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

Obama’s Economy: A New book by Jack Rasmus

Jack Rasmus’ new book, Obama’s Economy (PlutoPress, 2012), is a marked departure from his earlier volume, Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Recession (PlutoPress, 2010). Where the earlier effort sought to provide a theoretical framework to understand the worldwide economic crisis that began over four years ago, the new book offers a detailed, critical history of President Barack Obama’s policy responses to that crisis. In fact, much of Obama’s Economy reads like a vivid, insightful diary of economic life during that period. Rasmus links these events into a powerful narrative that was easy to miss as we lived it.

This blow-by-blow account of economic decline and feeble policy response is all cast in the shadow of Obama’s campaign promises, promises that were neither bold nor progressive. As Rasmus demonstrates, Obama -- the candidate – drew his financial support from Wall Street, surrounded himself with corporate-friendly, free-market-oriented advisers, and preferred caution and compromise to any bold, new vision:

Another clear conclusion from the campaign period is that once Obama had all but sewn up the nomination, he began a shift even further to the right. This was not unnoticed, even by the ultra-conservative editorials in the Wall Street Journal, not to mention columns by liberal economists like Krugman. To the extent that candidate Obama’s election-period programs were “populist” in any sense, they were positions largely borrowed from his Democratic opponents in the primaries. Most of these populist elements were de-emphasized in the fall election period, or soon after the election. Few would appear in his eventual 2009 first economic recovery program. (p. 33-34)

Beyond Rasmus’ account and well before the Presidential candidacy, Obama’s career was marked by sycophancy to power and wealth and by opportunism. What is truly pathetic is that so many who willfully overlooked the stark evidence and chose to embrace a Pollyanna picture of hope and change are now outraged at an imagined but non-existent “betrayal.” As Rasmus demonstrates, Obama’s economic course was largely predictable from his campaign promises. But then liberals and most progressives have been dining on the thin gruel of imagined Democratic Party “leftism” for decades. And they are at it again in this election cycle.

Rasmus sifts through the seeming chaos and improvisations of the last four years to find three distinct Obama recovery programs implemented in 2009, 2010, and 2011. In addition, Obama’s Economy identifies “two and a half” Federal Reserve actions (Quantitative Easings) meant to revive the slumping economy. It is Rasmus’s considered opinion that all these efforts failed to restore the US economy to anything like a sustainable vitality. The current abysmal state of the global economy and the sluggishness of the US economy would certainly suggest that Rasmus is right.

Further, he chronicles the bi-partisan, near-consensual debt-reduction mania that emerged in 2011, a development that found politicians competing with one another to suggest severe budget cutting and program elimination. Rasmus takes this anti-stimulative austerity to augur a “double dip” recession: a forthcoming decline in gross domestic product no later than 2013. In this, he is in agreement with the May 22, 2012 statement by the staid Congressional Budget Office which predicts a GDP contraction in the first two quarters of 2013 unless federally legislated measures are rescinded (the equally draconian state and municipal austerity programs are not a factor in the CBO calculations).

After reading Rasmus’ new book, one will find little to justify praise for the Obama administration. While the three trillion dollars of recovery programs (as tabulated by Rasmus) from March of 2008 until September of 2011 may have staved off an even deeper downturn, they have done little to revive the economy. And more than two thirds of these federal dollars were allocated on Obama’s watch.

Certainly from the perspective of capital and a wealthy and powerful tiny minority of our citizens, the recovery has been satisfactory, if not a rousing success: profits have been rapidly restored and, for those individuals, incomes and wealth are expanding. But for the vast majority in the US, wages are stagnant or dropping, benefits shaved or eliminated, living costs rising, home ownership in jeopardy, and employment tenuous; most of us are still looking for the recovery. And the economic data promise little improvement.

So if the Obama recovery program failed, why did it fail? And what might succeed? What should we advocate to save the majority from the devastation of this global economic catastrophe?

For the loyal opposition, most clearly represented by the high-profile, Nobel Prize awardee, Paul Krugman, the answer lies in the size of the stimulus programs. Obama and his administration failed to devote enough resources to bring the economy back. For these left liberals, size does matter. And the tragedy of Obama’s recovery program lies simply in pouring too little water on a raging fire, leaving hot embers that are about to re-ignite.

Of course this approach is merely a twenty-first-century revisiting of the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, ideas distilled from lessons he drew from the Great Depression of the 1930s. In its twenty-first- century incarnation, Keynesian solutions are advocated for their alleged ability to multiply or amplify economic growth as generated by government action. Neo-Keynesians, like Krugman, Stiglitz, Roubini, etc, see little difference in how or where governments act provided only that they generate more effective demand or investment push for economic activity. If recovery doesn’t come or if it stalls, more resources need to be committed.

Rasmus correctly challenges the simple, but flawed, remedy of the neo-Keynesians. Drawing on his understanding of the actual history of previous severe downturns—as described in greater detail in his earlier work—Rasmus stresses that the “where” and “how” of economic stimulus are of critical importance in generating recovery—it is not merely a matter of size, but also of composition, timing, and focus. Thus, tax cuts are proven ineffective stimuli, while jobs programs, infrastructure programs, government services, etc., often generate worthwhile outcomes. Likewise, the focus on restoring corporate health should not have overshadowed restoring home ownership, jobs, income and the stability of state and local government.

Unlike the formulaic neo-Keynesians, Rasmus respects the intent of the New Deal which was not conceived as a stimulus program, was not designed in its specifics as a recovery program, but, first and foremost, was implemented as measures to create jobs, provide humane living standards, and restore a popular sense of confidence. That is, the Roosevelt administration set out not to execute a general, comprehensive stimulus program for the flagging economy as did the technocrats in the Bush and Obama administrations, but to fix the many problems—unemployment, price deflation, impoverishment, financial distress, etc.—wrought by the Great Depression. All historians concede that the myriad New Deal programs—including the CCC and WPA jobs programs-- were largely improvisational and trial-and-error. There was no overarching stimulus goal binding the programs together. Recovery would come when the broken elements were all fixed.

The idea of a stimulus program grounded in fiscal and monetary action is really a product of neo-classical economics, a conventional mode of thinking that captivates both the Obama administration and its neo-Keynesian critics. It is a toolbox approach linked to a mechanical model of the capitalist economy, an approach that smugly presumes that recovery is simply a matter of troubleshooting and tinkering with a fundamentally sound economic engine.

There is, however, a larger question that neither the liberal neo-Keynesians nor Rasmus addresses credibly, though Paul Krugman readily concedes its significance. After over four years of agonizing, painful economic distress, the global economy is mired in a crisis that, like the Great Depression, appears intractable. Certainly the measures taken by the New Deal administrators went a long way toward  alleviating the harshest pains of the Great Depression; surely the many popular programs pressed by the Roosevelt team kept the economy from sinking even deeper; but on all historical accounts, these commendable efforts failed to generate the desired recovery. It was only the war build-up and subsequent world-wide conflagration costing tens of millions of lives, untold wounded and injured, and the production and unparalleled destruction of inestimable billions of dollars of wealth. Yes, World War II generated the recovery from the crisis of the '30s, but at a cost in lives and resources far beyond what anyone could find acceptable.

Is a similar orgy of destruction -- erasing debt, commanding production, and mobilizing the idle—necessary to escape the economic calamity of our time? Should we think that anything short of a planned, disciplined, state-directed war effort will rescue the US and world economy? Is war the only effective “stimulus” to a global economic catastrophe of this dimension?

Certainly, Rasmus is aware of this conundrum. In an aside in his earlier book, he states the following:

Wars have a double-edged impact on Epic Recessions and depressions… The financial panic of 1857 was cut short by the onset of the Civil War, which clearly dampened the potential impacts of the panic of 1857 on the real economy. The timing of the Mexican-American War in 1845 has yet to be analyzed as to its role in ensuring an end of the depression of 1837-43. Similarly, the Spanish-American War in 1898 perhaps not accidentally coincides with the ending of the depression of 1893-98… [T]he role of World War I in putting a definitive end to the Epic Recession of 1907-1914 is less debatable. The war put a definitive end to the extended stagnation period of 1908-14. (Epic Recession, p. 163)

Yet, if devastating wars are the only decisive solutions to the most severe crises of capitalism as history strongly suggests, then surely this raises the urgent question: Is capitalism worth saving? Is it time for a radical overhaul or replacement of the capitalist economic engine?

While I find much to admire in the writings of Krugman and other liberal public intellectuals, as much as I’ve learned from and appreciate the insights of Jack Rasmus, I am disappointed that they offer no answer to this, the most pressing question of our time. Indeed, they do not even acknowledge the question.

Since World War II, the US capitalist economy has become a perpetual war-time economy—first with the Cold War and now a contrived world-wide “war on terror.” When President Eisenhower warned of the “Military-Industrial Complex,” he was describing this new structural feature of capitalism in his own cautious words.

Nonetheless, even with the preferred “pump priming” of war and its associated economic “stimulus,” the global capitalist economy is now seriously broken. No way is it obvious or even likely that “repairs” are apt to be effective or that a recovery will ensue.

Thus a discussion -- at the very least, a discussion -- of socialism as an alternative economic system would seem to be in order. It is not surprising that a New York Times Nobel laureate would evade this question; otherwise, Krugman would be neither a Nobel laureate nor a New York Times columnist. It is disappointing that a writer of Rasmus’ integrity and acumen would not discuss its relevance.

The question of socialism is intimately linked with the politics of “recovery.” Rasmus, like the New Deal liberals (a brand of liberalism far to the left of what passes as “liberal” today), offers a people-oriented program that promises to restructure capitalism in a way that would dampen many of the inequalities and injustices generated by the capitalism of our time ( though I don’t share his confidence that it would revitalize the capitalist economy nor do I want to “save” capitalism). 

His program in Obama’s Economy is one that, popularized and adopted by a broad political movement, could serve us all well for the immediate future. It is bold and daring, engaging the government in employment in a way unseen since the New Deal. It reverses the housing crisis and protects and strengthens the social safety net (While it mirrors the programs advocated in Rasmus’ earlier book, Epic Recession, it curiously and unfortunately omits a single-payer healthcare solution in this version).

But in sharp contrast with the New Deal liberals, there is no political vehicle for this program. Certainly the Democratic Party has not and will not adopt it. The Democratic Party of the twenty-first century is Obama’s Party and not even a vague shadow of Roosevelt’s Democratic Party. And today’s weak labor movement has shown neither the desire nor gumption to re-shape or divorce the Democratic Party and opt for such a course. That leaves the fine Rasmus economic plan outside of US politics looking in.

Conversely, the socialist option will become increasingly attractive to millions of people as the global economy continues to sink and the wholly capitalist-owned political system continues to block any popular challenges to take-no-prisoners capitalism. Thus, the most urgent task is to ideologically and organizationally prepare a vehicle to advance that option.

Whether others agree with me, the wasteland of US mainstream politics leaves plenty of room to advocate independent, broad-based movements that will adopt a progressive program embracing the recommendations so persuasively argued by Rasmus. I regret that Rasmus does not engage in this advocacy in Obama’s Economy; perhaps he will in a later book. Nonetheless, I can wholeheartedly recommend the book for its unparalleled recounting of the economic failures of the Obama administration and its detailed, well-argued plan for the opening stages of the founding of a people’s economy.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

 

“Human Rights” gone Wild

You have to marvel at the bizarre media circus triggered by the zany tale of “human rights activist” Chen Guangcheng. Chen’s saga began fantastically, evolved strangely, and continues as a hypocritical argument between Republicans and Democrats over who is the real friend of human rights.

Media accounts are vague on what earned Chen the mantle of “human rights advocate.” Some point to his opposition many years ago to the campaign in the Peoples’ Republic of China to limit population growth by urging families to birth only one child. There is also agreement that Chen was convicted and served four years in prison and was under home detention until the night of April 22.

On that night, according to Chen’s friends and repeated by the US officials, Chen escaped from his detention, scaled at least eight walls, and wandered around for 20 hours until he hooked up with a fellow dissident who drove him a considerable distance to an ultimate rendezvous with officials from the US embassy in Beijing. This feat is all the more remarkable because the media reports that Chen is blind. US news outlets hailed this accomplishment without any incredulity. Nor did they suggest that there was any connection between the “escape,” the resulting furor, and the beginning of high-level US-PRC talks scheduled to begin 10 days later. For the happily gullible US media these steps were mere happenstance.

After his arrival, confusion reigned. No one could quite figure out what Chen wanted, including US embassy officials. According to The Wall Street Journal, US officials found him “self absorbed.” They remarked how it “feels like the guy is unfairly attacking the US.” What began as another opportunity to show the PRC’s insensitivity to human rights was quickly dissolving into a fiasco.

At different times Chen insisted on talking by phone with PRC Premier Wen, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and Representatives Chris Smith and Nancy Pelosi in the US. For days, US embassy personnel chatted with Chen about his wishes. At the same time, he called friends in the PRC and the US to discuss his options. PRC officials calmly dialogued with the embassy—no doubt bemused by the increasing impatience of the US officials.

After six days, US officials believed they had determined Chen’s intention. He wanted to stay in the PRC, but with the caveat that he be admitted to law school in his native province. Despite his lack of a formal education, PRC officials quickly granted his wish. But wait: first, he wanted to be reunited with his family. Again, officials granted his wish, whisking his family to Beijing on a fast train.

Thinking the “incident” had been resolved, embassy officials drove Chen to a Beijing hospital to be treated for minor injuries. Overnight, he changed his mind again and demanded he be sent to the US to take advantage of a visiting scholar offer tendered by Jerome Cohen of NYU. He alluded to vague threats by PRC authorities that were denied by embassy officials. Finally, the Chen “human rights” struggle was capped off by a remote open mike dialogue with the US House of Representatives where he surprised House members with the revelation of his forthcoming journey to the US. By the way, Chen has since announced that he reserves the right to return to China when his US R&R is completed. Human rights indeed!

One obvious lesson of the Chen episode is that there is an avenue for convicted criminals to extort a law degree or a trip overseas if he or she plays the cards right, though I would not recommend that anyone try this in the US.

But the more serious lesson is for the myriad human rights groups in the US and Europe. Their ready acquiescence to “causes” that coincide with the interests of their respective ruling classes casts a shadow on their body of work. The critical observer cannot help but notice the coalescing of many human rights campaigns with the foreign policy objectives of the US and its NATO allies.

It’s an old story, beginning in the Cold War with a noticeable tendency for the most prominent rights groups to find human rights violations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but curiously overlooking the ravages of anti-Communism in the US. But after the Helsinki Accords of 1975, the human rights provision (though no other element) became an anchor for US and European foreign policy. Millions of dollars were directed towards Western human rights organizations and NGOs that compromised any objectivity for the routine payoff. Human rights pressure intensified on the Socialist countries while waning in the West. Of course some groups and activists were merely gullible; they inherited blindness to repression and oppression in their beloved backyard while bearing a nativist distrust of things foreign or different; cultural ignorance and disrespect of differences always exacerbated the blunders of human rights campaigners. And imperialists were quick to exploit these weaknesses.

In recent history, the irresponsibility of human rights activists has contributed to the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the demonization of countries seeking an independent path from that chosen by the US and its allies, countries such as Cuba, the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, the PRC, Venezuela, Iran, Libya, and Syria. Some groups seem to have forgotten the other nine points of the Helsinki Accord.

This institutionalization of human rights organizations, along with their penetration by governmental agencies, has challenged their credibility. The obscene campaign against Libya has resulted in civilian deaths and the brutal rule of bandits and racists. And the current campaign against the Syrian government brings frequent bombings by opponents and a great loss of civilian lives. Surely some human rights advocates owe us an accounting.

As The Colombia Journalism Review reports, the recent Mike Daisey account of workplace abuses in the PRC went viral after paradoxically appearing on This American Life (They show little interest in American workplace abuse). Eight hundred and eighty-eight thousand downloads followed. Consequently, Change.org, the ubiquitous on-line petition campaigner, solicited 256,425 signatures opposing this alleged abuse.

But Daisey’s account was a fraud, laden with inaccuracies and spurious charges. Consequently, This American Life retracted the Daisey episode. Yet only 486 people signed a petition urging the withdrawal of the Change.org petition. The damage was done. The stain remains.

We deserve better human rights advocates: less obsequiousness and gullibility, more responsibility and seriousness.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

The Silly Season: A Caricature of Democracy

We are well into the silly season, the great US national election spectacle that will compete with the other inane entertainments offered by our mega-media; in a real sense, the 2012 Presidential and congressional campaigns are the ultimate reality shows. In fact, they are not far from mimicking the vulgar competitions of American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. Imagine a television show with participants chosen by how much money they can raise from mega-millionaires, shadow boxing over questions prepared by media multi-millionaires, and concluding with an extravagant climax in November, with US voters selecting the winners. And those winners then get to rule the US for the next two, four or six years. And that, without too much exaggeration, is our two-party electoral system. Of course ruling the US should be serious business. And the great tragedy is that this frivolous selection process is anything but serious.

This carnival has evolved. The role of television, for example, has transformed national elections into beauty pageants with $200 haircuts, attractive faces, winning smiles, and cute families superseding issues and programs. But before television, party bosses delivered the votes with patronage and Election Day “services.” The common denominator throughout the ages is money. Money, and the effort it buys, have been and continue to be decisive. Merely the ante has changed, growing astronomically until only the super-rich or their friends can vie for the highest offices. Inexorably, the staggering role of money exponentially multiplies the influence of a tiny cabal of the wealthiest in picking winners and shaping policy.

None of this is strikingly new or even seriously deniable. But what is striking and serious is the continued acceptance of this state of affairs by the millions of increasingly desperate citizens who cling to elections as an expression of their interests. Though elections are becoming more and more irrelevant to serving those interests, the cycle continues unabated.

For the “one percent,” the electoral circus is an undeserved gift that allows a refreshing of the ruling elites on a regular basis, with little chance of any renegades sneaking into the ruling clique. The pool of reliable candidates is determined well in advance based upon their service to capital and then the populace is allowed to pick from two duly anointed choices (certainly I recognize that in some “liberal” or minority districts better candidates vie, but this is consistently challenged with gerrymandering and hyper-spending geared towards embedding trustworthy and spineless social-liberals with no animus towards corporations).

For the ninety-nine percent, the elections are the meager meal that keeps the pitchforks in the barn and staunches the illusion that the US is a democracy.

While none of this is really disputable or even often challenged by the left, most of the left continues to dutifully climb on board the Democratic Party bus every election cycle. Sure, the thought of electing an ex-FBI snitch, clumsy B-film movie actor as President in 1980 drove most of us to vote for a mediocre Democratic incumbent who had already signed onto the neo-liberal agenda and betrayed his entire 1976 program (Ted Kennedy ran against him in the primary for exactly that reason). We should have known better—the Democrats had secured near-total dominance of the electoral arena after the Nixon fiasco and frittered it away, demonstrating no intention to further a progressive, popular agenda.

Election after election, the Democratic Party mobilizes its progressive base by stoking fears of the wacko-right. And like Pavlov’s dogs, the base pulls out all the stops to support well-groomed, corporate-friendly lawyer-candidates who promise, but never deliver. And now—over thirty years after Reagan—the incumbent Democratic Party President is on record as enthusiastically expressing his admiration for Ronald Reagan, the demon who stoked the great fear of the ultra-right. A bitter irony, but an irony lost on a new generation of leftists and progressives who hold their nose and work hard for a Democratic Party victory.

Why is this?

Arguments for repeating the same pattern abound: from future Supreme Justices to ending military occupations and containing economic predation. Yet the ideological disposition of the Supreme Court continually drifts rightward; the wars and occupations overlap from one regime to another; and inequality continues to grow unabated. Clearly, any merits of the “lesser-of-two-evil” tactic are not realized in practice.

What began as a credible tactic—put aside ideology, and deny the extreme right a shot at ruling—has since become an unthinking and unproductive habit, a habit that fails to stop or even slow the rightward drift in US politics. To break this habit, someone must pose, advocate, and work to popularize a new tactic that promises to turn back this vicious trend. To reverse this trend, a new approach is urgently needed.

But it would be naïve to believe that a new approach would emerge from within the Democratic Party. Party leaders have no interest in seeing such a movement arise and have been complicit for some time in smashing any internal insurgency by changing the rules against democracy, by siding with “winnable” moderates and rightists, and by undermining progressive candidacies; it’s their party and they’re keeping it. Yet many still tilt at these windmills.

Instead, devising a new approach falls upon the left, a left that seems determined to avoid this responsibility. The harsh reality is that the left in the US, even broadly defined, has little to no influence upon electoral outcomes and, therefore, has little to lose in exploring independent answers. That is not to deny that the labor movement in the US does seriously impact elections. But its long standing intimate relationship with the Democratic Party promises little change without a popular movement to show the way. Finding a new approach is one problem, but none will be found unless we begin to look for one.

Standing in the way are the naysayers, the perennial advocates for staying the course. Recently, I read an analysis by a “Communist” who castigated some on the left because they “disparage the electoral battle.” He pompously stated that the elections are the “main form of class struggle.” Such a view is sheer nonsense and an impediment to advancing both class struggle and class politics. Certainly, elections can be a form of class struggle, but never an effective form, except when influenced by powerful, independent and principled forces. We have known these moments both in the 1930s when the left mobilized millions in opposition to failed economic policies, and in the 1960s, when militant actions supported civil rights and challenged an imperialist war. If the results of the 2008 election (with a Democratic sweep) are a measure of the success of this form of "class struggle", then its success for those on the wrong side of the class divide. If we learn anything from the malignant Tea Party, we should understand the value of not tendering our support unless we get something for it. And if the Democrats don’t need our support, then we are foolish to offer it.

Still other pseudo-Marxists justify their electoral obsession and fealty to the Democratic Party by appealing to the writings of Georgi Dimitrov. Dimitrov introduced the notion of a united front against fascism in his 1935 report to the Communist International. On their reading, the left should make common cause with the Democrats to defeat the ultra-right, thought by them to be the contemporary embodiment of fascism. But this is a felony against history: we are not faced with the fascist threat of 1935. Nor do these Marxist poseurs represent Dimitrov’s views faithfully. He never advocated surrendering the left’s identity to rival political parties; he never advocated fighting the class enemy solely in the electoral arena; and he never endorsed making nice with the Parties of the big bourgeoisie. Certainly US Communists didn’t interpret Dimitrov in this fashion when they ran Earl Browder and James Ford in the 1936 election against Franklin Roosevelt.

Another variant on this opportunist “Marxist” theme postulates stages or levels of struggle by anointing collaboration with the Democrats in their electoral bids as an intermediate stage on the road to a distant socialism. With this view, any motion at all towards that distant goal must await the final conflict with the ultra right.

 Except this is not Marxism. Rather it is the pretentious appropriation of Marxist jargon to justify marriage to the Democratic Party. Marxists, first and foremost, recognize the direction of processes. And in the case of marching in lockstep with the Democratic Party, this policy has hardly been a productive process. In fact, it has led, over decades, to a continued rightward retreat under the banner of “the lesser of two evils,” a dubious launching pad for a higher stage.

From the perspective of an even lighter shade of red, Bill Fletcher has stirred a lively internet debate with his recent excoriation of those he sees as disdainful of electoral politics. In his “My Frustration with the Left when it comes to Electoral Politics”, Fletcher caricatures the debates on the left as between sensible, pragmatic leftists who bring their issues into the electoral arena and wild-eyed, cynical radicals who scorn elections. Like all caricatures, his simplifies and obscures differences and evades a real confrontation with the limitations of electoral politics in the here and now. Fletcher postures the electoral “arena” as a “field of struggle” for “popular power” and a place to “raise issues that have the possibility of gaining greater recognition.”

But is it? Certainly, it could be, under specific and ideal conditions—for example, the existence of a left bloc with the temerity and determination of our Tea Party foes on the right. But is the 2012 election such an arena for the left?

The answer is clearly “no.” A Democratic victory promises neither “popular power” nor the projection of any new, progressive issues. Surely, the betrayal of the meager program promised by the 2008 Obama victory underscores this point. Fletcher conflates what could be with what is. Elections could be meaningful if we had a class-based or anti-monopoly Party, but we don’t. Furthermore, Fletcher scoffs at the idea of building one. Instead, he projects one possibly arising “from an ‘insurrection’ within the Democratic Party and a major section of its base…” Waiting for this “insurrection” to spontaneously ignite has been a dream for generations, a dream of those blessed with patience, but short of vision and realism.

History teaches a different lesson: from the abolitionists through the anti-war movement of the sixties and today’s Occupy movement, change has come from organized forms resolved to press issues regardless of the electoral consequences and independent of electoral maneuvers. Were the abolitionists’ strategy to take the focus of struggle solely into the electoral arena, the cause would have languished for decades. Similarly, without labor’s independent militancy outside of the electoral arena in the early thirties, workers would have been saddled with the corporate-friendly NRA and the toothless section 7A.

Bringing struggles into the Democratic Party and entrusting it to advance these issues legislatively, as Fletcher suggests, inevitably dilutes, co-opts, and divides popular struggles. Certainly Democratic Party leaders opportunistically and parasitically adopt popular movements when they capture the attention of voters, but they do so to contain, compromise, and exploit those movements. That process was clearly demonstrated in the Obama era, with far-too-many leaders of the anti-war movement passing the cause on to the Administration. As a result, the wars continued to expand and the movement is virtually silent. Today, the Democrats are fervently trying to suck the energy of the Occupy movement into the electoral campaign. Should it succeed, it will eviscerate the movement.

Fletcher is correct to argue that we have yet to build a foundation for a left party in the US. However, we will never build one, if we do not fight to keep our struggles and movements independent of the Democratic Party and outside of a reliance on electoral politics. People should and will vote as they please. But energy spent on working for a Democratic victory in November is energy diverted from building our movements. Movements are the enforcers of ideas and policies. When the left builds its base, it will have something to advance or trade with bourgeois politicians and it will not surrender its support for nothing.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com