A Prize or a Bad Joke?

Many see the Nobel Prize as the Super Bowl of intellectual life. But more and more, it appears to be like another championship belt in the World Wrestling Federation. Where awarding the “Peace” prize to the Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most war-mongering power tarnished the award, the recently awarded prize for economics brings the contest down to the level of American Idol.

“Economic science,” as its practitioners refer to it, has moved in two directions at once: further away from the reality of economic life and closer to self-sustained scholastic exercises understood and appreciated by the few who work in those same close quarters. Yet never does it travel too far from the ranch of apologia for the holy scriptures of capitalism.

Capitalist triumphalism – the view that all deep questions about the fundamentals of economic structures and activity have been settled – dominates and informs recent academic research in the field. If one suspects a parallel with the religiously driven dogmas of Ptolemaic cosmology, it is there to be found. The world of modern academic economists assumes, with no need to prove it, that economic activity is and can only be understood with the basic units of markets, individual actors and their sets of interests, acquisitive motives, and private ownership. This is the game and the only game. Outsiders – Marxists and renegades from economic scholasticism – are not allowed to play, since they fail to abide by the rules.

But sometimes reality intercedes with brute economic events that challenge this smugness. As the often-brilliant John Strachey wrote in 1935 during the midst of the Great Depression:

The capitalist world… has its experts, its economists. The phenomena of crisis lie, however, outside the scope of their science… They have evolved a science of economics which seems to explain the exact workings of the capitalist system, and (incidentally) justifies those workings in every respect. There is only one difficulty. The system periodically refuses to work… (The Nature of Capitalist Crisis, p.8)

Today, we are in the throes of a similar crisis and economists are similarly fumbling for explanations and solutions.

In the spotlight of today’s crisis is the seeming intractability of extremely high unemployment, a problem even more embarrassing to capitalist apologists in light of record-setting profits.

Thus, many, even far outside of the academic world, expectantly turned with great interest to the announcement that three economists would share the $1.5 million Nobel Prize for purportedly insightful work on unemployment. Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen, and Christopher Pissarides won the 2010 prize for their “groundbreaking ideas that help explain why unemployment remains stubbornly high in the US and other developing countries,” as hailed by The Wall Street Journal.

Sadly, any such expectations would be quickly shattered. The core problem addressed by the three scholars is not the unemployment of the moment, but the relatively high unemployment associated with the European economies of the 1980s and 1990s. At that time, France, Germany and other advanced economies enjoyed strong growth, rising living standards, viable social welfare benefits, but relatively high unemployment – high relative to the theoretical fundamentals of economic dogma. Conventional thinking dictated that growth and rising standards should motivate Europe’s unemployed to seek the available jobs, but instead many chose to obstinately accept the benefits of the social welfare system while settling for a measure of leisure in an abundant society. Essentially, they were redundant, but without courting starvation, some choosing to write poems or backpack through Europe like the sons and daughters of the idle rich. In the eyes of those benefiting from the imposition of strict discipline upon labor, the unemployed were not victims, but outlaws.

Not only did this violate the logic of market forces, but it also challenged the culture of the post-feudal work ethic as explained so well by Max Weber. Since jobs were available, economists - like the three laureates - took on the task of explaining this phenomenon and thus providing policy tools to restore order to economic orthodoxy. The intellectual contributions of the three came to be called “search theory” – an explanation of how the buyers and sellers of labor power can fail to match up. In other words, they sought to account for why workers were not automatically and always herded into jobs despite the assumption that work was necessary to survive. They postulated that “frictions” – inhibiting factors – allowed for jobs to be unfilled while workers were idle. Their “frictions” were hardly novel or earthshaking: “tough” labor regulation restricting firings, “generous” unemployment benefits, inadequate or inappropriate skill sets, and geographical distance between jobs and workers, for example.

It should not escape notice that none of these “frictions” touch on the fundamental friction between workers and employers, namely, the fight for the distribution of the economic surplus. None of these “frictions” address the kind of employer-friendly unemployment that pressures workers into pay cuts and concessions or increases the rate of exploitation. To state the obvious, isn’t it possible that workers do not take available jobs because the available jobs simply do not pay enough? Is this not a street-corner answer to “search theory”?

But these are answers to different questions, questions of little interest to academics accustomed to seeing employees as numbers in calculations or variables in complex equations. Moreover, workers or their organizations do not fund academic research or make generous awards to economists.

Does the Nobel-award-winning research help us understand or overcome the current crisis of unemployment as The Wall Street Journal proclaims?

No, not at all. It is irrelevant and, should it influence policy, potentially disastrous. The current tragic unemployment rate is the result of two years of uneven class war over the carcass of a severely wounded economy. Unemployment is the casualty count of the working class. Profits are the war booty of the employers. Government and its policy makers have sided decisively with the profit-seekers.

Unlike the period in Europe studied by the three economists, there are far too few jobs available today. (The Wall Street Journal in its article hailing the awarding of the prize provides a deceptive chart that shows a growth in available jobs since the worst moment of 2009, a growth that does not even account for those newly entering the job market.) The unfavorably geographical distribution of jobs today is not a matter of leaving home for another city or state, but leaving for an entirely different time zone! Witness the thousands who travel overnight to attend job fairs or apply for a few dozen jobs. The mounting foreclosures, the explosion of food stamp applications, and the growth of unclaimed medical prescriptions hardly point to “generous” unemployment benefits offering a cushy life. And of course there are no “tough” job regulations that restrained the cruel, massive layoffs of the last two years.

At its core, “search theory” finds no fault with the reigning economic system. It identifies no “friction” between the needs of people and the relentless drive for profit. It is blind to a decade of slow or non-existent job growth coupled with growing concentration of wealth and the quickening rise of after-tax profits as a portion of national income. “Search theory” dares not search in this territory.

Instead, this “groundbreaking” theory seeks to motivate the unemployed to try harder, move to low wage areas or retrain for subsistence jobs. It justifies the limiting of unemployment benefits. For all its theoretical sophistication, “search theory” is simply the latest version of the carrot and the stick – in today’s world, a shriveled carrot and a heavy stick.


Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Had Enough?

Frustration with the Obama administration has reached a new level with only 45% of US citizens polled approving of the job that the administration is doing and 39% voicing approval of the administration’s policies on the economy (see Wall Street Journal/NBC telephone polls, 9-7-10). The overall mood is pessimistic: 65% of those polled believe that the US is in a period of decline; 59% of the polled population thinks that the country will be the same or worse in five years.

Only 30% of poll participants believe that the country is headed in the right direction. This is a negative assessment not seen since the tail end of the Bush administration.

In a normal election cycle – the give-and-take of the two Parties – this would signal enthusiasm for the party out of power: the Republican Party. However, among Republicans, only 30% have a positive view of their own party, the lowest number recorded since before 1990.

These numbers express a smoldering anger about where we have arrived since the 2008 election and where we are heading.

The only major new force on the political scene reflecting this angry mood is the Tea-Party phenomenon–-- a faux populist movement backed by extreme-right money and fueled by the ultra-right media.

Facing an interim election in November, all of the healthy forces in US political life are scrambling to establish a posture towards these elections. Bitterness, backbiting, and confusion abound. The Internet is abuzz with the anger of scorned liberals who feel betrayed by two years of, at best ineffectual, at worst, malign administration leadership. As the Administration positions itself for the coming months, it reflects this mood by jettisoning three of its leading economic lights: Peter Orszag, Christina Romer and Lawrence Summers. The exit of Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, has passed the rumor level and is now a fact, as is likely the departure of many other prominent members of the administration. Despite their fealty to the corporate financial sector, Obama has suggested that he is seeking economic advisors that are more comfortable communicating with the corporate world.

Some in liberal circles cling to lingering hopes that the “real” Obama will soon be revealed. With all the enthusiasm of a revival meeting, they are awaiting a political rapture – a fulfillment of the “change” and “hope” themes of the election campaign. But my angry local letter carrier sees it differently. She says that people mistook “hope” for “dope,” a succinct declaration of her own frustrations.

Indeed, all signs point to a reshuffling of the administration in an even more conciliatory-to-the-right, pro-business direction. As the Wall Street Journal reports, “Part of the president’s task will be to ‘reset’ relations with the business community, not only to ease working in a divided Washington but also to smooth his path to re-election” (9-23-10). There is little room in this scenario for the revelation of a progressive, pro-working-class agenda. The WSJ cites senior White House officials as saying, “the president could concentrate on finding common ground on deficit reduction, education and immigration while guarding his achievements, from health care to student lending to financial regulation.”

The Political Crisis

All polls agree that approval ratings for the President have sunk substantially since his inauguration. And approval ratings for Congress hover at an embarrassing low level, a level that has been maintained since a time deep into the Bush Administration. Polls also show that both Parties are generally unpopular. Whether one bought the Obama message or not, it should have been apparent that his administration was meant to change the national mood of dissatisfaction and the international scorn brought on by the previous administration. They have failed in that task. And the political crisis continues.

The distance between the legislative actions of elected officials and the needs and desires of the electorate has never been greater. And the Obama Administration suffers inordinately from this distance because they promised so much in the presidential campaign. This distance was shown most recently with the issue of allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire. Initially, Obama and the Democratic leadership proposed maintaining the cuts for all but the very wealthy, a move that would have brought a measure of fairness to tax policy and generated $700 billion over 10 years in extra Federal revenue. The Republicans mounted a hysterical and demagogic campaign based on the inflammatory charge of tax increases. When opinion polls showed that the tax increases for the rich were popular (mid-September, CBS/New York Times - 53-38%), especially in key “battleground” states, the Republicans backed down. But, immediately, 31 Democratic Representatives voiced their public opposition to taxing the rich. Consequently any decision on the Bush tax cuts will be deferred until after the November elections. Every signal points to Congress maintaining the Bush tax policies for another two years.

Why is there such distance between popular issues and legislative action?

Many pundits employ vague, cloudy concepts like “gridlock” or blame a new-found intransigence or incivility. But the truth is simpler, but deeper: Elected officials are, for the most part, owned by monopoly capital. To a very great extent, the course of political success is greased with money and the opportunity to forge a successful and long political career is dependent upon corporate friendliness. Of course this is not new, but it has reached a new level of prevalence, demonstrating strikingly that the state – its structures and personnel – is dominated by and serves the interests of monopoly capital; that is, our reigning socio-economic system is state-monopoly capital.

Thus, there is no exit, without some radical surgery, from the political crisis that grips the US.

Moreover, the results of the November elections – regardless of the outcome - will have no dramatic impact on our profound political crisis. This does not mean, however, that there is nothing to be gained in the election. There are independent candidates – Greens, for example – who could open cracks in the corrupted two-party system. There are also some independent-minded Democrats who could, though only with a strong prod from progressive constituents, mount a meaningful challenge to the ossified, corporate-coddling Party leadership. And there would be advantages, advantages with a shrinking relevance, to maintaining a balance of forces favoring the Democrats. However, the ever-growing distance between the Democrats and the needs of the populace dampens any enthusiasm for fighting for this advantage.

Therefore, there is a deep and deadly contradiction embedded in the two-party system, a contradiction that will only be overcome with the emergence of independent movements unwaveringly committed to principled, progressive politics.

Going forward, we can expect the Obama Administration to focus on the 2012 Presidential election. The Obama team will maneuver rightward, leaving many of the now-distant campaign promises like EFCA or immigration reform in its wake. The hints referenced above signal an aloof presidency, above the fray, though ever sensitive to the needs of the corporations and their generous campaign contributions. Like Bill Clinton, Obama will seek a presidential posture dissociated from any ideological position, but portraying civility, bi-partisanship, likeability and managerial competence – a posture appealing to the non-ideological center thought to be crucial for re-election.

Needed: A Break from the Past

Undoubtedly, these observations may not come as news for many, especially many of the 65% of those polled who think the US is in decline. The widespread mood is anger and disappointment. But little will come from moods if no useful conclusions are drawn, if patterns remain unseen, if events are misunderstood. Far too many see the political crisis in terms of flawed personalities, individual values or ideological caricatures. The long-term trend of wealth and income inequality; the ever-growing concentration of power and influence in the hands or corporations, especially the financial sector; the growth of political corruption and the role of money and media in electoral politics; the ascension of the callous, anti-social culture of individualism assailing “entitlements” or common benefits; the repeated aggressive military missions to deny any barriers to international capital--- all these phenomena interact and decisively cause the deepening political crisis. These are not moments of bad judgment, occasionally flawed policies, or aberrations. They are features of the logic of capitalism, a capitalism that brought on an equally profound and closely related economic crisis.

Not everyone yet makes these connections, but they ignore them at great peril. While there is a widespread sense that we are at a decisive moment, there is an unfounded faith that the old solutions will suffice. Some pine for an imaginary time of social harmony and cultural unity while conveniently ignoring those left out of their idyllic fantasy – a world without immigrants, embracing segregation and racism, and willfully ignorant of the crude exploitation of labor. Others embrace liberal values associated with an imaginary kinder, gentler capitalism, but turn away from the reality that the profit-hungry modern corporation stands firmly and powerfully against this dream.

Politics will become real only when we face the truth that the modern monopoly capitalist corporation stands as the adversary to all but the very rich. That understanding will lead to the further understanding that only a broad anti-monopoly strategy will solve the crises of our economy and our politics.

It’s a curious, but telling, fact that political discourse has shifted from the extreme-right-imposed cultural battlefield of abortion, gays, and guns dominating the last decade to the issues of the economy and the role of the state. The Right has entered this new battlefield under the banner of fiscal austerity and hostility to government. Led by tea-bagger foot soldiers, they rail against government spending, regulation, and social programs. If they succeed in selling this line to voters, they will bring pain and devastation not only to working people, but also to the whole economy and social fabric.

Sadly, the Democratic Party leadership has shown little or no interest in engaging the right on this battlefield. They concede that government spending should be restrained, regulation should be minimal and non-antagonistic to business interests, and social programs must be trimmed. It is left for Democratic-friendly labor leaders and party loyalists to defend this blatant coincidence of political outlook. They must excuse this conjunction of Democratic views with Republican ideology as a tactical retreat or they must argue that Democrats will inflict the pain of austerity more compassionately. Neither excuse is credible with angry, frustrated voters who continue to thirst for effective change.

This is the great tragedy of the November elections. Indeed, there is much at stake, but the Democrats refuse to fight a credible battle, a battle that would require at least a modest rebuff to their corporate masters. As things stand, the election will turn on how much fear of a return to Republican leadership can be generated rather than what the Democrats would accomplish with a victory.

Last week’s giant rally in Washington, DC only underlines these contradictions. Committed people came in droves to express both an outrage at where we are heading and a determination to join others in changing course. Hopes were high that leaders would energize the causes that inspire people to action, such as fair labor legislation, employment opportunities, peace, immigration reform, racial equality, help for the poor and disadvantaged, and mortgage and other debt relief. While speakers readily chronicled the evils produced by a system of inequality and injustice, they were hesitant to speak its name: capitalism. Instead, most urged those who came on buses, trains, planes, and cars to work for the election of Democrats in November.

This constant cycle of placing all the hopes for a better future in the hands of corporate-owned Democrats must be broken. This is not a call for those fearful of a Republican victory in November to sit on the sidelines or boycott the elections, but, rather, for them to further commit to establishing independent voices, voices that will demand that all elected officials choose between corporate fealty and the causes of the people.

For too long, many progressive and left leaders have posed supporting the Democratic Party against any initiative that might upset or provoke Democratic leaders. They narrowly and rigidly limit political action to the electoral campaign and reject any challenge to Democratic Party leadership as heretical and divisive. Such an approach has led us into the current political crisis and offers no way out. This false tactical finesse smothered the anti-war movement and tolerated the evisceration of health care reform, the expansion of imperialist aggression, the coddling of the financial sector, and the criminal neglect of the unemployed, the underemployed and the poor. It is time to reject it and move on.

There is no easy escape from our political crisis. But it begins by building movements outside of and often apart from the ineffective Democratic Party.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

URGENT: STAND UP TO REPRESSION

Friday, September 24 at 8:00AM, the FBI made a coordinated raid on seven homes of several anti-war and solidarity activists and two offices in Chicago and Minneapolis and served grand jury subpoenas in Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota. Other activists in California and North Carolina were contacted in an effort to intimidate. These actions by Federal agents are part of an effort to suppress militant anti-war activity and especially anti-imperialist solidarity with movements in Latin America and Palestine.

Those subpoenaed report that the FBI investigation is directed towards possible “terrorism” charges against those activists who were themselves terrorized by the Federal agency. Once again the fear-mongering “terror” charge has been mounted against all who dare to speak out against US imperial transgressions.

Initial reports indicate that the homes were ransacked with all but household essentials taken by the FBI.

Several of the activists are well known as long time, dedicated, and principled fighters for working class empowerment and social justice.

Clearly, this represents a ramping up of Federal activism against the left and, thus, a tribute to the work of these activists as well as a badge of honor in the struggle for social justice. We should all show our solidarity. You can send your support to: info@colombiasolidarity.org or info@fightbacknews.org.

The following actions are urgently needed:

Call the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at 202-353-1555 or write an email to: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.

Demand:

**Stop the repression against anti-war and international solidarity activists.

**Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell phones, papers, documents, etc.

**End the grand jury proceedings against anti-war activists.


Plan and Support national days of protest at FBI offices or Federal Buildings, September 27 and 28th.

A demonstration has been called at the Minneapolis FBI Office Monday, 4:30, September 27th(111 Washington Ave. S.).

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

What has California just taught us about fighting for single payer?

With his permission, I'm guest posting Charles Andrews comments on the recent betrayal of the California single payer health care bill. Charles' comments begin here:

The commentary excerpted below is fascinating. Russell Mokhiber draws the lesson that we must fight for single payer on our own, "dumping the Democrats." I agree.

But the writer builds his case using analysis by Don Bechler. Unfortunately, Bechler's analysis verges on childish. See my remarks after the excerpt:

Single Payer Later

By Russell Mokhiber
Single Payer Action, September 7, 2010

What’s happening in California is the best argument to dump the Democrats.

Forever.

And start anew.

It’s the only option.

The state legislature in California has twice passed the California single payer bill.

And twice, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed it.

Earlier this year, the Senate passed it for a third time.

And the Assembly was about to pass it for a third time.

But the Democratic Speaker of the Assembly pulled the bill at the last minute.
...
“The Democrats should have put it up for a vote in the Assembly,” said Don Bechler of Single Payer Now. “California has been the wind in the sails of the single payer movement. Each time the legislature passes it, we get stronger. We have more people in our movement than ever before. Passing it for a third time would have built the momentum.”

“The California legislature has twice before said that they are for having a universal health care system minus the insurance companies,” Bechler says. “We can be proud of winning that little battle.”
...

Full item at http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=2562

Bechler claims, "The California legislature has twice before said that they are for having a universal health care system minus the insurance companies." They said it, but it was an open secret that a good number of California legislators from progressive districts voted for the single payer bill knowing the governor would veto it. The vote was a credential on a legislator's lapel, nothing more.

Bechler further claims, "Each time the legislature passes it, we get stronger. We have more people in our movement than ever before."

Don's mailing list has grown. That's great. But Bechler does not give evidence that the legislature's staged votes were the cause. If I drink too much beer in the evening, I need to urinate around five in the morning. Sure enough, an hour later the sun rises. Gee, my urine makes the sun rise.

Every day more people experience the fact health care sold as a commodity is health care denied, health care sold at an extortionate price, health care done wrong. That experience - and as much agitation as we can do about it - is why more people than ever before believe health care must be provided as needed, as a program we all have equal rights to, guaranteed no matter what. Most of these people do not know about the Potemkin votes of the legislature in past years.

Reading the sum of Bechler's comments as reported by Mokhiber, it almost sounds as though Bechler wants to throw out a lifeline to the California Democratic Party: You guys better do some damage control, or rank and file supporters of single payer are going to take Mokhiber's advice: Dump the Democrats.

The California Democratic Party's stab in the back of single payer has made many people reconsider the entire politics of winning such a big reform. It is important to draw lessons based on facts.

Can we ever get Equal Care for All? I discussed that problem on MRZine at
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/andrews260110.html

Sincerely,

Charles Andrews

P.S.: And there is larger analysis of major reforms in my book No Rich, No Poor. See
http://www.amazon.com/NO-RICH-POOR-CHARLES-ANDREWS/dp/096799053X

Liberal Remorse: The Nation Forum

The August 30/September 6, 2010 issue of The Nation magazine features a forum entitled “Debating Obama,” keynoted by Eric Alterman, with responses by six other writers. The forum reflects a sense among The Nation editors - and no doubt most of the readers of the leading liberal/progressive publication - that matters did not go quite as expected after the inauguration of the youthful, well-spoken Democratic President, Barack Obama. In fact, Alterman puts it plainly: “Few progressives would take issue with the argument that, significant accomplishments notwithstanding, the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment.” Alterman goes on to say: “… if one examines the gamut of legislation passed and executive orders issued that relate to the promises made by candidate Obama, one can only wince at the slightly hyperbolic joke made by late-night comedian Jimmy Fallon, who quipped that the president’s goal appeared to be to ‘finally deliver on the campaign promises made by John McCain.’”

There is more than a little expression of betrayal in this statement.

But could it be that the disappointment and sense of betrayal is misplaced? Could it be that liberals and progressives misread the moment, misjudged the locus of power, and, indeed, totally misunderstood the mechanism of capitalist rule in the US? Could it be that the Obama election was little more than an adjustment to corporate rule, an adjustment from a failed regime that threatened to rip the fabric of contrived consensus to one more likely to strike a path offering the appearance of change and a new direction while preserving the interests of those holding power? Could it be that, in the clatter of the usual campaign rhetoric, most change-starved voters heard a message that they wanted to hear, ignoring the huge corporate funding and same cast of characters orchestrating the campaign?

This is not an understanding yet agreeable to the liberal and progressive establishment, though it was the conclusion that I, and too few others, drew during the presidential campaign. In response to a euphoric celebration of the Obama victory, I wrote the following shortly after the election:

At the top [of the Obama team] is a superstructure of solidly established, old-guard politicos who have yet to propose one idea that departs too far from the limited toolbox of neo-classical economics and imperial foreign policy. Yes, there is talk of green initiatives, a friendlier relationship with labor, support for social liberalism, and a vague, dangerously tame reform of health care. But this group has shown no new thinking on the catastrophic economic crisis. Moreover, their timidly progressive pronouncements differ little from the false hope promised by the Clinton and Carter Democratic Administrations that precede this one. .. Below this elite center of power is an electorate overcoming racism, demonstrating a decisive rejection of the Bush administration, and starved for real change.... Change will come from the efforts of those organized oppositionally to force new initiatives and not from those relying on the good will of ruling elites. To ignore this historical truth is to risk the disillusionment and alienation of all of those who have advocated change with their vote. (November 22, 2008)

And now, disillusionment is widely apparent.

A little over four months after the inauguration, I wrote again on this topic, comparing the euphoria and subsequent sourness of the venerable I. F. Stone on the Kennedy presidency. Stone, like today’s liberals, embraced JFK with star-struck infatuation. His return to reality was both bitter and filled with disappointment. My comments:

Typical of jilted lovers, many will turn against Obama with a bitter sense of betrayal. This is both naive and misplaced. Like Kennedy, Obama is neither an agent for change nor a closet reactionary. Like Kennedy, Obama is the executive of a vast structure welded to interests that have little in common with the interests of the majority of US citizens. Admirers of Kennedy will recall the enormous forces arrayed against change in his time: the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defense contractors, the CIA, Southern politicians, etc. Detractors will, with equal passion, note how little Kennedy did to challenge these forces. Likewise, those still taken with Obama fever will point with disgust at the obstructionist Republicans, the "Blue Dog" Democrats, the "disruptive" left, and other evil forces, as though they are not always a part of the two-party carnival.

It is not Obama, but this corrupted, broken two-party system of governance that betrays our aspirations. It is not designed for change, but to smother it. Never in the history of this undemocratic "democracy" have the wants and needs of the citizens been so distant from the intent of the ruling elites. This reality cannot be laid at Obama's feet.

The only antidote to the rot of this system is political independence within, but especially outside, of the existing two parties. There is simply no reason that activists engaged in Democratic Party circles cannot work outside - independently, uncompromisingly and vigorously - on progressive, advanced issues, with no concern for ruffled feathers. To fail to do so, betrays any commitment to real change. (May 30, 2009)

Indeed, the predictable disappointment has set in, witnessed by the Nation forum. It would appear from the “debate” that the fault lies not with Obama, not with liberal self-delusion, but with the system: “It doesn’t matter what Obama dreams of. The far more important fact is that the system is rigged, and it’s rigged against us,” to quote Eric Alterman.

Yes, it is – and it’s called “capitalism,” with its accompanying phony democracy, ownership of the media, and measurement of all things by profit.

Sadly, the wave of disappointment has not brought forth a deeper understanding and new resolve. The participants largely endorse Alterman’s sketch of the ills of the system: the influence of money, the Bush legacy, the dysfunction of political institutions, the power of finance, and the corruption of the media. All true, but hardly new or alien to the evolution of the system. One searches in vain for an over-arching theory that explains and connects these features of our present predicament. There is not even a modest indictment of capitalism in this debate – not to mention an advocacy of socialism.

Instead, we are offered a shallow and diverse set of remedies ranging from mandatory voting to reforming the Senate rules, including the predictable, but tragically complacent call to stay the course. To her great credit, Barbara Ehrenreich cuts through the fog of liberal hand wringing to serve up a moving indictment of government’s role as a “handmaid to corporate power.” Her palpable anger at the state of the nation leads her to announce that “these are revolutionary times.” One only wishes that her brief essay offered a course of action to match these “revolutionary times.” One hopes that we will hear more from her.

One can find little to inspire from the other discussants who serve up the following lame variations on “change that you can believe in” and resignation to Administration impotence:

●“One hopeful hypothesis… Obama is taking the best deal on the table today, but one expects that once he is re-elected in 2012… he will build on the foundations laid during his first term to bring about the fundamental “change” that is not possible in today’s environment.” (Eric Alterman)

●“From the legacy of Bush-era incompetence and corruption to the partisan discipline of the GOP and the Roberts Court to the influence of lobbyists, one marvels that the president has accomplished anything at all.” (Michael Kazin)

●“Operating in a dysfunctional environment dominated by a minority party that thinks its road back to power is to block everything and bring the president to his knees, Obama and his congressional allies have had remarkable success… far more than the bitter cauldron of partisan rancor and ideological fervor would ordinarily allow.” (Norman Ornstein)

●“…Obama may well be the most progressive alternative possible in our current reality.” (Salim Muwakkil)

●“President Obama and his unwieldy party have managed to enact major reforms… that are the most far-reaching and economically redistributive social accomplishments since the New Deal.” (Theda Skocpol)

●“Don’t give up… Don’t believe in silver bullets… Deal with fixing Senate rules first…” (Chris Bowers)

Unlike with Ehrenreich, the sentiments expressed in these comments show no sense of outrage or urgency about the problems facing millions of citizens. Instead, there is complacency, a distance from the everyday tragedy of unemployment, foreclosure, and an uncertain future faced by even more people today than in the Great Depression.

With their apology for the new Administration, the academics in the forum display an unpardonable distortion of the history of the New Deal era. They fail to acknowledge the similar forces holding back reform in that era: intransigent corporate and political opposition, a hostile Supreme Court, and demagogues and false prophets. The Roosevelt Administration overcame these obstacles thanks to pressure from a militant, revolutionary left and the determination and commitment of unswerving progressives. Where are the Perkins’s, Wallace’s, Wagner’s, Connery’s, and Hopkins’s in the Obama Administration? To hold the Obama Administration to a lower standard is to demean the dogged effort and sacrifice readily assumed by those courageous liberals. None succumbed to the seduction of lobbyists. None weighed their future careers before the task at hand. Perhaps these scholars think the KKK and the Liberty League and the other native fascists were less of a threat then than the tea-baggers of today.

One yearns in this forum for some call to action – perhaps an endorsement of the October 2 march in Washington supported by the NAACP and the AFL-CIO – or even a commitment to revitalize the too long dormant anti-war movement. One looks for alarm at the Obama stealth commission patiently waiting for the November electoral dust to clear before pillaging Medicare and Social Security. But we find none of these progressive initiatives.

The cure for the hangover from the Obama-high is honesty and action, not remorse or more hope. The realities of our political system are transparent and have been for over a generation: the two-party system is broken and lurching ever further from any credible vision of democracy. More importantly, we are facing an unprecedented social, political and economic crisis that is in many ways even more challenging than the Great Depression. We have to be honest enough to see that we have not measured up to these challenges. We have to be bold enough to risk radical solutions worthy of the moment.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com.

Is It Time for the Shorter Workweek?

There is no lack of rhetoric expounded on the need to dramatically reduce unemployment. Using the most revealing government figures, nearly 17% of the US workforce is unemployed. That figure means that nearly one in five US citizens working before the economic crisis, or joining the workforce since, is, at this moment, idle or under-employed. Counting the involuntary part-time workers and discouraged workers, the total number of US workers seeking work totals nearly twenty million. Though the media and the governing cabal have shown little more than token interest in the staggering human tragedy facing these workers and their families, nearly everyone voices a determination to see unemployment reduced. And while it’s easy to procrastinate on a solution, it must be remembered that the economy needs to generate at least 150,000 jobs a month to keep up with population growth. And therein is the problem: while everyone may want full employment, few have an honest, real plan to achieve it.

Instead, we get lots of talk about “green” jobs, retraining, tax incentives, etc – the usual malarkey that constitutes a stump speech for Democratic Party candidates. Historically, most Democratic leaders and unimaginative, class-collaborationist labor leaders have sought to prompt – “incentivize,” to use the fashionable term – business to hire more workers. This thinking accepts the primacy of the corporate class and seeks to motivate that class by appealing to its selfish motive: profits. For decades, local, state and federal governments have poured billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of developers, contractors, service providers and factory owners to entice and cajole them into hiring more workers. Tax incentives to businesses and entrepreneurs have substantially absented the corporate world from its place as fellow taxpayers, leaving the burden on the rest of us.

Despite the persistent execution of this strategy, all economists agree that we have lived through a “jobless” decade. Since the dot.com recession, job creation has lagged far behind population growth and the demand for good-paying jobs. That is a fact. The crisis beginning in 2007/2008 only exacerbated this development by shedding millions of jobs. And since the false recovery, job growth has been non-existent, despite the dramatic rise in profits. That, too, is a fact. Only those ideologically wedded to capitalist dogma fail to see this. The strategy is completely bankrupt.

Responding to the crisis, the Obama administration crafted a hybrid plan that sought to both generate recovery and spur job creation with an $862 billion stimulus program. Commendably, the Administration devoted nearly $300 billion for aid to states, unemployment benefits, and food stamps. Offsetting this was a $336 billion financial incentive package of tax cuts, one-time payments, etc., meant as an expensive bone to those economic Neanderthals who still believed that the recovery would come when folks had a few extra bucks in their pockets. This was merely another example of Obama’s oft-repeated desire to appease the flesh-eaters of the right, a useless political gesture that will be paid for by future taxpayers.

Remaining in the package was a total of $230 billion, a not-insubstantial sum, despite the squawking of well-meaning liberal economists who thought the package inadequate. But simple arithmetic would show that this allocation would support over 5-6 million public sector jobs at $35,000 for a year, even with a modest factor for overhead costs. Moreover, including a conservative application of the economic multiplier effect would add thousands of additional jobs and growth in the private sector. Of course, that would amount to direct federal employment, an approach comparable to that adopted during the Roosevelt administration in response to the Great Depression. But from slavish worship of the supremacy of the private sector and the overpowering influence of that sector on the campaign accounts of our leaders, that solution was ruled out of hand by all but the fringes of government and the labor movement.

Instead, the Obama Administration chose to follow the same path that has proven bankrupt for so painfully long: dangle projects with risk-free public subsidies in front of private contractors. While there still are substantial funds unspent, the results have been disappointing by everyone’s account. At the time the program was initiated, few asked how the funds would be dispersed (I did, on my blog. See How Not to Create Jobs). Would the funds simply go into the pockets of contractors who would complete the work with an existing work force? Would much of the effective stimulus be absorbed by profits and not employment? Indeed, the results were disappointing, but only to those who naively believed that contractors or project managers were in the business of creating jobs. They were happy to rake in profits from infrastructure projects or accept subsidies for new enterprises outside the conventional market, provided the government guaranteed the funding and assumed the risk. In this regard, the Administration merely created a duplicate of the wasteful, profit-bloated defense industry --- no new ideas here, but an additional debt on the shoulders of the taxpayer.

Labor history offers us a different solution, an effective solution. After the Civil War, a movement stirred in the US to shorten the working day to eight hours. Eight-Hour Leagues sprang up throughout the country. Labor embraced the eight-hour day movement and the movement strengthened and helped to organize labor. This struggle reached across the oceans and spurred similar movements around the world.

Winning the eight-hour day became the galvanizing issue of all labor struggles for almost a century. Unions were built and contracts won around achieving a shorter working day. The political landscape – from labor’s point of view – was shaped by the eight-hour struggle.

Today, a shorter workweek would offer a victory for labor against the relentless offensive mounted against workers that has stagnated or reduced benefits over decades. Many, if not most, in labor have not known a major victory for working people in their lifetime. But more urgently, a shorter workweek would offer an answer to the persistent and damaging high unemployment brought on by the economic crisis. A mandatory shorter working day and working week, with strict overtime penalties for exceeding those limits, would force employers to hire more workers to maintain the same level of production or to increase it. A federally mandated shorter workweek – a seven-hour workday/thirty-five-hour workweek – would decrease the workweek by over 14% and potentially increase employment by the same amount. Of course, employers would fight such an increase in hiring as a threat to profitability, but the pressure of the market – the shortage of existing labor – would force new employment in order to even maintain existing levels of production or service activity.

Unlike the conventional answers that place the burden of employment recovery squarely on the backs of taxpayers, the shorter-workweek strategy attacks the profits of the employer. Enabling legislation should guarantee no reduction in pay, as well as reducing hours of work. Accordingly, it is from the surplus value of the capitalist enterprise that new employment would be funded. Only a solution that solves the unemployment problem with a shift in the economic balance sheet from capitalist to worker counts as an overdue offensive in the class struggle and a real advance for working people.

Where the bankrupt, ineffective “incentive” model of employment growth is shared by both political parties and acceded to by most of organized labor, the shorter-workweek model would mark an embrace of class militancy, as well as an effective measure with a noble historic precedent. Unemployment did not come from some inexplicable quirk of nature; it came from the ruthless, conscious profit seeking of the corporate class. In a just society, they should pay for its extinction.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 governs these matters. It has been amended many times since 1938 to improve the status of labor, but never to change the length of the working day. Maybe the time is now.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Human Rights and iPhones

I have read The New York Review of Books off and on for forty years. Generally, I take it to be an easy way to follow trends in US liberal thinking. It stands as a bridge between prominent academics and a self-conscious educated, elite class. For some, it is the source for the last word in cocktail party discussions. For others, it is a channel to drift arcane, scholarly controversies towards a larger audience.

Throughout the forty years, the publication has sustained a narrow ideological range of centrist liberal thought – one conjures a picture of a reader ready to defend the Volvo, The New York Times, and the travel agency against all threats, foreign and domestic.

Running through those forty years like a thick thread is a relentless, rabid streak of anti-Communism. Early on, Robert Conquest railed against the evils of the Soviet Empire, supported by academics of the same Hoover Institute ilk. This surely didn’t separate the NYRB from the many other publications favored by liberal elites.

Later, with détente softening the Cold War hysteria, the NYRB continued to hold to a hard-line, “Scoop” Jackson version of Soviet-US relations, taking up the cause of Soviet Jews and other “dissidents.”

Similarly, those who rejected the “revisionist” US historians - historians who had taken a more measured, less demonizing view of the Communist Party USA - always found a willing partner in the NYRB.

With the departure of the Soviet Union, liberal attention turned away from the Red threat, only to find a new demon to flog in Islamic fundamentalism. Yet throughout the post-Soviet era, the NYRB continued to pound away at anything even vaguely associated with socialism or Communism. Venezuela came in for its share of battering. And of course, Cuba stayed solidly in the cross-hairs of the NYRB stable of writers. The most signal accomplishment of the NYRB in this period was to help elevate an obscure anti-Soviet academic, Anne Applebaum, into a prominent public intellectual devoted to the NYRB anti-Communist mission, a worthy successor to Robert Conquest.

The weapon of choice in attacking everything Soviet or Communist was and is the puffed up, self-righteous liberal ideological pillar: human rights. With US legal segregation removed in the third quarter of the 20th century, the last formal contradiction with 18th century bourgeois rights theory was removed as a thorn in the side of US liberalism. Finally, North Americans and their European friends could, without naked hypocrisy, tout the two-hundred-year-old doctrines that closed the door on feudalism and opened the way for the capitalist order. While new, expanded versions of human rights doctrine were proposed – versions that reflected new concerns, deprivations, and oppressions identified since the 18th century – most US liberals cling to the narrow interpretations constructed with the rise of a comfortable, cosmopolitan bourgeois class and its aspirants. Not surprisingly, the rights recognized by liberals are precisely the rights that they find most useful in their own pursuit of happiness.

Human rights organizations and campaigns exploded with the course of the Cold War and its aftermath. Nearly all reflected a naïve cultural crudeness and historical myopia, imposing standards on others that ignored historically and culturally shaped practices enjoying popular support or consensus. Many, if not most, received overt or covert support from Western governments that shaped the focus and intensity of their human rights campaigns. Neither the will of the people nor the taint of government manipulation was daunting to these campaigns.

The human rights organization favored by The New York Review of Books is Human Rights Watch, an organization that grew out of Helsinki Watch, the old Cold Warrior set up to ferret out human rights violations in the Soviet Union. Today, enjoying a generous $44 million budget, with nearly all revenue coming from the US and Western Europe, the organization has offices throughout the world and generous salaries for its directors. Its deputy director for the Americas, Daniel Wilkinson, was thrown out of Venezuela some years ago for aiding the foreign policy initiatives of the Bush administration.

In a recent article in NYRB entitled “The New Challenge to Repressive Cuba,” Wilkinson takes up the cause of Cuban bloggers who, by his account, are challenging “repressive” Cuba. But where are they mounting this challenge, since he concedes that few in Cuba read the blogs? Clearly, their audience is drawn from those who follow the bloggers in the US and Western Europe, those likely to draw a negative opinion of Cuban life apart from any direct exposure to the facts. There is not even a feeble attempt in the article to substantiate the picture drawn by “dissident” bloggers. Their claims stand as unvarnished “truths.” It would be as though a human rights campaign were mounted solely on the basis of the blogs of our own hysterical tea-baggers. In reality, Wilkinson presents not a report on Cuban conditions, but second- and third-hand anecdotes of those in opposition to the Cuban system. This is the work of a politically driven prosecutor and not an unbiased human rights advocate.

And who are the bloggers? Only those who write critically of the Cuban government are worthy of his attention. While he claims that there are over a hundred “unauthorized” bloggers operating from Cuba, Wilkinson only shows interest in the “at least two dozen who are openly critical of the government.” The remainder remains voiceless and its opinions are ignored. Wilkinson, like most of the corporate media, focuses on Cuba’s celebrity dissident, Yoani Sanchez, known as Generation Y. With the help of US and Western European media attention, Sanchez has established a huge following outside of Cuba, estimated by Wilkinson at a million visitors a month; her blog is translated into fifteen languages. It is not unlikely that Sanchez has a greater media exposure – a wider range of influence – outside Cuba than any Cuban “official” publication. Wilkinson (or Sanchez) never ask or explain how this could be or what this means. But surely – short of divine intervention – such a following is not possible without the overt or covert help of others of more than modest means. Only the most gullible would not suspect the hand of those committed to changing the socialist governance of Cuba. It is one thing to stand in open opposition to the Cuban government and quite another to hypocritically hide behind a posture of unbiased support for human rights.

To many of us, especially those of us blogging critically of our own government, the celebrity of the handful of Cuban bloggers so often hailed by the human rights establishment stands in sharp relief to our own lack of attention from those same advocates. They seem to have a profound blindness to the criticisms and human rights violations voiced on thousands of blogs in the US and Western Europe. Those same advocates fail to acknowledge the marginalization of opinion by a monopoly capitalist media as de facto censorship in the US and Western Europe. Moreover, our experience with this de facto censorship teaches that one does not become an overnight, world-wide media sensation without the help of a hidden hand.

Lurking in the shadows of the Wilkinson assault on “repressive” Cuba is the conceit of great-power chauvinism. Wilkinson willfully underplays the material shortcomings of a tiny island country saddled with a blockade that has hindered its development and a legacy only fifty years free from the most exploitative of colonial relations with the US. While the Cuban government has readily admitted that it lacks the means to bring its citizens fully into the Internet era, Wilkinson seeks to add this shortcoming to the human rights balance sheet.

One can only marvel at a “human rights” advocate who so cavalierly poses the interests of an admitted “at least two dozen” bloggers before the will and interests of the Cuban people. Do they share Wilkinson’s and the bloggers’ views? We do not know. Not only because our government will not let us travel there, but also because Wilkinson never bothers to ask them. It is possible – I believe it is extremely likely – that most Cubans are not only content with, but energetically supportive of, their government. This most basic of human rights –the right to have a government legitimized by popular consent – seems to elude the deputy director of Americas Watch. No doubt he scoffs at any popular government that does not agree with his own narrow vision of procedural democracy. Political diversity does not appear to be an element of Wilkinson’s notion of human rights.

There is no mention in Wilkinson’s article of the generous budget set aside by the US Congress (not to mention the secret and quasi-governmental budgets) for the express purpose of overthrowing the Cuban government. There is no comment on the activities of the US Interest Section in Havana directed towards fomenting and subsidizing opposition. One would never know that many of the so-called “political prisoners” were prosecuted for acts that any judicial system would count as acting to overthrow the government and in the interest of a foreign power. In Wilkinson’s eyes, they are political prisoners. And yet, he cannot even mention the plight of the five Cuban patriots judicially railroaded in the US for acts that would be hailed by any true human rights advocate as thwarting terrorism. Hypocrisy on stilts…

Wilkinson ends his “challenge” to Cuba with a truly pathetic paean to the iPhone attributed to Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y: “I had the desperate desire to grab [the Spanish journalist’s] iPhone and run off with it to hide in my room and surf all the sites blocked on the national networks. For a second, I wanted to keep it so I could enter my own blog…”

If this is the cutting edge of the struggle for human rights, it is no wonder that they ran Wilkinson out of Venezuela.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com