Systemic alternatives and local activism – David McNally

From "David McNally: The Global Economic Meltdown", Chapter Four of Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult by Sasha Lilley (PM Press, 2011)

SL: Are you concerned at all about a crisis of ideas on the left? One segment of the left seems to be pushing for a return to the Keynesian welfare state, which characterized the social democracies following WWII and to a lesser extent the U.S. And, on the other hand, you have those focusing very specifically on local struggles and less on a wholesale, systemic agenda for transformation. Does it concern you that there aren't ideas currently in circulation that really would be able to address this crisis?

DM: Yes... There's a danger that ... those who are speaking to what we may call systemic alternatives are really trying to do that in Keynesian terms. That is to say they are really imagining that we can go back to, say 1940s, 1950s, early 1960s styles of capitalism with much more regulation. ... I think that it does not address the world in which we live. It's just a dead end for the left. ...

The danger then is that the alternative is seen as a certain kind of local activism, and believe me, I'm a big believer in digging in and ... building resistance movements where we are ... But I think we ... actually squander certain opportunities right now if we're not putting forward a wider anticapitalist systemic approach. In other words, raising issues about:

• how an economy might be reorganized,
• how global relations between North and South might be reorganized,
• popularizing ideas like social ownership, workers' self-managed production, the reduced work-week across the board,
• the redistribution of wealth from North to South,
• the green economy, and so on

–really developing an integrated response which isn't Keynesian but which really does speak to the global realities in which we find ourselves today.

[T]hat discussion is clearly happening in other parts of the world. The statement by the World Social Movement's meeting in Brazil as part of the World Social Forum was very much exactly to that point. They are trying to move toward that kind of analysis and perspective. But I think in North America in particular we've tended to lag behind. I think the Latin American movements are ahead of us on that in particular. I think the activist left in some of the European countries, particularly France, are ahead of us on that.

[L]ocal activism is crucial because that's where you build the actual resistance movements of the day, but at the same time this is a moment for the really serious left to think on a much wider scale as to how to begin to popularize alternative economics and anticapitalist forms of organization. Because this is an opportunity where we don't want our voices to be either lost because we're only doing the local activism or to be speaking in the outmoded language of Keynesianism.

In that sense, the slogan which has come out of Venezuela about a socialism for the twenty-first century seems to me to be more urgent than ever before. It's an opportunity to really redefine socialism and anticapitalism in terms of its original democratic commitments and its internationalist commitments. I think there's a lot of space for that if we can figure out how to do it.

Examples of Resistance

For our final meeting, our primary topic is to consider the range of responses and resistance to the global economic crisis, and to project from the previous discussions what might be the economic environment for collective liberation in the next period.

Preparing for our discussion, the thinking (journaling? free writing?) part is more important than the reading, which can only be a small sample of the hundreds of thousands of activist projects taking place.

Nevertheless, I have picked out instances which range from the ultra-local (Occupy Bernal) to a small nation (Iceland, as we mentioned last time), to international (Bolivarian revolution) to abstract ("The Global Economic Meltdown" in Capital and Its Discontents). Below are links to articles which address these. I would also encourage everyone to follow Sharon's suggestion to look over the very substantial Catalyzing Liberation Toolkit prepared by Catalyst for Occupy organizers, available as a 184 page PDF file from the Occupy Resource Center of their website, collectiveliberation.org.

About Occupy Bernal:

• "Occupy Bernal, Petaluma zero in on foreclosures" in the SF Chronicle Business Report with Bloomberg February 6, 2012 by Carolyn Said
• February 22, 2012 on CBS San Francisco: "SF Homeowner Gets Last-Minute Eviction Reprieve"
• "After Pressure from Occupy Bernal, Wells Fargo execs fly across country to meet with Bernal Heights man" on the SFBG Politics Blog February 23, 2012,  by Yael Chanoff

About Iceland (Mickey may recommend something additional):

• "Icelandic Anger Brings Debt Forgiveness in Best Recovery Story" By Omar R. Valdimarsson - Feb 19, 2012 on Bloomberg.com.

About "21st Century Socialism," "Communitarian Socialism" and new Internationals:

• "Evo's Way: Bolivia's Path to Socialism" by Roger Burbach, Counterpunch, April 6, 2010

About Keynesian reforms versus collective liberation:

• A brief excerpt from David McNalley in Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult by Sasha Lilley (PM Press, 2011) (sent by email).

For additional reading, Sharon recommends  a pair of long letters from some of the leaders of the California prison hunger strike:

• "California prison hunger strikers propose ‘10 core demands’ for the national Occupy Wall Street Movement" by Heshima Denham, Zaharibu Dorrough and Kambui Robinson, San Francisco Bay View, December 6, 2011
•  "A discussion on strategy for the Occupy Movement from behind enemy lines" by J. Heshima Denham, Zaharibu Dorrough and Kambui Robinson of the NCTT Corcoran Security Housing Unit (SHU), San Francisco Bay View, February 19, 2012

The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism

The international (imperial) dimensions of unemployment and employment issues are addressed forcefully in an article in Monthly Review, "The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism" by John Bellamy Foster, Robert W. McChesney, and R. Jamil Jonna (November 2011). Some of the language of the article is dry and academic, but it is worth checking out. 

One chart in particular, showing the reserve army itself, captures a great deal (worth a thousand words, as they say):
 

More Unemployment Insurance politics

Here is an update to the Congressional debate about extending current Unemployment Insurance benefits that was reported in an earlier blog post. I think it is especially helpful to look at the deal in light of the Shock Doctrine.

The article below is from the New York Times. The same developments are reported with slightly different slants in the SF Chronicle, Yahoo and elsewhere.

www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/us/politics/panel-completes-last-details-of-tax-cut-extension.html

February 15, 2012
Panel Completes Last Details of Payroll Tax Cut Extension

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — Members of a House-Senate committee charged with writing a measure to extend a payroll tax reduction said Wednesday that their work was done, just shy of an hour before their deadline to get a bill ready for a Friday vote.

After fighting until the very final hour over how to pay for parts of a $150 billion plan that would also extend unemployment benefits and prevent a pay cut for doctors who accept Medicare, leaders of both parties put together a bill that the majority of the committee could support.

While the substance of most issues had largely been worked out this week, Democrats from Maryland — home to many federal workers — held up an agreement at the last minute debating whether a pay freeze for  federal workers or a reduction in scheduled raises would be more acceptable  than changes to pensions for some employees as a way to pay for continuing jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.

Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, a Maryland Democrat who is on the conference committee, and Representative Chris Van Hollen, also a Democrat of Maryland, said they were unhappy with provisions affecting federal employees.

With no support from Senate Republicans — who Senate Democrats said earlier in the week had not been very involved in the drafting of the report — it came down to Mr. Cardin, who was reluctant to give the needed signature to push the report toward the floors for a vote.

Mr. Cardin was called Wednesday by President Obama, who strongly wanted the provisions and leaned heavily on the senator to give his approval, senior administration officials said.

While the committee’s work has the blessing of House Republican leadership, many rank-and-file Republicans, while cheered by a reduction in unemployment benefits and proposed erosion of the health care law, were nonetheless leaning against the deal.

“They are framing it as a middle-class tax cut even though this is a significant change to how Social Security has traditionally been treated,” said Representative Jeff Fortenberry, Republican of Nebraska, who plans to oppose the measure. “The payroll tax keeps Americans attentive to the fact that they put a little bit aside each check for Social Security. That connection is now gone.”

Lawmakers had hoped for a final vote on the measure in at least the House, if not both chambers, by Friday, before Congress is set to recess for a week. But the late hour of the deal combined with the technical issues that remained with the measure suggested that a vote would be delayed until at least Saturday. Under House rules, bills are meant to be posted three days before a vote.

Under the agreement reached by House and Senate negotiators, the current reduction in the employee’s share of the Social Security payroll tax — to 4.2 percent of wages, from 6.2 percent — would be continued to the end of the year. Revenue lost to the Social Security trust fund would be fully replaced with money from the general fund of the Treasury.

For a worker with annual earnings of $50,000, the payroll tax holiday would increase take-home pay by $1,000 over the course of the year.

The bipartisan agreement also revamps unemployment insurance, reducing the maximum duration of benefits in states with high unemployment to 73 weeks, from the current 99. Currently, fewer than half of states are eligible for 93 weeks or more of unemployment insurance, with just 18 states getting the full maximum of 99 weeks.

The roughly $30 billion price will be picked up by the sale of radio spectrum licenses and the federal worker benefit changes.

Under the agreement, states will be allowed to conduct drug testing for anyone who lost a job because the person failed or refused to take an employer’s drug test, and they could test anyone seeking a job that generally requires such a test, a provision similar to existing law.

Federal workers were not pleased with the proposed changes, with Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, calling them “absolutely outrageous.” She said House and Senate negotiators were tentatively planning to save $15 billion over 10 years by reducing the government contribution to pensions for new federal employees and requiring the workers to contribute more.

The agreement extends the nation’s main welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, through the current fiscal year. States will have to prevent welfare recipients from using electronic benefit cards at liquor stores, casinos and strip clubs. In addition, the legislation blocks a 27 percent cut in payments to doctors treating Medicare patients. In effect, this assures that beneficiaries will have access to their doctors after March 1, when the cut was to have taken effect.

Dr. Peter W. Carmel, president of the American Medical Association, said his group was “deeply disappointed” that the agreement, while delaying the cut for 10 months, did not replace the statutory formula that requires such cuts. Republicans boasted that they had cut spending under the new health care law to help pay for Medicare spending under the agreement. For example, the agreement cuts $5 billion from a special account created by the new law to promote public health.

To help offset the cost of paying doctors under Medicare, the agreement will also reduce payments to hospitals.       

On the politics of unemployment insurance

In today's press there are a couple interesting stories about the debate in Congress over unemployment insurance (UI): cutting benefits, drug testing, limiting UI to high school graduates, diverting UI funds to politicians' pet projects. A new frontier for neoliberalism.

In today's San Francisco Chronicle, business columnist Kathleen Pender gives a good brief summary: "Deadline for federal jobless benefits looms" while Colorlines focuses on the racially coded demonization of UI recipients at "House GOP’s Jobless Image: Drugged Out, Lazy and in Need of a GED".

Unemployment measures and policy

A couple mainstream (but still helpful) ways of looking at unemployment are charted in the graphs linked from the post of First Readings below. Unemployment statistics are important in themselves, and they are also a good example of how to look at all types of economic reports. A typical example of a news report is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly report for January, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Unemployment Decline Masks U.S. Labor Force Drop: Economy".

For a first critique, look at Paul Craig Roberts' "Do the Job Numbers Really Add Up?" on Counterpunch. Then follow up with a closer look at the gender inequality involved: Laura Flanders' "From 'Man-cession' to 'Man-covery'", also on Counterpunch.

And then check out the policy debate in Congress: "Effort to Dismantle Unemployment Insurance Revived in Congress as Conference Committee Convenes" from the National Employment Law Project.

And of course the point of all this is to consider how these economic trends and structures shape the environment for political organizing? 

Caste? In the US? Caste and Unemployment

Look at unemployment and racial caste in Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, the sections "Boxed In" and "The Black Box", pages 145-150 (1st ed.) You can find this on the Scribd web site at www.scribd.com/doc/64858828/The-New-Jim-Crow-Michelle-Alexander; search for "Boxed In".