As the number of Debt Commissions multiplies and media gasbags generate hurricane-like forces and hysterical fears of government insolvency, I’ve decided to surrender to the madness and propose a fresh, creative approach to debt reduction. My approach has the added value of requiring no budget cuts or tax increases. Instead, the solution will be found in cutting waste and acquiring new revenue sources hitherto unexplored.
And all of these revenues are generated by tapping the hidden potentials of the market place, a solution that will endear this plan to the vast majority of free-market economists and policy jockeys.
In its essence, my program exploits the vast assets currently wasted in our two-party political system. Instead of holding costly primary elections, I propose that we auction off the candidacies for the two parties with all proceeds going to the Federal budget. And instead of holding costly electoral campaigns, we adopt a system based upon cash votes: one vote for every dollar spent. The nine months currently devoted to canned speeches, staged rallies and meaningless debates could serve as an ongoing telethon with the dollars (votes) pouring in with a huge surge near the end. Again, all proceeds would go to the Federal budget. The beauty of this scheme is that the process is totally transparent and the results very likely close to the ones we usually get with the current electoral system.
But there is more: We could sell the naming rights to all of the House and Senate seats. The 18th Congressional District of state X might become the Halliburton or Goldman Sachs seat. The Delaware Senate seats could be sold to Dupont and the credit card industry. The possibilities are endless.
Likewise, the naming rights to departments, public buildings, airports, parks and roads might well generate millions to the Federal government. Admittedly, this might result in some awkward moments – the Richard Nixon Justice Department, the Strom Thurman Equal Rights Commission, etc. – but a small cost for market efficiency!
Instead of all the lobbying money currently wasted on campaign coffers and personal graft, we might consider installing turnstiles in government offices and agencies, charging lobbyists by the hour or earmark.
We might also consider marketizing the judiciary by selling judgeships and auctioning decisions. Undoubtedly, the legal profession would object since there would be little need for private attorneys, but the resultant revenues could go directly to the Federal budget, thus aiding widows and orphans.
The market-based solutions to the widely acclaimed deficit crisis are limited only by our imagination. Instead of slowly choking public education with privatization schemes (charter schools), why not simply construct a government fee schedule that allows youth to buy their way into a future career or profession? Of course, their fees would be refunded if they failed to meet the standards minimally necessary for performance in their fields. Doctors who consistently harm their patients would be asked to purchase a new profession more consistent with public welfare. Surely this would meet the requirements of market rationality.
For those without the funds to bid on prestigious professions, a government lottery could sort out those relegated to low-paying service jobs, those destined for prison, and those unhappily cast out as redundant. As always, the proceeds of this process would go to ease the deficit.
The beauty of this debt-reduction scheme lies in its total transparency. There are no hidden agendas, secret meetings, under-the-table deals; all transactions are in the open. While it produces virtually the same results that current practices deliver, it dispenses with the hypocrisy that infects the present political system. Moreover, the funds currently absorbed by our parasitic class of consultants, political staffers, office holders, campaign professionals, media moguls, etc. are shifted to debt reduction. It is no exaggeration that this market-based approach could produce billions of revenue to bolster the Federal budget.
Some may object, citing the absence of democracy in this approach. But this is a petty complaint, given that the results would most likely be the same as our current way of doing things. Social scientists call this an isomorphism: The processes may appear different, but operate the same and produce the same outcomes. Less kindly, Marxists call our current political system “bourgeois democracy,” a political doctrine that postures as democratic while functioning to produce and reproduce rule by wealth and power.
Undoubtedly, those who persist in defending the current two-party system will be outraged, condemning this proposal as cruelly cynical. Indeed it is. But the option is to reject the vulgar entertainment we accept as democracy and fight for a third peoples’ party or a new democracy. Anything less is rotten with hypocrisy.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
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Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Election Results: Telling the Forest from the Trees
I have slogged through uncountable commentaries on the mid-term elections. Many have offered useful insights on an event that will no doubt shape the political direction of the next two years. Yet, there is little to surprise in the outcome for anyone following recent and long-term developments in the US political system.
Two years ago, I projected that the Obama presidency would likely follow the pattern of the Carter presidency. Both came after a deep crisis of legitimacy: in one case, the Nixon debacle, in the other, the disastrous Bush presidency. The candidates postured as outsiders and in both cases they made impassioned pleas for change with a vague commitment to a “progressive” agenda. But in the end, the two administrations proved to be shaped by and acquiescent to a ruling-class agenda. The election of both candidates energized, protected and promoted a two-party system in need of credibility.
In another contemporaneous post, I drew upon the venerated I. F. Stone, who, groping for understanding of his disappointment with the Kennedy tenure, wrote of the enormous institutional forces that blocked any deviancy from the ruling-class agenda in the unlikely event that any President should truly want to stray.
In all three cases, performance fell far short of public expectations. In all three cases, the left mistook cosmetic adjustment for real change.
With the exception of a brief interlude of New Deal vigor during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, spawned by a martyred Democratic president, an overwhelming defeat of the Goldwater extreme right and the pressures of a militant Civil Rights Movement, this has been the pattern of Democratic presidencies for the last fifty years.
While many know this history, few see it as a pattern. Since the marginalization of the Marxist left, few find or even look for meaningful connections and continuities linking political events. Instead, the media and establishment punditry portray the US electoral process as a regular contest, fought around carefully crafted personalities, shifting demographics, debate performance and the poll results of the moment disconnected from class and process. They neither look for nor find the deeper structural forces that determine how the game is played and who wins.
A deeper look exposes the internal logic of a two-party electoral system in a class-divided society. Without a radical challenge, such a system inevitably produces rule by wealth and power over the popular will. As money and wealth determine both the candidates and the outcomes, the political leaders become more and more distant from the people, something the Tea Party movement knows and exploits effectively.
Further, the issues raised in electoral campaigns function to establish a space between the candidates, necessary to legitimize the elections in the eyes of voters. But once elected, the differences between candidates prove illusive. Thus, we find more and more commentators referring to the Bush/Obama continuum. On war, immigration, civil liberties, etc, we are all too familiar with the shortcomings of the Democratic Administration and its legislative allies. But the Republicans demonstrate the same cynicism toward their promises: both Reagan and G.W. Bush ran as deficit hawks, but oversaw some of the largest government spending splurges in history, all in the interest of the military-industrial sector of monopoly capital. This cynical manipulation of the electoral process is neither an historical accident, nor an aberration of an otherwise democratic procedure, but a logical development of a two-party system in an increasingly class-divided society.
Some will find this overly deterministic, suggestive of a fatalistic course to US politics. Still others will find this dismally pessimistic. It is neither. It is, instead, a realistic assessment of where our neglect of the structural limitations of the US two-party system has taken us. Any response to the power of money, the corruption, and the cynicism of today must address these structural impediments. It is not enough to live in a fantasy world of marginal reform, incremental change, or slavish faith in a corporate-sponsored party.
Just as careful study reveals the rigid logic of the two-party system, a long look at periods of progressive change expose the genuine alternatives to a system that trivializes public engagement and guarantees results friendly to the wealthy and powerful. All important reversals of the two-party trajectory came with the building of mass movements driven by peoples’ causes – the plight of the rural poor, the exploitation of industrial workers, against imperialist wars, for civil rights for minorities, equality for women, etc. Insofar as these movements maintained a distance from the two parties, along with a dogged commitment sustained regardless of the party in power, they were able to leave an indelible mark on the political landscape. Insofar as they hitched their movement to the Democratic Party or Republican Party, they were quickly absorbed into the electoral campaign machinery, with their cause tacked on to the end of a long list of Party priorities. Again, these are historical constants that must be addressed going forward if we are not to continue down the same ineffective, well-worn path.
Recognizing that in the US today we are accustomed to preferring score cards to theory, I suggest we consider the voting patterns in the mid-term elections. Exit polls show that the groups most supportive of the Democrats in the election were: African-Americans, Hispanics, youth, union households, and urban dwellers. Yet they were the groups that benefited least from two years of a Democratic Executive and Congress. These are the same groups that demonstrated the most enthusiasm for change and have suffered the most from a profound economic crisis. They have witnessed and will pay for the enthusiastic rescue of Wall Street and the corporate sector, while their own interests have been neglected or trampled.
Until we come to grips with this glaring contradiction, we will continue to repeat the same mistakes with the same disappointing results.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Two years ago, I projected that the Obama presidency would likely follow the pattern of the Carter presidency. Both came after a deep crisis of legitimacy: in one case, the Nixon debacle, in the other, the disastrous Bush presidency. The candidates postured as outsiders and in both cases they made impassioned pleas for change with a vague commitment to a “progressive” agenda. But in the end, the two administrations proved to be shaped by and acquiescent to a ruling-class agenda. The election of both candidates energized, protected and promoted a two-party system in need of credibility.
In another contemporaneous post, I drew upon the venerated I. F. Stone, who, groping for understanding of his disappointment with the Kennedy tenure, wrote of the enormous institutional forces that blocked any deviancy from the ruling-class agenda in the unlikely event that any President should truly want to stray.
In all three cases, performance fell far short of public expectations. In all three cases, the left mistook cosmetic adjustment for real change.
With the exception of a brief interlude of New Deal vigor during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, spawned by a martyred Democratic president, an overwhelming defeat of the Goldwater extreme right and the pressures of a militant Civil Rights Movement, this has been the pattern of Democratic presidencies for the last fifty years.
While many know this history, few see it as a pattern. Since the marginalization of the Marxist left, few find or even look for meaningful connections and continuities linking political events. Instead, the media and establishment punditry portray the US electoral process as a regular contest, fought around carefully crafted personalities, shifting demographics, debate performance and the poll results of the moment disconnected from class and process. They neither look for nor find the deeper structural forces that determine how the game is played and who wins.
A deeper look exposes the internal logic of a two-party electoral system in a class-divided society. Without a radical challenge, such a system inevitably produces rule by wealth and power over the popular will. As money and wealth determine both the candidates and the outcomes, the political leaders become more and more distant from the people, something the Tea Party movement knows and exploits effectively.
Further, the issues raised in electoral campaigns function to establish a space between the candidates, necessary to legitimize the elections in the eyes of voters. But once elected, the differences between candidates prove illusive. Thus, we find more and more commentators referring to the Bush/Obama continuum. On war, immigration, civil liberties, etc, we are all too familiar with the shortcomings of the Democratic Administration and its legislative allies. But the Republicans demonstrate the same cynicism toward their promises: both Reagan and G.W. Bush ran as deficit hawks, but oversaw some of the largest government spending splurges in history, all in the interest of the military-industrial sector of monopoly capital. This cynical manipulation of the electoral process is neither an historical accident, nor an aberration of an otherwise democratic procedure, but a logical development of a two-party system in an increasingly class-divided society.
Some will find this overly deterministic, suggestive of a fatalistic course to US politics. Still others will find this dismally pessimistic. It is neither. It is, instead, a realistic assessment of where our neglect of the structural limitations of the US two-party system has taken us. Any response to the power of money, the corruption, and the cynicism of today must address these structural impediments. It is not enough to live in a fantasy world of marginal reform, incremental change, or slavish faith in a corporate-sponsored party.
Just as careful study reveals the rigid logic of the two-party system, a long look at periods of progressive change expose the genuine alternatives to a system that trivializes public engagement and guarantees results friendly to the wealthy and powerful. All important reversals of the two-party trajectory came with the building of mass movements driven by peoples’ causes – the plight of the rural poor, the exploitation of industrial workers, against imperialist wars, for civil rights for minorities, equality for women, etc. Insofar as these movements maintained a distance from the two parties, along with a dogged commitment sustained regardless of the party in power, they were able to leave an indelible mark on the political landscape. Insofar as they hitched their movement to the Democratic Party or Republican Party, they were quickly absorbed into the electoral campaign machinery, with their cause tacked on to the end of a long list of Party priorities. Again, these are historical constants that must be addressed going forward if we are not to continue down the same ineffective, well-worn path.
Recognizing that in the US today we are accustomed to preferring score cards to theory, I suggest we consider the voting patterns in the mid-term elections. Exit polls show that the groups most supportive of the Democrats in the election were: African-Americans, Hispanics, youth, union households, and urban dwellers. Yet they were the groups that benefited least from two years of a Democratic Executive and Congress. These are the same groups that demonstrated the most enthusiasm for change and have suffered the most from a profound economic crisis. They have witnessed and will pay for the enthusiastic rescue of Wall Street and the corporate sector, while their own interests have been neglected or trampled.
Until we come to grips with this glaring contradiction, we will continue to repeat the same mistakes with the same disappointing results.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Micro-lending Falls on Hard Times
Do I have a grudge against the Nobel Prize committees? A few weeks ago I launched a broadside against the awarding of prizes to three - no doubt well meaning and diligent - academic economists whose work on unemployment was postured as earthshaking contributions to resolving the current crisis. At the same time, I took a pot shot at last year’s Nobel Peace Prize going to the serving US President, an award that likely caused him some embarrassment after his dramatic escalation of the war in Afghanistan. And I couldn’t help noticing that my colleagues at Marxism-Leninism Today posted an article by Stephen Gowans that loosed his acerbic, sharp pen to blast this year’s Nobel Peace award granted to Liu Xiaobo. Gowans’s considerable talents conclusively demonstrate the stealth political agenda behind the committee’s decision. One is staggered by an international award earned by the recipient’s singular achievement of soliciting and attracting a mere 10,000 on-line signatures on a petition that, in effect, calls for the overthrow of the Chinese government.
But let me be clear about this: my quarrel is not with the recipients, at least not in past polemics. Rather, it is with committees that posture as unbiased and speak with the conceit of service to mankind. Instead, it is more and more obvious that the awards serve the ends of Western elites and legitimize their view of the world.
Take, for example, the 2006 Peace prize awarded to Prof. Mohammed Yunus for his pioneering work on what came to be called “micro-lending”. No doubt micro-lending – the idea that tiny loans to impoverished people could or would raise people from poverty – might, in some cases, be effective. Undoubtedly a small loan to a budding entrepreneur could launch a new, successful career in one of the world’s many economically barren areas. Of course informal loans in these areas are already a fact of ordinary life. Some are generously granted by family or friends, some are extended by usurious loan sharks. In any case, while granting that some could be lifted out of poverty with a modest loan, a financial helping hand, only the witless or perhaps a capitalist sensing potential profit would pose micro-lending as a solution to world poverty. Generously, I doubt that even Yunus ever saw the practice as the solution to mass poverty.
Nonetheless, the media, a gaggle of liberals, and many pundits hailed micro-lending as a miraculous answer to grinding poverty. In a striking display of ostentatious compassion, celebrities tossed money at the micro-lenders, puffing with pride over their genuine sympathy for the downtrodden. As the word got around about micro-lending, a groundswell of enthusiasm and a basket of awards and prizes followed, culminating in the Nobel Prize. Even Bill Clinton, the Terminator of the US welfare program, hailed micro-lending as one of the truly great poverty-reducing instruments.
As the micro-lending mania flourished, I thought that this too would pass. Like so many faddish schemes of the past, I saw micro-lending as one more fashionable way to turn liberal eyes away from the true causes of poverty in the developing world. Instead of dealing with the legacy of colonialism and the continuing pillage of imperialism, micro-leading gives comfortable people in the West a guilt-cleanser, a measure of smug acknowledgement – like the once popular “CARE” packages – that poverty was being whipped. It is certainly less costly than repaying the teeming masses for centuries of exploitation, brutal domination, and neglect. And I was well aware of the argument that a mere $200 micro-loan could help a poor villager establish a bicycle shop. But I wondered how the other villagers could rise from poverty by also setting up bicycle shops.
But lurking in all the palaver over micro-loans was the interesting micro-fact: lenders generally charged between 25 to 100% annual interest. Now I don’t know what village loan sharks charge, but my imagination stretches to envision their pushing much beyond these bounds. Granted, their collection methods might be considerably more severe than the beneficent micro-lender. To my mind, the micro-lending mania produced the aura of the pay-day loan shops that prey upon the working poor in the US.
But the micro-lending phenomena proved to be more than a passing fad. Today in India, one of the largest “markets” for micro-loans, there are more than 25 million borrowers and loans total well over 200 billion rupees. Total loans have grown nearly six times in three years. Banks and private equity firms have plowed over $4 billion this year into what has become a significant industry. The largest micro-lending firm recently offered $350 million in shares on the Indian stock market, according to The Wall Street Journal (10-29-10). Capitalism has discovered micro-lending.
Whatever noble intentions may have spurred the micro-lending movement, it was quickly stripped of any such sentiments when the financiers discovered it. Like efforts in the US to encourage low-income home ownership, the financial predators saw only profit. And they leaped at it, pushing the limits as far as the last dollar (or rupee) of profits could be squeezed out. The parallel between this exploitation of the most vulnerable in India and our own tragic exploitation of the poor through sub-prime mortgages is glaringly apparent.
It took a rash of suicides by borrowers to bring these abuses to the attention of Indian government regulators. The headlines in The Wall Street Journal tell it all: India’s Major Crisis in Microlending: Loans Involving Tiny Amounts of Money Were a Good Idea, but the Explosion of Interest Backfires (10-29-10), Backlash in Microlending (10-30-10). All debt payments have been suspended by the authorities and loan agents have been arrested in the Indian state burdened with 30% of the country’s micro-loans, leading WSJ writers to conclude that “the microlending movement… has in recent weeks fallen into chaos.” Once again financial predations result in chaos and crisis, a pattern that only escapes those willfully blind or cornered by self-interest.
The naked truth is that lending, like insuring, is a socially useful function if and only if it is democratically administered and publicly sustained. There is no rational or moral justification for engaging private interests. A disinterested public administrator armed with default data, an available loan fund, and a reasonable sense of social priorities and judgment of character could dispense loans untainted by the distraction of profits. Profits only distort the rationality or efficiency of this necessary social function.
The same could be said of insurance. Armed with actuarial tables (usually assembled from data collected from government agencies), a schedule of costs and benefits can be constructed by a competent statistician. It is an easy step to fairly and equitably distributing these costs and benefits in the most efficient and democratic way. Again there is no justification for introducing private gain into this process. It’s only an invitation to chaos and crisis.
It’s time to drive the money lenders from the temple.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
But let me be clear about this: my quarrel is not with the recipients, at least not in past polemics. Rather, it is with committees that posture as unbiased and speak with the conceit of service to mankind. Instead, it is more and more obvious that the awards serve the ends of Western elites and legitimize their view of the world.
Take, for example, the 2006 Peace prize awarded to Prof. Mohammed Yunus for his pioneering work on what came to be called “micro-lending”. No doubt micro-lending – the idea that tiny loans to impoverished people could or would raise people from poverty – might, in some cases, be effective. Undoubtedly a small loan to a budding entrepreneur could launch a new, successful career in one of the world’s many economically barren areas. Of course informal loans in these areas are already a fact of ordinary life. Some are generously granted by family or friends, some are extended by usurious loan sharks. In any case, while granting that some could be lifted out of poverty with a modest loan, a financial helping hand, only the witless or perhaps a capitalist sensing potential profit would pose micro-lending as a solution to world poverty. Generously, I doubt that even Yunus ever saw the practice as the solution to mass poverty.
Nonetheless, the media, a gaggle of liberals, and many pundits hailed micro-lending as a miraculous answer to grinding poverty. In a striking display of ostentatious compassion, celebrities tossed money at the micro-lenders, puffing with pride over their genuine sympathy for the downtrodden. As the word got around about micro-lending, a groundswell of enthusiasm and a basket of awards and prizes followed, culminating in the Nobel Prize. Even Bill Clinton, the Terminator of the US welfare program, hailed micro-lending as one of the truly great poverty-reducing instruments.
As the micro-lending mania flourished, I thought that this too would pass. Like so many faddish schemes of the past, I saw micro-lending as one more fashionable way to turn liberal eyes away from the true causes of poverty in the developing world. Instead of dealing with the legacy of colonialism and the continuing pillage of imperialism, micro-leading gives comfortable people in the West a guilt-cleanser, a measure of smug acknowledgement – like the once popular “CARE” packages – that poverty was being whipped. It is certainly less costly than repaying the teeming masses for centuries of exploitation, brutal domination, and neglect. And I was well aware of the argument that a mere $200 micro-loan could help a poor villager establish a bicycle shop. But I wondered how the other villagers could rise from poverty by also setting up bicycle shops.
But lurking in all the palaver over micro-loans was the interesting micro-fact: lenders generally charged between 25 to 100% annual interest. Now I don’t know what village loan sharks charge, but my imagination stretches to envision their pushing much beyond these bounds. Granted, their collection methods might be considerably more severe than the beneficent micro-lender. To my mind, the micro-lending mania produced the aura of the pay-day loan shops that prey upon the working poor in the US.
But the micro-lending phenomena proved to be more than a passing fad. Today in India, one of the largest “markets” for micro-loans, there are more than 25 million borrowers and loans total well over 200 billion rupees. Total loans have grown nearly six times in three years. Banks and private equity firms have plowed over $4 billion this year into what has become a significant industry. The largest micro-lending firm recently offered $350 million in shares on the Indian stock market, according to The Wall Street Journal (10-29-10). Capitalism has discovered micro-lending.
Whatever noble intentions may have spurred the micro-lending movement, it was quickly stripped of any such sentiments when the financiers discovered it. Like efforts in the US to encourage low-income home ownership, the financial predators saw only profit. And they leaped at it, pushing the limits as far as the last dollar (or rupee) of profits could be squeezed out. The parallel between this exploitation of the most vulnerable in India and our own tragic exploitation of the poor through sub-prime mortgages is glaringly apparent.
It took a rash of suicides by borrowers to bring these abuses to the attention of Indian government regulators. The headlines in The Wall Street Journal tell it all: India’s Major Crisis in Microlending: Loans Involving Tiny Amounts of Money Were a Good Idea, but the Explosion of Interest Backfires (10-29-10), Backlash in Microlending (10-30-10). All debt payments have been suspended by the authorities and loan agents have been arrested in the Indian state burdened with 30% of the country’s micro-loans, leading WSJ writers to conclude that “the microlending movement… has in recent weeks fallen into chaos.” Once again financial predations result in chaos and crisis, a pattern that only escapes those willfully blind or cornered by self-interest.
The naked truth is that lending, like insuring, is a socially useful function if and only if it is democratically administered and publicly sustained. There is no rational or moral justification for engaging private interests. A disinterested public administrator armed with default data, an available loan fund, and a reasonable sense of social priorities and judgment of character could dispense loans untainted by the distraction of profits. Profits only distort the rationality or efficiency of this necessary social function.
The same could be said of insurance. Armed with actuarial tables (usually assembled from data collected from government agencies), a schedule of costs and benefits can be constructed by a competent statistician. It is an easy step to fairly and equitably distributing these costs and benefits in the most efficient and democratic way. Again there is no justification for introducing private gain into this process. It’s only an invitation to chaos and crisis.
It’s time to drive the money lenders from the temple.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Profits or Prosperity?
Data on US profits for the second quarter of this year are well worth studying, not only for what they say about the health of the corporate sector, but also for what they reveal about the structure of our economic system and the priorities of our policy makers.
Commerce Department figures show that after-tax profits rose 3.9% from the first quarter and a staggering 26.5% from the same quarter in 2009. This year-to-year percentage growth is the highest ever recorded by the Commerce Department without factoring for inflation. (The figure is even more impressive given that virtually none of the growth is due to inflation over the last year!)
Perhaps even more telling is the percentage of national income accounted for by profits. Well over 9% of national income in the second quarter of 2010 counted as profits, the 3rd highest portion since 1947. Interestingly, the percentage of national income was only marginally higher in two quarters of 2006 when the unemployment rate was 4.6% at the peak of the last economic expansion.
Analyzing the data, The Wall Street Journal (10-4-10) concluded that those corporations making up the Standard and Poor’s top 500 corporations – the core of monopoly capital – actually grew by 38%, returning $189 billion or 15.6% of all after-tax profit.
WSJ analysts underline the profit trends by noting that profits are up 10% over 2008 though revenues are down 6%. Monopoly corporations now make 8.4 cents on every dollar of revenue, when they made only 7 cents on every dollar in 2008.
The Winners’ Circle
For corporations, the numbers are spectacular. They indicate a complete recovery of the profit momentum lost in 2008 and 2009. Since the early 1980’s, after-tax profits - as a percentage of total national income - have marched upward and onward, indicating that more of the wealth created in the US has been distributed to the corporate sector. At the beginning of the 1980’s, less than 5% of national income found its way to corporations as profits. Today, that percentage appropriated by corporations, especially monopoly corporations, has increased to nearly 10%.
Several interrelated factors have contributed to this shift of wealth to corporations from the rest of us.
First, the rate of exploitation – the relation between the share of wealth appropriated by the ownership class and the share left to the workers - has increased dramatically. Labor’s bargaining power has diminished with the decline of both union density and militancy. Hourly wages in the US have been stagnant or declining throughout most of the last thirty years while productivity has increased consistently. The average hourly wage (adjusted for inflation) for production and non-supervisory employees has hardly budged since 1978. Indeed, nearly two-thirds of ALL workers average hourly wages have stagnated since 1978. At the same time, benefits have been cut, shifted or eliminated for most workers. Given the growth of the national income in this period, it follows that more of society’s wealth is available to the corporate sector, its managers, investors, and parasitic minions.
Secondly, the growing significance of financial instruments and the financial sector has prodded corporate profits to new heights. With the stagnation of mass purchasing power brought on by rapacious exploitation, the financial sector has established borrowed money as the vehicle for improved living standards for most US citizens, given that capitalists have the money and the rest of us do not. Consumer debt – mortgages, credit cards, student loans, home equity loans, etc. – has replaced wages as the means to a better life for the vast majority of those outside of the ownership class. Consequently, more and more of corporate profits were represented by deferred, projected, or even hypothetical wealth – the wealth that would be accumulated when all debt is eventually cleared. The financial sector went even further and through the creation of financial exotica (instruments derived from the real-world contracting of debt) claimed further profits from the buying and selling of these artificial creatures. Of course it was the collapse of this debt house-of-cards that brought the world economy to its knees in 2008 and 2009. And yet the share of total corporate profit attributable to the financial sector remains over 40% despite this destruction of deferred, projected, and hypothetical profit.
Thirdly, the actions of policymakers – lawmakers of both parties and their technocratic vassals – have aided and abetted the corporate drive for profits. By privatizing and commodifying many public assets, they have widened the arena of profit taking. By turning a blind eye to corporate migration to low-wage labor markets, they have pressured wages to the level of the lowest competitive nation. And through removing socially responsible restrictions on corporate activity, they have allowed corporations to escape the costs of compliance, even at enormous social costs born by the majority.
The creation of public-private partnerships by lawmakers and enthusiastic administrators has transferred enterprise risks to the public while subsidizing private profit taking. Likewise, tax policies have shifted to remove nearly all burdens from corporations. Conversely, policymakers have weakly submitted to an extortionate con game of credits and infrastructure subsidies to keep old businesses or attract new plants, warehouses, or other private investors. Local, state and regional authorities are caught in a vicious competitive spiral of ever more generous bids to retain or attain a business. The game ends when the last competitor falls exhausted. And often the winner lives to regret the enormous costs of success.
And, of course, the government has embarked on a massive and unprecedented bailout of financial institutions and other major industries over the last two years, a bailout that brought these corporations from their knees to new heights of profitability. Likewise, the widely heralded stimulus program channeled vast sums to private firms – unlike the public works programs of the New Deal – further propping up profits with little impact upon employment.
These three processes – intense exploitation of labor, the dominant role of the financial sector and the subservience of policy to the interests of capital – combine to explain the explosive growth of that share of US national income flowing to corporate coffers. They also explain the cracking of the foundations of our economy over the last few years.
Conjuring Consensus
The explosive growth of after-tax profits as a share of national income over the last three decades was hardly a secret; it was not a closely held conspiratorial plot; nor were the events and policies that enabled this development out of sight of the public. Nonetheless, the corporate onslaught met feeble resistance.
Thanks to a corporate-friendly media, a compliant punditry, and a public diverted by entertainments besting the most elaborate Roman circus, the profit gouging agenda became the widely accepted road to general prosperity.
Sure, the early Reaganite slogan of “trickle down” growth – the notion that the success of the wealthy would seep down into the lower classes – was met with significant skepticism, even derision. But by the time of the Clinton administration, this idea was deeply embedded in mass consciousness. Captured by the more colorful metaphor that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” the idea that the success of the most favored, the most advantaged, would bring a general rise of social good planted deep roots in the public psyche. For most US citizens, it became an obvious truth that corporate success - growth, increasing profits, and stock appreciation - led to employment and rising living standards. We might express this “truth” with the simple formula: corporate profits→growth→jobs→general welfare.
It was this thinking that bolstered the notion in the labor movement that workers should support “their” corporations – US-based corporations – against “foreign” corporations, despite the fact that the modern monopoly corporation knows no borders. Similarly, people came to believe that government should guarantee the health and profitability of their employers in order to secure and create jobs and, in due course, generate a rising standard of living for employees. In turn, if profitability is accepted as the sole, decisive factor in social progress, then employee concessions often become a necessary evil that smooths the road to further progress.
The triumph of the sovereignty of profits left little room for alternative thinking that might cast corporate profits in a different light. This identification of profits and general prosperity smothered considerations of public ownership and the operation of socially beneficial enterprises, redistributive policies, democratic governance of corporate activity, or even an open discussion of the biblical notion of a “fair profit.”
The Chain is Broken
Despite the brutal economic facts of the last decade, few have shown the vision or courage to admit that the key links between profits and prosperity have been shattered. Economists acknowledge that the upturn after the recession of 2001 was decidedly a “jobless recovery,” a recovery with little to offer the majority of working people other than more debt. Moreover, the profit recovery since the 2009 economic nadir has accompanied a stubborn, unmoving near-depression level of unemployment. The volcanic rise in profits (206% for the S&P 500 in the last quarter of 2009 against the same quarter in 2008) stands in sharp contrast to an equally dramatic change in the misery indices: declining incomes, greater inequality, rising poverty rates.
Even those deafened by the constant media babble or blinded by political flimflam should now see through the humbuggery of placing human advancement in the hands of profiteers. The old argument that corporate avarice, through the unbiased operation of the market, will benefit us all must surely be retired.
Economists concede that the next decade - called by some, a "lost decade" - promises, at best, a feeble recovery with likely persistent unemployment, greater impoverishment, a retreat of social securities, and ominous uncertainties for most outside of the ownership class. Thus, the first two decades of the twenty-first century will have featured a decided retreat from the prosperity promised by a profit-driven market economy. Many, if not most of the people will have experienced the better part of their adult life in the shadow of these tribulations. The hopeful notion that the next generation will do better is severely threatened, maybe shattered. Indeed, it is now apparent that few boats are lifted with a rising tide driven by profits.
The responsibility for exposing the failure of profit-centric economic policy falls squarely on the US left. While the US left is small and with a narrow circle of influence, it alone can begin to project and popularize an alternative economy that reduces or eliminates the decisive role of profits. It alone can offer a road apart from the path paved by corporate self-interest.
Some falsely counter pose organizing and agitating for a just, democratic alternative economy – to my mind, socialism – with political work on the margins of mainstream politics. For decades, this argument has surfaced time and again with every election cycle or legislative session. The struggle for socialism, the argument goes, is distant and difficult, while we – the left - might have an impact on the immediate issues and options at play in the two-party charade. This is, I believe, a dangerous brew of egomania and complacency. The reality is that the left has neither the bucks nor the bodies to shift the balance in the big show (nor is engagement welcome, except at the price of any left identity). And when left engagement does threaten to upset the political trajectory (for example, the Nader campaigns), these same “soft” left advocates roundly condemn the effort.
But in the end, it is possible to do both: one can, if one likes, participate energetically in the big game – primaries, legislative lobbies, etc. – with the hope of moving the ball incrementally forward. And one must fervently engage our foes on every level, whether it be in the neighborhood or around individual issues. At the same time, one can and must organize and agitate for an alternative to the profit-centric dogma. Without a determined effort to spark and fan the embers of extraordinary, fundamental change, we are doomed to see our future sink in the face of corporate power and greed.
Zoltan zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Commerce Department figures show that after-tax profits rose 3.9% from the first quarter and a staggering 26.5% from the same quarter in 2009. This year-to-year percentage growth is the highest ever recorded by the Commerce Department without factoring for inflation. (The figure is even more impressive given that virtually none of the growth is due to inflation over the last year!)
Perhaps even more telling is the percentage of national income accounted for by profits. Well over 9% of national income in the second quarter of 2010 counted as profits, the 3rd highest portion since 1947. Interestingly, the percentage of national income was only marginally higher in two quarters of 2006 when the unemployment rate was 4.6% at the peak of the last economic expansion.
Analyzing the data, The Wall Street Journal (10-4-10) concluded that those corporations making up the Standard and Poor’s top 500 corporations – the core of monopoly capital – actually grew by 38%, returning $189 billion or 15.6% of all after-tax profit.
WSJ analysts underline the profit trends by noting that profits are up 10% over 2008 though revenues are down 6%. Monopoly corporations now make 8.4 cents on every dollar of revenue, when they made only 7 cents on every dollar in 2008.
The Winners’ Circle
For corporations, the numbers are spectacular. They indicate a complete recovery of the profit momentum lost in 2008 and 2009. Since the early 1980’s, after-tax profits - as a percentage of total national income - have marched upward and onward, indicating that more of the wealth created in the US has been distributed to the corporate sector. At the beginning of the 1980’s, less than 5% of national income found its way to corporations as profits. Today, that percentage appropriated by corporations, especially monopoly corporations, has increased to nearly 10%.
Several interrelated factors have contributed to this shift of wealth to corporations from the rest of us.
First, the rate of exploitation – the relation between the share of wealth appropriated by the ownership class and the share left to the workers - has increased dramatically. Labor’s bargaining power has diminished with the decline of both union density and militancy. Hourly wages in the US have been stagnant or declining throughout most of the last thirty years while productivity has increased consistently. The average hourly wage (adjusted for inflation) for production and non-supervisory employees has hardly budged since 1978. Indeed, nearly two-thirds of ALL workers average hourly wages have stagnated since 1978. At the same time, benefits have been cut, shifted or eliminated for most workers. Given the growth of the national income in this period, it follows that more of society’s wealth is available to the corporate sector, its managers, investors, and parasitic minions.
Secondly, the growing significance of financial instruments and the financial sector has prodded corporate profits to new heights. With the stagnation of mass purchasing power brought on by rapacious exploitation, the financial sector has established borrowed money as the vehicle for improved living standards for most US citizens, given that capitalists have the money and the rest of us do not. Consumer debt – mortgages, credit cards, student loans, home equity loans, etc. – has replaced wages as the means to a better life for the vast majority of those outside of the ownership class. Consequently, more and more of corporate profits were represented by deferred, projected, or even hypothetical wealth – the wealth that would be accumulated when all debt is eventually cleared. The financial sector went even further and through the creation of financial exotica (instruments derived from the real-world contracting of debt) claimed further profits from the buying and selling of these artificial creatures. Of course it was the collapse of this debt house-of-cards that brought the world economy to its knees in 2008 and 2009. And yet the share of total corporate profit attributable to the financial sector remains over 40% despite this destruction of deferred, projected, and hypothetical profit.
Thirdly, the actions of policymakers – lawmakers of both parties and their technocratic vassals – have aided and abetted the corporate drive for profits. By privatizing and commodifying many public assets, they have widened the arena of profit taking. By turning a blind eye to corporate migration to low-wage labor markets, they have pressured wages to the level of the lowest competitive nation. And through removing socially responsible restrictions on corporate activity, they have allowed corporations to escape the costs of compliance, even at enormous social costs born by the majority.
The creation of public-private partnerships by lawmakers and enthusiastic administrators has transferred enterprise risks to the public while subsidizing private profit taking. Likewise, tax policies have shifted to remove nearly all burdens from corporations. Conversely, policymakers have weakly submitted to an extortionate con game of credits and infrastructure subsidies to keep old businesses or attract new plants, warehouses, or other private investors. Local, state and regional authorities are caught in a vicious competitive spiral of ever more generous bids to retain or attain a business. The game ends when the last competitor falls exhausted. And often the winner lives to regret the enormous costs of success.
And, of course, the government has embarked on a massive and unprecedented bailout of financial institutions and other major industries over the last two years, a bailout that brought these corporations from their knees to new heights of profitability. Likewise, the widely heralded stimulus program channeled vast sums to private firms – unlike the public works programs of the New Deal – further propping up profits with little impact upon employment.
These three processes – intense exploitation of labor, the dominant role of the financial sector and the subservience of policy to the interests of capital – combine to explain the explosive growth of that share of US national income flowing to corporate coffers. They also explain the cracking of the foundations of our economy over the last few years.
Conjuring Consensus
The explosive growth of after-tax profits as a share of national income over the last three decades was hardly a secret; it was not a closely held conspiratorial plot; nor were the events and policies that enabled this development out of sight of the public. Nonetheless, the corporate onslaught met feeble resistance.
Thanks to a corporate-friendly media, a compliant punditry, and a public diverted by entertainments besting the most elaborate Roman circus, the profit gouging agenda became the widely accepted road to general prosperity.
Sure, the early Reaganite slogan of “trickle down” growth – the notion that the success of the wealthy would seep down into the lower classes – was met with significant skepticism, even derision. But by the time of the Clinton administration, this idea was deeply embedded in mass consciousness. Captured by the more colorful metaphor that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” the idea that the success of the most favored, the most advantaged, would bring a general rise of social good planted deep roots in the public psyche. For most US citizens, it became an obvious truth that corporate success - growth, increasing profits, and stock appreciation - led to employment and rising living standards. We might express this “truth” with the simple formula: corporate profits→growth→jobs→general welfare.
It was this thinking that bolstered the notion in the labor movement that workers should support “their” corporations – US-based corporations – against “foreign” corporations, despite the fact that the modern monopoly corporation knows no borders. Similarly, people came to believe that government should guarantee the health and profitability of their employers in order to secure and create jobs and, in due course, generate a rising standard of living for employees. In turn, if profitability is accepted as the sole, decisive factor in social progress, then employee concessions often become a necessary evil that smooths the road to further progress.
The triumph of the sovereignty of profits left little room for alternative thinking that might cast corporate profits in a different light. This identification of profits and general prosperity smothered considerations of public ownership and the operation of socially beneficial enterprises, redistributive policies, democratic governance of corporate activity, or even an open discussion of the biblical notion of a “fair profit.”
The Chain is Broken
Despite the brutal economic facts of the last decade, few have shown the vision or courage to admit that the key links between profits and prosperity have been shattered. Economists acknowledge that the upturn after the recession of 2001 was decidedly a “jobless recovery,” a recovery with little to offer the majority of working people other than more debt. Moreover, the profit recovery since the 2009 economic nadir has accompanied a stubborn, unmoving near-depression level of unemployment. The volcanic rise in profits (206% for the S&P 500 in the last quarter of 2009 against the same quarter in 2008) stands in sharp contrast to an equally dramatic change in the misery indices: declining incomes, greater inequality, rising poverty rates.
Even those deafened by the constant media babble or blinded by political flimflam should now see through the humbuggery of placing human advancement in the hands of profiteers. The old argument that corporate avarice, through the unbiased operation of the market, will benefit us all must surely be retired.
Economists concede that the next decade - called by some, a "lost decade" - promises, at best, a feeble recovery with likely persistent unemployment, greater impoverishment, a retreat of social securities, and ominous uncertainties for most outside of the ownership class. Thus, the first two decades of the twenty-first century will have featured a decided retreat from the prosperity promised by a profit-driven market economy. Many, if not most of the people will have experienced the better part of their adult life in the shadow of these tribulations. The hopeful notion that the next generation will do better is severely threatened, maybe shattered. Indeed, it is now apparent that few boats are lifted with a rising tide driven by profits.
The responsibility for exposing the failure of profit-centric economic policy falls squarely on the US left. While the US left is small and with a narrow circle of influence, it alone can begin to project and popularize an alternative economy that reduces or eliminates the decisive role of profits. It alone can offer a road apart from the path paved by corporate self-interest.
Some falsely counter pose organizing and agitating for a just, democratic alternative economy – to my mind, socialism – with political work on the margins of mainstream politics. For decades, this argument has surfaced time and again with every election cycle or legislative session. The struggle for socialism, the argument goes, is distant and difficult, while we – the left - might have an impact on the immediate issues and options at play in the two-party charade. This is, I believe, a dangerous brew of egomania and complacency. The reality is that the left has neither the bucks nor the bodies to shift the balance in the big show (nor is engagement welcome, except at the price of any left identity). And when left engagement does threaten to upset the political trajectory (for example, the Nader campaigns), these same “soft” left advocates roundly condemn the effort.
But in the end, it is possible to do both: one can, if one likes, participate energetically in the big game – primaries, legislative lobbies, etc. – with the hope of moving the ball incrementally forward. And one must fervently engage our foes on every level, whether it be in the neighborhood or around individual issues. At the same time, one can and must organize and agitate for an alternative to the profit-centric dogma. Without a determined effort to spark and fan the embers of extraordinary, fundamental change, we are doomed to see our future sink in the face of corporate power and greed.
Zoltan zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
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:
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
“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
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
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
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
Saturday, September 25, 2010
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:
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
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
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