What the voters wanted was unquestionably significant change. What they were promised was change. Whether change will come from the Obama administration is - at best - questionable….
And every indication is that the Obama administration will continue down the path of advancing imperial interests and privileging corporate America.” ZZ’s Blog, 11-06-08
"Has Obama betrayed his progressive promise? Obama never made a progressive promise. The idea of Obama as a water-bearer for liberal or progressive reform came not from Obama's mouth, but from the sheer wishes and dreams of the left…"
In fairness, Obama has betrayed no one. His vast centrist following and the Democratic Party old-guard have shown no fear of Obama's perceived "progressive" agenda, an agenda that appears to be more and more in the minds of a self-deluding left. ZZ’s Blog, 12-09-08
Liberals and the celebrity left are in a catfight over their relationship to the Obama Administration and it’s not a pretty thing. Chris Hedges stirred the pot recently with an interview of Cornel West on Truthdig, augmented with his own angry voice, denouncing Obama: The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic. The interview circulated widely on the internet, generating discussion and controversy like few other internet commentaries.
Hedges postures the Obama “deception” as a Shakespearean tragedy and West depicts it as a personal affront. While many of my left brothers and sisters have hailed this personal mea culpa and attack on Obama as welcome, joining those sending the interview far and wide, they have only added to the tiresome finger pointing that advances our struggles very little.
West earns no thanks for placing the character flaws of the current President, as he reveals them, at the center of the political universe. It is especially embarrassing that he cites the personal slights – the absence of inaugural tickets, missing handshakes, unreturned phone calls, official jabs – as the fulcrum of his argument.
It really is not about Cornel West.
At one point, Hedges senses that the interview has gotten too personal. He writes: “But there was also the betrayal on the political and ideological level.” Yet a few lines later, he returns to the personal: “Obama and West’s last personal contact took place a year ago at a gathering of the Urban League when, he says, Obama ‘cussed me out.’”
In its essence, the interview is an indulgence in Cornel West’s personal pique -- a People magazine-style profile breathlessly hanging on the words of one of our “stars.” If Obama had proved to be everything that the “hopey-changey” left had forecast, West’s complaints would now be viewed as they are: an irrelevant exercise in self-indulgence. This interview is unbecoming of Chris Hedges, who has shown a deep understanding of the issues and has put his own body on the line to stop the war and fight corporate power.
Predictably, The Nation magazine – the most prominent periodical on the left and an early champion of the Obama-as-savior perspective – unleashed its star TV-commentator upon the Hedges/West interview (Cornel West v. Barack Obama, The Nation blog). Melissa Harris-Perry grasped the opportunity afforded by West’s “ballistic” personal tirade and lunched on West’s celebration of self-worth. She wrote: “I can tell the difference between a substantive criticism and a personal attack. It is clear to me that West’s ego, not the health of American democracy, is the wounded creature in this story.”
While establishing her own modest, tepid criticisms of the Obama administration, she further charges West with an unholy alliance with TV personality Tavis Smiley, a counter-charge of the same irrelevance as West’s outburst.
What do we ask of those who promoted the mistaken view that Barack Obama was the second-coming of FDR? Do we want a public tirade denouncing Obama? Do we expect a period of self-flagellation or contrition? Should those who eagerly signed onto “Progressives for Obama” be taken to the woodshed?
None of these options shows even a measure of political maturity. The battle then, and the battle now, is a battle of ideas and not personalities. Revealingly, the exchange between Hedges/West and Harris-Perry says little about the way forward. Absorbed in a clash of celebrity egos, they are more intent on settling scores than mapping a way to mount a counter-offensive to the relentless advances of monopoly capital.
A left constructed on wishful thinking and opportunistic campaign promises is little better than a right based upon fantasy and eighteenth-century dogma. But it is not helpful to promote the cult of personality that has become so prevalent in our culture.
In today’s climate, charges of “betrayal” or “deception” are hollow. They reflect a misreading of the history and social role of monopoly capital and its bankrupt two-party system; they obscure the deep mechanisms that sustain the capitalist system. We desperately need acts of resistance and not web battles between our luminaries.
For those who want to go beyond the trivial, beyond the wars on the web, the road is clear: look at what our brothers and sisters are at this moment doing in Greece, Portugal and Spain. Faced with the austerity that will soon visit the US, they are in the streets, anchored by militant labor movements that understand the stakes and confront the enemy: capital. It’s time for our own labor movement to go beyond electoral maneuvers and bring the fight to the streets in the US. We should help them figure out how to get there.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
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Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
A Phony Anti-War Movement?
In a recent radio commentary, Glen Ford, executive editor of the Black Agenda Report, lashed out at what he calls the “The Phony Anti-War Movement” (BAR, 5-3-11). Based on a comprehensive study conducted by two academic writers, Michael Heaney, of the University of Michigan, and Fabio Rojas, of Indiana University, Ford charges that “many of the folks that turned out in such large numbers to demonstrate against America’s wars when George Bush was president, were really only opposed to Republican wars. Thus, when Barack Obama captured the White House, the so-called anti-war movement largely collapsed.” The study, as well as Ford’s commentary, gives voice to what many of us on the left have felt for some time. In the US, during the Bush administration and prior to the 2008 election, the anti-war movement surfaced, grew, and gathered momentum. Subsequent to the election, the movement appeared to hesitate and immobilize.
Ford, one of the most incisive, principled, and uncompromising commentators on the left, adds that “United for Peace and Justice, UFPJ, the anti-war umbrella group during the height of protest, was behaving more as an arm of the Democratic Party than as principled peace activists. The shallowness of these phony anti-warriors was so obvious, UFPJ was widely derided as United for Peanut Butter and Jelly.” Thus, Ford paints both the leadership and many of the activists associated with the movement as “a cynical gathering of partisan Democrats.”
But are matters quite that simple? Should we cast the anti-war leadership and thousands of activists into the same barrel? Are there more complex reasons for the “sell-out” of the anti-war movement?
Surely many remember the dissolution of the anti-war movement of the sixties and seventies. Contrary to our recent experience, that movement grew massively during the tenure of a Democratic President and dissipated during the rule of the hated Nixon. Many attribute that “collapse” to the elimination of the draft, the winding down of direct US military involvement, and the shrinking of US casualty figures.
We might argue that in both cases – the Vietnam war and today’s endless twenty-first-century wars – the decline of anti-war activity was a victim of personalized, narrow commitment and shallow ideology. The earlier anti-war movement lost young people when their fate decoupled from the prosecution of the war and lost liberals when US surrogates took over combat and the US death toll dropped dramatically. The lessons of this period were not lost on the ruling class; the many wars preceding the “War on Terror” were fought with puppet fighters or the massing of vastly overwhelming power exercised by a volunteer military. The use of unmanned drones and other remote weaponry – favored by the Obama administration - draws on these lessons.
Similarly, our era’s anti-war movement reflected growing military setbacks and rising casualty figures. More than the organizing skills of the official leadership, the imagery of a solitary mother of a dead soldier stalking George Bush energized the movement. Cindy Sheehan was effectively the inspirational leader of the movement. Other family members of US casualties added their voices, dramatizing the horrors of war inflicted upon US families.
Cindy Sheehan, through her activism, grew to understand the role of the US in world affairs, especially the effects of US aggression upon its victims and the interests served by these attacks. She began to see the historical patterns and connections that reveal the real nature of US foreign policy. In short, she acquired an anti-imperialist consciousness.
Sadly, this understanding has not sunk deep roots in the US peace movement since the wholesale destruction of the left in the McCarthy era. Consequently, the bulwark of anti-imperialist resistance has been the distant victims of US intervention and not the folks on the imperialist home front. They have risen when things went badly, when aggression proved costly, when the consequences of US imperialism began to touch people personally. It is only then that opposition to war becomes a mass movement. Undoubtedly this sentiment, when it arises, plays a key role in stopping US predatory wars, but it should not be confused with anti-imperialism.
Without anti-imperialism at its core, anti-war movements in the US are destined to only activate masses when the horrors of war are brought home. “Successful” assaults on the interests, lives, and dignity of other peoples will likely be met with passivity, even applause, when they are wrapped in the cause of “democracy” or deposing a demonized “tyrant.” We saw this in Angola, Grenada and Yugoslavia. And we see this today in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Syria, Libya, Peoples Democratic Republic of Korea, Iran and many other countries.
Of course the ultimate source of this profound weakness is a political system – a two-party charade - that resolutely denies that the US is an imperialist power. Indeed, both parties actively and openly advocate for US imperialism. They make no concession to those standing in the way of US corporate interests or seeking their own path of development. While progressives may have hopefully thought they heard Obama and the Democrats say they were anti-war, they really heard that Obama and the Democrats were determined to drop direct and risky military involvement in the costly Iraq occupation and re-direct it to Afghanistan. It was undisguised in the campaign speeches and clearly stated in the Democratic platform. In other words, the Democrats resolved to deliver imperialism at a cost more agreeable to the US public.
With the presumptive “people’s” party fully committed to the imperialist agenda and a corporate media slavishly cheerleading for the same, it is only independent progressives and the left – the political outliers - who can lead the US public away from complicity with imperial aggression. They – and they alone – can provide the leadership that will educate and organize the US peace movement to be more than a response to mounting US casualties, military setbacks, and a useful tool for Democratic Party politicians.
Glen Ford’s scathing condemnation of much of the prominent recent leadership of the peace movement is well deserved. They failed to elevate the anti-war program to include a deeper understanding of imperialist aggression. In the interest of “breadth” and “unity,” they assiduously excluded many causes associated with US intervention or complicity, arguing that these issues might offend feckless liberals and middle class sensibilities. Principles were sacrificed for an elusive broad appeal. Whether the leaders were web warriors masking Democratic Party partisanship or struggle-in-the-streets “radicals” seeking some kind of soulless popular front is irrelevant. They allowed electoral politics to trump resistance; they bet everything on the 2008 election. The “success” of this effort was the creation of a movement shallow in commitment and thin in ideology, a movement easily hijacked by the Democratic Party.
Fortunately, there are organizations, like the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) and many national, regional and local committees, which are continuing the battle to end, not just Bush’s wars, but Obama’s wars as well. They share an independence of the two parties as well as a core understanding of the imperialist character of US foreign policy. While others wait for the Administration to have a change of heart, they continue to organize and agitate against policies that are costing thousands of lives to project US capitalism throughout the world. No one is excluded from these organizations or actions, but no one’s resolve against imperialism is muffled, either. When the imperial program is again perceived by the public as failing – which it will – they will be there to build a more militant, principled mass movement. Hopefully, next time will be different.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Ford, one of the most incisive, principled, and uncompromising commentators on the left, adds that “United for Peace and Justice, UFPJ, the anti-war umbrella group during the height of protest, was behaving more as an arm of the Democratic Party than as principled peace activists. The shallowness of these phony anti-warriors was so obvious, UFPJ was widely derided as United for Peanut Butter and Jelly.” Thus, Ford paints both the leadership and many of the activists associated with the movement as “a cynical gathering of partisan Democrats.”
But are matters quite that simple? Should we cast the anti-war leadership and thousands of activists into the same barrel? Are there more complex reasons for the “sell-out” of the anti-war movement?
Surely many remember the dissolution of the anti-war movement of the sixties and seventies. Contrary to our recent experience, that movement grew massively during the tenure of a Democratic President and dissipated during the rule of the hated Nixon. Many attribute that “collapse” to the elimination of the draft, the winding down of direct US military involvement, and the shrinking of US casualty figures.
We might argue that in both cases – the Vietnam war and today’s endless twenty-first-century wars – the decline of anti-war activity was a victim of personalized, narrow commitment and shallow ideology. The earlier anti-war movement lost young people when their fate decoupled from the prosecution of the war and lost liberals when US surrogates took over combat and the US death toll dropped dramatically. The lessons of this period were not lost on the ruling class; the many wars preceding the “War on Terror” were fought with puppet fighters or the massing of vastly overwhelming power exercised by a volunteer military. The use of unmanned drones and other remote weaponry – favored by the Obama administration - draws on these lessons.
Similarly, our era’s anti-war movement reflected growing military setbacks and rising casualty figures. More than the organizing skills of the official leadership, the imagery of a solitary mother of a dead soldier stalking George Bush energized the movement. Cindy Sheehan was effectively the inspirational leader of the movement. Other family members of US casualties added their voices, dramatizing the horrors of war inflicted upon US families.
Cindy Sheehan, through her activism, grew to understand the role of the US in world affairs, especially the effects of US aggression upon its victims and the interests served by these attacks. She began to see the historical patterns and connections that reveal the real nature of US foreign policy. In short, she acquired an anti-imperialist consciousness.
Sadly, this understanding has not sunk deep roots in the US peace movement since the wholesale destruction of the left in the McCarthy era. Consequently, the bulwark of anti-imperialist resistance has been the distant victims of US intervention and not the folks on the imperialist home front. They have risen when things went badly, when aggression proved costly, when the consequences of US imperialism began to touch people personally. It is only then that opposition to war becomes a mass movement. Undoubtedly this sentiment, when it arises, plays a key role in stopping US predatory wars, but it should not be confused with anti-imperialism.
Without anti-imperialism at its core, anti-war movements in the US are destined to only activate masses when the horrors of war are brought home. “Successful” assaults on the interests, lives, and dignity of other peoples will likely be met with passivity, even applause, when they are wrapped in the cause of “democracy” or deposing a demonized “tyrant.” We saw this in Angola, Grenada and Yugoslavia. And we see this today in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Syria, Libya, Peoples Democratic Republic of Korea, Iran and many other countries.
Of course the ultimate source of this profound weakness is a political system – a two-party charade - that resolutely denies that the US is an imperialist power. Indeed, both parties actively and openly advocate for US imperialism. They make no concession to those standing in the way of US corporate interests or seeking their own path of development. While progressives may have hopefully thought they heard Obama and the Democrats say they were anti-war, they really heard that Obama and the Democrats were determined to drop direct and risky military involvement in the costly Iraq occupation and re-direct it to Afghanistan. It was undisguised in the campaign speeches and clearly stated in the Democratic platform. In other words, the Democrats resolved to deliver imperialism at a cost more agreeable to the US public.
With the presumptive “people’s” party fully committed to the imperialist agenda and a corporate media slavishly cheerleading for the same, it is only independent progressives and the left – the political outliers - who can lead the US public away from complicity with imperial aggression. They – and they alone – can provide the leadership that will educate and organize the US peace movement to be more than a response to mounting US casualties, military setbacks, and a useful tool for Democratic Party politicians.
Glen Ford’s scathing condemnation of much of the prominent recent leadership of the peace movement is well deserved. They failed to elevate the anti-war program to include a deeper understanding of imperialist aggression. In the interest of “breadth” and “unity,” they assiduously excluded many causes associated with US intervention or complicity, arguing that these issues might offend feckless liberals and middle class sensibilities. Principles were sacrificed for an elusive broad appeal. Whether the leaders were web warriors masking Democratic Party partisanship or struggle-in-the-streets “radicals” seeking some kind of soulless popular front is irrelevant. They allowed electoral politics to trump resistance; they bet everything on the 2008 election. The “success” of this effort was the creation of a movement shallow in commitment and thin in ideology, a movement easily hijacked by the Democratic Party.
Fortunately, there are organizations, like the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) and many national, regional and local committees, which are continuing the battle to end, not just Bush’s wars, but Obama’s wars as well. They share an independence of the two parties as well as a core understanding of the imperialist character of US foreign policy. While others wait for the Administration to have a change of heart, they continue to organize and agitate against policies that are costing thousands of lives to project US capitalism throughout the world. No one is excluded from these organizations or actions, but no one’s resolve against imperialism is muffled, either. When the imperial program is again perceived by the public as failing – which it will – they will be there to build a more militant, principled mass movement. Hopefully, next time will be different.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Crisis of Capitalism: Act II
When, in the last few weeks, insiders and economists like Jeffrey Sachs and David Stockman – not noted for their radical postures – decry the state of the economy and the direction of policies, all of us should take note.
Sachs, one of the fathers of neo-liberal “shock therapy,” recently cited decades-long stagnant wages and obscene levels of inequality: “We’ve reached the greatest income [and] wealth inequality in history… This is a new ‘Robber Baron’ era, of course.” He went on to say “…the people at the top buy the politicians… All of them – all parties. Everyone is in the hands of the super wealthy.” (Interviewed by Aaron Task, Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance).
In a similar vein, David Stockman, former director of the Office of Management and Budget under the Reagan Presidency, ripped the “crony capitalism” that has changed “capital markets into a rip-roaring casino that really is not productive for the real main street economy and is generating windfall gains for a very limited number of people to no good purpose…” He sees ordinary folks trying to save in this environment as “savaged” by Federal Reserve and government policies. (Interviewed by Peter Gorenstein, Daily Ticker, Yahoo! Finance).
These gloomy, critical views stand in stark contrast to the generally up-beat, optimistic reports and forecasts that usually flow from policy makers and dominate the media today. For the experts and pundits, the crisis has passed and we are on the way – though, they concede, tentatively – to recovery.
In truth, our modern-day Pollyannas mistake the first act for the entire play. While our economy may not be on the edge of a precipice, the problems that placed the world economy near collapse have only been displaced, pushed forward or swept aside. Even an arch advocate of capitalism such as Vincent Reinhard, senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, understands this: “After a severe financial crisis, we [tend to] get a severe recession, slower recovery and subpar expansion… Denial is a standard feature of financial crises…" (Interviewed by Stacy Curtin, Daily Ticker, Yahoo! Finance).
A closer look at the economy – an up-to-date report card from a Marxist perspective – is surely in order.
Gross Domestic Product
The broadest conventional measure of national and international economic performance remains GDP growth. Laden with the assumptions fundamental to the continued functioning of the capitalist economic engine, it valorizes all that is considered important to the ownership class and its continued accumulation of capital. Conversely, if an enormous human asset, such as the addition of one year of life span, were added to every person in the US, that value would not show up in the annual GDP figures except insofar as it generated commercial economic activity. Yet, as biased as the GDP growth figures are, their trend does reflect something real – the prospect of capitalism’s sustainability.
The first quarter figures for 2011 show a tepid US annual GDP growth of 1.8% from January through March. Pundits posture this as an aberration, a momentary stumble; but the trend line from the last quarter of 2009 is decidedly downward, in step with the drying up of stimulus funds. Nonresidential fixed investment has followed the same downward trajectory since its highpoint in the second quarter of 2010, even with spending on equipment and software leaping 11.6% this past quarter.
Likewise, export growth rates – touted by the experts as a leading force of recovery -- show the same downward trend from the level reached in the last quarter of 2009. Despite the Federal Reserve’s shrinking-dollar policy to sustain the rate of export growth, it is now falling below earlier levels of growth. Given that refined oil-based products account for the second largest component of export value and that the dollar value of these exports is highly inflated by the rising cost of oil, export growth calculated in dollars is exaggerated in the official numbers.
Further suggestive of foul weather ahead, the February GDP report for Canada – the US’s leading export destination by far – demonstrated an actual decline of .2%. It is hard to imagine robust export growth ahead, with a stagnant Canadian economy.
The growth rate of government spending – the sole factor preventing the economy from falling over the cliff at the height of the crisis – is now in negative territory and falling rapidly. The debt hysteria gripping local, state and federal officials produced budget cuts that are only now beginning to affect the GDP and other key economic indicators. Their influence on key factors – employment, incomes, consumer spending, etc. – will be felt more dramatically and negatively in the months and years to come.
Consumer spending continues its modest growth from its decline in the depths of the crisis. Its sustainability is in question, however, given that wages failed to keep up with inflation in the first quarter of 2011. This suggests that consumer debt and shrinking savings will again be the source of consumption growth, a condition ominously reminiscent of the pre-crisis period.
Internationally, GDP growth shows the same downward trend in nearly all the developed capitalist world, particularly the European Union. For those countries that have surrendered their sovereignty to the International Monetary Fund and the European Union – Greece, Ireland, and Portugal – the decline is far more dramatic. In the case of Greece, compliance with the austerity hawks has been catastrophic, with four successive quarters of losses greater than an annualized rate of 5%. PRChina and many emerging markets, on the other hand, have sustained high growth rates for diverse reasons, ranging from rational planning to irrational investment bubbles.
Profits, Productivity and Employment
Profit growth in the US – the fuel for a capitalist economy – has sprung back sharply from its nadir in the last quarter of 2008. Accelerating rapidly from that point, growth has stabilized over the last year at a rate commensurate with the pre-crisis period. Pundits hail the growth of profits in the manufacturing sector, a factor that has now reached about 90% of its pre-crisis level of production. But they fail to ask how profit growth can be so strong with less production and capacity utilization well below pre-crisis levels. The answer lies in a sharp increase in the rate of labor exploitation, expressed as intensified labor productivity. Labor productivity drove the explosion of profits after the 2008 collapse, settling at a level above historic averages. Put bluntly, the restoration of profitability came at the expense of an increasingly sweated, shrunken workforce.
Two factors opened the door to profit restoration: a weak, class-collaborationist labor movement, unwilling to confront capital, and the high rate of unemployment sowing fear throughout the workforce – what Marx called “the reserve army of labor.” With little organized fight for a larger share of the surplus and generalized fear of job loss among the working class, intensified exploitation was readily available to the capitalist class.
Nonetheless, the trend in labor productivity, like the trend in profitability, is downward, suggesting strongly that the crisis has failed to wring from the economy the long-term tendency for the rate of profit to decline–the theoretical basis for the Marxist theory of crisis.
With private sector labor productivity losing momentum, capital has turned to the service sector, primarily public goods and services, as a target for countering slowing profitability and surplus accumulation. The current attack on public employees’ rights, wages, salaries and benefits marks this tactical shift. With weak unions, disunity and nearly non-existent class consciousness, the private labor market is virtually elastic – capitalism can dictate the terms and conditions of labor. State-monopoly capital cannot tolerate a relatively inelastic public sector labor market with high union density, firm contracts and stable standards of living alongside a nearly enslaved private sector. Hence, it has launched an all-out assault on public sector workers, organized by capital’s minions in both political parties. While they cannot outsource police, firemen, and other face-to-face employees, they can break their unions. Of course, this initiative is done under the transparent ruse of debt reduction.
Another alarming sign emerging from the profit picture is the return of financials as the leading force in US profit growth. While non-financial profits lost steam at the end of 2010, profits from the financial sector jumped dramatically. By the end of 2010, financial profits achieved the same percentage of total domestic profits as they did in 2005. Clearly, speculation and financial maneuvers have ominously returned to the main stage in the US economy. For example, hedge funds have been increasing their CDS bets against Japanese debt, doubling the notional value of swaps made over the last year. Millions were made with the recent natural disaster and nuclear crisis. Debt speculation is an active agent in amplifying the volatility of European debt.
While supporters and critics of Administration policies wring their hands over the persistently high rate of unemployment, massive layoffs -- reducing the labor force dramatically faster than economic activity – was the key factor in restoring profitability and increasing asset value as expressed by equity markets. It would be naïve not to see unemployment as a capitalist tool of capitalist recovery, a tool that the ownership class is reluctant to surrender.
Much has been made of recent drops in the official monthly unemployment rates. Critics are quick to correctly note that these declines also reflect people who have left the workforce, people who are “discouraged” and statistically disappeared.
Perhaps a more realistic measure of the employment consequences of the crisis comes from examining the employment-to-population ratios and the labor participation rates compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The ratio of US employed to the total population has lost 4.5 points from its pre-crisis peak – a workforce loss of 13 to 14 million workers. When we add back those displaced but receiving unemployment compensation, we find a loss of 1.9 points in the labor participation rate, revealing 5 to 6 million workers officially disappeared – left without jobs or unemployment benefits. For these casualties of the crisis, savings, family support, food banks, social security, meager government aid, or the street are their only means of support. Unlike the politically biased official unemployment rates that obscure as much as they reveal, these grim BLS calculations offer little to celebrate.
Nor does the future of US employment appear bright. Over the last decade, US based multi-national corporations have added over two million jobs overseas while eliminating nearly 3 million here, a trend that will likely continue.
Running on Empty
Since the depths of the crisis over two and a half years ago, US policy makers have sought to stabilize and revive the critically wounded capitalist system. First, they offered a transfusion to the financial sector by injecting trillions of publicly obligated dollars into its lifeless body. Secondly, federal authorities cut away the gangrenous tissue infected by financial speculation – over a trillion dollars’ worth of fetid securities -- and placed it in the vaults of the Federal Reserve and Treasury, where it rests to this day. Thirdly, lawmakers agreed to an $800 billion stimulus package meant to restart the economy’s feeble heartbeat. After all these treatments, the economy remains in critical condition.
In mid-2010, the Federal Reserve recognized that these efforts to resuscitate a sickly economy were failing. Despite offering financial institutions and corporations virtually cost-free loans, the economy continued to respond sluggishly. The authorities acknowledged that the huge accumulated federal debt would eventually require higher interest rates to entice purchases of treasury securities to offset that debt. They understood that higher interest rates to secure the purchase of government debt would rebound through our financial institutions, driving all interest rates up and slowing borrowing. With lending drying up, they anticipated that the economy would slow down.
Thus, they sought to backstop this potential setback to recovery by embarking on a massive purchase of US treasury securities to maintain extremely low interest rates and ease any barriers to borrowers – essentially a rear-guard action dubbed Quantitative Easing II. As with the gangrenous financial securities, they purchased nearly $600 billion in government debt and locked it in the Federal Reserve vault, where it joins the garbage accumulated in the speculative frenzy that gave birth to the crisis. They hope to determine what they will do with it and the other “assets” at a later date.
Like most of the moves that flow from economic theories corrupted by wishful thinking and iron-clad confidence in capitalism, the Federal Reserve strategy produced consequences undesired. The huge infusion of dollars to purchase treasury securities cheapened the value of the dollar against other currencies. Imports, which outstrip the value of our exports to other countries, grew more costly to the US consumer; and inflation raised its ugly head, chewing away the living standards of working people. Further, many commodities, like oil, are traded internationally in dollars. With the value of dollars declining, pressure drove suppliers to raise prices to offset the falling buying power of the dollar, creating more inflationary pressure internationally. Moreover, rising interest rates in several countries inflated their currencies against the dollar as well, further affecting the costs of imported goods. These inflationary forces amplify the costs of other products, feeding an inflationary spiral. Despite unfounded optimism purveyed by the authorities and the media, inflation poses a serious threat to the economy and, especially, working class living standards. Those elements of the Consumer Price Index most relevant to working and poor people – fuel, health care, food, childcare, school fees, rent, etc – are those showing the most dramatic increase.
In addition, Federal Reserve policies failed in their mission. Though the cost of funding the US government debt is relatively stable, the cost of borrowing in the consumer arena continues to grow. Interest rates on mortgages, student loans, auto loans, etc. are on the rise. Again, QE II offered little relief to working people.
Prospects
Rather than a recovery, we are in Act II of a severe crisis of capitalism. It is not merely a financial crisis, a severe business-cycle trough or a radical imbalance, but a profound crisis of the capitalist system. Yes, there are imbalances, especially in the global economy. However, they are the effects and not the causes of this deep crisis. The advanced economies are scrambling to find solutions – individually – to the intractable problems of stagnation or decline, inflation, debt, intensified competition and failing economic institutions. These problems have fostered equally intractable political crises. Economic blocs, like the European Union, are under great stress from the diverse interests of the member states.
The emerging economies, on the other hand, are super-heated and threatened by the influx of speculative capital boiling over into severe eruptions of inflation and over-production.
As I argued some years ago, early in the crisis, the ephemeral era of capitalist cooperation – once called “globalization” – is over. Nation-states are going it alone, trying to find solutions to their immediate life-and-death issues, often at the expense of their global “partners.” Where they do find areas of limited cooperation, for example, in the aggression against Libya, their differences surface as well.
Years from now, when sober heads look back on the global crisis, they will recognize that the stability of PRChina, with its publicly owned banks and rational planning, did more to save the global economy from the brink than all of the bankrupt policy antics of the major capitalist powers. But there are more acts to come before the global capitalist economy finds firm ground.
What is missing from the maelstrom is for the working classes of all nations to move to center stage and demand solutions benefiting the vast majority. The Economist magazine, the voice of free markets since Marx’s time, reports that confidence in free markets has sunk by 21 percentage points internationally since 2002. Similarly, the Gallop Poll shows the confidence in banks and Congress is now at an all time low in the US. Only 23% of respondents have “a great deal of” or “a lot of” confidence in banks. The Congress scores even lower: a meager 11% share “a great deal of” or “a lot of” confidence in the US legislative branch. The crisis opens great opportunity to shape the world in a new direction, a direction that would not merely tame capitalism, but remove its destructive forces forever.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Sachs, one of the fathers of neo-liberal “shock therapy,” recently cited decades-long stagnant wages and obscene levels of inequality: “We’ve reached the greatest income [and] wealth inequality in history… This is a new ‘Robber Baron’ era, of course.” He went on to say “…the people at the top buy the politicians… All of them – all parties. Everyone is in the hands of the super wealthy.” (Interviewed by Aaron Task, Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance).
In a similar vein, David Stockman, former director of the Office of Management and Budget under the Reagan Presidency, ripped the “crony capitalism” that has changed “capital markets into a rip-roaring casino that really is not productive for the real main street economy and is generating windfall gains for a very limited number of people to no good purpose…” He sees ordinary folks trying to save in this environment as “savaged” by Federal Reserve and government policies. (Interviewed by Peter Gorenstein, Daily Ticker, Yahoo! Finance).
These gloomy, critical views stand in stark contrast to the generally up-beat, optimistic reports and forecasts that usually flow from policy makers and dominate the media today. For the experts and pundits, the crisis has passed and we are on the way – though, they concede, tentatively – to recovery.
In truth, our modern-day Pollyannas mistake the first act for the entire play. While our economy may not be on the edge of a precipice, the problems that placed the world economy near collapse have only been displaced, pushed forward or swept aside. Even an arch advocate of capitalism such as Vincent Reinhard, senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, understands this: “After a severe financial crisis, we [tend to] get a severe recession, slower recovery and subpar expansion… Denial is a standard feature of financial crises…" (Interviewed by Stacy Curtin, Daily Ticker, Yahoo! Finance).
A closer look at the economy – an up-to-date report card from a Marxist perspective – is surely in order.
Gross Domestic Product
The broadest conventional measure of national and international economic performance remains GDP growth. Laden with the assumptions fundamental to the continued functioning of the capitalist economic engine, it valorizes all that is considered important to the ownership class and its continued accumulation of capital. Conversely, if an enormous human asset, such as the addition of one year of life span, were added to every person in the US, that value would not show up in the annual GDP figures except insofar as it generated commercial economic activity. Yet, as biased as the GDP growth figures are, their trend does reflect something real – the prospect of capitalism’s sustainability.
The first quarter figures for 2011 show a tepid US annual GDP growth of 1.8% from January through March. Pundits posture this as an aberration, a momentary stumble; but the trend line from the last quarter of 2009 is decidedly downward, in step with the drying up of stimulus funds. Nonresidential fixed investment has followed the same downward trajectory since its highpoint in the second quarter of 2010, even with spending on equipment and software leaping 11.6% this past quarter.
Likewise, export growth rates – touted by the experts as a leading force of recovery -- show the same downward trend from the level reached in the last quarter of 2009. Despite the Federal Reserve’s shrinking-dollar policy to sustain the rate of export growth, it is now falling below earlier levels of growth. Given that refined oil-based products account for the second largest component of export value and that the dollar value of these exports is highly inflated by the rising cost of oil, export growth calculated in dollars is exaggerated in the official numbers.
Further suggestive of foul weather ahead, the February GDP report for Canada – the US’s leading export destination by far – demonstrated an actual decline of .2%. It is hard to imagine robust export growth ahead, with a stagnant Canadian economy.
The growth rate of government spending – the sole factor preventing the economy from falling over the cliff at the height of the crisis – is now in negative territory and falling rapidly. The debt hysteria gripping local, state and federal officials produced budget cuts that are only now beginning to affect the GDP and other key economic indicators. Their influence on key factors – employment, incomes, consumer spending, etc. – will be felt more dramatically and negatively in the months and years to come.
Consumer spending continues its modest growth from its decline in the depths of the crisis. Its sustainability is in question, however, given that wages failed to keep up with inflation in the first quarter of 2011. This suggests that consumer debt and shrinking savings will again be the source of consumption growth, a condition ominously reminiscent of the pre-crisis period.
Internationally, GDP growth shows the same downward trend in nearly all the developed capitalist world, particularly the European Union. For those countries that have surrendered their sovereignty to the International Monetary Fund and the European Union – Greece, Ireland, and Portugal – the decline is far more dramatic. In the case of Greece, compliance with the austerity hawks has been catastrophic, with four successive quarters of losses greater than an annualized rate of 5%. PRChina and many emerging markets, on the other hand, have sustained high growth rates for diverse reasons, ranging from rational planning to irrational investment bubbles.
Profits, Productivity and Employment
Profit growth in the US – the fuel for a capitalist economy – has sprung back sharply from its nadir in the last quarter of 2008. Accelerating rapidly from that point, growth has stabilized over the last year at a rate commensurate with the pre-crisis period. Pundits hail the growth of profits in the manufacturing sector, a factor that has now reached about 90% of its pre-crisis level of production. But they fail to ask how profit growth can be so strong with less production and capacity utilization well below pre-crisis levels. The answer lies in a sharp increase in the rate of labor exploitation, expressed as intensified labor productivity. Labor productivity drove the explosion of profits after the 2008 collapse, settling at a level above historic averages. Put bluntly, the restoration of profitability came at the expense of an increasingly sweated, shrunken workforce.
Two factors opened the door to profit restoration: a weak, class-collaborationist labor movement, unwilling to confront capital, and the high rate of unemployment sowing fear throughout the workforce – what Marx called “the reserve army of labor.” With little organized fight for a larger share of the surplus and generalized fear of job loss among the working class, intensified exploitation was readily available to the capitalist class.
Nonetheless, the trend in labor productivity, like the trend in profitability, is downward, suggesting strongly that the crisis has failed to wring from the economy the long-term tendency for the rate of profit to decline–the theoretical basis for the Marxist theory of crisis.
With private sector labor productivity losing momentum, capital has turned to the service sector, primarily public goods and services, as a target for countering slowing profitability and surplus accumulation. The current attack on public employees’ rights, wages, salaries and benefits marks this tactical shift. With weak unions, disunity and nearly non-existent class consciousness, the private labor market is virtually elastic – capitalism can dictate the terms and conditions of labor. State-monopoly capital cannot tolerate a relatively inelastic public sector labor market with high union density, firm contracts and stable standards of living alongside a nearly enslaved private sector. Hence, it has launched an all-out assault on public sector workers, organized by capital’s minions in both political parties. While they cannot outsource police, firemen, and other face-to-face employees, they can break their unions. Of course, this initiative is done under the transparent ruse of debt reduction.
Another alarming sign emerging from the profit picture is the return of financials as the leading force in US profit growth. While non-financial profits lost steam at the end of 2010, profits from the financial sector jumped dramatically. By the end of 2010, financial profits achieved the same percentage of total domestic profits as they did in 2005. Clearly, speculation and financial maneuvers have ominously returned to the main stage in the US economy. For example, hedge funds have been increasing their CDS bets against Japanese debt, doubling the notional value of swaps made over the last year. Millions were made with the recent natural disaster and nuclear crisis. Debt speculation is an active agent in amplifying the volatility of European debt.
While supporters and critics of Administration policies wring their hands over the persistently high rate of unemployment, massive layoffs -- reducing the labor force dramatically faster than economic activity – was the key factor in restoring profitability and increasing asset value as expressed by equity markets. It would be naïve not to see unemployment as a capitalist tool of capitalist recovery, a tool that the ownership class is reluctant to surrender.
Much has been made of recent drops in the official monthly unemployment rates. Critics are quick to correctly note that these declines also reflect people who have left the workforce, people who are “discouraged” and statistically disappeared.
Perhaps a more realistic measure of the employment consequences of the crisis comes from examining the employment-to-population ratios and the labor participation rates compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The ratio of US employed to the total population has lost 4.5 points from its pre-crisis peak – a workforce loss of 13 to 14 million workers. When we add back those displaced but receiving unemployment compensation, we find a loss of 1.9 points in the labor participation rate, revealing 5 to 6 million workers officially disappeared – left without jobs or unemployment benefits. For these casualties of the crisis, savings, family support, food banks, social security, meager government aid, or the street are their only means of support. Unlike the politically biased official unemployment rates that obscure as much as they reveal, these grim BLS calculations offer little to celebrate.
Nor does the future of US employment appear bright. Over the last decade, US based multi-national corporations have added over two million jobs overseas while eliminating nearly 3 million here, a trend that will likely continue.
Running on Empty
Since the depths of the crisis over two and a half years ago, US policy makers have sought to stabilize and revive the critically wounded capitalist system. First, they offered a transfusion to the financial sector by injecting trillions of publicly obligated dollars into its lifeless body. Secondly, federal authorities cut away the gangrenous tissue infected by financial speculation – over a trillion dollars’ worth of fetid securities -- and placed it in the vaults of the Federal Reserve and Treasury, where it rests to this day. Thirdly, lawmakers agreed to an $800 billion stimulus package meant to restart the economy’s feeble heartbeat. After all these treatments, the economy remains in critical condition.
In mid-2010, the Federal Reserve recognized that these efforts to resuscitate a sickly economy were failing. Despite offering financial institutions and corporations virtually cost-free loans, the economy continued to respond sluggishly. The authorities acknowledged that the huge accumulated federal debt would eventually require higher interest rates to entice purchases of treasury securities to offset that debt. They understood that higher interest rates to secure the purchase of government debt would rebound through our financial institutions, driving all interest rates up and slowing borrowing. With lending drying up, they anticipated that the economy would slow down.
Thus, they sought to backstop this potential setback to recovery by embarking on a massive purchase of US treasury securities to maintain extremely low interest rates and ease any barriers to borrowers – essentially a rear-guard action dubbed Quantitative Easing II. As with the gangrenous financial securities, they purchased nearly $600 billion in government debt and locked it in the Federal Reserve vault, where it joins the garbage accumulated in the speculative frenzy that gave birth to the crisis. They hope to determine what they will do with it and the other “assets” at a later date.
Like most of the moves that flow from economic theories corrupted by wishful thinking and iron-clad confidence in capitalism, the Federal Reserve strategy produced consequences undesired. The huge infusion of dollars to purchase treasury securities cheapened the value of the dollar against other currencies. Imports, which outstrip the value of our exports to other countries, grew more costly to the US consumer; and inflation raised its ugly head, chewing away the living standards of working people. Further, many commodities, like oil, are traded internationally in dollars. With the value of dollars declining, pressure drove suppliers to raise prices to offset the falling buying power of the dollar, creating more inflationary pressure internationally. Moreover, rising interest rates in several countries inflated their currencies against the dollar as well, further affecting the costs of imported goods. These inflationary forces amplify the costs of other products, feeding an inflationary spiral. Despite unfounded optimism purveyed by the authorities and the media, inflation poses a serious threat to the economy and, especially, working class living standards. Those elements of the Consumer Price Index most relevant to working and poor people – fuel, health care, food, childcare, school fees, rent, etc – are those showing the most dramatic increase.
In addition, Federal Reserve policies failed in their mission. Though the cost of funding the US government debt is relatively stable, the cost of borrowing in the consumer arena continues to grow. Interest rates on mortgages, student loans, auto loans, etc. are on the rise. Again, QE II offered little relief to working people.
Prospects
Rather than a recovery, we are in Act II of a severe crisis of capitalism. It is not merely a financial crisis, a severe business-cycle trough or a radical imbalance, but a profound crisis of the capitalist system. Yes, there are imbalances, especially in the global economy. However, they are the effects and not the causes of this deep crisis. The advanced economies are scrambling to find solutions – individually – to the intractable problems of stagnation or decline, inflation, debt, intensified competition and failing economic institutions. These problems have fostered equally intractable political crises. Economic blocs, like the European Union, are under great stress from the diverse interests of the member states.
The emerging economies, on the other hand, are super-heated and threatened by the influx of speculative capital boiling over into severe eruptions of inflation and over-production.
As I argued some years ago, early in the crisis, the ephemeral era of capitalist cooperation – once called “globalization” – is over. Nation-states are going it alone, trying to find solutions to their immediate life-and-death issues, often at the expense of their global “partners.” Where they do find areas of limited cooperation, for example, in the aggression against Libya, their differences surface as well.
Years from now, when sober heads look back on the global crisis, they will recognize that the stability of PRChina, with its publicly owned banks and rational planning, did more to save the global economy from the brink than all of the bankrupt policy antics of the major capitalist powers. But there are more acts to come before the global capitalist economy finds firm ground.
What is missing from the maelstrom is for the working classes of all nations to move to center stage and demand solutions benefiting the vast majority. The Economist magazine, the voice of free markets since Marx’s time, reports that confidence in free markets has sunk by 21 percentage points internationally since 2002. Similarly, the Gallop Poll shows the confidence in banks and Congress is now at an all time low in the US. Only 23% of respondents have “a great deal of” or “a lot of” confidence in banks. The Congress scores even lower: a meager 11% share “a great deal of” or “a lot of” confidence in the US legislative branch. The crisis opens great opportunity to shape the world in a new direction, a direction that would not merely tame capitalism, but remove its destructive forces forever.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Thursday, April 21, 2011
The 16th Congress of the World Federation of Trade Unions Athens, Greece, April 6-10, 2011
For ZZ's report on the historic 16th World Federation of Trade Union's Congress, please follow the following links:
World Federation of Trade Unions:
http://www.wftucentral.org/?p=3695&language=en
Marxism-Leninism Today:
http://mltoday.com/subject-areas/labor-movement/the-16th-congress-of-the-world-federation-of-trade-unions-athens-greece-april-6-10-2011-1134-2.html
For a video of the proceedings, please access this link:
http://www.wftucentral.org/?p=3692&language=en
World Federation of Trade Unions:
http://www.wftucentral.org/?p=3695&language=en
Marxism-Leninism Today:
http://mltoday.com/subject-areas/labor-movement/the-16th-congress-of-the-world-federation-of-trade-unions-athens-greece-april-6-10-2011-1134-2.html
For a video of the proceedings, please access this link:
http://www.wftucentral.org/?p=3692&language=en
Thursday, March 31, 2011
“No-Fly” Imperialism
As the super-power and its sub-super-power friends rain bombs and missiles on Libya, we face a new crisis of clarity and courage in the US. While many in the world recoil from the destruction and human toll of this un-provoked assault by foreign powers on a small, relatively defenseless country, most of our fellow citizens, without much thought, buy into the government and the slavish media’s spin on this aggression.
From a far-off planet, beings would trust their instincts and see the massive military force unleashed on a section of North Africa as the criminal violation of Libyan air space and territoriality that it is. They might wonder what possibly could justify this aggressive action, even what could motivate seemingly senseless economic and human destruction.
But in our corner of the world, words like “No Fly Zone,” “human rights,” “democracy” and “humanitarian intervention” are drained of any credible meaning and cynically repeated by perpetrators who know that, if they are repeated enough and echoed by a subservient media, they will cow masses into thoughtless compliance.
Libya is in the throes of a civil war. Unlike other risings in the Middle East, the opposing forces have resorted to armed confrontation, resolving to settle the affair violently. On one side is a once-popular nationalist leader credited with overthrowing an absolute, but “pro-Western” monarch. He has vacillated between hostility to Western interests and mutual, cooperative relations. Up until the uprising, he had many European friends and corporate collaborators attracted to Libya’s energy resources.
Gadhafi has the dubious distinction of being perhaps the first international leader openly targeted by the US Government for assassination. In 1986, the Reagan administration launched an overt air attack upon him that resulted in the death of numerous civilians. Formerly, government-sponsored international assassination was couched in deniability and reserved for US security services. With little significant domestic opposition, the precedent has encouraged subsequent administrations to expand these illegal murders, most recently with the wide-spread drone attacks embraced by the Obama Administration.
Gadhafi has created his own unique state structure that claims a “democratic” and “socialist” character, a matter best left to be judged by the Libyan people.
Arrayed against Gadhafi in the civil war is a resistance movement that embraced armed struggle and occupies key cities in the Eastern part of Libya. Nominally leading this movement is the former Libyan Justice Minister and a largely anonymous, secretive council that has yet to reveal either a clear program or ideological commitments. Interestingly, they fight under the flag of the old pre-Gadhafi monarchy. Many left commentators have exposed financial ties and covert contacts with Western intelligence agencies and covert organizations. The impact of these charges is difficult to assess since such contacts are widespread, infecting almost all of the oppositional movements in the Middle East, including those in Egypt and Tunisia. Subsequent news reports have confirmed a significant and growing engagement by US and British security forces, including the embedding of a top military leader with undeniable ties to the CIA and the US foreign policy establishment. Anti-imperialists should well remember the covert assistance delivered to Islamic fundamentalists throughout the Middle East by US and Israeli intelligence as a backstop to secular left movements, a devious tactic that spawned a new oppositional movement that turned against its sponsors. Nonetheless, the kept media has, with little evidence, proclaimed the anti-Gadhafi forces “democratic.”
No-Fly Zones
US and European intervention in Libyan affairs hides under the cover of a UN resolution authorizing a “No-fly zone.” A no-fly zone was a formal devise contrived in 1991 to pressure Iraq under the guise of protecting human rights. Forcing a resolution through the UN Security Council, the US and its allies “interpreted” the resolution to allow the policing of Iraqi air space, denying Iraqi military planes or missiles any activity in much of its territory. In fact, this maneuver was an attempt to provoke a response that would lead to an escalation of US military action. Interestingly, US policy assumed that pre-emptive strikes were unnecessary because the US maintained such an overwhelming military and technological advantage.
Facing little effective international or domestic opposition to the Iraqi venture, the US and its allies again went to the UN well for approval of air power to secure “human rights” in the ongoing dismantling of Yugoslavia. From 1993 on, NATO conducted air strikes to influence the outcome. Emboldened by the success of the “humanitarian intervention” ruse and confident of their domination of the UN, the Western allies nakedly used air power to shape the post-Soviet world in their own interests, but at the cost of thousands of innocent lives and massive economic destruction. With most opinion makers in the Western capitalist countries seduced by the doctrine of “humanitarian intervention,” a new tool of imperialism was born.
Now the tool has been unsheathed against Libya. Rushing through another “No-fly” UN resolution with the shameful acquiescence of some abstaining “progressive” states, the US and its allies are again seeking to dictate the fate of a sovereign state. In this case, they have shed even the illusion of disinterested humanitarian intervention by actively coordinating with and supporting the military operations of the anti-Gadhafi forces. The initiative for this aggression was eagerly assumed by France and the UK, a development that likely reflects their reliance on Libyan energy resources.
Like a petulant child, the Western powers – the US and its NATO allies – press the limits of tolerance. From its malign origins as a maneuver to influence regime change in Iraq, the “no-fly zone” tactic has morphed into a scheme to dismantle the former Yugoslavia and, now, a transparent cover for naked, unprovoked aggression against a sovereign nation. The full might of Western military power has wrecked havoc upon the civilian population to sheer away Gadhafi supporters through terror. While paying lip service to the UN resolution, NATO spokespeople have endorsed this terror campaign as the strategic goal – an updated version of “shock and awe.”
Imperialism
Imperialism makes adjustments. After the demise of the Cold War, US imperialism structured a new world order. With the absence of a formidable military and economic counter-force, policy makers were emboldened to take direct, overt action to shape the world in a way agreeable to capitalist economic interests. During the Cold War, these goals were sought through covert action, subservient regional watch dogs, and surrogate armed forces, rarely through direct military engagement; fear of the military might of the socialist community foreclosed direct intervention. With those barriers removed, the imperialist countries are now feasting on weaker countries through open military action.
In order to dampen popular resistance, imperialist aggression is clothed in the lofty humanitarian language of democracy and human rights. With a tame, compliant mass media, aggression is readily postured as fostering democracy and promoting human rights, oblivious to the very lives of hundreds of thousands of those who disagree or are merely bystanders.
Unfortunately, many progressives and leftists have failed to adjust to the adjustments of imperialism; they have been blinded by the cynical, empty slogans proclaimed by imperialist aggressors. They refuse to see those resisting aggression as anti-imperialists, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or now Libya. Instead, they are side tracked by cultural, religious or political differences not palatable to smug, all-knowing Westerners.
The crucial and fundamental right of national self-determination, so crucial to the oppressed and scorned by imperialism, has been cast aside. For most of the twentieth century, this principle was the cornerstone of liberation from big power domination. In today’s world, it is expressed as non-intervention in the internal affairs of other nations. Throughout the world - from Cuba and Venezuela to Georgia, from Iran to Peoples’ China – the US violates this principle on a daily basis. However we may personally judge the practices or political systems of our neighbors, they are for them to determine. It is surely not a matter to be decided by the great powers of our time. Their sanctimony thinly disguises their own imperial interests.
Indifference or willful consent to imperialist aggression is not an honest option.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
From a far-off planet, beings would trust their instincts and see the massive military force unleashed on a section of North Africa as the criminal violation of Libyan air space and territoriality that it is. They might wonder what possibly could justify this aggressive action, even what could motivate seemingly senseless economic and human destruction.
But in our corner of the world, words like “No Fly Zone,” “human rights,” “democracy” and “humanitarian intervention” are drained of any credible meaning and cynically repeated by perpetrators who know that, if they are repeated enough and echoed by a subservient media, they will cow masses into thoughtless compliance.
Libya is in the throes of a civil war. Unlike other risings in the Middle East, the opposing forces have resorted to armed confrontation, resolving to settle the affair violently. On one side is a once-popular nationalist leader credited with overthrowing an absolute, but “pro-Western” monarch. He has vacillated between hostility to Western interests and mutual, cooperative relations. Up until the uprising, he had many European friends and corporate collaborators attracted to Libya’s energy resources.
Gadhafi has the dubious distinction of being perhaps the first international leader openly targeted by the US Government for assassination. In 1986, the Reagan administration launched an overt air attack upon him that resulted in the death of numerous civilians. Formerly, government-sponsored international assassination was couched in deniability and reserved for US security services. With little significant domestic opposition, the precedent has encouraged subsequent administrations to expand these illegal murders, most recently with the wide-spread drone attacks embraced by the Obama Administration.
Gadhafi has created his own unique state structure that claims a “democratic” and “socialist” character, a matter best left to be judged by the Libyan people.
Arrayed against Gadhafi in the civil war is a resistance movement that embraced armed struggle and occupies key cities in the Eastern part of Libya. Nominally leading this movement is the former Libyan Justice Minister and a largely anonymous, secretive council that has yet to reveal either a clear program or ideological commitments. Interestingly, they fight under the flag of the old pre-Gadhafi monarchy. Many left commentators have exposed financial ties and covert contacts with Western intelligence agencies and covert organizations. The impact of these charges is difficult to assess since such contacts are widespread, infecting almost all of the oppositional movements in the Middle East, including those in Egypt and Tunisia. Subsequent news reports have confirmed a significant and growing engagement by US and British security forces, including the embedding of a top military leader with undeniable ties to the CIA and the US foreign policy establishment. Anti-imperialists should well remember the covert assistance delivered to Islamic fundamentalists throughout the Middle East by US and Israeli intelligence as a backstop to secular left movements, a devious tactic that spawned a new oppositional movement that turned against its sponsors. Nonetheless, the kept media has, with little evidence, proclaimed the anti-Gadhafi forces “democratic.”
No-Fly Zones
US and European intervention in Libyan affairs hides under the cover of a UN resolution authorizing a “No-fly zone.” A no-fly zone was a formal devise contrived in 1991 to pressure Iraq under the guise of protecting human rights. Forcing a resolution through the UN Security Council, the US and its allies “interpreted” the resolution to allow the policing of Iraqi air space, denying Iraqi military planes or missiles any activity in much of its territory. In fact, this maneuver was an attempt to provoke a response that would lead to an escalation of US military action. Interestingly, US policy assumed that pre-emptive strikes were unnecessary because the US maintained such an overwhelming military and technological advantage.
Facing little effective international or domestic opposition to the Iraqi venture, the US and its allies again went to the UN well for approval of air power to secure “human rights” in the ongoing dismantling of Yugoslavia. From 1993 on, NATO conducted air strikes to influence the outcome. Emboldened by the success of the “humanitarian intervention” ruse and confident of their domination of the UN, the Western allies nakedly used air power to shape the post-Soviet world in their own interests, but at the cost of thousands of innocent lives and massive economic destruction. With most opinion makers in the Western capitalist countries seduced by the doctrine of “humanitarian intervention,” a new tool of imperialism was born.
Now the tool has been unsheathed against Libya. Rushing through another “No-fly” UN resolution with the shameful acquiescence of some abstaining “progressive” states, the US and its allies are again seeking to dictate the fate of a sovereign state. In this case, they have shed even the illusion of disinterested humanitarian intervention by actively coordinating with and supporting the military operations of the anti-Gadhafi forces. The initiative for this aggression was eagerly assumed by France and the UK, a development that likely reflects their reliance on Libyan energy resources.
Like a petulant child, the Western powers – the US and its NATO allies – press the limits of tolerance. From its malign origins as a maneuver to influence regime change in Iraq, the “no-fly zone” tactic has morphed into a scheme to dismantle the former Yugoslavia and, now, a transparent cover for naked, unprovoked aggression against a sovereign nation. The full might of Western military power has wrecked havoc upon the civilian population to sheer away Gadhafi supporters through terror. While paying lip service to the UN resolution, NATO spokespeople have endorsed this terror campaign as the strategic goal – an updated version of “shock and awe.”
Imperialism
Imperialism makes adjustments. After the demise of the Cold War, US imperialism structured a new world order. With the absence of a formidable military and economic counter-force, policy makers were emboldened to take direct, overt action to shape the world in a way agreeable to capitalist economic interests. During the Cold War, these goals were sought through covert action, subservient regional watch dogs, and surrogate armed forces, rarely through direct military engagement; fear of the military might of the socialist community foreclosed direct intervention. With those barriers removed, the imperialist countries are now feasting on weaker countries through open military action.
In order to dampen popular resistance, imperialist aggression is clothed in the lofty humanitarian language of democracy and human rights. With a tame, compliant mass media, aggression is readily postured as fostering democracy and promoting human rights, oblivious to the very lives of hundreds of thousands of those who disagree or are merely bystanders.
Unfortunately, many progressives and leftists have failed to adjust to the adjustments of imperialism; they have been blinded by the cynical, empty slogans proclaimed by imperialist aggressors. They refuse to see those resisting aggression as anti-imperialists, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or now Libya. Instead, they are side tracked by cultural, religious or political differences not palatable to smug, all-knowing Westerners.
The crucial and fundamental right of national self-determination, so crucial to the oppressed and scorned by imperialism, has been cast aside. For most of the twentieth century, this principle was the cornerstone of liberation from big power domination. In today’s world, it is expressed as non-intervention in the internal affairs of other nations. Throughout the world - from Cuba and Venezuela to Georgia, from Iran to Peoples’ China – the US violates this principle on a daily basis. However we may personally judge the practices or political systems of our neighbors, they are for them to determine. It is surely not a matter to be decided by the great powers of our time. Their sanctimony thinly disguises their own imperial interests.
Indifference or willful consent to imperialist aggression is not an honest option.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Unwanted Advise
When in doubt about how to channel the movement forward, I suggest asking someone standing in the way of change. Do the opposite of what they advise.
Fortunately, we have unsolicited advise from William McGurn, a corporate Vice President of News Corporation, the giant media conglomerate that, under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch, brings the world the right-wing, pro-corporate, anti-democratic slant through familiar vehicles like Fox News and The Wall Street Journal. McGurn is an especially important voice since he writes the speeches for CEO Murdoch and, before that, he was the chief speechwriter for George W. Bush.
He regularly writes the folksy WSJ column called “Main Street,” though it is doubtful that McGurn often visits “Main Street,” except when he mistakes it for “Wall Street.”
Most recently, McGurn penned a column entitled “Rules for Wisconsin Radicals”, offering “…ten rules for Wisconsin protesters…” (Wall Street Journal, 3-15-2011) Undoubtedly, he didn’t write these rules to seriously direct those fighting to preserve the wages, benefits, and rights of Wisconsin public sector workers, but rather to provide a moment of jocularity for his Wall Street pals and other moguls. (We used to call them “fat cats,” but they’ve joined the fitness craze; they still smoke fat cigars and belong to private clubs, though.)
McGurn begins with a rule that, should anyone take it seriously, guarantees a tame and ineffective movement: No more Jesse Jackson. Apart from its embedded racism, this rule is a recipe for dissipating the energy that street action generates. Lurking behind this advice is a fear that a movement can grow and develop into a real threat to corporate power and elite politics. Jackson’s rhetorical powers and ability to unite seemingly varied interests might “suggest to people... that the protesters may be more radical than they claim,” quoting McGurn.
Precisely.
And it is exactly the fire and brimstone and ability to link causes brought by people like Jesse Jackson that promise to mold a particular struggle into a national movement attracting millions. Mainstream McGurn’s rule reveals his own thinly concealed image of the average US citizen as dumbly sitting in front of the TV watching the demonstrations on Fox News and frowning at the sight of Jesse Jackson. Sure, that may be true of many Fox News viewers, but millions of people – certainly most African Americans – remember the picket lines, voter registration projects, protests and demonstrations that Jesse Jackson has enlivened.
Rule Two proscribes other figures associated with the left: Ditto for Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, and Tony Shaloub. While they and other activists may get under the skin of those trawling Fox News for wisdom, they bring together others who will recognize the connections between many and varied movements: health care, women’s issues, repression of Arab Americans, and immigrant rights. It is through these connections that recognition of a common foe creates the conditions for a united movement, something that Mainstream McGurn profoundly fears.
Sadly, many on the left have fallen into McGurn’s trap by narrowing the focus of struggles in order to court the illusory mainstream. Elements of the anti-war movement have excluded “controversial” leaders and issues so as not to alienate fair-weather friends in the Democratic Party or those they imagine too dumb to gauge their own stakes in various issues. Implicit in this tactic is contempt for people’s ability to learn and grow. Implicit in this approach is a lack of the ability to imagine a unified, diverse movement emerging. Cynically, this is often presented as an attempt for “broad unity.” Instead, as we have seen, this results in vague, tepid and uninspiring demands.
Lose the peace signs, McGurn admonishes, that would suggest “a hankering for the anti-middle class 1960’s.” This third rule is an odd twist on history. The movements of the sixties produced an end to legal segregation in the South, civil rights legislation, anti-poverty programs, Medicare, the collapse of a President’s re-election bid, and enormous pressure to end an unjust war. While the peace sign was just one of the symbols of the time, it is hard to envision how these gains were achieved while offending the “middle class.”
The simple truth is that McGurn fears a repeat of the movements that swept the sixties; he fears that the peace sign and its broad appeal might unify those seeking peace with those promoting other causes for social justice.
Put out more flags and sing “a few verses of ‘God Bless America.’” Sure, flags, like peace symbols, are welcome, but turning the Wisconsin struggle into an orgy of patriotism and chest-pounding loyalty is a sure-fire way to divert a movement that shows a glimmer of recognition of class oppression into a celebration of common destiny and the mirage of shared sacrifice. Whenever the moguls sense a stirring of resentment among their vassals, they bring out the flag and patriotic songs to remind the downtrodden of how they are all part of “…one nation, invisible…” I doubt if McGurn would invite a band of workers carrying flags into the corporate board room to remind the directors that we are “…one nation, indivisible…” and entitled to jobs and fair and equitable treatment. Maybe that’s where we most need more flags and patriotic songs.
Rule Five: Respect the law. Paraphrasing Marx, agents for change shouldn’t interpret the law, but force the legal system to embrace social justice – to change it. This is rarely possible without defiance of the law. All the successful movements that have made the US a better nation have challenged the law when it was a barrier to advancing the struggle. From the slavery abolitionists to anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, principled fighters for justice have energized movements with their determination to go beyond the constraints of polite discourse and even the laws. One of our great democratic achievements – the elimination of legal segregation – would have failed if the civil rights movement abided by the laws of the time.
Mainstream McGurn scolds the Wisconsin teachers with his sixth rule: If you are teachers, don’t call in sick as a group so you can all protest. McGurn’s concerns about cancelled classes and student welfare would be touching if he showed the same concern for teachers’ unions and their welfare. Once again, he shows scorn for the intelligence and integrity of the “mainstream” students and parents who value the well being of teachers and identify with their needs. (In every opinion poll, teachers are among the most respected segments of society—well above corporate bigwigs, politicians, and even pundits!)
McGurn is especially appalled by the incivility of the demonstrators. No more Hitler moustaches on Governor Walker, he exclaims. “…Hitler analogies are tired.” Or do they touch a raw nerve? In any case, my own survey of the multitude of homemade signs suggests that McGurn’s imagination is even greater than his indignation. But in any case, policing the signs and images is merely a distraction from the work of nurturing a dramatic fight back against his friend, Governor Walker. Where McGurn sees a public relations spectacle, others see the kindling of class struggle, a fire that McGurn deeply dreads.
Rule Eight: Make local workers your public face: real teachers, real cops, real firemen. “… [T]hey make a much more sympathetic case than the professional union leaders.” While “professional union leaders” are struggling to shed the rust of class collaboration, dividing them from the rank-and-file is a sure way to derail a movement. When masses are in motion, even the most cautious, backward union leaders will jog to keep up. They pose a real danger, however, when their fears of worker militancy threaten to clear the streets in favor of political maneuvers and back-room deals. But the spotlight is large enough for everyone to stand in it.
If you want to cripple a movement, take McGurn’s Rule Nine to heart: Don’t call for grand actions only likely to confirm your weakness. Certainly modest, polite and limited requests will hearten the moguls and elites who are only too happy to dismiss them. This brand of pre-destined defeatism limits the horizon of victory before the battle is waged. Surely, the decades-long, one-sided class war waged by corporations and their minions must be met with more than the threat of minor, tentative skirmishes. Unquestionably, great victories require thorough and thoughtful preparation, but they are foregone if couched in timidity. Lenin said it well: “Only struggle discloses to it [the masses] the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will.” For Lenin and other peoples’ leaders, weaknesses are not to be heeded, but to be overcome through action.
The “business unionism” practice of offering concessions before confrontation has proven to be bankrupt. The prospect of “grand actions” should be on the agenda.
Lastly, McGurn admonishes protesters to [s]how some sympathy for the tax payers. In McGurn’s world, public sector workers are merely burdens on taxpayers and not the essential elements of a functioning and hospitable society. It never crossed his mind that they may be more socially useful than stock brokers, Wall Street managers or CEOs. Workers’ struggles to maintain and advance a modest standard of living is seen by him and those like him as a personal burden rather than compensation for the education, protection and services that they provide for the vast majority. In his world of gated communities, mansions, private jets and limousines, private schools, private clubs and the other privileges of wealth, the public services that sustain the work, security and private lives of most of us is of little consequence.
Of course we are all taxpayers and most of us are grateful for the social benefits that public workers provide. We wish that less of our tax burden were wasted on destructive wars, subsidies for giant corporations and fixing the messes left in the wake of corporate irresponsibility and crime. For McGurn and his friends, these are tolerable uses of taxpayers’ dollars; for the rest of us, they are not.
Thanks, but no thanks, William McGurn. As the battle for justice for public sector workers grows in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and most other states, we’ll find our own way.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Fortunately, we have unsolicited advise from William McGurn, a corporate Vice President of News Corporation, the giant media conglomerate that, under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch, brings the world the right-wing, pro-corporate, anti-democratic slant through familiar vehicles like Fox News and The Wall Street Journal. McGurn is an especially important voice since he writes the speeches for CEO Murdoch and, before that, he was the chief speechwriter for George W. Bush.
He regularly writes the folksy WSJ column called “Main Street,” though it is doubtful that McGurn often visits “Main Street,” except when he mistakes it for “Wall Street.”
Most recently, McGurn penned a column entitled “Rules for Wisconsin Radicals”, offering “…ten rules for Wisconsin protesters…” (Wall Street Journal, 3-15-2011) Undoubtedly, he didn’t write these rules to seriously direct those fighting to preserve the wages, benefits, and rights of Wisconsin public sector workers, but rather to provide a moment of jocularity for his Wall Street pals and other moguls. (We used to call them “fat cats,” but they’ve joined the fitness craze; they still smoke fat cigars and belong to private clubs, though.)
McGurn begins with a rule that, should anyone take it seriously, guarantees a tame and ineffective movement: No more Jesse Jackson. Apart from its embedded racism, this rule is a recipe for dissipating the energy that street action generates. Lurking behind this advice is a fear that a movement can grow and develop into a real threat to corporate power and elite politics. Jackson’s rhetorical powers and ability to unite seemingly varied interests might “suggest to people... that the protesters may be more radical than they claim,” quoting McGurn.
Precisely.
And it is exactly the fire and brimstone and ability to link causes brought by people like Jesse Jackson that promise to mold a particular struggle into a national movement attracting millions. Mainstream McGurn’s rule reveals his own thinly concealed image of the average US citizen as dumbly sitting in front of the TV watching the demonstrations on Fox News and frowning at the sight of Jesse Jackson. Sure, that may be true of many Fox News viewers, but millions of people – certainly most African Americans – remember the picket lines, voter registration projects, protests and demonstrations that Jesse Jackson has enlivened.
Rule Two proscribes other figures associated with the left: Ditto for Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, and Tony Shaloub. While they and other activists may get under the skin of those trawling Fox News for wisdom, they bring together others who will recognize the connections between many and varied movements: health care, women’s issues, repression of Arab Americans, and immigrant rights. It is through these connections that recognition of a common foe creates the conditions for a united movement, something that Mainstream McGurn profoundly fears.
Sadly, many on the left have fallen into McGurn’s trap by narrowing the focus of struggles in order to court the illusory mainstream. Elements of the anti-war movement have excluded “controversial” leaders and issues so as not to alienate fair-weather friends in the Democratic Party or those they imagine too dumb to gauge their own stakes in various issues. Implicit in this tactic is contempt for people’s ability to learn and grow. Implicit in this approach is a lack of the ability to imagine a unified, diverse movement emerging. Cynically, this is often presented as an attempt for “broad unity.” Instead, as we have seen, this results in vague, tepid and uninspiring demands.
Lose the peace signs, McGurn admonishes, that would suggest “a hankering for the anti-middle class 1960’s.” This third rule is an odd twist on history. The movements of the sixties produced an end to legal segregation in the South, civil rights legislation, anti-poverty programs, Medicare, the collapse of a President’s re-election bid, and enormous pressure to end an unjust war. While the peace sign was just one of the symbols of the time, it is hard to envision how these gains were achieved while offending the “middle class.”
The simple truth is that McGurn fears a repeat of the movements that swept the sixties; he fears that the peace sign and its broad appeal might unify those seeking peace with those promoting other causes for social justice.
Put out more flags and sing “a few verses of ‘God Bless America.’” Sure, flags, like peace symbols, are welcome, but turning the Wisconsin struggle into an orgy of patriotism and chest-pounding loyalty is a sure-fire way to divert a movement that shows a glimmer of recognition of class oppression into a celebration of common destiny and the mirage of shared sacrifice. Whenever the moguls sense a stirring of resentment among their vassals, they bring out the flag and patriotic songs to remind the downtrodden of how they are all part of “…one nation, invisible…” I doubt if McGurn would invite a band of workers carrying flags into the corporate board room to remind the directors that we are “…one nation, indivisible…” and entitled to jobs and fair and equitable treatment. Maybe that’s where we most need more flags and patriotic songs.
Rule Five: Respect the law. Paraphrasing Marx, agents for change shouldn’t interpret the law, but force the legal system to embrace social justice – to change it. This is rarely possible without defiance of the law. All the successful movements that have made the US a better nation have challenged the law when it was a barrier to advancing the struggle. From the slavery abolitionists to anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, principled fighters for justice have energized movements with their determination to go beyond the constraints of polite discourse and even the laws. One of our great democratic achievements – the elimination of legal segregation – would have failed if the civil rights movement abided by the laws of the time.
Mainstream McGurn scolds the Wisconsin teachers with his sixth rule: If you are teachers, don’t call in sick as a group so you can all protest. McGurn’s concerns about cancelled classes and student welfare would be touching if he showed the same concern for teachers’ unions and their welfare. Once again, he shows scorn for the intelligence and integrity of the “mainstream” students and parents who value the well being of teachers and identify with their needs. (In every opinion poll, teachers are among the most respected segments of society—well above corporate bigwigs, politicians, and even pundits!)
McGurn is especially appalled by the incivility of the demonstrators. No more Hitler moustaches on Governor Walker, he exclaims. “…Hitler analogies are tired.” Or do they touch a raw nerve? In any case, my own survey of the multitude of homemade signs suggests that McGurn’s imagination is even greater than his indignation. But in any case, policing the signs and images is merely a distraction from the work of nurturing a dramatic fight back against his friend, Governor Walker. Where McGurn sees a public relations spectacle, others see the kindling of class struggle, a fire that McGurn deeply dreads.
Rule Eight: Make local workers your public face: real teachers, real cops, real firemen. “… [T]hey make a much more sympathetic case than the professional union leaders.” While “professional union leaders” are struggling to shed the rust of class collaboration, dividing them from the rank-and-file is a sure way to derail a movement. When masses are in motion, even the most cautious, backward union leaders will jog to keep up. They pose a real danger, however, when their fears of worker militancy threaten to clear the streets in favor of political maneuvers and back-room deals. But the spotlight is large enough for everyone to stand in it.
If you want to cripple a movement, take McGurn’s Rule Nine to heart: Don’t call for grand actions only likely to confirm your weakness. Certainly modest, polite and limited requests will hearten the moguls and elites who are only too happy to dismiss them. This brand of pre-destined defeatism limits the horizon of victory before the battle is waged. Surely, the decades-long, one-sided class war waged by corporations and their minions must be met with more than the threat of minor, tentative skirmishes. Unquestionably, great victories require thorough and thoughtful preparation, but they are foregone if couched in timidity. Lenin said it well: “Only struggle discloses to it [the masses] the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will.” For Lenin and other peoples’ leaders, weaknesses are not to be heeded, but to be overcome through action.
The “business unionism” practice of offering concessions before confrontation has proven to be bankrupt. The prospect of “grand actions” should be on the agenda.
Lastly, McGurn admonishes protesters to [s]how some sympathy for the tax payers. In McGurn’s world, public sector workers are merely burdens on taxpayers and not the essential elements of a functioning and hospitable society. It never crossed his mind that they may be more socially useful than stock brokers, Wall Street managers or CEOs. Workers’ struggles to maintain and advance a modest standard of living is seen by him and those like him as a personal burden rather than compensation for the education, protection and services that they provide for the vast majority. In his world of gated communities, mansions, private jets and limousines, private schools, private clubs and the other privileges of wealth, the public services that sustain the work, security and private lives of most of us is of little consequence.
Of course we are all taxpayers and most of us are grateful for the social benefits that public workers provide. We wish that less of our tax burden were wasted on destructive wars, subsidies for giant corporations and fixing the messes left in the wake of corporate irresponsibility and crime. For McGurn and his friends, these are tolerable uses of taxpayers’ dollars; for the rest of us, they are not.
Thanks, but no thanks, William McGurn. As the battle for justice for public sector workers grows in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and most other states, we’ll find our own way.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Class Solidarity: The Road to Unity
Some see the description “Marxist” as an anachronism. Certainly much has changed in the world since the times of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Indeed, capitalism – the object of their study – has evolved strickingly from the socio-economic order they sought to understand in the nineteenth century. Yet we are constantly reminded of the fruitfulness of their key analytical tools: class, exploitation and profits.
We find these tools useful in some of the most unlikely places, as demonstrated by a recent article in The Wall Street Journal. Writing on the Journal’s refreshingly eccentric sports page, author Matthew Futterman tackles the political economy of the National Football League (The NFL’s $1 Billion Game of Chicken (2-17-11). Futterman states: “The League has run out of new ways new ways to make another quick $1 billion, so its turning its focus to the biggest piggy bank of all: its own players.” Within the next two weeks, the player contract expires and NFL management will likely lock out – call a management strike on – the players and their union.
Futterman adds that behind this threatened lockout is “a notion that’s familiar to investors, but that represents a radical notion in professional sports: the idea that a sports league, like a giant company, must show steady growth over time. And more radically, a slowdown in the rate of growth, even without actual losses, is sufficient grounds to ask labor to make concessions.” In other words, professional football is a giant monopoly business with its own unique expressions of class, labor exploitation and profit accumulation.
Of course this backdrop of social confrontation and the drive for greater profits is not readily apparent to the average fan. Professional football occupies a special place in US culture. On one hand, it postures as a “pure” sport with great athletes – athletes bred, trained and motivated for most of their young lives – competing in a brutally violent game. On the other hand, it is presented as capturing the US ethos: overwhelming power, domination, confident cockiness, as well as respect for authority and unquestioning patriotism. Unmistakably, this representation is a profoundly conservative ethos.
But as Futterman’s candor shows, the NFL is far more than this popular image. From tickets to television, from media noise to gear, from advertising to fantasy football, the NFL both occupies a huge chunk of US cultural life and stands as a profit-generating behemoth.
It is this last aspect that draws little attention. Even less attention is given to the conflict between owners and workers, especially the players.
Between 2000 and the 2010 season, revenues have grown from about $4 billion to $9 billon. While every NFL team is highly profitable, owners view their protected franchises – their teams – as their major source of wealth. Just as stock market investors have come to place equity value over dividend return, team owners are most interested in seeing their team’s worth grow. For example, the NY Jets were purchased in 2000 for $635 million. Ten years later, another comparable franchise - the Miami Dolphins - sold for $1.1 billion.
The explosion of revenue in the NFL has come from several inter-connected sources. From 1993 to 2005 NFL owners extorted massive public funding for new stadiums. By threatening to move franchises, team owners and compliant city and regional officials have contrived a massive public welfare program for the benefit of the wealthy owners; the WSJ estimates that public subsidies averaged $500 million per year over the 13-year span.
Thanks to brand new stadiums with not-too-subtle class divisions (end-zone seats vs. luxury sky boxes), ticket revenues exploded, doubling between 1997 and 2007. Today, the average ticket costs $76 per game. It’s an unspoken truth that most season ticket holders are far removed from the working class who largely follow their team from in front of their television sets.
But competing media conglomerates have been the most kind to the NFL owners. Media rights to NFL broadcasts and properties have jumped from $2.6 billion annually in 2005 to $3.8 billion in 2010.
One might think that the NFL team owners would be quite satisfied with their lofty financial achievements, but like all capitalists they have an unquenchable thirst to accumulate. But as Futterman cogently puts it, they are looking for new ways to “make a quick $1 billion…” With new stadiums built and steadfast resistance to further subsidies on the part of the public, the team owners have turned away from the public troughs. With ticket prices sky high, they are afraid of squeezing fans further. And media contracts will increase only modestly over the next three years.
Therefore, owners are turning to the tried-and-true, centuries-old capitalist tactic: increase labor productivity by reducing wages and increasing the workload. They hope to add two more games per season to increase revenue. Thus, players will work 1/8th more for the same salaries. Standing in the way of this intensification of the owners’ exploitation of the players is their union’s resistance. Consequently, the lockout threatens to cancel the next season and pressure the players’ ability to earn a living.
As much as fans admire NFL players, they show little sympathy for their economic plight. Attention to the mega-salaries of superstars blinds them to the facts of an NFL career. The average median salary of an NFL player in 2009 was $770,000. But the average career lasts only 3 years, giving the average player a lifetime earning of $2 million plus from the NFL. Most players come from modest backgrounds and, unlike autoworkers or plumbers, have devoted fully 10 previous years of intense, competitive training without compensation beyond athletic scholarships. Thus, a 24-year-old average NFL retiree has earned well under $200,000 a year over his career, leaving his job often with debilitating injuries and little skill for any later opportunities. The media-hyped splendor of the super-star masks the far less glamorous status of the NFL’s ordinary player. Clearly, a lost season for players who only average three productive years is a powerful economic blow.
So, yes, players are workers, though unusually well paid for a brief time, and workers with their own unique advantages and difficulties. Players, like most fans, have drunk the cultural kool-aid that elevates all NFL players to elite status. The players don’t want to be seen as workers, but neither do many other well paid professionals or craftsmen for that matter.
For those of us who are consumers of the players’ product – fans – we need to take sides in a struggle between admittedly well-off players and the handful of mega-rich owners who seek to get more for less from their employees. In the end, that is the central question of Marxist and scientific socialist theory: exploitation. Exploitation defines class position as well as the distribution of the surplus, in this case NFL earnings. Unfortunately, the market determines the consumer’s place in this arguably decadent and politically numbing exercise in primitivism and violence – we lose a bit of our souls every Sunday in the fall. And our dollars combine to generate the $9 billion that the owners are so greedily striving to stuff into their pockets. But behind our shared football mania is an exploitative socio-economic system, just as ancient slavery stood behind the entertainments of the Roman circuses and the encounters of gladiators.
The lesson here is not that we should drop all activities to organize huge rallies in support of the small number of NFL professionals who are exploited by their employees, though there is much that we can easily do to show our solidarity with them. We certainly have more urgent priorities in supporting the public employees in the class war now raging in Wisconsin and breaking out in numerous other states. The living standards of all government employees –federal, state and local – as well as their union rights are under assault from many quarters, an assault that presages further attacks upon all workers. Instead, we must recognize that the Marxist notion of class – employees versus employers – trumps all other notions that divide workers by strata, job description, race, gender or nationality. It is “class,” as Marxists understand it, which serves as a basis for unity, and not some bogus unity forged from artificial ties with fickle friends in bourgeois politics or opportunistic, tenuous common interests. Those loose ties maybe be useful and even tactically desirable, but not at the expense of class partisanship.
A healthy sign of this class solidarity is the recent open letter from several current and former members of the Green Bay Packers professional football team urging support for Wisconsin’s embattled public workers. Is it an accident that they played for the only publicly owned team in the National Football League?
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
We find these tools useful in some of the most unlikely places, as demonstrated by a recent article in The Wall Street Journal. Writing on the Journal’s refreshingly eccentric sports page, author Matthew Futterman tackles the political economy of the National Football League (The NFL’s $1 Billion Game of Chicken (2-17-11). Futterman states: “The League has run out of new ways new ways to make another quick $1 billion, so its turning its focus to the biggest piggy bank of all: its own players.” Within the next two weeks, the player contract expires and NFL management will likely lock out – call a management strike on – the players and their union.
Futterman adds that behind this threatened lockout is “a notion that’s familiar to investors, but that represents a radical notion in professional sports: the idea that a sports league, like a giant company, must show steady growth over time. And more radically, a slowdown in the rate of growth, even without actual losses, is sufficient grounds to ask labor to make concessions.” In other words, professional football is a giant monopoly business with its own unique expressions of class, labor exploitation and profit accumulation.
Of course this backdrop of social confrontation and the drive for greater profits is not readily apparent to the average fan. Professional football occupies a special place in US culture. On one hand, it postures as a “pure” sport with great athletes – athletes bred, trained and motivated for most of their young lives – competing in a brutally violent game. On the other hand, it is presented as capturing the US ethos: overwhelming power, domination, confident cockiness, as well as respect for authority and unquestioning patriotism. Unmistakably, this representation is a profoundly conservative ethos.
But as Futterman’s candor shows, the NFL is far more than this popular image. From tickets to television, from media noise to gear, from advertising to fantasy football, the NFL both occupies a huge chunk of US cultural life and stands as a profit-generating behemoth.
It is this last aspect that draws little attention. Even less attention is given to the conflict between owners and workers, especially the players.
Between 2000 and the 2010 season, revenues have grown from about $4 billion to $9 billon. While every NFL team is highly profitable, owners view their protected franchises – their teams – as their major source of wealth. Just as stock market investors have come to place equity value over dividend return, team owners are most interested in seeing their team’s worth grow. For example, the NY Jets were purchased in 2000 for $635 million. Ten years later, another comparable franchise - the Miami Dolphins - sold for $1.1 billion.
The explosion of revenue in the NFL has come from several inter-connected sources. From 1993 to 2005 NFL owners extorted massive public funding for new stadiums. By threatening to move franchises, team owners and compliant city and regional officials have contrived a massive public welfare program for the benefit of the wealthy owners; the WSJ estimates that public subsidies averaged $500 million per year over the 13-year span.
Thanks to brand new stadiums with not-too-subtle class divisions (end-zone seats vs. luxury sky boxes), ticket revenues exploded, doubling between 1997 and 2007. Today, the average ticket costs $76 per game. It’s an unspoken truth that most season ticket holders are far removed from the working class who largely follow their team from in front of their television sets.
But competing media conglomerates have been the most kind to the NFL owners. Media rights to NFL broadcasts and properties have jumped from $2.6 billion annually in 2005 to $3.8 billion in 2010.
One might think that the NFL team owners would be quite satisfied with their lofty financial achievements, but like all capitalists they have an unquenchable thirst to accumulate. But as Futterman cogently puts it, they are looking for new ways to “make a quick $1 billion…” With new stadiums built and steadfast resistance to further subsidies on the part of the public, the team owners have turned away from the public troughs. With ticket prices sky high, they are afraid of squeezing fans further. And media contracts will increase only modestly over the next three years.
Therefore, owners are turning to the tried-and-true, centuries-old capitalist tactic: increase labor productivity by reducing wages and increasing the workload. They hope to add two more games per season to increase revenue. Thus, players will work 1/8th more for the same salaries. Standing in the way of this intensification of the owners’ exploitation of the players is their union’s resistance. Consequently, the lockout threatens to cancel the next season and pressure the players’ ability to earn a living.
As much as fans admire NFL players, they show little sympathy for their economic plight. Attention to the mega-salaries of superstars blinds them to the facts of an NFL career. The average median salary of an NFL player in 2009 was $770,000. But the average career lasts only 3 years, giving the average player a lifetime earning of $2 million plus from the NFL. Most players come from modest backgrounds and, unlike autoworkers or plumbers, have devoted fully 10 previous years of intense, competitive training without compensation beyond athletic scholarships. Thus, a 24-year-old average NFL retiree has earned well under $200,000 a year over his career, leaving his job often with debilitating injuries and little skill for any later opportunities. The media-hyped splendor of the super-star masks the far less glamorous status of the NFL’s ordinary player. Clearly, a lost season for players who only average three productive years is a powerful economic blow.
So, yes, players are workers, though unusually well paid for a brief time, and workers with their own unique advantages and difficulties. Players, like most fans, have drunk the cultural kool-aid that elevates all NFL players to elite status. The players don’t want to be seen as workers, but neither do many other well paid professionals or craftsmen for that matter.
For those of us who are consumers of the players’ product – fans – we need to take sides in a struggle between admittedly well-off players and the handful of mega-rich owners who seek to get more for less from their employees. In the end, that is the central question of Marxist and scientific socialist theory: exploitation. Exploitation defines class position as well as the distribution of the surplus, in this case NFL earnings. Unfortunately, the market determines the consumer’s place in this arguably decadent and politically numbing exercise in primitivism and violence – we lose a bit of our souls every Sunday in the fall. And our dollars combine to generate the $9 billion that the owners are so greedily striving to stuff into their pockets. But behind our shared football mania is an exploitative socio-economic system, just as ancient slavery stood behind the entertainments of the Roman circuses and the encounters of gladiators.
The lesson here is not that we should drop all activities to organize huge rallies in support of the small number of NFL professionals who are exploited by their employees, though there is much that we can easily do to show our solidarity with them. We certainly have more urgent priorities in supporting the public employees in the class war now raging in Wisconsin and breaking out in numerous other states. The living standards of all government employees –federal, state and local – as well as their union rights are under assault from many quarters, an assault that presages further attacks upon all workers. Instead, we must recognize that the Marxist notion of class – employees versus employers – trumps all other notions that divide workers by strata, job description, race, gender or nationality. It is “class,” as Marxists understand it, which serves as a basis for unity, and not some bogus unity forged from artificial ties with fickle friends in bourgeois politics or opportunistic, tenuous common interests. Those loose ties maybe be useful and even tactically desirable, but not at the expense of class partisanship.
A healthy sign of this class solidarity is the recent open letter from several current and former members of the Green Bay Packers professional football team urging support for Wisconsin’s embattled public workers. Is it an accident that they played for the only publicly owned team in the National Football League?
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
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