The American Left's Problem With Antisemitism

 https://newrepublic.com/article/184236/american-left-problem-antisemitism

The American Left’s Problem With Antisemitism

 

Anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim hate are just as pernicious, of course. But there is no segment of the left that denies the existence of those. Why do some ignore antisemitism?

 

Venezuela Election Report

 Marc Cooper , from his substack. 

I HAVE to say something about Venezuela. Too much of the American Left along with a few groupuscles in Latin America are the only people in the world still believing that the Maduro Dictatorship in Venezuela is actually an anti-imperialist beacon of socialist solidarity and prosperity.

In fact, it is a hell hole from which a full quarter of the population — some 8 million— have fled. And having run into some of the 700,000 who are now in Chile, these are poor people who were plain hungry and tired of the Chavista-Maduro bullshit.

Maduro has created a new class of wealthy government lackeys, parasites, and favored loyalists who are swimming in money — and not exactly short on cocaine (google Maduro’s wife and family for that one). As Chavez dubbed his regime Bolivarian, the new rich are called the Boliburgueses.

Since the election a week ago Sunday, hundreds of thousands of protesters have come into the streets denouncing the obvious fraud perpetrated. Around 20 have been shot dead. Among the various election observers, many from progressive Latin American organizations, the Carter center, the international press, and the opposition itself, it appears that Maduro actually lost by a margin as big as 2 to 1 but simply declared victory.  The AP has concluded he really lost. Duh. So has everybody else. Well, almost everybody. There are still American progressives like acrobats in pain, contorting themselves to justify one of the most fixed elections in recent history.

Much of the American Left cannot articulate a strong critique of regimes like Venezuela or Cuba for that matter, and currently not even Russia, because there is a large percentage of American lefties who are wittingly or otherwise, are what we Old Leftists call “campists.”

They believe in their hearts that only the US has imperialist or military agency and that any country in the world, regardless of its regime, is to be supported if it is “anti-imperialist” which in the end translates as anti-American. So… for these campists, yeah, Iran and China and even Russia and certainly Venezuela, are seen ONLY as victims of US imperialism with absolutely NO regard for the living conditions of the respective populations. Nor is any independent agency ever assigned to these “anti-imperialist” states because whatever they do, whatever evil they perpetrate on their own people or others, is rotuinely justified by these campists as legitimate resistance to.. multiple choice: a)the cia b) the state department c) NATO, D) and generally, US Imperialism. 

And while leftists are properly quick to point out all the anti-democratic aspects of American elections they are usually dead silent on these sort of chronic human rights violations imposed by various dictatorships — so long as they call themselves socialist (they are not) or, simply engage in phony anti-Imperialist rhetoric. The case study for the latter is Nicaragua where the dictatorial Ortega family has buried both the Sandinista Revolution and basic democracy and in the name of Sandino has imposed a ruthless pro-capitalist dictatorship with socialist rhetoric. I guess that is the China model. Savage capitalist dictatorship with enormous inequality all in the name of Chinese socialism. I mean, how do these reptiles get through a party convention without cracking up in laughter (but dont ask Code Pink about Chinese democracy because China is a victim of US Imperialism — and also a pretty direct funder of Code Pink!

This chronic inability to liberate themselves from these Stalinist impulses, their ability to apologize for brutally anti-democratic dictatorships so long as they are a thorn in the American side. render this sort of American leftist politically inert at best — radioactive at worst.

---------         ----------------            -----------------

 

Many of us will remember Marc Cooper from his informed writings on Chile at the time of the coup, and during the dictatorship.

(https://thecoopscoop.substack.com/p/coop-scoop-do-progressives-really(https://thecoopscoop.substack.com/p/coop-scoop-do-progressives-really))

 

The AP Results.

https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-maduro-machado-biden-gonzalez-a625eb01979bc9cf5570d03242f198b1

 

 

 

Whose Side Are We On? The War in Ukraine and the Crisis of the Left

 

By Van Gosse and Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Portside

 

April 19, 2022 - Whose side are we on? That is the question that anyone professing a commitment to anti-imperialism should be asking, when a sovereign nation is invaded by a Great Power.

 

Blinded by American Exceptionalism, however, many of the U.S. Left are not able to answer the question, and their silence speaks.

 

We must always oppose empire, under any heading. No nation has the right to dominate another, let alone invade and occupy it. That was the principle we as leftists affirmed in 2003, when George W. Bush led the United States into a war of aggression against Iraq.

 

We should state it plainly, in terms of international law. Aggressive war is the first crime of war, from which all the others flow. As the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg stated, “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” 

 

Vladimir Putin has now committed this crime of war, and that is the premise from which we should analyze the crisis in Ukraine: Whose side are we on? That of the war criminals who started the war, or those who are defending their sovereignty? 

 

For ourselves, we are on the side of the Ukrainian people against an unprovoked war of aggression by an imperialist Great Power demonstrating in unmistakable terms what V.I. Lenin denounced as “Great Russian chauvinism.”

 

Here are some questions to consider.

 

Does Russia have “legitimate security interests” in Ukraine and other nations bordering it?

That premise has been affirmed repeatedly by various antiwar organizations, so we need to underline: states large and small have one legitimate security interest, which is to have their sovereignty respected—not to be invaded, bombed, blockaded, or subverted.

 

That is the limit of Russia’s security interest regarding Ukraine. It has no “legitimate interest” in dominating, controlling, or dictating policy to the states bordering it, any more than the U.S. does. Many of us have spent decades denouncing the politics of the Monroe Doctrine, what Theodore Roosevelt defined in 1904 as the U.S.’s right to “the exercise of an international police power” in the Americas, which led to military occupations all over the Caribbean and Central America between 1898 and 1934, the CIA-organized coup in Guatemala in 1954, and the invasions of Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989. That is what it looks like when a Great Power claims “a sphere of influence.” No one claiming to be anti-imperialist should concede any legitimacy to a Russian “sphere of influence.”

 

But hasn’t NATO expansion threatened Russia?

 

As anti-imperialists we oppose militarism in any form, including permanent military pacts, and the aggressive militarism promoted by the U.S.-led NATO alliance. The best way to protect the rights of small nations is to seek demilitarization in Europe and everywhere else. But it is utterly wrong for us to dictate to nations in Eastern Europe whether or not they join an alliance because of the concrete threat that Russia poses to their sovereignty. This is the message the Left in those countries has sent us, and we must respect it as a basic principle of internationalist solidarity. We have no more right to tell them what to do than the U.S. does to pressure or subvert the government of Canada if it chose to leave NATO and conclude a treaty of friendship with China.

 

Doesn’t the United States share responsibility for this war?

 

Like all major historical events, the war in Ukraine has many causes, and many actors were involved. Focusing on what the U.S. did or didn’t do takes the focus off who started it, and absolves Russia from its sole responsibility for initiating a war of aggression. Beyond that, it betrays an Americo-centric view of the world that is at odds with reality. The United States is no longer a world hegemon, it does not determine the course of history, and presuming its centrality makes the U.S. into an exception, standing outside and above the normal relations between states.

 

Shouldn’t we focus on peacekeeping by opposing all weapons transfers to Ukraine?

The Ukrainians have a right to defend their country, and that includes the right to seek aid from anywhere they see fit. It is everyone’s interest to keep this war from spreading, so we should oppose any measures, such as a no-fly zone, that would widen the zone of war across international borders and draw in more nations.

 

We are not pacifists. The Left should avoid confusing pacifism, as in opposition to war in any form, with anti-imperialism. We cannot stand aside and simply condemn the violence. It is in Putin’s hands to stop the war now; until then, we take the side of the Ukrainians.

 

[Van Gosse is a Professor of History at Franklin & Marshall College, and Co-Chair of Historians for Peace and Democracy.

 

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a past president of TransAfrica Forum and a longtime trade unionist and writer.] .

 

As Romney Says Covid Relief Bill 'Not Well-Timed,' Progressives Urge Biden to Abandon GOP Outreach, Move Swiftly on Bold Package

As Romney Says Covid Relief Bill 'Not Well-Timed,' Progressives Urge Biden to Abandon GOP Outreach, Move Swiftly on Bold Package

AOC Interview On Divisions Within the Democratic Party

A Global Left

Progressive International from MEANS OF PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

The Left Needs Strategy for 2020 and Beyond

WEB ONLY / FEATURES » SEPTEMBER 19, 2018

Progressives Need a Clear Strategy for 2020 and Beyond—Here Are 5 Guidelines

We have significant numbers. But we need to continue to build our ranks, and mobilize behind a winning political strategy.

BY MAX ELBAUM AND CALVIN CHEUNG-MIAW

http://inthesetimes.com/article/21451/progressives-left-election-donald-trump-strategy-organizing-analysis

Democrats Move Left

Democrats Move Left 

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/great-moving-left-show-democratic-party?

Max Elbaum, 

What we can learn from the Sixties. He is the author of Revolution in the Air.

Max spoke in Sacramento last month cosponsored by DSA.  This essay focuses on what the Left of today ( DSA) can learn from the turmoil of the Left in the 60’s and 70’s.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/21387/new-communist-movement-democratic-socialists-activism-left

Reading Politics in a Time of Crisis: A book review

Reading Politics in a Time of Crisis – A view from the Left.

By Duane Campbell

As we know, the economic crisis of 2008-2012 disrupted the U.S. economy.  The crisis was much worse in some of the peripheral countries of Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Italy among others), and even more destructive in under-developed regions of African and Asia.

Spanish political leader Pablo Iglesias Turrión has written Politics in a Time of Crisis: Podemos and the Future of European Democracy, published in an English translation by Verso Books. Iglesias provides a critical summary of the crisis that began in the U.S., and spread to much of the world causing political upheavals and leaving misery, starvation, and massive migration in its wake.

We can learn much from reading Iglesias about this crisis in Spain and  other countries and economies, including how the crisis led  several social democratic political parties in Spain, Greece, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe to collaborate with right-wing movements to impose austerity on the people.  This collaboration led to the collapse of  many social democratic political parties, the rise of  authoritarian right-wing parties,  and now the rise of a new left.  A similar process led to the collapse of social democratic parties in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.  Currently in Mexico the formerly left-wing Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD) is working with the right-wing National Action (PAN) party while a new left –the National Regeneration Movement (“MORENA”) may well win this summer’s presidential elections.

Pablo Iglesias, a political science professor, is one of several leaders of Podemos (Spanish for “We Can”), a party of democratic socialism and populism that was born in 2014 and currently commands almost 21 % of the vote in Spain.  In just 4 short years, it became the second largest party in Spain while the traditionally left Socialist Workers party (PSOE) collaborated with a conservative government to impose austerity and lost much of its membership.

Iglesias’ and Podemos’ analysis of the economic crisis beginning in 2008 is that New York and London became the financial capitals of the world.  In the U.S. , the financial sector itself became the most powerful political force- a group he calls the Party of Wall Street:

“The Party of Wall Street is a Leninist party in its way: it is a class party with an international vocation. This party represents those who inhabit the penthouses of the economic system. It is the party that encouraged the selling of subprime mortgages that left millions of Americans homeless.  Under the Secretary of the Treasury and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, it is the party  that brought off a ‘soft’ coup d’etat  in Washington and forced the American government to inject billions of dollars into the banking system. It is the party that Angela Merkel belongs to; the party that controls the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund; the party that imposes structural adjustment programs on developing countries and swingering cuts on the countries of southern Europe[...]The party has been flourishing well before the 2008 crisis, always keeping to a very precise political line: to consolidate the power of finance” (Chapter 3)

According to Iglesias, the Party of Wall Street brought neoliberalism to the U.S. and Europe and  used its power to promote an unstable expansion of credit, while combating wage increases, trade unions and the existing welfare programs. The Party of Wall Street used the rhetoric of promoting free trade and privatization, and its political program was above all else a class project designed to establish and extend the power of financial elites.  The neoliberal projects are directly and closely connected to globalization of finance and the control of the economies of core nations.

I myself have been teaching a course here in California on our economic crisis since 2011, and  Iglesias’  descriptions of the processes that the rich used to loot the U.S. and eventually the world economy  are well-developed and supported by substantial research in the U.S.  His arguments about the Party of Wall Street moves those of us on the left beyond the endless debate about what stance left parties should take toward the Democrats and Hillary Clinton. 

This debate continues while we need to move on to organizing for power.   Meanwhile, a proto-fascist Donald Trump and his retinue have been elected, and have unleashed a reign of terror on the undocumented. They have proposed austerity and budget cuts in child care and health care that will lead to the deaths of many.  Their assault on organized labor is in the offing.

The issue is not good Democrats vs. bad Democrats and fascist Republicans.  As  Iglesias writes, the problem is the Party of Wall Street and how it must be defeated.  The party of Wall Street carried out a financial coup In the U.S. in 2008-2010.  The financial disease then spread to Europe.  U.S. and European banks and financial houses converted their financial losses to “citizen debt” to be paid by government austerity programs:

“ American taxpayers were forced to hand over their money to Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and other fraudsters of the same ilk. … the disease spread, and  outlying European countries soon found themselves in similar predicaments. Countries like Greece, Ireland and Spain, have de-industrialized their economies in favor of tourism, services and construction and allowed financial institutions to pump up property bubbles, now bailed out their own banks… Just as in the U.S., bank debt was converted to citizen debt, which ordinary people would have to pay off in the forms of cuts to public services and ferocious austerity measures. (Chapter 3)

The party of Wall Street convinced European banks that the existing welfare systems and union policies were too expensive, initially in Greece, Spain and Italy.  The effects of government imposed austerity have been horrifying: pension cuts, high unemployment, cuts to health and education systems.  “In Spain by the end of 2013, there were more than six million unemployed, a third of whom received no state assistance, and youth unemployment reached 60 per cent.” (Chapter 3) Austerity policies not only failed to produce growth, they have plundered the economies and created desperate situations for the young and the unemployed.

Perhaps more important than Iglesias’  view of the economic crisis from Spain is the way he and a new left responded- a left that became Podemos.

Spain, of course, is different than the U.S.  It has a fascist past and it is an economically dominated member of the European Union.   It is often called by the media a member of the European “periphery” or “south” as if it should not be considered a member of the Global North any longer.  Spain historically had a socialist government of PSOE, which participated in the government responding to the crisis of imposed European austerity.

Podemos was formed in 2014 based in significant part on the prior protests of 15-M (the “May 15” movement based around protests in May of 2011) against inequality, corruption, and massive unemployment.   In the elections on May 25, 2014, Podemos received some 7.9 % of the national vote and elected 5 members of the European Parliament.  In elections in December of 2015, Podemos received 21 % of the vote and gained 69 out of 350 seats in the Spanish parliament.  Since 2015 the formerly leftist PSOE party has been substantially repudiated for participating in the imposition of neoliberal capitalist policies of bailouts and tax cuts for the rich, and austerity for the great majority.  Social-democratic parties across Europe are facing similar defeats, including most recently the Socialist Party of France.

Led by Iglesias and others, Podemos has created a new form of struggle based in large part on the ideas of people working in the tradition of Gramsci. In Politics in a Time of Crisis, Iglesias reviews the histories of Marxism, and of Leninist parties and social democratic parties in Europe- and where they failed.  He  asserts that a first problem was that the conservatives were winning elections in part because the majority did not participate.

Iglesias argued that since the broad mass of people were not engaging in politics through the existing parties, the left had to go where the people were.  This was a war of ideology and of position.  In addition to local movement organizing, Podemos established a nationwide, web-based television program, “Tuerka,” to advance a left analysis of the crisis. 

With over 25 % unemployment, and over 50% among the young, the people knew there was serious problem.  The critical issue was to explain the crisis in common language so that potential voters could understand the role of the existing parties- the Party of Wall Street, in looting the economy, and the alternatives to this party.

Podemos created a new kind of open, participatory party not weighted down by the corruptions of the past, including corruptions of the established parties and labor union officialdom .

As in the U.S., the banks and the rich recovered, the poor and the working class did not.  And, in Spain as a de-industrialized country as a consequence of EU policy, the impacts on the lives of the working class were more severe, including a rise in hunger nationwide.

The banks were robbing the people. The debt in Spain was private bank debt that the government accepted to placate the Eurozone under threat similar to that of economic war imposed upon Greece..  Conservative governments and social democratic parties collaborated to destroy the Spanish and European social welfare state—including its labor rights—as they did in Greece:

“The central strategy of Podemos was to occupy the centrality of political discussion:  “in Gramscian terms in this war of position was to create a new common sense that would allow us to occupy a transversal position at the heart of a newly reformulated political spectrum.” (Appendix II) 

Podemos offered the population a left perspective in terms all could understand, and, they became the left.  It was not that Podemos organized a new left.  The conditions and events created space for a resistance, and Podemos created the formulation.  They did not create a left- the left existed. It previously lacked some explanatory power because economists, news media, and politicians were  funded by capitalists  and locked in old categories, not addressing the clear and immediate dangers of the economic crisis.  The old left lacked credibility, since it was often collaborating with conservatism to impose austerity.

Podemos recognized that the economic crisis was a political crisis.  It was created by the Party of Wall Street, and it could best be resolved by gaining control of the government through the expansion of democracy not by endless debates about Keynesian or post Keynesian economics.

The economic crisis, of course, is not limited to Spain, nor is the engagement of formerly social democratic parties into the Party of Wall Street.  Iglesias offers many useful insights including comments of the problems of the “infantile” left, and problems of institutionalizing a movement.  But, first, we have to recognize that the issue is about power and that the broad working class can seize power.

The chapter History: the Future Has an Ancient Heart, provides a detailed recounting of recent Spanish political history and the struggle for democracy since the Monarchy of the 1900’s.  The history is important since it was often determinant in shaping the PSOE and the competing labor union federations.  I am confident Spanish readers found many insights there.

Political conditions differ in the U.S., in Mexico and other places.  Bernie Sanders faced a dominant 2 party system and a presidential government.  Spain faces a multiparty system and a parliamentary government.  Mexico is currently in facing the collapse of the prior social democratic opposition – the PRD- and the rise of a citizen’s movement somewhat similar to Podemos in Morena.   The critical election will be in July of 2017.

Despite the differences in how our political systems structurally operate, perhaps we can learn from Iglesias on how a broad-based popular movement was created by movement leaders and activists, rather than an electoral party centered around individual candidates.

 I heartily recommend reading  Politics in a Time of Crisis. There is much we can learn by reading Iglesias’ insights about Spain, Europe, and political organizing.   The author offers valuable insights and examples for those of us seeking to create a left in the U.S. that can achieve power – as opposed to a left that talks primarily to itself.

 And then, we will have to write our own story.

Duane Campbell is a professor emeritus of bilingual multicultural education at California State University Sacramento, a union activist, and past chair of Sacramento DSA. He serves on the Immigrant Rights Committee of DSA’s Anti Racism Working Group and as an editor of the Democratic Left blog.  

The False Dichotomy Between Movement Building and Electoral Politics

By Tom Gallagher

Most people we might think of as being on the American left don’t generally embrace the idea of “American exceptionalism.” There is one apparent exception to this unexceptional point of view, however, at least in some corners of the American left. That is the notion that in the U.S. – unlike any other country with a reasonably democratic system – electoral politics are somehow only an optional part of a serious political movement. The latest expression of this “only in America” point of view comes in response to Senator Bernie Sanders’s declaration of his intention to run in next year’s Democratic Party presidential primaries.

The objections to his candidacy come in at least two variants – “not now” and “never.” The “never” perspective is articulated by David Swanson in hisCounterPunch article, “Invest in Activism, Not Bernie Sanders.” It’s not that Swanson doesn’t like Sanders. On the contrary, although he allows that he has some disagreements with him – which he characterizes as “imperfections” on Sanders’s part – Swanson considers “the contrast with Clinton ... like day to night.” Nevertheless, he pleads, “please do not give him or Hillary or the wonderful Jill Stein or any other candidate a dime or a moment of your life. Instead, join the movement,” referring to people seeking justice on the streets of Baltimore, trying to abolish nuclear weapons in the halls of the United Nations, and doing any number of other valuable things.

This movement, he reminds us, “has always been the driving force for change.” For instance it “gave women the right to vote” and we should support the efforts of those now “struggling to create fair elections through steps like automatic registration in Oregon, and pushing legislation to provide free media, match small donors, give each voter a tax credit to contribute.”

Building the Next Left

A strategy for change: Bill Fletcher

 By Bill Fletcher, Jr. , Carl Davidson 

The 2012 Elections Have Little To Do With Obama's Record … Which Is Why We Are Voting For Him    August 9, 2012  | 

Let’s cut to the chase. The November 2012 elections will be unlike anything that any of us can remember.  It is not just that this will be a close election.  It is also not just that the direction of Congress hangs in the balance.   Rather, this will be one of the most polarized and critical elections in recent history.  

Unfortunately what too few leftists and progressives have been prepared to accept is that the polarization is to a great extent centered on a revenge-seeking white supremacy; on race and the racial implications of the moves to the right in the US political system. It is also focused on a re-subjugation of women, harsh burdens on youth and the elderly, increased war dangers, and reaction all along the line for labor and the working class. No one on the left with any good sense should remain indifferent or stand idly by in the critical need to defeat Republicans this year.

U.S. Presidential elections are not what progressives want them to be

A large segment  of what we will call the ‘progressive forces’ in US politics approach US elections generally, and Presidential elections in particular, as if: (1) we have more power on the ground than we actually possess, and (2) the elections are about expressing our political outrage at the system. Both get us off on the wrong foot.

The US electoral system is among the most undemocratic on the planet.

Demonstrations and violence in Oakland

While thousands marched to support OCW in Oakland, a group of less than 200 anarchists stepped on the media coverage and encouraged police repression.

This is how the AFL-CIO reported on the march on their blog:http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/11/03/occupy-oakland-unions-march-together/

“More than 7,000 Occupy Oakland protesters, union members and community and faith activists peacefully rallied against Wall Street greed, bank foreclosures and for good jobs yesterday in one of the largest demonstrations since the Occupy Wall Street movement began last month.

The Alameda County Labor Council endorsed the Day of Action and encouraged local unions and union members to take part. Many of the union members who joined in the action took unpaid time off work to make their voices heard. Unions also worked with the city government, the Oakland school system and other employers to make leave arrangements.

Bernie Sanders - On Wall Street protests

"Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of

Wall Street -- financial institutions generally -- has

caused severe damage to the people of the United States

(and the world). And should also know that it has been

doing so increasingly for over 30 years, as their power

in the economy has radically increased, and with it

their political power. That has set in motion a vicious

cycle that has concentrated immense wealth, and with it

political power, in a tiny sector of the population, a

fraction of 1%, while the rest increasingly become what

is sometimes called "a precariat" -- seeking to survive

in a precarious existence. They also carry out these

ugly activities with almost complete impunity -- not

only too big to fail, but also "too big to jail."

Noam Chomsky

The End of the New Deal Liberalism- Greider

The End of New Deal Liberalism

William Greider | January 5, 2011

We have reached a pivotal moment in government and politics, and it feels like the last, groaning spasms of New Deal liberalism. When the party of activist government, faced with an epic crisis, will not use government's extensive powers to reverse the economic disorders and heal deepening social deterioration, then it must be the end of the line for the governing ideology inherited from Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson.
Political events of the past two years have delivered a more profound and devastating message: American democracy has been conclusively conquered by American capitalism. Government has been disabled or captured by the formidable powers of private enterprise and concentrated wealth. Self-governing rights that representative democracy conferred on citizens are now usurped by the overbearing demands of corporate and financial interests. Collectively, the corporate sector has its arms around both political parties, the financing of political careers, the production of the policy agendas and propaganda of influential think tanks, and control of most major media.
What the capitalist system wants is more—more wealth, more freedom to do whatever it wishes. This has always been its instinct, unless government intervened to stop it. The objective now is to destroy any remaining forms of government interference, except of course for business subsidies and protections. Many elected representatives are implicitly enlisted in the cause.

What is next ? A progressive agenda. Richard Flacks

What is next? Richard Flacks.

Are you as tired as I am with never-ending critiques of Barack Obama coming from the left as well as the right? Mainstream punditry has decided that he is largely a failed president (never forget that the MSM thought he was a failed candidate before he wasn't). Everyone on the left thinks, as one friend (a committed feminist) said the other night, ‘he has no balls.' The current rage is focused on apparent White House support for some sort of compromise on extending those Bush tax cuts. And there's plenty of other betrayals over which to wring hands and gnash teeth.

Handwringing and teeth gnashing don't bring the needed change, however. Why do we keep playing this blame game?

Let's stipulate, the administration needs to be criticized and pressed to correct course. There's no doubt that the president needs to figure out how to explain his key policies to those whose disapproval seems based on misunderstanding. This seems especially true for health care reform, the complexity of which has been key to its apparent unpopularity (I say this in light of the fact that large majorities approve of most of the specific provisions of the act when these are described). But the demand that Obama become more confrontational in order to challenge the fatuous and foolish GOP in congress isn't good strategic advice for him. The country sees him as trying to solve problems and govern, and sees the GOP already as obstructionist. A significant number of people who once identified as Republican now declare as independents. Here's some recent polling evidence. For us on the left, Obama's reasonableness is frustrating. But it could be his best chance to prevail in terms of policy as well as politics.

But...

As I keep saying in this space, if progressives want to promote real change we can't be waiting for Barry, it's up to us. We should be asking each other, not what should he be doing, but what should we do. Of course it's fine to mobilize for a progressive/populist tax measure in the lame duck congress and to defend social security in the face of the Bowles-Simpson initiative. These very focused issues lend themselves well to on-line actions that will give counter-weight to the rightwing onslaught.

But there are more far-reaching measures we should be figuring out how to mobilize for-measures that might really help the people:

       A new WPA?

In a recent web posting, Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohen, argued that Obama could do what FDR did-create a lot of jobs by executive order:

"Can the President directly create jobs by executive order? The answer is a resounding yes. Remember when the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which created the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was passed, one of the purposes was to preserve homeownership, and promote jobs and economic growth.

Much of the TARP money has been repaid and the administration refers to the profit on the payments. If one assumes an average cost of one job is $50,000, 6 million jobs could be immediately created for $300 billion. 12 million jobs could be created for $600 billion. Because this is already appropriated money, Congressional Republicans could not block it""

Such funding could also be used to support state budgets to protect education and public safety, and to promote weatherization and other green economy job creation.

Building a Progressive Agenda

This is an essay from the journal Democratic Left.
The ideas provide a context for how we will need to work to change NCLB.

Part II: Mobilizing from Below to Enact an Economic Justice Agenda


The impressive depth and breadth of Obama’s electoral victory, combined with Democratic gains in both the House and the Senate, provides the possibility of reversing three decades of growing inequality that is the primary cause of an impending global depression. But these electoral gains will prove temporary if the Obama administration does not improve the living standards of middle and working class voters. To do so, the new administration will have to govern “big” and “quick.” While there is short-term consensus in favor of a major stimulus package, some of his centrist Democratic advisers are already warning that long-term spending plans will have to be put on hold, particularly universal health care and the increased taxes on the wealthy originally set to fund the program. And the moderate punditry, led by global-capitalist enthusiast Thomas Friedman, reminds Obama that “excessive regulation” of the financial industry could “strangle” the “entrepreneurial risk-taking spirit of capitalism.” We are in the midst of a global “liquidity crisis” in which banks will not lend capital out of fear that borrowers will not be able to pay them back. The mainstream media – and the Obama campaign and transition team – does not yet comprehend that this crisis has everything to do with the massive growth in inequality of the past three decades. The policies of deregulation, privatization, and de-unionization, supported by both Democratic and Republican administrations, led working and middle class Americans to try to maintain their living standards by taking on massive consumer debt and borrowing against their home equity. Once the housing bubble collapsed, so did their purchasing power.
Only activist pressure from below can force an Obama administration to govern in a manner than could secure a Democratic realignment. With the constitutional system of checks and balances and separation of powers consciously aimed at forestalling rapid change, it is no surprise that almost all the reforms identified with the twentieth century Democratic Party – Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, the Civil Rights Acts and Medicare – occurred in the period 1935-1938 and 1964-66, the only time when the Democrats controlled the presidency, had strong majorities in both chambers of Congress and insurgent social movements at their heels.
If upon taking office the Obama administration boldly leads, his administration could pass major legislation for universal health care, massive investment in green technology, and labor law reform that would transform United States social relations for generations to come. But already the corporate community is mobilizing heavily against the Employee Free Choice Act. As a former community organizer Obama understands that reforms do not come from the top down; in the past, they arose because moderate elites made concessions to the movements of the unemployed and the CIO in the 1930s and to the civil rights, anti-war, women’s and welfare rights movements of the 1960s. But while the December sit-down at Republic Windows indicates that a new wave of labor militancy could be in the offing, the strength of the labor movement and the Left is even weaker than they were in 1932, when an economic crisis still demobilized workers fearing losing their jobs if they rocked the boat. Nor does there exist the degree of social mobilization within excluded communities of color parallel to the vigor of the civil rights movement of 1960.

]Specifics of a progressive agenda [
Thus, a “realigned” new Democratic majority can only be built if the Obama administration enacts a legislative agenda that reconstructs a new “productive” egalitarian economy. I emphasize “productive” because as this economic crisis should teach us, an economy whose major “wealth” is created by the shuffling of paper assets by ‘mega-banks,’ hedgefunds, and corporate law firms will inevitably be divided between a privileged top 10 or 20 percent of credentialed “symbolic manipulators” and a precarious middle and working class who “serve” them.. Only an economic system that invests in production for human needs – such as renewable energy, mass transit, and urban infrastructure, school and housing construction – can generate a sufficient number of “good jobs at good wages.” The infotainment, finance, and service model of “post-industrial” capitalism is vulnerable to continuous speculative bubbles because it does not produce sufficient real value to sustain mass middle-class living standards.
And if the production of “useful goods” is increasingly off-shored, then United States living standards can only be sustained if the rest of the world will lend it the money to run massive trade deficits. If and when East Asian central banks decide that investment in Euros rather than U.S. Treasury bonds is a more secure way to preserve value, the entire United States model of indebted growth could collapse.. The dirty little secret is that aside from the auto industry, it is mostly military-related aerospace and military hardware production that sustains a high-wage manufacturing base in the United States. That base still produces 25 per cent of our GDP, while only employing 12 per cent of our workforce, whereas the financial industry has those figures reversed.. Such an imbalance between those who produce real value and those who shuffle paper value cannot sustain an egalitarian economic system. Republican intransigence and virulent anti-union sentiment is close to destroying our domestic auto industry.. Our domestic parts manufacturers alone employ 650,000 workers – or nearly triple the 230,000 remaining employees of the (once) Big Three— and sizeably in states outside of the Midwest. Should domestic parts suppliers go under with the Big Three, we could well lose several million industrial jobs forever. Even foreign transplants will switch to importing parts and supplies from foreign suppliers. Add in the Big Three auto dealers, who employ several hundred thousand workers, and the magnitude of the problem is clear.
Our other major remaining industrial centers – aerospace and machine tools -- are heavily tied to military production. While this is a form of high-wage industrial production, it is heavily capital intensive and produces goods that have little “multiplier” effect Tanks and planes are not capital goods – they don’t produce more material goods; rather they either depreciate or are blown up!. Thus, the truth that no “strong on defense” Democrat speaks is that unless we transition our military production to industrial production for civilian use, we cannot create a new “productive” economy that creates a larger number of high-value-added productive jobs. Obviously, not all jobs can be outsourced. There are , and will remain, large numbers of people employed in the “infotainment” industry, health care, retail, construction, and the food and hospitality industry., and further unionization could raise the living standards of those employed in these largerly service sectors. But if the purchasers of care and leisure goods are going to be able to pay human wages to their service providers, then there must be enough industrial high-wage jobs to sustain those not working in the service sector.
Only insurgent social movement activity will push the pragmatic Obama and his centrist, technocratic cabinet to govern “big.” While Obama’s web-based network of predominantly white and youthful middle-strata progressives could be activated in favor of “global warming” policies and major investment in green technology, they are unlikely to agitate for the industrial and social policies outlined above, which only mobilization by organized labor, new immigrant communities and excluded inner-city residents could engender. Obama’s victory raised hopes among these communities; but is there the organizational base within the labor movement, immigrant rights movement and inner city communities to mobilize quickly around an economic justice agenda? A sense of hope may lead the excluded to engage in more spontaneous acts of disruption that can scare elites into offering legislative change. (FDR’s pre-1935 reforms responded more to the homeless and unemployed movements of 1932-33 and the labor unrest in Toledo, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Seattle of 1934 than to the later emergence of the CIO.) Perhaps we will see urban militancy akin to that of the mid-1960s -- though the protests against police brutality that led to mass riots were led by working and middle class community activists who no longer reside in the largely impoverished urban ghettos. And whether mobilization of communities of color would provoke a similar politics of white racial backlash to those of 1966 onwards remains an open question.

]Stimulus plan needed now[
Even before taking office the Obama administraiton confronts the most serious breakdown in the global economy since the Great Depression. Obama’s Treasury department and the Congressional Democratic leadership are likely to agree on a massive two-year stimulus package of at least $850 billion, but Republicans – perhaps joined by fiscally moderate Southern and Western Democrats – are likely to filibuster against such “massive deficit spending,” particularly if major public investment in alternative energy technologies is part of the package.. The Obama administration will have to remind the American public that Ronald Reagan ran deficits equal to 7 per cent of the GDP in each of 1981 and 82 (or the equivalent of $680 billion per year (!) in today’s dollars), in the face of a much less severe recession. In addition, the Obama administration must press Congress to implement a major anti-foreclosure program (similar to FDR’s Home Loan Corporation), as the income stream from homeowner payments on refinanced, affordable mortgages should significantly increase the value of the toxic assets of “securitized mortgages.” The Bush administration’s failure to protect the foreclosed (particularly those who could pay a reasonable renegotiated mortgage rate on a readjusted home value) explains in large measure its utter inability to improve the balance sheets of major financial institutions.
The stimulus package should include major government funding of job-training in the inner cities (in green technologies, for example) and of opportunities for both GIs and displaced workers to return to university as full-time students (and for women on TANF to fulfill their ‘workfare’ requirements through secondary and higher education pursuits). While affluent suburbs provide their residents superb public education and public services, federal cutbacks in aid to states and municipalities has worsened the life opportunities of inner city residents. With all but seven states’ budgets in the red, cuts in social services and public-sector layoffs will devastate already hard-hit communities. .
The inefficient and inequitable United States health care system cries out for replacement by a universal and cost-efficient alternative. If private insurance administrative and advertising costs of 25 per cent on the health care dollar could be reduced to Medicaid and Medicare’s three per cent administrative overhead, both universal and affordable coverage would be achieved.. Even securing “opt-out” provisions from the Obama’s ‘pay or play’ system of private insurance would be an improvement. Such ‘opt-outs’ would allow states to create their own single-payer systems, and enable Medicare or the federal employees health plan to market to employers as a lower-cost alternative to private group plans.
]Looking at the revenue side[
But how to pay for all this? The Obama administration should reverse not only the Bush tax cuts, but also the Reagan cuts in marginal rates on high-income earners, which would each return some $300 billion in revenues to the national treasury. In addition, abolishing the preferential 15 per cent tax rate on hedge fund and private equity managers’ earnings could garner another $100 billion in annual revenues. Truly ending the war in Iraq should save $100 billion per annum; a 1/3 cutback in United States military bases abroad and an end to Cold War era plans to build a next generation of fighters and an anti-ballistic missile defense could save $216 billion in federal revenue per year.
The military budget is hideously oversized for a nation that claims armaments are necessary for defense, and not defense of empire. One fights terrorism by intelligence and espionage cooperation among states and via a multilateral diplomatic strategy that provides hope for the billions who still live under authoritarian governments and in extreme poverty. Obama’s call to send more United States troops to Afghanistan ignores the lessons of the Soviet experience: that foreign military presence only elevates the forces of Islamic fundamentalism into national resistance fighters.
When the ponzi scheme of “securitized mortgages” collapsed with the end of the irrational run-up in housing prices, the federal government had to bail out Bear Stearns, then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and then AIG. American capitalism has “privatized” gain, but “socialized” risk. Yet if risk is to be “socialized” then so should investments. The Obama administration should not only demand equity shares in the banks and corporations that are bailed out by the public treasury, but should also require that consumer, worker, and government representatives be added to the board of directors of corporations receiving government aid. And the administration must stick to the goal of re-regulating the finance industry so that it serves the interest of the productive economy and not those of run-amok speculators.
A “new New Deal” would have to restructure international economic institutions so that they raise-up international labor, living, human rights, and environmental standards. In large part Obama owes his victory in the key battleground states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania to the efforts of one of the few integrated institutions in the United States – the American labor movement. Restoring the right to organize unions (a right that no longer exists in practice in the United States) is a key policy component in the battle against economic inequality. Given the massive corporate and media offensive already launched against the Employee Free Choice Act, Obama will have to place the entire prestige of his presidency behind the legislation. He must use the bully pulpit to explain to the American public that NLRB elections are not “free” – not when the time lag between petitioning and the election works in managements’ favor, allowing management to intimidate workers, require them to attend anti-union meetings and leaves management free to fire pro-union workers with impunity.
]What’s next for the democratic Left?[
An Obama presidential victory by no means guarantees the bold policy initiatives necessary to restore equity with growth to the United States economy. His campaign did not advocate major defense cuts, progressive tax reform, and significant expansion of public provision. But FDR did not campaign on bold solutions in 1932. It was pressure from below that forced FDR’s hand. Similarly, Obama’s victory may provide space for social movements to agitate in favor of economic justice and a democratic foreign policy. Let us hope that as a president who understands the process of social change, Obama will realize that those demanding the most from his administration are those who can best help him succeed in office.
Obama, a supreme pragmatist , will respond to the balance of social forces that press upon his administration, or ignore them in the absense of pressure. Thus, the work of DSA, YDS and the rest of the democratic Left has just begun. We must join with our allies in the labor movement, communities of color, the feminist, and gay and lesbian and immigrants rights groups to advance the transformative social and economic policies outlined above and in DSA’s Economic Justice Agenda (see www.dsausa.org) . And we should begin to gear up to defend progressive House and Senate gains made in the 2006 and 2008 elections and replace Republicans and conservative Democratic officials at every level of government. To do this, DSA and YDS must not only build more capacity on the ground, but also build working relations with such groups as Progressive Democrats of America as well as trade unions and communityorganizations active in progressive electoral politics.
What will be the unique “value-added” of DSA and YDS in these broad coalition efforts to press the Obama administration from the left? As all crucial economic justice reforms – universal national health care, EFCA,public investment in green technology and inner city infrastructure – involve state action to limit the prerogatives of corporate capital, the right will charge these reforms as being “socialist.” DSA’s role is to educate the American public as to the historic role of socialist-inspired reforms in rendering capitalist societies less capitalist and more democratic. Until more average Americans say “what’s wrong with socialism” even a less exceptional and more humane American mixed economy will remain a utopian dream.

Joseph M. Schwartz , a national vice chair of Democratic Socialists of America, teaches politics at Temple University. His most recent book is The Future of Democratic Equality: Rebuilding Social Solidarity in a Fragmented America (Routledge, 2008). Parts of this article is revised from “Memo to Obama,” which will appear in the January-February issue of Tikkun magazine.