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Why The Germans Didn’t Stop Fascism

August 18, 2018
democracy, history, politics, strategy
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In my lifetime (1940-so far, so good) the biggest historical question has always been, “Why didn’t the German people stop fascism?”

nazis-people2

Book Review: Erik Larson, “In the Garden of Beasts,” Crown, New York, 2011

When we meet people from Germany, we start looking for the right opportunity to, politely, ask them. When we read the histories, it’s what we want to know. “In the Garden of Beasts” relates the personal histories of the four family members of Professor William E Dodd, Ambassador to Germany 1933-37.

Worldwide attitudes toward the Nazis ranged from admiration to revulsion when Dodd moved to Berlin. Like most people, his family fell somewhere in between. Dodd felt that his role was to be an intermediary without strong bias. That changed over time and the course of this book.

Probably the most detailed account comes from vivacious daughter Martha Dodd. That may be because she wrote the most and lived the longest. It may also have been because she was more involved with more people and with people of more disparate political views. One of her lovers was a communist who worked in the Soviet Embassy; another headed the Gestapo, and there were several in-between.

Hitler had already been elected to high office before the Dodd’s arrived, and his popularity was already rising to fanatic levels. But he didn’t really consolidate all his power until the period that the Dodd’s experienced up close and personally. While they were there, he murdered some of his rivals and outlasted General Hindenberg, the only single person who could have stopped him.

Interestingly, Dodd had his detractors within the State Department all along. Especially after he began to condemn the Nazis, powerful Americans wanted him removed and finally had their way. His successor was still apologizing for Hitler at the end of the book. According to this author’s account, President Roosevelt supported Dodd’s view, but was forced to acquiesce in getting rid of him.

After Dodd returned to the United States, he toured the country to warn about fascism. Martha, too, worked against the fascists, but, like many others, she had to seek exile during the post-war witch hunt.

So, why didn’t the Germans stop Hitler? The best answer I got by asking came from a World War II veteran (their side, not ours) living in Dallas. He said, “The Nazis got people jobs.” Hitler came to power during the great worldwide depression. German unemployment was 25%. That’s why it was so easy for the relatively wealthy National Socialist Party to recruit young men into their Stormtroopers. After they took power, the Nazis started their great military building, which eventually overcame the worst of their unemployment problem. That’s a partial answer to the question, but not a fully satisfying one.

The real answer may never be found by asking individual Germans or reading history books. The real answer has to do with comfort zones, lack of understanding, lack of organization, miseducation, and lack of will. The reasons the German people didn’t stop fascism, even though they could see it, are the same reasons that the people of the United States have not yet stopped the trend toward fascism here. Let’s start asking about that!

–Gene Lantz

I am on KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” program every Saturday at 9 AM Central Time. Podcasts are on Itunes. If you want to know what I really think, check out my personal web site

 

What’s “Normal” in Economics?

August 7, 2018
democracy, economy, history, politics, unions
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Book Review:

Galbraith, James K “The End of Normal. The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth.” Simon & Schuster, New York, 2014. Dallas library 330.90511 G148E 2014

Some economists, and certainly those dominating the thinking in the labor movement, believe that the period 1945-1973 was “normal” and that our subsequent problems came about because of bad policies. Most notably, we blame Reagan, Reaganomics, and “trickle down” economics. Our intentions are the best, but our economic analysis is way wrong according to the last few economics books I’ve read, especially this one.

The postwar boom was not normal. It was an extremely unusual period of capitalist history during which the United States dominated the economic world. Capitalists reluctantly shared some of their largesse with a powerful and demanding labor movement. By 1973, it was pretty well over. What happened before and what is now happening afterward is normal capitalism: slow growth, rising inequality, international competition, and inevitable crises.

Some economists treat their discipline like a religion. In religion, God has a purpose for everything. He/She tends to restore balance in a world that makes sense. When things seem to go terribly wrong, God is just moving a few things around with balance and purpose His/Her ultimate goal. Religious people think that the universe has some kind of stasis, and everything within it has a natural balance that we will understand someday after we’re dead. “Farther along, we’ll know all about it. Farther along, we’ll understand why” as the song says.

This religious commitment to balance and purpose is contradicted by everything that happens. The universe has no balance: some stars collide with others, planets come and go. Our lives have no balance: we may be growing cancer cells right alongside the healthy ones.

Things aren’t balanced and purposeful. In fact, things aren’t even whatever we think they are. Everything is changing from one type of thing to another. The only “normal” is change. That’s true of economic systems as well. It’s not a religion, and there is no balance and purpose to be “restored.”

galbraithquote

Galbraith seems to know that, and he lashes the many conventional economists whose conclusions are tailored to suit the desires of their employers. You really have to appreciate Galbraith for that.

The author teaches at UT Austin. He’s a wonderful writer. Whether or not he’s a great economist, I suppose, will be revealed over the next few years because, unlike most, he does not believe that America will ever return to the growth period from around 1945 to the 1970s. He recommends that we adjust our policies for an extended period of slow growth. His recommendations are a lot like those of Bernie Sanders.

I wonder what he said two weeks ago when President Trump announced that growth in the 2nd quarter of 2018 had exceeded 4%? If they are able to sustain that kind of growth, then Galbraith was simply wrong, but that one quarter could easily be a fluke. I wrote him an email to ask.

Some of his more contemporary remarks, from January 2018, are on-line:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/economist-james-k-galbraith-isnt-celebrating-dow-25000-2018-01-08 He correctly predicted that corporations would not invest their ill-gotten gains from the December, 2017 tax giveaway. He says they will just buy back their own stock and drive up stock prices, and that is certainly what happened over the next 8 months.

This is a good book well worth reading.

OTHER REVIEWS:

‘The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth’ reviewed by Hans G Despain

Reviewed by Hans G Despainent

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James K Galbraith’s The End of Normal, recently published, is a spectacular achievement in political economy generally, as a philosophical critique of the practice of economics and public policy in particular, and for its comprehensive and totalizing explanation of global monopoly-finance capitalism.

…Galbraith contends that not only does financialization generate massive inequality and instability (see Galbraith 2012), but generates opportunities for colossal fraud. Galbraith contends we must “stipulate that the Great Financial Crisis was rooted in a vast scheme of financial fraud”

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18144111-the-end-of-normal

Today, four factors impede a return to normal. They are the rising costs of real resources, the now-evident futility of military power, the labor-saving consequences of the digital revolution, and the breakdown of law and ethics in the financial sector.

 

MY NOTES:

Pg10: That bastard Richard Fisher

17 He begins his tale in 1945

21 Effect of communism. At the last chapter, he gives an interesting summary of the economic collapse of the Soviet Union from being a great power to being a total bust

57 Financialization

64 Economists are like monks in a monastery. He handles metaphors very adeptly

67 Capitalism = perfection

68 Stochastic – it means “random”

99 Could this be an error? He says that no gain results from variable costs. Does he think profit comes from fixed costs?

100: Does he think surplus value is produced from energy? Business cycles are caused by technology. Tractors basically caused the great depression by supplanting all the farmers, mules, and horses. Anyway, he thinks resource costs are a big problem. He thinks technology is not going to save us.

164 Explaining the Great Recession: “…fraud took over the financial system because it was expedient to allow it.” The basis for growth ended in the 1970s.

Somewhere in here, he mentions that nobody cares if people move from California to Colorado. I think he’s pointing out that immigration within the Economic Union is a really big problem, but it’s easy within the United States.

222 Cutting Social Security would not help the economy, as they are just transfer payments redistributing wealth but not creating or destroying any

238 There are four obstacles to achieving high growth and full employment:

  1. Energy markets remain high cost and uncertain (this was 2014)
  2. World economy is no longer under the effective financial and military control of the United States and its allies.
  3. Digital technology replaces a lot more jobs than it creates
  4. The private financial sector has ceased to serve as a motor of growth

Pg 241: Why not live in a “no growth” world? He says that our store of capital would not get replenished so productivity would fall continuously

The Soviets were a great powerhouse by the 1960s, but they did not rebuild and replenish their productive abilities and, eventually, lost the technology race. Their production got more and more costly and less and less quality. After the government collapses, the economy really went to hell. GNP dropped by half, life expectancy dropped from 72 down to 58 (pg 259).

He doesn’t think cutting the working hours would be as good as just letting people retire earlier.

The Coming Economic Crash

July 25, 2018
democracy, economy, politics, strategy
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Book Review:

Thomas Hartman, The Crash of 2016. Twelve, the Hachette Book Group, New York,  2013

us-economic-collpase

If there really had been a crash in 2016, Hartman would have been considered a great genius. As there wasn’t, he ends up with some egg on his face. Further unfortunately for Hartman, some of the problems he points out were already reversed by the Trump administration, specifically tariffs and China-bashing. So his argument for the crash of 2016 is further undermined.

However, a ‘great crash’ within the present time frame would nevertheless redeem him and people would only say that he missed it a few years. The book is a good, exciting, read, but I would have to put it into the category of well-written alarmist narrative rather than serious economic study. Like all of the books written before Piketty (2015 in English) that I have read, they consider 1945-1979 “normal” and everything subsequent as “abnormal.’ I consider this wrong, and so does Piketty. The abnormal period was 1945-1979. Before and after that short “American century,” what happened and is happening is just capitalism.

Hartman puts most of the fault for the disastrous 1979-to-present period on mental states and subjective attitudes rather than historical and economic developments. FDR was a good guy, the “economic royalists” were bad guys with questionable sanity. In fact he calls them psychopaths. The rest of us are guilty of mental lapses, too, as new generations go through a “great forgetting” that causes us to repeat previous economic errors.

As Hartman doesn’t understand the cause of the present economic problems, he doesn’t have a very good handle on solutions, either. Some of his hopes are presently being carried out by Donald J. Trump and are not likely to bring long-term economic benefit to the populace.  He also proposes things that aren’t likely to happen given current trends. After the “crash of 2016” that he predicts, he wants us to reinvigorate democracy through election reform. He wants the labor movement to be encouraged by government. Most of all, he seems to want worker cooperatives to replace the giant corporations as the main economic engines.

How any of that could happen, Hartman doesn’t say.

some notes:

Pg15: Good quote from Grover Cleveland in 1888: “The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor. As we view the achievements of aggregate capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

20: The Business plot: General Smedley Butler blew the whistle on a plot to bring an army of 500,000 men into DC to oust FDR. The front man for the businessmen and banksters was Gerald MacGuire.

26: Moyers quote on plutocracy on 2011: “Our democracy is dysfunctional…. We no longer have a government of, by, and for the people– representative democracy. We have government by plutocracy– the rule of the rich for the rich by the rich…. Plutocracy has one purpose, which is to protect wealth.”

Pg34: Powell memo outlined how Republicans could take over. Lewis F Powell Jr in 1971 went to Nixon. Nixon made him Supreme Court Justice. His memo, written to the United States Chamber of Commerce just before his nomination, recommended a militant political action program ranging from the courts to the campuses. He wanted to undo the New Deal.  Powell called on corporate leaders to launch an economic and ideological assault on college and high school campuses, the media, the courts, and Capitol Hill. The objective was simple: the revival of the Royalist-controlled so-called ‘free market’ system. (page 37)

pg40 Roger Ailes prepared the way for Fox news misrepresentation

pg43: lobbying mushroomed. ALEC formed

44: CATO and Heritage foundation come out of Koch Brothers

48: Supreme Court decisions such as Citizens United

52: “Trickle down” economist Milton Friedman advises the fascists in Chile. Terrible economic results

71: He credits FDR and “good “ politics for 1945-1979 good times. Unlike Piketty, who says it was the “shocks” of two world wars.

88: He is pro-tariffs. This is before Trump imposed them

93: Psychopaths. He says that banksters and other filthy rich are basically psychopaths. In fact, a lot of Hartman’s analysis has to do with mental states. He thinks that generations go through a “great forgetting,” for example, that causes us to repeat previous economic errors.

95: Getting sillier. He thinks madness is part of evolution.

96-7: Oligopoly

101: On China, he seems to be agreeing with Trump again. Lots of China bashing here

122: Tillman Act under Theodore Roosevelt stopped corporate electioneering

151: Corporations, especially Railroad Corporations, made many efforts to get legalization in Supreme Court decisions. They always lost until “Citizens United.”

207: He gives recommendations for after the crash of 2016. It’s all reformism of capitalism. He espouses value of co-operatives.

273: Author is described as a talk show host with several important books before this one.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on the “Workers Beat” talk show on radio KNON in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. Podcasts are available under the “events” tab. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.

Why Organize A Singalong?

July 18, 2018
art, democracy, history, strategy, unions
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I organized a musical event for July 14 at the CWA Local 6215 hall in Dallas. We celebrated Bastille Day and Woody Guthrie’s birthday. As far as I know, it was the first of
its kind in Dallas history. It came out very well. About 50-55 people, including 6 performers, had a great time. There was a lot of good will. I’m not sure how much money we
raised for KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” program, but we raised $534.25 that I know of for Dallas AFL-CIO.

But why did I do it?

I’ve organized cultural events before. In general, I’m motivated by a desire to restore the kind of cultural traditions that helped build the American labor movement during
its great upsurge, 1935-1947. I also like to try to combine the labor movement with other progressive elements, in fact that’s what I’m usually trying to do — build unity. As
for fund raising, I’m always raising money for my program on KNON. But I had a special reason for making this one a fund raiser for the Dallas AFL-CIO.

It is my opinion that the labor movement is being bled to death by Donald J Trump and the Republican party. The recent Supreme Court, Janus Vs AFSCME, will deplete labor’s
finances by millions of dollars. Trump’s executive orders driving federal unions out of their workplace offices will cost a lot. The concerted effort of such savage anti-
worker organizations as the National Right to Work Committee and many others is designed to discourage workers and stop dues payments. Many state legislatures are trying to
stop or hinder dues collections.

I don’t know any numbers, and the labor movement is not likely to start advertising its weaknesses, but I think it’s fair to assume that they really need money. I knew I
could’t raise a lot of money with a simple singalong on July 14, but I also knew that we have to start changing people’s attitudes about financing the labor movement. That was
my motivation. I’m pleased with the result.

Here’s What Happened

If you missed the event, you might want to read what was said and watch videos of what was sung. Here are my notes.

Host’s introductions and comments:

Introduce Dallas AFL-CIO principal officer Mark York. He will include greetings from Texas AFL-CIO President Rick Levy as follows:

“I can’t think of a better quote about labor songs and culture than from the man himself [Woody Guthrie]:

‘I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for
nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad
luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your
world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that
make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the
other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the
ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d
sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that
anyhow.’

‘We have to make our own songs and our own culture and remember who we are and what we are fighting for. Thanks to you and the folks putting this together for reminding us to
always be true to our best nature and be proud of who we are.” –Rick Levy

Host (me): Thank you for being here to help us revive labor’s cultural heritage. It’s a singalong. You should have a song sheet with the words to the chorus of some great
songs.

When you leave today, I’d like to have your contact information on the back of the song sheets so you can learn about future events.

Why do we say that Woody Guthrie is America’s greatest songwriter? He began his singing career in the 1930s and was taken from public view by 1950, so hardly anybody in this
room has any direct memories of him. Some of you know the name of his son, Arlo Guthrie, and some of you may know some of the songs that he wrote, but he wrote hundreds and
had a profound effect on the progressive movement in America. That’s why we’re celebrating him today.

Woody put working people first. Almost all of his songs are about working families, and many of them are about organizing. One of the most famous is “Union Maid,” brought to
you here by Linda Coleman. She’ll sing the verses, but she wants you to help her sing the chorus

Union Maid and some introductory video: https://youtu.be/rkq8dK0GP6o

Woody Guthrie popularized the “Talking blues.” You’ve heard this style from Nobel-prize-winner Bob Dylan. But you may never have asked where Dylan got his style. Let’s have a
couple of talking blues from Brother Kenneth Williams:

Talking Union
Mean Talking Blues: https://youtu.be/oxMKDrDGZ0g

Woody sang for unions, for people on strike, and for organizing drives. Here is Kenny Winfree with Woody’s song: “You Gotta Go Down”
You Gotta Go Down and Join the Union: https://youtu.be/ynQqbpRM_bw

Almost any book of folk songs will have more Woody Guthrie tunes than those from any other writer. He wrote songs about everything. Pete Seeger tells the story of the
blacklist time when the FBI was arresting, deporting, or intimidating every progressive artist in America. The FBI actually visited Woody and Pete, and Pete said it really was
intimidating. But he said Woody laughed about it and immediately wrote a new song: Would I point a gun for my country.

All folk music is very close to gospel music. When Woody was just a little boy in Okemah, Oklahoma, his mother sang gospel and folk music to him. James Kille brings you some
of Woody’s original lyrics:
Jesus Christ: https://youtu.be/OdsBZHJ6ePY

In the tradition of original folk music, we bring you this satire by our own Dallas group: The Billionaires
Billionaire song (in previous video I think)

Fund Pitch:
All his life, Woody Guthrie was committed to the progressive movement, and so are we. We’d like to have your help in keeping two pillars of progressivism going strong: KNON
radio and the Dallas AFL-CIO. KNON allows the “Workers Beat” every Saturday at 9 AM. We advertise as many progressive events as we can find out, and we explain why people need
to join the movement. The very center of the movement in Dallas is the AFL-CIO Central Labor Council. The labor movement has put its old isolation behind it and is a
fundamental part of progressivism today. It takes money to run these things, and they’re always short. As Woody used to say when they asked him if he was a communist: “Well, I
might be, I’ve been in the red all my life.”

Please fill out the pledge form in your brochures. You can get all the paperwork done with Bonnie Mathis, who has her computer warmed up and waiting for you. When you get
finished, how about some free lunch and a beer? We’ll start the music up as soon as the artists all eat.
Fund Pitch

Noon: Lunch break

Ashaken Farewell
Shenandoah (Included with “Philadelphia lawyer” below)

Introduce the performers? At least Jon Gentry on violin. Ben Willett recording us.

Woody loved to write about cowboys, and he had fun with everything he did. Next James Kille, Linda Coleman, and I will bring you one of Woody’s ballads.
Philadelphia Lawyer: https://youtu.be/sewKC7EVysw

Today, the treatment of immigrants is an international scandal. Woody was sensitive to the problem when he wrote this song, presented to you by Anthony Esparza.
Deportee: https://youtu.be/iYGiR-TN3LQ

All of us are pretty much amateurs except for Kenny Winfree. I asked him to do a couple of extra numbers before we get back to Woody Guthrie
Kenny Winfree extra songs: https://youtu.be/dSKUtCbKv2o

Back around 1990, My wife and I visited Okemah, Oklahoma, where Woody was born in 1912. We asked people about Woody and they said “We don’t talk about him here.” Within a few
years, they changed their tune and now the Woody Guthrie annual festival is an important national event. It’s a sign of the times: As the government gets crazier, the people
are getting more sane.

Oklahoma may not have loved Woody all the time during his lifetime, but Woody sure loved Oklahoma! Join me in the chorus please!
Oklahoma Hills: https://youtu.be/AsHSSSw9UmI

In Woody’s time, the biggest issue became the fascist takeover of Europe. Woody fought it every way he could. Some people would say that we need a fight like that now!
All You Fascists Bound to Lose: https://youtu.be/-X5wHfLfKhc

Americans come together around Woody’s songs. Let’s join in on the chorus for this one.
This Land is Your Land: https://youtu.be/oL8RNiIi3qI

THANKS FOR COMING!

Extreme Suppression=Death

July 2, 2018
democracy, history
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Have you noticed the number of journalists getting killed lately?

It makes you stop and think about it. Around the world, journalists who try speaking truth to power are getting murdered. President Donald Trump isn’t helping when he tries to convince everybody that truth is fabricated, dark is light, and up is down. By constantly demonizing journalists, he’s painting a big bulls eye on their backs.

Which brings me to my letter to the editor printed today in the Dallas Morning News. It said that the recent decisions of the five anti-worker Supreme Court Justices reveal that they are opposed to democracy and would like to do away with it. The editors removed one word from my letter, “fascism.”

I equated the absence of democracy with fascism. If someone, like the Supremes, moves us away from democracy, they’re moving us toward fascism. That simple.

I try to explain things like that on my radio show every Saturday. Last Saturday a guy called to ask if I think all “conservatives” are also “fascists.” I said no, and I quoted conservative columnist David Brooks who recently wrote, “You can be a Republican or a Conservative, but not both.” He said true conservatives embrace democracy because they want freedom for all individuals.

If you aren’t for workers, I say, then you are automatically for corporations because their interests are opposite. Mussolini said that fascism was corporatism, and that makes sense to me.

I explore things like that all the time in my writing and on my radio show. Does that mean I’m in line to get killed? The studio is on the ground floor of an office building. Two sides are glass. Around my neighborhood, I’m always on my bicycle. Unprotected. I think that if I get to be as effective as I’d like to be in spreading the truth, I’d be in line to join the growing line of dead truth spreaders.

I thought about getting a gun, but that would kind of dilute the message, wouldn’t it?

 

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON radio 89.3 FM in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.

gun

Rush to See “1945”

June 25, 2018
art, democracy, history
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Movie Review, “1945,” Directed by Ferenc Török. 91 minutes

1945-2guys

I like to accuse my intellectual friends of only liking black-and-white movies in obscure dialects. They’d be sure to like “1945,” but almost anybody who likes good movies would, too.

It’s deceptively simple: Two tight-lipped Jewish guys come into a small Hungarian village immediately after World War II.

Can you imagine that? The all-gentile townspeople can. They have been dreading this coming every moment since their own participation in the holocaust.

I like filmmakers who understand their powerful medium and use it expertly. They don’t necessarily have to have wide screen, technicolor, computer graphics, or a cast of thousands to draw us moviegoers in and change us through art. This is a very sparse movie, like a tiny and innocent looking stick of dynamite.

The best movie comparison I could make is to “High Noon.” It’s not a cowboy movie, but the pacing and the tension it creates are similar. If you liked High Noon, you’d probably like “1945,” and who doesn’t like High Noon?

–Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON radio 89.3FM in Dallas every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. There are podcasts under the “events” tab. If you want to know what I really think, check out my personal web site.

 

Workers and the Texas Democrats

June 23, 2018
democracy, elections, politics, strategy, unions
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I liked a great deal of what I saw at the Texas Democratic Party convention in Ft Worth on June 22, but not everything.

conv-laborcaucuscrowd

The first thing we attended was the Labor Caucus. Texas AFL-CIO President Rick Levy presided over a completely packed meeting with people standing three deep along the back and sides. I caught Levy’s opening remarks on “Facebook Live” where you can see them at https://www.facebook.com/gene.lantz.7.

Just about every critical candidate in Texas was there seeking union help. Levy could only recognize most of them briefly due to time constraints. The ones that he introduced to the podium were the most critical statewide candidates such as Lupe Valdez for Governor.

candidate-lupevaldez

I noticed at least two unions had bought ads in the Democrats’ brochure: CWA and UAW. The Texas AFL-CIO booth in the Exhibit Hall was abuzz with activity. They took polaroids of people posing in front of their big slogan, “I’m union, I fight, I vote!’ It has a “big fist” image, to show power and commitment.

Labor’s big impact on the Democrats was evident everywhere. It doesn’t mean that labor is in their pocket, it actually means the opposite. Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa likes to say that Labor and the Democrats are “joined at the hip,” but in truth labor’s activities are very much our own. In this photo, you can see Texas AFL-CIO President Rick Levy thinking carefully while Hinojosa speaks to the Labor Caucus.

conv-levy-gilbertohinojosa

The deep polarization in America is causing working families to support Democrats. Recent news reports show Republicans trying to implement $6 trillion in cuts that would affect working people, less than a year after their big tax giveaway of more than a $trillion$ to the wealthy. The Texas Republican Party’s platform, just finished June 18, is a kick in the face to working families, and especially to our children.

On the downside

In their exuberance, the first dozen or so speakers at the Democrats’ convention emphasized two main themes: immigration and gun violence. These are hot-button issues today, to be sure, but they are issues that the Democrats already own. The Republicans have generously donated those issues and those voters to the Democrats.

But what about fighting the corporate takeover? What about America’s three ongoing wars and attempts to coerce and undermine other nations? What about America’s disgraceful top-of-the-world prison population? What about taking concrete steps to end the health care hodgepodge and support Medicare for All? What about saving the state’s environment in the face of rampant oil well fracking and nuclear waste dumping? I didn’t hear those issues, except for some vague emotional appeals here and there.

The inescapable conclusion is that the Democrats are not ready to forego big corporate campaign donations any more than the Republicans are.

What will you do?

I realize that many of America’s best activists have adopted the age-old goal of trying to take over the Democratic Party. I hope they do, but history tells us that it isn’t likely.

Supporting working families, not candidates nor parties, is the way to go. It may be true that nearly all of labor’s candidates in 2018 will be democrats, and it may be true that an individual activist can be more effective short-term working directly for candidates than he/she might be while working for the AFL-CIO, but that would be a major long-term mistake.

The electoral arena is only one of many, and we must choose labor in every one!

If the goal is to make serious change, activists must recognize that only workers can do that. They are the only ones who can stand up to capitalists. A few years ago, one could not have been blamed for feeling that the AFL-CIO and unions in general were not rightfully the leaders of the working class, but that is no longer true and has not been true since 1995. The AFL-CIO today truly works for the entire class and strives to organize everybody.

That’s the team we should join!

–Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON radio 89.3FM in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. The “events” tab on the web site leads to recent podcasts. If you want to know what I really think, check out my personal web site.

 

 

 

 

Trade: Free, Fair, and Misleading

June 10, 2018
democracy, economy, environment, history, politics, strategy, unions
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President Trump is the champion of fair trade for American workers. Or is he destroying the hopes of all workers for a peaceful and beneficial world? Or does he even know what he’s doing?

me-nonafta

A lot of working families were won over by Trump’s promise to renegotiate so-called “trade” agreements and restore American jobs. People, including a lot of union people, are still hoping he will. Yesterday, he poked his finger into the eyes of several world leaders at the G7 meeting in Canada. He said he was representing American workers.

What’s “Fair,” What’s “Free?”

For decades, since the Clinton Administration at least, American unions have been campaigning on the slogan “Fair trade, not free trade.” We always say “We’re not against trade — we just want it fair.” But it’s been very hard for union leaders to resist xenophobia and isolationism, because those “isms,” — right along with nationalism and racism — are also against the trade deals that America negotiated since Clinton.

The people that knew what they were talking about presented the argument that the so-called “free trade” deals were only “free” for big transnational corporations — not for the working families in America or any other country. Big corporations received “freedom” to pay low wages and pollute, nobody else got anything. That’s why we opposed NAFTA and all the others leading up to the “Trans Pacific Partnership” that was still an issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.

The people that knew what they were talking about actually favored trade deals if they included wage and environmental protection. But not everybody is so sophisticated. They hate the trade deals anyway. That’s why so many of them voted for Trump.

There’s a History to “Free Trade”

I recently read a complete history of Britain and found an interesting reference. When Britain “ruled the waves” and ruled the world, their slogan was “free trade.” From the time they defeated Napolean until World War I, the English favored what they called “free trade.” They didn’t , at least not immediately, necessarily open their own markets, but they wanted everybody else, especially their many colonies in Asia and Africa, to open theirs.

In other words, “free trade” meant, then and now, the “freedom” of one country’s corporate rulers to exploit everybody else. Another word for it is modern imperialism.

After World War I, and especially after World War II, when the United States took over world trade, corporations wanted “free trade” for the exact same reasons. But the “freedom” was always for the exploiters and never for the exploited, then and now.

Everything Ends

There are different ways to look at the Trump program on trade issues. Economists and pundits are arguing that he’s destroying the world and setting us back centuries. Trump and his supporters say he is restoring fairness. Xenophobes and racists are rooting for him, as they have all along.

But there’s another, more interesting way to look at Trump’s trade wars. American economic domination is coming to an end. It actually ended in the 1970s, according to some. Since then, international leaders have simply agreed to keep the system in place even though the United States is living on credit and has been for decades. The post-war system put in place by the United States after WWII has actually fallen apart. Donald Trump is just an opportunist trying to turn the situation to his own benefit.

A Real Solution to the Trade Wars

Modern nations were created by capitalism. Each nation is run by and for the bosses. Their economic and political decisions are made for the benefit of the dominant class — the capitalist class. That includes much more than trade deals and treaties. It also includes global pollution, war and genocide.

It is theoretically possible that the various governments, as presently constituted, could cooperate on trade in a way that would benefit the inhabitants of the various nations. But that’s only in theory. It has never worked that way because the inhabitants, us, were never in charge. We still aren’t, and there will be no solution until we are.

–Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON radio 89.3FM in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. The “events” tab on the web site leads to recent podcasts. If you want to know what I really think, check out my personal web site.

 

 

 

Better Then, Or Better Now?

June 8, 2018
democracy, history, strategy, unions
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Last night I listened to an outstanding report from a participant of the 1960s-70s American student anti-war movement. The reporter really knew his stuff, and his analysis was superb.

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At the end, though, I disagreed. It wasn’t that I don’t concede that the guy knows twice as much about the student movement as I do. It isn’t that I don’t agree that the student movement shook the world, refashioned people’s thinking, and contributed greatly to ending the Vietnam War. He’s absolutely right on that.

What I disagreed with was the emphasis. The progressive movement that we are experimenting with right now is the biggest, most important, and most potentially effective people’s movement since the American Civil War. Maybe even better than that. The student movement was nearly all college students, and mostly white draft-age males at that. Even the civil rights movement of 1954-1968 was limited to a relatively small sector of the population. The labor upsurge of 1935-1947 was great, but the union movement was split between the AFL and CIO then. The Industrial Workers of the World exceeds everything in pure romanticism, but I don’t think there were ever more than 100,000 actual members. The populist movement of the late 19th century was limited to farmers and, for the most part, didn’t even include landless farm workers. Outside Texas, the populists were infamous for their racism.

No, now is better.

Communists and Fascists Today

We had communists and fascists in the old days. We have them now.  People understand them both better now than they did when they were just “hot button” emotional topics. It is true that fascism is inching forward in America, but it is also true that people know what to do about it. More importantly, the fascists can’t use anti-communism as effectively as they did before. Anti-communism is dying out among America’s youth.

Just Look At Us!

I looked around the room while my friend was talking about our student movement. The crowd was mostly young, but not all young. In gender and race, it was diverse. When my friend talked about making leaflets for anti-war demonstrations, I realized that the people at the meeting had, in their purses and pockets, more thinking and communicating power than we ever dreamed of as students. They could make leaflets in minutes if they wanted to, but they don’t even need leaflets. They are experts at communicating. This small group could have easily reached thousands of co-thinkers before they left the room!

Labor Is Getting Past Its Isolation

Speaking of the room, it was the auditorium of the local school employees’ union, American Federation of Teachers. The president of the local union walked through and said hello to a few of us. Could you imagine, in your wildest dreams, that the student anti-war movement could have met in an AFT union hall? Albert Shanker was President of that union in those days, and he was, next to the president of the American Federation of Labor, the most fanatical supporter of the war in Vietnam.

Labor isolated itself from the progressive movement in most instances between 1947 and 1995, then they made a gigantic change toward standing for all workers.

Today’s progressive movement is warmly accepted in union halls. The Dallas AFL-CIO welcomes radical Bernie-Sanders-socialists several times a month! The AFL-CIO banner regularly appears at anti-war, civil rights, gay rights, environmentalist, and immigrants’ rights rallies. If anything, the national and state leaderships of the labor federation are even more integrated into the general progressive movement than Dallas unions.

I like studying the history of other progressive movements. There are many good things to learn, and we learned some of them last night. But don’t get carried away with the past. Now is better.

All We Have Is Now

I welcome discourse when I publish. Disagreements are welcome. But bear in mind that today’s situation is the only one we have. Romanticizing earlier situations may be fun or interesting, but all our efforts can’t go into “then.” They have to go into now! On that, last night’s reporter, and everyone else, agrees!

–Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON radio 89.3FM in Dallas at 9 Central Time every Saturday. Podcasts can be found under the “events” tab. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.