What's theory got to do with it?

The history of this young nation has known but a few transformational developments since its revolutionary birth: the Civil War primarily, but also the New Deal reforms and the broadening of civil rights in the latter half of the twentieth century. The first transformation, the destruction of slavery, was the first and only change that profoundly restructured property relations in the US.[i]

The New Deal, on the other hand, expanded the human rights manifesto beyond the eighteenth-century bourgeois deification of property and freedom of action, an expansion that nonetheless remains contested to this day with the continual erosion of the welfare state.

Where the New Deal proffered the additional universal rights to a job, to belong to a union, to food, etc.—what philosophers have come to call positive rights—the civil rights movements of the twentieth century expanded the notion of a citizen to include all those—women, former slaves-- denied by the so-called founding fathers, the colonial elite.

Thus, the goal of establishing a bourgeois republic was not completed for nearly two centuries until the nominal full participation of women and African Americans was achieved with universal voting rights. Yet within two decades after the landmark voting rights legislation, any promise of popular and democratic expression had been decisively dashed by the powerfully persuasive role of money and media. The newer information and entertainment technologies afforded the rich and powerful an overwhelming counter to the creaky machinery of universal suffrage and the myth of voter autonomy. What the bourgeois republic gave in opportunity, the opinion-makers took back with their consensus factories.

Allergy to Theory

Without an understanding of our nation’s history, without theories that weave together events, without a broad and deep grasp of causes and effects, the past and the way forward are mystifying and disorienting. More importantly, without an over-arching theory that explains both the common and uncommon elements occurring in the course of US history, one can only despair at the future. Certainly no hope for altering that course can come without that understanding.

But searching for causes, making historical connections, and scrounging for general laws have seldom known popularity with our fellow citizens. Some, like Professor Richard Hofstadter, have attributed this allergy to theory to a long-standing anti-intellectualism. But the US overflows with intellectuals, both inside and outside of the universities. Pundits of every stripe dominate the daily background noise, the written word, and the sport of national politics; they may not be intellectuals to my liking, but they are intellectuals nonetheless.

No, the problem is an aversion to theory, an aversion born from both unique subjective and objective features of US history. To a great extent, the dynamism of the young nation – its continued expansion and shifting frontier, the influx of waves of immigrants, the broken links with the patterns of European development, the perception of unlimited opportunity, and a host of other “exceptional” features—gave rise to the creed of American Exceptionalism, a view that the US stands outside of the patterns of development shared by other nations. Put simply, the US is seen as making a new history apart from the old patterns; no theory is necessary to explain that which remains unsettled and indeterminate.

From this stance of unique, exceptional social, political, and economic development came adherence to the philosophical framework of pragmatism and empiricism—a concern for the practical and the immediacy of experience. In the US “theoretical” frame of reference, it is the individual, and not the family, neighborhood, work collective or any other social unit that stands at the center of the universe, a posture reinforced and made imperative by the rigors and discipline of an unfettered capitalism that trades on dissolving historically established social ties and identities. 

Except on those rare occasions when Marxist or other collectivist theory-driven movements arise and intrude, our intellectuals celebrate the individual and eschew recognition of any laws of social, economic, and political development. Social life and its history are merely a swirl of sentiments, decisions, accidents and spontaneity, all guided by a quasi-religious sense of destiny.

An Example

A recent study circulating among progressives on the Internet demonstrates the poverty of this prevailing intellectual method in the US. Krishna Savani, a business professor at Columbia University, and Aneeta Rattan, a psychology professor at Stanford University, have authored a paper “explaining” the wide-spread, counter-intuitive acceptance of material inequality in the US. The paper’s title, while couched in the academic idiom, clearly states their conclusion: “A Choice Mind-Set Increases the Acceptance and Maintenance of Wealth Inequality.” That is, the idea that outcomes are determined by choice and not circumstance, privilege, advantage, or prejudice trumps the indignity or sense of injustice people may have over material inequality. Thus, people are less likely to attend to material inequalities when they believe strongly that life’s outcomes are largely a matter of choosing wisely.

They conducted experiments, the results of which showed that:

…highlighting the concept of choice makes people less disturbed by facts about existing

wealth inequality in the United States, more likely to underestimate the role of societal

factors in individuals’ successes, less likely to support the redistribution of educational

resources, and less likely to support raising taxes on the rich—even if doing so would help

resolve a budget deficit crisis. These findings indicate that the culturally valued concept of

choice contributes to the maintenance of wealth inequality.

The professors’ conclusions neither surprise nor satisfy. Opinion polls show that US respondents vastly overestimate their relative position in society; in one poll, nearly two out of five believed that they are or will be in the top 5% of wealth holders, a view that is patently irrational and impossible of fact. Other polls demonstrate that US citizens have a vastly distorted picture of wealth and income distribution in the US, an ignorance that also informs their perception and valuation of inequality. While choice may be one element in the conceptual framework that devalues social justice, there are many others, including deception and simple factual error.

The radical empiricism and theoretical meagerness of the Savani/Rattan study implies that high estimation of individual choices is the decisive factor in the reluctance of US citizens to tackle the explosively growing inequalities in the US. Though the authors may not have intended it, the study leaves the pessimistic impression that the worship of choice (the preference of weighing opportunity over outcome) is deeply and perhaps intractably rooted in the US character.

As an example of social science practiced in the US, the study is impeccable: the numbers are transparent, the statistics are significant, and the experiments are replicable. But as a basis for policy or of robust understanding, the study is frustratingly spare and unhelpful.[ii] 

Most importantly, the study fails to answer the critical question: Would people really choose to place choice above other social values if they were fully informed and unbiased? Or is their embrace of the choice “mind-set” something foisted on them by tradition, peer pressure, media, or propaganda?

Choosing to Choose?

While millions of dollars and thousands of hours could be spent rigorously identifying the “mind-set” that allows citizens to shun policies that address wealth and income inequalities, such an effort would get us no closer to understanding how this mind-set came to be and how it can-- if it can-- be transformed.

But addressing these questions is not a career track for scholars looking for appointment or tenure at elite universities.

Since it would make no sense, all things being equal, for people to freely and knowingly prefer a value (freedom of choice) over other values (equality, for example) that are clearly in their and nearly everyone else’s best interest, we need a theory and not merely an experimental result to move forward. One such theory—the Marxist theory—invokes the notion of a ruling class with its own distinct and anti-majority interests. On such a theory, and in contrast with the study’s barren empiricism, most people elevate certain values above their own interests because still others, operating as a cohesive class, have the desire and means to impose their values upon the rest of us. They could and would, if necessary, impose their will through coercion, but they prefer to use persuasive mechanisms to achieve the appearance of consensus.

The Marxist theory takes it as axiomatic that the ruling class, enjoying a decided advantage in wealth and power, will fully exploit that advantage; it will exercise its wealth and power to market its own interests to those with conflicting interests. The ruling class addresses this project through the ownership of the means of mass persuasion and decisive control of the instruments of governance. Thus, for a Marxist, the monopoly of the media, the indirect, but decisive control of the educational system, and the dominance of political voices and the options they espouse allow the ruling class to plant, nourish, and harvest ideas among the masses, ideas that run counter to the interests of the vast majority. One such idea, among many others, is the notion that individual choice is threatened by any policy that promotes egalitarianism.

The “Consensus” Mechanism at Work

Since the end of the Second World War, the US ruling class has pressed its interests over all others by successfully raising the specter of Communism, in the first place, and the threat of Islamic Fundamentalism, today. Clearly, the anti-Communist hysteria was predictable as a gambit by the ruling class since Communists did indeed threaten to overthrow them. Subsequently, the success in portraying Communism as a threat to the nation, freedom, religion, and any other real or constructed value, allowed the ruling class to destroy any real domestic opposition and eviscerate the militant trade union movement. In a real sense, the left and the trade union movement in the US has yet to recover from this thorough and successful project of mass persuasion. And since the threat of Communism has lost its credibility at this time, the US ruling class saw the necessity of creating a new bogeyman in Islam.

Consolidation and monopolization of the mass media has enabled the deceptions and fantasies that were the building blocks of a false and alien world view shared by the majority of citizens even against their own interests. As new technologies arose and as they were more and more absorbed by giant monopoly media corporations, the bounds of independent thought grew narrower. Even non-conformity became a calculated and manipulated phenomenon. A casual examination of network news, newspapers, and news services shows an uncanny similarity in coverage and point of view. A closer examination shows that the common point of view nearly always coincides with the point of view of elements of the ruling class; that is, whatever diversity is found in the national dialogue simply reflects the diversity of opinion among the ruling elite.

By purchasing the two contesting major parties, the ruling class decidedly controls the electoral arena in the US. It is not necessary for the rulers to send instructions. By merely funding the lobbying effort and shifting campaign contributions, the US ruling class determines the limits of discussion and debate. As a result, a spectacle of largely -- but not exclusively-- white guys with professional degrees, expensive haircuts, near identical suits and ties, and flag pins gather to decide the direction of the country. Few see the bizarreness of this dance of puppets and even fewer recognize the puppeteers who pull their strings.

Theory and Change

The theory advocated here -- the Marxist theory -- has a long history back to its origins in the mid-nineteenth century. The fact that it captures and explains the behavior of many capitalist nations over many years bolsters its scientific credentials. The fact that it accounts for wars, economic crises, oppressive governmental acts, and massive transfers of wealth to the wealthiest – all counter to the interests of the vast majority—attests to its robust explanatory value. Those who have no theory have no explanation or answer for why a tiny minority can shape the course of history without regard to the interests of the majority and without resorting to coercion.

Rather than fueling pessimism and fatalism, the Marxist theory offers a way out. The profound economic crisis that surfaced in 2008 and continues unabated has damaged, disabled, or slowed the consensus mechanisms that have been operating smoothly and effectively for many, many decades; the mythologies created by these mechanisms are crumbling; and the tight grip on the “mind-set” of the US population is loosening.

While the political expression of these changes is retarded by habit, peer pressure, and sheer, naked opportunism, the underlying foundation of conventional political behavior is eroding. Consider the following:

●All of the institutions of governance are at all-time lows in credibility and confidence according to numerous opinion polls.

●Similarly, sectors of monopoly capital are viewed extremely negatively, especially the financial industry.

●Likewise, opinion polls show new lows for the credibility of the mass media.

●The idea that every generation of US citizens does better than its forebears is shattered. This has been a pillar of American Exceptionalism.

●The axiom that education is the key driver of occupational success is crushed in a vice of fewer and fewer high paying jobs and escalating educational costs.

●Income and wealth inequality is too apparent to hide or dismiss.

●Several generations of young people have moved beyond the pollution of anti-Communism. The socialist option now has credible showings in opinion polls, especially among young people.

Though these seeds of discontent are now deeply planted in the national “mind-set,” the ruling class works feverishly to counter their growth. Nonetheless, they will burst through. But we have no guarantee that the discontent will not be deformed by false populism, appeals to nativism, and personality cults. Those waiting for spontaneous risings may be shocked by what they get.

Instead, the moment is ripe for intensifying the battle of ideas. When politics lags behind the national sentiment, there is no better time to engage the ruling class and the false prophets. Regardless of how the forthcoming election turns out, this battle for shaping a genuine national interest remains. If we are serious about transformational change, we must follow the path of the abolitionists who came before. We must show the same persistence and zeal for our cause and not be deterred by electoral sideshows, compromise, and maneuvering.  

For a left largely irrelevant to the outcome of the coming US elections, the moment to inject new ideas—anti-capitalism, socialism---is now.

The pitchforks will eventually come out; it’s only a matter of who they skewer. 

i This is not to, in any way, discount the most important new world re-ordering of property relations: the wholesale expropriation of the property of the native inhabitants.

ii  Despite their “rigor,” they expose their own theoretical bias by contrasting acceptance of choice over taxing the rich to pay down the deficit. It never occurs to them that paying down the deficit might be viewed as a bogus reason to re-frame taxation!

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

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Well There Is No Reason to Read The Nation Anymore…

Alexander Cockburn has died. Nearly thirty years ago, I began borrowing copies of The Nation magazine from a friend in order to read Cockburn’s weekly column. In a publication then notable for its determination not to completely surrender to Cold War hysteria, Cockburn stood out as a stubborn and fearless champion of reason and fidelity to leftist values—not the values that pass as leftist today, but genuine values of internationalism and advocacy for those on the bottom.

Later I learned of Cockburn’s familial roots: his father was the estimable Claud Cockburn who wrote for the UK Daily Worker, was a partisan reporter on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, and served as a thorn in the side of the puffed-up English upper classes for most of his life.

Claud authored the novel that served as the basis for the obscure, but delightful John Huston movie, Beat the Devil, a cinematic parody that relentlessly poked fun at nearly every stereotype and prejudice.

Alexander’s writing carried the same level of disdain for self-satisfaction and smugness. Cockburn, the elder,  famously remarked that one should “Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.” Alexander Cockburn’s writing reflected even broader truths: Never believe anything uttered by your nation’s public officials or their media hand maidens. And always regard with a measure of respect the claims of their opponents. This motto would serve the journalism profession far better than the usual hypocritical nonsense about fairness and objectivity. It would also well serve a public that readily identifies the media lies when it is itself the specific target, but exhibits a blind, groundless, and sheep-like trust of the media on other matters (think of Syria!).

In that spirit, Alexander Cockburn’s column pierced the inflated egos of wind bags, charlatans, and courtiers from Henry Kissinger through the financiers Jamie Dimon and Robert Diamond, the subjects of his final column.

I don’t know that Alexander considered himself a Marxist, though he acknowledged that his father flirted with and perhaps embraced the views of the old Moor. Certainly Alexander came closer than any other contemporary writer in English, despite his occasional eccentricities, to the acerbity and intolerance for hum-buggery of our beloved KM.

As The Nation moved away from its legacy of popular front progressivism and anti-anti-Communism and towards drawing-room liberalism, Cockburn became more of an internal critic. He began to take shots at Nation writers and columnists who were more comfortable reporting conversations at dinner parties than in reporting on Appalachia or big city ghettos. He rightly called out writers whose views seemed to unerringly march in lock step with the Democratic Party leadership.

Though The Nation editors would deny it, his punishment was to see his popular column reduced from every issue to every other issue.

Nonetheless his column persisted despite the magazine’s further ideological acceptance of the tighter and tighter Democratic Party leash. In recent years, the taming of The Nation forced me to discontinue my twenty-five-year subscription when I concluded that even Cockburn could not hold me.

But a ten-dollar desperate renewal offer (the way of all print magazines starving for support) brought me back recently, a happy move since it delivered me Alexander Cockburn’s last column. But o how far The Nation has sunk! The funeral issue contained three tortured and embarrassingly pandering defenses of Obama’s grossly misnamed Affordable Care Act (four if you count Katha Pollit’s lame cheer-leading in her column: “Obamacare(s) for Women”), all a transparent call to vote for Obama in the fall election. Poor Alexander Cockburn’s last column was sandwiched between these crude political ads.

The rest of the issue included a bizarre “vindication” of right-wing scumbag David Frum (his mother was a feminist!), a pathetically and needlessly “scholarly” critique of Charles Murray’s scurrilous attack on working class white males, and a Princeton professor’s paean to Jurgen Habermas’ vapid pontifications on the meaning and future of the European Union.

Pity poor Eric Foner, who joins Cockburn with an article in such dreary company.

Needless to say, I will not be renewing my Nation subscription (unless the price comes down even further!). I’ve had enough and, with Cockburn gone, I can catch the occasional significant article from friends on the ‘net.

I will miss Alexander Cockburn—more than a little. I regret that I never followed him closely on Counterpunch, but I trust that its archives are full of his sterling and stirring writing. I’m sure collections of his essays and articles will soon appear. I look forward to reading them. I hope others will as well.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

No Time for Illusions

No, I didn’t get it quite right. More than two years ago, I wrote:

Renault, like Peugeot-Citroen, received government bailout money from the French people under the condition that they would maintain employment: “The companies pledged in return to protect French jobs.” The industry minister stressed, “The state will have its say. When a French car is destined to be sold in France, it should be made in France.” This is, of course, in sharp contrast to the US President, allegedly a progressive and friend of labor, whose policies dictated that US auto companies would close plants and lay off workers in exchange for bailout money. The difference, quite clearly, is the militancy and class consciousness of labor. French unions, unlike their US counterparts, have consistently and without relent, refused class collaboration. (“The Class War: Where Things Stand,” 2-14-2010)

Today, it is a bitter mockery that Peugeot announced two days before the French national holiday and only shortly after the Socialist Party sweep of French elections that the company would lay off 8,000 workers. At the bottom of a severe downturn, a virulently conservative president, Sarkozy, and his minions feared that the French labor movement and its friends would pounce if public bailout funds were offered to companies responding to the crisis with layoffs and plant closings. Yet Peugeot now feels confident that it can close a plant and reduce employment at another plant even with a “socialist” government in power. Hollande, the new Socialist President of France pronounces the move “unacceptable;” the French unions are indignant.

What has changed in two years?

In the depths of the crisis, fear gripped Peugeot and most of the rest of the corporate world. The threat of devastated profitability or even insolvency brought them to their knees. Without generous help from outside, from the public trough, and with the public agreement to take on the risk of pending corporate failure, Peugeot and its corporate brethren might have collapsed.

But now the same corporate behemoths exploit the public debt incurred in their rescue. They recognize the vulnerability of the French government to the circling financial buzzards and pick this moment to shed workers, reduce costs, and increase profitability. They are gambling that French unions will place their fate in the hands of the new French government which will not have the resolve to thwart Peugeot’s plans. I suspect they are right.

Surely, some must see a parallel with the Obama Presidential campaign and the accompanying Obama-mania that gripped the US in 2008. Like the US electorate, French citizens were euphoric over the prospects of moving beyond an embarrassingly incompetent, right-wing vulgarian. And like their US counterparts, many French voters invested unjustified hope in a candidate never demonstrating an ability to separate national interests from corporate interests. Once again voters cast aside reality for the thin promise of vague change.

Hollande, like Obama, devoted his first days to assuring business interests and European Union rulers that he had no intention to rock the boat too vigorously --- even though the boat is sinking.

When the moment is opportune, French “Socialist” Party leaders, their SYRIZA counterparts in Greece, and social-democratic candidates throughout the world step up to offer voters an easy option: class partisanship with no class struggle. Theirs is a make-believe world of advocacy, communication and compromise, a world where corporations and markets are resolutely tamed in parliamentary chambers through speeches and resolutions. Their history in this regard is hardly encouraging.

Just as European parliamentary elections have taken on more and more of the flavor of US two-party campaigns, the trajectory of European politics takes on more and more of that of the US. Thus, the Obama presidency offers a preview of what to expect from his European counterparts: a refreshed ruling class leadership offering more “progressive” style than substance.

After Obama’s election in the US, the “movement” unleashed for change was quickly dismantled and the new administration asserted continuity with ruling class policies, but served up with better articulation and a friendlier face to liberals and labor. As for the campaign promises of peace, labor law reform, health care reform, tax fairness, etc, they were unfulfilled or compromised.

Europeans who choose the easy detour of social democracy will relive the experience of US workers over the last nearly four years of Democratic Party governance. Wages for production and non-supervisory workers in manufacturing, when adjusted for inflation, are down 3.2% from March of 2009. At the same time, output per worker hour has exploded: where compensation has been essentially flat for the last nine years, output has grown by over 30%, rising most dramatically since 2009. For those of us still embracing the Marxist analytical tools, these facts signal a dramatic increase in the rate of exploitation under the watchful eyes of US social democrats and their liberal friends.

At the same time, wages for Mexican workers are rising. And in the Peoples’ Republic of China, wages rose 5% in 2009, 16% in 2010, and 20% in 2011. Already in the first half of 2012 wages for urban households rose 13% against the same time frame last year. So much credence for the myth of slave-labor conditions in China depressing US standards, a view so dear to backward labor leaders and media commentators. It should be transparently obvious that it is not the PRC government or Chinese workers who threaten US workers’ living standards, but corporations and their own government who both associate worker sacrifice with economic recovery.

And pity US steelworkers. With non-farm productivity growth (growth of exploitation) off for the first quarter of 2012 and threatening profit growth, steel manufacturers are looking to squeeze workers even harder. ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel producer is proposing to cut all wages and benefits by 36% and eliminate retiree health care for anyone hired after the expiration of the old United Steelworkers of America (USWA) contract on August 31. According to the USWA, ArcelorMittal hopes to cut $350 million per year from the labor costs incurred by 12,544 union workers, an amount that would transfer smoothly to share holders and top managers. While there is little indication of a plan to fight these moves, one of the USWA’s lead negotiators was quoted by The Wall Street Journal: “We’re very frustrated with the tone in negotiations.”

With ArcelorMittel enjoying $1.1 billion in profits in 2011, the union should be showing more militancy than a mere concern about the “tone” of negotiations. But don’t look for the “friend of labor” US President to show even a word of sympathy for the workers’ cause. Nonetheless, he and his Democratic Party colleagues will readily welcome the money and support of the USWA. Unlike their corporate counterparts, US unions insist on little in return.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com 

Getting Serious about Politics

Economic relations clarify politics just as politics can return the favor. In truth, it is impossible to fully understand one without an understanding of the other, and especially without a grasp of their inter-relationship. No doubt that explains the wisdom of the classical economists (and Marx and Engels) in describing their studies as “political economy.” Similarly, the failure to systematically integrate the two social domains explains the frustration of the modern-day academic economists, even Nobel laureates, who fume about the politicians standing in the way of their ready solutions to the current global economic crisis.

A case in point is the most prominent economist/pundit in the USA, Paul Krugman. Not to call out Krugman—most others share his frustration with US and European policy-makers—but his prestigious podium in The New York Times certainly makes him a handy target. Both in the recent pages of The New York Review of Books (jointly with his wife) and in his New York Times column, Krugman has turned to the political roadblocks standing in the way of his proffered “recovery.” Until recently, Krugman has simply repeated his prescription for recovery again and again. But now—like the Biblical Paul on the road to Damascus—Krugman has had a blinding flash of recognition. In his case, it's the maddening recognition of the political dynamics intimately tied to changing economic policy, the backward politics of political factionalism.

Undoubtedly part of Krugman’s (and other liberals like Robert Reich’s) new-found acknowledgment of the political dimension is the fast approaching Presidential and Congressional election in the US. While they are right to see much at stake, they will assuredly be disappointed with the policy options huckstered by the candidates of the two parties.

Economic crises not only clarify, but they expose politics. As we move deeper into a seemingly intractable global economic crisis, the political landscape is revealed to show clearly where the class interests of the various parties and alignments reside.

And what is exposed is neither pretty nor promising. It would be foolish to think that over forty years of building and strengthening a neo-liberal consensus would arm existing political institutions with the means to tackle a crisis of almost unprecedented ferocity. It borders on insanity to believe that a policy toolbox crafted from a long period of stability and smug confidence in capitalism would be adequate at a time when the foundations are collapsing. Yet, that foolishness and insanity is what we have in 2012.

Politics, Pre-Crisis

A long period of relatively crisis-free development in Europe and the US after World War II sapped Left and Communist Parties of their radical and revolutionary fervor. As mass confidence in capitalism’s promise and sustainability grew, anti-capitalists retreated into parliamentarianism and reformism. At the same time, bourgeois parties—the parties of capitalism—drew ideologically closer together, first around a modest Keynesian welfare state and then, after the severing of the post-war social contract and the subsequent fall of Soviet and Eastern European socialism,  around the neo-liberal agenda. Politics in Europe and the US evolved into an ever-tightening circle of economic consensus celebrating the supremacy of markets and the meager social justice compatible with capitalist accumulation. Bourgeois parties embraced unfettered capitalism and individual self-reliance, differing only on the pace of privatizing and dismantling former social safeguards. And radical parties, even Communist Parties, “mutated” or dissolved in order to be included in the tightening circle of common ideology. In the US, the two dominant parties competed more and more over the same terrain, limiting differences mainly to life style and cultural matters. In Europe, multi-party parliamentary systems were evolving inexorably into the two-party charade so well established in the US.

To the surprise of many, this happy festival of capitalist triumphalism was rudely interrupted by a global economic crisis of an intensity unseen since the early decades of the last century. Unfortunately, the left is as ill equipped to address this crisis as are its bourgeois opponents.

An Awakening?

After nearly four years of relentless economic instability and severe pain for a growing majority of the citizenry, surely it is time to question the viability of capitalism. With all signs pointing to another severe relapse amplifying the destruction of the 2008-2009 collapse, certainly the idea of a radical departure from capitalist social and economic relations is in order.

But to address the crisis, we must move dramatically away from the thinking that characterized the post-war “golden age” of capitalist development, an era that seduced the US and European left into the comfortable bed of class collaboration and reformism.

Some view the electoral turn in Europe to the “socialists” of Francois Hollande in France or the strong parliamentary showing of the SYRIZA coalition in Greece as a sign of a left rebirth. Many, both in the amorphous, ideologically muddled US left or with the European Green/pale-red parties, place their hopes in this development. 

Events will show this to be a false path, a path that invests in attempting to prop up the very system that has rained destruction, poverty, and pain on the vast majority of the world’s population. Certainly Hollande’s election and SYRIZA’s strong showing in Greece mean something. They represent a first attempt, a cautious and tentative attempt, to move away from the rigid discipline of markets and financial fealty. They represent the timid and fearful votes of a broad and self-satisfied middle stratum that, despite its profound injuries from the crisis, still harbor hopes of returning to the pre-crisis era. They express the false promise of a painless process that presumably will rein in predatory capitalism by negotiation and reasonableness. And, tragically, they represent a dead-end road leading to even further devastation of living standards and increased unemployment and poverty.

From the perspective of the ruling classes, the ascendancy of the French socialists and SYRIZA in Greece signals the passing of the baton to new forces with a mandate to manage capitalism (Just as the Obama candidacy signaled a similar passing in 2008). 

Their electoral successes point to the recognition that a new direction is both desired and warranted, though one that remains securely in the capitalist camp. In the words of Giorgos Marinos, a leader of the Communist Party of Greece, “… the reformation of the political scene is being promoted which is supported by the bourgeois class, the European Union and other imperialist mechanisms to more effectively manage the capitalist crisis in capital’s favor, to impede the class struggle…” As long as much of the left in both Europe and the US fail to see this, they turn away from any real exit from this profound crisis of the capitalist system.

Both Hollande and his socialists as well as SYRIZA propose to refuse the austerity medicine demanded by central bankers, international lenders, and EU politicians and, instead, focus on economic growth in France and Greece. While this proposal may have resonated with voters, it will never advance beyond a mere campaign slogan. It can’t.

To believe that austerity can simply be willed away is foolish or disingenuous. The austerity imposed in Europe is an economic imperative driven by the weaknesses of the European Union that allow predatory capitalism to exploit the most vulnerable of the Union’s members. Finance capital is the enforcer of this austerity and finance capital must be brought to its knees to escape the austerity. There is nothing in the French Socialist program or the SYRIZA platform that even hints at how this could or should be done.

Austerity has a political dimension, but at its heart it is both an economic mechanism to restore and expand profitability and an expression of the economic dominance of financial markets. To not grasp this point, to not understand that austerity emanates from a source deep in the capitalist system, is to have failed to draw any lessons from the last four years. Only a frontal assault on capitalism, a program to dismantle an economic system that invariably concentrates greater and greater wealth into fewer and fewer hands, answers this challenge.

Already, before the celebration of the Socialist Party’s sweeping victory has even expired, financial predators are focusing on France. Officials are warning of a “debt spiral,” while others in government are nervously reassuring financial markets that France will meet its deficit goals. One financial expert quoted by The New York Times noted: “So far the markets have been kind to France… but…France remains ‘the lucky peripheral.’” Not for long. And the Socialists have no answer.

Escaping the Debt Dilemma

It is no exaggeration to state that effective political responses to the crisis have yet to mature sufficiently in the US and Europe. Conservative and social democratic forces dominate the political landscape, while showing no program to escape the clutches of finance and monopoly capital. This undoubtedly will change as these capitalism-friendly parties fail to turn away the capitalist onslaught.

In Europe, principled revolutionary parties like the Greek Communist Party (KKE) will win more and more Greeks and Europeans to militant anti-capitalism and breathe life to the socialist option. They offer an answer to the debt dilemma.

During the most recent Greek parliamentary elections, the KKE was the target of a scathing attack for refusing to join with SYRIZA in a potential coalition government. “Leftists” in Greece, as well as outside the country, dishonored the party’s independence and trampled on its principles with irresponsible assaults on its position. Greek Communists adamantly refused to cooperate with a government that would both seek to preserve capitalism and fail to safeguard the interests of working people. History will show this stand marks the way forward, despite the electoral losses spawned by fear and confusion.

In the US, dismal two-party politics continues to grind down working people with no respite in sight. Both parties vie for and receive campaign money from the financial sector and the other major monopoly corporations. Both parties will duly reward this generosity.

Once again, as in the run-up to the 2008 election, the financial sector is pouring money into the Obama coffers (at a pace even greater than in the earlier campaign). And despite campaign rhetoric and the predictable liberal fear tactics and apologia, he will, once again, live up to the expectations of his campaign donors. The next five months promise an orgy of media spending on Orwellian images and slogans. No answer to the debt dilemma and the global crisis will come out of this low drama. Ironically, prominent liberal economist, Robert Reich concedes as much in a recent post on his website. Faced with abysmal economic data and the threat of a perceived bad economy to Obama's re-election prospects, Reich argues that there is little the administration could do to change matters: ironic and pathetic

As in Europe, a peoples’ answer will come with the emergence of an anti-capitalist advocate for socialism, a Communist or Workers Party, a formation that challenges the core of capitalist social and economic relations. Giorgos Marinos of the KKE says it succinctly and well: “There are more than enough forces to manage the system. What the people need are real communist parties that will not manage the capitalist barbarity in the name of the “government left” and in the name of “realistically” accepting the negative correlation of forces. In this way you pave the way for the forces of capital and precious time is wasted, for which the working class and the popular strata will pay a high price.”

Yes, working people are paying a high price and we need to get on with the business of giving the people real Communist Parties.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Scoundrel Time-- Again?

A constant of life in the US has been an unrelenting diet of anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism. Even before the Big Mac, children in the US were force-fed lurid stories of Soviet horrors, labor camps, and political liquidations. Popular magazines like Coronet, Readers’ Digest, Look, and Life were a constant source of tales recounting the cruelty and inhumanity of Soviet Communism just as their modern counterparts spew scorn upon Muslims.

Academics and other intellectuals built a scholarly foundation for the popular imagery, allowing media to forego the journalistic niceties of seeking corroboration or entertaining counter-claims—the evils of Communism became articles of faith. We were only to learn later what some suspected, that the much of the academic and intellectual construction was generously funded by the CIA and other government agencies.

After the demise of the Soviet Union and a world-wide retreat from Communism, the anti-Communist campaign took a strange twist. Despite the expected triumphal chest-beating, the most hysterical, wild-eyed anti-Soviet intellectuals like Robert Conquest were thoroughly discredited by newly released archival information. Their victim number-mongering proved wildly and recklessly inflated.

Paradoxically, a new breed of scholar of Soviet history, while not necessarily endorsing the Soviet project, used the evidence to construct an account of Soviet history that cast aside the demonic caricature for a more rational, persuasive depiction of the forces shaping Soviet behavior and development. While these scholars had little influence on the popular vulgar misconceptions, they were able to carve out a significant, credible, but marginal, niche in academic circles.

Though funding for hard-core anti-Communists surely declined after the Cold War, anti-Sovietism still found a happy nest in the academy and with old Cold War publications like The New Republic and The New York Review of Books. The latter publication even softened its hard-line support for Israel while maintaining and even intensifying both its demonizing of the Soviet Union and its hatred of China and Cuba. Perhaps it is anxiety over Eastern European opinion polls that show nostalgia for the old system; perhaps the editors fear a rebirth of Marxism in the face of the persistent global economic crisis. Whatever the motive, the NYRB happily assumed the burden of keeping anti-Soviet hysteria alive and fostering a new generation of anti-Soviet writers.

The NYRB can take much credit for promoting three figures who are twenty-first-century incarnations of the Cold War intellectual: Anne Applebaum, Orlando Figes, and Timothy Snyder. All three review and lavish praise on each others’ works; all three breath the thin air of the most elevated of public intellectuals; and all three harbor a boundless hatred of all things Soviet. Applebaum’s signature work is on the Soviet penal system, an exposition sufficiently lurid to launch an otherwise undistinguished career and earn a vaunted position as a Washington Post columnist. Her ties by marriage to Polish officialdom causes no pause to Western intellectuals who see no conflict in the long standing animus of post-Soviet Polish elites towards Russia and the Soviet era.

The latest to rise above the crowd of anti-Soviet intellectuals is Timothy Snyder, whose Bloodlands enjoys fame by paralleling Soviet “atrocities” to those of the Third Reich. Snyder both trivializes the horrors of Nazism and scandalizes the legacy of Soviet achievement by pressing equivalency between Nazi brutal and calculated inhumanity and Soviet desperate and dogged resistance. Even more than the others, Snyder tosses around victim numbers with little or no attribution, numbers that are curiously and suspiciously rounded.

But now the anti-Soviet nest has been further fouled by Orlando Figes. Of the anti-Soviet triumvirate, Figes is perhaps the most celebrated, with several books, movie and theater adaptations, and radio and television performances. His books have enjoyed translation into over twenty languages and he has won numerous literary prizes. Wide acclaim has made him arguably the most respected and authoritative of the anti-Communist Soviet experts.

Despite the acclaim, and thanks to recent revelations by Stephen F. Cohen and Peter Reddaway in The Nation magazine, Figes’ reputation has been fatally shattered (at least with those who still maintain a measure of intellectual integrity).

Reddaway and Cohen take us back some years when Figes was winning several distinguished literary prizes. At that time, a number of established scholars of Soviet history found “shortcomings,” “borrowing of words and ideas…without adequate acknowledgment,” “messed up references…,” etc. One scholar asserts that: “Factual errors and mistaken assertions strew its pages more thickly than autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa.” Of course shoddy scholarship has never stopped the anti-Soviet bandwagon once it gathers momentum.

Then there was the rather indecent matter of Figes launching anonymous attacks against books by other authors through his online reviews on Amazon while praising his own work. If that wasn’t sleazy enough, he denied doing it until forced to deliver a confession. Still, the bandwagon rolled on.

Ironically, it is his Russian sources that finally deflated his overblown reputation. Figes’ most celebrated book, The Whisperers, allegedly drew on interviews and memoirs of Soviet citizens collected by a Russian NGO, the Memorial Society. While the English language edition drew the highest praise in the gullible “tell-me-a-tale-of Soviet-perfidy” West, the book failed to find a publisher in Russia. Thanks to Cohen and Reddaway we know that the book can’t get published in Russia because it “would cause a scandal…” The Memorial Society itself reviewed the book against its primary sources and concluded that there were too many “anachronisms, incorrect interpretations, stupid mistakes and pure nonsense.” One of the leading lights of the Memorial Society noted that Figes was “a very mediocre researcher…but an energetic and talented businessman.” The fact that so many “experts” and “intellectuals” were snookered by Figes says much about the standards and biases of Soviet studies in the West.

I cannot leave this bizarre and pathetic tale without noting that one of Figes chief promoters, the New York Review of Books, published a flattering review of Figes’ latest book in its June 21 issue. Michael Scammell, one of the lesser lights in the journal’s anti-Soviet stable, devotes numerous column inches of fulsome praise for the book while concluding with a brief “caveat” outlining Figes’ sins. Scammell declares The Whisperers a “masterpiece” while noting that the Memorial Society found “dismaying discrepancies” in the book (he buries the Cohen/Reddaway charges in a footnote). One wonders if Scammell would show the same tolerance for an undergraduate student.

Yes, it's scoundrel time, again.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

The Debt Dilemma, Bankrupt Policies, and Europe's Future

The reason for virtual disappearance of great depressions is the new attitude of the electorate… [E]conomic science knows how to use monetary and fiscal policy to keep any recessions that break out from snowballing into lasting chronic slumps. If Marxians wait for capitalism to collapse in a final crisis, they wait in vain. We have eaten of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and, for better or worse, there is no returning to laissez faire capitalism. The electorate in a mixed economy insists that any political party which is in power—whether it be the Republican or the Democratic, the Tory or the Labor party—take the expansionary actions that can prevent depressions.  Economics, 8^th Addition, Paul Samuelson (1970, McGraw-Hill), p. 250.

Since Samuelson---probably the most influential bourgeois economist of the post-war era---died at the end of 2009, we will never know if he would now retract these statements. Every claim in the above quote is false, and false in a way that sheds light on where we are today.  And because every claim is false, policy makers are in a hell of a mess.

The reason for virtual disappearance of great depressions is the new attitude of the electorate…… [E]conomic science knows how to use monetary and fiscal policy to keep any recessions that break out from snowballing into lasting chronic slumps.

In 1970, when the 8^th edition of Samuelson’s iconic textbook was published, nearly everyone did share the belief that government had access to tools that could reverse any slump. Even the old red-baiting Cold Warrior President, Richard Nixon, embraced Keynesian prescriptions at that time.

But matters changed quickly in the 1970s. A long period of inflation and stagnant growth settled in, seemingly immune to fiscal and monetary therapy. The loss of the “stimulus” of the war in Vietnam and a restructuring of energy prices challenged the consensus celebrated by Samuelson. Many economists identified the soaring inflation with union and other cost-of-living escalators; consequently, a dampening of wages and benefits was urged, a tendency that continues unabated today. By the end of the 1970s, Treasury Secretary Volker’s shock therapy to contain inflation brought the US economy into deep recession. The Reagan victory in 1980 signaled a loss of confidence in government intervention and the rise of a competitive ideology. Some called it “voodoo economics,” but it proved to have amazing resilience: it turned away from the Keynesian toolbox, and it established a new consensus. 

We have eaten of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and, for better or worse, there is no returning to laissez faire capitalism.

By 1980, the “Fruit” was less than appetizing. Reagan’s election (and Thatcher’s before him) signaled a return to the gruel of laissez faire under the cheery brand description, “neo-liberalism.” A whole new set of popular terms like “supply side,” “trickle down,” etc. were created to sell the new thinking, while the “deep” thinkers of academia, cast off the economics of aggregates and the priority of demand for the micro-foundations of Hobbes and his selfish, but rational animal dominating his/her living space. By 1992, with both the collapse of European socialism and the election of a “New Democratic” President, the “Tree of Knowledge” was a mere stump and neo-liberalism had penetrated nearly every aspect of life in the most advanced capitalist countries. Laissez faire returned with a vengeance and enjoyed even greater dominance than in its original incarnation. And the restored economic doctrine saw no need for the tools of repair since it saw the capitalist market as self-correcting. 

The electorate in a mixed economy insists that any political party which is in power—whether it be the Republican or the Democratic, the Tory or the Labor party—take the expansionary actions that can prevent depressions.

This unassailable truth of 1970 has proven to not only be assailable, but down right false. The political parties mentioned by Samuelson – the dominant parties in the US and UK – did not vigorously defend the value of “expansionary actions;” rather, they fled from the policy as though it were radioactive. With William Clinton’s ascendancy to the Presidency at the head of the old New Deal party, advocates of expansionary government intervention had been largely purged from prominence in the Democratic Party. Likewise, Tony Blair’s rise to Prime Minister in the UK signaled the Labour Party’s wholesale embrace of neo-liberalism.

Of course Samuelson’s claim that the “electorate… insists…” on these policies was never tested because the electorate was never asked — elites settled the matter for them. In 1970, prominent intellectuals still believed that important matters were decided through the electoral process; surely few share that illusion today, when political actors persistently ignore the will of the electorate on matters like taxing the rich or shoring up social programs. 

It bears reflecting upon the words of the Nobel committee in awarding the prize in economics to Samuelson in the same year as the publication of the 8^th edition: “More than any other contemporary economist, Samuelson has helped to raise the general analytical and methodological level in economic science. He has simply rewritten considerable parts of economic theory.” Unfortunately, the “general analytical and methodological level” has proven to be unhelpful in understanding the course of economic history.

If Marxians wait for capitalism to collapse in a final crisis, they wait in vain.

Samuelson’s peculiar coinage of the term “Marxians” suggests that he seldom engaged Marxists to solicit their opinion. Of course one does encounter Marxist-poseurs who frequently and loudly predict an apocalyptic final collapse of capitalism just as one hears of half-baked fans who believe the Chicago Cubs will win the World Series—it’s possible, but not likely.

Capitalism will assuredly disappear as a result of “a final conflict” (“C’est la lutte finale” in the original words of the Internationale) and not a final economic crisis. Yet there is a relationship between economic and social crises and the final conflict that will push capitalism into the fabled historic dustbin. That is just to say that wars, economic calumnies, or political paralysis are almost always the immediate and decisive causes of revolutionary risings.

We cannot give Samuelson this point, however, because he meant to deny both that (1) economic crises will not alone bring down capitalism and that (2) no economic crisis – like the Great Depression—can again shake the foundations of the capitalist edifice. On the later, all (authentic) Marxists are in agreement: capitalism cannot, from its internal logic, escape serious economic turmoil; crises are inescapable partners of the accumulation process.

With capitalism’s foundations seriously buffeted by the last four years of bank failures, housing foreclosures, mass layoffs, financial scandals, shrinking wealth, stagnant incomes, dwindling social services, and a host of other blows, few would want to stand on the ground carved out by Samuelson in 1970. What may have appeared to be transparently obvious in 1970 is now decidedly questionable in the light of the protracted economic crisis that we have endured since late 2008.

The Next Step?

I have written often and confidently that we have only seen the first act of a continuing severe structural crisis of global capitalism. Regardless of policy initiatives, there is much more pain and economic chaos ahead. Contrary to the most esteemed minds of the economic profession, there are no quick or decisive solutions to be found from either the market fundamentalists or the Keynesian heretics opposing them. And their political expressions—conservative and social democratic parties – are equally bankrupt, offering no real exit from the looming disaster. Thus, both the seriously damaged economic engine and impotent political institutions combine to guarantee that the crisis will be with us for some time to come.

For the moment, Europe is the locus of the global crisis. The European Union project, realized in an era of great optimism and capitalist triumphalism, is in imminent danger of collapsing; its vulnerability to predatory financial capitalism has left its constituent countries, particularly its weakest countries, in immediate danger of reversion to nineteenth century standards of development and living. The global market mechanism has determined that Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and probably Italy have no essential role in the global economy except for nostalgic tourism and retirement villas.

The illusion of a unified Europe, devoid of borders and with a shared standard of living, is just that—an illusion. The old economic and social relations of dominance and exploitation did not evaporate in Europe because politicians voted in idyllic times to create a union. And with a profound global crisis, the weaknesses of this unsteady union became the target of the bond vultures that turn hardship into profits. In the beginning, these bond vultures swooped down upon Greece, capturing its economy for the big banks and handing its sovereignty to the European imperial centers. I wrote of the weakness and vulnerability of this union often in 2008 and 2009. I returned to this theme in November, 2011: “one might conclude that unification – mutually beneficial combinations of national entities—is extremely unlikely to be successful with capitalist social and economic relations intact. Conversely, socialist social and economic relations, linked with an internationalist perspective hold the only real, lasting opportunity for unity among diverse states.”

The Great Debt Dilemma

The foreclosing of a bourgeois solution to the European crisis arises from the dominance of finance capital in the world economy. That is to say, no real solution is available through policy initiatives crafted by bourgeois economists or advocated by politicians who are intent upon keeping state-monopoly capitalism unchanged while ignoring the predatory role of the financial sector. Those who hope to return to the capitalism of Samuelson’s time are simply delusional.

Market fundamentalists who thought that the Euro-crisis would dissipate with a bit of budget discipline, a heavy dose of government austerity, and perhaps a few emergency loans have been thoroughly discredited by shrinking growth, even greater debt burdens, and intense human suffering. The wholesale dumping of political incumbents has signaled the bankruptcy of conservative answers to those ruling elites who first chose this road.

In the trail of this failure is the “I told you so” of the Keynesians and social democrats. In truth, liberal economists were loud and outspoken about policies that hung on a thin strand of hope rather than rational thought (Despite the fact that policies of austerity made absolutely no sense, it drove the media and politicians into a frenzy of advocacy—a tribute to the power of elitist wishful thinking over common sense). Krugman, Stiglitz and a host of other economists seek to bolster the social democratic case by advocating robust deficit spending to re-kindle growth in the Euro-zone. They argued sensibly that austerity and reduced government spending would only make matters worse. And they assumed that the converse—more government stimuli—would therefore make matters better. But this is a non sequitur.

Certainly more government spending when directed towards programs that benefit those suffering from the economic crisis is a justifiable social good and urgently needed, though it does not follow that it is necessarily a prescription for recovery. Neither the historical record nor theory demonstrates that government spending is a sure-fire recipe for restoring capitalist growth and profitability. It may help, it may not. And it will not in this case unless we excise the influence of financial markets upon the fate of the Euro-zone.

To hear the social democrats, the answer to the European debt crisis is to reject austerity in favor of growth. But they forget or choose to ignore the elephant in the room: the international debt market. Bond vultures, their accomplices --the credit rating agencies, and lending institutions-- pounce on even a hint of deficit spending. The entire contemporary history of the European crisis is that of a crisis engineered by debt holders who view any additional credit extension or currency deflation as a threat to their existing debt holdings. And they hold the power to enforce their interests through debt markets. Equally, they have nearly all the European political forces in a strangle hold that places the interests of the financial sector ahead of all else. That is the demonstrated dominance of finance capital in the twenty-first century. We ignore this at our peril.

The facile answer of the social democrats—from the recent successful electoral campaign of the “socialists” in France to the ascendancy of SYRIZA in Greece—is to reject austerity and endorse growth. But this is no answer at all if it depends upon the “good will” of financial markets that neither have a “will” nor respect the social “good.” The dominance of finance capital cannot be wished or negotiated away.

Nor is exit from the Euro an option without a radical break from international finance. Credit markets will be closed to any country that departs the zone without guaranteeing the integrity of existing debt, a burden that leaves an exiting or exiled country exactly where it was before it left.

Doom or Promise?

The debt dilemma poses an impossible challenge to those who wish to see Europe governed as usual. It forecloses both a conservative and social democratic answer to the current crisis ravaging Europe. Understandably, the habits of decades of complacency and relative stability leave the electorate with a desire to find an easy way out within the confines of the known rather than a leap into the unknown. Embracing solutions beyond the habitual ones comes with great difficulty even among the victims. But for four years, the habitual solutions have failed and the debt dilemma gives us every reason to believe that they will continue to fail.

Only a vigorous people’s movement determined to overthrow the dominance of finance capital will lead Europe (and the rest of us) out of the death grip of financial markets. Central to that overthrow is the establishment of public ownership and control over financial institutions and the removal of those institutions from the market place. It is a nascent movement; we see its stirrings in the growth of the Communist movement emerging around the ideological pole established by the Greek Communist Party, a Party that refuses to compromise by joining a doomed-to-fail coalition government with no answer to the debt dilemma. The era of smug, smooth, and easy recoveries from the capitalist business cycle, as announced by Paul Samuelson, is over. Likewise, the era of economic tinkering and political self-satisfaction is inadequate for this moment. We enter a new era with fear and uncertainty gripping most of the world’s population. Therefore, the realization of the promise of the new era may be a while in coming, but it's surely coming. 

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com