Harry Targ
Congress on Thursday, June 18 voted to authorize a $106 billion military supplemental appropriation, largely for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is in addition to a 2009 defense budget already in excess of $500 billion.
This supplemental is just the latest way in which the “permanent war economy” is being perpetuated. The PWE has its roots in the World War II plans to keep alive the partnership of corporations, the government, and the military in the post-war world. The PWE was the way to maintain demand for goods and services that would continue economic growth, capital accumulation, and enormous profits for the biggest corporations in the world.
The PWE required demonic enemies, “threats to national security,” to justify the expenditure over the next forty to fifty years of three trillion dollars. The “communist threat,” “the war on drugs,” the threat of “terrorism” and the mystical Al-Qaeda, has kept a pliant public in a state of fear ever since. By the time of the Korean War, the U.S. government, as a national security state, was premised on the prioritization of military spending over spending on any other public issue.
Along with the security threat, Americans have been told that there is a connection between continuous military spending and a robust high job, high wage economy. By the 1960s, one in ten jobs was directly or indirectly connected to military spending. The economies of whole communities were based on corporations engaged in the arms industry. Further, economic recoveries from recessions in the early 1960s and 1980s were largely the resultant of huge boosts in military spending and adventurism abroad.
In the end, United States foreign policy has been significantly driven by this PWE. The impacts on people everywhere has been horrific. At least 100,000 U.S. soldiers have died in military actions since the end of World War II and three or more times that figure disabled from participation in war. Almost ten million citizens from countries in which the U.S. had some military operations died, from the Greek civil war in the 1940s, to Korea, Vietnam, to Guatemala, and Iran in the 1950s and 1960s, to El Salvador, Nicaragua, Angola, Ethiopia, and Cambodia and Afghanistan in the 1980s, to Serbia, Somalia in the 1990s, to Afghanistan and Iraq in this century.
Along with the death and destruction and perpetual fear, the PWE has failed in its promise of economic growth. A whole array of studies have shown that public and private investments for non-military purposes, education, health care, transportation, consumer goods, and environmental protection for example, would have led to more secure jobs, research and development, and improved quality of life than investment in war. Looking at the history of the last several decades bursts in military spending used to have short term economic stimulation. That no longer is the case.
The National Priorities Project, http://nationalpriorities.org,
provides data on the costs of military spending for wars on Iraq and Afghanistan by nation, state, and congressional district. In addition, they estimate what non-military comparable funding would provide for such political units.
For example, residents of the Fourth Congressional District of Indiana (represented by war-hawk Steven Buyer), paid $1.7 billion for wars on Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. This money could have provided residents of the district the following instead of investment in the PWE:
496,529 people with health care for one year
1,593,167 homes with renewable electricity for one year
26,094 music and arts teachers for one year
224,694 scholarships for university students for one year
17,550 affordable housing units
250,705 head start places for children for one year
29,362 elementary school teachers for one year
And, of course, the transfer of some of this money from the military to these other programs would mean much less unemployment than the 9.2 per cent currently experienced by residents of Lafayette, Indiana, the largest city in the district.
The War Resisters League has a sensible list of demands that would reduce the threat to national security, help overcome the current economic crisis, and begin the process of environmental rejuvenation. Their list includes:
-Slash the military budget
-End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
-Close foreign bases and bring troops home
-Dismantle nuclear weapons and related systems
-Adopt a foreign policy based on multilateral negotiation and not military might”
In sum, thinking about the PWE necessitates thinking about the fundamental interconnections of military and foreign policy issues with those involving education, health care, the environment, transportation, and economic growth. Also, thinking about the PWE involves thinking about the fundamental connections between global, national, and community policies. Progressives must begin to make the connections between policies and issues, and between problems in different geographic spaces.
These connections are clear in ethical terms as well. As Dr. Martin Luther King suggested: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Friday, June 19, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
PITTSBURGH, AMERICA
Harry Targ
I recently attended the Working Class Studies Association national meeting at the University of Pittsburgh. Along with the usual array of academic panels and plenary lectures, the conference program included a history of Pittsburgh in words and music and short excerpts from plays about the Sago mine disaster and Thomas Bell’s classic novel, Out of This Furnace, about the steel town Braddock Pennsylvania. The playlets were accompanied by inspiring labor folksinger Anne Feeney and a group of her musical friends. In addition conferees had the option of viewing a powerful documentary of the life of socialist/feminist worker, writer, and teacher, Tillie Olsen, Tillie Olsen-A Heart in Action. Finally, along with drama, music, and film, conference attendees were offered tours of significant historic sites pertaining to workers. I took the tour to Homestead and Braddock, Pennsylvania.
These various experiences underscored for me in an emotional way a variety of impressions I had about capital and labor in conflict and profit and power versus humanity only as a series of abstractions. First, the iron law of capital accumulation involved killing, enslaving, and exploiting whatever population was needed to achieve ever greater rates of profit. Original inhabitants of Western Pennsylvania were tricked, used, and killed to create a new land made ready for the industrial revolution. The trees were cut, the land was plowed, and the beauty of the landscape destroyed for the construction of factories. For much of the twentieth century the community of Homestead was shaped and shrunk to accommodate the huge steel works; three miles long, 300 acres, and over the century employing over 160,000 workers. After the steel mill closed, the land lay unused for a decade before a huge shopping mall was built. It surrounded 12 smoke stacks which remained to provide a meager clue as to what the land had been used for during the prior century.
During much of the 100 year domination by big steel of the Greater Pittsburgh region, workers engaged in dangerous backbreaking work while inhaling smoke and soot-filled air every day of their lives. The mighty steel craft union of the nineteenth century was busted in 1892 and workers did not win the right to form unions until the United Steel Workers of America (CIO) was formed in the late 1930s. From the shop floor to the streets life was hard for the many so the few could accumulate more wealth.
Second, the working class, despite leading lives of near desperation felt pride in their work, shared a sense of community with neighbors on the shop floor and in the streets, and celebrated their lives, their families, religions, and their country as best they could. It was clear from the plays, the music, the tour guides, and the scholars and trade unionists from the area that people had powerful attachments to their history and the place that was theirs: Homestead, Pittsburgh, Braddock.
Third, despite the brutality of capitalism, the magnitude of exploitation, the defilement of the environment, and the sheer power represented by militias, the Pinkertons, the police, the National Guard, class consciousness survived. It is a consciousness about the capitalist system, the solidarity of the working class, and at the same time a consciousness about place.
My experiences at this conference reminded me of the need to understand at the most human level what capitalism means to communities of people; how it shapes people’s work and leisure lives; how it creates physical space and affects the natural environment; and how workers have responded and continue to respond to the circumstances that have shaped their lives.
In the end, our political analyses have to include political economy, environment, geography and space, and consciousness. Practical political work in our communities must be based on our understanding of the ways in which the general features of economic, political, and social life intersect with particular structures, spaces, and local histories.
I recently attended the Working Class Studies Association national meeting at the University of Pittsburgh. Along with the usual array of academic panels and plenary lectures, the conference program included a history of Pittsburgh in words and music and short excerpts from plays about the Sago mine disaster and Thomas Bell’s classic novel, Out of This Furnace, about the steel town Braddock Pennsylvania. The playlets were accompanied by inspiring labor folksinger Anne Feeney and a group of her musical friends. In addition conferees had the option of viewing a powerful documentary of the life of socialist/feminist worker, writer, and teacher, Tillie Olsen, Tillie Olsen-A Heart in Action. Finally, along with drama, music, and film, conference attendees were offered tours of significant historic sites pertaining to workers. I took the tour to Homestead and Braddock, Pennsylvania.
These various experiences underscored for me in an emotional way a variety of impressions I had about capital and labor in conflict and profit and power versus humanity only as a series of abstractions. First, the iron law of capital accumulation involved killing, enslaving, and exploiting whatever population was needed to achieve ever greater rates of profit. Original inhabitants of Western Pennsylvania were tricked, used, and killed to create a new land made ready for the industrial revolution. The trees were cut, the land was plowed, and the beauty of the landscape destroyed for the construction of factories. For much of the twentieth century the community of Homestead was shaped and shrunk to accommodate the huge steel works; three miles long, 300 acres, and over the century employing over 160,000 workers. After the steel mill closed, the land lay unused for a decade before a huge shopping mall was built. It surrounded 12 smoke stacks which remained to provide a meager clue as to what the land had been used for during the prior century.
During much of the 100 year domination by big steel of the Greater Pittsburgh region, workers engaged in dangerous backbreaking work while inhaling smoke and soot-filled air every day of their lives. The mighty steel craft union of the nineteenth century was busted in 1892 and workers did not win the right to form unions until the United Steel Workers of America (CIO) was formed in the late 1930s. From the shop floor to the streets life was hard for the many so the few could accumulate more wealth.
Second, the working class, despite leading lives of near desperation felt pride in their work, shared a sense of community with neighbors on the shop floor and in the streets, and celebrated their lives, their families, religions, and their country as best they could. It was clear from the plays, the music, the tour guides, and the scholars and trade unionists from the area that people had powerful attachments to their history and the place that was theirs: Homestead, Pittsburgh, Braddock.
Third, despite the brutality of capitalism, the magnitude of exploitation, the defilement of the environment, and the sheer power represented by militias, the Pinkertons, the police, the National Guard, class consciousness survived. It is a consciousness about the capitalist system, the solidarity of the working class, and at the same time a consciousness about place.
My experiences at this conference reminded me of the need to understand at the most human level what capitalism means to communities of people; how it shapes people’s work and leisure lives; how it creates physical space and affects the natural environment; and how workers have responded and continue to respond to the circumstances that have shaped their lives.
In the end, our political analyses have to include political economy, environment, geography and space, and consciousness. Practical political work in our communities must be based on our understanding of the ways in which the general features of economic, political, and social life intersect with particular structures, spaces, and local histories.
Monday, June 8, 2009
"ECONOMIC CRISIS, THE CHANGING WORKING CLASS, AND PRAXIS": A Panel Introduction
(This statement was prepared as an introduction to a panel at the Working Class Studies Association Conference, June 5, 2009, Pittsburgh)
Harry Targ
The thirty year trajectory of growing income and wealth inequality, stagnant real wages, and job loss have been exacerbated by the deep economic crisis of 2007 and beyond. Literally millions of jobs are being lost in manufacturing and service while formerly so-called “middle class” workers, salaried employees, are experiencing an economic marginalization historically reserved for workers on the shop floor, the restaurant, or the health care facility. The effects of job and income loss are spilling over to destroy entire communities. Youth and people of color, as always, experience economic crisis two or three times the magnitude of others. All but the ruling class is becoming “proletarianized.”
This panel will address the depths of the economic crisis and what it means for class in the United States in the twenty-first century. It will particularly address the connections between economic crisis, the changing nature of class, and political practice: campaigning, mobilizing, consciousness raising, building a progressive majority, and envisioning socialist alternatives.
As we address the context in which mobilization may lead to reforms, worker consciousness raised, and class conflict becomes class struggle, I wish to raise a few points at the outset of our panel.
First, the 2008 presidential campaign mobilized a broad array of people, many of whom never participated in any political activity before. New generations of party activists, particularly youth, and trade unions were mobilized. Scores of issue-oriented groups such as those concerning the environment, health care, anti-racism struggles, and gay rights worked alone and in concert with others to defeat right-wing forces who had dominated the political system since the 1980s.
Second, out of the campaign a number of activists, and their organizations, vowed to continue their work, mostly at the grassroots level, to promote a progressive agenda. They took the new president at his word when he invited citizens to pressure him to demand significant policy changes. In the months since his inauguration, it has become clear that President Obama has embraced a “pragmatic” decision-making style, avoiding taking clear and progressive positions on issues, while waiting to see how the constellation of contending political forces mobilize to demand change. Groups as varied as the Progressive Democrats of America, Move On. Org, various Obama groups, and a variety of single-issue groups networking with others have emerged or been reenergized; groups such as The Apollo Project, the Blue-Green Alliance, and United for Peace and Justice. This time has become a “teachable moment” and an “actionable moment.”
Third, groups on the left who come out of various Socialist and other Left traditions have been engaged in reevaluating their political visions and their relationships with the swirl of political activism that has emerged over the last 18 months. The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, for example, is holding its national convention this summer to address both participating in Building a Progressive Majority and envisioning Socialism.
Fourth, perhaps three material conditions most dramatically underlay this new 21st century context; depression, environmental devastation, and war. Each leads to organizational needs. The response to depression requires building new working class movements that begin with the revitalization of the trade union movement. The response to environmental devastation demands a radical transformation of the political economy away from unbridled, unplanned growth to an economy that creates life-sustaining work and human development. Finally, the response to war requires a mobilization against the “permanent war economy,” an economy that depends on war to sustain imperialism abroad and aggregate demand at home.
Fifth, progressives need to incorporate in their theory and practice an understanding of the three ways in which people have been organized, stratified, and segmented in modern times. These include understanding class, race, and gender.
Finally, before we despair about the depths of the economic crisis, the potential for destruction of life on earth as we know it, and the continuing legacy of war and violence, we need to remember how far progressive forces have come over the last 18 months. For example, there is evidence of a changing consciousness among the American people. A recent document presented by the Campaign for America’s Future, “America: A Center-Left Nation,” reports that majorities of American’s favor significant changes in public policy on a variety of issues. Respondents to a national survey indicate that government action is required because of growing economic problems; business needs to be more regulated; too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few large companies; corporate influence over government should decline; health care should be a government responsibility (54% for single payer); and gays should have equal rights.
As Eric Lotke wrote summarizing the findings:
“The media still calls America a “center-right” nation, but ‘center-left” is closer to the truth. On issues ranging from health care to energy, the public is more progressive than people think.”
“This report should give people the courage to push ahead. The danger is not going too far, too fast, too overreaching. The danger is in not doing enough. The American people want to achieve the promise in Obama’s great speeches, not the compromise forced by conservatives in both parties.”
The task before progressives is clear; working with growing majorities of people to make this new political consciousness into an effective political force to change the United States.
4.
Harry Targ
The thirty year trajectory of growing income and wealth inequality, stagnant real wages, and job loss have been exacerbated by the deep economic crisis of 2007 and beyond. Literally millions of jobs are being lost in manufacturing and service while formerly so-called “middle class” workers, salaried employees, are experiencing an economic marginalization historically reserved for workers on the shop floor, the restaurant, or the health care facility. The effects of job and income loss are spilling over to destroy entire communities. Youth and people of color, as always, experience economic crisis two or three times the magnitude of others. All but the ruling class is becoming “proletarianized.”
This panel will address the depths of the economic crisis and what it means for class in the United States in the twenty-first century. It will particularly address the connections between economic crisis, the changing nature of class, and political practice: campaigning, mobilizing, consciousness raising, building a progressive majority, and envisioning socialist alternatives.
As we address the context in which mobilization may lead to reforms, worker consciousness raised, and class conflict becomes class struggle, I wish to raise a few points at the outset of our panel.
First, the 2008 presidential campaign mobilized a broad array of people, many of whom never participated in any political activity before. New generations of party activists, particularly youth, and trade unions were mobilized. Scores of issue-oriented groups such as those concerning the environment, health care, anti-racism struggles, and gay rights worked alone and in concert with others to defeat right-wing forces who had dominated the political system since the 1980s.
Second, out of the campaign a number of activists, and their organizations, vowed to continue their work, mostly at the grassroots level, to promote a progressive agenda. They took the new president at his word when he invited citizens to pressure him to demand significant policy changes. In the months since his inauguration, it has become clear that President Obama has embraced a “pragmatic” decision-making style, avoiding taking clear and progressive positions on issues, while waiting to see how the constellation of contending political forces mobilize to demand change. Groups as varied as the Progressive Democrats of America, Move On. Org, various Obama groups, and a variety of single-issue groups networking with others have emerged or been reenergized; groups such as The Apollo Project, the Blue-Green Alliance, and United for Peace and Justice. This time has become a “teachable moment” and an “actionable moment.”
Third, groups on the left who come out of various Socialist and other Left traditions have been engaged in reevaluating their political visions and their relationships with the swirl of political activism that has emerged over the last 18 months. The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, for example, is holding its national convention this summer to address both participating in Building a Progressive Majority and envisioning Socialism.
Fourth, perhaps three material conditions most dramatically underlay this new 21st century context; depression, environmental devastation, and war. Each leads to organizational needs. The response to depression requires building new working class movements that begin with the revitalization of the trade union movement. The response to environmental devastation demands a radical transformation of the political economy away from unbridled, unplanned growth to an economy that creates life-sustaining work and human development. Finally, the response to war requires a mobilization against the “permanent war economy,” an economy that depends on war to sustain imperialism abroad and aggregate demand at home.
Fifth, progressives need to incorporate in their theory and practice an understanding of the three ways in which people have been organized, stratified, and segmented in modern times. These include understanding class, race, and gender.
Finally, before we despair about the depths of the economic crisis, the potential for destruction of life on earth as we know it, and the continuing legacy of war and violence, we need to remember how far progressive forces have come over the last 18 months. For example, there is evidence of a changing consciousness among the American people. A recent document presented by the Campaign for America’s Future, “America: A Center-Left Nation,” reports that majorities of American’s favor significant changes in public policy on a variety of issues. Respondents to a national survey indicate that government action is required because of growing economic problems; business needs to be more regulated; too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few large companies; corporate influence over government should decline; health care should be a government responsibility (54% for single payer); and gays should have equal rights.
As Eric Lotke wrote summarizing the findings:
“The media still calls America a “center-right” nation, but ‘center-left” is closer to the truth. On issues ranging from health care to energy, the public is more progressive than people think.”
“This report should give people the courage to push ahead. The danger is not going too far, too fast, too overreaching. The danger is in not doing enough. The American people want to achieve the promise in Obama’s great speeches, not the compromise forced by conservatives in both parties.”
The task before progressives is clear; working with growing majorities of people to make this new political consciousness into an effective political force to change the United States.
4.
"ECONOMIC CRISIS, THE CHANGING WORKING CLASS, AND PRAXIS":
“Economic Crisis, the Changing Working Class, and Praxis”
A Panel Introduction
(This statement was prepared as an introduction to a panel at the Working Class Studies Association Conference, June 5, 2009, Pittsburgh)
Harry Targ
The thirty year trajectory of growing income and wealth inequality, stagnant real wages, and job loss have been exacerbated by the deep economic crisis of 2007 and beyond. Literally millions of jobs are being lost in manufacturing and service while formerly so-called “middle class” workers, salaried employees, are experiencing an economic marginalization historically reserved for workers on the shop floor, the restaurant, or the health care facility. The effects of job and income loss are spilling over to destroy entire communities. Youth and people of color, as always, experience economic crisis two or three times the magnitude of others. All but the ruling class is becoming “proletarianized.”
This panel will address the depths of the economic crisis and what it means for class in the United States in the twenty-first century. It will particularly address the connections between economic crisis, the changing nature of class, and political practice: campaigning, mobilizing, consciousness raising, building a progressive majority, and envisioning socialist alternatives.
As we address the context in which mobilization may lead to reforms, worker consciousness raised, and class conflict becomes class struggle, I wish to raise a few points at the outset of our panel.
First, the 2008 presidential campaign mobilized a broad array of people, many of whom never participated in any political activity before. New generations of party activists, particularly youth, and trade unions were mobilized. Scores of issue-oriented groups such as those concerning the environment, health care, anti-racism struggles, and gay rights worked alone and in concert with others to defeat right-wing forces who had dominated the political system since the 1980s.
Second, out of the campaign a number of activists, and their organizations, vowed to continue their work, mostly at the grassroots level, to promote a progressive agenda. They took the new president at his word when he invited citizens to pressure him to demand significant policy changes. In the months since his inauguration, it has become clear that President Obama has embraced a “pragmatic” decision-making style, avoiding taking clear and progressive positions on issues, while waiting to see how the constellation of contending political forces mobilize to demand change. Groups as varied as the Progressive Democrats of America, Move On. Org, various Obama groups, and a variety of single-issue groups networking with others have emerged or been reenergized; groups such as The Apollo Project, the Blue-Green Alliance, and United for Peace and Justice. This time has become a “teachable moment” and an “actionable moment.”
Third, groups on the left who come out of various Socialist and other Left traditions have been engaged in reevaluating their political visions and their relationships with the swirl of political activism that has emerged over the last 18 months. The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, for example, is holding its national convention this summer to address both participating in Building a Progressive Majority and envisioning Socialism.
Fourth, perhaps three material conditions most dramatically underlay this new 21st century context; depression, environmental devastation, and war. Each leads to organizational needs. The response to depression requires building new working class movements that begin with the revitalization of the trade union movement. The response to environmental devastation demands a radical transformation of the political economy away from unbridled, unplanned growth to an economy that creates life-sustaining work and human development. Finally, the response to war requires a mobilization against the “permanent war economy,” an economy that depends on war to sustain imperialism abroad and aggregate demand at home.
Fifth, progressives need to incorporate in their theory and practice an understanding of the three ways in which people have been organized, stratified, and segmented in modern times. These include understanding class, race, and gender.
Finally, before we despair about the depths of the economic crisis, the potential for destruction of life on earth as we know it, and the continuing legacy of war and violence, we need to remember how far progressive forces have come over the last 18 months. For example, there is evidence of a changing consciousness among the American people. A recent document presented by the Campaign for America’s Future, “America: A Center-Left Nation,” reports that majorities of American’s favor significant changes in public policy on a variety of issues. Respondents to a national survey indicate that government action is required because of growing economic problems; business needs to be more regulated; too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few large companies; corporate influence over government should decline; health care should be a government responsibility (54% for single payer); and gays should have equal rights.
As Eric Lotke wrote summarizing the findings:
“The media still calls America a “center-right” nation, but ‘center-left” is closer to the truth. On issues ranging from health care to energy, the public is more progressive than people think.”
“This report should give people the courage to push ahead. The danger is not going too far, too fast, too overreaching. The danger is in not doing enough. The American people want to achieve the promise in Obama’s great speeches, not the compromise forced by conservatives in both parties.”
The task before progressives is clear; working with growing majorities of people to make this new political consciousness into an effective political force to change the United States.
4.
A Panel Introduction
(This statement was prepared as an introduction to a panel at the Working Class Studies Association Conference, June 5, 2009, Pittsburgh)
Harry Targ
The thirty year trajectory of growing income and wealth inequality, stagnant real wages, and job loss have been exacerbated by the deep economic crisis of 2007 and beyond. Literally millions of jobs are being lost in manufacturing and service while formerly so-called “middle class” workers, salaried employees, are experiencing an economic marginalization historically reserved for workers on the shop floor, the restaurant, or the health care facility. The effects of job and income loss are spilling over to destroy entire communities. Youth and people of color, as always, experience economic crisis two or three times the magnitude of others. All but the ruling class is becoming “proletarianized.”
This panel will address the depths of the economic crisis and what it means for class in the United States in the twenty-first century. It will particularly address the connections between economic crisis, the changing nature of class, and political practice: campaigning, mobilizing, consciousness raising, building a progressive majority, and envisioning socialist alternatives.
As we address the context in which mobilization may lead to reforms, worker consciousness raised, and class conflict becomes class struggle, I wish to raise a few points at the outset of our panel.
First, the 2008 presidential campaign mobilized a broad array of people, many of whom never participated in any political activity before. New generations of party activists, particularly youth, and trade unions were mobilized. Scores of issue-oriented groups such as those concerning the environment, health care, anti-racism struggles, and gay rights worked alone and in concert with others to defeat right-wing forces who had dominated the political system since the 1980s.
Second, out of the campaign a number of activists, and their organizations, vowed to continue their work, mostly at the grassroots level, to promote a progressive agenda. They took the new president at his word when he invited citizens to pressure him to demand significant policy changes. In the months since his inauguration, it has become clear that President Obama has embraced a “pragmatic” decision-making style, avoiding taking clear and progressive positions on issues, while waiting to see how the constellation of contending political forces mobilize to demand change. Groups as varied as the Progressive Democrats of America, Move On. Org, various Obama groups, and a variety of single-issue groups networking with others have emerged or been reenergized; groups such as The Apollo Project, the Blue-Green Alliance, and United for Peace and Justice. This time has become a “teachable moment” and an “actionable moment.”
Third, groups on the left who come out of various Socialist and other Left traditions have been engaged in reevaluating their political visions and their relationships with the swirl of political activism that has emerged over the last 18 months. The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, for example, is holding its national convention this summer to address both participating in Building a Progressive Majority and envisioning Socialism.
Fourth, perhaps three material conditions most dramatically underlay this new 21st century context; depression, environmental devastation, and war. Each leads to organizational needs. The response to depression requires building new working class movements that begin with the revitalization of the trade union movement. The response to environmental devastation demands a radical transformation of the political economy away from unbridled, unplanned growth to an economy that creates life-sustaining work and human development. Finally, the response to war requires a mobilization against the “permanent war economy,” an economy that depends on war to sustain imperialism abroad and aggregate demand at home.
Fifth, progressives need to incorporate in their theory and practice an understanding of the three ways in which people have been organized, stratified, and segmented in modern times. These include understanding class, race, and gender.
Finally, before we despair about the depths of the economic crisis, the potential for destruction of life on earth as we know it, and the continuing legacy of war and violence, we need to remember how far progressive forces have come over the last 18 months. For example, there is evidence of a changing consciousness among the American people. A recent document presented by the Campaign for America’s Future, “America: A Center-Left Nation,” reports that majorities of American’s favor significant changes in public policy on a variety of issues. Respondents to a national survey indicate that government action is required because of growing economic problems; business needs to be more regulated; too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few large companies; corporate influence over government should decline; health care should be a government responsibility (54% for single payer); and gays should have equal rights.
As Eric Lotke wrote summarizing the findings:
“The media still calls America a “center-right” nation, but ‘center-left” is closer to the truth. On issues ranging from health care to energy, the public is more progressive than people think.”
“This report should give people the courage to push ahead. The danger is not going too far, too fast, too overreaching. The danger is in not doing enough. The American people want to achieve the promise in Obama’s great speeches, not the compromise forced by conservatives in both parties.”
The task before progressives is clear; working with growing majorities of people to make this new political consciousness into an effective political force to change the United States.
4.
Friday, May 29, 2009
ECONOMICS AS IDEOLOGY
Harry Targ
“That Freshman Course Won’t Be Quite the Same,” is the headline of an article by N. Gregory Mankiw, professor of economics at Harvard, that appeared in the business section of the New York Times, May 24, 2009.
Professor Mankiw, as the headline indicates, is changing his introductory economics course in several ways due to the current economic crisis. His course will need to highlight more the role of financial institutions in affecting the economy, he says. Banks and insurance companies are like stage hands. They work behind the scenes and are only noticed when they fail to show up. “The process of financial intermediation is similarly most noteworthy when it fails.”
Introductory economics at Harvard needs also to discuss more “the effects of leverage,” “the use of borrowed money to amplify gains, and in this case, losses.” Economists, Mankiw suggests, will have to explore why banks “undertook so much leverage.” In addition, the gateway course will have to assess monetary policy and study the broad range of monetary policy tools that are being introduced today to reduce the crisis.
Finally, introductory courses in economics need to analyze the limits of economic forecasting, particularly to realize that economic outcomes are beyond what professional economists can predict. “…students should understand that a good course in economics will not equip them with a crystal ball. Instead, it will allow them to assess the risks and to be ready for surprises.”
The most revealing aspect of Mankiw’s view of his introductory course in economics, which he says is given to some 700 Harvard undergraduates each year, is that the current economic crisis does not suggest the need for any fundamental change in what he teaches. His words are important here:
“Despite the enormity of recent events, the principles of economics are largely unchanged. Students still need to learn about the gains from trade, supply and demand, the efficiency properties of market outcomes, and so on. These topics will remain the bread-and-butter of introductory courses.”
So for those 700 students of economics at Harvard, presumably many of whom will become influential policy makers in Washington or on Wall Street some day, economic crises require no deeper and different reflection on how the economy works, who benefits from it, who experiences it primarily as pain and suffering, and what can be done to make the economy work for people and the environment.
According to Mankiw’s description, Harvard’s Introduction to Economics course is an introduction to a way of thinking about the economic universe that emphasizes maintaining systems of wealth and power. It presents as “science” an ideology that serves and justifies the status quo. It represents that intellectual tradition, neo-classical economics, that extrapolates from the historical reality of the rise of banks and corporations, the connectedness of economic institutions and the state, the use and abuse of those who work for a wage, and the use of race and gender to make workers more malleable, to create a mathematics of individual rational actors engaging in a system of free choices and supply and demand.
Neo-classical economics dismisses the great classical political economists from Adam Smith, to Karl Marx, to Lenin, to Joseph Schumpeter, to Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, who realized that economic processes change through history, connect economics to politics, benefit some and disadvantage others, and create new powerful economic and political institutions that need to be studied, evaluated, and changed if they fail to meet growing human needs.
In the end, the introductory economics taught at Harvard describes and defends the status quo. Those who seek to understand the current economic crisis in order to change it will have to look elsewhere.
“That Freshman Course Won’t Be Quite the Same,” is the headline of an article by N. Gregory Mankiw, professor of economics at Harvard, that appeared in the business section of the New York Times, May 24, 2009.
Professor Mankiw, as the headline indicates, is changing his introductory economics course in several ways due to the current economic crisis. His course will need to highlight more the role of financial institutions in affecting the economy, he says. Banks and insurance companies are like stage hands. They work behind the scenes and are only noticed when they fail to show up. “The process of financial intermediation is similarly most noteworthy when it fails.”
Introductory economics at Harvard needs also to discuss more “the effects of leverage,” “the use of borrowed money to amplify gains, and in this case, losses.” Economists, Mankiw suggests, will have to explore why banks “undertook so much leverage.” In addition, the gateway course will have to assess monetary policy and study the broad range of monetary policy tools that are being introduced today to reduce the crisis.
Finally, introductory courses in economics need to analyze the limits of economic forecasting, particularly to realize that economic outcomes are beyond what professional economists can predict. “…students should understand that a good course in economics will not equip them with a crystal ball. Instead, it will allow them to assess the risks and to be ready for surprises.”
The most revealing aspect of Mankiw’s view of his introductory course in economics, which he says is given to some 700 Harvard undergraduates each year, is that the current economic crisis does not suggest the need for any fundamental change in what he teaches. His words are important here:
“Despite the enormity of recent events, the principles of economics are largely unchanged. Students still need to learn about the gains from trade, supply and demand, the efficiency properties of market outcomes, and so on. These topics will remain the bread-and-butter of introductory courses.”
So for those 700 students of economics at Harvard, presumably many of whom will become influential policy makers in Washington or on Wall Street some day, economic crises require no deeper and different reflection on how the economy works, who benefits from it, who experiences it primarily as pain and suffering, and what can be done to make the economy work for people and the environment.
According to Mankiw’s description, Harvard’s Introduction to Economics course is an introduction to a way of thinking about the economic universe that emphasizes maintaining systems of wealth and power. It presents as “science” an ideology that serves and justifies the status quo. It represents that intellectual tradition, neo-classical economics, that extrapolates from the historical reality of the rise of banks and corporations, the connectedness of economic institutions and the state, the use and abuse of those who work for a wage, and the use of race and gender to make workers more malleable, to create a mathematics of individual rational actors engaging in a system of free choices and supply and demand.
Neo-classical economics dismisses the great classical political economists from Adam Smith, to Karl Marx, to Lenin, to Joseph Schumpeter, to Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, who realized that economic processes change through history, connect economics to politics, benefit some and disadvantage others, and create new powerful economic and political institutions that need to be studied, evaluated, and changed if they fail to meet growing human needs.
In the end, the introductory economics taught at Harvard describes and defends the status quo. Those who seek to understand the current economic crisis in order to change it will have to look elsewhere.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
OLD THEORIES ARE STILL RELEVANT TODAY
Harry Targ
"Clearly, the most important blame is with the financial institutions that didn’t manage risk and the regulators who didn’t ensure that the banks did what they were supposed to. There were some other factors, such as easy money. But easy money could have been used for productive investment, so you can’t blame easy money. It was the way easy money was misused that led to the bubble.” (Joseph Stiglitz, “Thoughts on a Crisis: The Future of Capitalism,” Financial Times, May 12, 2009, 28)
Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism
Lenin wrote his famous essay on imperialism in 1916, drawing upon a variety of theorists who began to see significant changes in the way capitalism worked as an international economic and political system in the twentieth century. To him imperialism was an economic and political/military system that was driven by capital accumulation, the ability to generate more and more profit from all economic exchanges. A central source of profit was the exploitation of workers of all kinds. By the dawn of the century a multiplicity of economic actors had been consolidated such that ever-smaller numbers of economic giants dominated the economies of individual nations and the entire international economy. Multinational banks and corporations gained enormous wealth and power. The nation-states from which they came were driven to capture vital raw materials, markets, cheap sources of labor, and increasingly in the modern age, investment opportunities.
It was imperative for the capitalist system to be an international system, because it became vital for newly industrialized countries to enhance their access to raw materials that could not be acquired domestically. Similarly, with the increasing worldwide division of labor, non-Western countries became the source of valuable agricultural goods that supplied the increasingly industrializing nations with vital food stuffs. Further, labor power as a commodity was cheaper in countries victimized by foreign penetration, particularly after labor in the industrializing countries began to organize to demand a greater share of the value of what they produced. Another obvious need of burgeoning industrial capitalism was markets for products produced in the capitalist countries for which insufficient customers could be found at home because of the logic of capitalist exploitation.
The Rise of Finance Capital
Lenin stated that although capitalism continued to require raw materials and foodstuffs, cheap labor, and markets, a new need was generated by the further concentration of the capitalist economies. The concentration was manifest in the emergence of integrated banking and monopoly corporate control of the economy. Banks had assumed a particularly important place in twentieth-century capitalism, and the wealth accumulated by banks and monopoly corporations had to find investment opportunities or the system would stagnate. Therefore, as profitable investment opportunities reached their limits domestically, money capital had to find outlets abroad.
Consequently, Lenin observed, what later would be called “the Third World” was increasingly becoming absorbed into the international political economy by way of investments from joint stock companies, loans, and other investments to facilitate the overseas sale of goods and the building of production facilities to utilize cheap indigenous labor. (In our own day investment instruments would include private equity funds, hedge funds, and other speculative financial instruments). The political expression of the spread of capital worldwide was, in Lenin’s day, colonialism, or formal occupation and administration of subject territories. Later colonialism would be replaced by neo-colonialism, with the targeted land superficially ‘independent” but under the economic yoke of one or a few capitalist powers, or the entire international economy imposing its will on a dependent country’s political and economic life.
The world’s great capitalist powers were often able to establish accords dividing the world but during periods of intense economic competition conflict and war often resulted. Usually, Lenin claimed, wars were associated with the rise of new capitalist competitors to challenge the hegemony of the older ones. Given the concentration of wealth and power and the uneven character of capitalist development across countries, war was seen as a common feature of international relations in the era of monopoly capitalism.
In Lenin's Words
Lenin best captures his theory in the following graph:
“Without forgetting the condition and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the catenations for a phenomenon in its complete development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features: 1)the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; 2)the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this ‘finance capital,’ of a financial oligarchy; 3)the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; 4)the formation of international monopolist capitalist combines which share the world among themselves; and 5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.”
And he summarizes: “Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.”
While the Financial Times may not wish its readers to return to the classic theories of imperialism, for most of us such theories, such as Lenin’s, may provide a clarity and resonance that can help us understand the current financial crisis.
"Clearly, the most important blame is with the financial institutions that didn’t manage risk and the regulators who didn’t ensure that the banks did what they were supposed to. There were some other factors, such as easy money. But easy money could have been used for productive investment, so you can’t blame easy money. It was the way easy money was misused that led to the bubble.” (Joseph Stiglitz, “Thoughts on a Crisis: The Future of Capitalism,” Financial Times, May 12, 2009, 28)
Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism
Lenin wrote his famous essay on imperialism in 1916, drawing upon a variety of theorists who began to see significant changes in the way capitalism worked as an international economic and political system in the twentieth century. To him imperialism was an economic and political/military system that was driven by capital accumulation, the ability to generate more and more profit from all economic exchanges. A central source of profit was the exploitation of workers of all kinds. By the dawn of the century a multiplicity of economic actors had been consolidated such that ever-smaller numbers of economic giants dominated the economies of individual nations and the entire international economy. Multinational banks and corporations gained enormous wealth and power. The nation-states from which they came were driven to capture vital raw materials, markets, cheap sources of labor, and increasingly in the modern age, investment opportunities.
It was imperative for the capitalist system to be an international system, because it became vital for newly industrialized countries to enhance their access to raw materials that could not be acquired domestically. Similarly, with the increasing worldwide division of labor, non-Western countries became the source of valuable agricultural goods that supplied the increasingly industrializing nations with vital food stuffs. Further, labor power as a commodity was cheaper in countries victimized by foreign penetration, particularly after labor in the industrializing countries began to organize to demand a greater share of the value of what they produced. Another obvious need of burgeoning industrial capitalism was markets for products produced in the capitalist countries for which insufficient customers could be found at home because of the logic of capitalist exploitation.
The Rise of Finance Capital
Lenin stated that although capitalism continued to require raw materials and foodstuffs, cheap labor, and markets, a new need was generated by the further concentration of the capitalist economies. The concentration was manifest in the emergence of integrated banking and monopoly corporate control of the economy. Banks had assumed a particularly important place in twentieth-century capitalism, and the wealth accumulated by banks and monopoly corporations had to find investment opportunities or the system would stagnate. Therefore, as profitable investment opportunities reached their limits domestically, money capital had to find outlets abroad.
Consequently, Lenin observed, what later would be called “the Third World” was increasingly becoming absorbed into the international political economy by way of investments from joint stock companies, loans, and other investments to facilitate the overseas sale of goods and the building of production facilities to utilize cheap indigenous labor. (In our own day investment instruments would include private equity funds, hedge funds, and other speculative financial instruments). The political expression of the spread of capital worldwide was, in Lenin’s day, colonialism, or formal occupation and administration of subject territories. Later colonialism would be replaced by neo-colonialism, with the targeted land superficially ‘independent” but under the economic yoke of one or a few capitalist powers, or the entire international economy imposing its will on a dependent country’s political and economic life.
The world’s great capitalist powers were often able to establish accords dividing the world but during periods of intense economic competition conflict and war often resulted. Usually, Lenin claimed, wars were associated with the rise of new capitalist competitors to challenge the hegemony of the older ones. Given the concentration of wealth and power and the uneven character of capitalist development across countries, war was seen as a common feature of international relations in the era of monopoly capitalism.
In Lenin's Words
Lenin best captures his theory in the following graph:
“Without forgetting the condition and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the catenations for a phenomenon in its complete development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features: 1)the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; 2)the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this ‘finance capital,’ of a financial oligarchy; 3)the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; 4)the formation of international monopolist capitalist combines which share the world among themselves; and 5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.”
And he summarizes: “Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.”
While the Financial Times may not wish its readers to return to the classic theories of imperialism, for most of us such theories, such as Lenin’s, may provide a clarity and resonance that can help us understand the current financial crisis.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES AT HART SCHAFFNER AND MARX
Harry Targ
Six hundred and fifty Hart, Schaffner, and Marx clothing workers rallied at noon, on Monday, May 11, 2009, in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines. They demanded that Wells Fargo, which received a $25 billion bank bailout from the federal government, provide loans to investors who would purchase their bankrupt company and keep it open. Workers at the Des Plaines, Illinois plant were speaking for 3,600 workers around the country who could lose their jobs if the company was sold to an investor committed to closing the company.
Stephen Greenhouse in a New York Times article quoted Illinois Congressman Phil Hare who asserted that Wells Fargo needed “to stand up for the American worker, like Congress stood up for the banks when times were tough.”
A spokesperson for the workers proclaimed that the union local was going to do whatever was necessary to keep Hart Schaffner and Marx plants open. The workers, Greenhouse wrote, were “coming from Chicago’s south side as well as China, Greece, Mexico, Poland and a dozen other countries, many earn around $12 an hour.”
Worker’s struggles for jobs and living wages at Hart Schaffner and Marx have a long history. Ninety nine years earlier, on a bright and sunny morning, 17-year-old Russian immigrant, Hannah Shapiro ran to work at the old Hart Schaffner and Marx factory in downtown Chicago. She rushed to her wooden chair and began sewing the pockets that would be attached to men’s pants. Shortly after the workers assembled at their work stations the foreman came on the floor and curtly announced that from now on they would earn 3 ¾ cents per pocket instead of 4 cents.
Hannah, called Annie by friends, was so outraged by this cruel cut in piece work pay that she got up from her chair and stormed off the shop floor. To her surprise 15 co-workers, also young women, followed her. Thus was launched the great Hart Shaffner and Marx strike that would lead to 40,000 workers in Chicago factories walking off their jobs in support. Annie Shapiro, the Russian girl who spoke English haltingly, mobilized support from Hull House activists, the Women’s Trade Union League, and she marched with famed lawyer Clarence Darrow and 20,000 workers in a solidarity parade on December 4, 1910.
While the workers did not earn union recognition immediately, Hart Schaffner and Marx offered an agreement to Hannah Shapiro and her co-workers to establish a joint worker/management committee to address grievances. Workers voted to accept the agreement. Within three months workers gained pay raises and improved working conditions. In addition, the walkout, led by a humble young Russian woman, not only brought modest gains to workers in the men’s clothing factory but planted the seeds for worker solidarity, militancy, and trade unionism in Chicago.
In retrospect, the seeds for worker justice today were planted long ago in hundreds of thousands of invisible local struggles, like that waged by Hannah Shapiro and her co-workers. Until jobs, living wages, healthy working conditions, and rights to a union are guaranteed, these struggles will continue.
A forthcoming children’s rendition of the story of Hannah Shapiro and the Hart, Schaffner and Marx strike by Marlene Targ Brill is in production. For further information see http://www.marlenetargbrill.com/
.
Six hundred and fifty Hart, Schaffner, and Marx clothing workers rallied at noon, on Monday, May 11, 2009, in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines. They demanded that Wells Fargo, which received a $25 billion bank bailout from the federal government, provide loans to investors who would purchase their bankrupt company and keep it open. Workers at the Des Plaines, Illinois plant were speaking for 3,600 workers around the country who could lose their jobs if the company was sold to an investor committed to closing the company.
Stephen Greenhouse in a New York Times article quoted Illinois Congressman Phil Hare who asserted that Wells Fargo needed “to stand up for the American worker, like Congress stood up for the banks when times were tough.”
A spokesperson for the workers proclaimed that the union local was going to do whatever was necessary to keep Hart Schaffner and Marx plants open. The workers, Greenhouse wrote, were “coming from Chicago’s south side as well as China, Greece, Mexico, Poland and a dozen other countries, many earn around $12 an hour.”
Worker’s struggles for jobs and living wages at Hart Schaffner and Marx have a long history. Ninety nine years earlier, on a bright and sunny morning, 17-year-old Russian immigrant, Hannah Shapiro ran to work at the old Hart Schaffner and Marx factory in downtown Chicago. She rushed to her wooden chair and began sewing the pockets that would be attached to men’s pants. Shortly after the workers assembled at their work stations the foreman came on the floor and curtly announced that from now on they would earn 3 ¾ cents per pocket instead of 4 cents.
Hannah, called Annie by friends, was so outraged by this cruel cut in piece work pay that she got up from her chair and stormed off the shop floor. To her surprise 15 co-workers, also young women, followed her. Thus was launched the great Hart Shaffner and Marx strike that would lead to 40,000 workers in Chicago factories walking off their jobs in support. Annie Shapiro, the Russian girl who spoke English haltingly, mobilized support from Hull House activists, the Women’s Trade Union League, and she marched with famed lawyer Clarence Darrow and 20,000 workers in a solidarity parade on December 4, 1910.
While the workers did not earn union recognition immediately, Hart Schaffner and Marx offered an agreement to Hannah Shapiro and her co-workers to establish a joint worker/management committee to address grievances. Workers voted to accept the agreement. Within three months workers gained pay raises and improved working conditions. In addition, the walkout, led by a humble young Russian woman, not only brought modest gains to workers in the men’s clothing factory but planted the seeds for worker solidarity, militancy, and trade unionism in Chicago.
In retrospect, the seeds for worker justice today were planted long ago in hundreds of thousands of invisible local struggles, like that waged by Hannah Shapiro and her co-workers. Until jobs, living wages, healthy working conditions, and rights to a union are guaranteed, these struggles will continue.
A forthcoming children’s rendition of the story of Hannah Shapiro and the Hart, Schaffner and Marx strike by Marlene Targ Brill is in production. For further information see http://www.marlenetargbrill.com/
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