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It’s Just Capitalism

August 22, 2016
elections, history, politics, strategy, unions
2 Comments

For weeks now, I’ve been raving about “Raging Inequality” by Les Leopold. Not so much because it’s a great book, which it is, but because the powerful Communications Workers of America (CWA) union is promoting it, teaching classes, and giving away copies. But I’ve been holding something back.

abevigoda

In essence, the book uses economic data and graphs to show how rotten things have been in America since 1980 in contrast to the period 1945-1980. Then it goes on to suggest how we can return fairness to our nation.

What’s wrong with that?

We’re looking at the wrong end of the graphs. The right side of each graph, the period 1980-2016, isn’t the period that’s out of kilter. It’s 1945-1980, the left side of each graph, that was un-historical. That “American century” of 35 years was downright peculiar in the entire 400-year old history of capitalism. It was the only time in history when the working class of any capitalist country ever held its own against the bosses! All the other periods, including the present one, were just business as usual.

Business as usual means constantly increasing the exploitation of the workers. It’s not anybody’s fault, it’s just the only way that capitalism can work. The only thing that can even slow the process down is resistance from the working class.

The post war period in America began with over 1/3 of all American workers in unions. There were more successful strikes in 1946 than in any year before or since. The unions, especially those led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), were integrated, practicing solidarity with one another and with the community at large, and even internationalist in their outlook! They were a real force to be reckoned with, and their power took decades to dwindle down to the skeleton that the new progressive AFL-CIO leadership picked up in 1995.

Shouldn’t we be fighting?

Of course we should be fighting every day. That’s why I tout the book so much. It shows where we are now and some of the steps we could make that would take us forward. My objection to it is that we don’t really want to return to 1945-1980, nor can we. We must bear in mind that we are fighting for something entirely new: an end to boss rule.

Until then, every advance that working people make can be taken away, because the bosses are still in power.

Read the book, please!

Let’s do our best to expand this marvelous educational project that the Communications Workers have begun. Let’s read the book and get everyone else to read it.

–Gene Lantz

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Where Labor Went Wrong

August 19, 2016
civil rights, economy, history, politics, strategy, unions
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Everybody should read “Runaway Inequality” by Les Leopold. Don’t wait for somebody from the Communications Workers of America to invite you to one of their classes on it.

runawayinequalitybook

Some of the best stuff is in the beginning. The forward is by Chris Shelton, President of the CWA. The middle parts of the book are mostly statistics about how inequality rose after America selected a new business friendly government policy in 1980. The other really great stuff is near the end

I particularly like Chapter 22: “When unions decline, inequality soars and we all lose.” On page 288 Leopold says, “Wealth inequality and unionization levels are intertwined.” You probably knew that but it’s good to see it in print.

What happened?

Then he goes into the reasons for the great union decline from its heady power of 1946, when Americans won strikes more than ever before or since. Leopold apparently doesn’t have the nerve to say it outright, but he lists, in a dispassionate way, several “theories” about how union leadership could have done better. I’ll shorten them and make them more blunt:

  • The decline started in 1947 when unions cooperated with the anti-communist witch hunt and expelled some of their best leaders.
  • Unions shouldn’t have worked closely with the CIA
  • The merger of the AFL and the CIO didn’t work out for the members
  • Unions shouldn’t have supported the War in Vietnam
  • Unions became bureaucratic and undemocratic
  • All unions haven’t learned community organizing techniques
  • Unions aren’t linking up with unions in other countries

Even though Leopold didn’t really commit to it, I thought it was a pretty good list. It probably should have included something about how unions largely ignored and still ignore the civil rights movement, but it’s still a pretty good list.

Right after the list, the author gives the underlying reason for all the problems: “Unions and the rest of us are on the losing side of a gigantic class war — a war that we have to recognize, discuss and address if unions are to grow again.”

In other words, we can list the things union leaders did wrong all we want, but the underlying reason for the decline was aggressive anti-worker policies of the boss class. Even if we’d had the best leadership in the world 1947-1995, it would have been very very hard to withstand the combination of government/boss aggression and the post war “good time” prosperity that allowed opportunist labor leaders to get pretty good contracts for their members — while slowly sinking into isolation from everybody else.

By 1979, unionized American workers were the envy of the world, even though our numbers were dwindling fast. In 1980, the party was over. I don’t think many union leaders figured it out, and some of them still haven’t. They still expect the bosses to act “reasonably.”

The essence of the problem

What it boils down to is this: From 1947 to 1995, the bosses were able to isolate the organized sector of the American working class from the rest of us. I picked this up from an earlier book by a prof in California named Lipschitz, “Rainbow at Midnight,” and from talking to people who lived through it. The new book, with CWA backing, will force unionists to look at the problem and see what we did wrong. Even if it did nothing else, the book would be worth the $20.

But Les Leopold actually does a lot more in “Runaway Inequality.” He makes serious suggestions as to how we can turn the situation around and return to the kind of militant union progressivism that succeeded for the CIO 1935-1947. The progressive leadership of the AFL-CIO, 1995 to present, can and probably will implement these ideas.

I can’t wait!

–Gene Lantz

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Fidel Outsmarted, Outlived His Enemies

August 15, 2016
civil rights, history, politics, strategy
2 Comments

Fidel Castro just turned 90. Our lives are all wound up with his.

moraleschavezcastro

Efforts to assassinate the Cuban revolutionary date back to the Kennedy Administration. All the attempts failed and it seems that he will die a peaceable old age, long after his adversaries are forgotten.

And socialist Cuba has survived too, despite all the lies, all the terrorism, all the official oppression, and all the economic pressure that the capitalist world could muster. Despite also all the predictions, including my own, of their demise. The Cubans remain as they have been since 1959, a beacon to the rest of the world.

I can hardly wait to see what happens next!

–Gene Lantz

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Our Side Can Win in 2016

July 28, 2016
economy, elections, history, politics, strategy
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I sometimes think of politics as a football game where each side pushes for yardage.  The goalpost ahead of us is a decent democratic society. The one behind us is slavery and want. In all of American history, we have struggled for yardage between those goal posts. The little upright yard markers are the court decisions and legislation that show progress or setbacks.

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The 2016 elections will not result in a perfect society. Neither did the 2008 elections, even though, to listen to the complaints, that’s what some voters expected. All things considered, the Obama Administration has been a whole lot better than what might have happened in 2008, and what will happen after 2016 can be a whole lot better than the Republican alternative.

Lesser evil?

That’s not “Lesser Evil” politics. It’s just an honest assessment of where we are and what the possibilities are in the current election.

The Outlook for Seniors is Promising

Nowadays, I mostly work with the retiree movement. Over the years, my speeches have been long, whiney complaints about all the attacks against the right to retire. There was a lot to whine about. Since Reagan was elected, most pension plans have been lost. Employer-sponsored health care plans have disappeared or been shamefully altered to the advantage of management. Social Security, so far, has not suffered a fatal blow, although several have been fired at it, but it’s been hit hard around the edges. The budget for administering Social Security has been cut so severely that there are empty buildings all over the nation where seniors used to be able to get help, but are gathering dust now. The Republicans in the House of Representatives just voted to cut another $1.2 billion!

Thanks mostly to the Bernie campaign, things are looking up for retirees in 2016. The Democratic Party platform and presidential nominee are publicly committed, not to “saving” the right to retire, but to extending and improving it!

But Seniors Have to Organize and Fight

Older Americans are going to have to do a whole lot more than hope for the best to make the Democratic Party promises come true. Fortunately, the AFL-CIO has made that possible by creating the Alliance for Retired Americans and a bunch of state affiliates.

Over the month from July 26 to August 25, the Texas affiliate scheduled nine separate actions in 6 different cities. Click here for list. The period includes the anniversaries of Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security.

At the July 26 event, State Rep Chris Turner read the words of ex-president Harry Truman on July 30, 1965, when Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare/Medicaid amendment:

“No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine. No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years. No longer will young families see their own incomes, and their own hopes, eaten away simply because they are carrying out their deep moral obligations to their parents, and to their uncles, and their aunts. And no longer will this Nation refuse the hand of justice to those who have given a lifetime of service and wisdom and labor to the progress of this progressive country.”

That was progress. In 1965, we moved the football and the yard markers in the right direction. We’re moving them now!

–Gene Lantz

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Remember the Sandinistas!

July 19, 2016
history, politics, strategy
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July 19, 1979, the Sandinistas triumphed over the U.S. supported dictator Anastazio Somoza and inspired the youth of the world!

sandino

Augusto Cesar Sandino, inspiration of revolutionaries in Central America and everywhere

Those old enough to remember know that Central America was suddenly ablaze with heroic revolutionary efforts. Here in Dallas, I helped form “Metroplex Citizens for Aid to Nicaragua.” We raised a trifling amount of money for the revolution, but we did a very good job of publicizing it and rallying public support.

A few months later, Americans were captivated by the fight in El Salvador, and a national organization, Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), took over the movement. I helped start the Dallas chapter, which was one of the most successful in the nation. I could tell you stories.

But the Salvadorans and the Nicaraguans soon had their revolutions drowned in blood from Ronald Reagan’s illegal mercenary armies. Congress, the courts, and most of America looked the other way while this great international atrocity was carried out. Central America sunk back into misery and murder. Millions tried to escape to the United States. This part is still going on.

Without going much into foreign policy, two clear lessons should be learned from the rise and fall of revolution in Nicaragua:

  1. The fight for real change needs to be carried out at an international level, not just in any single country.
  2. Workers cannot make permanent gains as long as the bosses are in power. They will always and forever try to take our gains away.

There’s another lesson that all of history has proven and continues to prove: Revolutionaries will never stop trying!

–Gene Lantz

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“Les Innocentes,” Has Lessons on Religion

July 17, 2016
art, history, politics
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innocents

Movie Review: “The Innocents,” Directed by Anne Hathaway, 115 minutes. In French and Polish with English subtitles.

We always stay until the last movie credits have rolled. As we left, one of the ushers picking up cups and popcorn sacks asked “How’d you like it?” I told him that we loved the film, but weren’t sure that younger people would, because there was no action. It was pretty much all talking and walking back and forth through the winter bleakness.

You can always tell a really good art experience, because you keep talking about it afterward. The story takes place at the end of World War II at a convent in Poland. A French Red Cross medical assistant decides to help with some of the war’s ongoing tragedies that are complicated by dark and archaic religious secrecy.

Do You Suffer for Religious People?

Do you feel sorry for people who willingly suffer because of their religion? Do you relate to the person who voluntarily dons the torturous hair shirt? Do you anguish along with the flagellant? Is your flesh mortified along with theirs?

Or do you just think they’re nuts and at least partially to blame for causing their own problems?  You’re certain to confront those feelings if you buy a ticket for this one.

Personally, I do suffer for religious people. Not just when they’re undergoing horrible tragedies but all the time. If they weren’t so religious, they’d spend less time looking for their own faults and shortcomings. If they weren’t so religious, they’d have a better idea of what’s happening in the world and how to deal with it. Whether you feel sorry for them or not, there isn’t much you can do.

So it is with the French medical assistant. She’s a materialist and a communist, and she is just as committed, more committed, to making a better world than the nuns in the dilemma. Same as you, same as me, she does what she can.

My movie buddy and I loved the film because it made us think and feel. We wish the same for you.

–Gene Lantz

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Body Counts in Iraq

July 12, 2016
history, politics, strategy
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One web site says 251,000 have died in Iraq since America was fooled into invading. Another (click here) says 500,000. Both of them say that most of the dead are civilians, and neither counts the number of maimed and crippled, not to mention the ones driven crazy, some of whom are running around on the streets here at home.

I wrote one of my one-minute songs about it. My argument was that they should be burying all of them here in Dallas, where George W Bush, the main perpetrator of the entire conflagration in the Middle East, lives. I’ve always thought it was fitting that General Robert E Lee’s plantation was taken over during the Civil War and used to bury the war dead. Bush has a ranch that could be used for that.

I don’t usually write about foreign affairs. I always assume that the people over there know more about what they should be doing than people over here, namely me, do.

But it’s clear that the United States has stirred up a holy war. It’s clear that young men and women are being recruited into that holy war on the basis that there’s something ungodly about what the great imperialist nations do in other people’s back yards.

I can’t begin to understand the religious side of it, but I know what imperialism is. It’s the boss’s game and for the boss’s profit. There’s nothing good in it for working people, over here or over there!

–Gene Lantz

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Police Shootings, Solutions and Carl Hampton

July 10, 2016
civil rights, history, politics, strategy
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Three days after the Dallas police shootings, the outpouring of “Back the Blue” is even stronger than I predicted.

carlhampton

Before July 26, 1970, Carl Hampton called for strong community organizations

Most of the public statements, even some from African American leaders, don’t even mention the underlying 400-year old problem of racism that underlies everything. Financial support for the police is everywhere. Dozens of restaurants have opened their doors and menus for free meals for the police. Special prayer services in parks and churches have taken place and are taking place today. There will be a big service for the police on the City Hall plaza tomorrow. The increase in tax money for police activities is virtually inevitable.

What About Solutions?

“Come together,” is the cry from the establishment. “We can work out our problems later,” is added by the more thoughtful ones. Everybody wants to treat one of the symptoms, retaliation against police officers, but few are looking at the problem.

On my radio show yesterday, a wide ranges of responses came from callers. One man  agreed with the Texas Lieutenant Governor that the police shootings were the fault of the peaceful protesters. The leaders, he said, should be arrested. Protests should be banned. Thursday night’s protesters should all be rounded up and “sent back to Mexico.” I think he confused some of his issues.

Another man said that Micah X Johnson, the sniper in question, should be treated as a “quasi hero.” Most of the callers said that the problem was societal and that it would not be solved until our society is changed. I thought that was reasonable, but not very concrete.

Can We Ameliorate Racist Violence?

I’ve been puzzling over answers to this ongoing problem since I was involved in exposing the police killing of Milton Glover in Houston in 1975. Glover waved a New Testament at two patrol officers and they shot him over and over again. In their defense, they said that the book looked like a gun. They walked, of course, but not until after we made it an international scandal.

I’ve heard a lot of the “reform” suggestions before. Here is a list of them published in a statement by the Texas Green Party:

 

  • In order to prevent further police brutality, we support the use of full body cameras that cannot be disabled by officers, demilitarization, and gradual across the board disarmament of the police. All video recordings should be stored indefinitely and available to the public online, without charge, except in cases to protect the victim’s identity and dignity.

  • Every law-enforcement department should be required to keep and report data to the public regarding police violence statistics.

  • We advocate a shift in funding from policing and prisons on the local, state, and federal levels to minority communities for job creation and educational opportunities.

  • Along with the Black Lives Matter movement and other movements and organizations, we demand justice for all people murdered by the police.

  • We advocate the dismissal of and criminal investigation into all officials that allowed police brutality to continue without acknowledgement or justice.

  • We advocate the establishment and full funding of independent civilian review boards, with subpoena power, at municipal and county levels, to oversee the investigation and subsequent prosecution of law enforcement officers accused of misconduct or brutality.

  • We strongly urge jurisdictions to provide independent prosecution and to require instructions and incentives for prosecuting agencies to pursue indictments against law enforcement officers in cases of alleged misconduct or brutality, rather than withholding evidence from grand juries, as well as comprehensive reform of the grand jury system to prevent no-bills of officers when evidence is clearly sufficient to proceed to trial.

The civilian review board with subpoena power has been a demand of African American community leaders to my own knowledge since the 1980s. The Black Lives Matter group has been publishing these suggestions since 2013. I kind of doubt that young Micah X Johnson knew about these ideas, and I don’t know if it would have stopped him if he did. If some of them had been implemented, Micah X Johnson might have had a lot more hope.

In my own opinion, though, the reforms are unlikely to be instituted because of the basic class nature of the police

Who Are the Police?

I would challenge the idea that poor people and police are the same. The police work for the government, and the government is ruled by wealthy people. Their interests are not the same as the interests of poor people and workers in general.

The 1970 Black Panthers Had the Answer

At lunch with friends on Saturday, I talked with a woman who was at Thursday’s march. She didn’t think the omnipresent police around the march in uniforms, in plain clothes, in cars, on foot, and on horseback were there to “protect people’s right to march” as is being affirmed in most of the public comments. She thought they were there to intimidate the marchers and to arrest anybody who looked crosseyed. Her solution to the overall problem of hatred between poor people and police and persistent racism was direct: “The Black Panthers were right!”

She didn’t mean that everyone should arm themselves as the Panthers did in the late 1960s. She meant that strong community organizations could eventually police themselves. There would be no need for armed police in the everyday concerns of well organized communities. That’s what the Panthers thought, but they didn’t get much of a chance to try it.

Carl Hampton (click here), Houston leader of “People’s Party II,” was murdered by a police sniper on a church rooftop July 26, 1970. His cousin, Fred Hampton, and other Panther leaders had been murdered as they slept by Chicago police a few months earlier.

The Dallas shootings of July 7, 2016, may have generated a lot of feelings, but it didn’t expose a new problem. This has been around for a long, long time.

 

Will Dallas Shootings Help?

July 8, 2016
civil rights, history, politics, strategy
2 Comments

Police shoot African Americans across the nation. That problem cannot be denied.

me-civilrts

The question that sober people must address is what to do about it. So far, we have failed to come up with strategies that would give young people hope of a solution. Our failure resulted in misguided actions on July 7th in downtown Dallas, and we are all going to pay the price.

Prayer and Platitudes

Most of what’s been said so far consists mostly of prayer and platitudes. President Obama’s statement that the shootings in Dallas that killed five law enforcement officers and wounded several others were “a vicious calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement,” doesn’t offer any solution and doesn’t even mention the overall problem.

Just previous to the Dallas tragedy, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka commented on the two most recent police shootings: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, the two African-American men who were shot by police within twenty-four hours of each other.  Racism plays an insidious role in the daily lives of all working people of color…..” He identified the problem accurately, but still, what’s the answer?

What Will Happen In Dallas?

There will be a lot of fear generated in Dallas until the police are satisfied. A lot of Dallasites, especially politicians and white people, are going to be publicly and financially “backing the blue.” Eventually, the most concrete change will probably be an increase in the police budget.

What Should Happen in Dallas and Because of the Dallas Tragedy?

Perpetration of violence against African Americans is as old as America. It’s not a problem easily solved, but it cannot be ignored. On my radio talk show on July 9, I’ll be calling for proposed solutions. As far as I have been able to ascertain, most civil rights organizations believe the problem can be solved with more restrictions and more transparency on police behavior. My own proposal may sound far-fetched, but keep in mind that the problem is very old and very chronic.

The police are an arm of a government that is run by and for the wealthy. As long as that class of people want to continue exploiting African Americans, we are going to see the police carrying out their implicit duties. What we need is a better government. In a more immediate sense, we need to move toward organized communities and away from specialized armed forces. Organizing is long, hard work, but it’s the answer.

Shooting Policemen Doesn’t Work

Does anybody think they can out-shoot or out-kill the police? Do they think they could grab a few rifles and challenge the U.S. Army? Can anybody point to a single time in history that minority violence brought progress for working people?

I think the best political advice I ever read came from a speech Leon Trotsky made during the Russian Revolution: “It is not sufficient to fight, comrades, it is also necessary to win.”

–Gene Lantz

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