaser” period that adjusts upward after two years, is a growing problem.

Hofeld says subprime mortgage companies routinely use bait-and-switch tactics to lure in potential borrowers and maximize the amount of money loaned out. At closing, borrowers are often presented with terms that do not match those previously offered by the company, and then pressured into signing documents which they have not had time to review. Ameriquest Mortgage Company is currently facing hundreds of lawsuits which allege that they routinely baited potential customers by promising fixed interest rates, low or no fees, lower monthly payments, no prepayment penalties, or by representing to borrowers that they qualify for a particular set of terms.

[...]

As they later discovered, however, the terms of the loan were not as they expected. Not only did the loan have an adjustable rate that can go as high as 13.4 percent, but the Walkers allege that Ameriquest falsely told them that their home had doubled in value since they had bought it a few years earlier, thus qualifying them for a larger loan amount. Ameriquest didn’t give them copies of their loan documents at closing, and as a result the Walkers did not realize that the terms had been changed until well after the three-day period during which they could legally cancel the loan. They have since tried to refinance, but have been unable to find another lender willing to lend them the amount currently owed to Ameriquest; the artificially inflated appraisal value has in effect trapped them in a loan with a rising interest rate.

[...]

“The problems in the subprime mortgage industry should be framed as an affordable housing issue,” says Hofeld. “We often compartmentalize the way we think about issues, but I really think that predatory lending is something that is decreasing the supply of affordable housing. And the lack of access to mortgage credit on fair terms is something that prevents people from getting into homes.”

In These Times: The Subprime Bait and Switch

The cyclical nature of the capitalist system is designed to concentrate wealth into the hands of the few. This latest cycle is an example of that process writ large. Real estate values will rebound eventually but only after many people loose their homes as foreclosures and bankruptcies commence. Capitalist enterprises and wealthy individuals will swoop in to buy up the properties and do with them as they please.

To close, an excerpt from a political economy course:

The general possibility of crises which is inherent in the commodity form of social production, attains its further development in the expansion of credit and the functioning of money as a means of payment (i.e., goods are sold but the money for it is paid only after the lapse of a certain time, and it is then only that the business is concluded; money thus exercises the function of credit).

During the space of time which lies between the moment of inception of the credit operation and that of the actual payment of the money, the value of the commodity may change. The payment might, besides this, not be made in time. The separation between purchase and sale and the independence of one from the other then again become revealed. The [consumer] for instance buys 20 yards of linen at the price of $40. He does not, however, pay this money immediately, as he has not yet sold his wheat, the value of which is similarly $40. The weaver, on his part, buys machinery which he promises to pay after he will have received the money from the [consumer]. But if the value of the wheat changes at the time when the [consumer] can sell it and he can realize for it less than $40 or if the [consumer] cannot sell it at all, he can of course make no final settlement with the weaver. The result of this is that the weaver is also unable to pay the manufacturer of the machinery, etc.

Credit ties up in this way all commodity producers who participate in credit operations by a chain of reciprocal dependence. The consequence of the break of any link of financial obligations may result in a shock to the whole chain, i.e., a crisis might break out.

Political Economy: The Marxian Crises Theory

Clearly, not the borrowers, but the capitalist system itself is subprime, unable to meet the basic needs of housing in a fair, equitable and sustainable fashion for the vast majority of citizens who labor under its dominion. A bold new direction is needed which can guarantee fair and affordable housing standards for all people. This can only be accomplished by breaking with the capitalist profit model through adoption of a democratic socialist program.

Stupid Cuba Embargo

Yes, the Cuba Embargo, one of the most idiotic policies of the United States government. Guess what? I plan to go anyhow...

From an AP story found on MSNBC:

In a first for an online travel company, Travelocity.com has been fined by federal regulators for booking trips between the U.S. and Cuba in violation of a 45-year-old embargo.

Travelocity.com earlier this month paid $182,750 to settle a complaint brought by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which said the company violated the prohibition nearly 1,500 times between January 1998 and April 2004.

Treasury's complaint said Travelocity "provided travel-related services in which Cuba or Cuban nationals had an interest by arranging air travel and hotel reservations to, from, with or within Cuba without an OFAC license."

[...]

Elsewhere, OFAC fined one unnamed individual $999.45 and another person $510 for buying Cuban cigars for sale on the Internet.

MSNBC: Travelocity fined for Cuba trips

You can do what's right or you can do what you are told

I was inspired to post these Phil Ochs lyrics after reading of the death of Moe Fishman. Fishman was a Communist organizer in the US who volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War against the fascists, while our own democratic government stood on the sidelines.

Time and again the major "democracies" of the west have stood by and tacitly supported authoritarian and fascist governments and parties, while attacking and destroying those on the left. The simple fact is that people power is feared and repressed and that western democracy is largely a sham. To this day western governments support materially many authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa, while oppressing the poor and disenfranchised, minorities and leftists at home.

It's time for the pattern to end, and that does NOT mean electing Democrats either! A fighting progressive socialist alternative linking students, the working class and the disenfranchised must be established at local, national and global levels to combat the neo-liberal agenda.

Phil Ochs, lyrics to "Days of Decision":

Oh, the shadows of doubt are in many a mind,
Lookin' for an answer they're never gonna find,
But they'd better decide 'cause they're runnin' out of time,
For these are the days of decision.

Oh, the games of stalling you cannot afford,
Dark is the danger that's knocking on the door,
And the far-reaching rockets say you can't wait anymore,
For these are the days of decision.

In the face of the people who know they're gonna win,
There's a strength that's greater than the power od the wind,
And you can't stand around when the ice is growing thin,
For these are the days of decision.

I've seen your heads hinding 'neath the blankets of fear,
When the paths they are plain and the choices are clear,
But with each passing day, boys, the cost is more dear
For these are the days of decision.

There's many a cross that burns in the night,
And the fingers of the fire are pointing as they bite,
Oh you can't let the smoke keep on blinding all your sight,
For these are the days of decision.

Now the mobs of anger are roamin' the street,
From the rooftops they are aimin' at the police on the beat,
And in city after city you know they will repeat,
For these are the days of decision.

There's been warnin's of fire, warnin's of flood,
Now there's the warnin' of the bullet and the blood,
From the three bodies buried in the Mississippi mud,
Sayin' these are the days of decision.

There's a change in the wind, and a split in the road,
You can do what's right or you can do what you are told,
And the prize of the victory will belong to the bold,
Yes, these are the days of decision.

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Veteran Dies at 92

A dedication to Moe Fishman posted by some new friends on the blog "An Unrepentant Communist.....":

Fishman (1915-2007) the seemingly indestructible Moe Fishman, the public face of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB) for more than half a century, died of pancreatic cancer on August 6, 2007 in New York. He was 92. Born in New York on September 28, 1915, Fishman left school during the Depression and became a laundry worker and truck driver. He participated in unionizing his fellow workers and found a commitment to social justice issues as a member of the Young Communist League. When war broke out in Spain, Fishman volunteered to fight, but was rejected for lack of military experience. However, his skill as a truck driver was needed and a second application for service was accepted—with the proviso that he recruit ten other volunteers. Fishman quickly found the men, though none actually showed up. The recruiters took him anyway. He arrived in Spain in April 1937 and trained as a foot soldier in the George Washington battalion. He was wounded during the battle of Brunete, his first action. He spent a year in convalescence in Spain; the injury left him with a lifelong limp.Back home in New York, Fishman stayed in touch with humanitarian aid organizations providing assistance for the civilian refugees of the Spanish Civil War.

SALUD! to Moe Fishman (1915-2007)

Harry Potter - As Great as All That?

Although I expect little from pop-culture, the sheer mass of the Harry Potter phenomenon and the obvious attempts to link it with and sell it as true literature cause me a lot of consternation. So I have been thinking a lot about Harry Potter lately; and of course because of the media blitz and the fact that I have two kids I really have no choice. My first impressions of Harry Potter as of the first book(s) were positive.

However, after the third book the series (I would not consider the books an epic by any measure) it became clear that this was nothing more than a continual rehash over and over again. Each book has a formula that is repeated from the previous book - Harry is isolated, Harry is despondent, Harry breaks the rules and almost gets kicked out of Hogswart, Harry discovers a lurking evil and no one believes him, Harry defeats the evil (sort of) and saves his family and friends (sans-one at least, of course).

I fully accept Harry Potter for what it is - comic book quality entertainment which inspires the imaginations of children. I think it is great that kids love the books and it encourages them to read. I think it is great that they love the movies and it makes them think about magic and fantasy. I also think that J.K. Rowling does a great job of squarely contextualizing the entire series within the petit-bourgeois milieu making it very easy for the majority of the western world to identify with.

But literature it is not and it disturbs me that it disguises itself as such, because by doing so it offers us superfluous reflections on our own lives in a trite and disingenuous fashion. Basically J.K. Rowling gets to have her cake and eat it too by offering prepackaged pop-morals without actually having to put any effort into developing or exploring the meaning of, or taking any responsibility for, what she is writing.

In the end, literature is significant because of what it tells us about ourselves and the human condition. Harry Potter unfortunately has nothing significant to say.

Excerpt from an article by Lakshmi Chaudhry in The Nation:

When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the eagerly anticipated conclusion of J.K. Rowling's seven-part saga, was finally released on July 21, the critics weren't disappointed. The New York Times's Michiko Kakutani praised the "epic showdown" as "deeply rooted in traditional literature and Hollywood sagas--from the Greek myths to Dickens and Tolkien to 'Star Wars.'" But great battles in fiction, especially of the caliber name-checked by Kakutani, are epic not merely in scale but also in moral content. Whether aimed at adults or children, they speak directly to the nature of good and evil and what is at stake when we choose between them. Most critics this past week didn't seem to notice that Rowling fails entirely to meet this key requirement. What we get instead is a moral fuzziness that parades as realism, innumerable references to a post-9/11 world coupled with throwaway and often derivative insights that never add up to a coherent moral vision.

[...]

Deathly Hallows is a sad confirmation of the same. The shallowness of Rowling's enterprise is revealed in the vapid little epilogue that seems inspired less by great fiction than B-list Hollywood scripts. Where the cataclysmic showdown in The Lord of the Rings leaves the Hobbits and Middle-earth irrevocably altered even in victory, the wizarding world merely returns to business as usual, restoring its most famous citizens to a life of middle-class comfort. At the end of this overly long saga, the reader leaves with the impression that what Harry was fighting for all along was his right--and now that of his children--to play Quidditch, cast cool spells and shop for the right wand. Or what George Bush would call "our way of life."

Harry Potter and the Half-Baked Epic

US Students Visit Cuba

From an article appearing in Workers World by Abraham Mwaura and Dante Strobino:

Twelve members of the youth group Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST) from San Diego, Raleigh, West Virginia, Denver, Boston, Rutgers University and New York City—together with five members of Workers World Party—traveled to Cuba from July 18-28 to defy the travel ban and to witness the gains of the socialist revolution.

In Cuba, the FIST delegation observed how a planned economy and centralized government following the path of socialist revolution have provided the necessary material conditions to carry out the process of the withering away of racism, sexism, homophobia and all forms of oppression, and for the building of a new human being.

U.S. activists from the Venceremos Brigade, Pastors for Peace, the U.S/Cuba Labor Exchange and FIST all traveled to the island to oppose the travel ban and participated in joint activities.

Surprising most in the FIST delegation, a Cuban representative told youth group members that FIST was the first socialist youth group from the U.S. in decades to officially travel to the island.

[...]

One of the major campaigns currently being organized by the UJC [Union of Young Communists] is the “Battle of Ideas.” Almost 80 percent of Cubans alive today have been born under socialism and many have come to expect free health care and education, while the struggles to defend these rights have begun to appear as things of the past.

The Battle of Ideas was designed in 1999 with more than 200 programs in education, health, construction and culture available to all children.

[...]

In their statement to the national and international media, the [ELAM (Latin American School of Medicine)] graduates said, “This is a dream come true: the dream of becoming doctors and helping people in need, helping those people who, like ourselves, don’t have enough money to access expensive health care service.”

Workers World: FIST youth visit Cuba

Socialism a Loaded Word

From an article by UT student Colin Pace in the Daily Texan (University of Texas):

There is no doubt that "socialism" is a loaded word in the Western world. Institutions ranging from news stations to school systems teach that socialist and nationalized programs are doomed to collapse under the weight of bureaucracy and corruption. There seems to be a general acceptance that leaders of socialist nations are aspiring despots, and that any pro-socialist ideas should be immediately dismissed, as it is understood that socialism just isn't right.

The idea exists in the West that the Cold War was the final showdown between the Communist bloc and the Western world. As the story goes, the United States trounced the Evil Empire by setting up a bulwark of capitalist states to ward off the threat of Communism. Since then, the remaining socialist nations are puttering out, drawing near their final days before privatization comes to their rescue.

Yet anti-socialist rhetoric, in a sense, is merited. It is undeniable that most of the world powers are capitalist nations, and dominant "socialist" nations - China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam - are having difficulties. Moreover, neoliberal policies, extended through institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are set up to help developing nations privatize and modernize their industries. These policies, in theory, will eradicate destitution. What we are taught in school and grow up believing is that capitalism not only benefits the leading nations of the world, but is also working to raise the standard of living for everyone.

Today, most Western institutional authorities claim that capitalism is indisputably superior to socialism. They nearly make it a crime to question what socialism is, how it functions and why it is "failing" around the world. From the red-baiting that Eugene V. Debs faced to the extremity of the McCarthyism era, the West continues to stigmatize socialists as "others," marginalizing their ideas and movements.

Socialism, however, should not be cast aside so easily. Socialism is not a monolithic ideology and it is not a terrible, fear-driven beast that threatens the U.S. masses. In fact, it is quite the opposite. To understand this, one need not look further than Michael Moore's recent movie, "Sicko." Though gimmicky and biased, like his other movies, the film raises an important question about why universal health care systems rank so high above the United States' privatized system in a global comparison.

But as the disparity between rich and poor grows in the United States, the same is happening around the world in situations far more significant than health care. Developing nations have received infrastructure-building loans from the World Bank to help industrialize. While this may help the upper class, the money does not usually benefit the people who need it most. The World Bank dictates the terms of loan agreements, often forcing developing nations to break up or sell nationalized industries to make way for private interests from other countries, leaving developing nations in debt. Meanwhile, massive cuts in social spending, devaluation of currency and unequal trading policies result from the policies instated by the new backers. Countries around the world, from Asia to Latin America to Africa, have been hit hard by these austerity measures.

While many U.S. citizens may be enjoying a relatively comfortable lifestyle, it is precisely because they are in the upper echelon of the economic spectrum compared to worldwide standards, and our current system caters to those at the top of society. Factory workers thousands of miles away are harshly exploited so consumer goods such as clothing and TVs can be sold at low prices to American consumers.

People should not judge the word "socialism" solely by what they know of "socialist" leaders. Leaders like Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro may have upheld socialist aspects of their administrations, but they were not actually "socialists" - A ruling elite still oppressed people within their countries, and did so just as harshly as their capitalist rivals. The immediate knee-jerk reaction that many have to the word "socialism" stems from the connotations of atrocities carried out under those administrations. Moving beyond superficial analysis of the word will allow people to better understand what socialist arguments are about.

Socialists around the world work toward bettering working conditions, raising wages, ending the war in Iraq, halting the injustices of the prison system and combating global warming, just to name a few of their critical agendas.

Even those who are staunchly opposed to the nationalization of industry, believing that the free market is the only means for progress, should question the objectivity of the Western view of socialism. The word is loaded with connotations, but that should not stop people from asking what the system is really about.

Daily Texan: Ignoring the undertones of socialism

Businesses Advance Socialism in China

Excerpts from an article by Li Qian from China Daily:

When China opened up to the world over 20 years ago, Wei Jianhua joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) because of its social ideals. A decade later, she became an owner of a chemical manufacturing corporation – a private enterprise.

At the end of last year, more than 2.86 million party members work in privately owned enterprises, including 810,000 running their own businesses, shows figures released by the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee.

Party members going into private businesses, especially those who left state-owned enterprises and government positions once became a national hot topic starting from the early 1990s when the country deepened development towards the market-oriented economic system.

[...]

The businesswoman's conversion has led to a fresh interpretation of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The CPC's constitution states that human society should eliminate the exploitation of the labor class, and calls on party members to establish businesses that are owned by all citizens or a collective of people.

But for Wei and many other Communist entrepreneurs, serving the people and country could be practiced in other ways.

"I believe the key issue is how to properly allocate profits to benefit the society," Wei said. "My company didn't receive a single penny from the government, but provides job opportunities and products. And we're committed in shouldering social responsibilities.”

[...]

"I feel I'm not a pure businessperson. When commercial interests conflict with social duties, I'll definitely place responsibilities ahead," Wei explained. "It's not just me, actually there are a great number of private business owners who have the same philosophy as me."

[...]

In the Sixteenth National Conference of the CPC in 2002, private owners and individual entrepreneurs were labeled for the first time as "Builders of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics".

"My heart was moved when I heard the news," Wei recalled. "I immediately felt my life was fulfilled."

China Daily: Red capitalists keep socialism alive

Predatory Lending: Subprime Pt I

Excerpts from an article in Justice newspaper by Theodros Shibabaw:

You’ve heard the commercials. “Want to own your own home, want to buy a car? Bad Credit? No Credit? No problem!” The past decade has seen the immense growth of “subprime” loans made to millions of people with bad credit histories.

Mortgage loan companies and banks have made hundred of billions of dollars in profit by preying on people who would otherwise be shut out of the market. These days, it’s hard to even pay for basic necessities without going into debt, as stagnating wages fail to keep pace with the fast-rising cost of living.

[...]

In the first quarter of 2007 almost 19 percent of all subprime loans, or 1.1 million mortgages, were either delinquent by more than 30 days or in foreclosure, an increase from 16.4 percent six months earlier (Mortgage Bankers Association, 6/14/07). Dozens of companies have either quit the subprime business or gone bankrupt.

[...]

Defending ourselves against these [capitalist] attacks will take a broad mobilization of the affected working-class communities. Working-class homeowners need to organize community committees to demand an end to foreclosures and zero tolerance to throwing families out of their homes. We need to demand state and federal funding for debt relief and fight for the cancellation of debts with no payment to the super-rich predatory lenders.

[...]

In the long term, however, it’s important to see the subprime lending crisis as just one expression of what big business can get away with in the absence of a strong working-class movement. Our economy is controlled by a tiny elite that glibly chases profits without the slightest regard to the livelihoods it destroys. It’s more urgent than ever to build a mass movement that consciously aims to replace the rule of profit with a rational, democratically-planned, socialist economy.

Predatory Lending: Cheating Workers Out of House and Home

Red Cross (TM)

A heart warming story of capitalism at its best. Perhaps J&J should consider a somewhat more creative logo instead of slapping a copyright on a symbol that has been used for thousands of years. But no...

From the Wall Street Journal:

Johnson & Johnson filed suit against the American Red Cross and some of its licensing partners claiming the charity misused the cross design that is its signature emblem, which also appears on J&J's first-aid kits and bandages.

The health-care products company alleges that the Red Cross licensed the eponymous design to for-profit companies that sell medical products -- such as first-aid kits and hand sanitizers -- and infringed J&J's trademark. The suit was filed yesterday in Southern District Court in New York.

In the suit, J&J asked the court to have all licensed products with the red-cross emblem destroyed and to permanently enjoin all sales of products bearing the emblem on first-aid, safety-preparedness and related products. The New Brunswick, N.J., company also seeks punitive damages and payment of its legal fees. J&J said it tried for several months to resolve the issue with the Red Cross, but that those efforts failed.

Wall Street Journal: Red Cross Is Sued by J&J Over Signature Emblem

Its funny, but the only product I can think of which uses the red cross are Band-Aid's, which I didn't even know was a J&J brand until I read this article.

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Fourth of July!

Regardless on what one may think of the current state of capitalist rule in the US, I agree with the assessment of revolutionary character of, well, the American Revolution. The legacy of tyranny haunts us still, and although bourgeois democracy is in many ways a potent combatant versus reactionary traditionalism, we still have a long way to go.

From the Socialist Equality Party's 2006 candidate for the NY Senate, Bill Van Auken:

This July 4 marks the 230th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a document that launched a revolution against colonialism and despotism, inspiring peoples all over the world. The creation of a new nation, founded on Enlightenment concepts of democracy, equality and the rule of law, foreshadowed the French Revolution 13 years later and had international reverberations for generations thereafter.

The document signed in 1776 had a profoundly liberating character, proclaiming the right of the people—not only in America, but everywhere—to employ revolutionary means to dislodge governments that trampled on their “unalienable rights.”

Those who led the insurrection against the British monarch were quite conscious of the international implications of their actions and the world historic significance of the Declaration. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams—both, in a poignant and fitting historical coincidence, were to die on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—“The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.”

World Socialist Web Site: The 4th of July Holiday...

What Did You Say?

A friend of mine, Eljeer Hawkins of NYC and Socialist Alternative/CWI activist, had an article published recently in Justice Magazine titled "What Did You Say?":

Media personality Don Imus, Hip-Hop artist 50 cent, comic/actor Michael Richards of Seinfeld fame and the resurgence of the gore and snuff films like the Quentin Tarantino presented Hostel I and II are at the center of an important debate about racism, sexism, violence and the use of language within U.S. society. To discuss these individuals or events in isolation is to underestimate the impact of capitalism on cultural products. This is a system based on profit, divide and rule and unbridled exploitation of the working class and poor. The current discussion reflects the crisis facing the working class and youth and exposes the true nature of American “democracy”.

[...]

At the height of the collective revolutionary struggles of the past, there was self-awareness, a consciousness of social and political uplift. The words of hate were still used within the community and general society, but those sectors engaged in struggle influenced the wider society. The call for justice, dignity and freedom, terms of endearment like sister, brother or comrade replaced the terms of our mental and physical oppression during and after slavery. The greatest expression of this was the “I AM A MAN” slogan of the 1968 Black sanitation workers strike in Memphis, Tennessee.

The language and actions of hate, discrimination and inferiority must be vigorously combated by the collective action of the working class and youth. The systemic culture of racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny demands building a sustained mass movement of the working class and youth. A mass movement would be multi-ethnic, gender balanced, democratic, accountable, and politicized, learning valuable lessons from the civil rights, women’s and LGBT movement. This mass movement would also need to prioritize the construction of a political party of the working class and poor that would stand for nationalized healthcare, jobs for all at a living wage, union rights and ending police violence.

Justice: What Did You Say?...

Lenin's Tomb

I was in Russia for 10 days (May 21-31) and have many photos to share. The most profound event of my trip was visiting Lenin's Tomb. It was an amazing experience, the design of the interior heightening the anticipation and momentousness of seeing the most important revolutionary in the history of humanity.



Below is a post on Paul Smith's blog in 2005 on "burying Lenin":

There was a bit of talk a few days ago about burying Lenin or not, I've always been pretty neutral on the topic, however I've just punched in Lenin into Google News and have been surprised at the amount of Lenin bashing going on in the capitalist press. So I'm going fully over to keep Lenin where he is until the work of the people is finished.

If they can get so annoyed at an 80 year old corpse then they're obviously [...] scared of what he represents.

I read on one website a comment by Amanda somebody...

As an eighth-grader, we learned about communism in Russia. Personally, I think they should just bury Lenin because he did not do anything helpful for Russia and is certainly not a good reminder of what happened for its people.

Well thanks to Lenin women in the Russian Soviet Republic had the right to vote when they took power, you would have to [have] waited until 1928. And if we really want to get technical the soviets since they formed (1905) obviously had no objections to women being politically involved, because its just stupid - the only kind of stupidity that some backwards feudal lord or fat capitalists could ever have made!

Go and ask some people who were alive then in Russia at the time and actually find out for yourself. I suppose you'd rather have Ivan the Terrible or Nicholas the Bloody in charge, for even asking for the right to vote they would of exiled you to Siberia.

There's a reason they decided to keep Lenin on display - because millions upon millions of people came to see him, and kept on coming to see him, even today.

Zyuganov, the leader of the [...] Communist Party of the Russian Federation:

Irresponsible and provocative [...] With their filthy hands and drunken heads they are crawling into the sanctuary of the state. The desire to rake up remains of the dead is a great sin and a sign of mental pathology.

Indeed there's a reason Putin said in 2001 he had no desire to move Lenin - it could well result in civil war, only this time we wouldn't lose like in 1993.

Who's Afraid of Democracy?

From In These Times:

Behavioral economists at UC San Diego recently conducted a study in which tokens were distributed among experimental subjects, with a few getting a concentrated chunk of the wealth and a majority getting little. They offered the “poor” subjects the opportunity to pay a price to take money away from the rich. The catch was that rather than being redistributed, the money would simply disappear. Economic orthodoxy predicts that few would snap at the chance, since they’d be paying for something that would confer no direct benefit. But they did. In spades.

Though only one data point, it suggests that people have a profound sense of economic fairness, that we are all, more or less, intuitive socialists. As far back as Edmund Burke, conservatives have suspected as much and feared democracy for that very reason. Read James Madison in the Federalist Papers and it’s clear that many of the Constitution’s undemocratic elements were designed to prevent the expropriation of wealth from an outnumbered elite.

Full article

Happy May Day 2007!

Happy May Day 2007 from New York City!

Union Square was the center of a May Day rally in support of immigration rights. The square was packed and filled with workers and activists of all types. A clutch of socialist and anarchist student groups brought up the rear of the over 20,000 marchers. I don't have my transfer cable for my camera but promise to upload pictures later in the week.

In Chicago, 150,000 to 1 million protesters filled the city streets. Mayor Richard Daley gave an address to a section of the protesters in Grant Park.

In Los Angeles, over 500,000 protesters filled the downtown halting traffic for over 16 blocks.

Peaceful rallies and marches were held all over the nation and in all the major cities, primarily by immigration rights groups, institutionalizing the May Day holiday in the United States.

Meanwhile, in Istanbul Turkey, police violently cracked down on leftist activists and militant union members who flooded Taksim Square. Speaking to the press at his union’s headquarters in the afternoon, Confederation of Revolutionary Workers’ Unions (DİSK) President Süleyman Çelebi said his union had realized its purpose in Taksim, asserting his belief that Taksim had now become a “May Day area.” He said DİSK’s primary aim was to commemorate the 36 deaths of the bloody May Day in 1977 in a peaceful demonstration but that the police had prevented it.1

Workers and pro-democracy activists were also roughly handled by the state security services in Nigeria. Dozens of workers, activists and pro-democracy political figures were beaten and arrested. Security forces swarmed public venues across the country to suppress the possibility for rallies.2

In Korea, workers from North and South Korea held the first joint May Day celebration between those two countries since 1950.

Across Europe over one thousand rallies were held, with hundreds of thousands attending in the major cities including London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin. Hundreds of thousands protested across Russia including union workers, activists and Communist Party members. Demonstrators demanded more economic security including better pensions.3

Indian May Day traditions are particularly inspiring. Across the nation, the students of India express gratitude to the community of workers behind the scenes with day long programs involving speeches and gifts to show appreciation for the hard work of those who keep the schools running. Union workers across India held rallies with thousands attending in the major cities.4

China has had a week long May Day celebration since 1999. Millions of workers take the week off going on holiday or attending rallies and celebrations.

Meanwhile, in sunny Cuba, millions celebrated while Fidel Castro enjoyed May Day from home due to health concerns. Thousands of foreign guests joined millions of Cuban workers, students and children at the emblematic Revolution Square, where the main parade took place.5

And in Venezuela, May Day celebrations were punctuated by a 20% rise of the minimum wage and the announcement by Hugo Chavez of deals with major oil companies to nationalize control of the remaining major Venezuelan oil fields.6