A Recessionary Class-Conscious Christmas Carol 2008

By Andrew Taylor



Naught the silent angels tell,
as the shills do make the sell.
All the missives sent on high,
are returned without reply.
Awaken all you nations, rise!
Let our actions rend the skies;
Let them see our Class's might
How we'll escalate the fight.
So our Christmas we'll keep well,
And their shills won't make the sell.

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media MEDIA ALERT: OBAMA - WIPING THE SLATE CLEAN

With thanks to John Andrew Hird for bringing this article to my attention
http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9947
November 13, 2008
Appearance And Reality In The Relaunch Of Brand America

In 1997, the British media filled with talk of “historic” change. Blair’s victory that year “bursts open the door to a British transformation,” the Independent declared. (Neal Ascherson, ‘Through the door he can begin to create a freer land,’ The Independent, May 4, 1997)

A Guardian leader saluted the nation: “Few now sang England Arise, but England had risen all the same.” (Leader, ‘A political earthquake,’ The Guardian, May 2, 1997)

The editors predicted that, by 2007, Blair’s triumph would be seen as “one of the great turning-points of British political history... the moment when Britain at last gave itself the chance to construct a modern liberal socialist order.” (Ibid)

The Observer assured readers that the Blair government would create "new worldwide rules on human rights" and implement "tough new limits on arms sales." (http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=5063)

This, after all, was the dawn of Blair’s “ethical” foreign policy.

It was a dawn of the dead - Blair left behind him the almost unimaginable horror of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A rare poll conducted by Ipsos last January of 754 Iraqi refugees in Syria found that “every single person interviewed by Ipsos reported experiencing at least one traumatic event in Iraq prior to their arrival in Syria.” (http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/iraq?page=news&id=479616762)

UNHCR estimated that one in five of those registered with the agency in Syria over the previous year were classified as "victims of torture and/or violence." The survey showed that fully 89 per cent of those interviewed suffered depression and 82 per cent anxiety. This was linked to terrors endured before they fled Iraq – 77 per cent of those interviewed reported being affected by air bombardments, shelling or rocket attacks. Eighty per cent had witnessed a shooting... and so on. (Ibid)

John Pilger was a lonely voice in 1997 warning that Blair was a dangerous fraud, a neocon in sheep’s clothing. As Pilger later pointed out, the media could hardly plead ignorance:

“Blair's Vichy-like devotion to Washington was known: read his speeches about a new order led by America. His devotion to Rupert Murdoch, who flew him and Cherie Booth around the world first class, was known. His devotion to an extreme neoliberal Thatcherite economics was known...” (John Pilger, Blair’s bloody hands,’ March 4, 2005; http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=5063)

Over the past two weeks - one decade and three wars later - the same media have been insisting, as one, that US president-elect Barrack Obama is another “new dawn”. A Guardian leader observed:

“They did it. They really did it. So often crudely caricatured by others, the American people yesterday stood in the eye of history and made an emphatic choice for change for themselves and the world...

“Today is for celebration, for happiness and for reflected human glory. Savour those words: President Barack Obama, America's hope and, in no small way, ours too.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/06/barackobama-uselections2008)

In the Guardian’s news section, Oliver Burkeman described the victory as “historic, epochal, path breaking”. But there was more:

“Just being alive at a time when it's so evident that history is being made was elating and exhausting.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/uselections2008-barackobama)

Magnitogorsk /Magnitogorsk by Louis Aragon

African American Review, Fall, 2007 by Louis Aragon
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2838/is_3_41/ai_n26670784?tag=content;col1
MAGNITOGORSK (FRAGMENTS)
... il s'agit maintenant de la transformer.--Karl Marx

They have given man back to the earth
They have said You shall devour all
and you shall devour all

They have thrown sky to earth
They have said The gods shall die
and the gods shall die

They have put in ferment the earth
They have said Times shall be good
and times shall be good

They have dug a hole in the earth
They have said Fire shall burst forth
and tire shall burst forth

Addressing the masters of the earth
They have said You shall be conquered
and you shall be conquered

They have taken in their hands the earth
They have said Black shall be white
and black shall be white

Glory to the land and the earth
in the sun of the bolshevik days
and glory to the bolsheviks

In the little houses of black earth lived
the human mole
In the little houses of black earth laughed
the child with the slanting eyes

In the little houses of black earth sleeps
the woman on the smoky hearth
In the little houses of black earth one day more
is dead

One day more in the little houses of black earth
One day more in the shadow of the church or the mosque
One day more to sew on the dead days like coins
on the breasts of the women here

So beautiful quiet and adorned
on the coins the image of
Franz-Joseph or Peter the Great

Citizen asked the agitator
do you know the ways of Lenin
She shook her head and showed her pieces of silver
that held a bit of light in the depths
of the little houses of black earth

The agitator comrade from the Komsomols
in the dusk of the village
re-tells in one breath the modern legend
Marx, October and Lenin
the taking of the Winter Palace
the commissions of Baku
Koltchak and his sister the famine
and all at once and all at once
he explains what is being smelted
he explains the world
he explains what will be
Magnitogorsk, Magnitogorsk
Do you hear Magnitogorsk

At his feet little naked children crawl in the black earth
One day more one day more in the little houses of black earth
One day more

MAGNITOGORSK (FRAGMENTS)

III. Hymne

Ils ont rendu l'homme a la terre
Ils ont dit Vous mangerez tous
Et vous mangerez tous

Ils ont jete le ciel a terre
Ils ont dit Les dieux periront
Et les dieux periront

Ils ont mise en chantier la terre
Ils ont dit le temps sera beau
Et le temps sera beau

Ils ont fait un trou dans la terre
Ils ont dit Le feu jaillira
Et le feu jaillira

Parlant aux maitres de la terre
Ils ont dit Vous succomberez
Et vous succomberez

Ils ont pris dans leurs mains la terre
Ils ont dit Le noir sera blanc
Et le noir sera blanc

Gloire sur la terre et les terres
au soleil des jours bolcheviks
Et gloire aux bolcheviks

IV. 1930

Dans de petites maisons de terre noire vit
la taupe humaine
Dans de petites maisons de terre noire rit
l'enfant aux yeux brides
Dans de petites maisons de terre noire dort
la femme au coeur enfume
Dans de petites maisons de terre noire est mort
un jour de plus

Un jour de plus dans de petites maisons de terre noire
Un jour de plus a l'ombre de l'eglise ou de la mosquee
Un jour de plus a coudre aux jours defunts comme les pieces
de monnaie au gilet des femmes d'ici
si belles immobiles et parees.
et sur une piece il y a l'image
de Francois-Joseph ou de Pierre le Grand

Citoyenne a demande l'agitateur
connais-tu les traits de Lenine
Elle a secoue la tete et montre ses pieces d'argent
qui retiennent un peu de lumiere au fond
des petites maisons de terre noire

L'agitateur un camarade des jeunesses
au crepuscule du village
raconte d'un seul trait la legende moderne

Marx Octobre et Lenine
la prise du Palais d'Hiver
les commissaires de Bakou
Koltchak et sa soeur la famine
et tout a coup et tout a coup
il dit ce que c'est que la fonte
il dit ce que c'est que le monde
il dit ce que cela sera
Magnitogorsk Magnitogorsk.
Entendez-vous Magnitogorsk

A ses pieds les petits enfants nus se trainent dans la terre noire
Un jour de plus un jour de plus dans les petites maisons de terre
noire
un jour de plus

Aragon, Louis, "Magnitogorsk," Hourra l'Oural. Paris: Denoel et Steele, 1934: 77-78. Translation: "Magnitogorsk," International Literature 4 (1933-34): 82-83.

COPYRIGHT 2007 African American Review
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

Michael Ignatieff is back in the running

by: Andrew W Taylor
Michael Ignatieff is back in the running. It didn't require a prophetic mantle to see this one coming as Dion ran an extraordinarily poor federal campaign for the Grits.
Many Liberals anxiously await Ignatieff as their leader, positioning their party in a traditional centrist posture on economic policy, -- confounding Bob Rae's talk of a unite-the-Left Liberalism. But truth be told there is no substantial policy difference between Ignatieff and Rae on this score. The Liberal Party of Canada's relationship to Left policy and theory is like a little boy's relationship to mum's forbidden cookie-jar: he is afraid of it and dances around it when a public may be present to censor his raiding. Sometimes he steals a biscuit but he is unsettled after consumption -- he knows its not really for him, and as often as not it makes him sick.

Another issue -- this time from the policy recent past -- should separate the contenders. Michael Ignatieff wrote and spoke in print and television media in favour of the U.S.invasion of Iraq while he lived and worked in the United States as director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. More, that pro-invasion position was disgracefully and enthusiastically pedaled by Ignatieff and provided small 'l' liberal collaborative support to the Bush-Cheney war. Rightly this was deeply unsettling in the federal Liberal Party at their last leadership convention. Ignatieff has tried to minimise his tub-beating for the Iraq war in an essay for The New York Times where he gives a wash on why he led himself away from his usual moral sagacity.

I would guess that Ignatieff hopes the economic crisis and the gentle forces of fading memory have effaced Canadians' concerns about deeds done in a scoundrel time when an ambitious man of letters and the law played the U.S. media circuit for imperial war. Let Canadians show him that we will not forget his complicity. Some political errors are more than forgivable gaffs on policy, this error entails a trail of blood.

How More Socialism Could Fix the Economy, By John Case

I add this article from cpusa's theoretical journal Political Affairs to help my friends and readers join in a discussion on the merits and demerits of Case's proposal. First I would ask readers to note that Case is putting forward a programme
for a "More Socialist" economic reform programme. It is not the political-economic state-plan of "Revolution Morning". I think another way to characterise the nature of his programme is to style it an anti-Monopoly or vigorous social-democratic policy.
-So what do you think of the proposals he puts forward? Is he pitching it somewhere between Keynes and the Bolivarian balance as it now stands?
-Is a weakness of Case's proposal that he doesn't sufficiently acknowledge that a mass-movement from powerful popular forces is a prerequisite even for such reforms as he envisages? (Just because the system is in the toilet doesn't mean the socialist alternative is on the job and ready to flush!)
-by Andrew W Taylor
____________________________________________________________________________



11-12-08

Principles of a MORE SOCIALIST economic reform program for today's capitalism:
http://politicalaffairs.net/article/view/7714/

1. The market mechanism is an effective control device for a myriad of unimportant decisions, and as an arbiter of the economic value of a commodity. But it fails important equity, efficiency, and stability tests.

2. A sophisticated, complex and dynamic financial system such as ours must play an essential role in enabling scientific and technological revolutions to emerge, be tested, and successfully be deployed throughout society. However, this process is inherently so destabilizing that serious depressions and greatly aggravated class conflict are its natural consequence. Thus: finance cannot be left to free markets.

3. Decentralized markets are particularly unstable and inefficient for an economy in which capital investment constitutes a significant portion of private national product, and investment goods are expensive to produce.

4. Under capitalism, financial resources will not be risked on large-scale, long-lived capital assets without protection against market forces. Public control, if not outright ownership, of large-scale capital intensive production units is essential.

5. A MORE SOCIALIST form of capitalism will be more stable than a LESS SOCIALIST form. The greater stability comes from the counter-cyclical impact of government deficits in stabilizing profits. However, if a MORE SOCIALIST form of capitalism is not going to be inflationary, its government must have the taxing and fiscal authority to hold back profits through budget SURPLUSES when and if inflation rises.

6. The historical emphasis (since the New Deal) on investment and "economic growth" rather than on employment as a policy objective is a mistake. A full employment economy is bound to expand, whereas an economy that aims at accelerating growth through devices that induce capital intensive private investment may grow, but will also be increasingly inequitable in its income distribution, inefficient in its choice of technologies and techniques, and unstable in its overall performance.

7. The employment strategy of a MORE SOCIALIST form of capitalism would be as follows:
a) The development of public, private, and in-between institutions that furnish jobs at a non-inflationary base wage, for any person laid off from the private economy.
b) Remove all barriers to labor force participation (for example social security penalties).
c) Modify the structure of transfer payments (unemployment compensation, AFDC-type payments, etc) to accommodate government as the employment of last resort.
d) Retraining privileges equivalent to military service for all.
e) Access to national health care coverage.
f) Enhanced public retirement protection.
g) In a full employment economy, compensation for increased productivity can include SHORTENING THE WORK DAY, especially in the lower third of the income scale.

The most challenging policy and administrative challenge implied in these principles is, of course, the "base wage." By guaranteeing full employment, government effectively sets the economic floor for any and every member of society. It must take care that advances in the floor -- surely the greatest promise of sustained economic productivity growth -- not fall prey to the temptations of "great leaps forward," which would lead to an inflationary spiral -- and ultimately a crash.

We can meet this challenge.

MORE SOCIALISM lies on the path to recovery from the economic crisis, for sustainable growth, including the foundations of well functioning markets for billions of goods and services.

Where To Now, Barack Obama? By Reuven Kaminer

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/7705/
At a very early stage in the campaign, I wrote to friends that though Obama is not a leftist or a part of the left, he must, in the given conditions be the candidate of the left in the United States. It was not the time for any third party fantasies. (This might be the place to suggest that any real genuine left initiative for presidential elections would have to base itself on a modicum of success in local and regional elections. A serious left would not go to national elections without any serious advanced preparation).

Symbolic Victory

I share the enthusiasm. Obama made his way to the presidency fighting the Clinton machine and the Mcarthyite sniping of the McCain gang. But more important, anyone who knows anything of the role of racism in US could not but be stirred with joy and satisfaction over Obama’s tremendous victory. This having been said, it is foolish to ignore the plain and simple fact that his core beliefs and outlook are no more than a variant of the dominant ideas in the Democratic Party. Here and there some good and pertinent ideas emerged in the context of the clash with the Republicans. However, there were innumerable examples of wrong and very dangerous positions (Afghanistan, Israel, Iran, the bailout, to name a few). Barack Obama knows the sweet talk. I think that I would pay for a ticket to hear him read the telephone book. But any halfway experienced political progressive knows that “Change” and “Yes, We Can” are empty and even dangerous slogans, when we do not know what changes we are talking about and what exactly “we can” do. Unity, as a superficial substitute for ideology, is simply nationalist, right-wing fodder. I cringe at the ideological terminology which either ignores the poor and the working class or enrolls and submerges their identity in the ranks of the middle class. Of course, when looking at the immediate past, any decent advocate of Obama can justify all of Obama’s political weaknesses with the argument that all this was precisely what Obama needed to do to get elected. But even those, who thus argue, will agree that this kind of rationalization would be pernicious, even dangerous if it congeals into a simple minded advance justification for potential failures and disappointments of a Obama presidency. The game is on and from this point we start keeping score.


What Has Not Changed

At this time, we know that Black people in the United States are suffering increasingly painful want and poverty. This is true by virtue of a social law well known to all of us. In times of want, recession and depression the poor suffer most and the largest section of the poor is Black. l am relating to an euphoric article that was sent to me as one of the best things written on the Obama success. It’s essence:

But there is one thing we can proclaim today, without question: that the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States of America means that "The Ultimate Color Line," as the subtitle of Javits' Esquire essay put it, has, at long last, been crossed. It has been crossed by our very first postmodern Race Man, a man who embraces his African cultural and genetic heritage so securely that he can transcend it, becoming the candidate of choice to tens of millions of Americans who do not look like him. "Root'

I understand that this was written in a moment of deep emotion, but it has been seconded by many liberals and progressives. The “Ultimate Color Line” – the election of a Black president seems to be important because tens of millions of (white) Americans did vote for an African American. But the sterling qualities of Barack Obama that enable so many white voters to momentarily and conditionally suspend their racism, are not the main thing. It is a liberal illusion that the election of prominent African Americans ensures Black people’s welfare and progress. The Ultimate Color Line is the gigantic real life and statistical disparity between blacks and the white population in every facet of life – income, opportunity, health, education, administration of justice, etc. Discrimination still reigns and where there is discrimination there is the old color line. Obama’s election proves nothing in this respect and promises, I fear, little. Even the victories of the civil rights movement have yet to bear ample fruit for the masses of black people.

Who Won the Election?

Not Barack Obama. He himself explained what happened. He told the people that it was not his victory, but theirs! Much depends on whether this is just an elegant politician’s way of saying thank you for recognizing my virtues. However, if this sentence is sincere and has any real meaning, it is that Obama owes his election to a mass movement at the grass roots level. And indeed, the 2008 success is the success of the grass roots mass movement.

Is this a movement created by the application of the right technical instruments and merely an arm of the effective and efficient operation put together by the Obama machine? Praise for the success of Obama’s campaign organization tends to portray it as a top to bottom creation and stresses that it is a resource that Obama can use when needed. But in our humble opinion, the movement to elect Obama is not merely an instrument to be used when required. It is a living and breathing social entity.

Obama says the election is not the main thing and he is right. But what forces does Obama take with him to DC? He has supporters in his party but these are usually subservient to Democratic Party bureaucracy which has its own interests and agenda. He has important support in the establishment sections of the business world and the academy. But once again these people usually have their own agenda. If Barack Obama has his own clear, fighting agenda, the only fully reliable ally that he has is the grass roots movement. But he can only rely on this movement if he listens well and builds up a constant, vibrant dialogue with those who worked to get him elected. It is the presence or the absence of this dialogue that will let us know where Obama is headed.

At this point the grass root movement is still celebrating, but through the clamor it hears the footsteps of the old politics: old guard appointments, consultations with representatives of the current elite establishment, foreign policy statements based on the Bush regime’s positions that seem designed to calm potential critics in the military-industrial-foreign policy complex. Every day that goes by without emerging evidence of a developing independent mass based organization working with and for Obama is a sign that Obama is not moving in the right direction. If Obama tries to govern from the center he will dissipate his strength and fall victim to those with whom he sought to curry favor. If he allows the financial experts, in his close vicinity, to advise him that government bailouts are the way to go, he will run out of money very quickly only to realize soon enough that unity between capital and labor is a fantasy. A depression means war on the working class and the poor and yes, large parts of the middle class. If you are indeed their leader, you fight back or you are trounced for having deserted those who put you in power.

--Reuven Kaminer lives in Jerusalem. He is a founder of the new Israeli Left, a member of the Democratic Front for Peace & Equality (one of the “Arab Parties” seated in the Knesset), a prolific author and activist.