this culture of consumerism turns human beings into herds of stampeding animals. it's almost cliche for a socialist to say that capitalism strips us of our very humanity. this walmart case of stampeding christmas shoppers trampling a worker to death gives new meaning to what was once widely considered a socialist cliche.
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The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By
November 29, 2008
Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death
By JACK HEALY and ANGELA MACROPOULOS
A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York died after he was trampled by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front doors and thronged into the store early Friday morning, turning the annual rite of post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting into a Hobbesian frenzy.
At 4:55 a.m., just five minutes before the doors were set to open, a crowd of 2,000 anxious shoppers started pushing, shoving and piling against the locked sliding glass doors of the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., Nassau County police said. The shoppers broke the doors off their hinges and surged in, toppling a 34-year-old temporary employee, Jdimypai Damour, 34, of Jamaica, Queens, who had been waiting with other workers in the store’s entryway.
People did not stop to help the employee as he lay on the ground, and they pushed against other Wal-Mart workers who were trying to aid Mr. Damour. The crowd kept running into the store even after the police arrived, jostling and pushing officers who were trying to perform CPR, the police said.
“They were like a stampede,” said Nassau Det. Lt. Michael Fleming. “Hundreds of people walked past him, over him or around him.”
Mr. Damour was taken from the Wal-Mart to nearby Franklin Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:03 a.m., the police said. His exact cause of death has not been determined. The police said that three other shoppers were injured and a 28-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant was taken to the hospital for observation.
One shopper, Kimberly Cribbs, said she was standing near the back of the crowd at around 5 a.m. on Friday when people started rushing into the store. She said several people were knocked to the ground, and parents had to grab their children by the hand to keep them from being caught in the crush.
“They were falling all over each other,” she said. “It was terrible.”
Crowds began building outside the Wal-Mart at 9 p.m. Thursday and grew throughout the night, as eager shoppers queued up in a line that filled the sidewalk and stretched toward the boundary fence of the Green Acres Mall.
At 3:30 a.m., store employees called the Nassau police to report that the crowd was growing quickly, the police said. Officers came by to try to organize the line, but were called away to a Circuit City, a Best Buy and a B.J.’s Wholesale Club nearby, to deal with crowds there.
A half-dozen Wal-Mart employees lined up in the entryway trying to hold back the crowd by pushing against the locked sliding doors, but they were overwhelmed by the force of the crowd, Lieutenant Fleming said.
As the doors snapped open and people streamed in, several people fell on top of one another. The 34-year-old employee who died was at the bottom of the pile, the police said.
On Friday, Wal-Mart released a statement saying that the man who was killed had been working for Wal-Mart through a temp agency. The company called the death “a tragic situation,” and said it was working with police.
“The safety and security of our customers and associates is our top priority,” Wal-Mart said in a statement.
Lieutenant Fleming said that the store “could have done more” to prevent the melee.
“I’ve heard other people call this an accident, but it’s not,” he said. “This certainly was foreseeable.”
Friday, November 28, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Victory for Venezuela's Socialists in Crucial Elections
Victory for Venezuela's Socialists in Crucial Elections
November 2008
James Petras
The pro-Chavez United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won 72% of
the governorships in the November 23, 2008 elections and 58% of the
popular vote, dumbfounding the predictions of most of the
pro-capitalist pollsters and the vast majority of the mass media who
favored the opposition.
PSUV candidates defeated incumbent opposition governors in three
states (Guaro, Sucre, Aragua) and lost two states (Miranda and
Tachira). The opposition retained the governorship in a tourist
center (Nueva Esparta) and won in Tachira, a state bordering
Colombia, Carabobo and the oil state of Zulia, as well as scoring an
upset victory in the populous state of Miranda and taking the
mayoralty district of the capital, Caracas. The socialist victory was
especially significant because the voter turnout of 65% exceeded all
previous non-presidential elections. The prediction by the propaganda
pollsters that a high turnout would favor the opposition also
reflected wishful thinking.
The significance of the socialist victory is clear if we put it in a
comparative historical context:
1. Few if any government parties in Europe, North or South American
have retained such high levels of popular support in free and open
elections.
2. The PSUV retained its high level of support in the context of
several radical economic measures, including the nationalization of
major cement, steel, financial and other private capitalist
monopolies.
3. The Socialists won despite the 70% decline in oil prices (from
$140 to $52 dollars a barrel), Venezuela's principle source of export
earnings, and largely because the government maintained most of its
funding for its social programs.
4. The electorate was more selective in its voting decisions
regarding Chavista candidates ? rewarding candidates who performed
adequately in providing government services and punishing those who
ignored or were unresponsive to popular demands. While President
Chavez campaigned for all the Socialist candidates, voters did not
uniformly follow his lead where they had strong grievances against
local Chavista incumbents, as was the case with outgoing Governor
Disdado Cabello of Miranda and the Mayor of the Capital District of
Caracas. Socialist victories were mostly the result of a deliberate,
class interest based vote and not simply a reflex identification with
President Chavez.
5. The decisive victory of the PSUV provides the basis for
confronting the deepening collapse of world capitalism with socialist
measures, instead of pouring state funds to rescue bankrupt
capitalist banks, commercial and manufacturing enterprises. The
collapse of capitalism facilitates the socialization of most of the
key economic sectors. Most Venezuelan firms are heavily indebted to
the state and local banks. The Chavez government can ask the firms to
repay their debts or handover the keys ? in effect bringing about a
painless and eminently legal transition to socialism.
The election results point to deepening polarization between the hard
right and the socialist left. The centrist social-democratic
ex-Chavista governors were practically wiped from the political map.
The rightist winner in Miranda State, Henrique Capriles Radonsky, had
tried to burn down the Cuban embassy during the failed military coup
of April 2002 and the newly elected Governor of Zulia, Pablo Perez,
was the hand picked candidate of the former hard-line rightwing
Governor Rosales.
While the opposition controlled state governorships and municipal
mayors can provide a basis to attack the national government, the
economic crisis will sharply limit the amount of resources available
to maintain services and will increase their dependence on the
federal government. A frontal assault on the Chavez Government
spending state and local funds on partisan warfare could lead to a
decline of federal welfare transfers and would provoke grassroots
discontent. The rightwing won on the basis of promising to improve
state and city services and end corruption and favoritism. Resorting
to their past practices of crony politics and extreme obstructionism
could quickly cost them popular support and undermine their hopes of
transforming local gains into national power. The newly elected
opposition governors and mayors need the cooperation and support of
the Federal Government, especially in the context of the deepening
crisis, or they will lose popular support and credibility.
Conclusion
There is no point in expecting the mass media to recognize the
Socialist victory. Its effort to magnify the significance of the
opposition's 40% electoral vote and their victory in 20% of the
states was predictable. In the post-election period, the Socialists,
no doubt, will critically evaluate the results and hopefully re-think
the selection of future candidates, emphasizing job performance on
local issues over and above professed loyalty to President Chavez and
'Socialism'. The immediate and most pressing task facing the PSUV,
President Chavez, the legislators and the newly elected Chavez
officials is to formulate a comprehensive socio-economic strategic
plan to confront the global collapse of capitalism. This is
especially critical in dealing with the sharp fall in oil prices,
federal revenues and the inevitable decline in government spending.
Chavez has promised to maintain all social programs even if oil
prices remain at or below $50 dollars a barrel. This is clearly a
positive and defensible position if the government manages to reduce
its huge subsidies to the private sector and doesn't embark on any
bailout of bankrupt or nearly bankrupt private firms. While $40
billion dollars in reserves can serve as a temporary cushion, the
fact remains that the government, with the backing of its majorities
in the federal legislature and at the state levels, needs to make
hard choices and not simply print money, run bigger deficits, devalue
the currency and exacerbate the already high rates of annual
inflation (31% as of November).
The only reasonable strategy is to take control of foreign trade and
directly oversee the commanding heights of the productive and
distributive sectors and set priorities that defend popular living
standards. To counter-act bureaucratic ineptness and neutralize lazy
elected officials, effective power and control must be transferred to
organized workers and autonomous consumer and neighborhood councils.
The recent past reveals that merely electing socialist mayors or
governors is not sufficient to ensure the implementation of
progressive policies and the delivery of basic services. Liberal
representative government (even with elected socialists) requires at
a minimum mass popular control and mass pressure to implement the
hard decisions and popular priorities in the midst of a deepening and
prolonged economic crisis.
November 2008
James Petras
The pro-Chavez United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won 72% of
the governorships in the November 23, 2008 elections and 58% of the
popular vote, dumbfounding the predictions of most of the
pro-capitalist pollsters and the vast majority of the mass media who
favored the opposition.
PSUV candidates defeated incumbent opposition governors in three
states (Guaro, Sucre, Aragua) and lost two states (Miranda and
Tachira). The opposition retained the governorship in a tourist
center (Nueva Esparta) and won in Tachira, a state bordering
Colombia, Carabobo and the oil state of Zulia, as well as scoring an
upset victory in the populous state of Miranda and taking the
mayoralty district of the capital, Caracas. The socialist victory was
especially significant because the voter turnout of 65% exceeded all
previous non-presidential elections. The prediction by the propaganda
pollsters that a high turnout would favor the opposition also
reflected wishful thinking.
The significance of the socialist victory is clear if we put it in a
comparative historical context:
1. Few if any government parties in Europe, North or South American
have retained such high levels of popular support in free and open
elections.
2. The PSUV retained its high level of support in the context of
several radical economic measures, including the nationalization of
major cement, steel, financial and other private capitalist
monopolies.
3. The Socialists won despite the 70% decline in oil prices (from
$140 to $52 dollars a barrel), Venezuela's principle source of export
earnings, and largely because the government maintained most of its
funding for its social programs.
4. The electorate was more selective in its voting decisions
regarding Chavista candidates ? rewarding candidates who performed
adequately in providing government services and punishing those who
ignored or were unresponsive to popular demands. While President
Chavez campaigned for all the Socialist candidates, voters did not
uniformly follow his lead where they had strong grievances against
local Chavista incumbents, as was the case with outgoing Governor
Disdado Cabello of Miranda and the Mayor of the Capital District of
Caracas. Socialist victories were mostly the result of a deliberate,
class interest based vote and not simply a reflex identification with
President Chavez.
5. The decisive victory of the PSUV provides the basis for
confronting the deepening collapse of world capitalism with socialist
measures, instead of pouring state funds to rescue bankrupt
capitalist banks, commercial and manufacturing enterprises. The
collapse of capitalism facilitates the socialization of most of the
key economic sectors. Most Venezuelan firms are heavily indebted to
the state and local banks. The Chavez government can ask the firms to
repay their debts or handover the keys ? in effect bringing about a
painless and eminently legal transition to socialism.
The election results point to deepening polarization between the hard
right and the socialist left. The centrist social-democratic
ex-Chavista governors were practically wiped from the political map.
The rightist winner in Miranda State, Henrique Capriles Radonsky, had
tried to burn down the Cuban embassy during the failed military coup
of April 2002 and the newly elected Governor of Zulia, Pablo Perez,
was the hand picked candidate of the former hard-line rightwing
Governor Rosales.
While the opposition controlled state governorships and municipal
mayors can provide a basis to attack the national government, the
economic crisis will sharply limit the amount of resources available
to maintain services and will increase their dependence on the
federal government. A frontal assault on the Chavez Government
spending state and local funds on partisan warfare could lead to a
decline of federal welfare transfers and would provoke grassroots
discontent. The rightwing won on the basis of promising to improve
state and city services and end corruption and favoritism. Resorting
to their past practices of crony politics and extreme obstructionism
could quickly cost them popular support and undermine their hopes of
transforming local gains into national power. The newly elected
opposition governors and mayors need the cooperation and support of
the Federal Government, especially in the context of the deepening
crisis, or they will lose popular support and credibility.
Conclusion
There is no point in expecting the mass media to recognize the
Socialist victory. Its effort to magnify the significance of the
opposition's 40% electoral vote and their victory in 20% of the
states was predictable. In the post-election period, the Socialists,
no doubt, will critically evaluate the results and hopefully re-think
the selection of future candidates, emphasizing job performance on
local issues over and above professed loyalty to President Chavez and
'Socialism'. The immediate and most pressing task facing the PSUV,
President Chavez, the legislators and the newly elected Chavez
officials is to formulate a comprehensive socio-economic strategic
plan to confront the global collapse of capitalism. This is
especially critical in dealing with the sharp fall in oil prices,
federal revenues and the inevitable decline in government spending.
Chavez has promised to maintain all social programs even if oil
prices remain at or below $50 dollars a barrel. This is clearly a
positive and defensible position if the government manages to reduce
its huge subsidies to the private sector and doesn't embark on any
bailout of bankrupt or nearly bankrupt private firms. While $40
billion dollars in reserves can serve as a temporary cushion, the
fact remains that the government, with the backing of its majorities
in the federal legislature and at the state levels, needs to make
hard choices and not simply print money, run bigger deficits, devalue
the currency and exacerbate the already high rates of annual
inflation (31% as of November).
The only reasonable strategy is to take control of foreign trade and
directly oversee the commanding heights of the productive and
distributive sectors and set priorities that defend popular living
standards. To counter-act bureaucratic ineptness and neutralize lazy
elected officials, effective power and control must be transferred to
organized workers and autonomous consumer and neighborhood councils.
The recent past reveals that merely electing socialist mayors or
governors is not sufficient to ensure the implementation of
progressive policies and the delivery of basic services. Liberal
representative government (even with elected socialists) requires at
a minimum mass popular control and mass pressure to implement the
hard decisions and popular priorities in the midst of a deepening and
prolonged economic crisis.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Minutes 11/20 Meeting
Here are some of the important details covered in our meeting Thurs 11/20.
Next week's meeting has been changed to Tuesday 11/25 at 9 pm at our normal meeting place, room 220H Snyder Hall.
RSO Leader Training
We really need a YDS member to sign up for a simple 2-hour session offered by the Department of Student Life.
Wed. Dec 3
6-8 pm
Please contact Allison ASAP if you are free to do this training. It is very important YDS have this as a resume item. The training consists of Financial Management and Organization Structure training. It's not the most exciting topic, but the facilitator has expressed interest in making sure YDS is present at this session.
Obama/Socialism Presentation
We are still working on choosing a date.
Possibly supplement Bobby Seal event (Jan 14-16) with this presentation as sort of preface or follow-up? Discussion with the DuBois society on this is underway. This could ease event promotion and bolster interest and attendance for both events.
Check your inbox for the newsletter with links to the current presentation
Please contact the corresponding members if you are interested in contributing to:
Video introduction: Reid
Defining Socialism: Ryan, Allison
History/Overview of US Socialist Movement: Austin
Obama Foreign Policy:
Obama Health Care: Christina, Cory
Obama Economy: Allison, Cat
Conclusion: Reid
Presentation Logistics and Promotion: Reid
(links are to emails)
Peace Over Prejudice: Know Your Allies Presentation
Date: Monday 12/1
Time: 6:30 pm (duration approx. 2 hours)
Location: Wonders Kiva
We will be presenting a version of the "chip game." We still need to figure out logistics such as materials (where we get them, how much we need). Austin will provide literature on the game rules to assist presenters. Rules should be available on blog soon also.
Delicious food will be served after all the presentations, and we will have a table for others to visit. We will have our banner and literature to pass out. We discussed having a way to expand upon the chip game at the table. What that actually entails has not been specified, and is open for discussion.
Reid and Ryan are our PoP members, and will be presenting. Contact them if you wish to contribute or have any questions.
Bobby Seal Event
Jan 14-16
Right now the DuBois society is working on the details of the firm offer. Soon we will need YDS members to assist with the media blitz for the event (tentatively tied to our Obama presentation) as well as logistics such as escorting Mr. Seal during his 3-day visit. There is soon to be a sign-up for hour-by-hour slots to cover the escort process.
If you are interested in helping with the event, please contact the DuBois Society's Jennifer White or our very own (and very awesome) Ryan.
YDS members must attend the dinner with Bobby Seal. Austin can provide excuse notes for work class obligations. Luckily, it is early in the semester so no one should have lots of homework or big tests or anything. Please notify your bosses/professors soon, get substitutes for work, whatever, and don't hesitate to ask Austin for an excuse note if you need it. It is very important for everyone attend!
External Affairs: 21st Century Chautauqua, MADI
Despite our strong presence at past MADI Leadership programs, our membership discussed scaling back efforts to maintain YDS presence at these functions. The 21st Century Chautauqua events have been garnering much more attention, and discussion was held to create a Chautauqua Liaison Committee. This (potential) committee would consist of several members whose responsibility is to ensure YDS has a presence at each week's Chautauqua. Reports back during general membership meetings are recommended. Look forward to deciding on this committee during our next meeting.
(Dean Esquith really wants Austin to hold some of these Chautauqua discussions specifically on critical race relations and political economy. In that case, we do not have to spend the entire discussion convincing the facilitator to cede to our fundamental points of argument, they will be the very topic of discussion.)
Debate: Blog Rules and Regs
It is important to maintain a positive image of YDS, particularly in what we say in our blog. Discussion was held regarding administrative rights on the blog and the power of removal. It has been suggested (not decided) that everyone have the right to remove another member's post. Guidelines should be established regarding what is and is not acceptable. If a member feels another member's post should be removed, swift action is encouraged. However, after removal substantive debate justifying publication and removal is necessary, and the membership should come to a decision on the post. This is only a suggested solution, but some members feel it is better to have removed something and replace it, rather than have debatable/objectionable material online for long periods of time. This is up for discussion and will be on the agenda for our next meeting.
RCAH Reading Room
Members are encouraged to solicit free books from their respective local libraries over winter break. We are in the process of getting a reading room bookshelf for the RCAH, and want *good* leftist/socialist literature. We need a volunteer to draft a summary of the focus for the socialist reading room, with both RCAH students and faculty in mind. Please contact Austin if you are interested in helping with this.
Educate Yourself
While the ultimate goal is to create a series of links to alternative news sources for our blog readers/users to utilize, here are a few good starting points. Views expressed by some sources (whose political agendas are more clear than others) are not necessarily explicitly shared by MSU YDS.
Democratic Socialists of America
The BBC
LibCom
The Real News Network
This list is in its infancy, please contact Peter with your further suggestions, as these resources will go on our blog.
DSA Newsletter is attached to your email
If you have new ideas, event opportunities, information or other business, please email YDS in order to add it to our upcoming meeting agenda. Thanks!
Tentative Meeting Agenda 12/2
Old Business
1. RSO Leadership Training: finalize details
2. Obama/Socialism: Update on presentation, discuss date/time finalization
3. POP Presentation: Update, make sure all materials are secured, verify presenters and attendees
4. Bobby Seal: specifics on this contingent upon feedback from DuBois Society. Possible sign-up for escorting, verification of dinner attendance
5. Chautauqua Liason Committee: Decision on committee creation, sign-up to be member
6. RCAH Reading room: Discuss or draft summary
7. Alternative News Sources: further suggestions for sites to visit?
Action Items
1. Discussion: Debate regarding blog content parameters, content removal rules/regs
New Business
?
Adjourn
Next week's meeting has been changed to Tuesday 11/25 at 9 pm at our normal meeting place, room 220H Snyder Hall.
RSO Leader Training
We really need a YDS member to sign up for a simple 2-hour session offered by the Department of Student Life.
Wed. Dec 3
6-8 pm
Please contact Allison ASAP if you are free to do this training. It is very important YDS have this as a resume item. The training consists of Financial Management and Organization Structure training. It's not the most exciting topic, but the facilitator has expressed interest in making sure YDS is present at this session.
Obama/Socialism Presentation
We are still working on choosing a date.
Possibly supplement Bobby Seal event (Jan 14-16) with this presentation as sort of preface or follow-up? Discussion with the DuBois society on this is underway. This could ease event promotion and bolster interest and attendance for both events.
Check your inbox for the newsletter with links to the current presentation
Please contact the corresponding members if you are interested in contributing to:
Video introduction: Reid
Defining Socialism: Ryan, Allison
History/Overview of US Socialist Movement: Austin
Obama Foreign Policy:
Obama Health Care: Christina, Cory
Obama Economy: Allison, Cat
Conclusion: Reid
Presentation Logistics and Promotion: Reid
(links are to emails)
Peace Over Prejudice: Know Your Allies Presentation
Date: Monday 12/1
Time: 6:30 pm (duration approx. 2 hours)
Location: Wonders Kiva
We will be presenting a version of the "chip game." We still need to figure out logistics such as materials (where we get them, how much we need). Austin will provide literature on the game rules to assist presenters. Rules should be available on blog soon also.
Delicious food will be served after all the presentations, and we will have a table for others to visit. We will have our banner and literature to pass out. We discussed having a way to expand upon the chip game at the table. What that actually entails has not been specified, and is open for discussion.
Reid and Ryan are our PoP members, and will be presenting. Contact them if you wish to contribute or have any questions.
Bobby Seal Event
Jan 14-16
Right now the DuBois society is working on the details of the firm offer. Soon we will need YDS members to assist with the media blitz for the event (tentatively tied to our Obama presentation) as well as logistics such as escorting Mr. Seal during his 3-day visit. There is soon to be a sign-up for hour-by-hour slots to cover the escort process.
If you are interested in helping with the event, please contact the DuBois Society's Jennifer White or our very own (and very awesome) Ryan.
YDS members must attend the dinner with Bobby Seal. Austin can provide excuse notes for work class obligations. Luckily, it is early in the semester so no one should have lots of homework or big tests or anything. Please notify your bosses/professors soon, get substitutes for work, whatever, and don't hesitate to ask Austin for an excuse note if you need it. It is very important for everyone attend!
External Affairs: 21st Century Chautauqua, MADI
Despite our strong presence at past MADI Leadership programs, our membership discussed scaling back efforts to maintain YDS presence at these functions. The 21st Century Chautauqua events have been garnering much more attention, and discussion was held to create a Chautauqua Liaison Committee. This (potential) committee would consist of several members whose responsibility is to ensure YDS has a presence at each week's Chautauqua. Reports back during general membership meetings are recommended. Look forward to deciding on this committee during our next meeting.
(Dean Esquith really wants Austin to hold some of these Chautauqua discussions specifically on critical race relations and political economy. In that case, we do not have to spend the entire discussion convincing the facilitator to cede to our fundamental points of argument, they will be the very topic of discussion.)
Debate: Blog Rules and Regs
It is important to maintain a positive image of YDS, particularly in what we say in our blog. Discussion was held regarding administrative rights on the blog and the power of removal. It has been suggested (not decided) that everyone have the right to remove another member's post. Guidelines should be established regarding what is and is not acceptable. If a member feels another member's post should be removed, swift action is encouraged. However, after removal substantive debate justifying publication and removal is necessary, and the membership should come to a decision on the post. This is only a suggested solution, but some members feel it is better to have removed something and replace it, rather than have debatable/objectionable material online for long periods of time. This is up for discussion and will be on the agenda for our next meeting.
RCAH Reading Room
Members are encouraged to solicit free books from their respective local libraries over winter break. We are in the process of getting a reading room bookshelf for the RCAH, and want *good* leftist/socialist literature. We need a volunteer to draft a summary of the focus for the socialist reading room, with both RCAH students and faculty in mind. Please contact Austin if you are interested in helping with this.
Educate Yourself
While the ultimate goal is to create a series of links to alternative news sources for our blog readers/users to utilize, here are a few good starting points. Views expressed by some sources (whose political agendas are more clear than others) are not necessarily explicitly shared by MSU YDS.
Democratic Socialists of America
The BBC
LibCom
The Real News Network
This list is in its infancy, please contact Peter with your further suggestions, as these resources will go on our blog.
DSA Newsletter is attached to your email
If you have new ideas, event opportunities, information or other business, please email YDS in order to add it to our upcoming meeting agenda. Thanks!
Tentative Meeting Agenda 12/2
Old Business
1. RSO Leadership Training: finalize details
2. Obama/Socialism: Update on presentation, discuss date/time finalization
3. POP Presentation: Update, make sure all materials are secured, verify presenters and attendees
4. Bobby Seal: specifics on this contingent upon feedback from DuBois Society. Possible sign-up for escorting, verification of dinner attendance
5. Chautauqua Liason Committee: Decision on committee creation, sign-up to be member
6. RCAH Reading room: Discuss or draft summary
7. Alternative News Sources: further suggestions for sites to visit?
Action Items
1. Discussion: Debate regarding blog content parameters, content removal rules/regs
New Business
?
Adjourn
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Socialism: The Movement of the Majority!
http://www.blackcommentator.com/300/300_ror_socialism_movement_majority.html
Socialism: The Movement of the Majority!
Represent Our Resistance
By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to speak, drags capitalists, against their own will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization… Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few… the bulk of the profits go to the ‘geniuses’ of financial manipulation… Monopoly, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small and weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations - all these have given rise to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compels is to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.
-Lenin, “Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism”
PBS’s Frontline presents a documentary titled War Briefing. An “expert” on the Afghanistan war states that the Taliban could be won over to “our side,” its sounds natural to the ear. Some few Taliban, good Taliban will remain in place as leaders to lord over villages of the poor and women with impunity. It will be a better life for the Afghanis - nestled into the hierarchical structure that best benefits corporations like Exxon-Mobile. And of course, Exxon-Mobile, providing a service for all, will have its route to oil.
The producers can assume its audience is caught up in the rhetoric of freedom” Only in America can I watch and listen to a “free,” “educational” broadcast in a “free” nation!
Won over “to our side.”
What is “our side”? What is on “our side”?
Exxon-Mobile rejected its shareholders’ request to invest in renewable energy until the top brass discovered how such investment would be “good for the company” - not the people - the company.
On “our side,” we can no longer speak of the United States as representing a republic. In 1950, writes Gore Vidal, the original constitution “was secretly replaced with the apparatus of the national security state.” In a national security state, money is funneled into “war-related matters” abroad, and, I would add, money is spending on developing a world-class prison industrial complex, complete with a high-tech surveillance apparatus. In a national security state, institutions encouraging free thinking are counterproductive, subversive.
So it isn’t surprising that political rhetoric on “our side” delivers to the people a definition of “freedom.” Freedom is something “we have” and others don’t have. A principal of the national security state holds up a card with a graphic display consisting of numbers and lines adding up to the message: we have; they don’t. Another principle flashes a photo of a naked, ashy, African or Latino boy. Freedom is and must be “brought to” other nations. OKAY!
Freedom is the strongest man, the most beautiful woman, the wealthiest entrepreneur or corporation - the people who matter on “our side.” Freedom is the right of billionaire capitalists to ask and to receive a bailout at the expense of the ruled. Freedom is corporate short cuts, regardless of who loses a limb or what worker is laid off.
Freedom on “our side” is being told that the Democratic Party is your party. That “re-distribution of wealth” is socialism! Communism! - the other side! But we have but one Party, and it’s the Party of the Capitalists. The melding of the government and the corporate world has yielded an increasingly dominate national security state - with a sprinkling of fundamental Christianity. Freedom is not freedom for workers to form labor unions free from government control! Freedom is not a single-payer health care plan! Worker-lead unions and single-payer health care isn’t profitable for anti-human capitalists.
Freedom is recognizing your deficiencies and seeking ways (legal or illegal - it’s all good for the national security state) to overcome your unnatural condition. That’s being wholeheartedly on “our side.”
Freedom is accepting the insanity of these anti-human rulers, unconditionally - unconstitutionally!
Because freedom is, you lose - no matter how hard you strive to be on “our side.” Freedom is ownership of all resources for the few.
Freedom is never the right to a quality life - for workers and the oppressed. It is never about the right to work at a meaningful job or have health care, decent housing and education. Freedom is not about equality among human beings. It’s shopping from a city dumpster!
Because freedom is fear of the masses!
Freedom is controlling what the people know and playing games with reality. The workers, the oppressed, the economically distressed, people of color, and women are asked to see themselves within the definition delivered to them. The ruled submit, body and mind, to a “natural” and “unchangeable” reality that services the interests of the rulers.
On “our side” produces the nullification of action against the rulers. It produces behavior from the workers, unemployed, economically distressed, people of color and women that is collaborative or cooperative. Most importantly, thought is not only stifled, it isn’t thought! All thinking and action in this society is done in relation to capitalism.
Capitalism is a brutal and inhumane regime imposed on the world by western nations lead by the United States. Capitalism allows for the government and corporations to privatize public resources. How civilized is it for the chemical lobbyists to dictate to the EPA or FDA what will be while oil lobbyists argue for the right to pollute the air and water supply? How civilized is it to allow for the selling for profits of women and children? How civilized is it to train the young to kill or be killed or maimed to establish new headquarters for four oil companies in the Middle East? How civilized is it to continue glorifying liars and thieves and call that progress? Follow the money: There are no lobbyists for the poor!
Freedom as a product of capitalism can only move in one direction: The freedom to purchase your own electronic bracelet!
If you think the “won them over to our side” philosophy applies only to the Taliban, or to the Iraqis, or Chinese, think again. Show-us-the-money Secretary of Treasury Paulson asked and received funds to save the capitalists. The American people have served as laboratory rats in the big experiment: Sedate and manipulate with a narrative hailing the exceptional patriotism of the American people! To a large extent, the experiment has worked. When the constitution and freedom disappeared in the 1950s, the American public went right on, thankful that they were not poor, Black, Guatemalan, African, Indochinese, or Haitian. Halleluiah! Black liberation leaders are hunted down and killed or incarcerated and the American public is relieved. Those angry Blacks with guns are a frightening mass and a threat to the American civilization as we know it! Halleluiah, that’s over! It can be argued that with the success of this homegrown experiment, King George and his court assumed the Iraqi people would drop everything and, in the midst of falling bombs, worship at the feet of U.S. soldiers. They envisioned shouts of halleluiah, freedom at last by masses and masses of Iraqis. The collective halleluiahs of Americans and Iraqis would drown out the cries of burning children and courageous anti-war protesters.
We have now a society in the U.S. where the workers, James Cannon explains, have a right to vote every four years, if they don’t move around too much, but have no say about the control of the shop and the factory; where all the means of mass information and communication are monopolised (sic) by a few - they describe all that as the ideal democracy, for which the workers should gladly fight and die.
Get your guns; shake your store-bought hair; get your face lifted to the high heavens and tuck the stomach; undo the slant of your eyes; buy a three-piece Black suit and stocks and cut the hair; speak the most perfect English to outdo the Ebonics or Korean accent - and it will never matter; it has never mattered. What matters is that the American people capitulated, submitted, bowed in a permanent posture, before the flag, unconditionally. Even while unemployment is the highest since September 11, 2002 and while the ruled scuffle and scrounge up every penny in the children’s banks and under the sofa cushions, the capitalists appeared before Congress and anyone who would have them to shout - Fire! We need the money. They got it! The capitalists exercise “freedom” and call it democracy!
Hear echoes of George Orwell’s Winston: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”
Workers, the unemployed, the economically distressed, people of color and women are without freedom. Freedom for the once enslaved became acceptance into the capitalist system as another kind of slave. Here - “our side” has been an accumulation of cells in a prison under the control of capitalist rulers!
During the 2008 presidential election, debate about the rights of workers, the exploited, focused on a nightmare for believers in capitalism: We can’t have a “re-distribution of the wealth” in the U.S. The believers shouted to the American people: It would mean taking “well-earned money” from “hard working entrepreneurs.” Re-distribution will put an end to democracy!
As Cannon writes, this game of confusing and misrepresenting [socialism] has been facilitated for the capitalists and aided to a considerable extent by the social democrats and the labour bureaucracy, who are themselves privileged beneficiaries of the American system, and who give a socialist and labour coloring to the defence (sic) of American ‘democracy.’
The American people reject the evidence of its own eyes and ears: there’s a form of socialism - imperialist socialism!
“Socialism,” writes Cannon, was often called the society of the free and equal and democracy was defined as the rule of the people.” There “rule of the people” isn’t Stalin’s idea of “socialism” or the bogey-man-communist coming to take freedom, that is, money, from “hard-working” American people! No one can take what you don’t have! Socialism isn’t socialization for imperialists!
The true socialist movement is the movement of the majority! It represents change that is indeed radical! Revolutionary!
And you would think that after the last forty years Black Americans would once again speak openly about freedom and the “rule of the people.” Rev. Martin Luther King wondered why Black Americans had not joined the Communist Party en-mass.
This month, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, delegates to the first West Africa conference of African Socialist International are talking about what we are afraid to debate. The delegates of the conference, according to Lansana Fofana, called for “reparations to be paid to Africans for 400 years of slavery.”
“Asking for reparations is no favor demanded from the West,” said Ismail Rashid, Sierra Leonean professor of African History at New York’s Vassar College. “It is our right because through slavery, the West stole our labor, dignity and resources. It is repayment for our labor, our looted human resources.”
Please don’t think as programmed: We gave you a “Black” president. We have a BLACK president!
As Carlito Rovira reminds us in African American Reparations and the Struggle for Socialism, “African chattel slavery arose in the 15th century based on the expansion of capitalism.”
The wealth accumulated from slave labor strengthened capitalist industries and commerce. Textile industries, agriculture and shipbuilding prospered as a result of cheaper goods and raw materials obtained by enslaved African labor. The more Black slavery expanded, the more it became an impetus for capitalist economic development - not only in the United States, where slavery was strongest but throughout the world.
In the United States, Rovira writes, the class struggle has always relied on racism. “Reparations for the oppressed [Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Black Americans, Latino/a Americans - workers] automatically imply the expropriation of the capitalist class.”
The movement of the majority is the concern of socialists and revolutionaries engaged in anti-capitalist struggles!
Any concept of freedom must start from the reality of the ruled, the people denied freedom.
What did Winston say of the Proles:
…[I]f only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength…They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies…[I]f they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning… And yet…!
And yet…!
“Our side” has been historically oppositional, among the majority striving for freedom and the rule by the people! The movement of socialists and revolutionaries is the movement of the majority! Say it again, until you see it and understand.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has been a writer, for over thirty years of commentary, resistance criticism and cultural theory, and short stories with a Marxist sensibility to the impact of cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality, she has served as a coordinator of student and community resistance projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea of an equalitarian community and facilitator of student-teacher communities behind the walls of academia for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures, with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class narratives) from Loyola University, Chicago. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.
Socialism: The Movement of the Majority!
Represent Our Resistance
By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to speak, drags capitalists, against their own will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization… Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few… the bulk of the profits go to the ‘geniuses’ of financial manipulation… Monopoly, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small and weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations - all these have given rise to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compels is to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.
-Lenin, “Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism”
PBS’s Frontline presents a documentary titled War Briefing. An “expert” on the Afghanistan war states that the Taliban could be won over to “our side,” its sounds natural to the ear. Some few Taliban, good Taliban will remain in place as leaders to lord over villages of the poor and women with impunity. It will be a better life for the Afghanis - nestled into the hierarchical structure that best benefits corporations like Exxon-Mobile. And of course, Exxon-Mobile, providing a service for all, will have its route to oil.
The producers can assume its audience is caught up in the rhetoric of freedom” Only in America can I watch and listen to a “free,” “educational” broadcast in a “free” nation!
Won over “to our side.”
What is “our side”? What is on “our side”?
Exxon-Mobile rejected its shareholders’ request to invest in renewable energy until the top brass discovered how such investment would be “good for the company” - not the people - the company.
On “our side,” we can no longer speak of the United States as representing a republic. In 1950, writes Gore Vidal, the original constitution “was secretly replaced with the apparatus of the national security state.” In a national security state, money is funneled into “war-related matters” abroad, and, I would add, money is spending on developing a world-class prison industrial complex, complete with a high-tech surveillance apparatus. In a national security state, institutions encouraging free thinking are counterproductive, subversive.
So it isn’t surprising that political rhetoric on “our side” delivers to the people a definition of “freedom.” Freedom is something “we have” and others don’t have. A principal of the national security state holds up a card with a graphic display consisting of numbers and lines adding up to the message: we have; they don’t. Another principle flashes a photo of a naked, ashy, African or Latino boy. Freedom is and must be “brought to” other nations. OKAY!
Freedom is the strongest man, the most beautiful woman, the wealthiest entrepreneur or corporation - the people who matter on “our side.” Freedom is the right of billionaire capitalists to ask and to receive a bailout at the expense of the ruled. Freedom is corporate short cuts, regardless of who loses a limb or what worker is laid off.
Freedom on “our side” is being told that the Democratic Party is your party. That “re-distribution of wealth” is socialism! Communism! - the other side! But we have but one Party, and it’s the Party of the Capitalists. The melding of the government and the corporate world has yielded an increasingly dominate national security state - with a sprinkling of fundamental Christianity. Freedom is not freedom for workers to form labor unions free from government control! Freedom is not a single-payer health care plan! Worker-lead unions and single-payer health care isn’t profitable for anti-human capitalists.
Freedom is recognizing your deficiencies and seeking ways (legal or illegal - it’s all good for the national security state) to overcome your unnatural condition. That’s being wholeheartedly on “our side.”
Freedom is accepting the insanity of these anti-human rulers, unconditionally - unconstitutionally!
Because freedom is, you lose - no matter how hard you strive to be on “our side.” Freedom is ownership of all resources for the few.
Freedom is never the right to a quality life - for workers and the oppressed. It is never about the right to work at a meaningful job or have health care, decent housing and education. Freedom is not about equality among human beings. It’s shopping from a city dumpster!
Because freedom is fear of the masses!
Freedom is controlling what the people know and playing games with reality. The workers, the oppressed, the economically distressed, people of color, and women are asked to see themselves within the definition delivered to them. The ruled submit, body and mind, to a “natural” and “unchangeable” reality that services the interests of the rulers.
On “our side” produces the nullification of action against the rulers. It produces behavior from the workers, unemployed, economically distressed, people of color and women that is collaborative or cooperative. Most importantly, thought is not only stifled, it isn’t thought! All thinking and action in this society is done in relation to capitalism.
Capitalism is a brutal and inhumane regime imposed on the world by western nations lead by the United States. Capitalism allows for the government and corporations to privatize public resources. How civilized is it for the chemical lobbyists to dictate to the EPA or FDA what will be while oil lobbyists argue for the right to pollute the air and water supply? How civilized is it to allow for the selling for profits of women and children? How civilized is it to train the young to kill or be killed or maimed to establish new headquarters for four oil companies in the Middle East? How civilized is it to continue glorifying liars and thieves and call that progress? Follow the money: There are no lobbyists for the poor!
Freedom as a product of capitalism can only move in one direction: The freedom to purchase your own electronic bracelet!
If you think the “won them over to our side” philosophy applies only to the Taliban, or to the Iraqis, or Chinese, think again. Show-us-the-money Secretary of Treasury Paulson asked and received funds to save the capitalists. The American people have served as laboratory rats in the big experiment: Sedate and manipulate with a narrative hailing the exceptional patriotism of the American people! To a large extent, the experiment has worked. When the constitution and freedom disappeared in the 1950s, the American public went right on, thankful that they were not poor, Black, Guatemalan, African, Indochinese, or Haitian. Halleluiah! Black liberation leaders are hunted down and killed or incarcerated and the American public is relieved. Those angry Blacks with guns are a frightening mass and a threat to the American civilization as we know it! Halleluiah, that’s over! It can be argued that with the success of this homegrown experiment, King George and his court assumed the Iraqi people would drop everything and, in the midst of falling bombs, worship at the feet of U.S. soldiers. They envisioned shouts of halleluiah, freedom at last by masses and masses of Iraqis. The collective halleluiahs of Americans and Iraqis would drown out the cries of burning children and courageous anti-war protesters.
We have now a society in the U.S. where the workers, James Cannon explains, have a right to vote every four years, if they don’t move around too much, but have no say about the control of the shop and the factory; where all the means of mass information and communication are monopolised (sic) by a few - they describe all that as the ideal democracy, for which the workers should gladly fight and die.
Get your guns; shake your store-bought hair; get your face lifted to the high heavens and tuck the stomach; undo the slant of your eyes; buy a three-piece Black suit and stocks and cut the hair; speak the most perfect English to outdo the Ebonics or Korean accent - and it will never matter; it has never mattered. What matters is that the American people capitulated, submitted, bowed in a permanent posture, before the flag, unconditionally. Even while unemployment is the highest since September 11, 2002 and while the ruled scuffle and scrounge up every penny in the children’s banks and under the sofa cushions, the capitalists appeared before Congress and anyone who would have them to shout - Fire! We need the money. They got it! The capitalists exercise “freedom” and call it democracy!
Hear echoes of George Orwell’s Winston: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”
Workers, the unemployed, the economically distressed, people of color and women are without freedom. Freedom for the once enslaved became acceptance into the capitalist system as another kind of slave. Here - “our side” has been an accumulation of cells in a prison under the control of capitalist rulers!
During the 2008 presidential election, debate about the rights of workers, the exploited, focused on a nightmare for believers in capitalism: We can’t have a “re-distribution of the wealth” in the U.S. The believers shouted to the American people: It would mean taking “well-earned money” from “hard working entrepreneurs.” Re-distribution will put an end to democracy!
As Cannon writes, this game of confusing and misrepresenting [socialism] has been facilitated for the capitalists and aided to a considerable extent by the social democrats and the labour bureaucracy, who are themselves privileged beneficiaries of the American system, and who give a socialist and labour coloring to the defence (sic) of American ‘democracy.’
The American people reject the evidence of its own eyes and ears: there’s a form of socialism - imperialist socialism!
“Socialism,” writes Cannon, was often called the society of the free and equal and democracy was defined as the rule of the people.” There “rule of the people” isn’t Stalin’s idea of “socialism” or the bogey-man-communist coming to take freedom, that is, money, from “hard-working” American people! No one can take what you don’t have! Socialism isn’t socialization for imperialists!
The true socialist movement is the movement of the majority! It represents change that is indeed radical! Revolutionary!
And you would think that after the last forty years Black Americans would once again speak openly about freedom and the “rule of the people.” Rev. Martin Luther King wondered why Black Americans had not joined the Communist Party en-mass.
This month, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, delegates to the first West Africa conference of African Socialist International are talking about what we are afraid to debate. The delegates of the conference, according to Lansana Fofana, called for “reparations to be paid to Africans for 400 years of slavery.”
“Asking for reparations is no favor demanded from the West,” said Ismail Rashid, Sierra Leonean professor of African History at New York’s Vassar College. “It is our right because through slavery, the West stole our labor, dignity and resources. It is repayment for our labor, our looted human resources.”
Please don’t think as programmed: We gave you a “Black” president. We have a BLACK president!
As Carlito Rovira reminds us in African American Reparations and the Struggle for Socialism, “African chattel slavery arose in the 15th century based on the expansion of capitalism.”
The wealth accumulated from slave labor strengthened capitalist industries and commerce. Textile industries, agriculture and shipbuilding prospered as a result of cheaper goods and raw materials obtained by enslaved African labor. The more Black slavery expanded, the more it became an impetus for capitalist economic development - not only in the United States, where slavery was strongest but throughout the world.
In the United States, Rovira writes, the class struggle has always relied on racism. “Reparations for the oppressed [Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Black Americans, Latino/a Americans - workers] automatically imply the expropriation of the capitalist class.”
The movement of the majority is the concern of socialists and revolutionaries engaged in anti-capitalist struggles!
Any concept of freedom must start from the reality of the ruled, the people denied freedom.
What did Winston say of the Proles:
…[I]f only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength…They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies…[I]f they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning… And yet…!
And yet…!
“Our side” has been historically oppositional, among the majority striving for freedom and the rule by the people! The movement of socialists and revolutionaries is the movement of the majority! Say it again, until you see it and understand.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has been a writer, for over thirty years of commentary, resistance criticism and cultural theory, and short stories with a Marxist sensibility to the impact of cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality, she has served as a coordinator of student and community resistance projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea of an equalitarian community and facilitator of student-teacher communities behind the walls of academia for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures, with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class narratives) from Loyola University, Chicago. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
The United States: Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia
Bolivian President Evo Morales is visiting the United Nations and the
Organization of American States this week to report on the recent US
coup attempt against his government. He will also meet with members of
Congress to deal with ?the worst diplomatic crisis? in the history of
the two countries, and hopes to open a dialogue to normalize relations
once Pressident-elect Barak Obama takes office.
Below is the story of US efforts over the past three years to topple
Morales.
The United States: Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia
By Roger Burbach
Evo Morales is the latest democratically-elected Latin American
president to be the target of a US plot to destabilize and overthrow his
government. On September 10, 2008 Morales expelled US Ambassador Philip
Goldberg because ?he is conspiring against democracy and seeking the
division of Bolivia.?
Observers of US-Latin American policy tend to view the crisis in
US-Bolivian relations as due to a policy of neglect and ineptness
towards Latin America because of US involvement in the wars in the
Middle East and Central Asia. In fact, the Bolivia coup attempt was a
conscious policy rooted in US hostility towards Morales, his political
party the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and the social movements that
are aligned with him.
?The US embassy is historically used to calling the shots in Bolivia,
violating our sovereignty, treating us like a banana republic,? says
Gustavo Guzman, who was expelled as Bolivian ambassador to Washington
following Goldberg?s removal. In 2002, when Morales narrowly lost his
first bid for the presidency, US ambassador Manuel Rocha openly
campaigned against him, threatening, ? if you elect those who want
Bolivia to become a major cocaine exporter again, this will endanger the
future of US assistance to Bolivia.? Because he led the Cocaleros
Federation prior to assuming the presidency, the US State Department
called Morales an ?illegal coca agitator.? Morales advocated ?Coca Yes,
Cocaine No,? and called which for an end to violent U.S.- sponsored coca
eradication raids, and for the right of Bolivian peasants to grow coca
for domestic consumption, medicinal uses and even for export as an herb
in tea and other products.
?When Morales triumphed in the next presidential election,? says Guzman,
?it represented a defeat for the United States.? Shortly after his
inauguration, Morales received a call from George Bush, offering to help
"bring a better life to Bolivians." Morales asked Bush to reduce US
trade barriers for Bolivian products, and suggested that he come for a
visit. Bush did not reply. As Guzman notes, ?the United States was
trying to woo Morales with polite and banal comments to keep him from
aligning with Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez.? David Greenlee, the US
ambassador prior to Goldberg, expressed his "preoccupation" with
Bolivia's foreign alliances, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
and others at the Pentagon began talking about "security concerns" in
Bolivia.
Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, the highest ranking US
official to attend Morales? inauguration, declared a willingness to
dialogue with Morales. In fact, what followed were almost three years of
diplomatic wrangling while the U.S. provided direct and covert
assistance to the opposition movement centered in the four eastern
departments of Bolivia known as ?La Media Luna?. Dominated by
agro-industrial interests, the departments began a drive for regional
autonomy soon after Morales, the first Indian president in Bolivian
history took office. (About 55% of the country?s population is Indian.)
Headed by departmental prefects (governors) and large landowners, the
autonomy movement has been determined to stymie Morales? plans for
national agrarian reform, and bent on taking control of the substantial
hydro-carbon resources located in the Media Luna.
The Bush administration has pursued a two-track policy similar to the
strategy the United States employed to overthrow the
democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973.
The diplomatic negotiations initiated by Shannon centered almost
exclusively on differences over drug policies, with the Bush
administration continually threatening to cut or curtail economic
assistance and preferential trade if Bolivia did not abide by the US
policy of coca eradication and criminalization. At the same time, the
United States through its embassy in La Paz and the Agency for
International Development (USAID), funded political forces that opposed
Morales and MAS. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), with 37
in- country agents, appears to have acted like the CIA in Bolivia,
gathering intelligence and engaging in clandestine political operations
with the opposition.
For the remainder of the article, see:
http://globalalternatives.org/node/95
Organization of American States this week to report on the recent US
coup attempt against his government. He will also meet with members of
Congress to deal with ?the worst diplomatic crisis? in the history of
the two countries, and hopes to open a dialogue to normalize relations
once Pressident-elect Barak Obama takes office.
Below is the story of US efforts over the past three years to topple
Morales.
The United States: Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia
By Roger Burbach
Evo Morales is the latest democratically-elected Latin American
president to be the target of a US plot to destabilize and overthrow his
government. On September 10, 2008 Morales expelled US Ambassador Philip
Goldberg because ?he is conspiring against democracy and seeking the
division of Bolivia.?
Observers of US-Latin American policy tend to view the crisis in
US-Bolivian relations as due to a policy of neglect and ineptness
towards Latin America because of US involvement in the wars in the
Middle East and Central Asia. In fact, the Bolivia coup attempt was a
conscious policy rooted in US hostility towards Morales, his political
party the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and the social movements that
are aligned with him.
?The US embassy is historically used to calling the shots in Bolivia,
violating our sovereignty, treating us like a banana republic,? says
Gustavo Guzman, who was expelled as Bolivian ambassador to Washington
following Goldberg?s removal. In 2002, when Morales narrowly lost his
first bid for the presidency, US ambassador Manuel Rocha openly
campaigned against him, threatening, ? if you elect those who want
Bolivia to become a major cocaine exporter again, this will endanger the
future of US assistance to Bolivia.? Because he led the Cocaleros
Federation prior to assuming the presidency, the US State Department
called Morales an ?illegal coca agitator.? Morales advocated ?Coca Yes,
Cocaine No,? and called which for an end to violent U.S.- sponsored coca
eradication raids, and for the right of Bolivian peasants to grow coca
for domestic consumption, medicinal uses and even for export as an herb
in tea and other products.
?When Morales triumphed in the next presidential election,? says Guzman,
?it represented a defeat for the United States.? Shortly after his
inauguration, Morales received a call from George Bush, offering to help
"bring a better life to Bolivians." Morales asked Bush to reduce US
trade barriers for Bolivian products, and suggested that he come for a
visit. Bush did not reply. As Guzman notes, ?the United States was
trying to woo Morales with polite and banal comments to keep him from
aligning with Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez.? David Greenlee, the US
ambassador prior to Goldberg, expressed his "preoccupation" with
Bolivia's foreign alliances, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
and others at the Pentagon began talking about "security concerns" in
Bolivia.
Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, the highest ranking US
official to attend Morales? inauguration, declared a willingness to
dialogue with Morales. In fact, what followed were almost three years of
diplomatic wrangling while the U.S. provided direct and covert
assistance to the opposition movement centered in the four eastern
departments of Bolivia known as ?La Media Luna?. Dominated by
agro-industrial interests, the departments began a drive for regional
autonomy soon after Morales, the first Indian president in Bolivian
history took office. (About 55% of the country?s population is Indian.)
Headed by departmental prefects (governors) and large landowners, the
autonomy movement has been determined to stymie Morales? plans for
national agrarian reform, and bent on taking control of the substantial
hydro-carbon resources located in the Media Luna.
The Bush administration has pursued a two-track policy similar to the
strategy the United States employed to overthrow the
democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973.
The diplomatic negotiations initiated by Shannon centered almost
exclusively on differences over drug policies, with the Bush
administration continually threatening to cut or curtail economic
assistance and preferential trade if Bolivia did not abide by the US
policy of coca eradication and criminalization. At the same time, the
United States through its embassy in La Paz and the Agency for
International Development (USAID), funded political forces that opposed
Morales and MAS. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), with 37
in- country agents, appears to have acted like the CIA in Bolivia,
gathering intelligence and engaging in clandestine political operations
with the opposition.
For the remainder of the article, see:
http://globalalternatives.org/node/95
Monday, November 10, 2008
Ayers Reflects on Election, Future of Change in America
What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been
Looking back on a surreal campaign season
By Bill Ayers
On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on message. I became a prop, a cartoon character created to be pummeled
Whew! What was all that mess? I’m still in a daze, sorting it all out, decompressing.
Pass the Vitamin C.
For the past few years, I have gone about my business, hanging out with my kids and, now, my grandchildren, taking care of our elders (they moved in as the kids moved out), going to work, teaching and writing. And every day, I participate in the never-ending effort to build a powerful and irresistible movement for peace and social justice.
In years past, I would now and then—often unpredictably—appear in the newspapers or on TV, sometimes with a reference to Fugitive Days, my 2001 memoir of the exhilarating and difficult years of resistance against the American war in Vietnam. It was a time when the world was in flames, revolution was in the air, and the serial assassinations of black leaders disrupted our utopian dreams.These media episodes of fleeting notoriety always led to some extravagant and fantastic assertions about what I did, what I might have said and what I probably believe now.
It was always a bit surreal. Then came this political season.
During the primary, the blogosphere was full of chatter about my relationship with President-elect Barack Obama. We had served together on the board of the Woods Foundation and knew one another as neighbors in Chicago’s Hyde Park. In 1996, at a coffee gathering that my wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and I held for him, I made a donation to his campaign for the Illinois State Senate.
Obama’s political rivals and enemies thought they saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest perception that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist who sympathizes with extremism—and they pounced.
Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) campaign provided the script, which included guilt by association, demonization of people Obama knew (or might have known), creepy questions about his background and dark hints about hidden secrets yet to be uncovered.
On March 13, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), apparently in an attempt to reassure the “base,” sat down for an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News. McCain was not yet aware of the narrative Hannity had been spinning for months, and so Hannity filled him in: Ayers is an unrepentant “terrorist,” he explained, “On 9/11, of all days, he had an article where he bragged about bombing our Pentagon, bombing the Capitol and bombing New York City police headquarters. … He said, ‘I regret not doing more.’ “McCain couldn’t believe it.
Neither could I.
On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on message. I became a prop, a cartoon character created to be pummeled.
When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got hold of it, the attack went viral. At a now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama was “pallin’ around with terrorists.” (I pictured us sharing a milkshake with two straws.)The crowd began chanting, “Kill him!” “Kill him!” It was downhill from there.
My voicemail filled up with hate messages. They were mostly from men, all venting and sweating and breathing heavily. A few threats: “Watch out!” and “You deserve to be shot.” And some e-mails, like this one I got from satan@hell.com: “I’m coming to get you and when I do, I’ll water-board you.”
The police lieutenant who came to copy down those threats deadpanned that he hoped the guy who was going to shoot me got there before the guy who was going to water-board me, since it would be most foul to be tortured and then shot. (We have been pals ever since he was first assigned to investigate threats made against me in 1987, after I was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.)The good news was that every time McCain or Palin mentioned my name, they lost a point or two in the polls. The cartoon invented to hurt Obama was now poking holes in the rapidly sinking McCain-Palin ship.
That ’60s show
On Aug. 28, Stephen Colbert, the faux right-wing commentator from Comedy Central who channels Bill O’Reilly on steroids, observed:
"To this day, when our country holds a presidential election, we judge the candidates through the lens of the 1960s. … We all know Obama is cozy with William Ayers a ’60s radical who planted a bomb in the capital building and then later went on to even more heinous crimes by becoming a college professor. … Let us keep fighting the culture wars of our grandparents. The ’60s are a political gift that keeps on giving."
It was inevitable. McCain would bet the house on a dishonest and largely discredited vision of the ’60s, which was the defining decade for him. He built his political career on being a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
The ’60s—as myth and symbol—is much abused: the downfall ofcivilization in one account, a time of defeat and humiliation in a second, and a perfect moment of righteous opposition, peace and love in a third.The idea that the 2008 election may be the last time in American political life that the ’60s plays any role whatsoever is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, let’s get over the nostalgia and move on. On the other, the lessons we might have learned from the black freedom movement and from the resistance against the Vietnam War have never been learned. To achieve this would require that we face history fully and honestly, something this nation has never done.
The war in Vietnam was an illegal invasion and occupation, much of it conducted as a war of terror against the civilian population. The U.S. military killed millions of Vietnamese in air raids—like the one conducted by McCain—and entire areas of the country were designated free-fire zones, where American pilots indiscriminately dropped surplus ordinance—an immoral enterprise by any measure.
What is really important
McCain and Palin—or as our late friend Studs Terkel put it, “Joe McCarthy in drag”—would like to bury the ’60s. The ’60s, after all, was a time of rejecting obedience and conformity in favor of initiative and courage. The ’60s pushed us to a deeper appreciation of the humanity of every human being. And that is the threat it poses to the right wing, hence the attacks and all the guilt by association.
McCain and Palin demanded to “know the full extent” of the Obama-Ayers “relationship” so that they can know if Obama, as Palin put it, “is telling the truth to the American people or not.”This is just plain stupid.
Obama has continually been asked to defend something that ought to be at democracy’s heart: the importance of talking to as many people as possible in this complicated and wildly diverse society, of listening with the possibility of learning something new, and of speaking with the possibility of persuading or influencing others.
The McCain-Palin attacks not only involved guilt by association, they also assumed that one must apply a political litmus test to begin a conversation.
On Oct. 4, Palin described her supporters as those who “see America as the greatest force for good in this world” and as a “beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy.” But Obama, she said, “Is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America.” In other words, there are “real” Americans — and then there are the rest of us.
In a robust and sophisticated democracy, political leaders—and all of us—ought to seek ways to talk with many people who hold dissenting, or even radical, ideas. Lacking that simple and yet essential capacity to question authority, we might still be burning witches and enslaving
our fellow human beings today.
Maybe we could welcome our current situation—torn by another illegal war, as it was in the ’60s—as an opportunity to search for the new.
Perhaps we might think of ourselves not as passive consumers of politics but as fully mobilized political actors. Perhaps we might think of our various efforts now, as we did then, as more than a single campaign, but rather as our movement-in-the-making.
We might find hope in the growth of opposition to war and occupation worldwide. Or we might be inspired by the growing movements for reparations and prison abolition, or the rising immigrant rights movement and the stirrings of working people everywhere, or by gay and lesbian and transgender people courageously pressing for full recognition.
Yet hope—my hope, our hope—resides in a simple self-evident truth: the future is unknown, and it is also entirely unknowable.
History is always in the making. It’s up to us. It is up to me and to you. Nothing is predetermined. That makes our moment on this earth both hopeful and all the more urgent—we must find ways to become real actors, to become authentic subjects in our own history.
We may not be able to will a movement into being, but neither can we sit idly for a movement to spring full-grown, as from the head of Zeus.
We have to agitate for democracy and egalitarianism, press harder for human rights, learn to build a new society through our self-transformations and our limited everyday struggles.
At the turn of the last century, Eugene Debs, the great Socialist Party leader from Terre Haute, Ind., told a group of workers in Chicago, “If I could lead you into the Promised Land, I would not do it, because someone else would come along and lead you out.”
In this time of new beginnings and rising expectations, it is even more urgent that we figure out how to become the people we have been waiting to be.
© All Rights Reserved
Bill Ayers
is a Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar
at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of Fugitive Days (Beacon) and co-author, with Bernardine Dohrn, of Race Course: Against White Supremacy (Third World Press).
Statement on the 2008 Presidential Election: Democratic Socialists of America Political Action Committee
Statement on the 2008 Presidential Election
Democratic Socialists of America Political Action Committee
The November presidential election, now only three months away, will mark the welcome end of the Bush-Cheney regime – one of the worst administrations in U.S. history.
The corporate-dominated media tainted the primary season by once again treating the campaigns as a series of horse races – where voters are encouraged to vote not for the candidate who best represents their interests and values, but rather for the candidate the media says is most likely to win. For the media to judge a candidate as having a “winning trajectory,” he or she must be among those raising the most contributions from corporate-connected individuals.
We have little hope that over the next three months the media will focus on the policy
differences between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. That is tragic, because there are major differences between the commitments of both candidates and their respective parties that need to be aired and understood, even if these differences are not as great as the democratic Left might like. Obama promises to restore to American workers the right to organize; to renegotiate international trade agreements so they enforce and do not retard labor, environmental, and human rights; to re-regulate the financial sector and end speculative excess; to bring troops home from Iraq and invest the saved funds in domestic needs; and to move toward universal health
care. That’s a program worth electing a president on– or fighting for in the event the president and his party renege.
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) holds a different view of electoral politics than that of the corporate media or even much of the Left. We see electoral politics as one means in a much broader struggle of grassroots democratic social movements to pressure the state to enact policies that address the needs of their constituencies and a wider public. The democratic reforms of both the New Deal (the Wagner Act, Social Security) and the Great Society (the civil rights acts, Medicare) did not derive from the beneficence of moderate presidents Franklin Roosevelt and
Lyndon Johnson. In the case of FDR, his modest programs were substitutes for more radical policies supported by numerous Congress members but deemed not winnable by the president and congressional leaders. The limited reforms of the New Deal and Great Society were enacted because Congress and the president were forced to respond at least minimally to the demands of the mass social movements of the CIO and the civil rights upsurge.
DSA has long recognized that the corporate, neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party is not an ally for radical democratic change. Its support for NAFTA, similar destructive trade legislation, and cuts in government aid to low-income citizens in the face of growing poverty and income inequality; its fronting for corporate power and “free market” ideology; its resistance to allowing the party to make a systemic critique of the war in Iraq, the “war on terror,” or the corporate stranglehold on civil society put it on the other side of a widening political divide. While Obama’s largest funders come from this wing of the party, the social forces fueling his campaign – people of color, union activists, and anti-war Democrats – have long opposed the neoliberal
stranglehold on the Democratic Party.
Thus, DSA has no illusion that a Democratic presidential victory, combined with bulked-up Democratic majorities in both houses of the Congress, will in itself bring about significant democratic reform. We do believe that such a political landscape would provide the most favorable terrain upon which mobilized, assertive social movements can pressure the government to appoint decent federal judges and agency administrators and enact desperately needed universal health care legislation, labor law reform, and a federally funded Marshall Plan to develop green technologies and green jobs.
Had the U.S. a genuine multiparty system, neoliberal positions would be held by a centrist party, and DSA would be organizing as part of a left electoral force against it. Given the U.S.’s restrictive election laws, the only electoral fight possible against corporate domination has to happen in and around the Democratic Party, on the federal, state, and (allowing for the rare exception) county and city levels.
An Obama presidency will not on its own force legislation facilitating single-payer health care (at least at the federal level) or truly progressive taxation and major cuts in wasteful and unneeded defense spending. But if DSA and other democratic forces can work in the fall elections to increase the ranks of the Congressional Progressive and Black and Latino caucuses, progressive legislation (backed by strong social movement mobilization) might well pass the next Congress.
Senator Barack Obama has attracted considerable support as a presidential candidate who promises to end “politics as usual.” He has invigorated a significant youthful, multiracial cadre of supporters, as well as gained considerable support from liberal activists. The massive outpouring of small contributions in support of his campaign signals the potential power of his message, and his recent call for a windfall profits tax on the oil companies is encouraging.
Yet his campaign has centered more around gestures and symbols than on concrete policy
alternatives; and where he has been concrete, as in health care, his plan falls short of universal coverage. And he often employs pro-market rhetoric to defend his programs and their failure to cover everyone.
While recognizing the critical limitations of the Obama candidacy and the American political system, DSA believes that the possible election of Senator Obama to the presidency in November represents a potential opening for social and labor movements to generate the critical political momentum necessary to implement a progressive political agenda. We know that a proactive and progressive government can come only on the heels of a broad coalition for social justice united against a reactionary Republicanism as well as a Democratic neoliberalism.
Such a movement will also have to fight for a public finance system that can limit the power of corporate fundraising and lobbyists over both major political parties.
Thus, DSA offers its Economic Justice Agenda and its “four pillars” as a framework for such a progressive policy agenda. This program calls for:
1. Restoring progressive taxation to the levels before the Reagan administration and
enacting massive cuts in wasteful defense spending;
2. Enacting single-payer universal health insurance and expanding public initiatives in child
care, elder care and pension security;
3. Passing the Employee Free Choice Act as part of a broader effort to rebuild a powerful
labor movement capable of achieving equity in the labor market; and
4. Implementing a U.S. foreign policy that promotes global institutions that advance labor,
environmental, and human rights and regulate transnational corporations.
True democracy is not about one woman or man promising change for the American public. That takes consistent pressure from below. Who holds the presidency does matter, if only as a more accessible target for pressure. A Democratic presidency and Congress would also create popular expectations that rising inequality and injustice will be curbed. If the Democrats frustrate those hopes (as they did in the early 1960s), mass mobilization is likely to grow rather than subside.
Nor should the Left be so involved in the national presidential campaign that it ignores the fall primaries and general election races for the U.S. House and Senate. We need more progressives in Congress as well as increased Democratic majorities.
The November election can’t be the end of a fight, but its beginning, and connections made on a local and national level leading up to November can position the Left to play a role in struggles to come.
Democratic Socialists of America PAC, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 505, NY, NY 10038; not approved by any candidate or candidate's committee.
Democratic Socialists of America Political Action Committee
The November presidential election, now only three months away, will mark the welcome end of the Bush-Cheney regime – one of the worst administrations in U.S. history.
The corporate-dominated media tainted the primary season by once again treating the campaigns as a series of horse races – where voters are encouraged to vote not for the candidate who best represents their interests and values, but rather for the candidate the media says is most likely to win. For the media to judge a candidate as having a “winning trajectory,” he or she must be among those raising the most contributions from corporate-connected individuals.
We have little hope that over the next three months the media will focus on the policy
differences between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. That is tragic, because there are major differences between the commitments of both candidates and their respective parties that need to be aired and understood, even if these differences are not as great as the democratic Left might like. Obama promises to restore to American workers the right to organize; to renegotiate international trade agreements so they enforce and do not retard labor, environmental, and human rights; to re-regulate the financial sector and end speculative excess; to bring troops home from Iraq and invest the saved funds in domestic needs; and to move toward universal health
care. That’s a program worth electing a president on– or fighting for in the event the president and his party renege.
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) holds a different view of electoral politics than that of the corporate media or even much of the Left. We see electoral politics as one means in a much broader struggle of grassroots democratic social movements to pressure the state to enact policies that address the needs of their constituencies and a wider public. The democratic reforms of both the New Deal (the Wagner Act, Social Security) and the Great Society (the civil rights acts, Medicare) did not derive from the beneficence of moderate presidents Franklin Roosevelt and
Lyndon Johnson. In the case of FDR, his modest programs were substitutes for more radical policies supported by numerous Congress members but deemed not winnable by the president and congressional leaders. The limited reforms of the New Deal and Great Society were enacted because Congress and the president were forced to respond at least minimally to the demands of the mass social movements of the CIO and the civil rights upsurge.
DSA has long recognized that the corporate, neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party is not an ally for radical democratic change. Its support for NAFTA, similar destructive trade legislation, and cuts in government aid to low-income citizens in the face of growing poverty and income inequality; its fronting for corporate power and “free market” ideology; its resistance to allowing the party to make a systemic critique of the war in Iraq, the “war on terror,” or the corporate stranglehold on civil society put it on the other side of a widening political divide. While Obama’s largest funders come from this wing of the party, the social forces fueling his campaign – people of color, union activists, and anti-war Democrats – have long opposed the neoliberal
stranglehold on the Democratic Party.
Thus, DSA has no illusion that a Democratic presidential victory, combined with bulked-up Democratic majorities in both houses of the Congress, will in itself bring about significant democratic reform. We do believe that such a political landscape would provide the most favorable terrain upon which mobilized, assertive social movements can pressure the government to appoint decent federal judges and agency administrators and enact desperately needed universal health care legislation, labor law reform, and a federally funded Marshall Plan to develop green technologies and green jobs.
Had the U.S. a genuine multiparty system, neoliberal positions would be held by a centrist party, and DSA would be organizing as part of a left electoral force against it. Given the U.S.’s restrictive election laws, the only electoral fight possible against corporate domination has to happen in and around the Democratic Party, on the federal, state, and (allowing for the rare exception) county and city levels.
An Obama presidency will not on its own force legislation facilitating single-payer health care (at least at the federal level) or truly progressive taxation and major cuts in wasteful and unneeded defense spending. But if DSA and other democratic forces can work in the fall elections to increase the ranks of the Congressional Progressive and Black and Latino caucuses, progressive legislation (backed by strong social movement mobilization) might well pass the next Congress.
Senator Barack Obama has attracted considerable support as a presidential candidate who promises to end “politics as usual.” He has invigorated a significant youthful, multiracial cadre of supporters, as well as gained considerable support from liberal activists. The massive outpouring of small contributions in support of his campaign signals the potential power of his message, and his recent call for a windfall profits tax on the oil companies is encouraging.
Yet his campaign has centered more around gestures and symbols than on concrete policy
alternatives; and where he has been concrete, as in health care, his plan falls short of universal coverage. And he often employs pro-market rhetoric to defend his programs and their failure to cover everyone.
While recognizing the critical limitations of the Obama candidacy and the American political system, DSA believes that the possible election of Senator Obama to the presidency in November represents a potential opening for social and labor movements to generate the critical political momentum necessary to implement a progressive political agenda. We know that a proactive and progressive government can come only on the heels of a broad coalition for social justice united against a reactionary Republicanism as well as a Democratic neoliberalism.
Such a movement will also have to fight for a public finance system that can limit the power of corporate fundraising and lobbyists over both major political parties.
Thus, DSA offers its Economic Justice Agenda and its “four pillars” as a framework for such a progressive policy agenda. This program calls for:
1. Restoring progressive taxation to the levels before the Reagan administration and
enacting massive cuts in wasteful defense spending;
2. Enacting single-payer universal health insurance and expanding public initiatives in child
care, elder care and pension security;
3. Passing the Employee Free Choice Act as part of a broader effort to rebuild a powerful
labor movement capable of achieving equity in the labor market; and
4. Implementing a U.S. foreign policy that promotes global institutions that advance labor,
environmental, and human rights and regulate transnational corporations.
True democracy is not about one woman or man promising change for the American public. That takes consistent pressure from below. Who holds the presidency does matter, if only as a more accessible target for pressure. A Democratic presidency and Congress would also create popular expectations that rising inequality and injustice will be curbed. If the Democrats frustrate those hopes (as they did in the early 1960s), mass mobilization is likely to grow rather than subside.
Nor should the Left be so involved in the national presidential campaign that it ignores the fall primaries and general election races for the U.S. House and Senate. We need more progressives in Congress as well as increased Democratic majorities.
The November election can’t be the end of a fight, but its beginning, and connections made on a local and national level leading up to November can position the Left to play a role in struggles to come.
Democratic Socialists of America PAC, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 505, NY, NY 10038; not approved by any candidate or candidate's committee.
Friday, November 7, 2008
things to consider against the booth
Well, now that the position on why voting is worthwhile has been posted, now I felt like it was just fair to defend the other position held by some marxists - that of electoral abstentionism.
The state is a mechanism of class domination, and as such, anyone trying to participate in it, whether the most honest socialist or the worst machiavellian careerist, is going to become integrated to capital. The state is the safeguard of the economy and the foreman of the fiber of society and as such, its only logical modus operandi is to continue protecting the social order it perpetuates.
Some abstentionist theses on the Democrats:
1)The anti-war left suffers a collective amnesia, for their attachment and general support to the Democrats invalidates their general opposition to the war. The democrats under Woodrow Wilson ran under an "anti-war platform" in WWI, and yet under his administration american workers where still sent to murder european workers. Kennedy and Johnson continued to escalate the vietnamese war. Obama voted for the Patriot Act and threatened in national television Pakistan and expressed his interests to continue the "war on terror."
2) The platform of the Republicans, Democrats, and any party integrated to the state are either meaningless or in constant flux, for such platform and positions are expressions of the interests of the different factions of the ruling class at a certain time. This is why the "platform" the democrats and republicans put forward in the electoral spectacle changes dramatically every four years, not only in "strategies" but in the principles themselves. This is why the democrat party is traditionally thought "in the left" yet Obama supported the billions of dollars bailout and has a pro-war platform. Or why, decades ago the old republican party was made up by isolationists and "econonomic nationalists", differing from the new "neo-conservatives". This is also why someone like Warren Buffet would support Obama, while opponents slander the democrat politician as "socialist".
3) Supporting an electoral party in the name of "relevance" is as sound as supporting the left wing of the NSDAP. We as socialists should look for creating independent class organizations that have nothing to do with the state. We should not compaign for the state at all. I wonder how leftists are going to justify their vote when the politician they voted for starts dropping bombs in Afghanistan or Pakistan...... Or the politician they voted for starts attacking the living standards of the general populace. Or the politician they voted for starts sending friends, brothers, and sisters to war.... In short, campaigning for the state is a compromise of one politics and principles.
The state is a mechanism of class domination, and as such, anyone trying to participate in it, whether the most honest socialist or the worst machiavellian careerist, is going to become integrated to capital. The state is the safeguard of the economy and the foreman of the fiber of society and as such, its only logical modus operandi is to continue protecting the social order it perpetuates.
Some abstentionist theses on the Democrats:
1)The anti-war left suffers a collective amnesia, for their attachment and general support to the Democrats invalidates their general opposition to the war. The democrats under Woodrow Wilson ran under an "anti-war platform" in WWI, and yet under his administration american workers where still sent to murder european workers. Kennedy and Johnson continued to escalate the vietnamese war. Obama voted for the Patriot Act and threatened in national television Pakistan and expressed his interests to continue the "war on terror."
2) The platform of the Republicans, Democrats, and any party integrated to the state are either meaningless or in constant flux, for such platform and positions are expressions of the interests of the different factions of the ruling class at a certain time. This is why the "platform" the democrats and republicans put forward in the electoral spectacle changes dramatically every four years, not only in "strategies" but in the principles themselves. This is why the democrat party is traditionally thought "in the left" yet Obama supported the billions of dollars bailout and has a pro-war platform. Or why, decades ago the old republican party was made up by isolationists and "econonomic nationalists", differing from the new "neo-conservatives". This is also why someone like Warren Buffet would support Obama, while opponents slander the democrat politician as "socialist".
3) Supporting an electoral party in the name of "relevance" is as sound as supporting the left wing of the NSDAP. We as socialists should look for creating independent class organizations that have nothing to do with the state. We should not compaign for the state at all. I wonder how leftists are going to justify their vote when the politician they voted for starts dropping bombs in Afghanistan or Pakistan...... Or the politician they voted for starts attacking the living standards of the general populace. Or the politician they voted for starts sending friends, brothers, and sisters to war.... In short, campaigning for the state is a compromise of one politics and principles.
Monday, November 3, 2008
10 things to consider in the voting booth
from: PWW
1. The world is quite likely on the brink of a global depression. “Free market” economic policies are the key to understanding this crisis. Barack Obama has rejected these policies. John McCain now blames individuals, greedy Wall Street executives, even Bush, to hide his complicity and support for these policies, while offering the same economic policies Bush pushed for the past eight years. We are early in the crisis. Electing Obama can be like electing Franklin Roosevelt in 1930, not 1932. Electing McCain will be like electing Herbert Hoover in 1930, not 1928, something that no rational electorate would do.
2. Barack Obama has shown modern leadership ability. He works collectively, makes decisions carefully, establishes broad policy outlines and then seeks specific policy solutions that fit the outlines and changing conditions. John McCain is impulsive and reckless, prone to make and then reverse snap judgments, lacking either a broad policy outline or specific policies that are consistent with that outline.
3. Barack Obama has experience working with trade unions, urban community organizations and metropolitan business elites to get things done. John McCain is a senator and former congressman from Arizona, an anti-union-shop “right to work” state. McCain was chosen by and has represented the Arizona elites, the “right to work” business executives, real estate developers and bankers from the beginning of his political career. He has no record of working with and supporting the interests of the trade union movement, the large Latino population or the Native American population of his state.
4. Barack Obama has already shown his leadership ability by choosing Joe Biden, a senator with extensive experience, especially on foreign policy matters, who complements Obama’s abilities, a serious heir apparent to the presidency should that become necessary. McCain has chosen Gov. Sarah Palin not to complement his candidacy or be a realistic heir apparent for the presidency but on the hunch that she would get him female votes and solidify the support of religious right Republicans. Given insurance company actuarial statistics, the chances of Palin succeeding to the presidency through the death of the 72-year-old McCain are much greater than the chances of Biden succeeding to the presidency by the death of the 47-year-old Obama. What a Palin presidency would mean to the U.S. and the world deserves to be a consideration for voters, even if it obviously hasn’t been a consideration for McCain.
5. Barack Obama opposed the Iraq war and occupation as an Illinois state senator even before Bush launched it and has continued as a U.S. senator to seek non-military, multilateral approaches to foreign policy questions. John McCain strongly supported the Iraq war and military occupation and has always sought military solutions first to foreign policy questions.
6. Barack Obama has addressed the people’s economic crisis and has called for public investment in the economy, aid to states and localities, and tax reform that will erase the Bush tax giveaways to corporations and the wealthy. McCain and Palin have called these policies “redistribution of wealth” and “socialism,” name-calling of the kind that right-wing radio talk show hosts who run interference for Republican candidates usually specialize in, not candidates themselves.
7. As president, Barack Obama would almost instantly reverse the extreme decline in U.S. international prestige. He would be seen as a major break with the inter-related history of militarism, racism and support for the rich and privileged throughout the world which has long undermined respect for the U.S. As president, John McCain would be seen globally as another Bush, another cowboy politician irrelevant to either the present global crisis or the aspirations of the people.
8. As president, Barack Obama would, through regulatory revitalization, send a signal to transnational corporations, banking institutions and brokerage houses that the U.S. will act to reverse the “casino capitalism” that has produced trillions in global losses over the last month. This is something capitalists will not publicly praise, but it is something that they know, as they did in the Great Depression, that they need and cannot do for themselves. As president, John McCain would make gestures and look for scapegoats and try to swim with the Bush policies until the economy finds itself under water.
9. As president, Barack Obama, who has already brought millions of new and mostly young people into the political process, would raise the standard of understanding and debate in U.S politics. Through increased popular participation, an Obama administration would make the country a “better democracy” to the benefit of all, including intelligent conservatives, who will be, as they are in other countries, compelled to seriously articulate their views rather than watching passively as others reduce their views to calculated flag-waving and name-calling.
10. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, it will be an enormous victory for all Americans against what has been the single greatest roadblock to progress and unity in U.S. history: the effects of a racism born in slavery, continued through legal segregation, and maintained today overtly in some areas of life, covertly in others. If John McCain wins, given the disastrous Bush policies and the enormous economic crisis the nation and the world faces, it can only be understood at home and abroad as a victory for that racist history, institutions and ideology, sending a message globally that the U.S. electorate prefers to live in and with the prejudices of the past rather than look rationally at the present and face the future.
Norman Markowitz is a history professor at Rutgers University.
1. The world is quite likely on the brink of a global depression. “Free market” economic policies are the key to understanding this crisis. Barack Obama has rejected these policies. John McCain now blames individuals, greedy Wall Street executives, even Bush, to hide his complicity and support for these policies, while offering the same economic policies Bush pushed for the past eight years. We are early in the crisis. Electing Obama can be like electing Franklin Roosevelt in 1930, not 1932. Electing McCain will be like electing Herbert Hoover in 1930, not 1928, something that no rational electorate would do.
2. Barack Obama has shown modern leadership ability. He works collectively, makes decisions carefully, establishes broad policy outlines and then seeks specific policy solutions that fit the outlines and changing conditions. John McCain is impulsive and reckless, prone to make and then reverse snap judgments, lacking either a broad policy outline or specific policies that are consistent with that outline.
3. Barack Obama has experience working with trade unions, urban community organizations and metropolitan business elites to get things done. John McCain is a senator and former congressman from Arizona, an anti-union-shop “right to work” state. McCain was chosen by and has represented the Arizona elites, the “right to work” business executives, real estate developers and bankers from the beginning of his political career. He has no record of working with and supporting the interests of the trade union movement, the large Latino population or the Native American population of his state.
4. Barack Obama has already shown his leadership ability by choosing Joe Biden, a senator with extensive experience, especially on foreign policy matters, who complements Obama’s abilities, a serious heir apparent to the presidency should that become necessary. McCain has chosen Gov. Sarah Palin not to complement his candidacy or be a realistic heir apparent for the presidency but on the hunch that she would get him female votes and solidify the support of religious right Republicans. Given insurance company actuarial statistics, the chances of Palin succeeding to the presidency through the death of the 72-year-old McCain are much greater than the chances of Biden succeeding to the presidency by the death of the 47-year-old Obama. What a Palin presidency would mean to the U.S. and the world deserves to be a consideration for voters, even if it obviously hasn’t been a consideration for McCain.
5. Barack Obama opposed the Iraq war and occupation as an Illinois state senator even before Bush launched it and has continued as a U.S. senator to seek non-military, multilateral approaches to foreign policy questions. John McCain strongly supported the Iraq war and military occupation and has always sought military solutions first to foreign policy questions.
6. Barack Obama has addressed the people’s economic crisis and has called for public investment in the economy, aid to states and localities, and tax reform that will erase the Bush tax giveaways to corporations and the wealthy. McCain and Palin have called these policies “redistribution of wealth” and “socialism,” name-calling of the kind that right-wing radio talk show hosts who run interference for Republican candidates usually specialize in, not candidates themselves.
7. As president, Barack Obama would almost instantly reverse the extreme decline in U.S. international prestige. He would be seen as a major break with the inter-related history of militarism, racism and support for the rich and privileged throughout the world which has long undermined respect for the U.S. As president, John McCain would be seen globally as another Bush, another cowboy politician irrelevant to either the present global crisis or the aspirations of the people.
8. As president, Barack Obama would, through regulatory revitalization, send a signal to transnational corporations, banking institutions and brokerage houses that the U.S. will act to reverse the “casino capitalism” that has produced trillions in global losses over the last month. This is something capitalists will not publicly praise, but it is something that they know, as they did in the Great Depression, that they need and cannot do for themselves. As president, John McCain would make gestures and look for scapegoats and try to swim with the Bush policies until the economy finds itself under water.
9. As president, Barack Obama, who has already brought millions of new and mostly young people into the political process, would raise the standard of understanding and debate in U.S politics. Through increased popular participation, an Obama administration would make the country a “better democracy” to the benefit of all, including intelligent conservatives, who will be, as they are in other countries, compelled to seriously articulate their views rather than watching passively as others reduce their views to calculated flag-waving and name-calling.
10. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, it will be an enormous victory for all Americans against what has been the single greatest roadblock to progress and unity in U.S. history: the effects of a racism born in slavery, continued through legal segregation, and maintained today overtly in some areas of life, covertly in others. If John McCain wins, given the disastrous Bush policies and the enormous economic crisis the nation and the world faces, it can only be understood at home and abroad as a victory for that racist history, institutions and ideology, sending a message globally that the U.S. electorate prefers to live in and with the prejudices of the past rather than look rationally at the present and face the future.
Norman Markowitz is a history professor at Rutgers University.
Video on the Employee Free Choice Act
America's workers are struggling to make ends meet. But when workers are free to choose to join a union, our economy can work for everyone again.
That's why we need the Employee Free Choice Act—a bill in Congress that would help level the playing field and give workers the freedom to choose a union.
We’ve teamed up with the award-winning team at Brave New Films on a hilarious new video about why we need more good union jobs. Watch the video, and then sign the petition in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.
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