Looking Back and Going Forward

One year ago, President Obama took office. His assumption of the highest executive office was met with relief by most (nearly 80% of citizens polled in October 2008 thought the country was heading in the wrong direction) and high expectations by many.

Quite naturally, those who opine on the big national media stage used the occasion of the anniversary to record an assessment of the first year. Judgment was heightened by the result of the special election for the Senate seat in Massachusetts of the deceased incumbent, Edward Kennedy, a result that, by all accounts, was an ominous and severe setback for the Democratic Party.

With equal vigor, the Democratic Party mainstream, uncomfortable with anything even vaguely threatening to corporate interests, points to a non-existent leftish tilt as responsible for their failings. Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, ever anxious to speak for Party moderates, decried the Democrats “overreach” and failure to find consensus “with independents and moderates”. With all the seriousness that a scolding Democratic Leadership Council icon can muster, he warns of a “catastrophe of biblical proportions” unless Democrats mend their ways. Like so many of his Party colleagues, Bayh is more comfortable with sermons than realistic or effective policy proposals. He advocates a “positive populism” that will miraculously create jobs and prosperity while reducing government spending, a prescription akin to advocating diets for the starving. In his world this makes sense, only emphasizing the irony of his remark that “Washington is out of touch with mainstream America” as expressed to The Wall Street Journal (1-26-10)

But this seems to be the message that Obama and his team are hearing, given his emphasis on reducing the deficit. Not only will he freeze non-defense related federal spending, already eviscerated during the Bush years, but he will enact a stealth budget slashing strategy recently rejected by the Congress. A commission – to be established beyond the bounds of democratic engagement or transparency - would make wholesale recommendations for spending cuts and present them as a package to Congress to be voted up or down. With little debate and no possibility of amendment the package-strategy would provide cover for those politicians
facing potential outrage in their home states or districts. They will argue that they had no choice but to accept or reject the whole policy even with some unpopular aspects. There is no question that the ultimate target of this devious strategy is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We find here an example of the Obama pattern – now a finely honed tactic – of “faking left and going right”.

Despite Obama’s best rhetorical flourishes, there is absolutely to connection between deficit austerity and job creation. Every economist concedes this point. In fact, most would recognize an inverse relationship between reduced government spending and improved employment. Indeed, the great lesson of the last profound and persistent struggle against unemployment – The Great Depression – demonstrates the utter folly of a policy of deficit reduction in the face of mass job loss. Roosevelt’s drive for a balanced budget in 1937 sent the economy into a sharp descent while sharply reducing employment. It took a return to massive public employment to stabilize the US economy. That lesson is lost on an Administration dogmatically committed to private, market-based solutions.

Rather than listening to Evan Bayh, his corporate cronies, and the baying hounds of the know-nothing media, Obama and his team might consult with the people. He might begin with the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll (1-20-10).

Around 57% of US citizens think the economy will stay the same or decline over the next 12 months. This is hardly an endorsement of the policies crafted by Bernanke, Geithner, Summers, and the rest of the Obama economics team. If Obama were listening to the people, they would be gone. Nonetheless, the DC political cabal is hanging tough with Bernanke and Geithner. Since June, 2009, the percentage of people confident in Administration economic goals and policies has steadily declined, settling at about 35% in January. This should come as no surprise given policy makers’ near total neglect of the 16 million under or unemployed in the US while urgently rendering life support to the unappreciative financial sector.

In October of 2008, before Obama’s inauguration, only a bit more than one in ten US citizens felt the country was going in the right direction, a reflection of the overwhelming disgust with the Bush era. Immediately after the inauguration, that number rose to over 40%, bolstered by the great hope and faith that so many had placed in Obama and the Democrats. In January, 2010, the number had dropped to the mid-thirties, reflecting growing disappointment with the Administration.

Contrary to the wide spread, media induced belief that the country is being overrun by wild-eyed, Obama haters, 72% of the poll respondents found Obama to be “likeable and easygoing”, 59% “inspirational and exciting”. This result demonstrates the vast exaggeration of the tea-bagger movement as representative of the attitude of most US citizens. It further suggests to what extent the corporate media was complicit in pumping up the phenomena. On the other hand, the poll does show a decided unhappiness with the direction Obama has taken: only 38% agree with position on issues and 40% believe he will achieve his goals. Less than a third believe he is “changing business as usual in Washington”.

Despite the symbolic impact of the election of the first African-American President, 78% of those polls believe that race relations in the US have stayed the same or gotten worse.

Lest it appear that disappointment with Obama translates into support for Republicans, one need only turn to US attitudes towards health care reform: 55% of respondents disapprove of Obama’s handling of the issue, while 64% disapprove of the Republican approach! Clearly neither party offers the answers to health care that the people want. Of the options available – including the popular single-payer solution- both parties chose a course out-of-step with the people’s desires and, I might add, the people’s needs.

It should be even more obvious that both parties are trapped in a box dictated by corporate interests, a box that allows only limited policy options, failing both the test of popular desires and needs. Obama’s recent, extraordinary meeting with Republican bigwigs seems a calculated attempt to rally the other party to defend that box. When he stated: “I know many of you individually. And the irony, I think, of our political climate right now is that, compared to other countries, the differences between the two major parties on most issues is not as big as it's represented”, he spoke a truth that defined his own approach as well as the basis for the crisis in the two-party system. It is precisely this identity of outlook and interest that Obama persistently and enthusiastically pursues with his tiresome, ineffective, but dogged call for “bi-partisanship”.

It fails, and it will fail, because the Republican Party is under constant and unrelenting pressure from its right. The evangelicals, the anti-immigrant cabal, the anti-abortion crowd, the anti-gay fanatics, the racists, the war-mongering nationalists, and, yes, the tea-baggers are organized, vocal and independent of the Party leadership. They make nearly non-negotiable demands on the Republican Party. And the party complies.

This lesson has escaped liberals, progressives, and many on the left who consistently work and support Democratic candidates who neither share nor swear to a progressive agenda. Moreover, they refuse to call out politicians in the Democratic Party who stray from a progressive course out of some perverse sense of loyalty or twisted appeal to unity. In my view, this is unprincipled and opportunistic. But even if some see this as too harsh of a judgment, surely this past year demonstrates that complacent trust is ineffective. The dynamic of Obama’s first year shows that one cannot simply work for the election of a “better” candidate and put aside the critical activism that can shape that candidates political course. We would do well to study the strategic approach of the demonic right. We’d do even better putting our energies into building a left-of-center third party.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

How Not to Create Jobs

The Associated Press reports that after studying in detail over $21 billion in stimulus projects designated for road and bridge construction in the Administration’s first stimulus program, they found no discernible change in local employment associated with the completion of these projects. One of the five economists who reviewed their work stated: “There seems to me to be very little evidence that it’s making a difference.” Another economist commented: “In terms of creating jobs, it doesn’t seem like it’s created very many. It may well be employing lots of people, but those two things are different.” (Spending Fails to Stimulate Jobs, Matt Puzzo and Brett J. Blackledge, 2-12-10)

How can the widely lauded construction stimulus fail to improve the unemployment picture?

The answer lies in a gross misunderstanding of the New Deal employment programs and a slavish, dogmatic reliance upon the private sector.

I wrote - regarding the Obama stimulus program – in February of 2009:

Roosevelt sought job growth by directly employing the unemployed in Federal works projects. Obama, however, has pledged that 90% of his job-creating investments will be done though private firms. This raises many issues that Stanley Aronowitz perceptively explores in an article entitled "Facing the Economic Crisis" (Socialist Project, 12-26-08). He raises questions of wage rates, unionization, a living wage, and the technical composition of various kinds of projects. But most importantly, he notes that private sector job creation engages profits which siphon off the maximum impact of government expenditures; all things being equal, more jobs can be created from a given amount of dollars without awarding profits to a private firm. Aronowitz speculates that 30% gross profit would be a common return for a private firm given a government project. In fact, it is customary in bids for municipal and state government contracts for the private firm to offer estimates calculated at three times the cost of the hourly rate for the employees engaged in the project. Thus, for every three dollars of government stimulus, one dollar of hourly wages would be passed on for job creation. In any case, the Obama strategy would sharply reduce the impact of Federal expenditures designated for reducing unemployment, in sharp relief with the New Deal counterpart programs. Clearly, the economic advisors associated with Obama cannot escape their private sector fixation. (Looking Forward, MLToday, http://mltoday.com/en/looking-forward-542-2.html)

Both the Aronowitz insight and my observation point to the folly of creating jobs through private sector, contractor-based programs, the approach to which Obama and his advisors swore allegiance. Now, a year later, that folly has been demonstrated. Scorning the New Deal approach and wedded to dogmatic, conventional thinking, $21 billion has been wasted - dare I say, misappropriated – against the professed goal of job creation. The folly goes deep. The notion that contractors would pass on an opportunity to use existing employees to secure super-profits on government contracts, the notion that they would, out of some new-found support for the common good, hire additional workers and forgo profits, should be ridiculous even to the neo-liberal brain trust assembled by Obama.

Despite these findings, the Obama economic team has proposed and the House has approved an additional stimulus of $28 billion for another round of road construction targeted at reducing construction unemployment. White House economic advisor, Jared Bernstein blithely asserted: “When you invest in this kind of infrastructure, you’re creating good jobs for people who need them.”

It is becoming more and more apparent that permanent unemployment is a structural component of contemporary monopoly capitalism. Even with the absorption of millions of potentially productive employees by the criminal justice system (the world’s highest incarceration rate) and the military-industrial system (permanent and expanding wars and military spending), state-monopoly capital has no use for millions of workers. More to the point, capital has every interest in maintaining a “reserve army of the unemployed”, as classical Marxism maintained. Desperate workers, desperate for a job, will work for less, pressuring the wage rates and benefits of those currently employed. As most commentators have conceded, the last recession produced a jobless recovery and this far deeper downturn has shown no signs of restoring jobs once any real or fantasy recovery comes. The last decade is the first in US history – including the decade of the Great Depression – to show negative job growth.

Because of the decades of privatization, contracting out, outsourcing, and public subsidization, the notion that more public funding will stimulate private job generation is as foolish as the notion that pouring public funds into the financial sector will restore sanity to banking practices. The same economic thinking that produced the crisis will not be undone by feeding the beasts that it produced.

The first order of business should be to send Geithner, Summers, Rubin, and the rest of the economic whiz kids packing. Their dogmatic, narrow, corporate-friendly thinking has only worsened the crisis while wasting resources and betraying the public.

In addition, a robust, well funded public works program is urgently needed: publicly funded, publicly run, with public employment, and with the public as the beneficiary. With the money spent and proposed, a million workers could easily be employed at decent wages and with benefits in repairing homes and neighborhoods, cleaning, inspecting, and beautifying communities, and developing and expanding public spaces. In short, the unemployed could be put to work in an updated version of the New Deal programs. As in the New Deal, the direct payment of wages to these public employees would expand consumption and fuel further economic activity while giving the re-employed a sense of worth and accomplishment.

This approach to job creation is not only the best route, but – in light of the failure of private sector stimulus – the only route to generating employment.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Abusing Human Rights

The doctrine of human rights, as we know it - an invention of the era of liberation from feudal tyrannies - reached its apogee with the adoption of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948, a declaration that expanded the classical notion of individual, personal, and formal rights to include a measure of social and economic rights. The debates over this declaration, occurring with the onset of the Cold War and largely obscured by the sharp ideological divisions of the time, highlighted the limitations of existing rights doctrines in addressing the socio-economic concerns that emerged with the maturation of capitalism. For most of the world’s people, the individual rights spawned by liberation from absolute, tyrannical rule were fine, but irrelevant to the conditions of desperate poverty, homelessness, insecurity, and social neglect spawned by an exploitive capitalist system and its destructive wars. For most of the world’s people, social and collective rights were at least as important as individual rights. For most of the world’s people, rights to the material means of survival, security, and welfare were at least as important as rights to act without restraint.

As the UN changed its political complexion over the next several decades, new covenants were added to address many of these concerns, though they were largely ignored or dismissed in Western Europe and the US. Instead, western intellectual circles shamefully clung to the classical doctrines of rights, serving, knowingly or naively, to justify these solid pillars of bourgeois rule at the expense of a more generous, robust, and relevant notion of human rights. Early in the Cold War, the celebrated essay “Two Concepts of Liberty” by Isaiah Berlin was established as canonical, dismissing any claims to rights-status for “liberties from…(want, exploitation, domination, etc)” as opposed to “liberties to…(travel freely, speak openly, own property, etc.). In point of fact, all of the classical rights were birthed by “liberties from…” - liberation from religious, traditional, or autocratic intolerance or domination. This artificial distinction was elevated to an unsustainable legitimization of what came to be called “positive rights” at the expense of the demonized “negative rights” associated with collective, social and economic rights.

Like sheep, the Western academic community dutifully fell in line with Berlin’s shallow special pleading for classic bourgeois rights. To this day, there is no mainstream liberal philosophical critique of Berlin’s dogma. Despite the exposure of the incestuous relationship of the CIA with Berlin and many of his colleagues by Frances Stoner Saunders (The Cultural Cold War), the Berlin essay remains a standard entry in political philosophy textbooks.

As the years past, the Berlin dogma became rooted deeply and popularly in the West. Once again, the classical doctrine was enlisted in the Cold War. Human Rights organizations sprung up, capturing the activism of young people and occupying center stage in the ideological battle with the socialist countries. The familiar criticism was that these organizations only aimed their guns at Cold War foes; the US and European branches seldom if ever found human rights violations in the homeland. But deeper than this criticism was the transparent identification of human rights with only the classical bourgeois rights. I could miss a few instances, but I know of no Western human rights organization that ever seriously took up the cause of the collective right to a job, equal pay, favorable conditions of employment, trade union rights (Article 23); rest and leisure (Article 24); or an adequate standard of living (Article 25), all fundamentally collective, social, and economical rights. In truth, Western human rights groups have shown no interest in the minimal social and economic rights guaranteed by the UN Declaration.

In our time, the stripped down human rights agenda – shorn of collective, social and economic rights – remains a centerpiece of ideological struggle, serving as the first line of attack against those countries deemed hostile to EU and US foreign policy objectives. Again and again, matters of human rights in this most narrow sense are offered to justify interventions (the former Yugoslavia), invasions (Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan), interference (Ukraine, Belarus, Lebanon), coups (Venezuela) and a half a century of cold war (Cuba). This is not to diminish the hard-won rights of the US’s and Europe’s revolutionary heritage – they are surely in need of vigorous defense from corporate aggression and abuse as well as domestic political erosion – but to oppose their opportunistic harnessing to the goals of our own ruling elite.

Human rights – understood as those rights enshrined by Western human rights groups, NGO’s and Western liberalism - are bourgeois rights in two senses: firstly, they are the product of historically distant revolutionary movements that liberated the bourgeoisie principally, but other classes as well, from the tyranny and caprice of political and religious lords; and secondly, they are of most use and relevance to those whose socio-economic status makes collective, social, and economic rights of little need or importance. In this regard, they are class-based rights. A successful lawyer may be prepared to fight to the death for his right to travel freely, yet have given no thought to the right to participate in a trade union. Similarly, a landlord sees the right to property as sacrosanct while failing to recognize any tenant right to a safe sanctuary.

One could write a book about human rights hypocrisy. For example, the US offered itself as a paragon of human rights – an example to the world – while maintaining racial segregation well past the mid-century mark of the twentieth century. The 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and their Families is violated daily if not hourly by every country in the EU and the US, yet human rights groups are strangely quiet on this issue. Nor do human rights organizations or NGOs hold the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples in any special regard. The declaration opens with the statement: “The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination, and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights”. Surely the examples of the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan violate this right. There is no exemption for cynical crusaders for human rights any more than there was one for the “civilizing” mission of the British Empire.

The same declaration affirms that “All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”. Presumably that right would exclude the intervention of foreign funded media and NGOs, as well as covert operations, interventions like Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Radio and TV Marti, the Soros Foundation, the Republican and Democratic Institutes, AID, and the CIA. Yet again, the human rights organizations show no interest in this right.

One might conclude that it is no exaggeration to say that human rights have become a matter of political convenience.

Jeremy Bentham famously called rights “nonsense on stilts”. This harsh conclusion misses the point that they are human inventions and accordingly are what we make of them. Marx, commenting on the rights celebrated in his time, wrote “none of the so-called rights of man goes beyond egoistic man … an individual withdrawn behind his private interests and whims and separated from the community”. Efforts to rescue human rights from this narrow vision are not welcomed by those bent on preserving privilege, power and exploitation.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Looking Back at the 2008 Election

Two days after the 2008 Presidential election, I posted the following article with my thoughts on the meaning of the Obama victory. A friend – a sharp and critical observer of the political scene – suggested I take another look at the article to see how it stood up. I won’t posture false modesty, but I think it stands up well. I honestly believe it reflects a concrete, sober, and historical-materialist assessment of the last election that foretold many of the events that came to pass, warned of the wide-eyed euphoria of much of the left, and emphasized to the point of tedium my often repeated conviction that we need to build an independent movement challenging and pressuring the existing political institutions. To this, I credit the tool of Marxist-Leninist analysis.

I would genuinely welcome any comments or criticisms.

I have highlighted some of what I believe to be the most important points.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

The Presidential Election: A victory for the People?

The 2008 US Presidential election is behind us. A fair estimation of the results might be as follows: A clear, significant statement of the US electorate; a hollow, likely disappointing result for the people. After the euphoria of the Obama victory, it is vital that we separate these two assessments and avoid the cynicism of leftist isolationism and the self-deception of hopeful idealism. What the voters wanted was unquestionably significant change. What they were promised was change. Whether change will come from the Obama administration is - at best - questionable.

The Meaning of the Vote

The vote was most importantly a repudiation of racism and the Bush administration. White voters in working class areas cast aside crude racist appeals, put aside the three-headed Trojan horse of abortion, gays, and guns, and voted economic self-interest. They knew that McCain would do nothing for them and they wanted to believe that Obama would. A kind of reverse Bradley effect - unnoticed by the media - was operating. Many were afraid to openly support an African-American, but were comfortable doing so in the privacy of the voting booth, canceling out any lost votes from the opposite tendency. Thus, the polls proved to be an accurate, if not underestimated, gauge of the election results.

The significance of this cannot be overstated. The level of overt racism - the open, vulgar racism fostered by talk radio, shock jocks, internet slime - should diminish with the expression that most citizens are comfortable with an African-American President. Of course it won't disappear.

Also, the vote opens the door to a more unified working class. Make no mistake about it, union leaders who were lukewarm, often absent fighters for equality were forced by the circumstances of the campaign to take strong, out-front statements against racism. This is a good thing, and, though their efforts were sometimes clumsy, commendable.

Of course much work lies ahead in the struggle against racism; voting for Obama is not a free pass for racial insensitivity.

The three strongest constituencies for Obama (giving Obama the largest portion of their group vote) were African-Americans, Latinos, and union labor. African-Americans understandable took pride in the candidacy of Obama with predictable results. Latinos voters represented 8% of the total vote, siding decidedly for Obama. Both the growth of their total vote and their stronger support for this Democratic candidate mark a greater importance in electoral politics and a powerful progressive tendency. These results were duplicated in Florida, where the intimidating gusano influence continues to wane.

The election confirms the demographic expansion of the minority population and their increasing importance for anti-monopoly political organizing. The shift in the Latino vote makes the excuse for appeasing the anti-Communist Cubans in foreign policy even more lame.

The union labor vote - which overlaps substantially with the minority vote - was strong for Obama: 67% supported him, according to the AFL-CIO. Most importantly, the union electoral drive proved effective in blunting and overcoming racism and the always present distractions of abortion, gun control, and gay marriage. Like the Prohibition issue in the election leading to the New Deal victories, these issues are used to deflect attention from more fundamental issues. The union electoral effort shows the potential for influencing policy well beyond the electoral arena and much more frequently than the electoral cycles. Labor activism is an untapped source, lacking only ideological clarity and militant leadership - a task for the left in the coming period.

The Catholic vote went for Obama despite the efforts of many right-wing bishops to swing the vote towards anti-abortion candidates. Protestant Obama fared better than Catholic Kerry in 2004 - another measure of self-interest trumping self-identity.

In general, the vote results show an electorate ripe for new policies, new answers and moving in a clear progressive direction. The trends exposed by the Pew Research Center's two decade long polling study ("Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes") towards social democratic policies and away from insularity and obscurantism is born out by the 2008 election.

The Meaning of the Obama Victory

There is a glaring contradiction between the wants and needs of the people of the US and the issues debated and embraced by the Presidential candidates - it is as if they existed in two different worlds. The institutionalization of the two-party system both allows and insures this fact. It is no criticism of Obama or his hope-filled partisans of change who worked with such great enthusiasm to point this out. But, by the same token, it is delusional to forecast a progressive turn in the Obama administration from this great effort. If Nader, if Cynthia McKinney, if even Bob Barr were allowed to debate the candidates before a television audience, there might well have been progressive issues on the legislative table. If... if... if... But the institutionalized two-party system does not allow for such opportunities. And it will continue to block any move leftward without a dramatic mass movement forcing it.

The political influence of the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council surrounds Obama with the appointment of Rahm Emmanuel as chief-of-staff only underlining this reality. With Emmanuel as the gate keeper, the notion that progressives at least have access to the White House is even more remote. Despite the fact that the DLC is completely out of touch with the needs of the majority of the citizenry, they exercise inordinate influence within the Democratic Party. It must be remembered that they have a strong base in the South as well as the suburban bed-room communities in the North. These suburban communities proved to be the power base for sweeping away the progressive platform of the Democratic Party after the 1976 election victory.

Again, in 2008, suburban voters left the Republicans and sided with the Democrats. Despite their fickle loyalty to the Democratic Party (they respond mainly to the Party's social liberalism agenda of gun control, abortion rights, gay marriage, and other personal freedom-based issues), they are the main justification for the constant urging by the Party's pundits to tack towards the center and center-right). Their "activism" is what the Democratic Party best understands - money and power. And they stand as rivals for policy influence with African-Americans, Latinos, and labor.

On the economic front, Obama's advisors are hardly inspiring; indeed, they are a bit scary - Paul Volker, Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin. Austin Goolsbee, Jason Furman, Timothy Geithner, and Warren Buffet have all the wrong corporate and academic credentials. None have stepped too far from the warm, comforting waters of neo-liberal orthodoxy. And in a world of real oppositional politics all would have been ferreted out for previous personal or policy sins. For the hope-crazed progressives, there should be some puzzlement at the absence of Krugmans, Stiglitzs, and Reichs from this group (actually Reich is part of the transition team - a rose among so many thorns).

At this early date, the names floated for key cabinet positions are largely political retreads of previous administrations and old legislative warhorses. Very few wear any progressive medals for deviation from the center, center-right agenda.

Regrettably, the electoral victory was no victory at all for the left. That is just to say that the Obama victory brought no assured policy reward for left support. At best, the Obama administration would be more accommodating to, less intransigent against any advances forced upon it by mass action. That is something, but hardly a justification for most of the left's unconditional support of the Obama campaign. The occupation in Iraq is no closer to conclusion; universal single-payer health care is no closer to being achieved; there is no plan to end the Afghan war; the Cuban embargo remains policy; Palestinians remain political untouchables; and so on and so on... And every indication is that the Obama administration will continue down the path of advancing imperial interests and privileging corporate America.

Looming over this election is the global economic catastrophe - a giant gorilla towering over all other issues. Many see a repeat of the Great Depression - a sense not completely farfetched. And many hopefully see Obama as the new Roosevelt launching a new New Deal - a sense built upon the sand of "Yes we can". In truth, Roosevelt was not the great savior of capitalism or the people, a myth that lingers in liberal theology. But the facts give no portent that Obama is Roosevelt, either. It's time for the left to put aside the comforting illusions and rebuild an independent, oppositional front that is not dependent upon the good will of the corrupted Democratic Party. We desperately need that left to forge a true people-saving agenda from the destructive gorilla.

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

GM Workers Get an Unwelcome Holiday Bonus

General Motors assembly line workers are scheduled to receive a dubious “gift” in the coming year. Thanks to GM management, the Obama administration’s automobile task force and the collaboration of the United Auto Worker’s union leadership, General Motors will run auto plants on three shifts, twenty-four hours a day in 2010. Beginning on January 4, the Kansas City (Fairfax) plant will inaugurate the three-shift scheme.

According to The Wall Street Journal (In Risky Move, GM to Run Plants Around Clock, Kevin Helliker, 12-22-09), long standing industry standards engage the assembly line for two shifts with sufficient time for cleaning, maintenance, and restocking before the start of a new daily production cycle. Among industry experts, the two-shift regimen is believed to be the most efficient production technique; two shifts, operating 250 days a year, is considered 100% of capacity according to these experts. But the Administration’s auto czars, while negotiating the $50 billion investment infusion of public funds, pressed GM to operate at 120% of capacity.

“Do these guys understand the business?” asked an industry analyst quoted in the WSJ.

Functions formerly done while the line was down will now be performed while the production line runs, albeit at a slower speed. GM managers and union officials have reportedly agreed to make up for these slowdowns with “overspeeding” at other times, an odd euphemism for old-fashioned industrial speed-up.

In essence, the GM/auto czar scheme eliminates the industry accepted maintenance shift, replacing it with a production shift and conducting the maintenance work while production continues.

GM is increasing the workforce by a third by drawing workers from closed plants, but expects to increase weekly car production by forty per cent.

Fully a third of the new employees will come from the closed Janesville, Wisconsin plant. The Wisconsin State Journal (12-28-09) reports the toll this displacement takes on workers:

In some cases, the distance has torn families apart. Bill Hollingsworth, a clinical psychotherapist at the Janesville Psychiatric Clinic, is working with seven families strained by out-of-state job transfers. He said marriages separated by hundreds of miles have brought loneliness and fears that spouses are being unfaithful. In some cases, the distance has triggered depression, alcoholism and drug abuse.

"There's a lot of insecurity," Hollingsworth said. "A lot of mistrust."
Many people interviewed for this story spoke of long-distance marriages splitting up… "GM doesn't realize what it's done to the actual families," Carol Muchow said. "I know it's triggered divorces. I know there's going to be more."

The WSJ – not from compassion, but from “efficiency” - notes that “[in] all industries… midnight-shift workers are prone to above-average rates of on-the-job errors, absenteeism, and illness”. Unspoken here is that with “on-the-job errors” and “illness” come injuries, deaths, broken families and marriages, and social and cultural deprivation.

Looming over these changes is the threat – always present – of plant closings or shifts of production. In 2006, Kansas City offered a $146 million bond issuance to GM if they would bring production of a mid-sized vehicle to Fairfax. Where free trade agreements gave corporations an opportunity to stage global labor races to the bottom, these same corporations employ this competition to extort deals and concessions domestically. Ironically, GM extorted deals from the public coffers in 2006 and begged for public funds in 2009. Could there be any more dramatic proof of the fusion of the state and monopoly capital? Could there be a more clear demonstration of the utter bankruptcy of class collaboration on the part of union leaders?

It could not be clearer that the GM/auto czar scheme is not about workers, their families, their fair share, their health, their security, or their futures, but about profits. Increased exploitation, speedup, harmful working conditions, and job insecurity are the consequences of this new scheme. In contrast to other auto producing countries that linked public bailouts to sustaining employment, the current Administration insisted that auto companies close plants, cast aside workers and, in this case, subject workers to draconian conditions and increased exploitation. In contrast to other worker organizations in other countries facing the economic crisis, the UAW leadership eschewed militancy and opted for improving the profitability of capital. The WSJ cites the Fairfax union chairman as giving “his card to anyone driving the new Buick Lacrosse, one of the plants products. ‘I tell them to call me if they have any troubles or questions,’ he said.” Does he report problems to GM management? Does he scold workers over any reported problems? Does he represent GM or the workers?

It is understandable if GM workers feel that they are the “collateral damage” in the economic wars to restore capitalist profitability. On one hand, they must assume the cost of the massive bailout shoveled to GM by an Administration that they did much to elect. On the other hand, they are forced by that same Administration to accept unemployment, increased exploitation and severe working conditions. The only answer is a militant fight back. Unfortunately the current UAW leadership has neither the spine nor vision to organize that struggle.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

A Holiday Story

A fantasy in the spirit of Charles Dickens:

In February of 2009, with his poll numbers and public expectations exceptionally high, President Obama announces that he supports the House health care reform bill with the most co-sponsors: HR 676, the universal, single payer plan. He notes that this has always been his answer to fixing the broken, for-profit system that now fails patient needs and burdens our economy. Immediately, the health care industry and big Pharma go into full attack mode, condemning the bill as "socialism". Obama meets with Democratic House leadership and emphasizes that “the American people need this bill and we will give it to them. This victory will pave the way for an overwhelming victory in the 2010 elections!”

House conservative Democrats join Republicans in attacking the House bill, citing industry generated polls and conservative pundits in arguing that the “American people do not want a government plan, but one that leaves health care in the hands of the private market.” The health care industry and its friends rush multi-million dollar attack ads into play, much as they did during the Clinton administration.

In the early spring, Obama holds a town hall meeting, nationally televised, in which he brings together, from around the country, hundreds of people who have been victimized by lack of insurance, poor insurance, coverage denials, and obscene health care costs. In a major address, Obama cites the tens of thousands who die every year from a lack of insurance coverage. He declares this as criminally tragic as the September 11 attacks. Also, he emphatically states that placing petty concerns above delivering adequate health care to all is unpatriotic.

That same week, House leader Nancy Pelosi publicly announces that HR 676 must be passed and she will hold Democrats feet to the fire with all the resources available to the Democratic Party, including election funding, committee seats, and primary challenges. CNN reports live on a conference of pollsters, health care providers, doctors, nurses, and economists who discuss the bill thoroughly, followed by a full endorsement. National media coverage is extensive. The Sunday morning gasbags devote their shows to the bill, grilling opponents in light of the Administration offensive.

As the Senate takes up a health care bill, progressive Democrats call for a rally in support of the bill to take place in DC in the summer. They pressure the House leadership to endorse the rally. The AFL-CIO, NOW, MoveOn, and all other liberal groups endorse the rally.

While seemingly endless debate goes on in the Senate, hundreds of thousands pour into DC to hear a wide range of speakers, musicians, and Congressional leaders in support of the Senate counterpart bill introduced by Senator Sanders. The crowd stirs with the spreading rumor that the President may well appear. Near the end, the crowd roars as President Obama briefly appears, thanking the demonstrators.

The Democratic Senate leadership, stiffened by the unprecedented rally, announces that they will bring the bill quickly to the floor. Senator Reid – the Senate Democratic leader announces that this bill is as significant as any legislation since the Voting Rights Act. He wants his place in history to be identified with this vote. Administration staffer, Rahm Emanuel, reportedly caucused with Senate Democrats and says: “I don’t give a s*** about Lieberman. And Ben, you better get your ass on board or there will be hell to pay. You can’t even imagine the hell we’ll bring down on you. I want this f***in’ bill passed with ALL the D’s supporting it”. Emanuel denies this report.

The Republicans and a few Democrats howl in indignation. Fox news vilifies the House and Senate Democrats with wild charges of socialism and fascism. Harry Reid speaks in the Senate, holding a copy of the Constitution: “Maybe you folks in the Republican Party should read this. Americanism has never been to side with the bullies, and the insurance industry, their rich executives, big Pharma, and their consultants and lobbyists are bullies, forcing their profits ahead of the needs of the American people.” The media is shocked by his bold leadership.

Desperate Republican leaders announce a filibuster with the intent of forestalling a majority vote. The President goes on television with a sober, reasoned plea to have the bill passed. When asked by the press about the threatened filibuster, Obama replies with a wry smile: “Bring it on!”

As the Republican filibuster continues into the fall with Republican Senators droning on and on to an empty Senate chamber, public anger grows and grows. Late night comedians devote most of their shows to parodies of Senators quoting Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Constant picket lines of doctors, nurses, and victims of the broken US health care system surround Senate office buildings. Media commentators question this tactic, blaming the Republicans for bringing legislation to a halt. Polls show Republican favorable ratings at an all time low.

Senator Reid is quoted as chiding a Republican colleague: “Don’t stop now. Keep it up until the interim elections!” Senator Reid denies saying this.

Late in November, Republican leaders huddle, recognizing that continuing to filibuster will destroy any chances of survival after the November 2010 elections. They quickly agree to call it off.

In early December, the Senate passes its version of Medicare for all by a vote of 51 to 25, with many Republicans nervously abstaining.

President Obama goes on national television, thanking all of those who worked so tirelessly and intensely to achieve an efficient, universal, and comprehensive health care plan that will rival any system in the world. He assures the American people that all the failings of the current system, referring to World Health Organization’s parameters, will be reversed and the US will become a widely admired leader in delivering the best health care to its people. He promises to sign a final bill before Christmas, stating that he hopes that the new legislative act will serve as a long overdue, but welcome gift to us all. “Happy holidays!”, he concludes.


Of course this is a fantasy. We do not have the health care bill that we could have had. In fact, almost nothing in this fantasy is true. The President didn’t get behind the House bill with the most co-sponsors, the Democratic leadership didn’t fight hard for real change, there were no tough back room threats, the media didn’t give serious advocates a megaphone, there was no attempt by political leaders to engage and rally the base, political leaders did not show courage, and Democrats did not call the Republican bluff.

While I wish my liberal friends and soft-left comrades a safe and warm holiday season, I ask that they try, in the New Year, to understand why things went so awry. I ask that they turn away from the comforting notion that we live with an economic and political system that can deliver democracy, justice, and equality by our simple participation in the permitted rituals. I ask that, in the New Year, they desist from finding scapegoats for this disaster that should shame us all: whether it be Obama’s betrayal, Blue Dog treachery, or that rotten renegade, Lieberman. It’s the system. Seriously, it’s the system…

Happy Holidays!
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Action against Cuba

Despite the election of a new President, US government hostility towards Cuba continues unabated. The New York Times (“US Contractor Seized”, 12-12-09), in an article written by Marc Lacey and Ginger Thompson, quotes US officials as announcing that “A US government contract worker, who was distributing cell phones, laptops and other communications equipment in Cuba on behalf of the Obama administration, has been detained by authorities here [Havana]…” The contractor “was employed by Development Alternatives, Inc., which had at least $391,000 in government contracts last year. Based in Bethesda, Md., the company is a kind of do-it-all development company that provides services to the US government in countries around the world.” according to the authors.

In fact, this little known company received a three-year $43 million dollar contract for work in Pakistan last year, according to Business Week. With offices in DC, Jordan, Mexico, Palestine, Pakistan and Europe, this quiet, “do-it-all” corporation has had projects in many of the world’s hotspots: Afghanistan, Albania, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe. Its major fund sources are USAID, The Millennium Corporation (a well funded US government international “aid” corporation set up in 2004 and dedicated to promoting “good governance and economic freedom”), the Department of Defense and the Department of Labor.

While The New York Times understates dramatically both the funding and government dependence of DAI, it does reveal an interesting aspect of the story. The detainment occurred on December 5 with no public disclosure by the Cuban government. The fact that US officials felt compelled to announce the detainment, confessing the detainee’s activities and his employment, suggests that there will likely be more exposed in the days to come.

The detainment comes at a particularly sensitive time for the Obama administration. They have made a cause célèbre of a young Cuban blogger, Yoani Sanchez, who has become a darling of the US media with her accounts critical of life in Cuba. Obama has personally submitted answers to her inquiries on her blog, drawing extraordinary attention to her efforts (One would hope that this would give pause to the thousands of liberal US bloggers who cannot get the courtesy of a response from the President for their postings). Given that the detainee was admittedly distributing cell phones, laptops, and “other communications equipment”, this likely signals a calculated US campaign to utilize the internet – tweets, blogs, etc. – to destabilize Cuba, a tactic already exposed in the US intervention in the Iranian post-election demonstrations. Such a campaign would surely cast a shadow on the credibility of the Sanchez blog.

The shift of anti-Cuba covert activity to DAI and the Millennium Corporation is possibly a result of the stunning corruption of past USAID funding to de-stabilize Cuba. The same New York Times article notes that of the $74 million in USAID contracts designated for anti-Cuba activities in the prior decade, the Government Accounting Office reported in 2006 that nearly all went directly into the pockets of Miami-based gusanos. No doubt a good bit of these public funds went to finance anti-Cuba political candidates.

This violation of Cuba’s internal affairs by the US government comes on the heels of a curious public letter signed by 60 African-American notable figures calling ostensibly for the release of an Afro-Cuban prisoner and his case’s elevation to the status of “political prisoner”. No details or documentation of the case, the individual, or the circumstances are offered in the letter, other than a web link to an open letter by a Brazilian professor who repeats the charges, again with little detail. Stranger still, the letter makes the wholesale charge that Afro-Cubans are “the most oppressed citizens” in Cuba. It also speaks of the “brutal harassment” of Afro-Cubans. None of these claims are illustrated or substantiated.

Professor Nascimento – the Brazilian author of the open letter – writes, in a similar vein, of “those most marginalized in Cuba”. Once more, no evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, is given for this charge.

Cuba, like any ethnically diverse country, is not immune to racism. The Cubans would be the first to admit that vestiges of the virulent pre-revolutionary racism could not be rooted out in only a few generations. Yet this once popular charge has largely receded since Cuba’s unprecedented sacrifices for the liberation of the former Portuguese colonies, Namibia and South Africa. A figure of the stature of Nelson Mandela, who singled out Cuba’s embracing of tens of thousands of Africans who resided in the country for education and refuge during these struggles, attested to the unique role of Cuba in fighting racism and forging a society antithetical to its ugly manifestations. The Cuban medical missions to Africa, as well as other continents offer a gesture of international solidarity unknown in our time. One certainly does not hear these allegations from African leaders.

There is something oddly skewed about intellectuals of a country that will not allow its citizens to travel to Cuba to explore matters for themselves attacking the internal affairs of Cuba without mentioning that perverse fact in their public statement. While US government contractors are assigned to go to Cuba to meddle in Cuba’s affairs, prominent African-Americans, with- undoubtedly - honest concerns, are forbidden by law to verify those concerns.

These developments mark a continuation, if not escalation, of the provocative, hostile Cold War waged against Cuba since its revolution.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com