Why Neoliberals Have Trouble Telling the Truth

Media Wars and Manufacturing Consent:

Getting People to Vote Against Themselves

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

"Newt Gingrich: Obama's 'Bureaucratic Socialism' Kills Jobs" is one of many similar headlines appearing on dozens of web-based news portals in this 2012 election season. This one keeps popping up, and I'm getting sick of seeing it.

The reason? It manages to pack several major lies, each of which you could write a book about, into just five words-and hardly an editor anywhere takes a blue pencil to it.

Don't get me wrong. I've got no problem with 'socialism.' My shoot-from-the hip response when someone spits the 'S' word out in a political argument is, "Socialism? I've been a socialist all my life, and proud of it. We should be so lucky as to have some socialism around here. Unfortunately, we're not even close."

First of all, Barack Obama is not a socialist. Even back in his more youthful years in Illinois, at best on a good day, he was simply a neo-Keynesian liberal with a few high tech green ideas. Keynesians believe, among other things, that when markets fail, government has the task of being the consumer of last resort, even hiring people directly to build infrastructure and put people to work,

But these days, surrounded by a 'Team of Rivals' largely from Wall Street, Obama has set aside any earlier Keynesian policies he held and has been, wittingly or not, sucked into the black hole of the prevailing neoliberal hegemony.

What's 'Neoliberal hegemony?' That's a shorthand phrase for the current domination of our government by Wall Street finance capital. It simply wants to diminish any government initiatives or programs, except for those that line their own pockets.

Keynesians and others, in and out of government, have opposed the neoliberals. They've advocated a range of reasonable proposals for getting us out of the current crisis-ending the wars, Employee Free Choice Act, Medicare for All, the People's Budget submitted by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. John Conyer's HR 870 Full Employment Bill-but they all keep getting declared "off the table" by the neoliberals.

On Gingrich's second charge, far from being 'bureaucratic,' Obama, wisely or not, has actually reduced the number of federal employees, and made other cuts that will cause the states to do likewise.

On the third charge, far from 'killing jobs,' Obama's initial proposals regarding employment have actually created a few jobs, but not nearly enough. Why? Because of the real job-killing votes of Gingrich's Republican allies in the House.

It doesn't take a chess champion to figure any of this out. Any decent checker player could make an honest call of the false moves in the 'socialist job killer' gambit of Gingrich and other GOP presidential pretenders running the same rap.

But why distort the truth this way? Newt Gingrich is a smart man. He knows that Keynesianism is designed to keep capitalism going, and that socialism is something quite different and has very little to do with this debate. So why does he keep this 'Big Lie' business up?

It's a smokescreen. At bottom, Gingrich, the GOP and the far right are promoting a grand neoliberal project to repeal the New Deal and the Great Society, the primary past examples of liberal government dealing with market failure.

The right's problem is too many things that came out of those periods had some success and are still popular with a majority of voters-the elderly like Medicare and Social Security, labor likes the Wagner Act and the right to bargain collectively, Blacks and other minorities like the Voting Rights Act, and women like Title Seven. To take them all down, which is what the neoliberal-far right alliance wants, means you have to attack them indirectly, rather than directly.

So how does it work? You have to start with what most people fear most-losing their jobs-and then combine it with the darker demons of our past, such as anti-communism, racism and sexism. Next you mush all your potential adversaries--the socialist left, the liberals and progressives, and the FDR-loving moderates--into one huge combined bogey man. You make it into a hideous package that's going to scare voters into casting ballots against themselves. To put a fancier term on it, it's called manufacturing consent to combine with outright coercive force in getting you to submit to a renewed hegemonic bloc.

That's what Newt is doing here. In short, it's when they get you to think all your neighbors and co-workers are your enemies, while all the guys on Wall Street are your friends. You're going to hear a lot of it over the next year. Don't fall for it.

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Time to Get Serious About Full Employment

Yes, We Need a Jobs Program, But One

That Doesn't Tinker Around the Edges

 

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

Our regional daily newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, to its credit, came out with an editorial today, Aug. 22, 2011, urging President Obama to push for a substantial jobs program over Republican opposition.

"Action on jobs: Obama must push hard to get people back to work" is the headline, and a key point stresses "Mr. Obama now needs to offer proposals equal to the size of the problem. That means bold strokes, not half-measures. If his Republican antagonists in Congress are determined to stand in the way of getting Americans back to work, the president must say so publicly -- and then go over their heads to enlist the nation in his effort."

Terrific, a good framing of the question. Unfortunately, however, once you get into the substance of the piece, it turns into a muddle. The Post-Gazette offers up a hodgepodge of proposals that tinker around the edges of the problem-more tax cuts and credits for jobs created, more unemployment benefits, and oddly, more trade deals, even though these deals mostly result in net job losses.

Here's the heart of the matter. In a down economy, jobs are created by increasing demand, by more customers with bigger orders coming to a firm's doors. The problem is that consumer demand has taken a nose dive when the credit bubble burst. People don't have money to spend. They're cutting back on everything, and trying to unload their debt. This means business-to-business orders shrink as well. Companies may be cash-rich and have high profits, but with no increase in orders or customers at their door, they aren't likely to hire people to do nothing just to get a tax credit.

This is where government has to become the key customer. It has to make huge productive purchases for local work and local materials to build productive infrastructure-county-owned green energy plants, new and improved schools, modernized locks and dams, Medicare for all, investment in young students and veterans like we did with the GI Bill, investment in research in new industries, and so on.

Most important, to work well, it can't be nickel-and-dimed to death. It has to be on the scale of the expenditures for World War 2. That's when the 'multiplier effect' can kick in, and related growth in manufacturing can take off in turn. And it has to be paid for by going to where the most appropriate money is, imposing a financial transaction tax on unproductive and destabilizing speculation by Wall Street.

The best the P-G does on this matter is to support Obama's proposal for an 'Infrastructure Bank,' but urges him to find a way to bypass a GOP roadblock in Congress.

But even that is too passive. It says, in effect, here's a small pot of money. If you want to repair some roads, come and get some.

What we really need is something like the New Deal's Tennessee Valley Authority and Works Progress Administration, but on steroids, a TVA-WPA-CCC 2.0. We need to pass John Conyer's HR 870 Full employment Bill. We need the Dept. of Energy and the Dept. of Labor to go to every county in the country with a fully funded proposal to build new green energy wind farms and solar power arrays as public energy utilities, hiring local workers at union scale, with no obstacles to a union election. And that's just for starters.

Yes, we need a serious jobs program. But it's time for everyone who utters that phrase to get serious themselves. Why? Because it's going to take a massive upsurge in class struggle to get it by removing those standing in the way.

[Carl Davidson is a Steelworker Associate and a retired computer technician living in Beaver County.  His 'Keep On Keepin' On' column appears in Beaver County Blue, website of the 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America.]

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Progressive Cynicism and Misplaced White Anger

The Far Right's Two Magic Weapons for 2012

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

If you want a Republican sweep in the 2012 election, follow this simple formula: Keep blaming the White House alone as the main cause of every problem the country faces, and ignore the Tea Party as overblown has-beens.

That's not advice from me. That's from Richard Viguerie, who some might remember as the think-tanker  and skilled pollster of the 1970's New Right that helped usher in Reagan and the era of neoliberal hegemony we've suffered under ever since. That's what he hopes the center and left will do over the next year.

An Aug, 10, 2011 syndicated column by Viguerie reminds us that presidential elections don't require a majority of popular votes, but only a majority of votes in the Electoral College.

"The Aug. 8 Gallup tracking poll shows that Obama is at 50 percent or better approval rating in only 16 states, the majority of which are normally considered Democratic bastions. Those 16 states represent 203 electoral votes of the 270 needed to win the presidency." Then he adds: "Key states, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida that contributed to Obama's 365-to-173 blowout of the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008, are in play at this time. It gets better. The states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, which are now in play, were three of the top states where the tea party wave swept new constitutional conservative members into Congress."

Viguerie goes on to discuss the role of the Tea Party insurgency in Michigan and California among angry white voters. He adds an astute point: if the GOP puts up a 'moderate' like Romney, Obama wins narrowly. But if it plays its 'wild cards' like Bachmann and Perry, the far right's  activist base is energized-and at a time when Obama's strategy is dissing his own left-progressive base for the wimpy and ever-narrowing 'center.'

In short, keep the left inactive, the progressives and the center divided, and the Tea Party energizer bunnies get their 270 electoral votes.

It's not a bad projection for the prospects of a neoliberal alliance with proto-fascists, with the latter in the driver's seat. The alternative view is that the majority of serious Wall St finance capital is circling the wagons around Obama. They're not interested in the wilder instabilities that would be fueled by Bachmann or Perry White House.

Maybe so. Serious money matters in American politics. But the far right has some serious money too, and they can combine it with an army of insurgents.

Therein lays our problem. At the moment, we have no candidate for peace and prosperity at the top of the ticket. But we need candidates of that sort at any level if we are to unite and mobilize a left-progressive base in 2012. We have the negative motivator of a possible Tea Party win, but only if we take them seriously. But we need more than that. We need candidates that will fight positively for what working-class people need, not what Wall Street needs. The People's Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is a good starting point. We'll have some candidates who will back it, but we'll need them placed in the states with clout in electoral votes. We don't have enough at the moment.

Don't expect much help from the Blue Dog and upper crust Democrats. No matter how you slice it, it's going to be a tough fight. So organize your co-workers and neighbors independently, and prepare for some fierce battles.

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More Taxes for More Wars?

Scrambled Brains in High Places

Photo: Wasted War Junk in Iraq

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

Members of Congress had best be careful. If it hasn't already done so, the 'deficit madness' virus circulating in those hallowed halls will turn your brains into scrambled eggs.

That's the conclusion to draw from the latest bright idea from Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass) reported in the Aug 16 Washington Post-a new tax surcharge on taxpayers across the board to pay for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"These wars ought to be paid for and not put on a credit card so that our kids will have to pay for this in the future," McGovern said in a recent telephone interview. It's morally wrong for members [of Congress] to call for support of our soldiers and then not ask the rest of us to pay for it .?.?. or have it left to the poor and middle-income and seniors to bear the sacrifice along with our soldiers and their families. That's wrong."

McGovern wants the 'Super-Congress' Deficit Commission to take it up.

Only the last phrase about putting the burden on the poor contains any sense, especially since the overall costs, not to mention lives lost on all sides, is approaching $3 trillion. The rest is just screwy.

But I have a better idea. First, end the wars immediately, and only allocate enough money to get all our troops and contractors back home lickety-split. Second, pass a bill to pick up the tab by doing away with the oil depletion allowances and all other tax breaks on the oil companies. If that's not enough, put a tax on transfers of oil stocks and the profits of military contractors. And if they try to jack up the price of gasoline to cover their war expenses, nationalize them. After all, they're the only ones really benefiting from these foreign policy disasters.

Once that's out of the way, we can turn to the more strategic solution: a job creating financial transaction tax on all Wall Street gambling to fund the clean energy and green manufacturing revolution we need to move away from fossil fuels altogether. There are all sorts of places to begin, from 'shovel-ready' low-skilled jobs repairing the locks and dams on our rivers, to higher skilled jobs building and installing county-owned wind and solar generators as public power utilities.

In short, 'Jobs, Not War!' and 'Windmills, Not Weapons' are much better alternatives every which way than more taxes to pay for more wars. Back to the drawing board, Congressman McGovern.

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London: ‘Shock Doctrine’ as a Two-Way Street

The Approaching Winter of Our Discontent

By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On

Watching the rebellions of the young and poor continue in London and now spread to other industrial centers in the UK raises an interesting question: Will the Arab spring and the European summer lead to a fall and winter of discontent here in the USA?

All the makings for it are here. We have impoverished communities of the unemployed where there are huge numbers of young people who have never had a regular job of any sort. Now that any form of taxing the rich for funding a jobs program like that proposed by Rep. John Conyers’ HR 870 has been declared ‘off the table,’ it doesn’t appear likely to change, either.

Add to that the GOP’s ‘Shock Doctrine’ (with an assist from the White House) of creating a neoliberal deficit hoax to take from the working class and give to Wall Street, and you spread deeper misery across all of Main Street.

Now the AFL-CIO, thank goodness, is calling for a new round of mass actions against austerity and in defense of the tattered safety net. Add to that the October2011.org project, where the peace and justice movement is planning to camp out in downtown DC’s Freedom Plaza until all the troops are brought home from the wars.

It’s a perfect storm shaping up.  Hopefully, many of our young unemployed and under-employed will be drawn to these events. But any police outrage could set off a chain reaction like those in London-we’ve seen this many times in our history.

We have a few decent politicians facing up to the problem, like the 80 votes of the Congressional Progressive Caucus behind the People’s Budget. But our top political class has declared their efforts ‘off the table,’ too.

In brief, they’re telling us our views don’t count and we have nowhere to go.

That’s what the bigwigs in London thought, too. Now they’re all in a tizzy about riots and violence. In contrast, in one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

“Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you? Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”

Of course, many small shops and working-class homes, unfortunately, are being harmed in the UK events. Street heat is best when the target is narrowed on the upper class, and you keep the moral high ground. That way you can draw even more millions into relatively peaceful assembly with powerful and lasting implications. But when long-ignored social dynamite explodes, things don’t always work out that way, with the well-controlled niceties of a tea party, no pun intended.

It is right to rebel against outrages and unjust conditions imposed from above. The ‘Shock Doctrine’ is a two-way street, and once it erupts, more than you might think will know which side of the barricades to gather on.

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‘City of Steel’ by Jasiri X, Our Own Rapper

By Jasiri X and Paradise Gray

According to the New Pittsburgh Courier, “The average homicide victim in 2010 was a 33–year-old Black male with four prior arrests, most likely shot on the North Side, in the Hill District or the East End with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol in the early morning hours of a Saturday in July. The average shooter was a 29-year-old Black male with four prior arrests. The motive was likely retaliation. And according to the clearance-rate data, there is a 46 percent chance that he is still at large.”

This is why we decided to dedicate our latest video to the problem of violence in our community.

“City of Steel” was filmed on Pittsburgh’s Northside at, Northview Heights housing project, Allegheny County General Hospital, Zone No.1 Police Station, Union Dale Cemetery, and the newly reopened state prison, SCI Pittsburgh.

“City of Steel” was produced by Rel!g!on and directed by Paradise Gray.

This is the third video, in the four video series entitled “The Pittsburgh Press”, which was made possible by a generous Seed Award from the Sprout Fund.

LYRICS
In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either fiending or you’re tryin to be the Kingpin

In the late hours thugs dream to take power
baked powder cocaine entry in the dope game
X or the Big H reps come from big weight
you can catch a big break graduate to biggate
you can catch a big case graduate to triple max
affidavits, eye witness, warrants for official taps
legal fees cripple stacks, ya funds is limping
with your money on crutches you can’t run from prison
now it got ya gums itching, now you’ve begun snitching
saying you’ve become Christian no more drugs and women
but the press leaked ya name so 44 guns is spitting
no more tongues is flipping you got slugs in ya system
ain’t no happy endings in this coke opera
just broke coppers and dope poppers, bodies found in coat lockers
hope nada you’ll get ya folk shot up
only guarantee is they’ll be another boat with product, here

In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either a customer or hustler

In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either fiending or you’re tryin to be the Kingpin

In the early morning when ya barely yawning
thugs is carry on and what they carry is long and
sound like cherry bombs and will cherry ya garment and
bury ya squadron
for that cash stash that’s buried in your apartment
be wary of a cartridge
that’s loaded and fired by legendary marksmen
dead on with dead eyes dead weight cause dead guys’
don’t tell the Feds lies therefore the lead flies
In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
we stay on the fast lane of the freeway
each day’s a replay no room for delay
he say she say he spray she lay
on the pavement she’s going away with
her virginity in tack because she said she’d save it
till the day she got married but that day will never come
cause she died at 16 so she’ll stay forever young, here

In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either a customer or hustler

In Pittsburgh PA you’ll get served each day
You’re either fiending or you’re tryin to be the Kingpin

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Jobs and GOP ‘Dialectics’: Turning Things Into Their Opposites

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

People sometimes either groan or laugh when they hear the term ‘dialectics,’ a word which some people use to bamboozle others into thinking they know something when they don’t.

But here’s a great ‘laughing out loud’ example inspired by a few lines for Mike Hall’s current post on the AFL-CIO blog today, Aug. 2:

“The 4,000 furloughed Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) workers and 90,000 workers on airport construction projects stalled by the Republican shutdown of the FAA are worrying about how they will pay their bills in the coming weeks.

“But the only worry House Republicans have is how they are going to spend their six-week summer vacation. House Republicans leaders adjourned the House last night until Sept. 7 without taking action on reauthorizing an FAA bill so the agency—shutdown since July 22—could reopen and construction funds move down the pipeline again.”

So here’s a great example of Republican ‘dialectics’, their ‘Jobs Plan’ of turning real jobs into their opposites, non-jobs. It’s easy to laugh at, if it didn’t mean so much suffering for so many working-class families. I suppose we could say there’s a ‘unity of opposites’ there, too.

One thing that burns me up more than GOP nonsense, though, are many of the mainstream media pundits who don’t have any idea on how to ask a decent follow-up question. When our right wing lawmakers (and their White House allies) go on at length about cutting this and slashing that, taking money from low-income and middle-income workers and giving it to the super-rich, there always comes a point where they assert, ‘and this will create jobs!.’

Back in my youth I taught logic for a year at the University of Nebraska. Full disclosure here: I actually appreciate real dialectics, and other rules of argument. But one point I often made to my students: An assertion is not an argument.

Now why can’t our media pundits say, ‘Wait a minute here, Congressman (or other policy wonk). You’re cutting both spending and jobs, reducing overall demand. Then you assert this creates jobs? Can you tell us exactly how that works? Especially when it’s mainly demand that creates jobs? An assertion is not an argument.”

If I heard it just once on CNN, it would make my day.

My logic course back in 1965 was for incoming freshman. Wouldn’t it be great if news anchors could at least reach that level, even if it’s too much to expect of Congress and the White House? All the more reason we have to rely on our own labor-oriented blogs and news services. We know how to make use of decent dialectics, and put a spotlight on the foolish versions of our adversaries.

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Save Us from the ‘Business Guy’ Candidates

Mitt Romney at Screen Machine in Ohio

 

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Some things just drive you nuts.

Take Mitt Romney. Yesterday the GOP's presidential wannabe toured Screen Machine, a factory in Pataskala, Ohio, just outside Columbus.  The plant make heavy construction equipment, rock crushers to be exact.

Romney and the owners, Doug and Steve Cohen, held a typical photo-op. Mitt took the occasion to blast both Obama and 'government' as 'bad for business.'

Really? What did Mitt have in mind? A wimpy stimulus package? A failure to build more infrastructure? In that case, he might have a point.

But no, the real problems are environmental regulation, labor safety codes and health care. In other words, with more pollution and more unsafe conditions at work, and less health care to deal with the consequences, business could surge ahead.

There's not any truth to that claim, but that's not the worst of it.

First, there's the irony that Obama's health care plan is basically a national version of Romney's Massachusetts Plan. If we could scrap both and replace them with 'Medicare for All,' yes, it would be better for both workers and business--save for the health insurance firms.

But the real clincher is the story of Screen Machines, where Mitt, the tough-minded, pragmatic business guy candidate, was delivering his words of economic wisdom. Here's the Washington Post on the topic:

"Yet it's been the government - and Obama's policies in particular - that has helped propel Screen Machine's growth at its sprawling new headquarters here, even during the recession. The company, which builds heavy-duty crushing and screening machines used in construction, mining and recycling, received four stimulus awards totaling $218,607. It is also benefiting from a 10-year deal with local and state governments to not pay taxes on its property, equipment or inventory, according to public records."

We need to make a minimum requirement of all elected officials that they at least have the ability to blush when feeding us a lot of nonsense. Of course, that might wipe out most of Congress, and a few in the White House, too. But then we'd have some open slots for politicians who count voters rather than dollars.

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The Marcellus Shale’s Bigger Picture

Clean Water, Green Energy and the Big Blue Marble

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

A Reuter's story this morning about the rising threat to the water supplies of 12 East Coast cities connected a few dots for me. The threat comes from burning carbon and climate change, which will raise sea levels and wreak havoc in numerous ways.

"Rising sea waters may threaten U.S. coastal cities later this century, while the Midwest and East Coast are at high risk for intense storms, and the West's water supplies could be compromised, "the story led off. "These are among the expected water-related effects of climate change on 12 cities across the nation over the remainder of the century, according to a study released on Tuesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a leading environmental group.

"A lot of people think of climate change in the global context, but they don't think about the local impact climate change might have, particularly on water-related issues," said Steve Fleischli, a senior attorney with NRDC's water program."

Perhaps it's because my daughters and grandkids live in New York City that the story caught my eye. 'We'll have to make room for them here in Beaver County,' up in the hills on the west slope of the Alleghenies, I first thought.

But what about the Marcellus shale fracking by the gas drillers? We might not have any decent water here, either.

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Unemployment: Lies, Blue Smoke and Mirrors

The Neoliberal-Tea Party Jobs Plan at Work

By Carl Davidson

File this under the ‘Why is Anyone Surprised Dept?’

This morning’s Pittsburgh news media lets us know that more and more Pennsylvanians are unemployed. Particularly,  it’s in ‘Unemployment rate up in Pennsylvania’ in the Pittsburgh Business Times by Paul J. Gough.

What’s interesting is how it gets spelled out:

“Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate rose slightly in June as the Commonwealth followed an upward trend of national jobless data that has been rising since the spring.

“The state’s unemployment rate was 7.6 percent in June compared to 7.4 percent in May, according to data released Thursday afternoon by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry. That translated into a net of 2,600 jobs lost to a total 6.3 million people employed in Pennsylvania. Specific data for Pittsburgh won’t be released for several weeks, but unemployment increased in Pittsburgh to 7 percent in May, the most recent month where data is available.
“Much of the decreases were due to 7,800 jobs cut in education, health and social services. Also losing jobs were financial (2,000 jobs), leisure and hospitality (1,400 jobs), and professional/business services (1,700 jobs).”

What this means is that our GOP governor’s plan is working as designed. He and others of his ilk are determined to slash government spending on social services and the work force that provides them.  If we combine this with taking money from low-income and middle-income workers, and give it to the superrich as tax cuts, we can help the ‘recovery’ of the wealthy by reducing consumer demand from the rest of us.

Now put these two planks together, and you have the GOP-Blue Dog-Tea Party plan for employment, and as we can see, it’s working rather well.

Of course the numbers are going in the opposite direction from what they’ve been claiming will happen. Maybe we just need even more layoffs and even less spendable income at the bottom, and then we’ll really see things take off!

Now Obama’s problem is buying into this. But if he’s going to sell it beyond the business press, it’s going to need a sales team with a lot of lies, blue smoke and mirrors.

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Turn the Tables on a Rigged Game

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

Our local conservative newspaper, the Pittsburgh Business Times, carries an instructive story this morning, July 21, 2011, about how to solve our revenue problems, only it fails to make the critical point. So I’ll lend a hand. It says:

“Pennsylvania casinos brought in $81.4 million in tax revenue from table games during the fiscal year that ended last month, according to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. Of that, about $71.3 million went to the state’s general fund and another $10 million went to local municipalities and counties that host the state’s 10 table game casinos.

“The Rivers Casino on the North Shore was responsible for $8 million in state tax revenue and $1.2 million in local payments through its table games operations during the past fiscal year.”

It goes on to break the numbers down even more.

Now I can enjoy a day at the Casino. I recently took my Mom and stepfather, a retired J&L worker, to the Rivers for his 84^th birthday. I hit the nickel slot for $1.50 on my first try, but ended up leaving $5 in the hole.

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‘Gang of Six’ and the Neoliberal Deficit Trap

• 

What Happens When You Accept a Neoliberal Frame — or How Obama Joined the ‘Gang of Six’ and Became a Reverse Robin Hood

By Carl Davidson

1. Only one of the Gang of Six pictured above has done something positive recently, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, when he blurted out that ‘the banks own the place’ in reference to Congress

   Otherwise, this crew just cooked up a deal, under a false flag, that claims the US economy is going to recover by taking from the poor and giving to the rich—and now Obama has signed on to it.

   It all follows from the false frame, that our main problem is ‘deficits.’

   No, there’s plenty of money if you go after it in the right places, and our main problems are lack of jobs, unjust tax codes and the lack of a progressive clean energy and green manufacturing industrial policy.

   But neoliberal finance capital has suckered our political class, with some exceptions, into its false framework.  Once you accept the notion that there’s no money, that deficits can’t be corrected without cuts, and that tax cuts create jobs in a down economy, you’re on the road to perdition. Jobs are created by increasing demand, and these measures just decreased demand from both consumers and government. Ask your local deficit hawks to explain how decreased demand creates more jobs, and then try to keep from laughing out loud before they finish.

   The ‘exceptions’ just noted in our political class are the 70+ votes in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and the real solution to the crisis is in the ‘Peoples Budget’ they have promoted to counter both the White House and the GOP-far right alliance. Be sure to help them win in 2012, and to their ranks.

   Progressive Democrats of America is the main group supporting the good guys here, speaking truth to power and calling mass meetings locally around left-progressive solitions. Go to http://pdamerica.org and hook up. We need to grow its size tenfold.
   

   Source: pdamerica.org

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Is Wider Unity on the Shale Issue Possible?

A Stronger Steelworkers’ Voice Is Needed

in the Marcellus Anti-Fracking Movement

A Stronger Steelworkers’ Voice Is Needed
in the Marcellus Shale Anti-Fracking Movement

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

There’s a specter haunting Western PA. It’s the prospect of a working class divided by a fear of water pollution destroying the property values of small homeowners on one side, and on the other side, by the promise of new wealth from the exploitation of natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica shale deposits.

A similar fear divides West Virginians over ‘mountaintop removal’ mining. Little towns are split between those who want food on the table and those fearful of poisoning their children.

Steelworkers can certainly see the problem in our own terms. It takes a lot of steel pipe to drill down two to four miles, then drill out a horizontally for another mile in a dozen directions. The tube mills are getting the orders and steelworkers are back to work. On the other hand, steelworkers know the dangers of poisoning the ground and the rivers better than most. Read more!

New Paths to Socialism by Carl Davidson

How can the Mondragon Cooperatives, the Solidarity and Green Economies, with an assist from Gramsci and Marx, clear pathways to a new socialism of the 21st century?

Get a copy of Carl Davidson’s new book on the topic:

 New Paths to Socialism

Contents:

• The Mondragon Cooperatives and 21st Century Socialism
• Mondragon Diaries: Five Days Studying Cutting-Edge People and Tools for Change
• 'One Worker, One Vote:' US Steelworkers to Experiment With Factory Ownership, Mondragon Style
• Green Party Mayor of Richmond, California Signs 'Letter in Intent' with Spain's Mondragon Coops
• There Is An Alternative: Market Socialism with Radical Democracy
• Green Jobs Meets the Solidarity Economy: A Dynamic Duo for Changing the World
• Green Jobs and Class Struggle: A Memo for the Working Class Studies Association
• Alinsky vs. Arizmendi: Redistribution or Control of Wealth In Changing the World
• Eleven Talking Points On 21st Century Socialism
• Jossa: Gramsci, Economic Theory of Worker Cooperatives and the  Transition to a Socialist Economy
• Jossa: Excerpts from ‘Marx, Marxism and the Cooperative Movement’
• Schweickart: Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible? The Case of China
• $15 from Changemaker Publications. http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker

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Carl Davidson on Democracy, Values and 21st Century Socialism

Carl Davidson on Democracy, Values and 21st Century Socialism from Carl Davidson on Vimeo.

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‘We Are One—And Ready to Fight Back!’

Beaver County Union & Community Activists

Hold April 4th Solidarity Rally at Courthouse

 

By Carl Davidson and Tina Shannon
Beaver County Blue

Even though thunderstorms and downpours had swept through Beaver County all afternoon, close to 200 concerned citizens showed up for a candlelight vigil in front of the Beaver County Courthouse on Monday evening.

"Are you fired up?" shouted Roni Hamiel of SEIU Local 668 headquarters in Harrisburg, "Are you sick of this mess? The rich are getting richer and we're struggling every day, barely getting by. We want fairness, we want our bargaining rights, and we want a decent future."

Photo: Commissioner Joe Spanik at Vigil

Local members of SEIU 668 spearheaded the vigil, with others joining in to organize a broadly supported event. Throughout PA, events scheduled around the anniversary of Dr. King's assassination were organized by CLEAR (Coalition for Labor Engagement and Accountable Revenues). CLEAR is a coalition of public and private sector unions involved in protecting labor rights and public services from impending budget cuts.

"We are standing beside you in solidarity," said Willie Sallis, president of the Beaver County NAACP, from the podium. "Not behind you, but beside you. We are partners in this struggle."

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Fighting for Our Future & Honoring Martin Luther King With Solidarity

April 4 'We Are One' Events:

Uniting Labor and Community

For an Upsurge in Class War

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Working-class solidarity actions involving thousands of workers were among the lead news items in the headlines in nearly 1200 cities and town around the country over the April 4 weekend. The Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Eastern Ohio 'rust belt' region was no exception.

The occasion commemorated the anniversary of the April 4, 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his effort to help striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee win union recognition. The entire U.S. labor movement seized the time to organize public protest against the outrageous rightwing attacks on worker rights in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. The AFL-CIO knows full well that more attacks are coming, and its 'We Are One' campaign for the day was a grassroots dress rehearsal and consciousness-raising effort to prepare both its troops and its community-based allies for more battles to come.

"We are one! We are one!' and 'What's Disgusting? Union busting!' were among the chants echoing off the concrete and glass walls of downtown Pittsburgh. Somewhere between 500 and 1000 marchers waved V-signs at passersby in cars and buses--but more often than in a long time, one saw a sea of the more militant clenched fist salutes as well. As usual, different contingents of workers wore their color coded T-Shirts for the day-camouflage for the UMWA, dark blue for the Steelworkers, red for Unite Here! hotel workers, and purple for SEIU service workers.

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Mondragon as a Bridge to a New Socialism

 

Worker-owner in Mondragon coop factory

The Mondragon Cooperatives and 21^st Century Socialism:

A Review of Five Books with Radical Critiques and New Ideas

From Mondragon to America:

Experiments in Community Economic Development

By Greg MacLeod

UCCB Press, 1997

The Myth of Mondragon:

Cooperatives, Politics and Working-Class Life in a Basque Town

By Sharryn Kasmir

State University of New York Press, 1996

Values at Work:

Employee Participation Meets Market Pressure at Mondragon

By George Cheney

Cornell University Press, 1999

Cooperation Works!

How People Are Using Cooperative Action

to Rebuild Communities and Revitalize the Economy

By E.G. Nadeau & David J. Thompson

Lone Oak Press, 1996

After Capitalism

By David Schweickart

Rowman & Littlefield, 2002

Reviewed by Carl Davidson

Solidarity Economy Network

Something important for both socialist theory and working-class alternatives has been steadily growing in Spain’s Basque country over the past 50 years, and is now spreading slowly across Spain, Europe and the rest of the globe.

It’s an experiment, at once radical and practical, in how the working-class can become the masters of their workplaces and surrounding communities, growing steadily and successfully competing with the capitalism of the old order and laying the foundations of something new—it’s known as the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation (MCC).

Just what that ‘something new’ adds up to is often contested. Some see the experiment as a major new advance in a centuries-old cooperative tradition, while a few go further and see it as a contribution to a new socialism for our time. A few others see it both as clever refinement of capitalism and as a reformist diversion likely to fail. Still others see it as a ‘third way’ full of utopian promise simply to be replicated anywhere in whatever way makes sense to those concerned.

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Green Jobs: Frustration with Neoliberals over ‘Industrial Policy’

‘Good Jobs, Green Jobs’ Conference 2011:

Green Jobs Organizers Collide with

Neoliberalism’s War & Austerity Plans

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

Nearly 2000 people gathered at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel over three bitterly cold days in Washington, DC Feb 8-10 for the 4^th Annual ‘Good Job, Green Jobs’ conference. The attendees were a vibrant mixture of seasoned trade union organizers, representatives of government agencies and young environmental activists waging a variety of battles around climate change and the green economy.

“We want everyone to work at a green job in a green and clean economy,” declared David Foster, executive director of the sponsor, the Blue-Green Alliance, opening the first plenary. “But what stands in our way?” The answer was a new Congress stalemated by neoliberal resurgence centered in a bloc of the GOP and the far right. “It’s not going to be easy. We’re going to have to fight for it the old-fashioned way, from the bottom up, brick by brick, and floor by floor.”

The Blue-Green Alliance today is a coalition of hundreds of environmental groups, trade unions, and green business enterprises. It was founded less than five years ago, largely by the efforts of Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, one of the largest U.S. environmental nonprofits, and Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steel Workers, one of the country’s largest industrial unions.

“We’ve come a long way,” said USW’s Leo Gerard, the next speaker up. “Today we have dozens of affiliated sponsors and members with a combined membership of 14.5 million. Those fighting harder against us are going to meet some serious resistance.” The participants at the conference represented more than 700 organizations and came from 48 of the 50 states.

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Aliquippa: Sports Works for a Few, But We Need Jobs for All

Steel Town Finds Unity and Hope on Football Field

Posted February 11, 2011 at 8:00 am, in From the News

NY Jets Darrelle Revis at Aliquippa High School

By Carl Davidson
Author and writer for Beaver County Blue Blog

via USW Blog

For those of you who haven’t seen the current issue of Sports Illustrated, with the feature on Aliquippa, do yourself a favor, buy it or find it online, and sit down for a long and rewarding read.

It’s titled “The Heart Of Football Beats In Aliquippa: Over five decades of economic decline and racial conflict, a Western Pennsylvania mill town has found unity and hope on the football field.” Thorough the lens of sports, it will tug at your heart with a much larger story of de-industrialization, race and class privilege, class struggle and unity–and it will do it up close and personal, in a way that every steelworker knows is true.

I was born nearby, in Hopewell, Pa. Actually, my family was there before there was an Aliquippa or even a Beaver County. Many of my folks worked in J&L; my grandfather was killed in that mill.

The Beaver County Times did a decent story on the SI piece, and it kicked up some discussion in the online responses. For some reason, whenever Aliquippa is mentioned in any of these online debates, all the racist attitudes come out from under their rocks. This time, a few guys said Aliquippa should simply be bulldozed; and since my Mom and her husband, a retired steelworker, still live on Franklin Ave., it got my dander up. Instead of nasty quips about bulldozing, I wrote in and told these guys to read the article, especially the part about the seven coaches who work for free, simply for the love of the kids, the game and the area. Take them as a role model–then you can be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

The tragic sense of the article is that only a few escape to a better life through sports. We should be proud of them and those who helped them. But what about the rest? We have to be concerned about them, too. If we had the political unity and will, we could put every kid in Plan 11 to work in a decent Green Job cleaning the environment, winterizing public buildings, or working on things like Raccoon Creek State Park that was built by the WPA and the CCC in the Depression Era, an FDR project that’s still rewarding us all.

We have a decent shot at this if we combine the USW’s green industrial policy with Rep, John Conyer’s HR 5204 Full Employment Bill that starts where the need is greatest. That’s what Aliquippa and many other towns around here urgently need, and we don’t have any time to waste.

***

Carl Davidson, a retired computer technician, is a USW Associate Member now living in Aliquippa, Pa., his hometown, and the location of the former J&L Steel Mill, where many in his family worked and where his grandfather and a cousin died on the job. In Chicago, he served as a computer consultant for SEIU and several other unions, and was the editor of FIRR News for the Federation for Industrial Retention and Renewal during the campaigns against plant closings. In the 1960s, he was active in the civil rights movement, a national leader of student new left and the anti-Vietnam war movement. He worked on President Barack Obama’s first political campaign in Illinois, on his campaign for the U.S. Senate and for the presidency. Together with Jerry Harris, a former Chicago steelworker, he is author of CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age and editor of Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet. He is the author and co-author of several other books and lectures on the topic of the Mondragon Cooperatives, a network of 120 worker-owned factories centered in Spain, and writes for the Beaver County Blue website.

***If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button in the upper right corner of the website

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Tags: Aliquippa, Beaver County Times, de-industrialization, J&L Steel, Sports Illustrated, Steelworkers, USW

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PA Progressives Plan for New Battles

Pennsylvania Progressive Summit 2011:

Rebuilding Alliances, Shaping New Messages

Keynote speakers, Leo Gerard and Jess Jackson

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

Nearly 500 progressive and liberal organizers gathered at Pittsburgh’s Sheraton Station Square over the sunny but bitterly cold weekend of Jan. 22-23 to drawn out the lessons of their setbacks in the 2010 elections and shape a new course for the future.

Under the theme of ‘Taking Pennsylvania Forward,’ the two-day meeting was mainly pulled together by four ‘Organizing Sponsors’—Keystone Progress, a popular online communications hub for the state; SEIU, representing some 100,000 PA workers; the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a coalition between the United Steelworkers and advocates for new manufacturing enterprises; and Democracy for America, the outgrowth of the Howard Dean campaign in the Democratic Party.

A large number of unions other than the USW and SEIU also took part, as well as many local political, civil rights, women’s rights, youth and environmental groups from around the state. Beaver County was represented by a delegation from the 4^th CD Progressive Democrats of America.

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Aliquippa’s Harsh Realities Featured in Story of the Hope and Vision of its Athletes

 

Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis visiting his hometown, Aliquippa, Pa.

The Heart Of Football Beats In Aliquippa

Over five decades of economic decline and racial conflict, a Western Pennsylvania mill town has found unity and hope on the football field

By S.L. Price

Sports llustrated’s ‘Vault’

Jan 31, 2011 Issue - The fear came for Willie Walker that November. He was not expecting it. Evening had dropped early and hard, as it does in Western Pennsylvania in the fall, but these were streets he had known forever. Hours had passed since the 2004 regional championship game had ended down in Pittsburgh; the adrenaline and bravado on the ride home had long since burned off, replaced by grief, then mere regret. They had lost. The Aliquippa High football team, for all its history of success, had been beaten. Now, in the backseat, Walker felt a numbness settling in. Losing happens. You move on. You start thinking about what's next.

Walker was a senior. Just seven months until graduation, and he'd be able to say it: He had survived. The town hadn't killed, hadn't crippled, hadn't defeated him, though God knows it had tried. His life had been a cliché of criminal pathology: father long dead, mother struggling with crack addiction, days of hunger, corners promising casual violence. Aliquippa's streets are, as one of Walker's coaches put it, "a spiderweb" capable of ensnaring the most innocent, and though Walker never lost sight of his prize—college somewhere, anywhere—he was hardly innocent. No, for a time he had leaped into the web, daring it to grab hold.

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Solidarity and Hope: The Ongoing Saga To Close ‘School of the Assassins’

 

Bearing Witness, Making Solidarity:

5000 Turn Out vs. Torture and Murder

At Fort Benning’s ‘School of the Americas’

By Carl Davidson

CCDS Field Organizer

The annual School of the Americas Watch vigil and procession are a unique and powerful event in America political life

Going on for 20 years now, the mobilization against the training of torturers and killers in Fort Benning, GA is part peace mobilization, part solidarity with Latin America event, part religious pageant, part public face of the Catholic left, and part gathering of the tribes for newly radicalized youth. The gathering draws thousands of people, including nuns and priests, veterans and labor organizers, along with other peace and solidarity activists. They all come for a two-day creative mixture of diverse events that leaves everyone politically transformed and emotionally peaked.

This year’s event was no different. Over the weekend of Nov 19-21, close to 5000 people took part is a series of colorful and dramatic actions. Thirty were arrested and held several days by police. Four of these were arrested after intentionally committing civil disobedience by climbing over a fence topped with barbed wire at the entrance to Fort Benning. Others were arrested for simply straying off a sidewalk in an attempt to march to downtown Columbus, GA. Local courts imposed heavy fines and maximum sentences.

Why is the U.S military training torturers and death squads? The answer is an old one: wealth, power and intimidated, non-union labor.

“For the past several decades, the US has allied with dictators in Latin America who helped that region’s small, elite group of wealthy landowners,” said SOAW founder Father Roy Bourgeois, a Louisiana native, who lives just outside the gates of the school in Fort Benning where he carries on his work.

“We got involved militarily with these countries because they were rich in natural resources, with coffee in Colombia, bananas in Central America, copper in Chile, petroleum in Venezuela and tin in Bolivia. With their militaries, the U.S. joined with them to exploit those natural resources and to pay workers $1 a day. There were no labor laws there,” Bourgeois noted. “We were like the new conquistadors.”

The high point of the weekend was the Sunday procession of thousands, each carrying a white cross with the name of a slain Latin American peasant, worker or child, and a number of priests and nuns, including Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, slain by those trained in Fort Benning’s SOA facility. Teams of singers mournfully sang the names and ages, and after each one, everyone raised their crosses, and answered with the classic salute of the living to those who have fallen in battle: “Presente!”

The procession lasted for hours as the column of mourners bearing crosses of the dead walked from the front of the stage up one side of the street to the police barriers and back down the other side of the street to the back of the stage. There they placed the crosses into the chain link fence blocking the entrance to the military base. Many mourners cried. Some raised their fists. Some knelt in prayer or meditation as the singing of the names and the chant of “Presente!” continued. Behind the stage a theatre group staged a scene of murdered members of a religious order, their bodies spattered with blood. Others snapped pictures or stood quietly.

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Pittsburgh Rally Defends Clean Water, Opposes Natural Gas ‘Fracking’

Photos by Bill Allen

Western PA Activists

Deliver ‘Street Heat’ vs.

Marcellus Shale ‘Frackers’

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

“No Fracking Way! No Fracking Way!” was the chant resounding off the steel, granite and glass walls in downtown Pittsburgh on the sunny afternoon on Nov. 3, as nearly 500 environmental activists headed for the David Lawrence Convention Center. Their target was a gathering of 2000 natural gas drillers being addressed by Karl Rove, advisor to former President George W Bush.

Inside, the industry executives were meeting to discuss the "future" of hydro-fracking gas drilling and planning to use heavy explosives to blast apart the 4000-foot-deep Marcellus Shale formation to get the natural gas beneath.

"Only a dying soul," said Stephen Cleghorn, "can contemplate the destruction of life that they're discussing in that building right now!" Cleghorn is Reynoldsville, PA farmer, and his views reflected those of many semi-rural residents of Pennsylvania and other nearby states, where water was polluted and cattle died.

“They promise people all sorts of money,” said Bob Schmetzer, “but what’s your home worth if you have bad water? Nothing!” Schmetzer, carrying a placard demanding ‘prosecute the polluters,’ is the council president of South Heights in Beaver County, and the vice president of the 4^th CD Progressive Democrats of America.

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Report Back: Huge Rally in DC for Jobs, Justice, Education and Peace

‘One Nation’ March Shows the Tough Fight

Ahead for the Emerging Progressive Majority

 

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

If you wanted to know what a dynamic and emerging progressive majority of Americans looked like, the place to be was the National Mall at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC on the beautiful and sunny Saturday afternoon of Oct. 2, 2010. 

It was a sight to behold. Pulled together by the ‘One Nation Working Together’ coalition of some 400 groups, an estimated 175,000 people filled the area. They were the country’s trade unions, civil rights, women’s rights, and community organizations, peace and justice groups, and many more. The focus was jobs, justice and education, with sizable contingents against the wars as well.

“I hope they look at the mall today,” stated the Rev. Al Sharpton from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, referring to the GOP and the Tea Party right, “because this is what America looks like, not just one color or one gender.”

A rainbow of nationalities, men and women, young and old, and with a solid core from all sectors of the working class filled the area. The crowd’s mood was upbeat and militant, and they let it be known with a range of voices, from old-fashioned liberals to the socialist left, that they were fed up with the right wing assaults from Tea Party, the GOP neoliberals and the Blue Dog Democrats going along with them.

“This gathering is a wakeup call for the American people,” declared Harry Belafonte, in one of the strongest and most critical speeches of the day. “"Do we really believe that sending 100,000 troops to kill innocent men and women in Afghanistan and Pakistan makes any sense?” he continued, clearly and sharply criticizing Obama’s concession to the war machine. The actor-singer went on to attack the “crippling poison of racism” and "the undermining of the Constitution and the systematic attack on our most inalienable rights….At the heart of this danger is the Tea Party which is coming close to achieving its villainous ends. On November 2, in the millions, we must overburden our voting booths, and vote against those who would have us become a totalitarian state." 

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Mondragon and the Transition to a Third Wave Future

Mondragon Diaries: Day Five

Need, Trust, Realism and Well-Chosen Allies

“The world has not been given to us simply to contemplate it, but to transform it. And this transformation is accomplished not only with our manual work, but first with ideas and action plans.”

--Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, founder of the Mondragon Coops

By Carl Davidson

Keep On, Keepin' On

Today the Mondragon valley is misty and grey, with small clouds drifting between the mountain peaks. It's somewhat otherworldly, I think to myself on the bus ride up the slopes, almost like a scene from “the Lord of the Rings.”

Today is also our last day, and we're full of mixed feelings. Melancholy that our week-long seminar is coming to a close and that the news friends we've made will scatter. But there's also excitement that we'll soon be back home and able to share it all with our communities.

Our first stop is another component allied with Mongragon University called SAIOLAN. It's an incubator project for helping to launch new coops and high-tech businesses.

We're greeted in a classroom by a young woman from Mexico, Isabel Uriberen Tesia,  who is also our presenter. She wastes no time bringing up her powerpoint on the screen and getting into the topic.

“Our aim is generating employment, creating new jobs,” she says. “our purpose is to do this by developing new business projects and training new entrepreneurs.”

An few years back, as the economic crisis was developing, nearly 60 percent of the students graduating in the Basque Country were having a hard time finding employment. The government, the MCC coops and other businesses, as well as the students themselves, all turned to SAIOLAN to help launch new enterprises that could put young people to work.

“There are five levels in the training of entrepreneurs,”  Isabel explained. “First is motivation. Second is finding opportunities. Third is defining a suitable project for the student, in tune with his or her interests and ideas. Once you get past these three, the next two, planning the startup and launching what you have developed, also involves finding resources, such as grants and loans, that can get the new businesses operating.”

What kind of businesses were being started? One involved processing plants for cleaning waste water in a new and better way, another was called 'micro-manufacturing,' producing very small components accurately, quite a few were new software products. One from FAGOR, the large home appliance worker-cooperative, involved finding new uses for stainless steel, including exterior products, like one-piece transit stop structures.

Some of our group were concerned that many of the new startups were simply new businesses rather than also coops. This was 80 percent, or 138 out of 172 new small enterprises over the last few years, with 2281 new employees. SAIOLAN didn't seem worried. “It's their choice,” was the explanation. “Some of them will later transform into coops, and in any case, it's good to create new employment for our entire Basque community, not just the minority in cooperatives.”

We got deeper into the subject in our next session. It was further up the mountainside at Otlalora, and we had as our resource person one of the senior MCC leaders, the head of the “Innovation Group', who had been with Mondragon for 48 years.

After laying out some of the basic features of innovation—infrastructure, science, technology, strategic planning—he made it much more real by talking about a fundamental conflict facing all manufacturing businesses, not just MCC. “Take FAGOR, our home appliance manufacturing coop. It's a mature business. We can continue to compete by making some additional improvements in quality, or cutting our profit margins. But in the end, it's going to be very hard to compete with similar products produced in Asia. We should keep at it as long as we can operate in the black and our worker-owners can maintain their standards, but where, really, is our new growth potential?

He named three broad areas—renewable energy, health and eldercare, and information technology. I got even more interesting to me as he became more specific about new product lines—fuel cells, wind turbines, photovoltaics, embedded software, wireless, ambient intelligence, and bioprocessing in supercomputers. He was presenting the shift from second wave manufacturing to the high-design and high-touch products of a third wave future in a knowledge economy, and he had 200 people working full time on coming up with new ideas and plans.

I asked a question. “Have you had any inquiries from those countries trying to define a new 21^st century socialism, in whatever way, such as Venezuela, Cuba, China, Vietnam or even South Africa, on how they might use Mondragon's ideas and services? Do you thing you have something to offer here?”

“Yes and No,” was the cautious answer. “We get queries from all of them. We've been to China and other places, and there is some genuine interest, to a point. But since spreading knowledge and worker's power at the workplace also often runs against the clinging to control by bureaucrats, socialist or otherwise., the interest often comes to a dead end. But it's not always the case, and we keep working on doing what we can.”

He went on to discuss the problems of cultural differences. “We Basques are often risk-adverse when it comes to business, unlike Americans. We other avoid risks when we shouldn't. On another hand, when we talk with Mexican workers about owning the firms we start there for themselves, and they elected the leadership, they simply don't believe us. They want to know where the trick is hidden, since businesses are always owned by bosses, never by workers. There is no trust.”

So what are the basic things need to start worker-cooperatives in our countries, asked one of our group?

“First the workers themselves must FEEL THE NEED. Without that, it's hard to get anywhere. Second there must be a culture of TRUST, since you are sharing money, sharing risks, and supporting new leaders. Third, is to BE REALISTIC. You need successes, especially in the beginning. To many early mistakes, and you are finished. Finally you need friends and collaborators, but pick them carefully!”

This had us inspired and buzzing all through lunch, another amazing sampling of Basque cuisine. I had steamed artichokes with a delicious sauce and braised pork, finished off with dark strong coffee and ice cream with slivers of dark chocolate.

The afternoon session featured a presentation of one of the students in MUNDUKIDE, a small overseas assistance program with the people of Mozambique, Brazil, Cuba and a few other countries. The discussion was largely about microloans, which weren't working very well, and road-building, whic was rather successful.

Our final session was with Fred Freundlich, the American professor, who was a veteran of the movements against plant closings in the U.S. A few decades back, who now was a faculty member at Mondragon University. Since he understood both our realities and those at MCC, he could handle any outstanding questions.

There were a lot of them. The first was how much was MCC's success a result of factors unique to the Basque Country. “It's somewhat important, but not decisive,” Fred answered. “One very important . factor was it started at just the right time. If it had started 10 years earlier, conditions may have been too harsh. But the first coops were launched at a time when people really needed a lot of things, and finally had a little savings to spent. Many businesses grew in this period. If it started 10 years later, MCC may have had much stronger competition, and may not have gotten off the ground so well.”

I asked what was the response of the socialist and communist groups in the Basque County and Spain to MCC? “Mixed and confused,” was the answer. Some thought it utopian. Others dismissed it as a diversion, as making workers into capitalists. But they still kept sending delegations for visits, and going away impressed. The Basque left was also fragmented over violence, when ETA, the Basque armed resistance group, assassinated a former leader of one of the MCC coops who was also a socialist official.

After a thoughtful pause, Fred made a point that applied to the U.S. Left as well. “There's two trends in the left,” he explained. “Those who think long and hard about business and what to do with it. And those who mainly like to discuss left ideas.” The implication was that they most often didn't overlap, even if it was wise to do so, both tactically and strategically.

Mikel brought the session to and end by asking us all for our new ideas and projects on how we might implement what we had learned. There were all sorts of plans in the works, from networking food coops, to producing new green products, to making a new film about Mondragon for a U.S audience. We had clearly all had our imaginations fired up by the experience. Mikel gave us each a certificate for completing a 40-hour study seminar, which was a lovely touch. But the truth was that most of us would need no reminder. What we had learned here had changed us, and we would be looking at people and projects in new ways for some time to come.

[Carl Davidson is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a national board member of Solidarity Economy Network, and a local Beaver County, PA member of Steelworkers Associates. If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button above. For more info on these tours, go to http://praxispeace.org]

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Mondragon’s ‘Second Degree’ Coops Help Weather Today’s Crises

 

Mondragon Diaries: Day Four

Worker Coops, Worker Banks, Worker Skills

By Carl Davidson

Keep On Keepin' On

Most new small businesses fail. That's a fact, whether they are in the Basque Country or in the U.S. Or anywhere else, Yet the Mondragon Coops, which all started as small worker-owned businesses, have hardly ever failed. Why? The key is in Father Jose Maria Arizmendi's original founding conception of cooperatives as the interlocking of school, factory and credit union.

This was the thought I was rolling over in my mind as our bus again climbed the slopes on the Arrasate-Mondragon valley, this morning with grey skies and a light drizzle. We were headed for an administrative office of Caja Laboral, the worker-owned banking network of the MCC Coops. The ride wasn't far, and we were soon whisked into a small auditorium. Our mentor, Mikel, introduced the staff member who would introduce us to the world of banking, and Mondragon's modification of one corner of that reality.

Some people might question why workers for social change would want to be involved with banks at all. But certain kinds of credit and finance are important components of any society—capitalist, socialist or somewhere in between. Father's Arizmendi's conclusion tha two of the many reasons cooperative movements fail in the past was the lack of reliable credit and the lack of innovation and new ideas. Hence the reason he started with a school, but was soon to add a small credit union formed from the small deposits of his parishioners and their neighbors. To start a factory, you had to borrow some money, and borrowing the money of people close to you at lost cost was the best way to go.

By 1959, the small credit union had grown and transformed into Caja Laboral. Today it is one of the major banks in Spain, with assets of 21 billion euros and 1.5 billion in equity. It has 18.6 billion in customer deposits, outset by 16.4 billion in credit loans. It has 1,2 million clients, only 120 of which are the MCC coops. It has 2000 people working for it, who are worker-owners. Actually, the bank is owned 55% by the MCC coops and 45% by the staff workers. But the rule they have adopted is that the factory coops pick eight of the board member, while the staff worker elect four. Since Caja Laboral, is a coop of coops, it is what MCC calls a 'second degree' coop. Other second degree coops are their schools, medical clinics and insurance agencies.

“We are rated the best bank in Spain in customer satisfaction,” says our presenter. “One reason is that we are worker-owners ourselves, and not socially distance from them. We work closely with our clients. We are prudent and conservative.

Mikel give a wry laugh from the back of the room, and interjects: “Except for the Lehman Brothers fiasco....” It turns out Caja Laboral had taken a hit of 160 million euros it had tied up in Lehman Brothers securities when the Wall Street investment bank collapsed at the beginning of the financial crisis two years back. Not only had MCC's bank had been hurt, every bank and government in Europe felt the pain, and some were still struggling.

“Yes,” said our presenter. “But we followed our rule of transparency. You and everyone else knew it the same day, and we announced it to the press the next morning.”

This opened up a discussion among all of us on the proper role of banking and credit unions, including cooperative ones. It's not a subject progressive activists are all that familiar with, but we had it anyway. First it was clear that Caja Laboral's big sin in the Lehman Brothers case was believing in the validity of the AAA ratings of its securities, set by U.S. Government agencies, which turned out to be a sham. Second, it was also clear from the numbers presented that Caja Laboral was really something on the order of a strong and relatively cash-rich savings and loan operation and consumer services bank. Its managers didn't get rich, but had incomes within the same narrow and modest salary spread as all MCC coop members. Its profits were plowed back in to building new coops. It was not in the same league as the giant Wall Street speculators in derivatives, with their billion dollar bonuses, who were trying to gain wealth not by creating new wealth, but by pure gambling with other people's money.

Most of us concluded that Caja Laboral was a sound and necessary part of MCC and its growth, but the arguments continued out the door and on the bus ride further up the mountainside to our next talk at the Otalora conference center.

Here we had a new topic, the training of governing boards of the coops. It did no good to elect workers to coop governing boards, and then just let them sink or swim. A skills transfer and training pro gram was in order.

Our presenter was Juan Ignacio Aitpunea. He was a well-seasoned and tough-minded older Basque worker with strong cooperative values in his heart.

“We use a Basque word, ORDEZKARI, for our program,” he started off. “It means 'representative,' because that's the task of the boards, to represent the workers. Our boards are elected to four-year terms, but we stagger them. Every two years, only 50% change, but with 120 coops, that means we have about 1000 new board members to train every two years.

“We do it in steps. In the first six months, we get the new people to do self-evaluations, to find out their competencies, or the lack of them, so we know what to stress over the next year or so.

What were the skills needed? “First,” Juan continued, “you have to konw the basics, the laws on cooperatives and the functions of coop leaders. Second, you need common skills—teamwork, how to communicate, how to lead, how to make timely decisions. Third, you have to know how to design and work through a followup plan.

Juan went into more detail on this, but our crew had other questions: how were people nominated, and what was involved in running?

First, if there are two vacancies, there must be at least three candidate, he explained. Any worker could volunteer to run, but he or she had to get signatures of 10% of the workforce. Next, the workplace's social council, which serves some of the functions of a trade union, could suggest a candidate. Finally the old board could name one new candidate itself. But an initial vote was taken for each of the final minimum three candidates to get a 50% minimum, then the vote was held to determine the final two.

“We need this to make sure board members have a wide respect throughout the workplace,” Juan added. “This is especially important in hard times, like now, when hard decisions often have to made. Leading is not just about friendship, or making friends. This is not mainly a place for that. But it is a great school where you can learn what it means to be responsible. You may also make a few new friends. In fact, in tough times, that's when you can make the best and truest friends .”

Juan also stressed the need for diversity and the need to bring forward younger leaders. “When you get old like me, you get too used to having your own way. A time comes when you need to let new people in, but still find other ways to make a contribution.”

Our last stop of the day was Mondragon University. It was formed as a second degree coop by joining the engineering school, the business studies program, and the humanities and pedagogy teaching coop. It currently has about 3600 full time students. Tuition is about five thousand euros a year, considered moderate for a European university. Most of the students are from middle-income families in the area or from the workers in the coops.

Fred Freundlich was our presenter, an American who had been in the coop movement in the U.S. In the 1980s, but had lived in the Basque County for a good number of years. He gave frank and critical answers to our questions.

I raised my hand, and asked: “Suppose I'm a young worker in one of the local industrial coops, and I decide I want to become part of the management. How does MU help me? Do they?”

The short answer was 'Yes.' But Fred added that management usually required a college degree, and you didn't necessarily need to get it from MU. If you had a good resume and vita from elesewhere, You'd still be considered. On the other hand, if your coop saw that you were eager to gain new skills, they would give you a good deal of support, including financial, and going through MU for your degree would be a plus.”

Others raised the general question of activism among youth. “Frankly, Basque youth aren't all that active inside the coops. They're into third world global justice issues, environmentalism in general, and Basque nationalism. About the coop managers, I'd say a strong minority have solid cooperative values at heart, another minority pays lip service to them, and the rest are somewhere in between. We clearly need a new surge of activism to spread cooperativism beyond the factories, but my guess is only about 30 percent of the workers are activists on the matter. You really need to talk more with Mikel, who's really a leader on this topic”

Mikel went up front and drew us a wave-like graph, showing an initial surge in the early MCC decades, then a leveling off, then a dip at the beginning of the crisis, and now a small upward turn.

“This is the beginning of a rich discussion, how we need to redefine and reinvent ourselves for the 21^st century. But the bus is waiting to take us to dinner in San Sebastian. We can return to it tomorrow.”

[Carl Davidson is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a national board member of Solidarity Economy Network, and a local Beaver County, PA member of Steelworkers Associates. If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button above. For more info on these tours, go to http://praxispeace.org]

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Tools for Shaping the Organizations of the Future

Mondragon Diaries: Day Three

Visions of the Future, Ties to the Past

By Carl Davidson

Keep On Keepin' On

This morning our bus again takes us far up the winding mountain road to the 15^th Century blockhouse fortress now transformed into a conference center. I've since found out it's called Otalora, after an old noble family who owned the whole area reaching back 600 years. In those days, in was an armed way station on a trade route between the center of Spain and the sea, and the Otalora family extracted heavy taxes on the traffic going both ways.

This led to wars among the noble families over these spoils, and at one point the tall armed tower on one end of the building was destroyed by a rival. In the years that followed, to bring a degree of stability, all the the armed towers are lopped off on other castles in the area. This imagery brought smiles to the faces of the women in our group, who caught the symbolic significance immediately, even if the men took a moment or two to catch on with the laughter.

In any case, Otalora is now owned by Caja Laboral, the worker-owned credit union of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, which operates on the scale of a major bank with outlets across the country, in addition to serving as a source of finance to all the MCC coops, who dominate its governing council. The other voice is a bloc of representatives from the Caja Laboral staff workers themselves. A few farmers use the land for dairy cows and sheep, but otherwise, the whole area looks like a well-tended national park.

After the Otalora story, our more serious topic this morning is the wider range of the cooperative movement, both in the Basque Country and Spain. Mikel introduces Lorea Soldevilla, a young worker-owner from KONFEKOOP, the Basque Cooperative Confederation. MCC is part of this, but it turns out that there are many more cooperatives in the region that are not. From the group's acronym, I also learn that the Basque language does not use the letter 'C.'

There are currently 755 cooperatives in the Basque Country, she explains, and only 80 of them are the worker-owned MCC coops. There are a total of 537,000 members of all the coops, but only 54,919 are worker members, and 37,860 of these are the MCC worker-owners.

Where did these other nearly 500,000 come from? Lorea brings up a spreadsheet on a screen to show us that there all all kinds of cooperatives and members. Eroski, the supermarket chain, for instance, has consumer members as well as worker members, and there are other consumer coops. There are also producer coops, such a diary farmers, where the farm owners are member, but not necessarily the farm workers. There are also marketing coops, transport coops of independent truckers, cooperative schools, food coops and housing coops.

At the center of Konfekoop's work as a confederation is the concept of 'inter-cooperation,' the idea that coops should help each other. 'Inter-Coop', as it's called, has several organized components. ELKAR-LAN helps people with the legal and organizational consulting to form new coops. Elkar-Ikertigia is a volunteer policy and research center. PromoKoop helps find new markets and helps coops enter new markets. Oinarri helps to link coops to the wider social economy.

But there is another vital function as well. MCC is nonpartisan, ie, not tied to any political party, and the same is true of many of the others. Still, they need to influence and work with the Basque and Spanish governments, especially on matters of law and regulations that can help or hinder them. Konfekoop enables them to do this, both as a lobbying arm and by directly having its people serve on government bodies and study groups. It's a way of working with favorable politicians of all parties without directly being members of any of them. The Basque government, for its part, is largely favorable to MCC and the other coops, since they have helped to bring a higher-than-average degree of prosperity to the region.

We all gave Lorea a round of applause for expanding our horizons. It was now time for our caffeine break, and we all headed downstairs to a room in the old castle that was now a coffee bar. There were three workers getting us expressos and cafe con leches, so I asked, 'Are you guys worker-owners of this fancy Caja Cabral enterprise too? I asked. “Of course,” was the answer, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

As we returned for the next round, I heard a few groans about the title: 'The Corporate Management Model.' Some gritted their teeth for a technical lecture; a few said, “can't they find a better word than 'corporate'?” “Give it a chance,” I replied. “'Corporation' doesn't translate with the same meaning we put on it.”

Mikel introduced Jose Luis Lafuente, whose title, accordingly, was 'Director of Corporate Management Model.' Jose started of by explaining that their model was developed over decades, going back to Father Arizmendi's Ten Principles, but in the 1990s, was also deeply rooted in TQM outlook, or Total Quality Management. Again a few eyes were rolled, because a version of TQM was used against U.S trade unions back in those days, and a few around the table remembered it.

But as Jose continued expanding of MCC's approach, which put the core values of worker ownership and democracy at the center of an ever-widening set of values and organizational principles, the mood in the room began to change. He then took each component, and in a wonderful set of inter-linked graphic images, he unfolded a number of powerful tools that could be adapted to any progressive organization to build its strength, grow its size and achieve its goals.

He posted 'people in cooperation' as the first starting circle, then went on to connect that concept to the necessity of participatory organization, wage solidarity, social transformation and many others. By the time he was done, everyone was wide-eyed. “So what do you think?” he asked. “I love it,” I blurted out. “But I'm going to adapt it to building my socialist and other political organizations.” He laughed, but in the front of my mind was the conclusion that I had a powerful, modernized framework to update and supplement Lenin's 'What Is To Be Done' and an number of other classics on organization.

It was time for lunch, and all the tables were buzzing with excitement over the presentation. Jose set across from me, but he immediately asked about other matters. “We made an agreement with the US Steelworkers about a year ago to form some worker coops in the U.S. How's it going?” “From what I know,” I replied, “they want to proceed with caution, finding a few profitable firms to buy up and create. Plus a lot of their members had bad experiences in the past with Employee Stock Ownership Plans or ESOPs, and they have an educational task show how the MCC model is not at all the same as ESOPs. He countered than it was often easier to form a worker coop as a new startup, but he understood my points. He went on to speak highly of GAMESA, the Spanish wind turbine outfit that had opened up three new plants in Pennsylvania in cooperation with the USW. GAMESA got along fairly well with MCC, even though it wasn't a coop, but simply a high-road green capitalist

firm.

After lunch, we boarded our bus and headed back down the mountainside to the town of Assarte-Mondragon. We were visiting IKERLAN, on of MCC's thirteen Research and Development cooperatives. It was the first and the largest, and had a number of research lines. It included 209 full-time research scientists as worker-owners, and another 54 trainees. “Effective Innovation at the service of our company clients” was how Maria, our presenter, summed up their mission. She went on to describe energy saving power stations, micro-needles for bio-tech medicine, new computer components for smart electrical grids, touch screen control panels for the home automation, and so on. “Less energy, with lighter materials at lower costs” is a common thread, she added.

Again I was impressed by seeing the advanced productive forces, created by high design, that would be critical to solving problems like the climate change crisis. One of our team, however, asked an interesting question: “Does serving your clients mean working on nuclear weapons or other military instruments?” No, she said firmly, we turn these down. “Is that written down somewhere?” She wasn't sure, but added that with their values, “We would simply not think of doing things like that.”

The comment served as a transition to the last part of our day, a 40-minute bus ride even higher into the mountains. We were headed to a Franciscan monastery with a new secular institution, BAKETIK, the Basque Peace Center of Aranzazu, far above the town of Onati. The ride itself was a joy, with forest broken up by high mountain meadows with dairy cattle and, once you got higher, the sheep the Basques are known for raising. The cathedral at the top was a power piece of architectural, one you had to walk down through cut stone to enter.

The peace center itself had taken on a tough task. There were hundreds of undocumented refugee children, mainly from bloody civil conflicts in Africa, who had would up on the streets of Spain, homeless. Many were brought here, and paired with volunteer 'big brothers' and 'big sisters' to help them regain trust and their own physical and mental health. It took patience, but it served the children well.

On the way back we stop in Onati, known for good chocolate stores. It was true, as I picked up a large bar of truffle-flavored 80% cacao dark for only 2 Euros. But as I strolled through the town square at evening, I noticed something of even greater value. The town's working-class families were sitting in the town square, drinking beer and coffee, engaged in conversation. Children had the run of the streets, playing games and riding bikes—and there wasn't a bevy of police cars to be seen. It was a place of community and solidarity, where people still enjoyed the simple company of one another and the smaller pleasures of life.

[Carl Davidson is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a national board member of Solidarity Economy Network, and a local Beaver County, PA member of Steelworkers Associates. If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button above. For more info on these tours, contact the Praxis Peace Institute at http://praxispeace.org ]

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