The tasks at hand

I'm just back from Grant Park, where the energy and enthusiasm were remarkable. Biking back thru the South Side, the celebration is still going. I've been skeptical of Obama from the beginning, but the Obama campaign - partly thru its own determination to campaign on a mass basis but mostly because of events beyond its control - has mobilized a degree of popular participation unprecedented for at least a generation.

The extent of this phenomenon, combined with the neoliberal economy's self-inflicted wounds, give progressives their best opening in forty years. But our obstacles are huge: we confront a reluctance among many progressives to make a clear analysis of where our problems come from, as well as Obama's own centrism and the widespread naive faith in Obama which may convince many that their continued participation is unnecessary. Consider the kind of names that Obama has floated for important positions in his administration - Paul Volcker, pioneer of neoliberalism; Bob Rubin and Larry Summers, Clinton's unrepentant champions of free capital flows; Robert Gates, who recently argued that any decrease in the military budget (now over half of world military spending) would be a historic mistake; and the Dark Prince himself, Rahm Emanuel.

And those are just the problems on "our" side. American racism, xenophobia, and fundamentalism have not been vanquished, and now that a figure like McCain is no longer restraining them, the Republicans will soon enough return to demagoguery.

The two most important priorities are now 1) channeling the remarkable energy invested in the Obama campaign into true grassroots activism, and 2) getting serious about turning the economic crisis to our advantage. Translating campaign participation into everyday participation in a progressive transformation of society from the ground up is the best way to build our power, and the only way to create the kind of society we want. And we absolutely have to start hammering away at neoliberal ideology, which has discredited itself even as the left largely remains silent. We need to fill that ideological void and offer alternatives more progressive than what we'll get from the likes of Volcker and Rubin. We can enjoy this partial victory for a moment, but complacency would be disastrous.

Progressive priorities for Chicago

The coming year will be pivotal for Chicago. The rest of the country will be focusing on the presidential election over the next couple months, but in Chicago the real action is elsewhere. Sure, an Obama victory might translate into greater resources for urban development, both because Obama is presumably more interested in tackling urban problems than the Cheney administration has been or McCain would be, and because Obama might pay back the favors he’s incurred during his years in Chicago’s political mire. And, of course, electing Obama would ensure that Chicago gets a presidential library at some point down the road.

But there’s not much Chicago can actually do to influence the outcome of the race. Obama will undoubtedly win Illinois, Durbin will undoubtedly win reelection to the Senate, only a couple members of the House are in danger of losing their seats, and the only important local race, for state’s attorney, will likely be won by Anita Alvarez, who’s busy integrating herself into the Chicago machine. (There is a Green Party candidate for state's attorney, Thomas O'Brien, for those repelled by Alvarez and her Republic opponent, Tony Peraica.)

But the election is still hugely important for Chicago and Illinois because the question of whether to call a state constitutional convention will be on the ballot. Every twenty years the citizens of Illinois can choose to rewrite the constitution, an option they declined the previous time they had the chance. This time we need to seize the opportunity.

Unbeknownst to most, the state constitution is one of the strongest obstacles to progressive change in Illinois. On all of the key short-term structural problems we face - a regressive tax structure, unequal school funding, pay-to-play corruption between business and political leaders - the constitution either silently accedes to the status quo or enshrines it in law. The General Assembly’s anemic attempts to address these problems have invariably failed.

If the constitutional convention passed, two delegates would be elected from each senate district to consider changes, and the outcome of their deliberations would be put before the voters for a yes-no vote. Ideally the new constitution would:

• Eliminate the flat income tax, which not only leaves the overall tax structure regressive once truly regressive taxes like the sales tax are added in, it also hamstrings the legislature in raising revenue, forcing it to consider socially-destructive options like expanding gambling;
  
• Mandate equal school funding, a necessary but not sufficient condition for overcoming the social devastation on the South and West Sides that is now spreading to some inner-ring suburbs;
  
• Reform the campaign finance system by switching to public funding along the lines of Maine and Arizona's clean election systems;
  
• Implement a nonpartisan redistricting process, similar to Iowa’s.

Of course to both write a progressive constitution and get it passed would require a major progressive mobilization to counter the status quo forces (especially big business) that are already working to nip the threat in the bud by defeating the referendum. That means major efforts will be needed to pass the constitutional convention in November, and sustained efforts to influence its outcome afterward.

Progressives not only have a once-in-a-decade chance to rewrite the ground rules of politics in Illinois, we also have a once-in-a-century chance to influence the distribution of resources that would flow to Chicago if Daley wins his bid for the 2016 Olympics. But the International Olympic Committee will make its decision in 2009 October and as Ben Joravsky points out in a must-read article, Daley will assuredly not be making concessions after that point, so we have to mobilize now to win the best deal we can.

One major demand should be converting the Metra Electric Line running thru the South Side to a new CTA line - the Gray Line, which I've written about here. Theoretically this shouldn’t be a difficult victory since it seems in line with Daley’s long-term plans and would address many of the transportation problems connecting Olympic venues. Even so, the plan still has no visible political support from the relevant agencies, Chicago-area politicians, or Daley himself.

But even as we push for the Gray Line, it’s important to keep sight of Daley’s goals: he’s seeking the Olympics as a way to dramatically accelerate the gentrification of the South Side. Already the South Loop has been completely transformed in the last decade with a frenzy of new luxury highrises being built; the neighborhoods of Kenwood and Oakland have been converted to lowrise condos for professionals; and the major public housing projects have been destroyed, scattering to the four corners all those people keeping down property values (well, actually only to the southern corners).

The Olympics would extend and deepen the transformation of the South Side thru the new Olympic Village housing on the site of Michael Reese Hospital, major improvements to public parks and infrastructure (including transit), and most important the indirect spur it would give to developers and housing costs - both of which can be counted on to drive out poor and working-class people.

As long as we have to live with the massive social inequalities that capitalism necessarily creates, it’s not entirely a bad thing to bring rich folks and professionals into poor neighborhoods - their wealth draws the commerce that would redline the ghetto and their political influence keeps up basic infrastructure. But left to itself gentrification will cleanse the neighborhood of all its original inhabitants, simply displacing the social catastrophe forced upon them to neighborhoods and suburbs further south.
That’s why we need to demand solid guarantees on affordable housing from Daley to balance his vision of gentrification and to make sure the Olympics bid increases equality instead of deepening it. Communities for an Equitable Olympics, a coalition of South Side community groups, has begun organizing to demand affordable housing and preference for locals in jobs and contracts related to the Olympics. We need to expand their base of support and help them increase the pressure on Daley.

Of course we have to remember that the constitutional convention, the Gray Line, and integrating affordable housing into the Olympic plans are only preliminary skirmishes in a much more protracted struggle to remake Chicago - to stop the progress of Daley’s efforts to build a gleaming city inhabited by professionals and cleansed of the poor, and create in its place an egalitarian and participatory Chicago.

How should we fight meat?

The arguments against meat are overwhelming: the suffering imposed on the animals is unconscionable and the unnecessary killing of animals is ethically indefensible; there is no difference between pets and livestock that could possibly justify laws against cruelty to the one while industrialized horrors are committed against the other; meat is one of the main causes of global warming, air pollution, and the destruction of waterways, not to mention a colossal waste of resources; the production of meat is a major factor in the global food crisis, already causing widespread hunger and threatening large-scale violence if nothing is done.

Fighting meat is one of the most urgent issues we face - the crises in energy, food, and climate are deeply connected and are leading directly to a far more dangerous and impoverished world. Most urgent of all, every moment the number of innocent animals born to suffer horribly and then be killed without need is increasing. The OECD predicts a tragic 26 percent increase in meat consumption in developing countries alone over the next decade (The Wall Street Journal, 2008 August 1, “Brazilian Beef Clan Goes Global As Troubles Hit Market”).

Perhaps the arguments against meat are not convincing to right-wingers, who revel in their own selfishness, staunchly defend their right to take their pleasure at the expense of others, and delight in a violent masculinity. Yet most liberals and radicals eat meat as well, and many vegetarians eventually go back to eating meat. Despite the increasing awareness of the horrors of factory farms and the connection between meat production and both global warming and the food crisis, the percentage of Americans who are strict vegetarians remains a stagnant three percent, while the media continue to marginalize vegetarianism as a viable solution to the ethical and environmental devastation produced by meat (for the latest example, see this Chicago Tribune article, which explores every technological fix imaginable to the methane emissions of livestock while ignoring the obvious possibility of reducing or eliminating demand).

How are we to explain this? To a certain extent it’s simply ignorance - while the media have very tentatively begun to discuss meat’s connection to climate change, still only a handful of articles have been published since the news blackout started to crumble. Neither has the connection to the global food crisis captured much attention. Op-ed and editorial writers focus much anger on ethanol subsidies - a line of argument in keeping with their free-market principles - but ignore the massive inefficiency of producing crops to feed to animals, which is equally at fault for straining food supplies. Instead, the extremely high levels of meat consumption in the rich world and rapidly rising levels in 中国/China, India, and Brasil are treated as a force of nature.

If lack of information plays a part, willful ignorance may be just as big a factor. Many people are vaguely aware that the conditions at factory farms are unacceptable, but resolutely avoid exposing themselves to the many available online resources so that they can bury their guilt and keep eating meat. And even those people who feel bad about the industrialized torture of animals are perfectly comfortable with killing and eating animals if they don’t suffer. This line of thinking remains a fascinating mystery to me. Who would ever say that killing a human for pleasure is okay if it’s done painlessly? The animal itself wants to keep living at least as much as it wants to avoid pain - in supporting “humane” slaughter, whose feelings are we really protecting?

What we’re dealing with is more complicated than simply a lazy hypocrisy sustained by the old “meat tastes good” so-called argument. The fact of the matter is that human supremacy over other animals and the eating of meat is a deep-seated and intimate component of most people’s identities. How else can we understand the surprisingly defensive reaction that many people have when the subject is raised? Like racism, male chauvinism, xenophobia, antigay feelings, and other supremacies, domination over animals is both “common sense” until it meets strong organized resistance, and impossible to overcome simply thru the liberal remedy of “education”. A new culture and widely-shared identity must be forged that explicitly rejects human supremacy if the antimeat movement is to succeed.

Knowing all this, what are we supposed to do? I tried to start a conversation here and failed - the discussion here was more successful but came to no solid conclusions. Kyle’s suggestion to make common cause with other progressive issues is a good one, but the meat issue seems uniquely resistant to such an approach. For many people human supremacy is the ground upon which progressive politics are based - witness the vitriolic reaction that met PETA’s comparison of the livestock industry to the slave trade.

The obvious exception is on global warming and other environmental issues. Mainstream environmental groups have thus far been incredibly cautious on the livestock connection and refuse to even raise the issue, so putting pressure on them to discuss all the factors behind climate change is one direction forward. The food crisis is another potential line of attack, especially as high food prices increasingly hurt poor Americans, but seems to have drawn little attention so far amongst progressives.

Popular education efforts calling attention to meat's role in climate change and the food crisis are another possibility. Most people associate opposition to the killing of animals with marginalized subcultures like hippies or new age practitioners, and are unwilling to confront the fact that their eating habits are responsible for horrific animal cruelty, so framing the issue as a crisis of environmental sustainability and food security gives us a major new line of attack in raising the issue. Pamphleting during lunchtime or holding protests about the negative consequences for people of meat production is probably the most effective way of communicating with the vast majority of the population that doesn't even think twice about human supremacy. Once someone has changed enough to become vegetarian, considering the ethics of dominating animals is made far easier.

Another important target is the media. Generally reporters won’t cover anything that politicians avoid, so it will take public pressure and high-profile protests to force meat onto the public agenda. Every reporter who ignores reducing or eliminating meat-eating as a solution to these problems should be met with a barrage of emails demanding an exploration of all sides (that Tribune reporter's email address is mhawthorne@tribune.com). And reporters specializing in climate change should be constantly reminded that the livestock industry produces more greenhouse gases than the transportation sector (on the blog of New York Times environment reporter Andy Revkin (anrevk@nytimes.com), which focuses mainly on global warming, the livestock industry’s role in the crisis has not been covered once, and The New York Times has yet to publish a news article on the issue). We should also make a point to contact the editors who aren’t assigning reporters to investigative efforts that might help us understand why runoff from factory farms keeps killing people who eat vegetables, why the brutality against animals in slaughterhouses is so often mirrored by brutality against the workers there, and how factory farms have driven a complete reorganization of the agricultural economy over the last generation (this page lists editorial contacts at The Times - and don't forget to include the public editor, whose job is to provide oversight at the paper).

In some states, the best way to raise the meat issue is thru popular referenda. The run-up to a vote allows public discussion of the issues - which can range far beyond the ballot proposal and play an important role in educating the public and challenging widely-accepted ideas on the human relationship with other animals. A proposition (Prop 2) to ban tiny cages for chickens, pigs, and calves is on the California ballot this November. This is a hugely important referendum to win - both to reduce animal suffering and to energize the movement in the rest of the country. If you live in California, you should consider becoming active in the fight to pass the measure; if not, talk to any friends or relatives living in California.

Finally, we should consider using the emotional appeals that exist comfortably within the discourse of human supremacy but may be most effective at reaching people who have been taught their entire life no other way of thinking. Nicholas Kristof’s most recent column may express his own rank hypocrisy in recognizing the intelligence and individuality of farm animals while continuing to kill and eat them. Yet it also makes one of the most powerful appeals for compassion that I’ve read. Many a meat-eater might think twice after reading something like this.

I’m a farm boy who grew up here in the hills outside Yamhill, Ore., raising sheep for my F.F.A. and 4-H projects. At various times, my family also raised modest numbers of pigs, cattle, goats, chickens and geese, although they were never tightly confined.

Our cattle, sheep, chickens and goats certainly had individual personalities, but not such interesting ones that it bothered me that they might end up in a stew. Pigs were more troubling because of their unforgettable characters and obvious intelligence. To this day, when tucking into a pork chop, I always feel as if it is my intellectual equal.

Then there were the geese, the most admirable creatures I’ve ever met. We raised Chinese white geese, a common breed, and they have distinctive personalities. They mate for life and adhere to family values that would shame most of those who dine on them.

While one of our geese was sitting on her eggs, her gander would go out foraging for food — and if he found some delicacy, he would rush back to give it to his mate. Sometimes I would offer males a dish of corn to fatten them up — but it was impossible, for they would take it all home to their true loves.

Once a month or so, we would slaughter the geese. When I was 10 years old, my job was to lock the geese in the barn and then rush and grab one. Then I would take it out and hold it by its wings on the chopping block while my Dad or someone else swung the ax.

The 150 geese knew that something dreadful was happening and would cower in a far corner of the barn, and run away in terror as I approached. Then I would grab one and carry it away as it screeched and struggled in my arms.

Very often, one goose would bravely step away from the panicked flock and walk tremulously toward me. It would be the mate of the one I had caught, male or female, and it would step right up to me, protesting pitifully. It would be frightened out of its wits, but still determined to stand with and comfort its lover.

Those are some ideas, but they're not really that satisfying against a problem so enormous and pressing. Any other thoughts?

If you vote, vote Green

Voting is awkward for every radical. You can cast your ballot and implicitly register a vote of confidence in a system that is deeply undemocratic. Or you can abstain and be counted as one of the "apathetic" half of the population who doesn't vote. If you do vote, you get to choose between a big-money Democrat who might win or a third-party candidate whose voters barely register in the statistics.

The amount of time progressives waste debating these choices is already far too great, so I won't belabor my point. If you feel you have to vote for Democrats, go ahead - but check the polls first and if your Democrat has a solid lead, don't waste your vote. Vote Green. Send the Democrats a message and help build a real progressive electoral alternative.

I haven't changed my mind about electoral politics - I think it's a waste of time for progressives unless they use the elections to organize locally and for longer-term battles. Right now the left is too weak to waste its energy in an electoral system that is rigged against it. There are some key issues worth working on - campaign finance reform and instant runoff voting would immediately increase the power of progressives. But until we can boast popular support and financial power, in the guise of grassroots organizations and democratic businesses, voting is going to remain awkward.

Creating a progressive culture

It's shocking to me that, years after it became clear that global warming would be a catastrophe, people still drive when they could walk, bike, or take public transit, they still waste electricity by leaving lights on or leaving their cell phone chargers plugged in, they still buy SUVs when an energy-efficient car would be just fine, they still eat meat (even if the animal torture doesn't bother you, getting our calories and protein from meat is one of the most energy inefficient things we do). And they do all these things even tho the green alternatives are usually less expensive!

Obviously ignorance plays a big role, and we can thank the media, schools, politicians, and business leaders for that. But I know people, ostensibly environmentalists, who know very well that meat is environmentally destructive and still eat it. I know people who don't recycle. I know people who live in the exurbs with two SUVs for one family. It's not just ignorance. It's a failure of will, borne of the absence of a progressive culture that could counteract the dominant market-driven culture pushing everyone to buy things all the time, to drive all the time, to live in the suburbs and to hell with what kind of world that's going to leave their grandkids.

One of Michael Albert's themes has always been that the left alienates "regular" people - potential allies or members - by shoving an intolerant culture down their throats. But I think creating an intolerant culture is one of our most important tasks. A culture that does not tolerate racist jokes, sexual harassment, homophobia, or the slaughter of animals. A culture that demands popular participation, economic human rights, and respect for the environment. These values cannot flourish in a culture that celebrates inequality and does not hold people accountable for the effects their decisions have on everyone else.

How we go about creating this culture is a delicate task. Most people take it as their right to consume the resources of future generations or to sacrifice the lives of animals for the fleeting pleasure of a meal. Changing their mind about that cannot be done by browbeating them or excluding them. Good arguments and the power of example must remain our primary methods, at least when interacting one-on-one. Confrontation thru mass action has its place too, but the consequences should always be carefully considered.

Yet Michael Albert's point is also well-taken. Concentrating too much on individual purity distracts us from the fact that changing systems is more important that changing individuals. A progressive culture is needed not so much for our own self-satisfaction as it is to create a base area out of which progressive organizing can expand. What's so galling to me about people whose choices hurt people, animals, and the environment is not so much the miniscule impact those actions have on the world. It's that those choices make it hard for them to take part in the movement.

Hmm, I didn't originally intend to write about this. I was just going to recommend this article on California's admirable steps to fight global warming.

Anyway, any thoughts about this idea of progressive culture?

Markets in China and their victims

I finally got around to contributing to The Protest again. This is my summary of what the market reforms have done to China and why massive opposition to them is unlikely to yield anything constructive.

for unknown reasons, the word "China" is not featured in the title

State Power, The Market and Oppression

China is a mess of contradictions. It has the most dynamic and fastest continually growing economy in the world. This economic expansion has lifted millions of people out of poverty and hunger and opened extraordinary new opportunities for millions more. Its cities are filled with construction cranes, new malls (including the biggest mall in the world) and all the luxuries available in the rich countries.

Yet social unrest is greater now than at any time since the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s. According to government estimates, last year alone saw nearly 90,000 riots and demonstrations, a number that has grown rapidly in the last few years. Juxtaposed against the consumer opulence of the big cities is the appalling exploitation of restaurant staff, factory workers and construction crews, who work 12-hour shifts seven days a week for 40 cents an hour. These workers' employers house them in cramped dorm rooms and regularly interfere in their personal lives, setting curfews or threatening to fire them if they travel home to see their family on the lunar new year, China's most important holiday.

The sweeping market reforms of the last 27 years brought about these devastating contrasts. The government dismantled the planned economy — owned and operated completely by the state — and gradually imposed market forces and the profit motive. These reforms did solve many of the problems of the planned economy, such as an overemphasis on heavy industry, innumerable production bottlenecks, low productivity and allocative inefficiency.

Yet the market reforms also created a host of new social problems. Of all people, China's supposedly Marxist leadership should have foreseen that their reforms would entail increasing levels of worker exploitation, skyrocketing wealth inequality, rapidly expanding corruption and accepting a subordinate position in the global economy. Market-led development has also created innumerable severe environmental problems: China's cities are the most polluted in the world, its waterways are filled with industrial runoff, its forests are disappearing.

Of course we should avoid misplaced nostalgia for the prereform period. Aside from the clear economic problems with central planning, Chinese society before 1979 was highly repressive and imposed strict limits on freedoms of movement, speech, association, sexuality and job choice. Today these freedoms are still restricted in key ways, but the market reforms have helped to expand freedom in China, often in ways unintended by the officials responsible.

Yet neither should we succumb to the kind of free market boosterism so common in the Chinese and Western media. The reforms may have increased freedom, but they have done so in deeply unequal ways and often with ambiguous results. Peasants are now free to leave the land and move to the cities — where they become second-class citizens and highly exploited workers. People are free to pick their own jobs, but what exactly are their choices? For the millions of rural migrants to the cities, their choice is between one kind of degrading work or another, all for pittance wages with no job security or healthcare and no access to education for their children.

Though incomes in China have risen several times over, the new burden of fees for basic services and rising taxes have also increased rapidly, leaving many people actually worse off than before. Nearly everyone once enjoyed the system of public services that included free healthcare, free education and free housing. Of course the market now offers many more choices when it comes to these basic needs, but only the small middle class, 10 to 15 percent of the population, can afford such choices. Just one-third of the country has even basic health insurance, and a World Health Organization survey in 2000 ranked China fourth from last in healthcare fairness. Stuck between school fees for their children and medical fees for their parents or themselves, millions upon millions of peasants must leave their families, travel hundreds of miles to the cities, and suffer appalling working conditions and the contempt of urban residents just to get by.

The reforms have restricted the very intimate power that party cadres once wielded over people's work lives, family lives and even love lives. Yet the decentralization of administrative power has given local officials greater leeway to squeeze taxes out of peasants and expropriate their land, as well as to exploit connections in corrupt or nepotistic fashion. The central government has repeatedly promised to crack down on corruption, yet its power over localities has been deeply compromised by decentralization, and the anti-corruption campaigns amount to little more than rhetoric. Meanwhile the market reforms have ushered in a dramatic rise in previously miniscule social problems like unemployment, homelessness and violent crime.

Popular opposition to the problems created by markets is strong and growing. The Western media have generally misunderstood or ignored this trend. In the 1989 protests that culminated in the massacre around Tian'anmen Square, for instance, the media portrayed only a "Democracy Movement" led by idealistic young students hungry for Western politics. To some extent this was accurate, but what gave the protests real power — and what terrified the government most — was that workers protesting the effects of economic liberalization, especially inflation, joined the demonstrations. The complex reality didn't fit the media's story line, and their blanket prescription for solving China's problems remained unchanged: more market reform.

It's no different today, as the Western media's two most popular economic suggestions to China show. The first is to legally enshrine property rights, ostensibly to help peasants protect their land from corrupt officials who confiscate it and sell it to developers for their own profit. The second is to privatize state-owned enterprises so that they can slim down and start making money. Great suggestions from the point of view of investors, but these reforms would be a disaster for regular workers and peasants. All land is currently state-owned, a vestige of socialism that makes it easy for corrupt officials to force peasants off their land. Already 70 million peasants have lost their land this way. Yet changing land into a private commodity would expose peasants to another equally dangerous threat: expropriation through the market. One of the Chinese revolution's greatest achievements was destroying the old system of a few large landowners controlling masses of destitute tenants. That system would quickly reemerge if land were once again subject to the market.

As the government moves closer to privatizing land, it is already privatizing many state-owned enterprises. Since these businesses are some of the only ones still providing job security and full benefits to their employees, their higher costs leave them uncompetitive against all the rest, which exploit their workers to the breaking point. Not only does privatization lead to major job losses and benefit cuts, but it also allows corrupt officials and their family and friends to accumulate great private wealth at public expense as they buy the companies for next to nothing or rob the pension funds of the employees. Declining job quality and increasing unemployment: this is what economists call "efficiency."

The countless victims of the market reforms don't take all this lying down, as the rapid rise in demonstrations attests. But what are the chances for success in winning something better? Progressive movements face an uphill struggle.

China's two central problems today are the vast, unaccountable power of the state and the growing strength of the market and private wealth. Since the reforms began in 1979, these two forces have forged a powerful and mutually beneficial bond. The state imposes markets, pays for key business requirements like infrastructure and skilled education, develops key sectors through targeted subsidies and protectionism, and represses the social unrest caused by markets. Intimate personal links nourish an alliance between the two sides: most successful businessmen are either former government officials or officials' close friends or family.

Given the strength and unity of elites, workers and peasants can only win meaningful change by uniting as well. Yet protests in China remain local and isolated. The government is partly responsible, controlling the news media and repressing any organization that might serve as a unifying force. But perhaps the bigger problem is how protesters themselves see their problems.

Rural protesters generally aim their ire against some local official who has imposed heavy taxes or expropriated their land or against a factory that has poisoned their air or water. When, inevitably, the official refuses concessions, the peasants frequently send a representative to Beijing to appeal to the central government for help. Labor protests are similarly local in focus. Protesters complain that their boss has stolen their pension fund or illegally forced them off the job, rarely taking aim at the market structures that encourage such abuses.

The problem, directly tied to the fragmented and isolated nature of social protest in China, is that the victims of the state and markets have no structural critique of the forces working against them, and, therefore, no consciousness of how closely related their struggles are. They direct their anger against mere agents — local officials or factory bosses — of those forces, rather than against the government and the economic system, which gives those agents power in the first place. In my two years living in China, I've heard many people criticize the course of their country, but I've never heard anyone locate these problems in the fundamental systems that structure Chinese power and wealth.

The problem should be familiar to Americans, because we suffer from the same short-sightedness. Every new war, every new corporate scandal, every time we hear that the government is spying on citizens or torturing foreigners, every time the number of people without health insurance increases — every perfectly predictable result of the power structure in the United States takes us by surprise. The answer to unceasing abuses of power, in the United States as in China, is to develop a structural understanding of how the inequality of power is built and maintained and how we can undo it. This approach also points toward the strategic and moral necessity of a unified social movement demanding fundamental restructuring rather than tinkering on the margins.

The problems of China may seem far away, but they're not so different from those Americans face, and they're connected in important ways. To address these problems we must all understand what we're facing and all get involved to fix it.
For more information:

On the healthcare system, see The Wall Street Journal, December 5 and 30, 2005.

On inequality and social unrest, see The New York Times series “The Great Divide,” October 13, November 10, December 8, 21 and 31, 2004.

On migrant workers, see Dorothy Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market.

On the economics of market reform, see Barry Naughton, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978-1993.

Progressive reformers inside a colonial puppet state

This is a political fable from a book I'm reading called Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism by Louise Young (1998).

I didn't know much about Japanese imperialism in Manchuria before reading this book, so I was pretty surprised to learn that Japanese leftists were very supportive of 满洲国/Manzhouguo (usually rendered in English as Manchukuo - the puppet state created by the Japanese military in today's 东北/Dongbei, northeast China). Not only that, leftist intellectuals in droves actually took up jobs in the Manzhouguo colonial administration and, despite their deep skepticism of imperialism, enthusiastically took part in the Manzhouguo enterprise.

Young cites two main reasons for the bizarre alliance between Japan's most progressive intellectuals and its most right-wing force, the military. First, public intellectual space in Japan was rapidly closing down as the climate of repression and compulsory nationalism forced many leftist intellectuals out of their previous safe haven in the universities. At the same time, ideological space in Manzhouguo was suprisingly open as the military tolerated - until the early 1940s at least - liberal and leftist academics because it needed their cooperation in gathering key information to form policy and suppress opposition. Excluded and facing persecution at home, leftists surged into the many research, administration, and policymaking jobs in Manzhouguo.

Second, leftists genuinely believed that they could make a revolution in Manzhouguo. Disappointed by the failure of their dreams on the home islands, they turned to Japan's newest colony. Yet they came not in desperation or weariness, but with great optimism. The absolute power of the colonial state to crush local opposition to progressive reform - which had been frustrated time and again inside Japan by intransigent landowners and businessmen - made the leftists believe that their dreams could be achieved. This time, working from the inside would succeed.

How valid these hopes actually were is captured in this vignette:

Mantetsu's [the state-controlled enterprise that had a vast research arm responsible for supplying much of the information needed by the military puppet regime] researchers and Sinologists...tried to provide analyses that took account of the force of Chinese nationalism and advised that military aggression would just make the problems worse. The "Investigation of the Resistance Capacity of the Chinese"..., one of the enormous "integrated" research projects undertaken by Mantetsu at the close of the decade, aimed to convince the army of this point as forcefully as possible.... Under the general editorship of Japanese Communist Party operative Nakanishi Kō, the report submitted to the Kwantung Army [hanyu pinyin: Guandong Army, the Japanese military force running Manzhouguo] in 1940...asserted that Japan could not win the war with China militarily. But when Nakanishi presented the research team's findings with the recommendation that Japan end the war politically to general staff headquarters in Tokyo, he was greeted with silence and finally one question from a young staff officer: "So, then, what sites would it be best for us bomb?" (p. 280-281)

There's two lessons we can take away from this. First, the Chomskian analysis that judges all progressive rhetoric surrounding imperialism as nothing more than cynical manipulation is too simple. Many imperialists deeply believe that what they're doing will forge a more just, more equal world. Of course, the Chomskian skepticism of such claims is, at least in this case, borne out.

Second, "working from within" to accomplish change is a questionable proposition. I wouldn't say it's inappropriate under all circumstances. Yet it does take a nearly willful naïveté to think you can turn institutions in which ultimate power is held by fundamentally right-wing or reactionary forces toward progressive ends. A current example that springs immediately to mind is those progressives who championed the invasion of Iraq as an instance of humanitarian intervention despite the overwhelming evidence that the institutions actually planning the invasion had far different purposes in mind.

More broadly, it's worth questioning whether working from within the state or any corporation is more likely to promote reform or merely provide the information that the leaders of these organizations need to execute their assuredly anti-progressive policies. People are remarkably agile in the rationalizations they perform to justify taking secure or lucrative jobs, but I suspect that "working from within" is almost never useful except when those "working from the outside" are particularly strong.

New book by Michael Albert

As anyone likely to read this knows, I'm a big proponent of participatory economics as a replacement for capitalism. In my opinion, Michael Albert - one of the two who first proposed the parecon system - is one of the most important theorists of leftist politics now working. Altho I'm less taken by his prose style and interpersonal skills, I strongly recommend Albert's writing for anyone interested in progressive social change.

Albert's new book, Realizing Hope: Life beyond Capitalism is coming out this month. In it he goes beyond his previous work on parecon and movement building to discuss much more broadly what kinds of social arrangements we might work toward for a society of equality and participation. He takes up race, gender, the political system, and the environment; more narrowly focused issues like education, art, and crime; and ideological debates around Marxism and anarchism. He explores how a participatory economy would interact with these systems, and what our strategy could be to pursue radical change.

I haven't kept up with Albert's writing over the last couple years, so I'm interested to see what he has to say (especially on the matter of "other species", since his disdain for animal welfare/liberation movements has been all too evident in the past). Thinking thru the institutional basis for the kind of ethnic/racial, gender, and political relations we should be fighting for has been almost entirely abandoned by the left, and enunciating what kind of society we want is an urgent priority. Our strategy for pursuing radical change is similarly neglected, and sometimes it seems like Albert is the only one out there raising these issues. Hopefully this book makes the kind of vital contributions Albert has made in the past, and even more important, that it helps stimulate the discussions we need to be having on vision and strategy.

book info and table of contents
Introduction to the book
interview with Albert on the book

Send forth the respectable protesters!

Todd Gitlin is once again calling for the domestication of the antiwar movement. He wants "the 'Giant Puppet,' 'Bongo circles for peace,' and 'Street Theatre' crowd" to stop running protests so as to avoid alienating mainstream support and allow the "adult" protesters to "increase their leverage and avoid getting painted into a corner."

He's making two substantive points: 1) "weird"/"immature" Americans participating in protests gives war apologists a chance to appeal to mainstream Americans - who might otherwise be skeptical of the war - on grounds of shared cultural identity; 2) the movement's attempt to link the war in Iraq to other issues, such as "the World Bank, Israel, and [a] demand [for] unilateral Nuclear Disarmament", is, well, it isn't good. He doesn't explain why, but we can assume it's because it distracts from the goal of getting American troops out of Iraq, which is easy to unify people behind, and brings in a lot of unrelated issues that might alienate mainstream supporters.

The first point is well-taken, but what's the point in blaming the left for it? Right-wing smear artists (and the media) will always play up elements in the protests that seem strange to mainstream Americans. And really, is street theater that alienating to average people? It's just puppets for godsakes. What Gitlin seems to want is to have serious men in business suits - the antiwar "adults" - negotiating with the serious men in business suits who are killing Iraqis. Those protesters who don't conform to the rules - both political and cultural - laid down by the people who run our society are to be excluded.

The second point? It's true that making connections between the war in Iraq and other aspects of American foreign policy, or global capitalism, or cultural imperialism will to some extent diffuse the power of the movement. But we have to ask ourselves, what is the point of the movement? Is it merely to get the troops out of Iraq? What would that accomplish, other than saving the lives of a small number of Americans? (Iraq is headed for civil war, as it was from the moment Saddam Hussein fell, so the USA leaving probably won't save any Iraqi lives.)

No, the most important goal of the movement is to use an unusually high-profile political issue to educate people on the fundamental source of the Iraq disaster - the global American system of political and economic domination. Drawing connections between that system and its consequences in Iraq and every other country in the world is our task. Pulling the troops out of Iraq will not prevent the next war, and will certainly do nothing to address the countless other human catastrophes currently under way because American global hegemony.

So the first thing the movement must do is radicalize people, ie show them the structural sources of problems that are usually attributed to the individual ineptitude or immorality of particular political leaders. Then it must bring them into the movement, because the only way that such deep-seated structures can be rooted out is thru an overwhelming popular mobilization. If the movement merely sends forth its respectable-looking representatives to negotiate an end to American involvement in Iraq, as Gitlin would have it, the whole thing will have been in vain.

Taking city politics seriously

Does it seem strange that people on the left don't talk about city politics? We know exactly what's going on in Iraq or Argentina, we know exactly which social forces are at work and what arguments to use against our opponents. But ask us how power is organized in Chicago or LA, what the key issues are, what social groups we can look to as allies, and we're completely lost.

At least I have been, and based on the lack of writing about it in progressive publications it seems like I'm not alone. Chicago is a city seemingly full of opportunities for the left. Huge inequalities of wealth, entire sections of the city (mostly populated by minorities) left to decay and violence, inadequate public transit, major environmental concerns, increasing business homogenization, loss of public space, low wages, exploitation of immigrants, &c, &c. Yet there's virtually no progressive civil society to speak of. Electoral politics is run by the Daley machine and there's basically no public debate over city policies. Hardly any local publications cover these issues, besides occasional good reporting in The Reader, The Chicago Reporter, and Chicago Indymedia. Community groups function here and there, but with almost no visibility or power. Cooperative businesses are nowhere to be found.

So this is a call for leftists to re'engage with city issues. It's not just that there are a lot of extremely important struggles that are being neglected, it's also an important strategic issue. The kinds of social movements we need to make any sort of national or global structural changes won't have any force without a strong base in communities and democratic businesses. We don't get that by ignoring what's going on where we live.

For my Chicago friends, this article is a good place to start. We need to understand how power works before we can confront it. In Chicago, Daley's machine Democrats work with developers, unions, businesses with city contracts, and international business interests in finance, law, and manufacturing to keep a stranglehold on politics and the economy. And they do it with virtually no dissent. That has to end.

Hope is on the way?!

Is MoveOn.org actually getting more annoying? I guess they were always wholly subordinate to the Democratic Party, but as the campaign progresses they become more and more shameless about it.

In an e-mail they sent out today, this is what they had to say:

When you watch John Kerry tonight, allow yourself to imagine a better future. Imagine an America which is respected throughout the world, and which strives to do right by all of the citizens of the world. Imagine living in a country where the values of community, respect, and empathy are held highest. Imagine having a President who, like President Roosevelt, believes that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

We'll have a lot of work to do on November 3rd when Kerry is our new President. But we'll wake up that morning able to dream big dreams for a country and a world that are once again headed in the right direction.

I know we're all taught as kids how important it is to exercise our imaginations, but to imagine a Democratic president leading the world in the "right direction" is asking far too much.

What we'd get with Kerry is what we had with Clinton: Policies meant to expand American global hegemony, but done under the guise of multilateralism — less aggressive, certainly, but perhaps more effective, especially in the current climate. Tepid support for progressive domestic measures to address social inequalities, with little to no policy follow-thru. Allowing corporate priorities to set the economic agenda at home and abroad.

Groups like MoveOn are far too quick to ignore how Democrats actually govern, and far too eager to amplify their campaign rhetoric. This is not how to build a progressive movement. Tricking people into having hope every four years doesn't do much good when those hopes are always cruelly disappointed. The outcome is apathy and cynicism.

I don't have a problem with people voting Democrat if that's what they want to do. But to do so naively is the worst possible course. Vote with your eyes open, and with the understanding that no matter how many times the Republicans are defeated, the Democrats will never eliminate fundamental global and domestic inequalities. For that to happen we must pursue the much harder work of organizing communities and building democratic businesses. Don't expect political elites to do the work for us.

What to do about nationalism and electoralism

Justin Podur, a Canadian writer for ZNet, posted recently about two important topics for the left to think about: nationalism and electoralism.

I added my thoughts about nationalism in the comments to his post. The left has historically been internationalist in its rhetoric, but anti-imperialist movements and communist revolutions have almost always governed in distinctly nationalist ways when they came to power, generally to the great harm of their people. But would their success have been possible without nationalism to mobilize support? Do the gains they make outweigh the damage their nationalism does?

On electoralism I spelled out my thoughts in this article. While I'm ultimately opposed to representative "democracy", I also think electoral strength is an important means to a more progressive society. Yet the electoral system isn't much use to us as long as we remain weak in our ability to mobilize people or money. So the priority should be building social movements, community organizations, and democratic businesses. If that can be done thru electoral organizing, fine. But that should always be the focus, and mustn't be lost in the strange obsession many leftists have in figuring out who to vote for (as if one vote matters).

Market discipline for Europe

For some time now people on the left have been warning that EU expansion into the former Soviet empire would be used European elites to drive down working conditions and dismantle the European social compact. That effort is now starting to shift into high gear.

Siemens, one of Germany's most important corporations, has just used the threat of shifting work to Hungary to force workers at two of its factories to accept a 5-hour increase in the work week and elimination of the Christmas bonus with not increase in wages. This is part of a Europe-wide effort on the part of employers to break the limited work weeks that have been won over the last 30 years.

Since World War II, Europe's strong labor movement has won impressive gains that the much weaker unions of the United States could only dream of. 35 hour work weeks, 25-30 vacation days/year, universal healthcare, good unemployment insurance. American commentators like to ascribe this to cultural differences: Americans have a stronger work ethic, Europeans value leisure more. But unless someone can point out the millions of American workers who would turn down a month of vacation every year at the same wages, the difference is simply one of power. In the fight over who will control the wealth generated by industrial economies, the workers are weaker in the USA so they get less of the benefits.

Unfortunately, European unions became complacent and stopped short of demanding truly radical transformations: workers' control of factories, the elimination of management, ending private ownership of businesses, abolition of markets. The fundamental dynamics of a capitalist economy were not done away with, merely repressed. Now that employers can take advantage of low-wage competition in Eastern Europe and other poor countries to increase their leverage, they'll go back on the offensive.

This is part of a worldwide reassertion of power by the ownership class against workers that's been unfolding for 30 years. In the poor countries it's called "structural adjustment" and imposed by the IMF. In the USA it's seen in the shift to casual/part-time work for low benefits and pay as the cities deindustrialize. Here it's called "globalization". Western Europe is the last holdout, but the process is getting underway there too. Everywhere, welfare measures are being dismantled, businesses are privatized, regulations are eliminated, labor is increasingly exploited, elites are increasingly powerful and rich.

If all you do is reform capitalism when you're strong, it'll only be a matter of decades before the system reasserts itself and all your gains are undone.

Does the left love capitalism?

Michael Albert today added an interesting post to his blog on participatory economics. It seems that while audiences up to and including the mainstream in countries around the world are interested in hearing about parecon, in the USA not even liberals will give it a shot.

Outside the country, Albert is invited to conferences, the latest parecon book is translated and reviewed, meanwhile American leftist publications like The Nation or The Progressive won't even review the book much less start up a discussion on the vision.

This is strange, to say the least. Liberals know that free markets make all kinds of social inequalities much worse, that they destroy the environment, that they corrupt politics. And here's a proposal that would eliminate markets and replace them with something egalitarian and democratic. Wouldn't we at least want to talk about it?

Maybe these liberals are afraid of appearing too radical? Do they fear that talking about ending capitalism would hurt their credibility? It's possible. But credibility with whom? Who is their audience? Is it regular men and women, or is it those who hold power in society? Most mainline liberal organizations, like NOW, the PIRGs, NAACP, &c, focus their attention on appeals to legislators, corporate leaders, and other highly-placed authority figures. These people would of course dismiss any fundamental challenge to free markets — their power is based on the status quo.

Regular people are too often merely foot soldiers to man the phone banks and collect the petitions, not individuals to be mobilized and empowered in new structures of power. Maybe this audience would be more receptive?

Another possibility, as Albert has suggested, is that the leaders of these magazines and organizations themselves have a class interest in preventing the sort of nonhierarchical structures of parecon. They, like their counterparts in government and corporations, serve at the top of hierarchies, receiving greater pay and authority than those they order around. The people who fund these organizations and read these magazines, too, tend to be from an educated, professional background, expecting the power and perks that accrue to their class. In parecon these sorts of inequities would be eliminated.

Whatever the reason, it's time for the left to stop being afraid. The injustices we fight against, from race to foreign policy, can't be solved as long as capitalism reigns.

(I make the case for parecon here)

Here comes the Green Party

Even most leftists probably don't know the Greens are holding their presidential nominating convention in Milwaukee right now. The candidate will be announced on Saturday. Ralph Nader, who's running as an independent, has taken himself out of the process but said he would accept the Greens' "endorsement".

This seems like a bad idea. Electoral politics is a losing proposition for the left in the first place. It doesn't make sense to put any effort or thought into it unless it's part of what our real focus should be, building grassroots social movements, community organizations, and democratic businesses.

A lot of people thought Ralph Nader's 2000 run for president as a Green could do just that. And the broad similarities between Bush and Gore did bring a lot of people into independent organizing as they sought out an alternative. But Nader — unforgivably — followed up that momentum with nothing. He let that energy dissipate, and let those people demobilize.

Ah well, maybe it's for the best. A good left electoral party can't depend on the charismatic appeal of one (rather authoritarian) leader anyway. Nader served his purpose by publicizing the Green Party, and now he's left it, hopefully allowing it to prosper on its own. And hopefully the Greens don't make the mistake of going back to him.

Unfortunately Nader is determined to run again, this time explicitly forsaking party organizing. This is only going to distract from the task at hand, building a strong grassroots party that can thrive if the movement behind it ever starts expanding. Progressives would be wise to repudiate the great-man Nader approach and seriously consider whoever the Greens choose.

The leading non-Nader candidate for the Green nomination is David Cobb, a lawyer and Green activist from Texas. Salon inteviewed him, sadly/predictably concentrating on Nader and the Democrats rather than the Greens or actual issues, but at least you get a feel for the guy. He seems committed to building the party, and the issues he singles out are key:

we're going to articulate the need to end the occupation of Iraq and bring the troops home, we're going to make the case for universal healthcare, raising the minimum wage to a living wage, the need to publicly fund elections, to end the racist war on drugs, and to provide a fair tax policy that provides tax relief to the poor and working classes in this country.

For those of you who care about such things, he wants to run a "safe-states" strategy concentrating resources on uncompetitive states and leaving the swing states for Kerry to win.

People in swing states will actually have to consider voting for Kerry. But for people in states like California, Illinois, or New York, the question should only be whether to pick Nader or whoever the Greens nominate. Hopefully the convention gives us that choice by denying Nader the endorsement, and hopefully we choose the party over the man.