Dear Comrades,
In Jewish families, upon the death of a loved one, it is customary for the family to observe a week of grieving during which friends come to the home of the deceased to comfort the family. This practice is known as "sitting Shiva (Shiva in Hebrew means seven)." Helen's daughter, Suzanne, and Helen's partner, Bob, will be sitting Shiva at Helen and Bob's apartment from Tuesday, 3/30 through Friday, 4/2 from 5-8 PM and on Saturday, 4/3 from 1-4 PM. The address is 30785 Hunters Drive, Apartment 23 in Farmington Hills (The Hunters Ridge apartment complex is located near the intersection of Orchard Lake and Fourteen Mile Roads.). It is customary, but not required, to bring food for the family.
In Solidarity,
David Green, Chair
Detroit DSA
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
An interesting analysis: Reflections of Fidel Health reform in the United States
GRANMA INTERNATIONAL
Havana. March 25, 2010
http://tinyurl. com/yk78mlc
Reflections of Fidel
Health reform in the United States
(Taken from CubaDebate)
BARACK Obama is a fanatical believer in the imperialist capitalist system
imposed by the United States on the world. "God bless the United States," he
ends his speeches.
Some of his acts wounded the sensibility of world opinion, which viewed with
sympathy the African-American candidate?s victory over that country?s
extreme right-wing candidate. Basing himself on one of the worst economic
crises that the world has ever seen, and the pain caused by young Americans
who lost their lives or were injured or mutilated in his predecessor?s
genocidal wars of conquest, he won the votes of the majority of 50% of
Americans who deign to go to the polls in that democratic country.
Out of an elemental sense of ethics, Obama should have abstained from
accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already decided to send 40,000
soldiers to an absurd war in the heart of Asia.
The current administration?s militarist policies, its plunder of natural
resources and unequal exchange with the poor countries of the Third World
are in no way different from those of its predecessors, almost all of them
extremely right-wing, with some exceptions, throughout the past century.
The anti-democratic document imposed at the Copenhagen Summit on the
international community ? which had given credit to his promise to cooperate
in the fight against climate change ? was another act that disappointed many
people in the world. The United States, the largest issuer of greenhouse
gases, was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices, despite the sweet
words of its president beforehand.
It would be interminable to list the contradictions between the ideas which
the Cuban nation has defended at great sacrifice for half a century and the
egotistic policies of that colossal empire.
In spite of that, we harbor no antagonism toward Obama, much less toward the
U.S. people. We believe that the health reform has been an important battle,
and a success of his government. It would seem, however, to be something
truly unusual, 234 years after the Declaration of Independence in
Philadelphia in 1776, inspired by the ideas of the French encyclopedists,
that the U.S. government has passed [a law for] medical attention for the
vast majority of its citizens, something that Cuba achieved for its entire
population half a century ago, despite the cruel and inhumane blockade
imposed and still in effect by the most powerful country that ever existed.
Before that, after almost half a century of independence and after a bloody
war, Abraham Lincoln was able to attain legal freedom for slaves.
On the other hand, I cannot stop thinking about a world in which more than
one-third of the population lacks the medical attention and medicines
essential to ensuring its health, a situation that will be aggravated as
climate change and water and food scarcity become increasingly greater in a
globalized world where the population is growing, forests are disappearing,
agricultural land is diminishing, the air is becoming unbreathable, and in
which the human species that inhabits it ? which emerged less than 200,000
years ago; in other words, 3.5 million years after the first forms of life
emerged on the planet ? is running a real risk of disappearing as a species.
Accepting that health reform signifies a success for the Obama government,
the current U.S. president cannot ignore that climate change is a threat to
health, and even worse, to the very existence of all the world?s nations,
when the increase in temperatures ? beyond the critical limits that are in
sight ? is melting the frozen waters of the glaciers, and the tens of
millions of cubic kilometers stored in the enormous ice caps accumulated in
the Antarctic, Greenland and Siberia will have melted within a few dozen
years, leaving underwater all of the world?s port facilities and the lands
where a large part of the global population now lives, feeds itself and
works.
Obama, the leaders of the free countries and their allies, their scientists
and their sophisticated research centers know this; it is impossible for
them not to know it.
I understand the satisfaction in the presidential speech expressing and
recognizing the contributions of the congress members and administration who
made possible the miracle of health reform, which strengthens the
government?s position vis-?-vis the lobbyists and political mercenaries who
are limiting the administration?s faculties. It would be worse if those who
engaged in torture, assassinations for hire, and genocide should reoccupy
the U.S. government. As a person who is unquestionably intelligent and
sufficiently well-informed, Obama knows that there is no exaggeration in my
words. I hope that the silly remarks he sometimes makes about Cuba are not
clouding his intelligence.
In the wake of the success in this battle for the right to health of all
Americans, 12 million immigrants, in their immense majority Latin American,
Haitian and from other Caribbean countries, are demanding the legalization
of their presence in the United States, where they do the jobs that are the
hardest and with which U.S. society could not do without, in a country in
which they are arrested, separated from their families and sent back to
their countries.
The vast majority of them immigrated to Northern America as a consequence of
the dictatorships imposed on the countries of the region by the United
States, and the brutal policy to which they have been subjected as a result
of the plunder of their resources and unequal trade. Their family
remittances constitute a large percentage of the GDP of their economies.
They are now hoping for an act of elemental justice. When an Adjustment Act
was imposed on the Cuban people, promoting brain drain and the dispossession
of its educated young people, why are such brutal methods used against
illegal immigrants of Latin American and Caribbean countries?
The devastating earthquake that lashed Haiti ? the poorest country in Latin
America, which has just suffered an unprecedented natural disaster that
involved the death of more than 200,000 people ? and the terrible economic
damage that a similar phenomenon has caused in Chile, are eloquent evidence
of the dangers that threaten so-called civilization, and the need for
drastic measures that can give the human species hope for survival.
The Cold War did not bring any benefits to the world population. The immense
economic, technological and scientific power of the United States would not
be able to survive the tragedy that is hovering over the planet. President
Obama should look for the pertinent data on his computer and converse with
his most eminent scientists; he will see how far his country is from being
the model for humanity he extols.
Because he is an African American, there he suffered the affronts of
discrimination, as he relates in his book, The Dreams of My Father; there he
knew about the poverty in which tens of millions of Americans live; there he
was educated, but there he also enjoyed, as a successful professional, the
privileges of the rich middle class, and he ended up idealizing the social
system where the economic crisis, the uselessly sacrificed lives of
Americans and his unquestionable political talent gave him the electoral
victory.
Despite that, the most recalcitrant right-wing forces see Obama as an
extremist, and are threatening him by continuing to do battle in the Senate
to neutralize the effects of the health reform, and openly sabotaging him in
various states of the Union, declaring the new law unconstitutional.
The problems of our era are far more serious still.
The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international
credit agencies, under the strict control of the United States, are allowing
the large U.S. banks ? the creators of fiscal paradises and responsible for
the financial chaos on the planet ? to be kept afloat by the government of
that country in each one of the system?s frequent and growing crises.
The U.S. Federal Reserve issues at its whim the convertible currency that
pays for the wars of conquest, the profits of the military industrial
complex, the military bases distributed throughout the world and the large
investments with which transnationals control the economy in many countries
in the world. Nixon unilaterally suspended the conversion of the dollar into
gold, while the vaults of the banks in New York hold seven thousand tons of
gold, something more than 25% of the world?s reserves of this metal, a
figure which at the end of World War II stood at more than 80%. It is argued
that the [U.S.] public debt exceeds $10 trillion, more than 70% of its GDP,
like a burden that will be passed on to the new generations. That is
affirmed when, in reality, it is the world economy which is paying for that
debt with the huge spending on goods and services that it provides to
acquire U.S. dollars, with which the large transnationals of that country
have taken over a considerable part of the world?s wealth, and which sustain
that nation?s consumer society.
Anyone can understand that such a system is unsustainable and why the
wealthiest sectors in the United States and its allies in the world defend a
system sustained only on ignorance, lies and conditioned reflexes sown in
world public opinion via a monopoly of the mass media, including the
principal Internet networks.
Today, the structure is collapsing in the face of the accelerated advance of
climate change and its disastrous consequences, which are placing humanity
in an exceptional dilemma.
Wars among the powers no longer seem to be the possible solution to major
contradictions, as they were until the second half of the 20th century; but,
in their turn, they have impinged on the factors that make human survival
possible to the extent that they could bring the existence of the current
intelligent species inhabiting our planet to a premature end.
A few days ago, I expressed my conviction, in the light of dominant
scientific knowledge today, that human beings have to solve their problems
on planet Earth, given that they will never be able to cover the distance
that separates the Sun from the closest star, located four light years
distant, a speed that is equivalent to 300,000 kilometers per second ? if
there should be a planet similar to our beautiful Earth in the vicinity of
that sun.
The United States is investing fabulous sums to discover if there is water
on the planet Mars, and whether some elemental form of life existed or
exists there. Nobody knows why, unless it is out of pure scientific
curiosity. Millions of species are disappearing at an increasing rate on our
planet and its fabulous volumes of water are constantly being poisoned.
The new laws of science ? based on Einstein?s theories on energy and matter
and the Big Boom theory as the origin of the millions of constellations and
infinite stars or other hypotheses ? have given way to profound changes in
fundamental concepts such as space and time, which are occupying
theologians? attention and analyses. One of them, our Brazilian friend Frei
Betto, approaches the issue in his book La obra del artista: una vision
hol?stica del Universe (The Artist?s Work: a Holistic View of the Universe),
launched at the last International Book Fair in Havana.
Scientific advances in the last 100 years have impacted on traditional
approaches that prevailed for thousands of years in the social sciences and
even in philosophy and theology.
The interest that the most honest thinkers are taking in that new knowledge
is notable, but we know absolutely nothing of President Obama?s thinking on
the compatibility of consumer societies with science.
Meanwhile, it is worthwhile, now and then, to devote time to meditating on
those issues. Certainly human beings will not cease to dream and take things
with the due serenity and nerves of steel on that account. It is a duty ? at
least for those who chose the political profession and the noble and
essential resolve of a human society of solidarity and justice.
Fidel Castro Ruz
March 24, 2010
6:40 p.m.
Translated by Granma International
Havana. March 25, 2010
http://tinyurl.
Reflections of Fidel
Health reform in the United States
(Taken from CubaDebate)
BARACK Obama is a fanatical believer in the imperialist capitalist system
imposed by the United States on the world. "God bless the United States," he
ends his speeches.
Some of his acts wounded the sensibility of world opinion, which viewed with
sympathy the African-American candidate?s victory over that country?s
extreme right-wing candidate. Basing himself on one of the worst economic
crises that the world has ever seen, and the pain caused by young Americans
who lost their lives or were injured or mutilated in his predecessor?s
genocidal wars of conquest, he won the votes of the majority of 50% of
Americans who deign to go to the polls in that democratic country.
Out of an elemental sense of ethics, Obama should have abstained from
accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already decided to send 40,000
soldiers to an absurd war in the heart of Asia.
The current administration?s militarist policies, its plunder of natural
resources and unequal exchange with the poor countries of the Third World
are in no way different from those of its predecessors, almost all of them
extremely right-wing, with some exceptions, throughout the past century.
The anti-democratic document imposed at the Copenhagen Summit on the
international community ? which had given credit to his promise to cooperate
in the fight against climate change ? was another act that disappointed many
people in the world. The United States, the largest issuer of greenhouse
gases, was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices, despite the sweet
words of its president beforehand.
It would be interminable to list the contradictions between the ideas which
the Cuban nation has defended at great sacrifice for half a century and the
egotistic policies of that colossal empire.
In spite of that, we harbor no antagonism toward Obama, much less toward the
U.S. people. We believe that the health reform has been an important battle,
and a success of his government. It would seem, however, to be something
truly unusual, 234 years after the Declaration of Independence in
Philadelphia in 1776, inspired by the ideas of the French encyclopedists,
that the U.S. government has passed [a law for] medical attention for the
vast majority of its citizens, something that Cuba achieved for its entire
population half a century ago, despite the cruel and inhumane blockade
imposed and still in effect by the most powerful country that ever existed.
Before that, after almost half a century of independence and after a bloody
war, Abraham Lincoln was able to attain legal freedom for slaves.
On the other hand, I cannot stop thinking about a world in which more than
one-third of the population lacks the medical attention and medicines
essential to ensuring its health, a situation that will be aggravated as
climate change and water and food scarcity become increasingly greater in a
globalized world where the population is growing, forests are disappearing,
agricultural land is diminishing, the air is becoming unbreathable, and in
which the human species that inhabits it ? which emerged less than 200,000
years ago; in other words, 3.5 million years after the first forms of life
emerged on the planet ? is running a real risk of disappearing as a species.
Accepting that health reform signifies a success for the Obama government,
the current U.S. president cannot ignore that climate change is a threat to
health, and even worse, to the very existence of all the world?s nations,
when the increase in temperatures ? beyond the critical limits that are in
sight ? is melting the frozen waters of the glaciers, and the tens of
millions of cubic kilometers stored in the enormous ice caps accumulated in
the Antarctic, Greenland and Siberia will have melted within a few dozen
years, leaving underwater all of the world?s port facilities and the lands
where a large part of the global population now lives, feeds itself and
works.
Obama, the leaders of the free countries and their allies, their scientists
and their sophisticated research centers know this; it is impossible for
them not to know it.
I understand the satisfaction in the presidential speech expressing and
recognizing the contributions of the congress members and administration who
made possible the miracle of health reform, which strengthens the
government?s position vis-?-vis the lobbyists and political mercenaries who
are limiting the administration?s faculties. It would be worse if those who
engaged in torture, assassinations for hire, and genocide should reoccupy
the U.S. government. As a person who is unquestionably intelligent and
sufficiently well-informed, Obama knows that there is no exaggeration in my
words. I hope that the silly remarks he sometimes makes about Cuba are not
clouding his intelligence.
In the wake of the success in this battle for the right to health of all
Americans, 12 million immigrants, in their immense majority Latin American,
Haitian and from other Caribbean countries, are demanding the legalization
of their presence in the United States, where they do the jobs that are the
hardest and with which U.S. society could not do without, in a country in
which they are arrested, separated from their families and sent back to
their countries.
The vast majority of them immigrated to Northern America as a consequence of
the dictatorships imposed on the countries of the region by the United
States, and the brutal policy to which they have been subjected as a result
of the plunder of their resources and unequal trade. Their family
remittances constitute a large percentage of the GDP of their economies.
They are now hoping for an act of elemental justice. When an Adjustment Act
was imposed on the Cuban people, promoting brain drain and the dispossession
of its educated young people, why are such brutal methods used against
illegal immigrants of Latin American and Caribbean countries?
The devastating earthquake that lashed Haiti ? the poorest country in Latin
America, which has just suffered an unprecedented natural disaster that
involved the death of more than 200,000 people ? and the terrible economic
damage that a similar phenomenon has caused in Chile, are eloquent evidence
of the dangers that threaten so-called civilization, and the need for
drastic measures that can give the human species hope for survival.
The Cold War did not bring any benefits to the world population. The immense
economic, technological and scientific power of the United States would not
be able to survive the tragedy that is hovering over the planet. President
Obama should look for the pertinent data on his computer and converse with
his most eminent scientists; he will see how far his country is from being
the model for humanity he extols.
Because he is an African American, there he suffered the affronts of
discrimination, as he relates in his book, The Dreams of My Father; there he
knew about the poverty in which tens of millions of Americans live; there he
was educated, but there he also enjoyed, as a successful professional, the
privileges of the rich middle class, and he ended up idealizing the social
system where the economic crisis, the uselessly sacrificed lives of
Americans and his unquestionable political talent gave him the electoral
victory.
Despite that, the most recalcitrant right-wing forces see Obama as an
extremist, and are threatening him by continuing to do battle in the Senate
to neutralize the effects of the health reform, and openly sabotaging him in
various states of the Union, declaring the new law unconstitutional.
The problems of our era are far more serious still.
The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international
credit agencies, under the strict control of the United States, are allowing
the large U.S. banks ? the creators of fiscal paradises and responsible for
the financial chaos on the planet ? to be kept afloat by the government of
that country in each one of the system?s frequent and growing crises.
The U.S. Federal Reserve issues at its whim the convertible currency that
pays for the wars of conquest, the profits of the military industrial
complex, the military bases distributed throughout the world and the large
investments with which transnationals control the economy in many countries
in the world. Nixon unilaterally suspended the conversion of the dollar into
gold, while the vaults of the banks in New York hold seven thousand tons of
gold, something more than 25% of the world?s reserves of this metal, a
figure which at the end of World War II stood at more than 80%. It is argued
that the [U.S.] public debt exceeds $10 trillion, more than 70% of its GDP,
like a burden that will be passed on to the new generations. That is
affirmed when, in reality, it is the world economy which is paying for that
debt with the huge spending on goods and services that it provides to
acquire U.S. dollars, with which the large transnationals of that country
have taken over a considerable part of the world?s wealth, and which sustain
that nation?s consumer society.
Anyone can understand that such a system is unsustainable and why the
wealthiest sectors in the United States and its allies in the world defend a
system sustained only on ignorance, lies and conditioned reflexes sown in
world public opinion via a monopoly of the mass media, including the
principal Internet networks.
Today, the structure is collapsing in the face of the accelerated advance of
climate change and its disastrous consequences, which are placing humanity
in an exceptional dilemma.
Wars among the powers no longer seem to be the possible solution to major
contradictions, as they were until the second half of the 20th century; but,
in their turn, they have impinged on the factors that make human survival
possible to the extent that they could bring the existence of the current
intelligent species inhabiting our planet to a premature end.
A few days ago, I expressed my conviction, in the light of dominant
scientific knowledge today, that human beings have to solve their problems
on planet Earth, given that they will never be able to cover the distance
that separates the Sun from the closest star, located four light years
distant, a speed that is equivalent to 300,000 kilometers per second ? if
there should be a planet similar to our beautiful Earth in the vicinity of
that sun.
The United States is investing fabulous sums to discover if there is water
on the planet Mars, and whether some elemental form of life existed or
exists there. Nobody knows why, unless it is out of pure scientific
curiosity. Millions of species are disappearing at an increasing rate on our
planet and its fabulous volumes of water are constantly being poisoned.
The new laws of science ? based on Einstein?s theories on energy and matter
and the Big Boom theory as the origin of the millions of constellations and
infinite stars or other hypotheses ? have given way to profound changes in
fundamental concepts such as space and time, which are occupying
theologians? attention and analyses. One of them, our Brazilian friend Frei
Betto, approaches the issue in his book La obra del artista: una vision
hol?stica del Universe (The Artist?s Work: a Holistic View of the Universe),
launched at the last International Book Fair in Havana.
Scientific advances in the last 100 years have impacted on traditional
approaches that prevailed for thousands of years in the social sciences and
even in philosophy and theology.
The interest that the most honest thinkers are taking in that new knowledge
is notable, but we know absolutely nothing of President Obama?s thinking on
the compatibility of consumer societies with science.
Meanwhile, it is worthwhile, now and then, to devote time to meditating on
those issues. Certainly human beings will not cease to dream and take things
with the due serenity and nerves of steel on that account. It is a duty ? at
least for those who chose the political profession and the noble and
essential resolve of a human society of solidarity and justice.
Fidel Castro Ruz
March 24, 2010
6:40 p.m.
Translated by Granma International
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
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/
A particularly striking example of this was Chicago’s recent Olympics debacle. As Doug Henwood points out on his blog (http://doughenwood.wordpress.
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.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Keeping Healthy
The following is an assortment of resources and info. shared with us from YDS's national office.
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.
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 andchallenge 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.
Monday, August 10, 2009
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
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).
Thursday, August 6, 2009
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.
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