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Today's
Stories
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to ... ?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the 'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
March 1 / 2,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Race Card
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Political Trial of Don Siegelman
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Nader the Best Antidote to American Imperialism
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba After Fidel
Christopher Brauchli
Meet Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev: Friend of Bill, George and Dick
Ron Jacobs
Inside the Secret City: Bomb Making at Oak Ridge
John Ross
The New Conquistadores: Spain's Reconquest of Mexico
Robert Fantina
Posturing Over Patriotism: Obama and Those Lapel Pins
Robert Weissman
Hidden in Plain Sight: Human Rights Hypocrisy
Mohammed Omer
Fear in Gaza
Remi Kanazi
Barack Obama and the Politics of Xenophobia
Bob Jackson
Why is Yellowstone Destroying Its Bison Herd?
Richard Rhames
Casual Threats: Loaded with Mercury
Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Awaits the Arrival of the USS Cole
Rannie Amiri
Showboat Diplomacy: US Warships Steam Toward Lebanon
David Michael
Green
The Three Faces of Hillary: the Politics of Flim-Flam
Conn Hallinan
Notes from the Southern Cone
Faheem Hussain
Prince Harry of Afghanistan and the Meaning of Normalcy
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Gardner and Ford
Website of
the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Help!
February 29,
2008
Matt Gonzalez
The
Obama Craze
Jonathan Cook
Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel
Joshua Frank
Obama and Israel
Anthony DiMaggio
The Unilateral Presidency: Signing Statements and the Rollback
of American Law
Linn Washington, Jr.
Cop Abuse in America
Binoy Kampmark
Hubris and Nemesis
Robert Bryce
Energy Efficiency May be a Good Thing, But It Won't Cut Energy
Use
Sonja Karkar
Australia's Government Continues Its Love Affair with Israel
Dave Lindorff
A Manchurian Candidate in the White House? Obama or Bush?
Website of
the Day
Olduvai George
February 28,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
"Iraq"
Falls Apart
Fred Gardner
The Birth of NAFTA
Michael Levitin
The Crisis in Kosovo is Just Beginning
William S.
Lind
The Fake State of Kosovo
David Macaray
A Ray of Hope for Organized Labor
Stephen Fleischman
Nader's Latest Run: Monkey Wrench or Cattle Prod?
George Wuerthner
The Myths of Forest Health: Why Ecological Logging is an Oxymoron
Laura Carlsen
The North American Union Farce
Carl Finamore
Why the Delta-Northwest Deal Hasn't Taken Off
Michael Dickinson
The Day I Bombed the House of Commons
Website of the Day
Plane Stupid
February 27,
2008
David Rosen
Playing
the Race Card: Obama, Love Across the Color Line and Political
Dirty Tricks
Vijay Prashad
Bomber John: McCain and the 100 Year War
Harvey Wasserman
Incident at Turkey Point: Did Florida Go to the Radioactive Brink?
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Shambolic Trials: Pentagon Boss Resigns,
Ex-Prosecutor Joins Defense
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan for Sale: an Interview with Ayesha Siddiqa on Pakistan's
Military Economy
Peter Morici
The Auction-Rate Securities Fiasco: a Drama of Greed and Betrayal
Stephen Philion
Conspiracy Theory, Fears of Betrayal and Today's Anti-War Movement
Michael Donnelly
Obama by Unanimous Decision
Erica Rosenberg /
Janine Blaeloch
After the Land Deals: Will There
be Any Wilderness Left to Protect?
Website of
the Day
Dress Blues
February 26,
2008
Debbie Nathan
Confessions
of a Gitmo Guard
Alan Dershowitz
v. Frank Menetrez
On Finkelstein
Harvey Wasserman
How Ohio Got Nuked
Michael Colby
Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals
Gary Leupp
Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade
David Orchard
The New Conquistadors: Canada in Afghanistan
Martha Rosenberg
The Big HRT
Fran Shor
The Electoral Circus and Nader's Sideshow
Serge Halimi
The Dom Perignon Socialist Manifesto: Bernard Henri-Levy's Plan
for the French Left
Global Balkans
Neo-Liberalism and Protectorate States in the Post-Yugoslav Balkans:
an Interview with Tariq Ali
Website of
the Day
Texistentialism
February 25,
2008
Roger Morris
A
Death in Damascus
Anthony DiMaggio
Military
Bases, the Media and the Democrats
Ralph Nader
Why I'm Running
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Broils
Paul Craig Roberts
Kosovo and the Empire Crazies
Peter Morici
Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms
Dave Lindorff
General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That
Minot Nuke Incident
Saul Landau
/
Farrah Hassen
Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film
Heather Gray
James Orange, Civil Rights Legend
Robert Weitzel
Accomodating Torture
John Halle
Kucinich Goes Down
Website of the Day
Do the Trunk Monkey!
February 23 / 4, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain
Paul Craig
Roberts
Obama
and Global Trade
Wajahat Ali
Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon
on the 9/11 Commission
Ralph Nader
Neutering the FDA
Jürgen
Vsych
"What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?"
Fidel Castro
Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana
Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo
David Macaray
Unions Under Assault
Jeremy Scahill
The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence
David Krieger
Stanley Sheinbaum
Caging the Cold War Monster
Ron Jacobs
Building for the Future
Michael Garrity
The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies
Brian McKenna
Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down
Missy Beattie
Over the Hill with John McCain
Fred Gardner
American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly)
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement
Mike Ferner
Kick That Barrel
Dan Bacher
On the Trail with the Border Angels
Christopher
Ketcham
Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread
Poets' Basement
Davies and Buknatski
Website of
the Weekend
Obama
Mariachi
February 22,
2008
Mike Whitney
The
Bonfire of Capital
Jason Hribal
Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet
Liaquat Ali Khan
Arresting Musharraf
Joshua Frank
That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child
Dave Lindorff
Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for
Her!
Liliana Segura
When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion
Robert Fantina
Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen?
Yifat Susskind
The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women
Norm Kent
Pushing 60 with Pot
Website of
the Day
Bush Gets Down in Liberia
February 21,
2008
Saul Landau
Fidel
Steps Aside
Elizabeth Schulte
Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed
Helen Redmond
Health Care as a Human Right
Benjamin Dangl
Undermining Bolivia
Michael Levitin
Kosovo's Dilemma
Liam Leonard
Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle
Patrick Irelan
Land and Food in Venezuela
Linn Cohen-Cole
Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto
Michael Simmons
Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music
CounterPunch
News Service
A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs
Website of the Day
Cop Abuse in Shreveport
|
March
18, 2008
The Coming Failure
of the Social Safety Net
The
Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
By DAN LaBOTZ
The world appears to be on the verge
of an economic crisis and, if it turns out to be as serious as
some think, one that could rival or exceed the great panics of
the late nineteenth century and the decade long Great Depression.
The crisis began with unscrupulous mortgage lending on an enormous
scale, leading to mass housing foreclosures, then to a collapse
of the securities backed by sub-prime mortgages, and finally
became a crisis of the banks that held those securities. Over
the past weekend government and banking officials worked out
J.P. Morgan's buy out of Bear Sterns, one of the most important
U.S. banks which stood on the verge of collapse, a development
that threatened to unleash an international financial crisis.
This may turn out to be only
another recession, painful as those are, but if it turns out
to be a genuine depression, what are we on the left prepared
to do? What will this crisis mean for the American working class?
What should be the response of the U.S. left? What can be learned
from the experiences of the past and how can those lessons be
applied to the present challenge?
A Common
Recognition of the Danger
The crisis that faces us is
now clear to all, even if President Bush-like President Herbert
Hoover after the Crash of 1929-denies that the economy is in
danger. Already several months ago Lawrence Summers, Secretary
of the Treasury in President Bill Clinton's administration wrote
in an opinion piece in The Financial Times warning that,
"Even if necessary changes in policy are implemented, the
odds now favor a US recession that slows growth significantly
on a global basis. Without stronger policy responses than have
been observed to date, moreover, there is the risk that the adverse
impacts will be felt for the rest of this decade and beyond."
John Lipsky, the number two
official of the International Monetary Fund said this week that
government policy makers must be prepared to "think the
unthinkable." One presumes that by that he means a collapse
of the world economy.
Robert Brenner, the UCLA economic
historian, wrote recently in the leftist journal Against the
Current that, "The current crisis could well turn out
to be the most devastating since the Great Depression."
He concludes his article writing "because banks' losses
are so real, already enormous, and likely to grow much greater
as the downturn gets worse, that the economy faces the prospect,
unprecedented in the postwar period, of a freezing up of credit
at the very moment of sliding into recession-and that governments
face a problem of unparalleled difficulty in preventing this
outcome."
A Crisis
for Ordinary People
There is a common understanding
of the serious nature of the crisis, even if no agreement on
ultimate causes and consequence, among a range of people with
quite different politics. Not only do banks, governments, and
international financial institutions face a crisis, so do the
working people of the world. The crisis has tremendous potential
to cause widespread suffering because it is taking the form of
a crisis of stagflation, that is simultaneous economic downturn
and rising prices.
Josette Sheeran, World Food
Program Chief for the United Nations, recently stated that the
world economy "has now entered a perfect storm for the world's
hungry." A series of developments-soaring energy and oil
prices, climate change, production of biofuels, and rising demand
from India and China-will make it increasingly difficult for
millions to afford food.
"This is leading to a
new face of hunger in the world, what we call the newly hungry.
These are people who have money, but have been priced out of
being able to buy food," she said. "Higher food prices
will increase social unrest in a number of countries which are
sensitive to inflationary pressures and are import-dependent.
We will see a repeat of the riots we have already reported on
the streets such as we have seen in Burkina Faso, Cameroon and
Senegal."
Impact on
the United States
When a recession occurs, companies
fail, plants close, those that survive lay off workers, and unemployment
rises. If the current crisis turns out to be merely a recession,
unemployment is expected to rise to 6.4 percent by 2009, according
to Goldman Sachs, while African American unemployment would reach
11.0 percent. (Blacks' unemployment is generally twice that of
whites.) However, if this turns out to be a more serious recession
such as those we have experienced in the last 25 years then unemployment
could reach 8.84 percent as it did in 1975 or 9.71 percent as
it did in 1982.
And, if this is the kind of
economic crisis which many fear, a crisis along the lines of
the Great Depression, then we would be talking about an unemployment
rate of 25 percent, and for African Americans, 50 percent as
it was in the 1930s. Deep recessions and depressions have historically
been accompanied by shorter workweeks and wage cuts, so that
income also falls for those who have work.
What would we expect to happen
if such an economic crisis with such high levels of unemployment
were to hit the United States? The United States today has a
social safety net such as did not exist in 1929-unemployment
insurance, social security, and Medicaid and Medicare-but a tremendous
strain would be put on those systems and government at every
level would soon face a fiscal crisis.
The Likely
Failure of the Social Safety Net
With lowered corporate profits
and declining incomes and sales, Federal, state and local government
would not have the revenues to pay for those social programs
and would also be unable to pay salaries and wages of public
employees. In fact this has already begun, as the New York
Times reports, "About half of the state legislatures
are scrambling to plug gaps in their budgets, shot through by
rapid declines in corporate and sales tax revenue..."
With private sector and public
sector workers losing their jobs, more families would quickly
exhaust their savings, lose their homes, and increasing number
of those who rent would be evicted. Homelessness of working class
families would rise beyond the capacity of government and charitable
institutions. The condition of the African American and Hispanic
workers will be much worse than that of the white workers, and
that will be quite bad. Significant numbers of recent Hispanic
immigrants would return to their homelands in Mexico or Central
America, though most would probably stay here, since things will
be no better at home.
The Political
Response
What will happen to American
politics if there is a depression? Whether we have a government
headed by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or John McCain, we will
face similar issues. All three candidates share a commitment
to the neoliberal and global capitalist model that has dominated
our political economy since the 1980s. While a Republican government
might react more rigidly and a Democratic government more flexibly
to such a deep economic crisis, still it is unlikely that either
will at first take dramatic measures.
Especially since the crisis
will probably be developing during the first year or two of a
new administration, one would expect that there will be foundering
followed by experimentation. The American experience of the 1930s
under President Franklin D. Roosevelt or the 1960s under President
Lyndon B. Johnson might lead a Democratic president to create
a program of public workers, the expansion of the social safety
net, and broadening of social programs in housing all paid for
by deficit spending along Keynesian lines. Will American capitalism
today be able to afford such a political economy given the relative
weakness of production and the decline in profitability?
McCain and the Republican Party
are likely to seek economic recovery through a program of tax
cuts for corporations and the wealthy, reduction of social programs,
together with an increase in repressive measures against social
movements, immigrants, African Americans and the poor. Whether
or not it will be able to find a mass base for such policies
after the George W. Bush administration's termination in the
disaster of a failed war abroad and economic crisis at home remains
to be seen.
When government and traditional
party politics fail in times of crisis, people tend to look for
other alternatives, for options to the right and left of the
American mainstream. During the Great Depression this took the
form of the growth of right-wing, quasi-fascists such as the
radio-priest Father Coughlin and rise of left-wing groups, most
importantly the Communist Party. With the American dream turning
into an American nightmare, millions will begin to look around
for other ethical ideals, political values, economic programs,
and social strategies. Some will turn to far right organizations
that scapegoat blacks and Hispanics. Others will turn to the
left looking for a humane organization of society, a system that
will improve life for all. What will be the possibilities of
the U.S. labor unions and left in such a crisis?
A Comparison
of the Labor Movement, Then and Now
The U.S. population today is
more than double what it was in 1930. In 1930 the population
was 137 million, today in 2008 it is about 304 million. The United
States had 3.6 million union members at that time, which represented
12.34 percent of the nonagricultural workforce and 7.45 percent
of the total workforce (there being many more farmers at that
time). Almost all of these workers were in the private sector,
since there were no public employee unions then. With the exceptions
of miners and garment workers, those union members were almost
all members of craft unions, like carpenters, that had few foreign-born
and African American members. The generation of the 1930s had
experienced its last major labor movement in 1918-1919, a movement
for industrial unions only about 15 years before. That industrial
upheaval had been crushed by the employers and the state, but
had left behind experienced leaders and dedicated activists.
Since then the unions had declined in membership, many were mere
skeleton organizations, and strikes were few.
Today 15.7 million workers
belong to unions, representing 12.1 percent of employed wage
earners. The union membership for private industry workers is
7.5 percent, while that for public sector workers is 35.9 percent.
In short, then about 12 percent of all workers were organized
and today about 12 percent are organized. The generation of 2008
has not participated in a major labor movement since the period
the late 1960s and early 1970s, now almost 40 years ago, when
there was a wave of organizing by public employees and farm workers
and of wildcat strikes and opposition movements in the industrial
unions. Some activists and leaders came out of that generation
of 1968. Since then the industrial unions have declined while
there has been some growth in the organization of public employees
and service workers. Today only a small percentage of workers
in unions have ever attended a meeting or participated in a strike.
The Left
of the 1930s and the Left of Today
The left of the United States
in 1930s was made up of about 20,000 committed members of one
or another party and received support at the ballot box from
nearly a million voters. The Socialist Party had approximately
13,000 members at that time while the Communist Party about 7,000
members, while the Trotskyists, who at the time considered themselves
an excluded part of the Communist Party, had at most a few hundred
members. The Socialists were a broad reformist party whose presidential
candidate Norman Thomas received over 800,000 votes in 1932,
while the Communists were a virtually illegal revolutionary party
which had little or no public presence. The loosely organized
Socialist Party, a congeries of conflicting ideologies and tendencies,
had many talented and dedicated members but its efforts were
diffuse.
The highly centralized Communist
Party, believing that liberals and socialists were fascists,
focused its efforts on the organization of its own labor federation,
the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), and its independent industrial
unions with perhaps a couple hundred thousand members. While
its sectarian strategy isolated the Communists from many much
of the American working class, it also gave them invaluable organizing
experience. The Communist party cadre of the 1930s-and their
Trotskyist satellite-were true believers in their parties' ideology,
absolutely dedicated activists tested in struggles against employers,
rival unions and the government, survivors of beatings, proscription
and imprisonment.
The left of the United States
today is made up the members of various socialist organizations
and broader movements. The largest left organizations in the
U.S. today, the Communist Party (CPUSA), the Committees of Correspondence
(CC), the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the International
Socialist Organization (ISO) represent a few thousand committed
members. There are also smaller socialist groups such as the
Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and Solidarity. Most
left activists, however, participate in broader movements such
as those that came together in the U.S. Social Forum last summer
in Atlanta: community groups, environmentalists, African American
organizations, feminist groups. There are also those academic
leftists and campus based activists who gather at the Left Forum
New York every year. Even taking all of these together, the U.S.
left represents a very small organized force in American society.
We could also gauge the left
in terms of its electoral support as measured by the 2.8 million
voters for the campaign of Ralph Nader on the Green Party slate
in the year 2000, a year in which he ran a campaign on what was
virtually a social democratic platform. Then too one should take
into consideration the unions and activists affiliated to the
U.S. Labor Party inspired by the late Tony Mazzocchi and local
or state left-of-center political formations such as the Working
Peoples Party in New York. None of the organizations of the left,
however, has a significant public presence comparable to that
of the Socialist Party and none has the dedicated and tested
cadres of the Communist Party of the early 1930s.
The Strategy
of the Labor Left of the 1930s
The socialist left played a
crucial role in the labor movement of the 1930s providing leaders,
cadres and activists for the organization of the Congress of
Industrial Organizations (CIO) which organized the industrial
unions in steel, rubber, glass, auto, electrical, and other industries.
While there were important ideological differences between Socialists,
Communists and Trotskyists in the 1930s, the three strains of
the left shared common strategies and tactics during the 1930s.
At the beginning of the 1930s all three groups had the same principal
goals: the organization of industrial unions; the creation of
a labor party; and the establishment of a socialist society in
America.
With the depression, all three
organizations engaged in many of the same organizing strategies.
In all of the campaigns to organize industrial unions, it was
generally experienced skilled workers who had been leftists and
members of craft unions who played the key role. The Communist
organized their members into industrially to coordinate their
union and working class activities. In 1928 the Communist Party
which then had 10,000 members had almost 1,000 in the building
trades, 1,500 in the needle trades, 850 metal workers, 1,200
miners, 400 auto workers and 150 lumber workers. Many of the
Communist union activists would play important roles in organizing
throughout the 1930s.
The leftist of all persuasions
in cities throughout the country built unemployed councils that
engaged in protest demonstrations and confrontations with government
officials to demand relief and public works jobs from the government.
The few hundred leftists active among the unemployed soon came
to lead groups of thousands of jobless workers. The unemployed
councils proved key to preventing scabbing and building solidarity.
By 1934 the various leftist
parties active among industrial workers succeeded in leading
three great strikes in 1934, all of which led to union recognition
and contracts: the Communists leading the longshore strike in
San Francisco, the Socialists directing the Autolite strike in
Toledo, and the Trotskyists heading up the Teamsters strike in
Minneapolis. The leftists brought to these strikes the same tactics
coordination with the unemployed councils, the use of mass picketlines,
the dispatch of flying squads, and violent confrontations with
scabs and the police to defend the strikes.
When John L. Lewis, the conservative
head of the United Mine Workers, created the CIO, all three socialist
tendencies became involved either as paid staff or as volunteer
organizers in the organization of the unions in heavy industry.
The Communist Party which began with the largest number of union
activists played the largest role in the CIO coming to be the
leadership of some unions such as the United Electrical Workers.
Throughout the 1930s the Communist Party grew while the Socialist
Party declined, losing members to both the Communists and the
Trotskyists. The CIO succeeded in organizing millions of workers
in basic industry, and the AFL also grew by adopting many of
the strategies and tactics of the CIO.
The Left
and the Labor Movement Today
The labor movement today is
divided into two rival federations, the AFL-CIO and Change-to-Win.
The AFL-CIO, historically dominated by the more conservative
building trades unions, failed during the 1980s to stop the decline
of organized labor. This led in the 1990s to the rise of a new
leadership under John J. Sweeney which during the 1990s and early
2000s also proved unable to stop the hemorrhage of union members.
Then in 2005, frustrated by the continuing decline in union membership,
seven unions left the AFL-CIO to form Change-to-Win, a new federation
with the goal of developing new strategies and dedicating greater
resources to organizing.
Among those Change-to-Win unions,
the Service Employees International Union has played the leading
role. SEIU's leader Andy Stern, who has little use for union
democracy, developed a top-down strategy, brought in young college-educated
organizers, and was accused by some of using workers like cannon
fodder. Nevertheless, SEIU succeeded in bringing significant
numbers of new members into the union, but it also faced mounting
criticism for his treatment of the members, for example, by consolidating
huge local unions, large beyond the possibility of membership
control. Stern has been criticized recently by leaders of his
own union for organizing and getting union contracts by making
deals with employers and government officials, sometimes behind
the back of the union members.
The Workers Centers and Jobs
with Justice also represent important centers of union activism.
The Workers Centers, usually led by and assisting immigrant workers,
attract young activists interested in the labor movement. Jobs
with Justice (JwJ), the national campaign for workers rights,
is a large network of labor activists that takes up labor issues
through local campaigns. JwJ represents an important venue for
radicals and militants of all stripes within in the labor movement.
Many radicals work in the labor movement, and whether in their
unions, workers centers or solidarity groups such as JwJ, they
defend union democracy, organize militant campaigns and challenge
the employers. They do so, however, without a broader labor,
social and political strategy?
The left today has thousands
of members active in the working class and in the labor unions
either as union staff, elected officers, or as rank-and-file
members. Events such as the Jobs with Justice conference, the
Labor Notes conference, and the U.S. or World Social Forum provide
opportunities for the labor left in the working class to come
together. There is, however, virtually no coordination of the
left in the labor movement; in fact, there is very little communication
as the different left groups each goes its own way.
The various left groups and
social movements have members who are in the union officialdom
or hold elected office, but few organizations puts forth a strategic
vision for labor independent of that of the union leadership
in the two major federations. Solidarity, a small socialist group
which came out of a merger of several left organizations in the
early 1980s, puts forth an alternative vision for the labor movement
based on the notion of rank-and-file power built within unions
to transform them into more democratic, militant, and class-conscious
organizations capable of mounting a broader working class struggle.
Solidarity's members have been particularly active in building
Labor Notes and in support for Teamsters for a Democratic Union.
Unlike the leftists of the
1930s, virtually none of the labor activist in the union movement
defends revolutionary socialist politics. Within the working
class there is virtually no socialist presence. Socialism exists
principally in the academy, while the working class remains tied
to the Republican and Democratic parties and is seldom offered
a political alternative.
The Labor
Movement and Politics in the 1930s
While the labor left of the
1930s started out fighting for industrial unionism, a labor party
and socialism, they had by the early 1940s accepted the first
and given up on the other two. By the second election of Franklin
D. Roosevelt in 1936, the Socialist Party and the Communists
had both reoriented toward the Democratic Party; by 1942 they
had been subsumed by it. The Socialist Party found that Roosevelt
had largely adopted their program of social reforms, while the
Communist Party decided that membership in the Democratic Party
was the American version of the Popular Front. The Democrats
swallowed the left.
After the Nazi attack on the
Soviet Union in 1941, for Communists the defense of the socialist
homeland blended with American patriotism and found expression
in loyalty to Roosevelt, the Democrats, America and the war.
The Progressive Party campaign of Henry A. Wallace in 1948 represented
the last hurrah of the Communist Party and its Popular Front
before it went down to ignominious defeat. After the war, Roosevelt,
Truman and Eisenhower succeeded in cohering and consolidating
a new political economy based on the limited welfare state, military
Keynesianism, war, and imperialism. By 1950 or so, with the consolidation
of the new political economic system and the beginnings of the
Cold War, the American government began the purge of the Communist
left from the unions, society and politics. McCarthyism meant
the end of the left for a generation, until the revival of the
1960s.
The American
Left and Politics Today
The election of Barack Obama
or Hillary Clinton as president in the midst of the greatest
economic crisis in 75 years will present the small socialist
left of the United States today with an enormous challenge. The
left will have to find a way to build an independent labor, social
and political response to the crisis without becoming drawn into
the Democratic Party. Obama, with his charisma, creativity and
flexibility, may prove to be a Rooseveltian figure that will
be able to lead the social forces that can cohere and consolidate
a new life for American capitalism. The responsibility of the
left is to fight to prevent such a consolidation of a new social
pact between capital and labor, government and the people, and
to build an independent working class movement and political
party that can fight for socialism in the coming decade.
The Challenges
for the Left Today
The principal organizational
problems for the revolutionary socialist left today are its numerical
weakness, its division into too many small rival organizations,
and its lack of dedicated cadres in the labor movement. The political
problems are equally serious: the left lacks an inspiring vision,
lacks a political program, and perhaps most important at the
moment, lacks a strategic plan for intervention in the working
class and society more broadly. The list of deficits more or
less constitutes the list of tasks of the American left in this
period, though logically the latter political deficits have to
be addressed before the organizational weaknesses can be addressed.
First, we need a left that
clearly defines itself as revolutionary socialist, that is, that
sees change coming through the overthrow of capitalism and the
state and the creation of a new social order. That such a revolutionary
socialist left fights for reforms goes without saying, but that
it participates in struggle for reform with its eye on the revolutionary
future must be stressed. Socialism means the liberation of the
full potential of the individual through the liberation of the
working class from exploitation, of the oppressed from the weight
of the state with its police, courts, and prisons, and of humanity
from the mass murder of warfare. The fulfillment of individual
and collective potential comes from the democratic experience
of creating a new economy, a new society, and a new form of human
self-government.
Second, such a revolutionary
left needs a program for American society, that is a broad statement
of principles that addresses the fundamental problems faced by
Americans today in our government, our economy, our society and
our foreign policy in a way that points to their solution through
fundamental social change. The problem of health care for the
50 million uninsured, for example, can be solved by taxing corporations
and the wealthy to pay for a publicly funded health care system-without
insurance companies or private hospitals-democratically administered
by organizations of patients, workers, nurses, doctors. Such
a program of transitional demands should have the character of
a set of proposals that tend to address the problems of today
and propose solution in ways that project fundamental structural
changes in the system, the sum total of which would amount to
another system, a democratic socialist system.
Third, the revolutionary left
must have a strategy that connects with the American working
class and the American people. Such a strategy must be able to
bring about a fusion between the left and the most critical and
active sections of the population, of whom, African Americans
have historically been at the forefront. Many of those that we
will want to recruit will be found in the movement which at the
moment is rallying to Barack Obama. We have to offer the people
attracted to his message of change the principles, program and
strategy of genuine change through the creation of a socialist
movement.
The most important part of
a strategy will be the development of strategy for labor. The
contemporary American working class is not that of the 1930s
or even the 1970s. Industrial workers, while remaining quite
significant, no longer have the economic power, social weight
or geographical compactness that they did 80 or even 40 years
ago. While the strike remains the classical working class form
of fighting, it was not then and is not now the only form of
struggle. Though unions are the fundamental working class organizations,
neither unions nor working class communities have the same character
they did in other decades. The globalization of the economy,
the international character of production, the dispersion of
workers throughout industrial regions, and the revolutionary
transformation of communication technology mean that while we
have much to learn from the past, we have to find and to create
the institutions and forms of struggle appropriate to our own
era.
The creation of a contemporary
working class and socialist political movement will not be based
on an attempt to recreate the American left of the mass Socialist
Party of 1912, the Communists Party of the 1930s and 1940s, or
by passing once again through Students for a Democratic Society
(sds) or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
What we once called internationalism and anti-racism, and which
the universities today call multicultural and diversity, will
form a more central part of the new working class party. The
respect for the integrity and autonomy of every sector of society's
exploited and oppressed form the basis for the unity and solidarity
of the class. We will have to discover, invent, and construct
the right principles, political program, and strategy for the
socialist party of our time. The depth of the crisis suggests
that the task is an urgent one.
Dan La Botz is a Cincinnati-based teacher, writer
and activist. He is a member of Cincinnati Progressive Action
(CPA) and No Jail Tax PAC (nojailtax.org).
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