Dead Prez Lecture 3 pm Saturday 12/12/09

A Michigan State YDS Publication

Be a Realist, Demand The Impossible!

By Chris OBrien

November 24, 2009

What’s the matter with American socialism? The days of easy credit are over, the Great American Jobs Machine has broken down, and Wall Street’s decadence has been revealed for all to see. In short, capitalism is less appealing than ever. Our friends in Germany, Portugal, and Latin America have recently made gains under similar circumstances. And yet we American socialists seem incapable of any fundamental breakthrough. Why? Our problems, I think, are twofold: first, we have the wrong attitude, and second, the wrong strategy. I’ll deal with each problem in turn.

Socialists are a pessimistic bunch. It’s pretty obvious why. We’ve been losing, a lot. The left, which 40 years ago remained a small but vital undercurrent in our society, has seen little but defeat since then. The social-democratic left has been marginalized within the Democratic Party, to the point where the Obama Administration seems intent on replacing moderate Republicans as the official voice of corporate America. Notice, for example, that demanding single-payer health insurance, once a staple of Democratic Party platforms, now marks one as an irresponsible radical.

What of the radical left itself? Faced with the ever-growing power of capital, and with our own corresponding enervation, we tend to moderate ourselves, to promote ‘realistic’ and ‘pragmatic’ reforms. Instead of socialism, we demand only ‘economic justice,’ instead of an end to exploitation, a ‘living wage.’ But even these goals are out of reach. What was once mere liberalism comes to seem almost revolutionary.

The problem, in short, is that we have become unable or unwilling to articulate our original vision. We no longer believe in socialism. Oh, we believe in it, but in the same way we might believe there is a black hole at the center of our galaxy: we accept that it is theoretically possible, but the notion strikes us as faintly magical, not anything we’ll ever see. This resignation makes socialists vulnerable to the old jibes that our ideas are basically utopian. If we want to have any practical success, we’d better just accept the rules of the capitalist game.

This moderation is fatal. The more pragmatic and ‘realistic’ we are, the less we have to say that really matters to anyone. Socialism’s distinct advantage is that it, and it alone, seriously addresses the problems people face everyday in their working and consuming lives- the numbing intensity of the capitalist workplace, the sense of inferiority and purposelessness it generates, the ultimately futile temptations of consumerism. The small fact that capitalism is driving us toward environmental disaster. No other political philosophy can really deal with these problems. When we ignore them, when we confine ourselves to ordinary ‘progressive’ issues- no matter how worthy those issues are- we willingly give up on our single greatest asset. Worse yet, we give up on workers and the poor (and the environment, too).

Socialists in America are a little like awkward teenagers. We recognize that we are somehow unique, different, and this frightens us. We wish to be normal and ‘popular’, so we start to act like everyone else, to imitate their language and feign their interests. But by doing this, we obliterate whatever made us interesting in the first place, and so become less popular than ever. As everyone should have learned by now, if you want to make friends and influence people you need to stop worrying too much about what they think.

We need self-confidence, basically.

Of course, self-confidence isn’t enough. The Spartacist League and the Revolutionary Communist Party have it, and they’re even worse off than we are. We also need an intelligent strategy. Once we’ve convinced ourselves that socialism is decent and necessary, how do we convince everyone else?

One classic approach is to organize lots of protests and marches and petitions, with the hope of convincing those in power to change their ways. The Nation, with its ‘open letters to President Obama’, etc., follows this strategy. Today, one evrn hears some talk amongst The Nation types about ‘holding Obama’s feet to the fire.’ How’s this project going? Not well, these quotes, unearthed by Bhaskar Sunkara of The Activist, suggest:

Attending the [National Equality March] was a "waste of time at best," Barney Frank told a reporter a few days before. "The only thing they’re going to be putting pressure on is the grass."

According to NBC News’ John Harwood, administration officials viewed demonstrators–and, in fact, anyone who criticizes Obama from the left–as an "Internet left fringe" that "needs to take off their pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult."

The problem, of course, is that we have no hope at the moment of competing with Washington DC’s other interest groups, particularly when those groups are funded by Goldman Sachs or Humana. Trying to influence politicians in Washington just won’t work. Speaking truth to power, Noam Chomsky once observed, is a waste of time. Those in power probably already know the truth, they just don’t care.

One might also follow what I’ll call the didactic strategy. This is what Chomsky himself seems to favor. It assumes that once you’ve gotten all the information out there, you’ll be able to convince people that capitalism is really horrible, and they will then go about taking political power and changing things for the better. Politics in this view, is really just a form of education.

This strategy actually has a lot of merits. We do need to educate people. It just happens to be too conservative. Simply lecturing to people probably won’t convince them. Instead, we need to demonstratethat socialism is better. Rather than convincing people to take political power at some future date, we should be helping them to gradually acquire power now. We need to figure out how we can place political and economic power into the hands of working people- we will teach them about socialism by creating it (gradually, step by step). The key to such a project, I think, is an old slogan on the international left: Dual Power. This is the notion that we should engage in traditional electoral politics while also building radical democratic institutions, with the later supplementing and eventually supplanting the former. With such a twofold approach, we could go about building a movement that’s both democratic and authentically socialist. Here are some highly schematic suggestions on how to do this:

Dual Power 1: Building Alternative Structures We tend to fall into the liberal trap of equating democracy with electoral politics. In a genuinely socialist society, though, democracy would be radically expanded. Workplaces, as well as the local and national (and eventually international) economies, would be organized democratically. Moreover, at the level of municipal government, one would want to see a great deal of direct democracy. As socialists, we should be working to build up alternative democratic institutions within the existing economy.

Of course, this insight isn’t exactly novel. But, while leftists repeat it almost to the point of cliché, there seems to be very little discussion of how to translate it into a concrete, practicable program. If we are serious about building egalitarian organizations outside of government bureaucracy, two actually existing institutions might be helpful: labor unions and cooperatives. Of course, unions are quite weak in this country, and there leadership has an awful record. However, rank-and-file labor organizers and unionists are often quite radical, temperamentally if not ideologically.¹ An interesting project for YDS would be to discuss how we might go about stimulating the latent radicalism of unionists, and combating their rather scrofulous leadership. As we saw in the 1930’s with the CIO, militant unions can do wonders for the working class.

Co-ops are already relatively popular. Our goal should be to make them even more so. Our job should also be to remind co-op members that these highly successful institutions should be impossible, given capitalist ideology. Both unions and cooperatives teach people that democracy within the economy can have a real positive impact upon their lives. They are both democratic socialism, in embryonic form.

Dual Power 2: Succeeding in Electoral Politics On the other side of the equation, how does the left achieve electoral success? Since a mass-based Social Democratic Party doesn’t seem to be an option at the moment, perhaps we should think (and act) more locally. As sociologist G. William Domhoff demonstrates in an interesting series of articles (see http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/local/), municipal governments in the United States are typically controlled by local real estate developers, eager to attract capital to their community and to use public resources for their own enrichment.

A particularly striking example of this was Chicago’s recent Olympics debacle. As Doug Henwood points out on his blog (http://doughenwood.wordpress.com/), studies have found that the Olympics doesn’t bring many long-term economic benefit to the cities that host it, at least if you include ordinary people in the analysis. It does make lots of money for local real estate interests. Since Chicago real estate magnates are major supporters of Mayor Richard Daily (not to mention favorite son Barack Obama), both of these gentlemen were willing to spend large amounts of public money on the Olympics. The point is: if Chicago could expend all these resources on a vanity project, why couldn’t it devote more to programs that actually improve people’s lives? City governments waste our money in similar ways all the time: think of all the public funds spent on stadiums and shopping centers and ‘enterprise zones’ that enrich developers at the expense of everyone else.

If socialists could win control of a local government or two, we could redirect some of these funds toward worthwhile projects. Not only would this help a lot of people out (and presumably make us a bit more popular), it would also be potentially quite radical. For example, public support for limited-equity housing cooperatives could erode the grip of the capitalist housing market. One could also imagine local governments supporting environmentally friendly cooperative industry. It would be wonderful if working class Americans started to associate socialism with jobs and cheaper, better housing- rather than with gulags and pretentious intellectuals.

Socialists could also open up city governance to ordinary people, in the form of neighborhood councils with real budgeting and planning powers. If successful this could make it much harder for capitalists to erode working class gains.

Best of all, we have models for this sort of program. For example, Bologna, Italy, under a long period of Socialist and Communist government, was able to make tremendous gains for its population. A book entitled Red Bologna, published in the 1970’s when the Italian left was at its peak of popularity and militancy² discusses the left’s achievements in that city. These were quite impressive: popular participation in budgeting and urban planning, free public transportation at rush hour, a heavily cooperativized retail sector, not to mention lots of cooperatively-owned industry and radical changes in education. Moreover, these things happened under severe budget constraints and under a strongly anti-socialist national government. The objective conditions, in other words, weren’t all that different from our own.³

What’s exciting about these ideas is that they are simultaneously more realistic and more radical than most current proposals from the left. It’s increasingly hard to imagine the Democrats passing EFCA or socializing the healthcare system, but it is possible to imagine us successfully campaigning for a local election, radicalizing a union local, or setting up a co-op. The left even has some experience doing these sorts of things. If we can do them on a small scale, then as we amass broader support, we could do them on an increasingly larger scale (winning national elections, radicalizing the whole labor movement). The point is that we coordinate these smaller projects so that they all lead toward the larger goal of building socialism. Who knows? The consequences could be revolutionary.

Keeping Healthy

The following is an assortment of resources and info. shared with us from YDS's national office. 

Health care industry profit spread

Insurance exec income spread

Gary Peters Town Hall on Health Care: Show UP!

594	Rep.	Gary	Peters	DEM	MI	District 9	Host Monster.com Job Fair	9/3			Marriot Pontiac-Auburn Hills		9:30 a.m.

Healthcare professionals are hanging the flyers linked above in their examination rooms and offices all over the country.  Patients are sharing them with families and colleagues. 

Make copies and take the flyers with you to the healthcare reform town halls and other events!  Pass them out to your Senators, Representatives and to the Press.  Send them to your friends and colleagues.

The Right's Strategy for Town Hall Meetings

The blog Talking Points Memo has retrieved the following talking points -- which is in its entirety in the link below -- that detail an intentional harassment strategy against Democratic members of Congress.

Complete details here

Tips include:You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep's

presentation. Watch for an opportunity to yell out and
challenge the Rep's statements early. If he blames Bush
for something or offers other excuses -- call him on it,
yell back and have someone else follow-up with a shout-
out. Don't carry on and make a scene -- just short
intermittent shout outs. The purpose is to make him
uneasy early on and set the tone for the hall as clearly
informal, and free-wheeling. It will also embolden
others who agree with us to call out and challenge with
tough questions. The goal is to rattle him, get him off
his prepared script and agenda. If he says something
outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right down.
Look for these opportunities before he even takes
questions.

Health Care is at a critical point; the best results will come from dialogue, activism is encouraged, but we are reminded by the American Right how NOT to engage and sustain democracy.

Please feel free to contact MSU YDS if you are interested in working on a campus or community project related to the success of single payer health care in America.

Lit Review: Theories of Development, Peet and Hartwick

Allison Voglesong

MSU James Madison College

International Relations 2010

MC 320 paper, written 2009.06.01

Part of YDS initiative to share student publications in the spirit of critical dialog. Please comment!

Review of Theories of Development, Richard Peet and Elaine Hartwick, Guilford Press, 1999, 234 pages

Development and Oppositional Space

1.
    There are many ways to explain and understand development. In "Theories of Development," Peet and Hartwick define development as a process of "social reproduction within environments" (288); present and critique its historiography founded in the "positivistic social science" (107) of modernization theory and its "sex-affective production" systems (261); and present an alternative vision of development that supports "subjugated knowledges and oppositional social movements" (279). I find value in the authors' discussion on development "as the social use of economic progress" (275), I agree with their critique of "capitalism as the social form taken by the modern world," and I echo their call for "social control of the reproduction of existence" (276) so that development policy may no longer reflect the preponderance of production, but rather emphasize building "transformative capacity"(121) through what I call constructive opposition.
2.
    Peet and Hartwick illustrate extant development theory as an extension of "modernization," what Parsons synthesized as "the enhancement of adaptive capacity (particularly in the economy's function of using resources effectively) as the main 'advance' projecting 'social evolution'" (118). The value system of modernization secures a "neoevolutionary" and hierarchical social order where "growth [was] founded on capitalist efficiency" (14). Modernization theory's features of structural functionalism -- its systemic organization -- includes social "adaptation, differentiation, [and] integration" (118). Put simply, "how developed a society was could be measured in terms of indices of similarity with the ["structural specialization" (122)] characteristics of modern industrial society" (121). The policies of development characterized by economic neoliberal intention are processes that Peet and Hartwick assert prejudice "instruments of power" over "natural methods of measurement" (11). Therefore, the modernization approach to development is destructive to third world development because its adaptive approach is historically entrenched in the capitalist global structure, and encourages a "bias towards equilibrium" (120) of an imbalanced global power structures -- one that makes development necessary at all.
    The separation of women from natural reproductive practices (i.e. relegation to informal economy labor) supports modernization development theory as a capitalist structure of "power inherent in the theorization of differences" (246). Several of the varying modes of feminism understands the destructive nature of neoliberal development policies for all marginalized and oppressed identities/entities. Modernization's structural functionalism "superimposed the scientific and economic paradigms created by Western gender-biased ideology on communities previously immersed in other cultures with entirely different relations with the natural world" (269). Modernization's pinnacle equilibrium is "imbued with Western notions of the sexual division of labor" (255); Peet and Hartwick believe feminism is relevant because "women arguably are becoming the majority of the new global working class" (242), and that the relationship between "modes of production with social forms of gender relations" (262) has increased women's subordination to men through modern development policies. The separation of public from private modes of production and reproduction are "sex-affective" (261) examples of "how women and their labor [have] been integrated into global capitalism by... core countries [which] explain[s their] marginalization and oppression" (254).
3.
    I share a large portion of Peet and Hartwick's sentiments on development, particularly as it "attends to the social consequences of production" (2), or rather, modernization's "deficiency" (280) in tending to them. Ultimately, we share the desire to seek "a wider strategy of transforming power relations in society at large," so that "all activities employing labor organized through social relations... [are] connected with the direct reproduction of immediate life" (290). Their "critical modernism" approach (Chapter 8) -- more specifically their adoption of "radical democracy" (288) -- seeks to transform development policy into a "directly and cooperatively" managed program to satisfy "locally defined, but universally present, needs" (291).     Contemporary development practices, explained above as under the influence of "modern products of reason" (250), are illustrated by Peet and Hartwick as guilty of: "limited aims (an abundance of things), the timidity of its means (copying the West), and the scope of its conception (experts plan it)" (280). Modernization's limited aims (i.e. structural adjustment goals of IFIs) are to be refocused through radical democracy to entail control... by all its members as direct and equal participants" (289). More importantly, this method reorients development aims towards capacity-building; employing "control over production and reproduction within a democratic politics quite different from either private ownership or state control" (18). Addressing modernization's timidity of its means in terms of socialist feminism Peet and Hartwick seek to "reformulate development in a way that combines, rather than separates, everyday life and the wider societal dimension, with productive activities of all kinds considered as a totality rather than split into [the] hierarchical types" (253) produced by Western structural functionalism.
    I am most enamored by Peet and Hartwick's critical modernist approach to the scope of conception of modern development, which I will refer to as "constructive opposition." Under the auspices of "retention" (281)  of some modernization thought, movement beyond neoliberal development economics requires "several, radically different, socioeconomic models, with free debate among their proponents" (282). I am weary of immediately adopting their recommendation that a "revitalized social democratic/developmental state model" will be able to, by means of whatever ambiguous manifestation, "produce growth with equity" (284). Peet and Hartwick recognize I am not alone in such caution: "interventions into the development process take many forms, some of which are incomparable but even in opposition" (273). What makes their analysis unique is their articulation of social movement opposition in two ways. First, they necessitate opposition against existing development structures, whereby "contradictions provoke crises, the people affected build social movements, and these accumulate into widespread popular opposition to the existing forms of social life" (286).  Similarly, they sew opposition together with the concept of linkages and "social movements, old and new, [as] united in their opposition to resource deprivation" (287). 
4.
    I agree that a re-conceptualized development theory needs oppositional space within and between its various social movements seeking to democratize social reproduction. Somewhat of an opportunity for airing out the defunct contemporary discourse of development, "constructive opposition" allows for the international division of labor to be reevaluated and cooperatively reconstituted. Reproductive capacity can, by this method, be stimulated by social movements, whose "action involves power in the sense of transformative capacity" (121), which is one conception of development theory that I agree with (for now).

Lit Review: Imperial Encounters, Roxanne Doty

Allison Voglesong

MSU James Madison College

International Relations 2010

MC 320 paper, written 2009.05.27

Part of YDS initiative to share student publications in the spirit of critical dialog. Please comment!

Review of Imperial Encounters, Roxanne Doty, Borderline Series, 1996, 224 pages

The Proletarian Third World and Discursive Representation

A Hypostatized “Other”

              The "third world" identity is politically sensitive because its discourse assumes the totalization of an "other" identity, but it is politically significant because, as a result of colonialism's imperial "rhetorical strategy" (11), the contemporary third world identity - and its development - has been hierarchically reified (36). In "Imperial Encounters," Roxanne Doty explains the discursive separation of self from other as an imperialist device employed by "Western"-thinking colonial nations (33) who contemporarily seek to "discipline" (129) the third world via development policy. She argues that the amalgamations of distinct indigenous identities were homogenized but never united, as illustrated by contemporary development theory whereby "positioning" (11) the "other" hypostatizes the third world. Doty identifies both the self/other separation and the bereavement of third world agency an expression not only of Western imperialism but also of the world capitalist system's colonial roots. Going beyond Doty's theorization of an imperialist North/South divide, I contribute the idea that such hierarchical "positioning," otherwise the simultaneous employment of the "logic of difference" and the "logic of equivalence" (12), is analogous to the social stratification of the proletariat as determined by the bourgeoisie, a theory characterized in the Marxist critique of capitalism, or as I critique, the world capitalist system.

Colonial Legacy, Aid, and the Discursive “Other”

              Colonialism's legacy both a physical and rhetorical creation of the "third world" by the Western-thinking world. In the 1890's the US sought to annex the Philippines, which Doty explains as an example of US participation in the "Western bond" whereby the "right to conquest... established a fundamental bond between powers possessing this right and a divide between these powers and their subjects/victims" (34-5). Conquest of the Philippines stigmatized the nation as a non-sovereign (44) representative entity whose quantum identity was non-white (30), while also "linking together in relations of similarity and complementarity" (43). This "discursive economy" (45) homogenized the Filipino identity as a "lower element of humanity" (43), which "rendered the Filipino incapable of exercising agency" (44). The hegemony of the Western bond discursively established the imperial representational practices seen in "the construction of the Philippine/Filipino other... Significantly, the discourse instantiated in this imperial encounter exemplified the representational practices that were at work more globally in constructing the West and its colonial other(s)" (28).

              The contemporary issues of foreign assistance, democracy and human rights importantly parallel the imperialist Western conquest of the third world in that the discussed "other," again the third world, was constructed by Western thought. Doty illustrates this with the academic discourse at MIT which constructed the third world "subject identity" (135) as passionate rather than pragmatic. In this case, the discursive economy was used to define third worlders as a "dangerous people," classified as politically unstable (132) and in need of development and democracy. Development framed under the auspices of democracy, Doty notes, was "never [in] the presence of a clear and unambiguous signified, but rather [in] the absence of certain characteristics in "third world" subjects" (136). Foreign assistance is framed by Doty as "deployment of disciplinary techniques" (129) and she notes that its "motive force remains outside of the "third world" society and its indigenous culture, social structures, and inhabitants" (134). Discriminately administered foreign assistance was therefore "a strategy for combating the dangers that confronted the project of an international, liberal, capitalist social order" (131). For Doty, this particular constitution of the North/South dichotomy "normalized... the hierarchical relationship" (142) between the West and the third world.

Positioning the Third World Proletariat

              Whereby Doty makes explicit the relationship between the creation of the North/South identity hierarchy and the world capitalist system, she less obviously explores capitalism's relationship to the concurrent internal stratification of the third world. The hypostatized "other" is evident in "the rhetorical strategies found in discourse [which] entails the positioning of subjects and objects vis-a-vis one another. What defines a particular kind of subject is, in large part, the relationships that the subject is positioned in relative to other kinds of subjects... [This] establishes various kinds of relationships between subjects and between subjects and objects" (11).              In the case of the Philippines, the Western bond undertook the divide-and-conquer practice to establish "knowledge" of the Filipino "native" in order to "justify U.S. conquest, violence, and subsequent control" (37). Doty cites Dean Worcester, who "ranked Filipinos hierarchically from the Negritos, the lowest both physically and mentally, to the Indonesians of Mindaneo, the highest" (37). Academic Kennon separated "the good but ignorant" Filipino and the bad Filipino... [which] permitted the denial of any collective sense of revolutionary nationalism" (37). The development of the very term Filipino was a representational practice which "worked to deny homogeneity or "peoplehood" to the inhabitants" (38) of the Philippines, later taking "credit for creating a unified identity" (38). This "hierarchy of race" (38) within the third world is analogous to the bourgeoisie's deliberate inter-proletarian stratification because "colonial discourse presupposed [Filipino] capacity for agency" (44), and therefore power.

              Doty indicates how the racialization of the third world is politically significant because "the earlier mission [of colonization] to uplift and civilize was replaced with the intent 'to trigger, to stimulate, and to guide the growth of fundamental social structures and behaviors'" (134). Foreign assistance was granted to "emerging peoples" (132) of nations whose capacity to self-govern was based on the discursive classification, or "reverse visibility," (142) of democracy throughout the third world. Plainly stated by Congressman Zablocki, the administration of foreign assistance based on a democratic prerogative was not to absolutely increase world democracy, but rather to "reconcile the unreconciled among men and nations to the continued validity and viability of the present world system" (132) of capitalism. A "failure to achieve practical improvements in the lives of people throughout the world would provoke unrest and bring political extremists to power" (129); similar logic guides the bourgeoisie to establish and maintain - through arbitrarily constructed, differentiated identities - a middle class buffer between itself and the disposessed proletariat. Finally, the discursive nature of establishing the non-democratic other "obscured the undemocratic character of policies ostensibly aimed at promoting democracy and of the international order itself -- institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank" (137).

Capitalism at Play

              Doty focuses on the idea that the "logic of equivalence... subverts positive identities" (11) and cancels out essential third world differences because "each of the contents of these differential elements is equivalent to the others in terms of their common differentiation between colonizer and colonized" (12). However, I believe that positioning is significant to the "representational practices... that framed North/South relations" in terms of "different and unequal kinds of international subjects" (45). This disenfranchisement and division of the "proletarian" third world therefore supports the idea of a world capitalist system. To recapitulate, "the proliferation of [self/other] discourse... illustrates an attempt to expel the "other," to make natural and unproblematic the boundaries between the inside and the outside. This in turn suggests that identity and therefore the agency that is connected with identity are inextricably linked to representational practices" (168). The third world, as the proletariat, is incapable of exercising power and agency, where distinct identities are aggregated in a hierarchical, racialized "other" position. These "representational practices were not epiphenomenal" (48) or unintentional but rather "constructed the very differences that [identity] transformation ostensibly would eliminate" (136). The third world, akin to the proletariat, has thus been conquered and divided by the hand of the world capitalist system, because "the construction of meaning and the construction of social, political, and economic power are inextricably linked" (170) to the system's stratified structure.

YDS MEETING SAT AUG 1 Noon @ Student Union

"The task of the intellectual is not to create revolutions but to join them whenever and wherever the people wage them.  Commitment is an act, not a word."  -- Satre

Up to the task?

Saturday August 1st

12:00 noon @ Student Union

MSU Young Democratic Socialists

Join us at our general meeting and bring ideas about what you'd like to see happen this year.

Already in consideration are the following programs:

Continuing YDS Response to Tuition Hike

Spring forum on 21st Century Socialism @ MSU

MSU YDS keynote speaker: Prof. Bill Ayers, University of Illinois, Chicago

Difficult Dialogues and 21st Century Chautauqua

Meeting location for 09-10

Detroit DSA partnership/representation

MSU YDS prefigures very widely on some major campus events for 2009 - 2010. The "Difficult Dialogues" program is going to be controversial and will more than likely receive state and possible national attention.  The Chautauqua program (not connected to "Difficult Dialogues") will take students to various parts of the state to explore the question, What should a more ethical, sustainable Michigan economy look like?

ADL "Difficult Dialogues" Program Needs YDS Voices

Ryan is the only YDSer that's been going to the meetings at Hillel House with JSU, etc; despite good intentions, this program is in imminent danger of getting bogged down in the all-to-familiar quagmire of "let's not push our limits, we all have a lot to do and maybe this year should just be a planning year." We need to have more of a presence from students that are conscious of the multitude of forms that racism and discrimination can take, particularly those who are really commited to moving beyond the typical dialogue of "tolerance" and "liberalism."

Also on Saturday's docket:

Joint film showing and discussion, "The Spook Who Sat By the Door" (note: this movie was summarily banned by United Artists due to its revolutionary content) and "Catch a Fire," with the Du Bois Society and Langston Hughes Society.

See you @ The Union

Allison Voglesong

The Unemployment Timebomb is Quietly Ticking

The unemployment timebomb is quietly ticking
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Telegraph
July 4 2009

One dog has yet to bark in this long winding crisis. Beyond riots in Athens
and a Baltic bust-up, we have not seen evidence of bitter political protest
as the slump eats away at the legitimacy of governing elites in North
America, Europe, and Japan. It may just be a matter of time.

One of my odd experiences covering the US in the early 1990s was visiting
militia groups that sprang up in Texas, Idaho, and Ohio in the aftermath of
recession. These were mostly blue-collar workers, ? early victims of global
"labour arbitrage" ? angry enough with Washington to spend weekends in
fatigues with M16 rifles. Most backed protest candidate Ross Perot, who won
19pc of the presidential vote in 1992 with talk of shutting trade with
Mexico.

The inchoate protest dissipated once recovery fed through to jobs, although
one fringe group blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995.
Unfortunately, there will be no such jobs this time. Capacity use has fallen
to record-low levels (68pc in the US, 71 in the eurozone). A deep purge of
labour is yet to come.

The shocker last week was not just that the US lost 467,000 jobs in May, but
also that time worked fell 6.9pc from a year earlier, dropping to 33 hours a
week. "At no time in the 1990 or 2001 recessions did we ever come close to
seeing such a detonating jobs figure," said David Rosenberg from Glukin
Sheff. "We have lost a record nine million full-time jobs this cycle."

Earnings have fallen at a 1.6pc annual rate over the last three months. Wage
deflation is setting in ? like Japan. Interestingly, The International
Labour Organisation is worried enough to push for a global pact, fearing
countries may set off a ruinous spiral by chipping away at wages try to gain
beggar-thy-neighbour advantage.

Some of the US pay cuts are disguised. Over 238,000 state workers in
California have been working two days less a month without pay since
February. Variants of this are happening in 22 states.

The Centre for Labour Market Studies (CLMS) in Boston says US unemployment
is now 18.2pc, counting the old-fashioned way. The reason why this does not
"feel" like the 1930s is that we tend to compress the chronology of the
Depression. It takes time for people to deplete their savings and sink into
destitution. Perhaps our greater cushion of wealth today will prevent
another Grapes of Wrath, but 20m US homeowners are already in negative
equity (zillow.com data). Evictions are running at a terrifying pace.

Some 342,000 homes were foreclosed in April, pushing a small army of
children into a network of charity shelters. This compares to 273,000 homes
lost in the entire year of 1932. Sheriffs in Michigan and Illinois are
quietly refusing to toss families on to the streets, like the non-compliance
of Catholic police in the Slump.

Europe is a year or so behind, but catching up fast. Unemployment has
reached 18.7pc in Spain (37pc for youths), and 16.3pc in Latvia. Germany has
delayed the cliff-edge effect by paying companies to keep furloughed workers
through "Kurzarbeit". Germany's "Wise Men" fear that the jobless rate will
jump from 3.7m to 5.1m by next year. The OECD expects unemployment to reach
57m in the rich countries by the end of next year.

This is the deadly lag effect. What is so disturbing is that governments
have not even begun the spending squeeze that must come to stop their
countries spiralling into a debt compound trap.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy, with a good nose for popular moods, says:
"We must overhaul everything. We cannot have a system of rentiers and social
dumping under globalisation. Either we have justice or we will have
violence. It is a chimera to think that this crisis is just a footnote and
that we can carry on as before."

The message has not reached Wall Street or the City. If bankers know what is
good for them, they will take a teacher's salary for a few years until the
storm passes. If they proceed with the bonuses now on the table, even as
taxpayers pay for the errors of their caste, they must expect a ferocious
backlash.

We are fortunate that the US has a new president enjoying a great reservoir
of sympathy, and a clean-broom Congress. Other nations must limp on with
carcass governments: Germany's paralysed Left-Right coalition, the
burned-out relics of Japan's LDP, and Labour's death march in Britain. Some
are taking precautions: Silvio Berlusconi is trying to emasculate Italy's
parliament (with little protest) while the Kremlin has activated
"anti-crisis" units to nip protest in the bud.

We are moving into Phase II of the Great Unwinding. It may be time to put
away our texts of Keynes, Friedman, and Fisher, so useful for Phase 1, and
start studying what happened to society when global unemployment went
haywire in 1932.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5742937/The-unemployment-timebomb-is-quietly-ticking.html

Article Critique: “New Trends in Democracy and Development: Democratic Capitalism in South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya” - Rita Kiki Edozie

In her article titled “New Trends in Democracy and Development: Democratic Capitalism in South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya” Professor Rita Kiki Edozie of the International Relations department at Michigan State University examines the “complex relationship between capitalism and democracy in contemporary democratic regimes in Africa from the perspective of current trends in economic globalization” (43). The article follows the prospects of democracy in the three mentioned African countries and the scandals surrounding their dominant political parties: The African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Nigeria, and the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) in Kenya (Edozie 43).

Edozie uses the theoretical frameworks of political economy and comparative studies to show how the global regimes of capital are having effects on contemporary national democratic politics and how a democratic crisis in each country is associated with an economic crisis. Among these are South Africa’s French Connection Scandal, Nigeria’s Globacom Affair, and Kenya’s Anglo-Leasing Finance Scandal (Edozie 43). According to Edozie, when considering the relationship between capitalism and democracy, one must consider two things: the region’s context of economic development and economic conditions that foster the emergence of democracy, as well as the performance of democratic regimes that speak to the conditions required for democratic stabilization, consolidation, and effective performance (45).

Edozie explains that in the developing world context, the analyses of problems that influence democracy are defined in socio-political, economic, and cultural, terms Edozie labeled as external or extrinsic (47). In the case of Africa, such factors cause significant effects on unevenly developed economic structures in developing democracies. Democratic transitions in which economic and democratic reform occur simultaneously allow for the formation of “democratic capitalism” (Edozie 48). From here Edozie moves into specific examples in the African context: South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya’s network of democratic capitalism. All three countries serve as important examples of the “phenomena” of democratic capitalism and show how intrinsic features such as liberal democracies and pluralism, along with extrinsic features such as global laissez-faire capitalism are contributing to a crisis of democracy (49). These three countries were selected because they are among the wealthiest of African economies on the continent. However, compared to other advanced industrial democracies throughout the world these African countries are relatively poor (Edozie 49).

Beginning with South Africa, the crisis of democracy is attributed to the second election and the assumption of Thabo Mbeki as the executive power. After his rise to power, the ANC become more centralized and dominating and “talking left while acting right” (Edozie 50). Others such as Jacob Zuma further tarnished the name of the ANC by illegally benefitting from a multibillion dollar arms contract, or the “French connection” as Edozie terms it. The tension originally began as a power dispute between Jacob Zuma, the Deputry President of the ANC and Bulelani Ngcuka, head of South Africa’s Directorate of Special Investigations. Ngcuka illegally benefitted from an arms trade deal with his financial partner Schabir Shaik, the director of the Nkobi Holdings and the African Defence Systems (Edozie 56). Tension built within the party as those with different ideologies (pro-reform vs. traditional revolutionary beliefs) clashed. Such internal conflict made it impossible for the ANC government to focus effectively on the issues of South Africa such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic and unemployment among others. and put democracy at risk.

Next Edozie moves onto Nigeria and its incumbent ruling party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). In Nigeria much of the political tension was caused between the battles between the country’s legislature and the executive. Impeachment charges were brought against then President Obasanjo and then counter charges against key legislators. Later on when Abubaka won the presidency, tension arose between the Southern Christians and the Northern Muslims. More pro-economic reform policy was pushed by the executive, putting more emphasis on personal power politics and the ideology of Nigerian ethno-regionalism (Edozie 50).
Under the NARC regime Edozie elaborates on the Globacom Affair. This affair had international connections, and very heavy relations with the US Department of Justice, the FBI, and Congressman William Jefferson. The Nigerian Presidency claimed to have been acting on behalf of the FBI to investigate the Vice President involvement in the laundering of money from privatization program funds and using them to purchase shares in Globacom and other US ‘front’ companies (Edozie 54). Such accusations of scandal, money laundering, and corruption are never conducive to democracy, and to accuse a President of those wrongdoings truly damages democracy in Nigeria.

Finally Edozie elaborates on the crisis in Kenya and the historic transition election in 2002 that brought President Mwai Kibaki and the National Rainbow Coalition Party (NARC) to power. With Kibaki’s ascension to power came Kenya’s adaptation of nurture capitalism in democratic politics. In 2003 a sensational corruptions scandal was discovered in Nigeria, now known as the Anglo-Leasing Finance Scandal. Its major players included NARC, President Kibaki, and a host of his other key ministers. The government of Kenya wanted to replace its passport printing system and sources its bids from international companies. A French firm quoted the transaction at 6million Euros, and a British firm, Anglo-Leasing Finance, quoted 30 million dollars. The scandal happened when the contract was awarded to Anglo-Leasing, which then sub-leased the contract to the French firm for 6 million dollars. NARC ministers were implicated but no charges were brought against them (Edozie 58-9). When the people can’t trust their own elected officials due to monetary scandal, democracy is in danger indeed.

Edozie’s collection of data for the three countries suggests that the democratic crises experienced by each country are linked to national and global economic structures including elites, electorates, and capitalist interests (60). These developing countries more aggressively “seek business investment for the purpose of economic growth and poverty reduction” (Edozie 61). But because of this, they tend to turn into nurture capitalist economies because they must rely on large domestic and international corporations who exploit the people of these countries. The governing bodies of these countries tend to support no-reform policies rather than economic reform because they realize how harmful such polices are to the welfare and interests of the people. Even still, since economic policy almost always presides with the executive and elite who are loyal to the central banks and creditors, they tend to form political majorities in parliament mobilized to support the technocratic, pro-reform economic policy (Edozie 62). Therefore, the interests of the people are never really given a chance.

Edozie’s evidence showing that people of these countries are demanding more than just democratic representation (such as suffrage, entitlements, or political rights) is her overall strength. She does not say that the political parties in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria have taken part in corrupt practices, but gives specific evidence of their wrongdoings as well as shows how the people reacted to them. She uses the labor strikes, demonstrations, riots, and militant conflicts of the people to show that constituencies in all three countries are demanding democracies that provide the redistribution of the already scarce resources (Edozie 62). Democratic capitalism is being rejected by the people. The future of the countries depend on whether or not each country can get beyond their crises through peaceful political means. In the case of South Africa it may mean allowing other parties than the ANC to have a share in the political process of the country. Similar are the cases in Nigeria and Kenya where there is a need to create a multi-ethnic, multiparty systems that foster national development and equal access to material wealth for everyone, rather than just the elite few.

Works Cited:

Edozie, Rita Kiki. “New Trends in Democracy and Development: Democratic Capitalism in South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya.” Politikon. 35:1, 43-67.

THINK BEFORE YOU DRINK: WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT BACARDI

link

Rock around the Blockade, which campaigns in solidarity with Cuba, has launched a Boycott Bacardi campaign to highlight the organised attempts by the Bacardi company to undermine the Cuban Revolution – a stance belied by its publicity for its apparently ‘Cuban’ rum.

In advertising its lead brand white rum, Bacardi plays on its Cuban roots, misleading drinkers into believing that Bacardi still has some links with the island. In fact the Bacardi empire is based in the Bahamas and the Bacardi company broke all ties with Cuba after the Revolution of 1959, when its cronies in the hated Batista dictatorship were overthrown by a popular guerrilla movement led by Fidel Castro and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.

Since then the Bacardi company has backed illegal and violent attempts to undermine the Cuban Revolution, including funding the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), a virulently anti-Castro right-wing exile organisation based in Miami, which has been responsible for systematic acts of terrorism against Cuba. Bacardi’s lawyers also helped draft the US Helms-Burton Act, which extends the United States’ blockade of Cuba to third countries, in breach of international trade law. So central was the role of Bacardi’s lawyer, Ignacio E Sanchez (a CANF member) in establishing Helms-Burton that US Senator William Dengue said the law should be renamed the Helms-Bacardi Protection Act.

The Helms-Burton Act was designed to tighten still further the United States blockade of Cuba. The blockade prevents the sale of food, medicines and other essential supplies to Cuba and threatens other countries (including Britain) if they trade with Cuba. It has been estimated that the blockade has cost Cuba over $40 billion in lost production and trade. Every year the US blockade is overwhelmingly condemned by the United Nations.

The blockade is responsible for severe shortages and suffering among the Cuban people. For instance, the prestigious American Association for World Health (AAWH) reported in 1997 that the US blockade is contributing to malnutrition and poor water quality in Cuba and that Cuba is being denied access to drugs and medical equipment which is causing patients, including children, to suffer unnecessary pain and to die needlessly. The AAWH gave examples of a heart attack patient who died because the US government refused a licence for an implantable defibrillator, of Cuban children with leukaemia denied access to new life-prolonging drugs and of children undergoing chemotherapy who, lacking supplies of a nausea-preventing drug, were vomiting on average 28 times a day.

The AAWH concluded that a humanitarian catastrophe had been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained a high priority for a system designed to deliver primary and preventive care to all its citizens. It is worth recording that, despite the effects of the blockade, Cuba last year received a World Health Organisation (WHO) award for meeting all the WHO targets for all countries by the year 2000 – the only country so far to have done so.

This is the humane, socialist system that Bacardi seeks to destroy.

Through its support for the blockade and its funding of CANF, Bacardi shares the responsibility for the suffering imposed on Cuba over the last 40 years by those who refuse to accept the socialist path chosen by the Cuban people. At the beginning of June 1999, the courts of Cuba issued a lawsuit against the US government and its representatives for human damages as a result of aggression perpetrated against Cuba for the last 40 years, based on witness statements and recently declassified US government papers. These crimes include the destruction of ships and civilian aircraft, biological and guerrilla warfare, the firebombing of factories and crops, assassination and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by US-trained mercenary troops in April 1961. The death toll from these activities is set at at least 3,400 Cuban citizens. These are the sort of terrorist acts supported by the Bacardi empire.

Not content with this, Bacardi has now resorted to stealing the Havana Club label. Although the blockade means that Cuban rum cannot be sold in the USA, in 1974 Cubaexport registered the Havana Club trademark there to prevent its use by other companies. The rights to the trademark were bought by the French company Pernod Ricard when it set up a joint venture with Havana Club Holdings in 1994 - in the face of threatening letters from Bacardi.

In 1996, Bacardi started illegally marketing its own Havana Club. Pernod Ricard sued. But, thanks to a section (section 211) hastily tacked onto last year’s US budget after frantic lobbying by Bacardi’s lawyers, Bacardi won. Section 211 arbitrarily stipulates that no court in the USA may recognise or in any way validate any claim regarding trademarks and commercial names related to properties ‘confiscated’ by the Cuban government. Bacardi claims Havana Club uses former Bacardi assets nationalised by Cuba in 1960. Section 211 contravenes international trade law, and Pernod Ricard is taking the case to the World Trade Organisation. As Castro pointed out, ‘I hope no one will now complain if we start marketing a Cuban Coca-Cola.’

Boycott Bacardi!

The Boycott Bacardi campaign launched by Rock around the Blockade will use petitions, protests, leaflets, stickers and direct action to expose the truth behind Bacardi’s ‘Cuban’ image and persuade consumers not to buy Bacardi. People throughout Britain will be asked to pledge not to buy any Bacardi products and pubs, clubs, student bars and shops will be asked not to stock them.

The campaign aims to threaten Bacardi’s profits and force them to get off Cuba’s back. It will build on the success of similar campaigns against other multinational companies involved in inhumane activities, such as that against Nestle for promoting powdered baby milk in underdeveloped countries and that against Shell for its involvement in atrocities committed against the Ogoni people in Nigeria. These campaigns attracted worldwide support and forced the companies involved to reconsider their policies.

Already a number of student bars and pubs have decided to make a stand against Bacardi’s activities by no longer stocking Bacardi and replacing it with Havana Club, a genuine Cuban rum whose sales bring much-needed hard currency into the Cuban economy. The challenge from Havana Club worldwide has left Bacardi sales down an estimated $25 million since 1990.

Don’t drink Bacardi – it’ll leave a bad taste in your mouth!

For further information contact Rock around the Blockade
c/o FRFI, BCM Box 5909, London WC1N 3XX

Tel: 020 7837 1688 Fax: 020 7837 1743
e-mail: rcgfrfi@easynet.co.uk

"Really Really Free Market" and State News Response by Allison Voglesong (YDS Co-Coordinator)

Help us promote the Really Really Free Market which is a block north of campus across from Gumby's in a park. Bring a chair and share at this fun skill-oriented "free market" where everything is free. Arrange through each other to bring whatever you want to give away for free. Or, just come take a study break and dig through some neat free stuff, learn (or share) how to do something useful (fix a bike/play a game) and enjoy the sounds of local music at its best. Leftover market items are (tentatively) going to VOA, feel free to indicate to us if you can help transport donations (depending on the nature of donations there is a possible bike brigade where small loads are taken by bike to donation sites. However, feel free to let us know if you've got a car you're willing to donate, then large items have a way of being donated.)

Got a good idea for this Really Really Free Market? Join the facebook group and let us know you plan to make it happen. There are no official organizers, so come join the horizontal effort to make cool stuff happen.

Saturday, April 25th
Valley Court Park, East Lansing
10 am -- 3 pm

Monday, April 20th, 2009
Students Protest In-State Tuition Increases
Response by Allison Voglesong

"Other members, such as international relations junior Allison Voglesong, said more students should be involved. “This is what being active is. If you want people to show up, throw a kegger — that is what students respond to,” Voglesong said." -The State News, April 20, 2009

Here's the VIDEO, which is a little better to clarify:



THE QUOTE IN THE PUBLISHED ARTICLE is a startling misrepresentation of my statement, particularly considering that the original comment I made regarding "keggers" was made in jest. The reporter asked me to repeat the point I had made to another protester that was not put into context in the article. More frustrating is that the young lady asked me to repeat myself and I made it clear to her that I was not suggesting our strategy to gain student interest in protesting the tuition increase was to throw keggers to get names on petitions.

Quite simply I am disappointed that more students show more interest in assemblies like "Cedarfest" and less interest in assembling to confront real problems that directly affect their ability to go to college. What was the point of Cedarfest that got so many people involved? Observing the frequency of "keggers" and their popularity, I find it discouraging that tuition is treated with such apathy here at MSU. Sadly, the State News Reporter, Ursula, did not choose to include that point when noting my comment about the appeal of "keggers" to large numbers of students. My bottom line is that it's too bad more students don't care and/or aren't vocal about this tuition issue. How do we get more students interested (at the very least) in what is going on with their school and their investment in their education? I think that point is well represented by my comments towards the end of the video.

If there are any responses, first answer the underlying question I'm trying to address. What is it that students respond to best or most often when assembling together? I'd love to know how to get more students excited about making a difference to encourage university transparency and accountability. It's too bad the tuition issue in itself isn't exciting enough.

Allison Voglesong

James Madison 2010
Major International Relations
Political Economy Specialization
Co-Coordinator, MSU Young Democratic Socialists
Member, Roosevelt Institution

Poll: Many Americans prefer socialism over capitalism

From: PWW

Author: Teresa Albano
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 04/09/09 14:54

This poll made our day.

According to a recent Rasmussen Report, only 53 percent of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

Not a very good spread for the profits-before-people, greed-is-good crowd. Ayn Rand must be rolling in her grave.

These numbers of course reflect the deep, transformative moment we are living in. An economic depression is a powerful force for people to experience, leading them to question the system that got us here.

Then there is the 20 percent that say socialism is better than capitalism, according to Rasmussen. Another wow! Twenty-seven percent are not sure which is better.
As the population gets further away from the Cold War years, the more they are open to socialism. The under 30 population is essentially divided: 37 percent prefer capitalism, 33 percent socialism and 30 percent are undecided.

Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the current system with 49 percent for capitalism and 26 percent for socialism.

But the ones over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13 percent of those believe socialism is better. What happened to the radical baby boomers?!

As you may imagine, those who have money to invest chose capitalism by a 5-to-1 margin. But for the rest of us who have no money to invest – a quarter of us say socialism would be o.k. Only 40 percent of non-investors think capitalism is better.

These are amazing statistics considering Rasmussen did not define either capitalism or socialism in their questions.

In an earlier survey by the polling firm they found, 70 percent of Americans prefer a free-market economy. When using the term “free market economy,” Rasmussen asserts, it attracts more support than using the term “capitalism.”

“Other survey data supports that notion. Rather than seeing large corporations as committed to free markets, two-out-of-three Americans believe that big government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors,” the poll summary stated.

Imagine how Americans would react if truly a national conversation was had on the benefits of socialism. Right now most Americans see it as a “government-managed” economy and they aren’t convinced the government could do any better than the corporate royalty, according to further poll findings.

Not included in the current popular view of socialism is democratization of the economy – where representatives of all communities, unions, schools, etc., would actually be involved in steering economic policy and decision making on all levels – micro and macro.

Recently, a colleague of mine, Sam Webb, the chair of the Communist Party said of the current economic and political situation:

“Is there any reason to think that millions in motion can't transform this country and world into the just, green, sustainable and peaceful "Promised Land" that Martin Luther King dreamed of?

“It would be a profound mistake to underestimate the progressive and socialist potential of this era. The American people have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity within their reach.”

While polls are just a snapshot of a very fluid and dynamic process of what people think, the more long term forces of the economy are already having this profound effect.

Dyson Visits, YDS Documents and Interacts

From the Left (no pun intended): Nicole Iaquinto, Co-Founder MSUYDS; Michael Eric Dyson (top), Professor of Sociology, Georgetown University; Michael Davidson (bottom), MSUYDS member; Allison Voglesong, Co-Coordinator MSUYDS

Many a YDS member came to MSU's Kellogg Center to fill the Big Ten room on April 9th to hear Dr. Michael Eric Dyson speak at the 2009 Race in 21st Century America 6th National conference. Dyson went above and beyond the theme of "Health Care and Communities of Color," delivering (and occasionally singing) a rousing address well into the night. Participants were given the opportunity to dialog with the guest, and YDS members stuck around to snap this photo at the end of the night.

Dr. David Green's Presentation @ YDS Panel on Economic Crisis

Compared to Europe, American labor dreadfully passive in the face of corporate exploitation

NY Times, April 5, 2009
In America, Labor Has an Unusually Long Fuse

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The workers and other protesters who gathered en masse at the Group of
20 summit meeting last week in London were continuing a time-honored
European tradition of taking their grievances into the streets.

Two weeks earlier, more than a million workers in France demonstrated
against layoffs and the government?s handling of the economic crisis,
and in the last month alone, French workers took their bosses hostage
four times in various labor disputes. When General Motors recently
announced huge job cuts worldwide, 15,000 workers demonstrated at the
company?s German headquarters.

But in the United States, where G.M. plans its biggest layoffs, union
members have seemed passive in comparison. They may yell at the
television news, but that?s about all. Unlike their European
counterparts, American workers have largely stayed off the streets, even
as unemployment soars and companies cut wages and benefits.

The country of Mother Jones, John L. Lewis and Walter Reuther certainly
has had a rich and sometimes militant history of labor protest ? from
the Homestead Steel Works strike against Andrew Carnegie in 1892 to the
auto workers? sit-down strikes of the 1930s and the 67-day walkout by
400,000 G.M. workers in 1970.

But in recent decades, American workers have increasingly steered clear
of such militancy, for reasons that range from fear of having their jobs
shipped overseas to their self-image as full-fledged members of the
middle class, with all its trappings and aspirations.

David Kennedy, a Stanford historian and author of ?Freedom From Fear:
The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945,? says that
America?s individualist streak is a major reason for this reluctance to
take to the streets. Citing a 1940 study by the social psychologist
Mirra Komarovsky, he said her interviews of the Depression-era
unemployed found ?the psychological reaction was to feel guilty and
ashamed, that they had failed personally.?

Taken together, guilt, shame and individualism undercut any impulse to
collective action, then as now, Professor Kennedy said. Noting that
Americans felt stunned and desperately insecure during the Depression?s
early years, he wrote: ?What struck most observers, and mystified them,
was the eerie docility of the American people, their stoic passivity as
the Depression grindstone rolled over them.?

By the mid-1930s, though, worker protests increased in number and
militancy. They were fueled by the then-powerful Communist and Socialist
Parties and frustrations over continuing deprivation. Workers also felt
that they had President Roosevelt?s blessing for collective action
because he signed the Wagner Act in 1935, giving workers the right to
unionize.

?Remember, at that time, you had Hoovervilles and 25 percent
unemployment,? said Daniel Bell, a professor emeritus of sociology at
Harvard. ?Many people felt that capitalism was finished.?

General strikes paralyzed San Francisco and Minneapolis, and a six-week
sit-down strike at a G.M. plant in Flint, Mich., pressured the company
into recognizing the United Automobile Workers. In the decade?s ugliest
showdown, a 1937 strike against Republic Steel in Chicago, 10 protesters
were shot to death. That militancy helped build a powerful labor
movement, which represented 35 percent of the nation?s workers by the
1950s and helped create the world?s largest and richest middle class.

Today, American workers, even those earning $20,000 a year, tend to view
themselves as part of an upwardly mobile middle class. In contrast,
European workers often still see themselves as proletarians in an
enduring class struggle.

And American labor leaders, once up-from-the-street rabble-rousers, now
often work hand-in-hand with C.E.O.?s to improve corporate
competitiveness to protect jobs and pensions, and try to sideline
activists who support a hard line.

?You have a general diminution of union leadership that was focused on
defending workers by any means necessary,? said Jerry Tucker, a longtime
U.A.W. militant. ?The message from the union leadership nowadays often
is, ?We don?t have any choice, we have to go down this concessionary
road to see if we can do damage control,? ? he said.

In the case of the Detroit automakers, a strike might not only hasten
their demise but infuriate many Americans who already view auto workers
as overpaid. It might also make Washington less receptive to a bailout.

Labor?s aggressiveness has also been sapped by its declining numbers.
Unions represent just 7.4 percent of private-sector workers today.

Unions have also grown more cautious as management has become more
aggressive. A watershed came in 1981 when the nation?s air traffic
controllers engaged in an illegal strike. President Reagan quickly fired
the 11,500 striking traffic controllers, hired replacements and soon got
the airports running. After that confrontation, labor?s willingness to
strike shrank markedly.

American workers still occasionally vent their anger in protests and
strikes. There were demonstrations against the A.I.G. bonuses, for
instance, and workers staged a sit-down strike in December when their
factory in Chicago was closed. But the numbers tell the story: Last
year, American unions engaged in 159 work stoppages, down from 1,352 in
1981, according to the Bureau of National Affairs, a publisher of legal
and regulatory news.

Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University, said that while
demonstrations remain a vital outlet for the European left, for
Americans ?the Internet now somehow serves as the main outlet? with
angry blogs and mass e-mailing.

Left-leaning workers and unions that might be most prone to stage
protests during today?s economic crisis are often the ones most
enthusiastic about President Obama and his efforts to revive the
economy, help unions and enact universal health coverage. Instead of
taking to the streets last fall to protest the gathering economic crisis
under President Bush, many workers and unions campaigned for Mr. Obama.

Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, said there were
smarter things to do than demonstrating against layoffs ? for instance,
pushing Congress and the states to make sure the stimulus plan creates
the maximum number of jobs in the United States.

?I actually believe that Americans believe in their political system
more than workers do in other parts of the world,? Mr. Gerard said. He
said large labor demonstrations are often warranted in Canada and
European countries to pressure parliamentary leaders. Demonstrations are
less needed in the United States, he said, because often all that is
needed is some expert lobbying in Washington to line up the support of a
half-dozen senators.

Professor Kennedy saw another reason that today?s young workers and
young people were protesting less than in decades past. ?This
generation,? he said, has ? found more effective ways to change the
world. It?s signed up for political campaigns, and it?s not waiting for
things to get so desperate that they feel forced to take to the streets.?



------------------------------

Spartans- Unite! Say No To Hike!

MSU YDS Public Statement Regarding Proposed Tuition Increase and the Failure of Our Student Government to Oppose 9% Tuition Hike 3/31/09

If you go onto MSU’s website and search for the word “inclusion,” it will not take long to locate President Simon’s “Statement on Core Values”. This document lays out the fundamental values that guide our “civil engagement with one another and with the society we serve;” one of these values is “inclusiveness.” According to the “Statement on Core Values,”

“Our commitment to inclusion means we embrace opportunities for all. It means that we ensure individuals who come from ordinary backgrounds but who possess extraordinary talents, passion, and determination can find the path to success. It means building a vibrant, intellectual community that offers and respects a broad range of ideas and perspectives. We embrace a full spectrum of experiences, viewpoints and intellectual approaches because it enriches the conversation and benefits everyone, even as it challenges us to grow and think differently.”

The problem with this statement is that there is a contradiction between the image being put forward by the university and the actions of the Board of Trustees and ASMSU with regards to our tuition.

As we all know, we are currently in the midst of an economic crisis that is regularly being called the “worst since the Great Depression.” This crisis has hit Michigan especially hard with an unemployment rate of 12% in February 2009 a staggering 4.6% increase over the previous year (http://www.milmi.org/), a foreclosure rate that rose by 10% in just a month from January to February (http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan), and the worst state economy in the nation. At the same time, U.S. News and World Report ran an article on March 27 pointing out that B.A.’s are quickly becoming the new high school diploma. And yet, in the middle of this economic maelstrom, our Board of Trustees is proposing a 9% tuition hike!

This tuition hike works to directly contradict MSU’s claim to be a university that supports and encourages diversity and inclusion. As education at MSU becomes increasingly unaffordable for working class and poor students, the university will become an increasingly elitist institution, available only to the rich and privileged of society. In addition this will be harmful to those attending the university as they are increasingly denied the opportunity of interacting with those who’s experiences and background are different from their own. And, those students who are able to claw their way through college will quickly be subjected to a renewed form of indentured servitude as they are forced to contribute 8% of their monthly income to repaying student debts. Finally, in light of the increasing need for college degrees to get decent jobs, the university is condemning poor and working class people to a potentially perpetual state of joblessness. The proposed tuition hike is exploitative, classist and racist.

Rather than relying on students to supply for its budget needs, the University ought to reevaluate its spending habits and ask who is benefiting from these actions. In 2008, our university completed construction of the $15.5 million Skandalaris football center, and construction is currently being continued on the $90 million dollar Secchia Center, a new MSU medical school located in Grand Rapids Michigan.

In her “Statement on Core Values,” President Simon also states that “great universities, like great companies, are rooted in fundamental values that define their contributions to society and that endure regardless of who is at the helm.” In light of these vanity projects and the proposed tuition hike, one must stop and wonder where MSU’s values lay, and whether it is not truly a company exploiting its students in the name of profit. An article posted on Inside Higher Ed.com in 2008 stated that Merit Based aid still makes up about 70% of college aid, despite the fact that such aid, by failing to take into account disparities in U.S. lower education, often goes to “those who could still otherwise afford a college education.” Once again, one is left to wonder why the university does not divert some of those funds to providing more need based scholarships if it is truly committed to promoting diversity.

The MSU Young Democratic Socialists would like to encourage our student government to engage in independent thought and fight for the rights of its constituency, the students, rather than simply towing the line of the Board of Trustees. After all, as I was told once by a friend, “what is the point of a government if it does not work for its people?”

Michigan State University Young Democratic Socialists

Allison Voglesong, MSU YDS Co-Chairperson, Logistics and Publicity

Ryan Wyeth, MSU YDS Co-Chairperson, Director of Communications and Public Relations

Press Release

MSU Young Democratic Socialists Host Panel Discussion of Economic Crisis



East Lansing, Michigan, 09/11/2009- On March 26th, the Michigan State University Chapter of Young Democratic Socialists (YDS) will be hosting an event titled “Finding a Way Out,” a panel discussion about the current economic crisis, its causes, and potential solutions to this crisis.



The event will be open to the MSU and East Lansing community and will be taking place in Club Spartan, on the third floor of Case Hall on the MSU campus. This panel will feature both MSU faculty and students from various points in the political spectrum, as well as representatives from National YDS and Democratic Socialists of America.



The event will be structured in such a way that, after a short presentation by each of the panel members, the majority of the event will be dedicated to encouraging discussion between the audience and panel members. In this way, we hope to create a space dedicated to community discussion of the crisis, and hope to spark an ongoing dialogue within the community about the crisis, what we as people wish to see done in response to it, and the best ways to achieve these goals.



For more information about the event “Finding a Way Out,” please contact Ryan Wyeth at msuyds@gmail.com, or join the Facebook event “Finding a Way Out: Panel Event on the International Economic Crisis.”



MSU Young Democratic Socialists is a student chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) America’s largest socialist organization. Its members come from a wide variety of political backgrounds, but all believe in the important role that economics plays both in the oppression of people around the world, and in their fight against this oppression. They aim both to equip themselves with an alternative view of the problems facing us today and to find alternative solutions to these problems.



For more information about MSU YDS, please contact Ryan Wyeth at msuyds@gmail.com, or visit our Facebook group, “MSU Young Democratic Socialists,” or our blog at http://therevolutionarytimes.blogspot.com/.