Leave a twig for the birds to perch on... don't let the capitalists do your thinking for you... if you are in the neighborhood, stop on in; the coffee is always hot and the cookie jar is full... looking forward to the day when the real decisions in America are made by working class families gathered around the kitchen table... new postings daily...Yours in the struggle...Alan L. Maki
It's a term for a new mental disorder Monsanto and big agribusiness is pushing to be recognized by the psychiatric industry... there is even medication that can be prescribed for you.
If you insist on the right to eat healthy foods or become a food activist you could be considered mentally ill should you be diagnosed with:
Orthorexia nervosa
This is a mental illness right up there with hoarding--- when people buy things in quantity on sale or at garage sales.
I wonder when the wealthy will be diagnosed with a mental disorder for hoarding the wealth we create?
Or, what about those who create hit lists of people to attack with drones knowing most of the "hits" will not even be on the target but kill lots of innocent civilians? Is there a name for this mental illness?
Anyways, don't worry about GMO's and what Monsanto does lest you be diagnosed with this mental disorder:
Orthorexia nervosa
Don't worry though...
Once diagnosed with this mental disorder there is a pill for the problem.
On
Feb. 12, 2015 the American Postal Workers Union and more than 60
national organizations came together in A Grand Alliance to Save Our
Public Postal Service!
Read the Alliance Statement and view the list of 60-plus Alliance signatories.
In a two-minute video,<< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o6vJw9mkzU>>
actor-activist Danny Glover champions the need for a vibrant public
Postal Service and asks the public to join with him in A Grand Alliance
to save it.
Mission Statement: A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service
The
United States Postal Service is a wonderful national treasure, enshrined
in the Constitution and supported by the American people. Without any
taxpayer funding, the USPS serves 150 million households and businesses
each day, providing affordable, universal mail service to all –
including rich and poor, rural and urban, without regard to age,
nationality, race or gender. The U.S. Postal Service belongs to "We, the
People."
But the
USPS and postal jobs are threatened by narrow monied interests aimed at
undermining postal services and dismantling this great public
institution. Even some postal executives have been complicit in the
drive toward the destruction of the Postal Service and ultimate
privatization: They have slowed mail service, closed community based
Post Offices and mail processing facilities, slashed hours of
operations, tried ceaselessly to end six-day service as well as door to
door delivery, and eliminated hundreds of thousands of living wage jobs.
Good
postal jobs are vital to strong, healthy communities, and have provided
equal opportunities and the foundation for financial stability for
workers from all walks of life, including racial and ethnic minorities,
women and veterans. Postal services are essential to commerce and bind
together families, friends and loved ones. In the day of e-commerce, a
public postal service is as relevant as ever.
Yet those
corporate forces who want to privatize public services allege that
curtailing postal services and eliminating jobs are necessary due to
diminishing mail volume and "burdensome" union wages and benefits.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, a
Congressionally-manufactured USPS "crisis" imposed an unfair crushing
financial mandate on the Postal Service that no other government agency
or private company is forced to bear. (The Postal Accountability and
Enhancement Act of 2006 compels the USPS to pay approximately $5.5
billion per year to fund future retiree healthcare costs 75 years in
advance.)
Without
this unreasonable burden, the USPS would have enjoyed an operating
surplus of $600 million in 2013 and over $1.4 Billion in 2014. The
people of this country deserve great public postal services. We advocate
expanded services, such as non-profit postal banking and other
financial services. We call on the Postmaster General and Postal Board
of Governors to strengthen and champion the institution.
The
public good must not be sacrificed for the sake of private investment
and profit. A strong public Postal Service is our democratic right. Join
us in the fight to protect and enhance vibrant public postal services
now – and for many generations to come.
Initial Signatories
A. Philip Randolph Institute AFL-CIO Alliance for Retired Americans Amalgamated Transit Union American Federation of Government Employees American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees American Federation of Teachers American Postal Workers Union Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance Black Women’s Roundtable Campaign for America’s Future Catholic Labor Network Center for Community Change Action Center for Effective Government Center for Media and Democracy Center for Rural Affairs Center for Study of Responsive Law Coalition of Black Trade Unionists Coalition of Labor Union Women Color of Change Communications Workers of America Congressional Hispanic Caucus Consumer Action Democracy for America Essential Information Farm Aid Gamaliel Network Greenpeace USA Healthcare-NOW! Hightower Lowdown In the Public Interest Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Interfaith Worker Justice International Association of Fire Fighters Jewish Labor Committee Labor Campaign for Single Payer Healthcare Labor Council for Latin American Advancement National Action Network National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees National Association of Letter Carriers National Association of Postal Supervisors National Coalition on Black Civic Participation National Consumers League National Council of Churches National Education Association National Farmers Union National People’s Action National Postal Mail Handlers Union National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association 9to5 People for the American Way Pride at Work Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc. Public Citizen Rainbow PUSH Coalition Service Employees International Union Social Security Works United For A Fair Economy USAction VoteVets Action Fund Working America
The new Greek Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, is making the claim that capitalism must be saved in order to save humanity while claiming title to a new kind of thought, an "erratic Marxism."
More than a bit like Herbert Marcuse who used the perverted logic of an upper middle class intellectual to deceive youth in struggle against war, racism and injustice into thinking they should not throw in their lot with "evil" Communists.
Those of the "New Left" who were sucked into following the idiocy of Herbert Marcuse are sure to be sucked in by Yanis Varoufakis and his "erratic Marxism" making the claim that the "problem" with Marxism has been his discovery.
It is no coincidence that those who Gus Hall singled out as being
traitors, Sam Webb, Jarvis Tyner, Scott Marshall, Erwin Marquit, Daniel Rubin et. al., who destroyed
the Communist Party USA have sucked up this perversion and
bastardization of Marxism.
I would point out that Webb and company publish support for Syriza while refusing to publish the views of the KKE (Communist Party of Greece). Again, so much for intellectual honesty and democratic dialog, discussion and debate.
Mikhail Gorbachov must be
wondering why he and Raisa were unable to drum up such itsy-pitsy to
defend their betrayal of socialism in the Soviet Union.
This is a not so thinly veiled attack on the KKE, the Communist Party of Greece, which has called for the replacement of capitalism with socialism as the solution to the very serious social and economic problems now being experienced by the Greeks.
Those considering sucking in this shit being dished out by Yanis Varoufakis in the name of saving Greece and humanity by saving capitalism might want to read and study Karl Marx, Frederich Engels and V.I. Lenin in order to find out for themselves what these great revolutionary thinkers believed rather than taking the word of Varoufakis to find out where the truth lies.
Anyone who takes the time to read and study the real proponents of Marxism will find out for themselves just how devious, deceitful and dishonest Varoufakis is.
And to top off his dishonesty, Varoufakis has the unmitigated arrogance and dishonesty to ask, "What should Marxists do?" in order to justify his own betrayal of working class struggles.
I thought it just a bit weird that Syriza would pluck up a professor from a U.S. university in Texas known for its support for neoliberalism and make him the Greek Minister of Finance... a real Marxist would never be allowed to teach at the University of Texas.
What follows is not "erratic Marxism" or any other kind of Marxism... certainly not real Marxism of the kind outlined in the "Communist Manifesto" which one may want to read for starters along with Marx's "Capital" and Lenin's "Imperialism" along with the writings of the anti-fascists including Togliatti, Gramsci and Dimitroff.
I would also encourage people to check out the websites of the KKE and PAME:
By the way, when will the German government finally repay the Greeks for the death and destruction wrought on them by Hitler and his fascist Greek collaborators?
Yours in the struggle,
Alan L. Maki
Yanis Varoufakis: How I became an erratic Marxist
Before he entered politics, Yanis Varoufakis, the iconoclastic Greek
finance minister at the centre of the latest eurozone standoff, wrote
this searing account of European capitalism and and how the left can
learn from Marx’s mistakes
Yanis Varoufakis. Illustration by Ellie Foreman-Peck
In 2008, capitalism had its second global spasm. The financial crisis set off a chain reaction that pushed Europe
into a downward spiral that continues to this day. Europe’s present
situation is not merely a threat for workers, for the dispossessed, for
the bankers, for social classes or, indeed, nations. No, Europe’s
current posture poses a threat to civilisation as we know it.
If my prognosis is correct, and we are not facing just another
cyclical slump soon to be overcome, the question that arises for
radicals is this: should we welcome this crisis of European capitalism
as an opportunity to replace it with a better system? Or should we be so
worried about it as to embark upon a campaign for stabilising European
capitalism?
To me, the answer is clear. Europe’s crisis is far less likely to
give birth to a better alternative to capitalism than it is to unleash
dangerously regressive forces that have the capacity to cause a
humanitarian bloodbath, while extinguishing the hope for any progressive
moves for generations to come.
For this view I have been accused, by well-meaning radical voices, of
being “defeatist” and of trying to save an indefensible European
socioeconomic system. This criticism, I confess, hurts. And it hurts
because it contains more than a kernel of truth.
I share the view that this European Union is typified by a large
democratic deficit that, in combination with the denial of the faulty
architecture of its monetary union, has put Europe’s peoples on a path
to permanent recession. And I also bow to the criticism that I have
campaigned on an agenda founded on the assumption that the left was, and
remains, squarely defeated. I confess I would much rather be promoting a
radical agenda, the raison d’être of which is to replace European
capitalism with a different system.
Yet my aim here is to offer a window into my view of a repugnant
European capitalism whose implosion, despite its many ills, should be
avoided at all costs. It is a confession intended to convince radicals
that we have a contradictory mission: to arrest the freefall of European
capitalism in order to buy the time we need to formulate its
alternative.
Why a Marxist?
When I chose the subject of my doctoral thesis, back in 1982, I
deliberately focused on a highly mathematical topic within which Marx’s
thought was irrelevant. When, later on, I embarked on an academic
career, as a lecturer in mainstream economics departments, the implicit
contract between myself and the departments that offered me lectureships
was that I would be teaching the type of economic theory that left no
room for Marx. In the late 1980s, I was hired by the University of
Sydney’s school of economics in order to keep out a leftwing candidate
(although I did not know this at the time).
Yanis Varoufakis: ‘Karl Marx was responsible for framing my perspective of the world we live in, from my childhood to this day.’Photograph: PA
After I returned to Greece in 2000, I threw my lot in with the future
prime minister George Papandreou, hoping to help stem the return to
power of a resurgent right wing that wanted to push Greece towards
xenophobia both domestically and in its foreign policy. As the whole
world now knows, Papandreou’s party not only failed to stem xenophobia
but, in the end, presided over the most virulent neoliberal
macroeconomic policies that spearheaded the eurozone’s so-called
bailouts thus, unwittingly, causing the return of Nazis to the streets
of Athens. Even though I resigned as Papandreou’s adviser early in 2006,
and turned into his government’s staunchest critic during his
mishandling of the post-2009 Greek implosion, my public interventions in
the debate on Greece and Europe have carried no whiff of Marxism.
Given
all this, you may be puzzled to hear me call myself a Marxist. But, in
truth, Karl Marx was responsible for framing my perspective of the world
we live in, from my childhood to this day. This is not something that I
often volunteer to talk about in “polite society” because the very
mention of the M-word switches audiences off. But I never deny it
either. After a few years of addressing audiences with whom I do not
share an ideology, a need has crept up on me to talk about Marx’s
imprint on my thinking. To explain why, while an unapologetic Marxist, I
think it is important to resist him passionately in a variety of ways.
To be, in other words, erratic in one’s Marxism.
If my whole academic career largely ignored Marx, and my current
policy recommendations are impossible to describe as Marxist, why bring
up my Marxism now? The answer is simple: Even my non-Marxist economics
was guided by a mindset influenced by Marx.
A radical social theorist can challenge the economic mainstream in
two different ways, I always thought. One way is by means of immanent
criticism. To accept the mainstream’s axioms and then expose its
internal contradictions. To say: “I shall not contest your assumptions
but here is why your own conclusions do not logically flow on from
them.” This was, indeed, Marx’s method of undermining British political
economics. He accepted every axiom by Adam Smith and David Ricardo in
order to demonstrate that, in the context of their assumptions,
capitalism was a contradictory system. The second avenue that a radical
theorist can pursue is, of course, the construction of alternative
theories to those of the establishment, hoping that they will be taken
seriously.
My view on this dilemma has always been that the powers that be are
never perturbed by theories that embark from assumptions different to
their own. The only thing that can destabilise and genuinely challenge
mainstream, neoclassical economists is the demonstration of the internal
inconsistency of their own models. It was for this reason that, from
the very beginning, I chose to delve into the guts of neoclassical
theory and to spend next to no energy trying to develop alternative,
Marxist models of capitalism. My reasons, I submit, were quite Marxist.
When called upon to comment on the world we live in, I had no
alternative but to fall back on the Marxist tradition which had shaped
my thinking ever since my metallurgist father impressed upon me, when I
was still a child, the effect of technological innovation on the
historical process. How, for instance, the passage from the bronze age
to the iron age sped up history; how the discovery of steel greatly
accelerated historical time; and how silicon-based IT technologies are
fast-tracking socioeconomic and historical discontinuities.
My first encounter with Marx’s writings came very early in life, as a
result of the strange times I grew up in, with Greece exiting the
nightmare of the neofascist dictatorship of 1967-74. What caught my eye
was Marx’s mesmerising gift for writing a dramatic script for human
history, indeed for human damnation, that was also laced with the
possibility of salvation and authentic spirituality.
Marx created a narrative populated by workers, capitalists, officials
and scientists who were history’s dramatis personae. They struggled to
harness reason and science in the context of empowering humanity while,
contrary to their intentions, unleashing demonic forces that usurped and
subverted their own freedom and humanity.
This dialectical perspective, where everything is pregnant with its
opposite, and the eager eye with which Marx discerned the potential for
change in what seemed to be the most unchanging of social structures,
helped me to grasp the great contradictions of the capitalist era. It
dissolved the paradox of an age that generated the most remarkable
wealth and, in the same breath, the most conspicuous poverty. Today,
turning to the European crisis,
the crisis in the United States and the long-term stagnation of
Japanese capitalism, most commentators fail to appreciate the
dialectical process under their nose. They recognise the mountain of
debts and banking losses but neglect the opposite side of the same coin:
the mountain of idle savings that are “frozen” by fear and thus fail to
convert into productive investments. A Marxist alertness to binary
oppositions might have opened their eyes.
A major reason why established opinion fails to come to terms with
contemporary reality is that it never understood the dialectically tense
“joint production” of debts and surpluses, of growth and unemployment,
of wealth and poverty, indeed of good and evil. Marx’s script alerted us
these binary oppositions as the sources of history’s cunning.
From my first steps of thinking like an economist, to this very day,
it occurred to me that Marx had made a discovery that must remain at the
heart of any useful analysis of capitalism. It was the discovery of
another binary opposition deep within human labour. Between labour’s two
quite different natures: i) labour as a value-creating activity that
can never be quantified in advance (and is therefore impossible to
commodify), and ii) labour as a quantity (eg, numbers of hours worked)
that is for sale and comes at a price. That is what distinguishes labour
from other productive inputs such as electricity: its twin,
contradictory, nature. A differentiation-cum-contradiction that
political economics neglected to make before Marx came along and that
mainstream economics is steadfastly refusing to acknowledge today.
Both electricity and labour can be thought of as commodities. Indeed,
both employers and workers struggle to commodify labour. Employers use
all their ingenuity, and that of their HR management minions, to
quantify, measure and homogenise labour. Meanwhile, prospective
employees go through the wringer in an anxious attempt to commodify
their labour power, to write and rewrite their CVs in order to portray
themselves as purveyors of quantifiable labour units. And there’s the
rub. If workers and employers ever succeed in commodifying labour fully,
capitalism will perish. This is an insight without which capitalism’s
tendency to generate crises can never be fully grasped and, also, an
insight that no one has access to without some exposure to Marx’s
thought.
Science fiction becomes documentary
In the classic 1953 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the alien force does not attack us head on, unlike in, say, HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds.
Instead, people are taken over from within, until nothing is left of
their human spirit and emotions. Their bodies are shells that used to
contain a free will and which now labour, go through the motions of
everyday “life”, and function as human simulacra “liberated” from the
unquantifiable essence of human nature. This is something like what
would have transpired if human labour had become perfectly reducible to
human capital and thus fit for insertion into the vulgar economists’
models.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.Photograph: SNAP/REX
Every non-Marxist economic theory that treats human and non-human
productive inputs as interchangeable assumes that the dehumanisation of
human labour is complete. But if it could ever be completed, the result
would be the end of capitalism as a system capable of creating and
distributing value. For a start, a society of dehumanised automata would
resemble a mechanical watch full of cogs and springs, each with its own
unique function, together producing a “good”: timekeeping. Yet if that
society contained nothing but other automata, timekeeping would not be a
“good”. It would certainly be an “output” but why a “good”? Without
real humans to experience the clock’s function, there can be no such
thing as “good” or “bad”.
If capital ever succeeds in quantifying, and subsequently fully
commodifying, labour, as it is constantly trying to, it will also
squeeze that indeterminate, recalcitrant human freedom from within
labour that allows for the generation of value. Marx’s brilliant insight
into the essence of capitalist crises was precisely this: the greater
capitalism’s success in turning labour into a commodity the less the
value of each unit of output it generates, the lower the profit rate
and, ultimately, the nearer the next recession of the economy as a
system. The portrayal of human freedom as an economic category is unique
in Marx, making possible a distinctively dramatic and analytically
astute interpretation of capitalism’s propensity to snatch recession,
even depression, from the jaws of growth.
When Marx was writing that labour is the living, form-giving fire;
the transitoriness of things; their temporality; he was making the
greatest contribution any economist has ever made to our understanding
of the acute contradiction buried inside capitalism’s DNA. When he
portrayed capital as a “… force we must submit to … it develops a
cosmopolitan, universal energy which breaks through every limit and
every bond and posts itself as the only policy, the only universality
the only limit and the only bond”, he was highlighting the reality that
labour can be purchased by liquid capital (ie money), in its commodity
form, but that it will always carry with it a will hostile to the
capitalist buyer. But Marx was not just making a psychological,
philosophical or political statement. He was, rather, supplying a
remarkable analysis of why the moment that labour (as an unquantifiable
activity) sheds this hostility, it becomes sterile, incapable of
producing value.
At a time when neoliberals have ensnared the majority in their
theoretical tentacles, incessantly regurgitating the ideology of
enhancing labour productivity in an effort to enhance competitiveness
with a view to creating growth etc, Marx’s analysis offers a powerful
antidote. Capital can never win in its struggle to turn labour into an
infinitely elastic, mechanised input, without destroying itself. That is
what neither the neoliberals nor the Keynesians will ever grasp. “If
the whole class of the wage-labourer were to be annihilated by
machinery”, wrote Marx “how terrible that would be for capital, which,
without wage-labour, ceases to be capital!”
What has Marx done for us?
Almost all schools of thought, including those of some progressive
economists, like to pretend that, though Marx was a powerful figure,
very little of his contribution remains relevant today. I beg to differ.
Besides having captured the basic drama of capitalist dynamics, Marx
has given me the tools with which to become immune to the toxic
propaganda of neoliberalism. For example, the idea that wealth is
privately produced and then appropriated by a quasi-illegitimate state,
through taxation, is easy to succumb to if one has not been exposed
first to Marx’s poignant argument that precisely the opposite applies:
wealth is collectively produced and then privately appropriated through
social relations of production and property rights that rely, for their
reproduction, almost exclusively on false consciousness.
In his recent book Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste,
the historian of economic thought, Philip Mirowski, has highlighted the
neoliberals’ success in convincing a large array of people that markets
are not just a useful means to an end but also an end in themselves.
According to this view, while collective action and public institutions
are never able to “get it right”, the unfettered operations of
decentralised private interest are guaranteed to produce not only the
right outcomes but also the right desires, character, ethos even. The
best example of this form of neoliberal crassness is, of course, the
debate on how to deal with climate change. Neoliberals have rushed in to
argue that, if anything is to be done, it must take the form of
creating a quasi-market for “bads” (eg an emissions trading scheme),
since only markets “know” how to price goods and bads appropriately. To
understand why such a quasi-market solution is bound to fail and, more
importantly, where the motivation comes from for such “solutions”, one
can do much worse than to become acquainted with the logic of capital
accumulation that Marx outlined and the Polish economist Michal Kalecki adapted to a world ruled by networked oligopolies.
Neoliberals have rushed in with quasi-market responses to climate change, such as emissions trading schemes.Photograph: Jon Woo/Reuters
In the 20th century, the two political movements that sought their
roots in Marx’s thought were the communist and social democratic
parties. Both of them, in addition to their other errors (and, indeed,
crimes) failed, to their detriment, to follow Marx’s lead in a crucial
regard: instead of embracing liberty and rationality as their rallying
cries and organising concepts, they opted for equality and justice,
bequeathing the concept of freedom to the neoliberals. Marx was adamant:
The problem with capitalism is not that it is unfair but that it is
irrational, as it habitually condemns whole generations to deprivation
and unemployment and even turns capitalists into angst-ridden automata,
living in permanent fear that unless they commodify their fellow humans
fully so as to serve capital accumulation more efficiently, they will
cease to be capitalists. So, if capitalism appears unjust this is
because it enslaves everyone; it wastes human and natural resources; the
same production line that pumps out remarkable gizmos and untold
wealth, also produces deep unhappiness and crises.
Having failed to couch a critique of capitalism in terms of freedom
and rationality, as Marx thought essential, social democracy and the
left in general allowed the neoliberals to usurp the mantle of freedom
and to win a spectacular triumph in the contest of ideologies.
Perhaps the most significant dimension of the neoliberal triumph is
what has come to be known as the “democratic deficit”. Rivers of
crocodile tears have flowed over the decline of our great democracies
during the past three decades of financialisation and globalisation.
Marx would have laughed long and hard at those who seem surprised, or
upset, by the “democratic deficit”. What was the great objective behind
19th-century liberalism? It was, as Marx never tired of pointing out, to
separate the economic sphere from the political sphere and to confine
politics to the latter while leaving the economic sphere to capital. It
is liberalism’s splendid success in achieving this long-held goal that
we are now observing. Take a look at South Africa today, more than two
decades after Nelson Mandela was freed and the political sphere, at long
last, embraced the whole population. The ANC’s predicament was that, in
order to be allowed to dominate the political sphere, it had to give up
power over the economic one. And if you think otherwise, I suggest that
you talk to the dozens of miners gunned down by armed guards paid by
their employers after they dared demand a wage rise.
Why erratic?
Having explained why I owe whatever understanding of our social world
I may possess largely to Karl Marx, I now want to explain why I remain
terribly angry with him. In other words, I shall outline why I am by
choice an erratic, inconsistent Marxist. Marx committed two spectacular
mistakes, one of them an error of omission, the other one of commission.
Even today, these mistakes still hamper the left’s effectiveness,
especially in Europe.
Marx’s first error – the error of omission was that he failed to give
sufficient thought to the impact of his own theorising on the world
that he was theorising about. His theory is discursively exceptionally
powerful, and Marx had a sense of its power. So how come he showed no
concern that his disciples, people with a better grasp of these powerful
ideas than the average worker, might use the power bestowed upon them,
via Marx’s own ideas, in order to abuse other comrades, to build their
own power base, to gain positions of influence?
Marx’s second error, the one I ascribe to commission, was worse. It
was his assumption that truth about capitalism could be discovered in
the mathematics of his models. This was the worst disservice he could
have delivered to his own theoretical system. The man who equipped us
with human freedom as a first-order economic concept; the scholar who
elevated radical indeterminacy to its rightful place within political
economics; he was the same person who ended up toying around with
simplistic algebraic models, in which labour units were, naturally,
fully quantified, hoping against hope to evince from these equations
some additional insights about capitalism. After his death, Marxist
economists wasted long careers indulging a similar type of scholastic
mechanism. Fully immersed in irrelevant debates on “the transformation
problem” and what to do about it, they eventually became an almost
extinct species, as the neoliberal juggernaut crushed all dissent in its
path.
How could Marx be so deluded? Why did he not recognise that no truth
about capitalism can ever spring out of any mathematical model, however
brilliant the modeller may be? Did he not have the intellectual tools to
realise that capitalist dynamics spring from the unquantifiable part of
human labour; ie from a variable that can never be well-defined
mathematically? Of course he did, since he forged these tools! No, the
reason for his error is a little more sinister: just like the vulgar
economists that he so brilliantly admonished (and who continue to
dominate the departments of economics today), he coveted the power that
mathematical “proof” afforded him.
If I am right, Marx knew what he was doing. He understood, or had the
capacity to know, that a comprehensive theory of value cannot be
accommodated within a mathematical model of a dynamic capitalist
economy. He was, I have no doubt, aware that a proper economic theory
must respect the idea that the rules of the undetermined are themselves
undetermined. In economic terms this meant a recognition that the market
power, and thus the profitability, of capitalists was not necessarily
reducible to their capacity to extract labour from employees; that some
capitalists can extract more from a given pool of labour or from a given
community of consumers for reasons that are external to Marx’s own
theory.
Alas, that recognition would be tantamount to accepting that his
“laws” were not immutable. He would have to concede to competing voices
in the trades union movement that his theory was indeterminate and,
therefore, that his pronouncements could not be uniquely and
unambiguously correct. That they were permanently provisional. This
determination to have the complete, closed story, or model, the final
word, is something I cannot forgive Marx for. It proved, after all,
responsible for a great deal of error and, more significantly,
authoritarianism. Errors and authoritarianism that are largely
responsible for the left’s current impotence as a force of good and as a
check on the abuses of reason and liberty that the neoliberal crew are
overseeing today.
Mrs Thatcher’s lesson
I moved to England to attend university in September 1978, six months
or so before Margaret Thatcher’s victory changed Britain forever.
Watching the Labour government disintegrate, under the weight of its
degenerate social democratic programme, led me to a serious error: to
the thought that Thatcher’s victory could be a good thing, delivering to
Britain’s working and middle classes the short, sharp shock necessary
to reinvigorate progressive politics; to give the left a chance to
create a fresh, radical agenda for a new type of effective, progressive
politics.
Even as unemployment doubled and then trebled, under Thatcher’s
radical neoliberal interventions, I continued to harbour hope that Lenin
was right: “Things have to get worse before they get better.” As life
became nastier, more brutish and, for many, shorter, it occurred to me
that I was tragically in error: things could get worse in perpetuity,
without ever getting better. The hope that the deterioration of public
goods, the diminution of the lives of the majority, the spread of
deprivation to every corner of the land would, automatically, lead to a
renaissance of the left was just that: hope.
The reality was, however, painfully different. With every turn of the
recession’s screw, the left became more introverted, less capable of
producing a convincing progressive agenda and, meanwhile, the working
class was being divided between those who dropped out of society and
those co-opted into the neoliberal mindset. My hope that Thatcher would
inadvertently bring about a new political revolution was well and truly
bogus. All that sprang out of Thatcherism were extreme financialisation,
the triumph of the shopping mall over the corner store, the
fetishisation of housing and Tony Blair.
Margaret Thatcher at the Conservative party conference in 1982.Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features
Instead of radicalising British society, the recession that
Thatcher’s government so carefully engineered, as part of its class war
against organised labour and against the public institutions of social
security and redistribution that had been established after the war,
permanently destroyed the very possibility of radical, progressive
politics in Britain. Indeed, it rendered impossible the very notion of
values that transcended what the market determined as the “right” price.
The lesson Thatcher taught me about the capacity of a long‑lasting
recession to undermine progressive politics, is one that I carry with me
into today’s European crisis. It is, indeed, the most important
determinant of my stance in relation to the crisis. It is the reason I
am happy to confess to the sin I am accused of by some of my critics on
the left: the sin of choosing not to propose radical political programs
that seek to exploit the crisis as an opportunity to overthrow European
capitalism, to dismantle the awful eurozone, and to undermine the
European Union of the cartels and the bankrupt bankers.
Yes, I would love to put forward such a radical agenda. But, no, I am
not prepared to commit the same error twice. What good did we achieve
in Britain in the early 1980s by promoting an agenda of socialist change
that British society scorned while falling headlong into Thatcher’s
neoliberal trap? Precisely none. What good will it do today to call for a
dismantling of the eurozone, of the European Union itself, when
European capitalism is doing its utmost to undermine the eurozone, the
European Union, indeed itself?
A Greek or a Portuguese or an Italian exit from the eurozone would
soon lead to a fragmentation of European capitalism, yielding a
seriously recessionary surplus region east of the Rhine and north of the
Alps, while the rest of Europe is would be in the grip of vicious
stagflation. Who do you think would benefit from this development? A
progressive left, that will rise Phoenix-like from the ashes of Europe’s
public institutions? Or the Golden Dawn Nazis, the assorted
neofascists, the xenophobes and the spivs? I have absolutely no doubt as
to which of the two will do best from a disintegration of the eurozone.
I, for one, am not prepared to blow fresh wind into the sails of this
postmodern version of the 1930s. If this means that it is we, the
suitably erratic Marxists, who must try to save European capitalism from
itself, so be it. Not out of love for European capitalism, for the
eurozone, for Brussels, or for the European Central Bank, but just
because we want to minimise the unnecessary human toll from this crisis.
What should Marxists do?
Europe’s elites are behaving today as if they understand neither the
nature of the crisis that they are presiding over, nor its implications
for the future of European civilisation. Atavistically, they are
choosing to plunder the diminishing stocks of the weak and the
dispossessed in order to plug the gaping holes of the financial sector,
refusing to come to terms with the unsustainability of the task.
Yet with Europe’s elites deep in denial and disarray, the left must
admit that we are just not ready to plug the chasm that a collapse of
European capitalism would open up with a functioning socialist system.
Our task should then be twofold. First, to put forward an analysis of
the current state of play that non-Marxist, well meaning Europeans who
have been lured by the sirens of neoliberalism, find insightful. Second,
to follow this sound analysis up with proposals for stabilising Europe –
for ending the downward spiral that, in the end, reinforces only the
bigots.
Let me now conclude with two confessions. First, while I am happy to
defend as genuinely radical the pursuit of a modest agenda for
stabilising a system that I criticise, I shall not pretend to be
enthusiastic about it. This may be what we must do, under the present
circumstances, but I am sad that I shall probably not be around to see a
more radical agenda being adopted.
My final confession is of a highly personal nature: I know that I run
the risk of, surreptitiously, lessening the sadness from ditching any
hope of replacing capitalism in my lifetime by indulging a feeling of
having become agreeable to the circles of polite society. The sense of
self-satisfaction from being feted by the high and mighty did begin, on
occasion, to creep up on me. And what a non-radical, ugly, corruptive
and corrosive sense it was.
My personal nadir came at an airport. Some moneyed outfit had invited
me to give a keynote speech on the European crisis and had forked out
the ludicrous sum necessary to buy me a first-class ticket. On my way
back home, tired and with several flights under my belt, I was making my
way past the long queue of economy passengers, to get to my gate.
Suddenly I noticed, with horror, how easy it was for my mind to be
infected with the sense that I was entitled to bypass the hoi polloi. I
realised how readily I could forget that which my leftwing mind had
always known: that nothing succeeds in reproducing itself better than a
false sense of entitlement. Forging alliances with reactionary forces,
as I think we should do to stabilise Europe today, brings us up against
the risk of becoming co-opted, of shedding our radicalism through the
warm glow of having “arrived” in the corridors of power.
Radical confessions, like the one I have attempted here, are perhaps
the only programmatic antidote to ideological slippage that threatens to
turn us into cogs of the machine. If we are to forge alliances with our
political adversaries we must avoid becoming like the socialists who
failed to change the world but succeeded in improving their private
circumstances. The trick is to avoid the revolutionary maximalism that,
in the end, helps the neoliberals bypass all opposition to their
self-defeating policies and to retain in our sights capitalism’s
inherent failures while trying to save it, for strategic purposes, from
itself.
This article is adaptedfrom a lecture originally delivered at the 6th Subversive Festival in Zagreb in 2013
Greek Resistance hero and Syriza MEP has issued a statement urging
opposition to the deal done by the party's leadership on Friday
Manolis Glezos kickstarted the Greek Resistance when in early 1941, he
and a friend climbed the Acropolis to tear down the Swastika the Nazi
occupiers were flying.
He now sits, aged 92, as a Member of the European Parliament for
Syriza. Glezos commands huge respect across the Greek left; in this
statement he urges resistance to the deal agreed by Syriza's leadership
on Friday.
The fact that the Troika has been renamed ‘the institutions’, the
Memorandum has been renamed the ‘Agreement’ and the Creditors have been
renamed the ‘Partners’, in the same manner as renaming meat as fish,
does not change the previous situation.
And you can’t change the vote of the Greek People at the January 25 election.
The Greek people voted what Syriza promised: that we abolish the
regime of austerity that is the strategy of not only the oligarchies of
Germany and the other creditor countries but also of the Greek
oligarchy; that we abrogate the Memoranda and the Troika and all the
austerity legislation; That the next day with one law we abolish the
Troika and its consequences.
A month has passed and this promise has yet to become action. It is a pity indeed.
From my part I apologize to the Greek people for having assisted this illusion.
Before the wrong direction continues.
Before it is too late, let’s react.
Above all the members, the friends and supporters of Syriza, in urgent
meetings at all levels of the organization have to decide if they
accept this situation
Some people say that in an agreement you must also make some
concessions. By principle between the oppressor and the oppressed there
can be no compromise, as there can be no compromise between the slave
and the conqueror; Freedom is the only solution.
But even if accept this absurdity, the concessions that have already
been made by the previous pro-memoranda government with unemployment,
poverty and suicide, are beyond any limit of concession...
No tears are being shed for this creepy CIA/FBI movement infiltrator who worked to split and divide the revolutionary working class movements here in the United States and around the world.
Erwin Marquit was to the progressive and left wing movements what the Reuther Brothers in service to the CIA/FBI were to organized labor.
As far as what liberal, progressive and leftist thinking people and grassroots and rank-and-file activists and supporters should do now...
My suggestion would be that a real program and platform be formulated around the legislated reforms required to help working people get through this economic mess capitalism has created and that we simultaneously launch a push to remove Wall Street from all positions of power--- political and economic--- by using massive, militant, united people's power in the streets along with forming a working class based progressive anti-monopoly people's party that would take up the struggles in the streets at the ballot box and in the legislative arena; a party that would be anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist working in international solidarity with people across the globe struggling against the financial centers of the G-8, with Wall Street in the forefront, which are creating problems for people and our living environment everywhere. Amovement in the streets, in our places of employment, in the schoolsanda party at the ballot boxfor peace, social and economic justice built around demands for reforms that will solve the problems of the people created by Wall Street greed which would create decent jobs with real living wages.
We need to break free from Wall Street's two-party trap. Supporting a bunch of Dumb Donkeys by holding up the tails of these Dumb Donkeys being satisfied with what the sparrows leave behind will not alleviate poverty nor put an end to the suffering and misery created for so many people by the parasitical Wall Street crowd.
Society needs these capitalist parasites about as much as my dog Fred needs ticks and fleas.
For example:
A National Public Health Care System which would provide every single person living in the united States with free health care through neighborhood and community centers would create over twelve-million new, decent, good-paying/living wage jobs.Publicly financed, publicly administered and publicly delivered just like our system of public education which performs with excellence when properly funded.
A National Public Child Care System free for all would create over three-million new real living wage jobs. Again, Publicly financed, publicly administered and publicly delivered just like our system of public education which performs with excellence when properly funded.
Making the Minimum Wage a real living wage by legislatively linking it to all "cost-of-living" factors would go a long ways towards eliminating poverty and a Basic Income Guarantee based on the same "cost-of-living" factors which was initially advocated by American revolutionary Thomas Paine would be the end of poverty in the U.S.A.
In short, what we would be bringing before the American people is making the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights a living reality rather than mere words on a piece of paper...
Defend the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights... don't stand for the Wall Street bribed politicians and their prosecutors, judges and police trampling these rights. These rights are to protect people and our living environment not corporations.
We need a new set of priorities: Fund human needs not militarism and wars. Use the wealth created by workers to create a just society forallinstead of feeding the insatiable greed of the little Wall Street crowd.
This is what grassroots and rank-and-file activists should stand for; and fight and struggle for.
Education. Organization. Unity. Action. The key to working class victories.
There is nothing far-fetched here. Our survival depends on such an approach. Citizen activism. Common sense. And an appeal to reason.
We shouldn't be satisfied with "inching" our way towards minimal reforms intended to divide and split us.
We shouldn't stand for being patient while Wall Street grabs, controls and manipulates the wealth we as working people have created... especially when this wealth is squandered on militarism and dirty imperialist wars for which we pay and they profit.
People are suffering as Wall Street profits, and we shouldn't stand for this one minute longer. Enough!
U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings wants a referendum on the ballot next year to increase Florida's minimum wage to $12.50 an hour.
Hastings,
a Democrat who represents parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties,
said the 55 percent increase from the current $8.05 an hour, is a
"starting point." He said he'd prefer $15 an hour, but wouldn't ask for
that much because opponents would "go bonkers."
Being lost in all of the increase the Minimum Wage proposals is the fact that whether it is $8.50, $10.10, $12.50 or $15.00 an hour, the only way the Minimum Wage will ever be anything other than a poverty wages providing employers with cheap labor is if the Minimum Wage is legislatively tied to the actual and real "cost-of-living" factors as monitored by the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics and then linked to inflation.
Here in Minnesota, the Democratic Governor, Mark Dayton, who promised to make the Minimum Wage a living non-poverty wage in order to get elected, ended up giving his cabinet heads raises that were more than what most workers make in a year while legislating one more poverty Minimum Wage for workers.
Here is the kicker: Dayton and Minnesota Democrats claim they are looking out for tax-payers but giving his cabinet members these huge raises is a burden on tax-payers while raising the Minimum Wage to a real living non-poverty wage wouldn't have cost tax-payers one single penny.
While no one is dumb enough to turn down a raise of any amount, this struggle for a just Minimum Wage needs to get centered on wages and cost-of-living not just "raising the Minimum Wage" which lets these politicians, most of whom are multi-millionaires, off the hook.
I lived in Virginia for several years and was always amazed how, when visiting historical sites and battlefields of the Civil War era, how things were stated by tour guides.
Things like, "Our boys put up a good fight." When I asked, "Which boys put up a good fight?," I would receive dirty looks and told, "Confederate soldiers."
When I would ask, "Who won the war?" no one wanted to comment.
Even worse than the monuments erected to the Confederacy and its leaders, were the deplorable present day working conditions and poverty wages I experienced.
In one sweatshop in Virginia Beach, working conditions were so deplorable and harsh, one elderly Black woman told the plant manager, "Why don't you just bring back the chains?"
Just recently I visited the Lyndon B. Johnson exhibits in Texas and one exhibit about Civil Rights noted that Texas has more KKK chapters than any other state and Texas is often held up as an example of "the new South."
I also learned that it is in Texas where what is published in school text books becomes the standard for the entire country and a bunch of right-wing racist bigots dominate the Texas text book commission. So, it is no wonder people have become so ignorant about the Civil War and who the real heroes of this period were.
More people visit the Alamo where, when the truth is told, these "heroes" died for the defense of slavery, than who visit the Lyndon B. Johnson ranch--- the Texas White House where one learns the evils of racism and how Johnson ended up supporting George McGovern, another little fact the textbooks omit.
While those like slavery defender Jefferson Davis are given prominence and honored, others like W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson are being written out of history and text books and it is workers paying the ultimate price as Wall Street corporations use racism to try to squeeze more and more production (profits) out of workers using many of the same methods as the slave owners along with the same sick racist ideas modified to better fit "the new South" and its corporations which have replaced the slave plantations for generating tremendous wealth.
It isn't just the naming of streets and highways in honor of these defenders of human barbarity that is repugnant and indecent--- it is the way our society is being built on their very ideas with the origin of profits owned and controlled by the wealthy still not being explained in order to put an end to human misery, the product of a sick system of exploitation held in place largely by racism in all of its ugly forms--- social, institutional and historic.
But doesn't a sick society and economic system need to elevate to prominence those like Jefferson Davis and all the evils he stood for in order to continue its own evil existence?
There is a reason Black History and Black Studies are being taken away under the guise of "reforms" and the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement are being perverted in school history books.
As for labor history, which embodies so much of the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle against slavery and racism, labor history has never been told in our schools and universities. When labor history is told, it is usually so perverted and nothing but lies not even basic truths can be found by reading between the lines.
Here is the story I commented on:
Lynching and Jeff Davis Highway
Exclusive:
Many parts of the South, including Arlington, Virginia, just outside
the U.S. capital, still honor Confederate President Jefferson Davis by
attaching his name to important roadways. But a recent study on lynching
puts the motive for honoring that white supremacist in a sickening new
light, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
A
new study of Southern lynching of blacks, sharply raising the total to
nearly 4,000 victims, adds some context to the decision in 1920 to
attach the name of Confederate President Jefferson Davis to parts of
Route One, including stretches near and through African-American
neighborhoods. That period was a time when the number of lynchings
surged across the South and whites were reasserting their impunity.
According to the study
by the Equal Justice Initiative, the use of lynching – mob killings and
mutilations of blacks by hanging, burning alive, castration, torture
and other means – was nearly as high around 1920 as it was in the latter
part of the Nineteenth Century. There was a gradual decline in
lynchings in the early Twentieth Century, but the pattern reversed and
the use of lynching surged to about 500 during a five-year period
heading into 1920.
A Civil War-era African-American soldier and his family. (Photo credit: Encyclopedia Virginia)
That
period also marked a determination by many Southern whites to reaffirm
the rightness of the Confederate cause and to reassert white supremacy.
Thus, in 1920, to drive home the point of who was in charge, the
Daughters of the Confederacy had Southern states name portions of Route
One after Jefferson Davis, who was hailed as the “champion of a slave
society” when he was chosen to lead the Confederacy in 1861.
Besides
honoring a dyed-in-the-wool white supremacist who favored keeping
African-Americans in chains forever, the Daughters of the Confederacy
saw these designations of Route One as a counterpoint to plans in the
North for a Lincoln Highway in honor of assassinated President Abraham
Lincoln.
But bestowing this honor on Jefferson Davis was also a
political message of pro-Confederate defiance that was not limited to
the brutal era of 1920. The Jefferson Davis designation was extended to
parts of Route 110 near the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, in 1964 as
Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement were pressing for
landmark civil rights legislation to end segregation and as white
Virginian politicians were vowing to resist integration at all costs.
A
year or so ago, I wrote to the five members of the Arlington County
Board and urged them to seek an end to this grotesque honor bestowed on a
notorious white racist. When my letter went public, it was treated with
some amusement by the local paper, the Sun-Gazette, which described me
as “rankled,” and prompted some hate mail.
One letter from an
Arlington resident declared that it was now her turn to be “RANKLED by
outsiders like Mr. Parry who want to change history because it is not to
his liking. … I am very proud of my Commonwealth’s history, but not of
the current times, as I’m sure many others are.”
I was also
confronted by a senior Democratic county official at a meeting about a
different topic and urged to desist in my proposal to give the highway a
new name because the idea would alienate state politicians in Richmond
who would think that Arlington County was crazy.
But the new study
on the terrorism of lynching reminds us that attaching Jefferson
Davis’s name to roadways wasn’t just some romantic gesture to honor an
historical figure beloved by Southern whites who in 1920 still pined for
the ante-bellum days when they could own black people and do to them
whatever they wished.
The years around 1920 marked a violent
revival of the carnival-like scenes in which whites treated the lynching
of blacks as a moment for community hilarity and celebration, often
posing with their children for photographs next to the mutilated
corpses. Stamping Jefferson Davis’s name on a highway that passed near
and through black neighborhoods was another way to send a chilling
message to African-Americans.
In my 37 years living in Virginia, I
have always been struck by the curious victimhood of many Southern
whites. Because of the Civil War, which some still call “the War of
Northern Aggression,” and the Civil Rights Movement, which finally ended
segregation, they have been nursing grievances, seeing themselves as
the real victims here.
Not the African-Americans who were held in
the unspeakable conditions of bondage until slavery was finally ended in
the 1860s and who then suffered the cruelties of white terrorism and
the humiliation of segregation for another century. No, the whites who
lorded over them were the real “victims” because the federal government
finally intervened to stop these practices.
Yet, while some white
Virginians remain “very proud” of that history, there has been a studied
neglect of other more honorable aspects of Arlington’s history,
including the role played by Columbia Pike as an African-American
Freedom Trail where thousands of former slaves, freed by Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, traveled north to escape slavery.
Many
were given refuge in Freedman’s Village, a semi-permanent refugee camp
along Columbia Pike on land that now includes the Pentagon and the Air
Force Memorial. Some of the men joined the U.S. Colored Troops training
at nearby Camp Casey before returning to the South to fight for freedom,
to end the scourge of slavery once and for all.
As blacks joined
the Union Army, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ratified a policy
that refused to treat black men as soldiers but rather as slaves in a
state of insurrection, so they could be executed upon capture or sold
into slavery.
In accordance with this Confederate policy, U.S. Colored Troops faced summary executions
when captured in battle. For instance, when a Union garrison at Fort
Pillow, Tennessee, was overrun by Confederate forces on April 12, 1864,
black soldiers were shot down as they surrendered. Similar atrocities
occurred at the Battle of Poison Springs, Arkansas, in April 1864, and
the Battle of the Crater in Virginia. Scores of black prisoners were
executed in Saltville, Virginia, on Oct. 2, 1864.
Yet, while
Jefferson Davis’s name remains on roadways through Arlington — and as
the Confederate president is effectively honored whenever people have to
use his name — there is still no commemoration of Freedman’s Village
(though something is supposedly being planned) and no one apparently
even knows the precise location of Camp Casey, arguably one of
Arlington’s most significant and noble historical sites. (Camp Casey is
believed to have been located close to where today’s Pentagon now is, an
area that in the 1860s was called Alexandria County before
being renamed Arlington County in the Twentieth Century.)
Apparently,
recognizing the place where free African-Americans were trained and
armed to defeat the Confederacy and end slavery might “rankle” some
white Arlington residents.
Investigative reporter Robert
Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and
Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its
connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy
includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
Obama and the Wall Street Democrats can always count on Sam Webb to defend them and make up excuses for them from a "left" point of view.
Note some things when reading Webb's article attacking grassroots and rank-and-file activists who have become impatient with corrupt and incompetent union leaders--- most of whom have never been democratically elected to their offices by the rank-and-file:
First; Gus Hall, the former head of the Communist Party U.S.A., called Sam Webb and his band "a bunch of traitors."
Second; Webb spent over one-million dollars remodeling the CPUSA's offices while refusing to spend one single penny to develop an alternative to Obama's Wall Street agenda. In fact, in this article below, Webb fails to even mention that Obama is Wall Street's president.
Third; Webb declares the corrupt, incompetent millionaire union leaders and their foundation-funded associates backing Obama to be the leaders of the democratic movements. These "leaders" Webb refers to from the labor unions spend more time making up excuses for Obama and the Democrats then they spend time or allotting resources to solving the problems of workers in their places of employment.
In fact, Webb identifies with these corrupt labor leaders because, like them, he is corrupt. Webb has become a millionaire himself through pilfering the funds of the Communist Party. For over 40 years, Webb has been on the CPUSA payroll and what is there to show for this? A Communist Party USA that has dwindled from thousands to less than 200 members nation-wide with many of these "members" still members only because Webb has them on the payroll for being his loyal kiss-asses.
Webb refuses to recognize that Obama is Wall Street's president but then goes on--- with his silence--- to defend Obama's criminal acts and dirty deeds in service to imperialism with his bloated increased military budgets simultaneously cutting social programs as he increases spending for nuclear weapons and continues to expand the dirty imperialist wars begun by Bush. Obama has started new wars of his own.
No mention of drones. Hit lists. Killing, murder and mayhem. Barbarity defying everything humanity and civilization is supposed to be supposed to.
For Webb, Obama's Wall Street agenda, a big part of which is militarism and wars, amounts to victory after victory for working people and he urges us to be patient in inching our way forward when, in fact, Obama is responsible for massive attacks on our rights and our standard of living.
Where are the progressive victories Webb alludes to? He doesn't provide a single detail out of fear his words might be subject to debate. This is sheer intellectual cowardice on Webb's part; it is nothing short of working class betrayal.
Webb is to the Communist movement what Richard Trumka is to the trade unions--- he splits and divides the working class with his words of praise for Wall Street's President, Barack Obama.
It must be noted that Webb joined with these crooked and corrupt millionaire labor leaders to shove Obama down our throats as some kind of "progressive" and a "leader of the people's movements" of which none is true.
Obama promised single-payer universal health care to get the nomination and once elected silenced the voices of the proponents of single-payer--- going so far as to have some of these proponents of single-payer arrested; many of whom were stupid enough to support Obama in the first place--- and some are even still so stupid they still do support Obama and now voice their support for Hillary Clinton.
Isn't it interesting Sam Webb has made no observations concerning Hillary Clinton's drive to become president? Come on Sam, tell us what you think about Hillary Clinton--- should she be supported for president, too, because the Republicans will be so much worse?
Isn't it interesting that Sam Webb has never joined us in voicing OUTRAGE when it comes to Obama's dirty Wall Street imperialist wars that are making us all poor?
If Sam Webb didn't steal the Communist Party's funds, where did the millions of dollars go?
Notice, also, Webb has never written in defense of what working people require in the way of reforms in order to live more decent lives free from poverty.
Notice, also, Webb has never supported one single resolution articulating any needed reform to be brought before the Democratic Party which he supports.
The American people are outraged and angered with Obama's dirty wars and the austerity measures being shoved down our throats to pay for these dirty imperialist wars.
The American people are outraged and angered about this "cost-of-living crisis" we are being forced to endure.
Perhaps Webb, the recently new millionaire, doesn't understand why the American people, rank-and-file workers in the first place, are outraged and angered because he has no need nor inclination towards urgency in solving the many pressing problems working class families are being forced to endure?
Webb is one more millionaire urging us to be patient in "inching" our way to reforms as they laugh all the way to their banks.
Isn't it just a bit strange this moron, Sam Webb, who claims to be the leader of the Communist Party U.S.A.--- a position he wasn't even elected to by the membership--- writes more about the need to defend Obama from attacks by the left than explaining the problems of working people and becoming involved in searching for solutions?
If Sam Webb would like to answer the questions and comments I have posed I will post his response.
By the way, just like the Dumb Donkeys, including Obama, who Webb supports--- not once has Sam Webb ever mentioned the fact that working class families are caught up in a crisis of everyday living at which the "cost-of-living crisis" is smack dab in the center of--- spun by increased spending on militarism and these dirty imperialist wars defending Wall Street's investments, holdings and profits and Wall Street's monopoly price-fixing.
And Webb never so much as mentions state-monopoly capitalism because he might have to explain Obama's role in all of this.
Is Obama the people's President looking after "We The People;" or, is Obama Wall Street's President looking out for Wall Street's interests which stand in complete contradiction to the people's interests.
No doubt Webb finds such a question to be insulting.
In fact, Obama is not inching us towards reforms. What Obama is doing is pushing us relentlessly into World War III with his support for a bunch of Nazi lovers in the Ukraine.
Not one single Communist leader from anyplace in the world can be found who will publicly defend and support Sam Webb's very dishonest and confusing views.
Sam Webb is a deceitful, dishonest coward who refuses to debate his views side-by-side with a leftist who will refute his views. in fact, Webb will not even allow those who oppose his views to state their views along with his; what kind of leftists engages in this kind of anti-democratic activity.
Instead of pushing an agenda which would include rank-and-file trade unionists fighting for action and democracy in the unions which would get rid of these corrupt, class collaborationist, millionaire labor leaders supporting war mongers like Obama who are attacking working class families, Webb is defending the status quo.
One can conclude from Webb's previous statements proclaiming Obama to be the leader of the democratic people's movements and now his pronouncement that a bunch of crooked and corrupt millionaire union leaders and wealthy foundation-funded outfit directors to be leaders of the democratic people's movement that Webb doesn't even know what constitutes a democratic people's movement.
Webb's criticism of outraged leftists reminds me of the dogs barking as the caravan passes... of course, it is writings like this from Webb which places him on the sidelines like a toothless barking dog.
Read what this phony leftist Sam Webb has to say in his defense of Obama:
Obama and the politics of outrage
by:
Sam Webb
February 9 2015
Some of the commentary from the left on President's Obama's recent State of the Union address struck me as too negative, even cynical in a few instances. It's said that the speech was at once too little, too late, and too celebratory. Some left critics went further, claiming that it was nothing but idle, and even deceptive, chatter
since the president knew that any progressive initiatives in his speech
are dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled 93rd Congress.
This contrasts with the reaction of the larger movement. Labor's take on the speech
was very positive.
Much the same can be said about the African American
community and other communities of color (for example, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and NAACP). The movements for women's and gay rights found stuff in the speech that they liked, as did many fighting for policing and sentencing reforms. Ditto the immigrant rights movement
and the organizations and people fighting for livable wages and union
rights. And progressives in Congress said they were buoyed by the
president's speech. Photos showed them leading the cheers to the speech,
while congressional Republicans, looking dour and sitting silent,
inwardly burned with rage at Obama's every word and his mere presence at
the podium.
In other words, the major democratic forces and movements
got a lift from the speech, while understanding full well that the
terrain of struggle is still uphill. They saw openings and opportunities
in Obama's words, though not agreeing with his every word.
They liked how he framed many questions and the spirit and
oratorical power that he exhibited to spotlight the deeply reactionary
role of the Republican Party, even if they thought his counter-proposals
should have gone further.
And they were encouraged by the fact that the speech
signaled a refusal on the president's part to cede initiative and ground
to the Republicans and their reactionary agenda over the next two
years, despite enormous pressure on him to do so coming from many
directions.
How do we explain this contrast, this differing take on this State of the Union address?
Speaking generally, the leaders of the democratic movements
don't pigeonhole the president as simply an unreconstructed neoliberal.
They don't peg him as nothing more than a centrist in the mold of Bill
Clinton. Nor do they believe that he cynically "plays" the American
people with his "fancy" rhetoric and oratory, while paying obeisance to
his first and abiding focus group - Wall Street (and its deep pockets.)
They also don't subscribe to the notion that Obama's presidency is
summed up as "the triumph of identity as content" (Adolph Reed
writing in Harper's). Finally, they are particularly aware of the
toxic, crude, and unremitting racist invective directed at the
president.
In other words, these mass movement leaders don't hollow
Obama out to the point where he is nothing but an abstract and frozen
political category with absolutely no progressive instincts, potential,
or record of achievement. In fact, they note that the president has a
genuine democratic sensibility and a list of political and legislative
successes that have made a difference, large and small, in the lives of
millions of working class people.
Moreover, in sharp contrast to some on the left, leaders of
the main mass organizations want him on their side. Victories, they
know from experience, are much more difficult to secure with a president
opposing them or assuming a position of neutrality. They have no truck
with a one-sided Howard Zinn view of historical progress and radical
social change, in which political compromises, unreliable allies,
tactical and strategic retreats, stages of struggle, participation in
electoral politics, and so on are to be studiously avoided. Based on
their real movement experience, they conclude that such a hopelessly
uncomplicated reading of the past and what it will take to make a more
livable future for the vast majority is politically wrong-headed and
counterproductive.
Finally - and maybe above all - the leaders of the broader
democratic movement are aware that the president governs in a concrete
political context in which the singular mission of the opposition party,
dominated by right-wing extremists, isn't simply to wreck the Obama
presidency. It extends far beyond the occupant of the White House to
every political, economic, and social right and gain secured over the
past century - not to mention the institutional bases of the broad
democratic movements, labor in the first place. The wholesale decimation
of democratic rights, organizations, and institutions may seem an
unlikely possibility to some, but leaders as well as activists of the
broader movement are keenly aware that right-wing extremists, who are in
the driver's seat in half the states and show no hesitation to use
power in ruthless ways when given the opportunity, are only one election
away from gaining control of the one remaining branch of the federal
government not now in their reckless, authoritarian hands.
None of this makes the president above criticism in the
view of progressive movement leaders, but when they offer criticism it
is contextualized and carefully calibrated. Its purpose isn't to show up
the president or bring him down. Or simply to be right without a
thought as to how words and the way they are expressed educate or
miseducate and mobilize or demobilize people. Its intent is to nudge,
prod, and move President Obama, inch by inch if necessary, in a
progressive direction. And we should never forget, as an astute trade
union leader once reminded me, that a lot of people live on those
inches.
Perhaps there is something that the left can learn from here.
Shouldn't our political categories and analysis - not only
as it applies to the president, but to political phenomena generally -
be more open-ended and elastic to allow for contradictions,
inconsistencies, indeterminacy,new experience, and, not least, human
agency?
Shouldn't we complicate our understanding of the process of
social change and bid farewell to cut and dried schemes, pure forms,
and pat answers?
Shouldn't we - much like the broader democratic movement
does - make the actual balance of class and social forces, the depth of
political understanding and unity of millions, and what people (not just
the left) are "ready to do" an indispensable frame for our politics and
practice?
Shouldn't we attach as much significance to the electoral
and legislative arena as a major locus of power and necessary gateway to
social change as the broader democratic movement (and perhaps even more
so the right wing) does, even at this stage of struggle and level of
political independence?
The point of this isn't to water down the
critical-analytical, organizing, or visionary-programmatic role of the
left, but to develop a politics - strategy, tactics, demands, message,
language, etc. - that can break the current political impasse (now more
than 30 years long), unite broad cross-sections of people, and lift the
country to higher ground where freedom and justice penetrate every
aspect of life - probably not all at once, but in the course of a
protracted mass, nonviolent struggle that draws strength from the
formerly passive and backward sections of the American people.
Without such a reset, I suspect that too many on the left
will continue to spend too much time bellyaching, talking only to each
other, living in their own cocoon of struggle, and missing opportunities
to join with others in broader campaigns for justice, equality, and
freedom.
The politics of "opposition and outrage," which too large a
section of the left has turned into a refined art form over the past
half century, is like a drug. It brings a momentary high, but later on
leaves its practitioner feeling washed out and utterly frustrated. It
may register some victories here and there, but it has no transforming
potential.
What is to be done, someone, once asked long ago and then
answered: Put an end to the past period. The left would do well to do
the same, but that will only happen if we get rid of narrow, simplistic,
schematic, and small-universe ideas - some of which have become nearly
second nature to too many of us. And that can be easily done without
sacrificing a morsel of our anti-capitalist perspective and goals - our
freedom dreams.
Photo: President Obama delivers the State of the Union
address in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20,
2015. White House photo/Pete Souza
February 9 2015