Sunday, November 17, 2024
Saturday, November 9, 2024
THE COMPATIBILITY OF MATERIAL AND MORAL ARGUMENTS: BERNIE SANDERS MEETS REV. WILLIAM BARBER
Harry Targ
(The essay below was written in January 2018, I found it by accident and decided to repost it as we move beyond the 2024 elections. The ideas of Sanders and Barber still make sense to me as a vision and basis for tactics and strategy. November 9, 2024).
An article appeared recently on the internet
announcing a public conversation to be held January 19, 2018 at Duke University
between Senator Bernie Sanders and Rev. William Barber. The discussion, “The Enduring Challenge of a Moral
Economy: 50 Years After Dr. King Challenged Racism, Poverty, and Militarism,”
will be moderated by Duke University Chapel Dean Luke A. Powery.
As prior dialogues between them suggest, this
conversation will not be a debate but an articulation of parallel theoretical
and practical insights about politics by two of the most compelling progressive
leaders today.
At root, but not in so many words, Sanders offers a narrative about a class
society in which one class, the one percent, exploit and oppress another class,
the 99 percent. Implicitly this dynamic is driven by the pursuit of profit. For
him the antidote to this system is democracy and socialism.
The Sanders vision draws from the Marxist theoretical
tradition but more importantly it is infused with the historic US tradition of
populism and the socialism of such prominent and diverse political leaders as
Eugene V. Debs, Jane Addams, and Dr. Martin Luther King.
Sanders prioritizes in his analysis, the capitalist
system, autocratic political institutions, “false” ideologies that only
recognize individuals, not communities or society, and institutionalized greed
and immorality. Change, he believes, requires the mobilization of the 99
percent in the electoral arena and the streets to transform societal
institutions.
Rev. Barber’s Moral Mondays movement, begun over a
decade ago, was inspired by the dramatic rightward shift in North Carolina (and
later national) public policies which effectively increased poverty, diminished
access to health care and education, suppressed the right to vote, and in other
ways attacked workers, people of color, women, and gays. Moral Mondays
catalyzed a variety of groups who were morally outraged about the substantial
increase in varieties of pain and suffering of vast majorities of people. And
Rev. Barber realized that while groups and communities were angry over a
variety of issues, their concerns overlapped. He was convinced that various
angry constituencies could be brought together to collectively challenge an
immoral system that hurt everybody; workers, people of color, women, LBGTQ
individuals, and people of spiritual or secular traditions. Thus, the idea of
“fusion politics” was articulated.
Moral Mondays was initiated by the spiritual community
and it was motivated by the basic proposition that what was happening to
people’s lives was immoral. Rev. Barber, therefore, built a movement based upon
ethical systems derived from constitutional and/or theological premises that
promoted social justice, human rights, and human dignity.
The Sanders campaign was grounded in material
reality: economic exploitation, profit seeking at the expense of human
development, and the maintenance of an economic system based on
institutionalized avarice. Rev. Barber’s campaign was based on an ethical
reality; that is that exploitation, poverty, racism, sexism, and homophobia
were morally wrong. Although the basic constituents of each campaign varied
(Sanders supporters tended to come from the working class, labor, and young
people interested in socialism while Barber’s constituencies included leading
civil rights organizations, faith communities, and issue-oriented advocacy
groups) the constituencies overlapped.
At the dawn of 2018 (now 2025), most human beings,
workers, people of color, women, gays, and almost everyone alive who lives in a
physical space threatened by environmental change, have a stake in resisting
the shift toward an apocalyptic economic, political, cultural, militaristic,
and environmental universe. They could support a vision of a new society that
prioritizes community over individualism, participatory democracy over
authoritarianism, and human solidarity over hate.
Consequently, the movements coming out of the two
currents (Our Revolution out of the Sanders candidacy and the New Poor People’s
Campaign out of Moral Mondays) should join hands in a common struggle. Analyses
of public troubles can begin with stances on political economy or public
immorality but they cover the same ground AND they propose the same solution; a
caring, participatory, just society.
So the vision of this latest dialogue between Senator
Sanders and Rev. Barber should be inspirational. It should stimulate both
communities to act in unity.
That is the political task of 2025 and beyond.
Thursday, November 7, 2024
ESSAYS ON THE RISE OF TRUMPISM: ECONOMICS, POLITICS, RACISM
Harry Targ
1.The Trump Phenomena: How Does It Apply
to 2024
The comments below have
been adapted and edited from an earlier assessment of the constellation of
political forces that led to the surprise victory and support for Donald Trump,
first in 2016 and now.
Trump’s core constituency all along has been sectors
of finance capital, insurance, real estate, the military/industrial complex,
and drug companies whose profits have come from domestic investments or sales
and speculation overseas. It also includes portions of small and medium-sized
businesses whose viabilities have been threatened, not by big government, but
by the further monopolization of the economy.
In addition, some workers displaced by the underside
of neoliberalism, including capital flight, automation, and trade, have
supported Trump because they saw no positive economic future in a Hillary
Clinton presidency in 2016 or a Kamala Harris presidency in 2024. Finally, the
Trump constituency has included a percentage of voters who are ideological
legatees of white supremacy.
Therefore, the Trump coalition from 2016 to today has consisted of fractions of
capital who gain from a more muscular and economically nationalist policy
agenda, marginalized portions of the so-called “middle class,” sectors of the
working class, and portions of all of these whose political learning has
centered on the history and consciousness of white supremacy (“make America
great again”).
Trump’s major adversaries have come from a core sector of the ruling class that
has dominated the policy process at least since the 1980s, the neoliberal
globalists. In response to the squeeze on profits of the 1970s, the capitalist
elites began to promote a dramatic shift in the character of the economy in the
direction of “neoliberalism.” Drawing upon an economic ideology with a long
history from Adam Smith, to Milton Friedman, to mainstream neoclassical
economists of the late twentieth century, every administration from Carter to
Trump has engaged in deregulation of economic life, reduced or modified government
programs that help the poor and working classes, weakened rights of workers and their unions, and the privatization of public
institutions. The Republicans have advocated the privatization of Social
Security and the postal service. Note these policies have been tepidly opposed
by sectors of the Democratic Party at the national level but have been fiercely
institutionalized in many of the 50 states, mostly red states.
The neoliberals in both Democratic and Republican
administrations “went global;” developing a network of economic ties via trade
agreements, the globalization of production, and integrating corporate boards.
Capitalist elites from every continent began to develop common approaches to
national policy via such informal organizations as the Trilateral Commission,
meetings of the G7 countries, and the annual World Economic Forum.
Debt poor countries were the first to be forced to
embrace neoliberal policies, followed by the former Socialist Bloc countries,
then the Western European social democracies, and finally the United States. A
significant portion of this qualitative change in the way capitalism works has
involved increased financial speculation (as a proportion of the total gross
domestic product), dramatic increases in global inequality in wealth and
income, and increasing economic marginalization of workers, particularly women,
people of color and immigrants.
Candidate Donald Trump in 2016 orchestrated a campaign
against the neoliberal globalists who dominated the political process in the
United States since the 1980s. While he epitomizes finance capital, albeit
domestic as well as foreign, and represents the less than one percent who rule
the world, he presented himself as a spokesperson for the economically
marginalized. He attacked some of the capitalist class of which he is a member.
In addition, he blamed the marginalization of the vast majority on some of their
own; people of color, women, and immigrants. Of course, this was the
centerpiece of his 2024 campaign, drawing on the history of White Supremacy and
American Exceptionalism embedded in US history.
Resistance to Trump, 2017 to 2020
Since the November 2016 election, masses of people
mobilized in a variety of ways against the agenda of the newly elected
president. The women’s marches and rallies of January 21, 2017 and
International Women’s Day on March 8 were historic in size and global reach. During
the rest of Trump’s first term, there were huge mobilizations to reduce the use
of fossil fuels and prevent climate disaster, to support immigrant rights, to
provide basic health care, and around police killings.
A multiplicity of groups formed or increased in size
since January, 2017: former Bernie Sanders supporters; anti-racists
mobilizations particularly against police violence; those calling for sanctuary
cities and defending the human rights of immigrants; progressive Democratic
organizations; climate change activists, and women’s organizations.
Traditional left organizations, such as the Democratic
Socialists of America, benefiting from the Sanders campaign, tripled in size
between 2016 and 2020. And organizations such as The American Civil Liberties
Union and Planned Parenthood reported large increases in financial
contributions. Since the 2016 election the mobilization of millions of
people bolstered the spirits of progressives everywhere. They felt that at this point in history a new progressivism was about to be born.
But the story has been made complicated by the nature of the opposition to
Trumpism.
Oppositions to Trumpism: Neoliberal and
Progressive
Paradoxically, while 1996-2020 was “a teachable
moment” as well as a movement building moment, progressive forces continued to
struggle to be organized. In and around the Democratic Party there were
conflicts over the vision and the politics it ought to embrace at that time and
in the coming period. The Sanders supporters, inside and outside the Democratic
Party, and progressive Congress persons such as the “Squad” marshalled much
support for a progressive agenda: single-payer health care, a green jobs
agenda, protecting the environment, tax reform, building not destroying
immigrant rights, defending women’s rights, and cutting military spending. With
the brutal policies advocated and already instituted by the Trump
administration, progressive democrats and their allies on the left worked
mightily to articulate a program, and create some organizational unity to
challenge Trumpism. And that struggle remained relevant after the 2020 election
of Joe Biden, who supported some of these policies. But candidate Trump in 2020
received in excess of 70 million votes for reelection and exceeded that number
in 2024.
The dilemma for progressives is that opposition to
Trumpism and all it stands for has been and must be a key component of
reigniting a progressive majority in the coming decade. But if it does not
address the fundamental failures of the neoliberal agenda, including
challenging neoliberal globalization, including support for war, convert
interventions, and militarism, the current phase of capitalism, Trump’s
grassroots support will continue as he occupies the White House in 2025.
Working people who ordinarily would vote for more liberal candidates for public
office need to believe that future candidates from the local to the national level
are prepared to address the issues, often economic, that concern them.
Therefore, the fundamental project for progressives today, 2024, includes
mobilizing against Trumpism while articulating an alternative political and
economic analysis of the current state of capitalist development. In concrete
terms, this approach means challenging the legitimacy of the legacy of the
Trump administration and its allies in Congress while articulating the
perspective that mainstream Democrats, the neoliberal globalists, are part of
the problem, not the solution.
This alternative analysis requires a bold challenge
inside the electoral arena and in the streets that calls for progressive
reforms: single-payer health care; cutting the military-budget; creating
government programs to put people to work on living wage jobs in
infrastructure, social services, and public education; addressing climate
change: and fiscal and regulatory policies that reduce the grotesque inequality
of wealth and income which has increased since the 1980s. It might
boldly include discussions of a guaranteed income for all and/or the right to a
job for every member of the society.
The tasks are challenging but another world is still possible.
2.Transforming Politics and Elections
Writers have identified the onset of capitalism with
slavery, land grabs, brutal violence, and globalization. Out of this came an
industrial revolution that over two hundred years rearranged the processes of
extraction of raw materials, manufacturing, the global distribution of goods
and services, and the accumulation of incredible wealth by small global ruling
classes and the expansion of human misery for the vast majority. In the
twentieth century, banks assumed great power and control of national economies
and political systems.
Changes in the global political economy gave rise to
revolutionary ferment, socialist systems, and massive campaigns demanding
economic justice including the right to form trade unions. In the twentieth
century governments were forced to adjust the capital accumulation process to
accommodate some worker demands. A small number of socialist states struggled
to create new economic and political systems. From the 1930s to the 1970s the
United States responded to massive social movements by carrying out modest
political and economic reforms which combined substantial growth and ruling
class wealth with policies to redistribute some of it to meet the needs of
workers.
By the 1970s, because of declining profit rates,
over-production and under-consumption, a state fiscal crisis, rising oil
prices, and expanding worker power, the “golden age” of the welfare capitalist
state was dismantled. Of particular significance was the shift from a
manufacturing- based economy to financial speculation. To accommodate finance
capital President Ronald Reagan in 1980 embraced a series of economic policies
which transformed the system of welfare state capitalism, initiated in the
period of the New Deal in the 1930s to a new economic program referred to as
neoliberalism.
Reagan gutted government programs, reduced taxes for
the rich, launched a frontal assault on trade unions, and increased military
budgets. The official rationale for the new public policies was that
“government was not the solution; government was the problem.” Inspired by
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in England, and promoted by Western-dominated
economic institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank,
the so-called “Washington consensus” was imposed on the world: forcing virtually
every country to cut government spending, privatize public institutions, and to
produce for global rather than local markets. U.S. capital
outsourced manufacturing to countries with cheap labor and expanded its direct
foreign investment.
In the United States political arena, pockets of
resistance to neoliberalism, or austerity, grew. The national
Democratic Party, for the most part, embraced the Reagan Revolution but vibrant
presidential campaigns of Reverend Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 challenged
the direction of change in the United States. Jackson launched a movement, the
Rainbow Coalition, which was designed to mobilize workers, people of color,
women, and youth to reverse the panoply of Reagan policies. Despite enormous
popularity, the Jackson campaign could not break through the wall of
collaboration of the Democratic Party.
On the Republican side, right-wing populist Pat
Buchanan challenged the Reagan consensus, particularly on so-called free trade
in 1992. Others, such as Ross Perot, ran for president primarily on the basis
of opposition to the yet to be approved North America Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA). Both efforts were motivated by sectors of capital that were domestic
in character, in contradistinction to the growing primacy of globalized
financial capital. 1992 Democratic candidate Bill Clinton remained cautious on
NAFTA as he promised American workers that he would represent their interests.
Upon election, Clinton proceeded to cajole
recalcitrant Democrats in Congress to vote “yes” on NAFTA. Over the next twenty
years NAFTA led to the loss of at least a million jobs in the United States and
created a downward pressure on workers’ wages. Meanwhile the Mexican economy
declined, relying on growing food imports and massive migration. Clinton
continued the Reagan era programs by cutting modest but critical welfare
programs, supporting efforts to increase the incarceration of masses of people
of color who lost economic opportunity because of the neoliberal policy agenda,
and worked to expand the so-called neoliberal-framed trade agenda by helping to
create the World Trade Organization. While there was high tech job growth
during the Clinton years (1992-2000), real wages for most workers continued
their steady decline, manufacturing jobs continued to go overseas, and due to
aggressive United States interventions economic migration from Latin American
and Asia increased.
Reflecting on this historical overview from a
political perspective several conclusions seem clear. First, the economic and
political characteristics of the “golden age” of the United States, that is the
growth and distribution of wealth benefiting workers between the late 1930s and
the late 1960s, were anomalies.
Second, as a result of the economic crises of the
1970s, politics shifted from support of government programs for the many to
austerity and wealth for the few. The Reagan Revolution of the 1980s
constituted a qualitative shift from welfare to growth and from providing some
benefits to the working class to extracting more from them to increase profits.
The Reagan Revolution expanded the economic shift to
financialization. Ideologically, pluralities of Americans were
convinced that the economic problems they faced were because of too much
government.
By the 1990s, the pluralities drawn to Reaganomics
increased to majorities as a result of the support given to it by the Clinton
Administration. NAFTA, mass incarceration, and welfare reform supported by
“third wave” Democrats like Clinton legitimized the Reagan Revolution.
Based on this extrapolation from economic and
political history, the 2016 presidential election campaign on the Democratic
Party side was critical. Candidate Hillary Clinton spoke for the interests of
financial speculation, trade regimes, privatization of public institutions, and
accommodations with Reagan descendants in the United States Congress.
Candidate Bernie Sanders, however, represented a
fundamentally different public policy agenda; one that began with the most
marginalized rather than the economic elite. It presumed that by bolstering the
economic opportunities of workers, the poor, people of color, women, and youth,
a buoyant economic recovery could occur that “trickles up” from the base. His
program endorsed some redistribution of wealth and the provision of health
care, education, a job, and adequate housing as basic human rights. His vision
also was and is of a “moral economy,” one in which every person is provided
with the opportunity to achieve all of her or his human potential that is
possible in the twenty-first century.
Questions remain about whether a “political” and
“moral” revolution is fully achievable without fundamental structural change in
the U.S. and the global political economy, but there is no question that the
Sanders campaigns of 2016 and 2020 represented an effort to reverse the policies established
by Presidents Reagan and Bill Clinton during the late twentieth century.
3.Some of the
Material Reasons for the Current Crisis and Alternatives
Introduction
The twenty-first century economic reality has created a
new class society with a dominant class of concentrated wealth at one
extreme and a growing class of economically insecure in the
other. More and more of those in the latter have become political activists, particularly among the
young, women, and people of color
episodically in the twenty-first century.
This new class society in the United States parallels similar economic changes in both rich and poor countries. As a result of the changes in global and domestic economies social movements have arisen everywhere. From Cairo, Egypt to Madison, Wisconsin, from Greece to Chile, from Syriza and Podemos, to Minneapolis, to the Sanders campaigns, the cry for change, often a demand for socialism, has spread. The outcome of this new activism remains unclear after November 4, 2024, but the prospects for positive social and political change remain possible despite the 2024 election.
The New Class Society
In
1999, Robert Perrucci and Earl Wysong published the first of four editions of a
perceptive sociological analysis that identified what the authors identified as
“the new class society.” They employed a Marxist and Weberian analysis of class
that combined workers’ relationships to the means of production with their
organizational position.
Using data reflecting their synthetic definition of
class, these authors concluded that the popular portrait of a U.S. class system
consisting of a small ruling class, a large “middle class,” and a small
percentage of economically and politically marginalized people was, by the
1970s, no longer an accurate way to describe society. The class system of the
days of relative prosperity from the 1940s until the late 1960s, which looked
like a diamond with a broad middle, had become a class system looking like a “double
diamond.”
In the new class society, the first diamond, the top one, consists of the
“privileged class” composed of a “super-class,” “credentialed class managers,”
and “professionals.” All together these representatives of privilege constitute
about 20 percent of the population. All the others constitute a “new working
class,” some living in relative comfort but most engaged in wage labor with the
constant threat of job loss and wage stagnation, some modestly self-employed,
and a large part-time labor force. This is the second diamond representing 80
percent of the population.
In short, the political economy that emerged nearly
fifty years ago is one in which a shrinking ruling class that owns or controls
capital has accumulated enormous wealth and dominates today’s economy. At the
other end an increasingly insecure working class in terms of jobs and income
has grown exponentially.
Peter Temin, an MIT economist, confirms the earlier
sociological work in his new book “The Vanishing Middle Class.” This book also
identifies an emerging two-class society with wealth and power concentrated at
the top and poverty and powerlessness at the bottom. In what Temin calls the
“dual economy,” the ruling class consists of the finance, technology, and
electronics sectors (FTE), representing the top twenty percent as opposed to
“the low wage sector;” clerks, assemblers, laborers, and service workers who
provide the comforts and profits for the top twenty percent.
In summary, both volumes suggest that in terms of
wealth and power conflicts of interest have to be seen not between the one
percent and everyone else but between the twenty percent who own/control/ or
administer the capitalist system and the eighty percent who constitute
increasingly marginalized labor serving the interests of the wealthy and
powerful.
The Precariat
Guy Standing, a British economist, has written about
the “precariat,” a growing portion of the worldwide work force, Temin’s “ low
wage sector,” who live in economic insecurity. The term, precariat, refers to a
synthesis of the idea of the proletariat, workers who sell their ability to
provide labor to a capitalist for a wage, and precarity, or economic existence
that is unpredictable, marginal, and insecure. Job scarcity and wage stagnation
increasingly are experienced by workers with professional skills and credentials
as well as the traditional working class.
Standing argues that all across the globe workers,
particularly young workers, live in situations of economic insecurity and
unpredictability, irrespective of credentials, that in the past guaranteed jobs
and living wages. Of course, the precariat do not have any of the guarantees of
union membership and their skills leave them often working on a part-time
contract basis and in isolation from fellow workers. In addition the precariat
include workers in the “informal sector.” These are workers who often will do
anything to survive from day to day: for example, day labor, street vending,
drug dealing, petty crime, or prostitution.
Accumulation by Dispossession
David Harvey, a Marxist geographer, revisited Marx’s
description of primitive accumulation in his book, “The Seventeen
Contradictions of Capitalism.” Capitalism was created on the backs
of slaves, the slaughter of indigenous people, and the expropriation of already
occupied land. In other words, through kidnapping, forced labor, slaughter, and
occupation, capitalism was born. The expropriation of resources, people, and
land led to the accumulation of wealth that spurred development and growth.
Harvey then argues that the primitive accumulation of
the fifteenth century is similar in outcome to the “accumulation by
dispossession,” of the twenty-first century. Today workers lose their property
and their personal income in a debt system that sucks their scarce earnings and
property. Examples include defaults on mortgage loans and bank repossessions
and governmental decisions to confiscate property for purposes of urban
redevelopment. Accumulation by dispossession, while not as violent as in the era
of primitive accumulation, has the same outcome: expropriating the value of the
work of the many for the riches of the few.
Growing Economic Inequality and Urban Decay
and Gentrification
Virtually every study of the distribution of wealth
and income in the United States demonstrates a dramatic increase in inequality.
Also studies sponsored by international organizations report that despite
declines in worldwide absolute poverty, the trajectory of growing inequality in
wealth and income is a central feature of the global economy. In addition,
declining inequality between countries, such as that between China and the
countries of the European Union, have occurred while inequalities within these
countries have widened. In the United States income and wealth inequality which
declined from the 1930s until the 1960s has returned to levels not seen since
the 1920s.
The patterns of inequality are visible in geographic
spaces as well. As more and more people are forced to migrate to cities, what
Mike Davis calls “global slums,” demarcations of areas of opulence
and poverty become visible. Members of the top twenty percent are consumers of
expensive living spaces, elite schools, and vibrant recreational facilities.
They also lobby for public funds to create recreational attractions that entice
tourists to bolster local economies. Gentrified city spaces are protected by fences
and police.
On the other hand, the bottom eighty percent live in
varying degrees of poverty. Housing stocks crumble, neighborhoods are
overcrowded, public services are increasingly underfunded, and populations are
left to lead lives of quiet desperation and intra-community violence. In the
new class society different sectors of the population live in isolation from
each other, except when political conflict and violence spread across
communities.
Also in the new class society youth become pessimistic
about their futures. Despite the fact that media and academic studies claim
that upward mobility is tied to scholastic achievement, the schools they attend
are underfunded. And the cost of higher education, the main source of
credentialing the young, has become prohibitively expensive. For those who
accumulate massive student debt the experience feels like a modern-day variant
of indentured servitude. Jobs for those who do not attend college are scarce and
reside primarily in the low-wage service sector. And so-called STEM jobs
(science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) are not as plentiful as
college promotional brochures suggest. Along with the precarity of the
traditional working class is a rising precarity of a new working class of
highly educated but unemployable young people.
Racism
Manning Marable published a perceptive essay in 2006
entitled “Globalization and Racialization.” In it he adapted, based upon the
twenty-first century global political economy, the prophetic statement by W. E.
B. Du Bois that the problem of the twentieth century was the color line.
Marable suggested that the new global political economy was based upon capital
flight, as well-paid manufacturing jobs left the United States for sweatshops
in the Global South. Unemployment increased in the United States.
Downward pressures on wages and benefits paid workers in poor countries reduced
the economic conditions of US workers. The decline of organized labor in the
United States and the Global South weakened the bargaining position of workers
everywhere.
Marable suggested that the people most vulnerable to
the massive changes in the global economy were the already marginalized people
of color. Unemployment rates in poor and Black communities skyrocketed,
particularly among youth. The new gentrification and shift in politics from
welfare state capitalism to austerity led to declining public services in poor
communities. This has had particularly devastating impacts on educational
institutions.
With declining economic opportunities, a growing sense
of hopelessness, draconian government policies such as the wars on drugs and
crime, literally millions of African Americans, and other people of color, have
become victims of mass incarceration, what Michelle Alexander calls “The New
Jim Crow.” Finally, many states have laws that prevent former felons from
voting. The Marable framework, which he refers to as “global apartheid” and
“the New Racial Domain,” thus links globalization of production to racism;
particularly growing unemployment and urban decay, criminalization, mass
incarceration, and voter disenfranchisement.
Neoliberalism: the Latest Stage of
Capitalism
The so-called “golden age of the US economy,” 1945 to
1968, may have been an anomaly in American history. The United States emerged
from World War Two as the economic and military hegemonic power. The war led to
a fourfold increase in United States trade compared with the late 1930s. In
1945 it produced about 2/3 of all the industrial goods manufactured in the
world and US investments constituted about ¾ of all the world’s investments.
With fears of stagnation accompanying the war’s end, the Truman Administration
launched a massive program of military investment to forestall declining demand
for US goods and services.
In terms of international relations, the United States
played an instrumental role in establishing powerful international economic
institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. It helped
rebuild an anti-communist Europe through a massive financial aid system. It
later established foreign assistance programs for newly “independent” countries
requiring their commitment to the maintenance of a global capitalist system.
At home a United States economy was created that
stimulated high mass consumption. People were socialized to believe that their
self-worth was determined by the quantity and quality of goods and services
they consumed. The new communication medium, television, educated viewers as to
the products that were available (as well as the enemies overseas who were the
threat to the domestic consumer society).
However, by the late 1960s, markets were glutted and
demand for goods lessened even though wages and benefits for some workers
increased. Federal and state governments had been increasing services such as
education, health care, and transportation. Both profit rates and consumer
demand declined. Growing political protest against the Vietnam war and racism
across the country added to emerging economic stagnation.
By the 1970s, the squeeze on profits and reduced
demand, was exacerbated by Middle East wars and large increases in the price of
oil, which made some corporations and banks richer while economic stagnation,
including both high inflation and unemployment, ensued. At this point, the
United States economy began a shift to what David Harvey calls
“financialization.” A small number of banks and corporations, mostly US but
also European and Japanese, began to shift from encouraging manufacturing
growth to financial speculation. A “new” debt system was encouraged, one in
which oil-poor countries borrowed more and more money from bankers to pay for
continued oil imports. In exchange debtor nations would promise to carry out
new economic policies at home: cut government spending, privatize public
institutions, deregulate domestic economies, and shift economic activities from
production for domestic use to production for sale in the world market.
Thus, the new era of “neoliberal globalization” was
initiated. The new system was driven by financial speculators, declining
autonomy of nation-states, and the downsizing of wages and benefits everywhere.
At the same time rates of profit for speculators increased and smaller numbers
of banks and other financial institutions increasingly dominated the global
economy. This system was initiated in the Global South, spread to Western
Europe and after the fall of the Soviet Union and its allies to Eastern Europe.
In the 1980s neoliberalism was embraced by Prime Minister Thatcher in Great
Britain and President Ronald Reagan in the United States. The best way to
characterize policy in the age of neoliberal globalization is “austerity,”
reducing the economic opportunities of the many for the benefit of the few.
Neoliberal globalization is the systemic source of the
new class society (or the dual economy), the rise of the precariat,
accumulation by dispossession, growing inequality and urban gentrification, and
the expansion of racism.
A Revitalized Interest in Socialism in the
Twenty-First Century
As history has shown, the accumulation of wealth and
power by ruling elites, or dominant classes, never goes unchecked. The drive
for domination breeds resistance. And resistance takes many forms: traditional
revolutionary practices, building alternative economic and political
institutions, non-violent refusal to obey the institutions that support
economic misery and political repression, and where practical, participation in
electoral processes. Social change is many-sided and several strategies together
are most likely to bring positive results.
History shows also that struggles for change are
broadly political, require organization, mass mobilization, and education.
Change requires analyses of the causes of the problems needing
solution and a vision of what a better future might look like. And
there is an inextricable connection between the causes of the problems, the
tactics needed to change the situation, and a vision of a better society.
The analyses above highlight the changing character of
the global political economy, emerging class structures, and the growing
vulnerabilities of literally millions of people: young and old: Black, Brown,
and White; female and male; gay and straight; and at all levels of education
and training. At the root of the problem is the capitalist system, a system
whose reason for being is the maximization of profit. People today are talking
about a new society, a socialist society. Socialism implies a political economy
in which people contribute their talents, their labors, for the public good and
share equitably in the product of their labor. And socialism presumes
democratic participation in work places, the political system, and the
community.
References
Robert A. Perrucci and Earl Wysong. The New Class
Society, Rowman and Littlefield, 1999 (the first of four editions).
Peter Temin, The Vanishing Middle Class:
Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, MIT Press, 2017.
Victor Tan Chen, “The Dual Economy,” Working Class Perspectives, https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/the-dual-economy/
Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous
Class, Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.
David Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the
End of Capitalism, Oxford University Press, 2015.
Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Verso, 2017.
Harry Targ, Challenging Late Capitalism,
Neoliberal Globalization and Militarism, Lulu.com, 2006.
Manning Marable, “Globalization and
Racialization,” ZNET, zcom.org, March 2, 2009.
Various articles on political economy, social
movements, peace and justice in Harry Targ, Diary of a Heartland
Radical, www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com
Monday, November 4, 2024
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY WITH CUBA A MUST IN OUR FUTURE
The conference linked below dealt with the Cuban economic/electrical/hurricane crisis and the need for our solidarity with Cuban solidarity organizations to continue and expand our work. I was convinced again that our work after the election should include international solidarity, irrespective of the election winner on Tuesday. The fight for social and economic justice is also a fight for international solidarity and against growing imperialism. In Cuba’s case, ending the economic blockade remains central.
In sum, I urge us after the
election to add anti-imperialism and militarism, and demands for peace to our
workload.
But, I warn you that the webinar, linked below, was 1 ½ hours long. You may choose to delete this message and/or to watch just a bit of it, including an update of what the Cubans are facing and/or examples of ongoing solidarity work.
*******************************************************************************
From: Merri Ansara <merri.ansara@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 2, 2024 11:08 AM
Subject: Follow up - October 29 meeting on humanitarian & material
assistance to Cuba
Dear Friends,
Thank you to the 58 of you who participated in the meeting
Thursday evening, the 29th to discuss humanitarian and material assistance, and
the 106 who registered. With this email, we send you the video of the
meeting, as well as a list of the organizations that presented their
work. We are aware that there are other organizations doing this work as
well, and we have added a couple; we ask you also to send us your information
and we will forward that along.
First of all, here is a link to the video of the meeting.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LFseIrznGrRYND91VsLqBJCoR185ztbP/view?usp=drive_link
We decided in the meeting that we would like to set up a web page listing where people can make material and humanitarian donations and make that available to organizations such as the National Network on Cuba and others, as well as set up social media links, the idea being to distribute it as far and wide as possible and help us reach people who care about Cuba, or have visited Cuba and want to be able to help out while we continue also to fight to have Cuba removed from the SSOT, the Trump/Biden sanctions lifted and the embargo of Cuba lifted. Three people stepped up to help design the web page.
We also decided that we would meet again on November 26th, 7pm. Please stay tuned for the meeting info and registration.
We also have created a WhatsApp chat for those who want to participate -- with it we can share information, updates, and links to organizations involved in humanitarian and material assistance to Cuba. You can join here: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Fg3LZScRI7B9O7XV1oE0LR
We welcome your feedback and comments on the meeting as well as letting us know of anything we have missed in this follow up report.
Several organizations presented their work
The People's Forum
Focuses on advocacy and humanitarian aid for Cuba. link here
Canadian Network on Cuba
Campaigns include the CUBACAN CARES campaign focused on providing
medical sutures and supplies. link here
PazAmor
Coordinates shipments of medicine and medical supplies to
hospitals in Cuba.
Not Just Tourists
Provides free suitcases filled with medical supplies carried by
travelers to Cuba.
Hothouse
Organizing concerts and events to raise funds for Cuba, with a
focus on cultural exchange. link here
May Day Brigade
Facilitates the delivery of supplies and funds to Cuba, aiming to
double their contributions each year, as part of their annual brigade to Cuba. link here
Global Health Partners
Focuses on global health initiatives, including support for
medical aid to Cuba. link here
Levántate por Cuba
Supports various humanitarian efforts and advocacy for Cuba. Email levantateporcuba@gmail.com for
ways to get involved.
Art Roots MambÃ
Initiatives: Cultural exchange projects between artists in Cuba
and the U.S., focusing on empowerment and mutual support. Donates art supplies
and musical instruments. link here
IFCO/Pastors for Peace
Longstanding Peace Caravans and other donation drives. link here
Friends of the Episcopal Church in Cuba
Has long supported projects in Cuba. link here
Additional organizations providing donations to Cuba
Cuba Partners Network
Working with Cuba partner Presbyterian churches for the past 30
years, among other activities, sends containers of food assistance. link here
Friends of Caritas Cuba
Works directly with the Catholic Church and its Caritas
organization in Cuba.
As a number of people on the call expressed, we want always to link our work in humanitarian and material assistance with advocacy to remove Cuba from the list of so-called state sponsors of terrorism (SSOT) and lift the 243 Trump/Biden sanctions, both of which are in the hands of the U.S. president and move towards lifting the embargo of Cuba, which is in the hands of the U.S. congress. You can take action right now. Urge your members of Congress to insist on this with the current president, who will be in office until the end of year, here. You can call the White House on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 am to 3 pm est at this number 202-456-1111, or make a written comment, here. If it's useful, here's a sample letter, a bit outdated, that you can shorten and use to write your own.
If you would like to join the Cuba Advocacy monthly meeting,
please write to Liam Crissam. The Cuba Working Group sponsored by the Latin America Working
Group, was formed in 2021 by some 25 organizations to share
analyses, ideas and projects advocating for lifting the sanctions, removing
Cuba from SSOT and other measures that move the US again towards meaningful
re-engagement and normalization. The next monthly meeting will be November 14
at 4 pm est.
With that, hoping to see you at 7 pm est on November 26 at a continuation of the humanitarian and material assistance meeting, or November 14 at 4 pm est for the advocacy meeting – or both.
Merriam Ansara and Tony Van Der Meer
Massachusetts Peace Action
PS
The National Network on Cuba has its annual meeting on November 15-17 - more
info and register here
Sunday, November 3, 2024
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY IS A MUST FOR OUR FUTURE
Dear Friends,
They identified two immediate programs to mobilize against US support for Israeli genocide; one was to support the Sanders resolution demanding an end to US military support for Israel and the other campaigns targeting public institutions that buy Israel bonds to dispose of them. The webinars also presented two local campaigns as illustrations.
I strongly recommend that we in the Socialist Left add international solidarity to our work after the election and join with our comrades in JVP to struggle against war, militarism, and imperialism. Of course, the immediate struggle is to oppose Israeli genocide.
But, I warn you that the webinar, linked below, was 1 ½ hours long. You may choose to delete this message and/or to watch just a bit of it, including an update on JVP policy recommendations.
Member of the Committees of
Correspondence (CCDS) Peace and Solidarity Committee
ere's some next steps to take.
|
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
Harry Targ Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) A Presentation at Fort Lauderdale, Occupy Labor Outreach, Marc...
-
Harry Targ (The New York Times is trying to link criticism of Israel's policy with antisemitism. The corporate media continues to crea...
-
From Upton Sinclair's 'Goose Step' to the Neoliberal University (lulu.com) Table of Contents Introduction Chapter On...
