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#we’re a democratic socialist society
bfpnola · 8 months
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introductory excerpts on the rainbow coalition:
The Rainbow Coalition was an antiracist, anticlass[1] multicultural movement founded April 4, 1969 in Chicago, Illinois by Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party, along with William "Preacherman" Fesperman of the Young Patriots Organization and José Cha Cha Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords. It was the first of several 20th century black-led organizations to use the "rainbow coalition" concept.[2]
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The Rainbow Coalition soon included various radical socialist community groups like the Lincoln Park Poor People's Coalition,[3] later, the coalition was joined nationwide by the Students for a Democratic Society ("SDS"), the Brown Berets, the American Indian Movement and the Red Guard Party. In April 1969, Hampton called several press conferences to announce that this "Rainbow Coalition" had formed. Some of the things the coalition engaged in joint action against were poverty, corruption, racism, police brutality, and substandard housing.[4] The participating groups supported each other at protests, strikes, and demonstrations where they had a common cause.[5][6]
The coalition later included many other local groups like Rising Up Angry, and Mothers and Others. The Coalition also brokered treaties to end crime and gang violence. Hampton, Jimenez and their colleagues believed that the Richard J. Daley Democratic Party machine in Chicago used gang wars to consolidate their own political positions by gaining funding for law enforcement and dramatizing crime rather than underlying social issues.[citation needed][7]
The coalition eventually collapsed under duress from constant harassment by local and federal law enforcement, including the murder of Hampton.[6]
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The phrase "rainbow coalition" was co-opted over the years by Reverend Jesse Jackson, who eventually appropriated the name in forming his own, more moderate coalition, Rainbow/PUSH. Some scholars, including Peniel Joseph, assert that the original rainbow coalition concept was a prerequisite for the multicultural coalition that Barack Obama built his political career upon.[11]
The Rainbow Coalition youth—made up of Panthers, Young Lords, and Young Patriots—also launched free breakfast programs that were supported by donations from community businesses and ran free daycare centers for neighborhood children. Several operations were upheld by the women of the Black Panthers and women’s focus groups like the Young Lordettes and Mothers and Others (MAO). The federal government institutionalized the School Breakfast Program in 1975.
“We’re gonna fight fire with water. We’re gonna fight racism not with racism, but with solidarity. We’re not gonna fight capitalism with Black capitalism, but with socialism… We’re gonna fight with all of us people getting together and having an international proletariat revolution,” Hampton was recorded saying.
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In public appearances, the Rainbow Coalition was backed by community residents and Black and brown street gangs—but they also had the support of unions, Independent Precinct Organizations, college students and activists who supported the movement through Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Rising Up Angry, and countless other organizations. Their allies included Concerned Citizens of Lincoln Park, the West Town Concerned Citizens Coalition, the Northside Cooperative Ministry, Neighborhood Commons Organization, and Voice of the People. “It was really based on common action,” said Mike Klonsky, a former Chicago leader of SDS (who, like Hampton and Cha-Cha, had a reward out for his arrest). “If there was a protest or a demonstration, the word would get out and we would all come to it and support each other. If somebody was arrested, we would all raise bail. If somebody was killed or shot by the police, we would all respond together.”
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In December of 1969, the FBI conducted an overnight raid on Hampton’s apartment with intelligence provided by an infiltrator. He had just been named spokesperson of the national Black Panther Party. A barrage of police bullets struck him in his sleep as he lay beside his pregnant fiance, Akua Njeri, who survived. Another occupant, Black Panther security chief Mark Clark, was also killed.  Distraught members of the Coalition unofficially disbanded, and a handful of the leadership went underground after Hampton’s assassination, fearing for their own safety. Thousands of people lined up to witness the open crime scene, while lawyers from the People’s Law Office disputed the later-disproved official police account, which had falsely claimed a heavy firefight on both sides. Having assassinated its most vocal leader, the Feds had effectively crushed the 1960s’ most promising push for united, cohesive social resistance in Chicago.
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tanadrin · 10 months
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To focus on something I couldn’t give the space it deserved in the previous post: I think it is possible to have a political system which is in theory very liberal in the classical sense but which in practice is not very liberal at all, and this goes to what some critics have pointed out as the tendency of liberalism to have CB of contradictions in its practical application.
A society without any kind of worker protection, old age pension, or anti discrimination laws, and with very low taxes, might legally be very liberal in the classics sense; but for individual workers and consumers it might be a society without much meaningful choice: one of company towns and stores, where most cannot afford an education or healthcare, and where bosses have intrusive control over employees’ private lives, to say nothing of whatever ambient social prejudices (like those of gender and race) might go unaddressed in workplaces. Moreover, because inequality in wealth will pretty much always tend to produce inequality in political power, even if on paper the society is very democratic, it will likely not function in a very democratic way.
Most western countries basically recognize this and have converged on what are a pretty extensive body of rules which are in principle illiberal—in that they strongly constrain individual rights and how firms behave—in the interest of broader social aims which are nevertheless pretty liberal in spirit: anti discrimination law, environmental law, welfare programs, disability law, anti monopoly statues, consumer protection law, and so forth. Outside the really hardcore libertarians (who are a small constituency), these rules seem broadly popular, with most political fights on the subject being focused on their details, not their existence.
The thing that I think a lot of socialists broadly construed have noticed is that this is still fundamentally a contradiction, just a contradiction of a different kind. And many critics of liberalism hold, essentially, that it simply doesn’t go far enough—and some flavor of socialism (pick your favorite) can deliver on the fundamental premise we’re aiming for (I.e., general welfare and individual freedom) better than a messy kludge applied over the top of capitalism.
I think the uncomfortable truth is that the line between Real Socialism and liberal capitalism with a social-democratic patch on it isn’t actually totally hard and fast—once you get below a certain GINI coefficient and above a certain HDI I think you’re splitting metaphysical hairs. But this is an indictment of the inherent virtue of capitalism as much as it is the One True Socialism that has Never Been Tried—if you have to do heavily adulterate capitalism that it barely qualifies as such anymore, it must be contributing very little virtue indeed to the final outcome.
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auroraluciferi · 1 year
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As we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, let's look at some of the things he said challenged capitalism and are left out of most history books.
"I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic... [Capitalism] started out with a noble and high motive... but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness."
- Letter to Coretta Scott, July 18, 1952.
"In a sense, you could say we're involved in the class struggle."
- Quote to New York Times reporter, Jose Igelsias, 1968.
"And one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.' When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society..."
- Speech to Southern Christian Leadership Conference Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.
"Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis."
- Speech to Southern Christian Leadership Conference Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.
"Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children."
- Speech to the Negro American Labor Council, 1961.
"We must recognize that we can't solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power... this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together... you can't really get rid of one without getting rid of the others... the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order."
- Report to SCLC Staff, May 1967.
"The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism."
- Speech to SCLC Board, March 30, 1967.
"I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective - the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed matter: the guaranteed income... The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty."
- Where do We Go from Here?,1967.
"You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism."
- Speech to his staff, 1966.
"[W]e are saying that something is wrong... with capitalism.... There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism."
- Speech to his staff, 1966.
"If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell."
- Speech at Bishop Charles Mason Temple of the Church of God in Christ in support of the Memphis sanitation workers' strike on March 18th, 1968, two weeks before he was assassinated.
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mariacallous · 11 months
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The invasion of Ukraine confronted Russian society with the consequences of a decades-long transformation that began, among other things, with Vladimir Putin’s introduction of a new Labor Code. The new labor legislation, passed in December 2001, curtailed the rights of labor unions, contributing to social atomization and to the crumbling of solidarity politics. Historian and political commentator Ilya Budraitskis has been part of Russia’s leftist political scene since the 1990s, engaging in labor union activism and other civic initiatives. Meduza spoke with him about Russia’s wartime left-wing politics, the role of CPRF (Russia’s establishment Communist Party) in the large picture of the Russian left, the latter’s survival in what Budraitskis calls “the conditions of dictatorship,” and the goals its activists can embrace now to bring about a decentralized, democratic future Russia, where the state will genuinely serve the interests of the majority.
What are the elements that comprise Russia’s political left today?
Starting on February 24, 2022, the present regime in Russia entered the stage of flagrant dictatorship, which puts in question all legal political activity in the country. Accordingly, political groups and movements that existed until that date split into two major camps: one supporting the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine, and the other condemning and protesting it. The same kind of division occurred with the political left at large. This was a foreseeable development, since it extended the tendencies that can be traced all the way back to 2014. Today’s Russia has two different kinds of leftists, and we need to be clear as to which of these two antagonistic movements we’re talking about.
Let’s begin with the pro-war bloc. When talking about the establishment parliamentary left represented by the Communist Party (CPRF), can we consider it a genuine leftist force?
The pro-war left is represented first and foremost by CPRF’s leadership and by those who support its position. For instance, Sergey Udaltsov’s Left Front has adopted a pro-war position and is effectively allied with the CPRF. They think of the war and the conflict with the West as a radical challenge to Russia’s former socio-political model, a challenge that will inevitably push the country in the direction of what they like to call “socialism.”
The main problem with their position (bracketing its morality and practicability) is that it provides no account of who is to be the subject of the political shift towards this “socialism” of theirs. They cannot be talking about the masses, the organized hired labor, because that possibility has been eradicated in Russia. All public political life, including the freedom of assembly, has been destroyed. Strikes have ceased to be a phenomenon. Russia’s society is in a maximally depressed and humiliated state. Putin’s Russia has no room for any kind of progress towards social justice.
From the point of view of the pro-war left, the subject of the “socialist” shift is to be today’s ruling elite. Its strategy, then, is the persuade the elite to go down the path of socio-economic reforms. The motive of these changes, meanwhile (we’re talking about things like nationalization of major industrial concerns, or a more “equitable” redistribution of the country’s resources) are the objective needs of a country confronted with acute external conflict. Hence the orientation towards militarized socialism, including top-down planning to meet the needs of ongoing warfare.
In the actual conditions of dictatorship, Putin has become the sole addressee of all CPRF propaganda. It’s him that this party must persuade to effect the reforms it is promoting. So, at the president’s July 2022 meeting with the parliamentary factions, the CPRF’s chairman Gennady Zyuganov declared that his party fully supports Putin’s political course, but it would like to see movement towards socialism. Putin replied, somewhat facetiously, that it’s an interesting idea, but it would be good to first come up with some estimates of what socialism would look like in practice.
There are very good reasons to doubt that the CPRF and its allies can be described as a bona fide leftist political force, since the socialist position is based on the idea that disenfranchised masses must take back political and economic power through grassroots self-organization. Socialism in this classic leftist sense is something that’s initiated by the people, who establish a new social order to benefit the many instead of the few.
Today’s CPRF and its allies have rejected this idea, since they don’t view the masses with their interest in bottom-up change as a subject, or an engine, of change. Zyuganov’s idea of socialism does not require any participation from the masses; in his view, grassroots activity is actually undesirable, since everyday people’s behavior is unpredictable and can therefore be exploited by Russia’s enemies, who might seduce them with their false values. It’s far safer to conduct reforms with a view to the interests of the state.
Does the CPRF have real political power? Even if it’s abandoned the root ideas of left-wing politics, does this party have real influence over reforms in the country?
The CPRF has just celebrated its 30th anniversary, and with great pomp. This makes the party, headed by its changeless leader Gennady Zyuganov practically coeval with the post-Soviet political system itself. It’s worth noting that its place in that system is fairly ambiguous. As a party of “managed democracy,” it never made any claims to real political power, coordinating its every step with the Kremlin, and lately following its explicit directives.
This party has never tried to get anyone to take to the streets. Its orientation is not about what happens outside the parliament; instead, it’s all about redistributing the seats in the State Duma and in regional governance. In other words, this party has no great political ambitions. It simply maintains itself and its own apparatus, providing a career ladder for politicians.
There are scores of people who became governors or representatives solely because they spent their early years climbing the hierarchic ladder of the Communist Party. Take the Oryol Governor Andrey Klychkov or Moscow City Duma deputies like Gennady Zyuganov’s grandson Leonid Zyuganov, or the governor of Khakassia, Valentin Konovalov. All of them made their careers in the CPRF, getting their modest share of political power. Within the current political system, the CPRF is unlikely to take you beyond the post of a deputy or a place in local government.
The CPRF’s niche in the system of Russian politics is a product of its function, which is to absorb protest-minded dissident voters during elections. People who vote for the CPRF don’t do it because they want Zyuganov’s grandson to make a career for himself, or because they want their party to support Putin’s every new undertaking. They vote for the CPRF because they are disgruntled with Russian life in various aspects, the social aspect being foremost. They’re unhappy about inequality and poverty.
Another case in point is the September 2021 State Duma election. Thanks in large part to the “smart vote” strategy championed by the Navalny team, most opposition voters gave their votes to CPRF candidates. A significant share of those candidates won their districts but still couldn’t get a seat in the parliament because of the sweeping falsifications, including the manipulation of online votes. The party leadership’s position was, meanwhile: sure, there have been some violations, but not so great as to question the election results or to go to bat against the regime.
This ambivalence on the part of the CPRF, an establishment party that attracted voters prone to protest, was also reflected in its composition. The CPRF has been a magnet for people looking to get serious about leftist opposition politics without pandering to the Kremlin, to defend their constituents’ interests, and to develop grassroots movements. Over its entire lifespan, the CPRF included these two conflicting groups with completely different motives. Its leadership, though, was always comprised of Kremlin collaborators, content to see the CPRF as an establishment party. Meanwhile, the party’s local branches often attracted people with completely different expectations.
In 2021, we saw this contradiction at play when the “smart vote” strategy garnered support for CPRF candidates like Mikhail Lobanov in Moscow, not least thanks to the fact that they held genuine, consistent anti-establishment views. When the war broke out, just a few State Duma deputies declared their antiwar position, but all of those who spoke up were CPRF members.
Did CPRF activists manage to achieve results despite these internal antagonisms?
When you become a municipal or a regional deputy, this opens up certain opportunities. They are, of course, severely circumscribed, given that any establishment opposition party, the CPRF included, is going to be a minority presence. Still, a deputy is someone who can significantly amplify the voices of local communities, as in the case of the Moscow City Duma Deputy Evgeny Stupin, who happens to be a CPRF member.
Let’s talk about the other leftist camp, which didn’t support the invasion. If a person doesn’t see oneself affiliated with the CPRF, what other leftist options are there?
Among the leftist organizations that condemned the invasion, there’s a number of small groups operating essentially as mass media. In the situation where practically any pacifist or antiwar activity is outlawed, these groups are just barely legal. Political organizations that adopted a clear-cut antiwar position have been forced underground and must be extremely careful now. This presents a serious strategic problem for all leftist groups that existed in Russia prior to the invasion, be they socialist or anarchist. There are several basic strategies they can use to adapt in today’s severe conditions.
The first approach is illicit direct action, which is difficult to embrace if you’re already a public figure. The second is to limit one’s activity to propaganda in small communities like closed reading groups. Finally, there is the strategy of labor advocacy, which remains legal for now. We’re talking about the messengers’ union Courier, the medical workers’ union Deistvie, and a number of other smaller unions where antiwar activists participate.
How did Russia’s trade unions become a political force, and is this changing now?
Let’s begin with the fact that Russia has both establishment and independent trade unions. The establishment, official unions get very little media attention, and most of their putative members hardly even suspect that they exist. Still, it’s a massive bureaucracy. Russia’s Federation of Independent Trade Unions (“FNPR”) has functioned for decades as an extension of the government in the arena of labor relations and as a tool of the business owners’ control over the workers. Clearly, this has nothing to do with real labor unions. If we look for historic parallels, various fascist regimes had their own state trade unions and associations for both employers and workers.
As for the independent trade unions, the few remaining avenues of still legal public activity (like the trade union rights advocacy, connected with the propaganda of self-education) have become exceptionally risky. For example, Kirill Ukraintsev, the leader of the Courier messengers’ union, was arrested and jailed last spring, and has only been released very recently.
We have to understand that, despite their localized achievements, these organizations cannot be considered fully-fledged trade unions, since a genuine trade union is capable of negotiating collective agreements with major industry employers. In today’s Russia, though, this is practically impossible, and not just because of repressive pressure from the government and business owners. It’s impossible due to the very legislation in effect, since one of Putin’s earliest initiatives when he first came to power was the adoption of a new Labor Code that curtailed the powers of trade unions.
This means that it’s practically impossible to have an effective strike in present-day Russia. The legal scope of trade unions is practically nil. Associations like Courier, Deistvie, or the Teachers’ Alliance are excellent and very important initiatives, operating nevertheless in close-to-underground conditions. They look more like advocacy organizations than trade unions proper. For comparison, just take a look at the pension reform protests in France, and you’ll see the difference.
What about the anarchists? They have long been subject to state repressions; are anarchist movements now growing in response to the invasion? Is it anarchists that organize railway sabotage and set draft offices on fire?
We have fairly scant information about who is really behind those initiatives. I have no data on whether anarchist movements are growing or shrinking, since they’re operating under enormous pressure, in a de facto underground mode. But it’s very difficult to grow when you’re underground.
The regime has been at pains to curtail the anarchists’ sweeping influence over the younger generation of Russians. About a decade ago, a major antifascist subculture that significantly relied on some anarchist ideas established itself in Russia. Its influence was very palpable. The regime invested a great deal of effort in crushing this antifascist scene. This is what prompted the prosecution of The Web,as well as many other politically-motivated criminal cases. The regime succeeded in liquidating a more-or-less mass movement, simply by taking out its key activists.
Of course, something of that antifascist element has survived, transforming into partisan groups. The question here is not so much about the present as the future. How much of what these groups do today will remain meaningful in the future? Isolated actions, however heroic, are incapable of breaking the momentum of the current situation. But I think that if Russian society presents a demand for a mass antiwar movement, all of its available forms, including those that exist already, will be welcome.
Is it true, then, that no left-wing movement can significantly grow in numbers in 2023? Isn’t this, rather, the perfect time to aim for growth?
I think that the dictatorial conditions leave no room for political and civic rights in principle. They permit no legal political activity in any form, effectively precluding these movements from gaining new adherents or actively spreading their message in society.
The question is whether Russian society can manifest change serious enough to engender a new kind of politics, and also what the left itself has to offer in terms of the country’s post-Putin development. This is the main task faced by the left at the moment, as well as by any opposition group in Russia, and this means that what they’re doing now is calculated largely for the long run, as opposed to immediate effect.
How does the Russian left understand decolonization, and what should it look like in Russia?
This is a complicated question, since there’s, on the one hand, the term “decolonization” as it stands in the context of post-colonial studies, and on the other hand, there are practical questions about Russia’s political future after the dead end it has come to at this time. And these two things are completely unrelated. So perhaps it’s best to focus on Russia’s current political order as rooted in its imperial past.
First of all, we realize that the war is grounded in historical revisionism and the idea that no authentic existence is possible for Russia within its current borders. The way the regime sees it, Russia’s borders must be constantly advanced, so as to “recover” the supposedly “historically Russian” lands. Regrettably, this line of thought comes with a certain tradition: it wasn’t invented by Putin, but is, instead, conditioned by all of Russia’s pre-revolutionary imperial heritage, as well as the Stalin-era and the post-Stalin Soviet experience.
This tradition has by now rooted itself in the consciousness of a large part of the population, and this is what makes propaganda so effective. Making post-Putin Russia live in peace with its neighbors without threatening other countries, including the post-Soviet states and Eastern Europe, requires a cardinal overhaul of the imperial mindset. We have to work out not just our present, but also our past and how our people see Russia’s history and its relations with the surrounding countries. This is the first point.
The second point has to do with Russia’s current official status as a “federation,” when in reality it’s a hyper-centralized state where all the resources are appropriated by Moscow to trickle down back to the regions based on their degree of political loyalty to the regime. This is what determines Russia’s policies with regard to its indigenous minorities, since the very existence of non-Russian identities inside the country is viewed by the Kremlin as a threat. Hence the suppression of indigenous languages and of the remaining vestiges of autonomy in regions with significant native non-Russian populations.
These policies have been in place for the entirety of Putin’s two decades in power, and are directly connected with the Moscow-centric nature of this regime and the absence of real democracy in the country. In this sense, we do need a serious revision of Moscow’s place in Russian governance.
Would this necessarily entail Russia’s disintegration as a single political entity?
Russia as it exists today is holding back the development of its regions with coercive power and money. It has no further positive program to offer those regions. This is why, once the regime’s political power begins to wane and money starts to dry up (and this will happen within the foreseeable future), we’re going to see an eruption of centrifugal forces within the country.
The results will not be entirely comfortable for those who live in the regions. If we want to preserve some common political space — not in the sense of its being bound by a single political power, but in the sense of an environment that permits some kind of intercultural human exchange — we have to think about the values, ideas, and principles that Russia as such can offer to the regions. The ideas of tolerance, equality, well-developed social policies, and the regions’ right to manage their own resources would help preserve this space in the form of a federation or a commonwealth.
If we keep denying that centralization is a problem till the bitter end, if we keep trying to force the ethnic regions into some Procrustean single standard, considering all signs of uniqueness to be a threat to the state and its integrity, this will lead to disintegration. Russia’s continuing its present course may possibly lead to a very harsh disintegration scenario. But it’s also possible to change this course, and avert disintegration.
What is the Russians’ overall attitude to left-wing politics? How much of a foundation for the future have these movements built up for themselves?
Left-wing politicians have seen some success in post-Soviet Russia. There are, for example, Mikhail Lobanov’s and other stories of electoral victories, as well as a whole array of charismatic municipal deputies like Sergey Tsukasov, who had at one point been the head of Moscow’s Ostankino municipal district. Or take the role of left-wing politics in mass social movements like the Shies environmental protests in the Arkhangelsk region. Then, there is the work of independent trade unions, and their role in local victories like the Labor Confederacy’s effective work on giving back their jobs to dozens of Moscow subway employees, illegally laid off in 2021.
Over the past decade, Russia presented a dual dynamic. On the one hand, we saw increasing political engagement among the younger people, growing grassroots movements and political protest, and active participation in electoral campaigns and elections. On the other hand, we’re also witnessing the growth of state repressive apparatus and its increasing pressure on this awakening society. Everything this regime had done in response to the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, and right up to the launch of the invasion, pursued not just foreign policy goals but also domestic ones. The regime’s principal aim was to suppress the society completely, atomizing the population and instilling an atmosphere of panic and terror in the face of any and all political activity.
I’m not a sociologist and cannot present specific numbers, but based on my own experience, which includes activism, I can say that the majority of Russians consider social inequality and inequity to be the key political question. An absolute majority of people would agree with you if you were to speak about redistributing the resources and wealth. They would also agree that Russia needs to become a genuine welfare state working in the interests of the majority. This is why the left-wing agenda is so important here.
Even the thrice-outlawed Alexey Navalny’s achievements have a lot to do with his inclusion of some elements of the leftist agenda in his own anti-corruption rhetoric. I would say that the majority of viewers realize that Navalny’s videos are not just about corrupt state officials. They’re really about how a negligible minority has seized all the wealth in an otherwise destitute country. This situation is flagrantly unjust. Whether the officials got rich legally or illegally is the last thing that people worry about, because the very laws that enabled this group to usurp these riches were written by the usurpers themselves.
Another important aspect of the leftist tradition is its orientation towards democracy, and not just formal democracy. For the political left, democracy is not just about working electoral institutions. It’s a question of how ordinary people can take part in the decisions that affect their own life. Socialism as it had been conceived by its founders, some 150 years ago, was an internally consistent vision of democracy taken to its logical limits. It was an idea of democracy as a majority rule not just in politics, but also in economics. This is why the democratic demands that have been so important to Russian society over the past decades — the demands for fair elections, freedom of assembly, free trade unions, and the right to strike — are endemic to the political left.
I think that, had Russia preserved some possibility of genuine public political life, with the creation of a legal left-wing liberal party that could take part in elections, we would have already seen a rise in left-wing politics in this country. All the conditions have been in place over the past decade, and ferment in the masses was very much in its favor, too.
Apart from state repressions, were there other factors that kept left-wing movements from penetrating deeper into society?
Despite Russian society’s demand for democratization and social justice, most of it remains politically passive. People have shown themselves to be unprepared for action, and I don’t think this has to do only with obstruction of grassroots self-organization or with the fear of repressions.
In a hardcore market society where every person stands for themselves, where money is synonymous with power, and where everyone subscribes to some personal survival strategy, any suggestion of common interests sounds like total rubbish. This prewar Russian “common sense” got in the way of the leftist agenda and of any grassroots self-organization. Russian activists had a very hard time explaining why the tenants in an apartment building should create a committee to defend their rights vis-à-vis the local management companies. Hired workers too have a hard time grasping what organized collective struggle for common rights is all about.
Instead, people wondered whether the struggle would bring them more benefits or problems. This was Russia’s reality, and it was largely responsible for the apathy we’ve seen and for the population’s vulnerability to militarist propaganda.
The left’s preoccupation with localized struggles against inequality seems to alienate it from the masses. At the same time, the left doesn’t propose any systemic reforms, economic or any other kind. Is this view unfair?
There is a real problem with the activists’ focus on everyday practical matters. People are easier to motivate when there is something they can do here and now. It’s generally a good thing, since activists often do manage to help someone. At the same time, the fixation on the “here and now” leads activists away from conceptualizing political programs and proposals, from developing large, comprehensive accounts that would explain the social reality. But everyday people need such accounts.
We can see that the Russians’ obsession with YouTube and with all kinds of talking heads has to do with this demand for a comprehensive worldview: to understand what they must do, people need someone who would tie all the events and goings-on into a coherent holistic picture. Often, people who are completely immersed in activism cannot supply such a picture. Either they don’t think it’s all that important, or they don’t have the time and the resources. This is detrimental to the left-wing movement as we have it in today’s Russia.
But this isn’t just a problem of how few people are developing large-scale political programs. Proposals that are decoupled from practice and from actual mass movements often become abstract. When liberal economists, for example, start talking about “how to reform Russia,” there’s usually some clarity about agency: “Putin must be replaced by a figurative Evgeny Chichvarkin, who will transform the economy as he sees fit.” For the left, the question of agency is radically different. It’s the question of how to reform the political system so that it would serve the majority. The answer to this question cannot be anticipated, or arrived at by some thought experiment.
Vladimir Lenin said that we’ll never find out what socialism looks like in detail until the masses get to work. This is something that’s still true for the left-wing movement. We won’t know what a just society looks like, until the time when this idea reaches millions of people and the masses decide that they want to see it realized in practice.
How can we figure out which long-term goals should be the priority in Russia’s left-wing politics? What should politicians emphasize if they want to be heard?
Leftists must learn their lesson and draw conclusions from what has happened to the country. We must be very clear that this regime is not subject to evolution. It’s not going to change on its own, and some fairly radical transformation is needed. This transformation will happen if Russia experiences a crisis of governance simultaneously with an active will for grassroots change from below.
This is why the left needs to think about how it plans to participate in this future mass movement. The present regime has made change within the existing institutional framework impossible. The country will need a new constitution, new laws, new political parties, and the CPRF will, in all likelihood, land in the dumpster together with the rest of the current political system.
There will be a definite need to reevaluate the past privatization, which became the foundation of the current regime in Russia. There will be a need for a radical revision of social policy, with a dismantling of the Putin-instituted labor law, with progressive taxation, with new budgetary policies for education and healthcare, now funded on a trickle-down basis.
Beyond this, what society needs isn’t just a redistribution of resources but a revision of the whole philosophy underpinning Russia’s social policy as we have it now. Today, it’s governed by the principle of efficiency: colleges, hospitals, and museums are all free-market agents that must generate revenues and finance themselves. Inefficient institutions are closed, ensuring that the state doesn’t ever have to take a loss. This premise that the state must always make a profit, that it should get more than what it spends in the first place, must be defeated. The whole social welfare sphere must be determined by the needs of society, not by market efficiencies or profitability.
In addition, there has to be a program for gender equality, with an overhaul of all these anti-LGBT laws, and with new laws against domestic violence. There should be a special program for turning Russia into a genuine federation enabling local governance to manage regional budgets. We must also enable ethnic minorities to develop their languages and cultures, without which these minorities are placed in a position of powerlessness and victimhood.
These aims are all definitely tied to decentralization of governance in Russia. What form this is all going to take is an open question, but I’m certain that decentralization is directly connected with democracy. The more power people have locally, and the less of it remains in the center, the more durable Russia’s democratic institutions will be in the future.
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innocentmurmurs · 2 years
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I don't think feminists are responsible for this as such, it isn't like we had a choice in Katy Perry and Emma Watson making feminism into meaningless slop. Nor did we have a choice in brands using it for marketing. Nonetheless the result has been disastrous. We have to get back into the streets and organise.
Effectively confronting threats to women’s material welfare requires a reckoning within feminism. This must go beyond generational indictments. It would be wrong to cast as Instagram ingénues the many millennial feminists fighting on the ground against practical impediments to equality, just as it’s wrong for parvenu radicals to recast the second wave as a bourgeois movement oblivious to race and class. The second wave’s collective activism helped secure, among other landmark achievements, the right to abortion — a right that, in our celebrity-besotted and self-absorbed times, we’re letting slip away.
As the court’s coming decision brings our attention back to basics, there are other models we can turn to. The National Domestic Workers Alliance, for instance, whose advocacy and organizing of low-income household laborers led to passage of Domestic Workers Bill of Rights laws in 10 states and two cities. Or Fair Fight Action, founded by Stacey Abrams — a voting reform campaign that helped flip Georgia to the Democrats for the first time in a generation and helped rescue the nation from another term of Trumpism. Or the “green tide,” a multipronged mass movement of Latin American feminists that stressed health equity and economic issues to build a wide spectrum of public support and legalize abortion in Argentina, Mexico and Colombia.
In the late 19th century, the Illinois Woman’s Alliance brought together almost every women’s organization in Chicago — including suffragists, unionists and socialists — forced a congressional investigation into female sweatshop labor and pushed through the state’s Workshop and Factories Act, creating an eight-hour day for women and children and banning factory labor for children under 14. (The second-wave feminist Meredith Tax’s recently reissued 1980 book, “The Rising of the Women,” chronicles the alliance and how the act was partly struck down by a hostile State Supreme Court.)
The coalition’s efforts were reflected nationwide in the work of diverse groups, Black and white, including the settlement home movement, the Women’s Trade Union League and the Neighborhood Union in Atlanta. The last was organized by the social reformer Lugenia Burns Hope, who was married to Morehouse College’s president and deployed other faculty wives to fight for education, day care and housing for poor Black women.
All of these groups subscribed to a fundamental principle enshrined in the mission statement of the Illinois Woman’s Alliance: “The actual status of the poorest and most unfortunate woman in society determines the possible status of every woman.” As the Supreme Court may soon remind us, it’s a principle we ignore at our peril.
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sageglobalresponse · 1 year
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Five facts you need to know about International Women’s Day
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Every year on 8 March, International Women’s Day is celebrated to commemorate and honour women's accomplishments, raise awareness about gender disparities and discrimination, as well as promote global support for women.
But what do you know about IWD? We’re here to answer five important questions…
How long has International Women’s Day been celebrated?
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On 28 February 1909, the then-active Socialist Party of America celebrated the first National Woman’s Day in commemoration of the 15,000 women who protested in New York against harsh working conditions and lesser wages.
In 1910, Clara Zetkin, a women's rights advocate and the leader of Germany’s Women’s Office for the Social Democratic Party, proposed the idea of a global International Women’s Day.
On 19 March 1911, the first International Women’s Day was held, with more than 1 million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland taking part.
It took until 1975 for the United Nations to recognize and begin celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD). Since then, the UN has served as the major sponsor of the yearly event, encouraging more countries to recognize “acts of courage and resolve by ordinary women who have played an outstanding role in the history of their countries and communities.”
And for those wondering and feeling left out (get over it), there is an International Men's Day, which is celebrated on 19 November in more than 80 countries worldwide, including the UK. It has only been marked since the 1990s and isn't recognised by the UN.
What is the symbol and colour of International Women’s Day?
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The symbol for International Women’s Day is a female gender symbol. It is usually accompanied by the colours purple, green and white.
According to the International Women's Day website, purple stands for dignity and justice, green for hope, and white for purity. "The colours originated from the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in the UK in 1908."
Is it a holiday?
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The day’s purpose varies by country. In some, it's a day of protest, while in others, it's a means to promote gender equality. In some countries, International Women's Day is observed as a national holiday.
IWD is recognized as an official national holiday in Afghanistan, Armenia, Belarus, Cambodia, Cuba, Georgia, Laos, Mongolia, Montenegro, Russia, Uganda, Ukraine and Vietnam.
In certain countries like Albania, Macedonia, Serbia and Uzbekistan, Women's Day has been combined with Mother's Day, a merger to highlight the importance of women as mothers.
In China, many women are given a half-day off work, while the Italian Festa della Donna is celebrated by the giving of mimosa blossoms.
Why is it a historical celebration in Russia?
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In 1917, the celebration of Women's Day in Russia got them the right to vote.
Women in Russia commemorated the day that year by going on strike for 'bread and peace' in order to protest World War I and campaign for gender equality. Tsar Nicholas II was far from happy and authorized General Khabalov of the Petrograd Military District to shoot any woman who refused to stand down. They did not back down and the protests remained and led to the Tsar’s abdication. The interim government granted women the right to vote as a result of their protest action.
What’s the theme this year?
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Ever since 1996, each International Women’s Day has an official theme.
The first theme adopted by the UN in 1996 was "Celebrating the Past, Planning for the Future".
Last year, the theme for IWD was #Breakthebias, which highlighted the issues women face due to gender bias.
This year, the International Women's Day website has stated that it’s #EmbraceEquity. As the website states, 2023 focuses on how gender equity needs to be part of every society's DNA: “It’s critical to understand the difference between equity and equality. The aim of the IWD 2023 #EmbraceEquity campaign theme is to get the world talking about Why equal opportunities aren't enough. People start from different places, so true inclusion and belonging require equitable action.”
The images linked to this year’s IWD all feature the hugging gesture, promoting giving equity a huge embrace.
Another highlight of this year is the UN's theme, which is 'DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality', aiming to to make people aware of the importance and contribution of digital technology in unveiling issues of gender inequality and discrimination. IWD will explore the impact of the digital gender gap on inequality for women and girls, as the UN estimates that women's lack of access to the online world will cause a $1.5 trillion loss to gross domestic product of low and middle-income countries by 2025 if action isn't taken.
"From the earliest days of computing to the present age of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, women have made untold contributions to the digital world in which we increasingly live," the UN stated. "Their accomplishments have been against all odds, in a field that has historically neither welcomed nor appreciated them."
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eelhound · 2 years
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"The central problem with the social media age is its never-ending cacophony. Silence and contemplation are never allowed. As a result, responses to mass murder almost immediately begin to conform to folks’ prior views — on gun regulation or on white supremacy, typically, but also a broader set of assumptions about how society is and should be organized. When tensions are so high, honest conversations are difficult.
And yet, those conversations must happen — and we cannot honestly talk about racist mass murder without talking about capital and the profit system.
We are not being honest about violence if we ignore the profit motive in weapons manufacturing.
We are not being honest about racism if we ignore the profit motive in the racism that makes non-rich white people identify their problems as Black people instead of the small handful of capitalists who control the global economy.
We are not being honest about the context of violence if we ignore economic inequality.
We are not being honest about media-fueled hate if we ignore the profit motive in news and social media companies that make money off outrage.
In short, we are not being honest about what’s happening if we ignore how hypercapitalism brought us to this moment.
As Martin Luther King, Jr said to his staff in 1966: 'Something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.'
By making explicit the connection between racism and capitalism, we honor the legacy of Black thinkers who have explored this question — from Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Assata Shakur, June Jordan, Lorraine Hansberry, W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, bell hooks, and Claudia Jones, to Robin D. G. Kelley and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor today.
Papering over these links between racial and economic inequality, then, is also papering over Black American intellectual history.
By skirting around the solution to the problems that all of us in the global 99 percent face, we’re not honestly diagnosing the disease and taking steps to address it in the body politic.
Particularly in the United States — where the socialist branch of the labor movement that brought us the eight-hour workday, the weekend, and Social Security was crushed in the McCarthy era and never recovered — we must start explaining the virtues of worker control over production and worker power in politics, and how it addresses the problem we face: the rich make every economic decision in society, while treating workers as subhuman.
'Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children,' King said."
- Matthew Cunningham-Cook, from "We Can’t Talk About the Racist Massacre in Buffalo Without Talking About Capitalism." Jacobin, 16 May 2022.
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asarlaiochtsystem · 1 year
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The American Left Needs to Emphasize the Importance of Class
(I originally wrote this for an article for the school newspaper. Unfortunately, they rejected it on the grounds that it didn’t align with the values of school.) The American left stands out among other left movements in the world, most noticeably we lack an explicitly class character when compared to other countries. More often than not, the American left prefers to look at issues as the cause and result of themselves: i.e. racism and sexism being the products of the institutions themselves. I, and many others, would argue that this is a reductionist view of these issues, rather we must look at the very core of our society’s politics and power to properly generate a critique. I therefore posit that these issues, among others, are the result of the capitalist mode of production.
When people talk about capitalism or liberalism, what we mean is the system of labor where one class of people control the means of production (the factory, mill, mine, store, etc), the bourgeoisie, and another class must sell their labor in exchange for a wage, the proletariat. The problem here arises with surplus labor, realized as profit. This surplus value is the uncompensated labor which went into the creation of a commodity, it is that which goes directly to the capitalist rather than their workers. So when socialists talk of “worker’s getting the full value of their labor”, we’re talking about abolishing profit. Furthermore, when we look at the market forces of the world, it benefits a capitalist to want to work a worker longer for shorter pay, so to extract the greatest amount of surplus value, whereas it is the interest of the worker to want to acquire better pay for shorter hours. The result of these conflicts of interests is class conflict.
Over the past few years, that has been a distinct rise of militancy among the American working class. From Manhattan to Alabama, from DC to LA, workers around the US have been increasingly calling for better working conditions, greater pay, greater benefits, and shorter hours. Some workers have even gone so far as to call for partial ownership of the companies so as to have a say in decision-making processes. In spite of this, the political sphere of the US has not entirely caught up. We have seen a rise in ‘democratic socialist’ candidates and ‘pro-labor’ activists, but no party or force exists on the national level pushing for the working class. What few parties exist are localized third parties, whose effectiveness is pitiful, in part due to the very explicit corporate interests of both parties. This corporate influence has extended so far that now the candidates of both parties will fund one another’s campaigns in the hopes of elevating the most radical candidates to appear more moderate themselves, than adopt any policies that would benefit the working class.
What then does this have to do with concepts such as racism or sexism? Throughout the entirety of American history, it has been a common tactic to try and divide people on the basis of race and gender, while trying to suppress the shared class interests people have. Look no further than the Communist party or Socialist party in the early 20th century, whose anti-lynching and anti-racist initiatives were suppressed because of the fear of a united front between black, white, asian and latin workers in the US. You can also see evidence of this fear in things like COINTELPRO, the origins of the Model Minority stereotype, and many other arms of racism.
However, it would be ignorant of me to ignore the biases of some socialist thinkers including against queer people, indigenous people and even the partially white supremacist ideas Engels and Marx had about the development of human societies or Stalin’s purging of ‘enemies of the people’ (Bulgars, Turks, and Romanians). Socialism was a product of its adherents, and one of the prerequisites of socialism in the US, will be to address historical oppressions that have been maintained and utilized by the capitalist elite to divide workers from one another. It may, therefore, be necessary to envision a complete reimagining of what it means to be ‘American’ in a post capitalist America. In the end it is the desire and goal of all socialists to unite as one, diverse, unique class of people, the Proletariat. United together to face all that opposes them and their liberation.
With that I will leave you with a line from the Internationale, the anthem of the socialist movement, “Freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all”.
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aoawarfare · 8 months
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Fathers of the Jadids
During the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about events in Turkestan in 1917 and today we’re going to take a step back and talk about two giants within the Jadid movement: Munavvar qori Abdurashidxon and Mahmudxo’ja Behbudiy. Both of these men were identified by Adeeb Khalid as the most influential Jadids of their time. They provided the funding, organization, and intellectual drive and supported the Jadid during the Tsarist regime and helped the Jadids survive the tumultuous period between 1919 and 1926, when they succumbed to the Soviet purges.
Mahmudxo’ja Behbudiy
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Mahmudxo’ja Behbudiy
[Image Description: A color painting of a warm skinned man with a long, thick black beard. He is wearing a white turban, round circular glasses, white long dress shirt and a green outer shirt.]
Mahmudxo’ja Behbudiy was born in Samarqand in 1875. He came from a family of qazis and became a mufti as well as a successful merchant. While going on the hajji in 1900, he became convinced that Turkestan society needed to be reformed. He may have also been introduced to Gasprinsky’s ideas about reform and the new teaching method during his travels. When he returned to Samarkand, he dedicated his wealth and literary abilities to the Jadid cause. He wrote several primers for the new-method schools and contributed to Uzbek literature through several plays. His play Padarkush (the Patricide) was the first Uzbek play to be staged. In 1913 he turned to the printed press and published the newspaper Samarqand and Oyina (Mirror) which became the most important Jadid periodical in Turkestan.
As we discussed in our Alash Orda episode, 1905 brought a moment of hope for the people of Central Asia as they were offered representation in the Duma. When that right was taken away, the Kazakh intellectuals allied with the Socialist democrats (the Kadets), but Behbudiy was distrustful of the Kadets and instead turned to the newly created Muslim Faction in the Duma (this was a governmental body for all other Muslims of the Russian Empire, but no Turkestan Muslims). He submitted a list of his ideal future for Turkestan, arguing that Turkestan remain part of the Russian Empire, but as an equal. He wanted an Administration of Spiritual and Internal Affairs that would oversee immigration, resettlement, education and cultural life. The Administration would be managed by men elected for 5 year-terms and familiar with Sharia law. They would control all matters of law including the administrators and judges, oversee the function of the mosques and madrasa and manage waqf property. Behbudiy believed this would give the government the power to reform Islam, particularly Sufi practices, while granting autonomy and modernity to Turkestan.
During the 1917 revolution, Behbudiy was in Samarkand managing a new newspaper the Huriyet (Liberty). When the Bukharan Emir chased out his Jadids, many of them fled to Samarkand, including Abdurauf Fitrat, and ended up writing for Behbudiy’s paper. While Fitrat would eventually argue for an Uzbek based origin story for Turkestan, finding inspiration from the great Timur to justify the creation of a Turkestani state, Behbudiy believed that for Turkestan to survive, they needed to embrace their Turkic, Russian, Arabic, and Persian roots. He argued that Persian was significant to Turkestanis because:
“It is the language of madrassas and litterateurs and is spoken in several cities and villages in the Samarqand and Ferghana provinces of Turkestan.” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 295
His newspaper the Oyina was published in Uzbek but had Persian articles. However, his other newspaper the Huriyet after 1917 only published materials in Uzbek.
When the Kokand Autonomy was formed in 1917, Behbudiy sat on the Kokand Autonomy’s 32-member council. While serving on the council, he and three others were sent to the Paris Peace Conference to gain recognition of the situation in Turkestan. He never made it to Paris. Instead, while traveling through Bukhara, he was stopped by border guards, arrested, and tortured to death. He died on March 25th, 1919.
Munavvar qori Abdurashidxon
Munavvar qori Abdurashidxon was born in Tashkent in 1878. Like Behbudiy, he came from a religious family. Most of his family members were ulama and he studied at a madrassa in Bukhara. While studying, he became convinced of the need for reforms.
In 1905, Munavvar wrote:
“All our acts and actions, our ways, our words, our maktabs, and madrasas and methods of teaching and our morals are in decay…if we continue in this way for another five or ten years, we are in danger of being dispersed and effaced under the oppression of developed nations…O coreligionists, o compatriots! Let’s be just and compare out situation to that of other advanced nations…let’s secure the future of our coming generations and save them from becoming slaves and servants of others. The Europeans, taking advantage of our negligence and ignorance, took our government from our hands and are gradually taking over our crafts and trades. If we do not quickly make an effort to reform our affairs in order to safeguard ourselves, our nation, and our children, our future will be extremely difficult. Reform begins with a rapid start in cultivating sciences conforming to our times. Becoming acquainted with the sciences of the [present] time depends upon the reform of our schools and our methods of teaching” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 27
Munavvar was introduced to the new-school methods supported by Gaprinsky and opened a new method school in Tashkent, the Namuna (Model) school. He also published several textbooks and contributed to several Tashkent newspapers. However, his biggest contribution was his efforts in creating a standardized and universal curriculum for the schools in Tashkent, organizing the wealthy merchants of Tashkent to open a reading room, and creating a benevolent society called the Imdodiya (Aid).
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Munavvar qori Abdurashidxon
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Munavvar used his considerable organizing skills to spur the intellectuals to take advantage of the Russian Revolution. Munavar was involved in the many different councils that sprung up in Turkestan. He and Ubaydulla Xo’jayev organized the first meeting of the Shuro council, a place for the people of Turkestan to come together and rule themselves. You can learn how that turned out in our episode on the Russian Revolution and Central Asia. Munavvar would be elected president of the First Turkestan Muslim Council in 1917 and take part in the formation of the Kokand Autonomy.
            When the Bolsheviks took Tashkent in 1918 and established the Musburo, they couldn’t extent its power into the old city, so the indigenous activists took over. At the time there were several Ottoman POWs in Central Asia and Munavvar decided to hire them as teachers in their schools. He also became involved with many of the nationalist and secret societies running rampant in Turkestan as the Bolsheviks, Jadids, and Russian settlers struggled to fill the political vacuum created by the fall of the Tsar. He was also involved with the reformation of the waqfs, believing they were the best mechanism the Jadids had to redistribute funds for the betterment of the community. He argued that the waqfs were:
“Founded not for serving religious and benevolent needs, but for the progress of culture and the enlightenment of the people” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, 233
And that they could:
“Liberate the thousands of existing maktabs from their present pitiful condition and to transform them from religious institutions into sources of culture and enlightenment” - Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan, pg. 234
Because of his role in establishing the Shuro, the Kokand Autonomy, and his work with the Ottomans, he came under the Cheka’s suspicion as the Bolsheviks spread their control over the entirety of Turkestan. In late 1920 he was arrested and thrown in prison for a year.
When he was released, Munavvar worked first for the branch of the Commissariat of Education that was responsible for primary and secondary education and then in the Uzbek Academic Center. While writing primers, he became embroiled in a scandal when his work was defamed for being “counterrevolutionary’ and “narrow nationalist” that brought him under renewed surveillance in 1921.
As the Soviets strengthened their hold over Central Asia, they didn’t know what to do with the old revolutionary Jadids and Alash Orda. Their first approach was to push them out of governmental bodies into dead end jobs or academia while keeping them under close surveillance. They then implemented random arrests, deportations to gulags, and finally executed them for state crimes. Munavvar was hounded by the Cheka since 1921, chased to Moscow where he could not find work, chased back to what was now Uzbekistan, and fired from his job at the Uzbek Academic Center. In 1927, he was asked by the OGPU to write a written testimony about his work with the Jadids and Nationalists. He also made a public speech where he admitted his “mistakes” and claimed that the Jadids were willing to work with the regime. His speech was belittled and he never made a public appearance again.
Munavvar became implicit in the Milliy Istiqlol (National Independence) conspiracy cooked up by the OGPU which claimed that at least 84 Jadids and various members of the Soviet Apparatus (several who actually went to Munavvar’s new-method school) were nationalists conspiring to overthrow the Soviet Union and/or working with the British to create an autonomous Turkestan. Munavvar was spared a show trial but was still executed on April 23rd, 1931.
References
Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR by Adeeb Khalid
Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent 1865-1923 by Jeff Sahadeo
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#1. Costa Rica (11% BEV market share)
We finish our report with Costa Rica, a country with an absurd lead over the rest of the region, to the point that it actually leads the entire continent (presenting higher BEV market share than the US and Canada).
25,741 vehicles were sold in Costa Rica in H1 2023. Of these, 2,783 were BEVs, presenting an 11% BEV market share, an impressive number, and more so for a country with middle income status. Moreover, sales are growing at electrifying speed (pun intended), with a 171% increase YoY so far in 2023!(..) 
P.S. Note: After the coup d'état, Figueres became a national hero, winning the country's first democratic election under the new constitution in 1953. Since then, Costa Rica has held 15 additional presidential elections, the latest in 2022. With uninterrupted democracy dating back to at least 1948, the country is the region's most stable.
Costa Rica is a unique country in Latin America because, unlike many of its neighbours: they respect the principles of democracy; do not allow dictators to political power, and they fight narco-cartels; and they do not indulge in stupid communist and socialist experiments. Costa Rica has achieved a fairly good standard of living with relatively few natural resources.
A truly functioning democracy and respect for human rights is an important prerequisite for the creation of a functioning economy and society. Almost next door is Venezuela, very rich in oil and other natural resources, which socialists and Russian advisers have turned into a crime-ridden impoverished cesspool...
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feckcops · 9 months
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AOC shouldn’t have endorsed Joe Biden
“Socialist politicians should be articulating a clear alternative to the business-as-usual centrism of Biden and other leading Democrats ... And a premature show of unity with the President who intervened to break a rail strike just seven months ago does exactly the opposite ...
“Left-wing politicians who display their unity with a president most Democratic voters aren’t enthusiastic about, months before the primaries and over a year before the general election, may tell themselves that they’re securing whatever influence they can exert as junior partners in a Biden-led coalition. And if their only goal was to very slowly bring about a few modest reforms, that calculation would be understandable.
“But if you think the level of economic inequality in contemporary American society is grotesque and unacceptable and you think that grave danger is posed to the entire planet by the twin threats of climate catastrophe and superpower tensions, it’s hard to justify this perspective.
“If we’re going to build a real political alternative to both the neoliberal center and the resurgent right, we can’t count on a long-term strategy of nudging the center for incremental improvements. We need to draw clear lines between the center and the Left, and make a forthright case for the future we need. That means acting like we and Joe Biden don’t comfortably fit together in the same big tent.”
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The 'anti-Meloni': Meet Elly Schlein, Italy's breakout left-wing star | Euronews
The 'anti-Meloni': Meet Elly Schlein, Italy's breakout left-wing star 
By Andrea Carlo  •   20/12/2022
Elly Schlein at an electoral rally in Modena, Italy. 2 September 2022   -   Copyright  AP Photo/Marco Vasini
Italy's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) suffered a devastating defeat in the September general elections, which saw Brothers of Italy's Giorgia Meloni and her right-wing alliance sweep into power with a landslide victory.
But could a trailblazing new candidate reverse the party's misfortunes?
Meet Elly Schlein, a 37-year-old MP who is widely touted as the latest breakout star in Italian politics and a possible ray of hope for the beleaguered centre-left.
Earlier this month, Schlein announced her bid to become the Democratic Party's new leader next year. Young and openly bisexual, the aspiring candidate is a feminist and impassioned pro-European who posits herself as a "real" leftist -- one who appeals to society's most disenfranchised, rather than the "elites" the modern-day left is often accused of courting. 
Media outlets are describing Schlein as the "anti-Giorgia Meloni", and comparing her to US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is also renowned for her socially progressive platform.
So who is Elly Schlein? Will she be able to revive Italy's moribund centre-left? And how do Italians perceive her?
Italy's AOC: Schlein's political platform
Elly Schlein's political position is perhaps best encapsulated by the way in which she announced her leadership bid.
Speaking at a club in Rome’s suburbs -- outside of its "limited traffic zone," a metaphor often used to depict the urban elite -- she announced a "progressive, environmentalist and feminist" campaign to offer an "alternative" to Italy’s new far-right government. All the while, her supporters sang "Bella Ciao" - Italy’s anti-fascist Resistance anthem.
Schlein, who belongs to the PD’s more socialist wing, aims to present a fresh and unifying vision for the left and the country.
As a party whose roots lie in a fusion between the Communist and Christian Democratic factions of Italy's past, the PD is often perceived as suffering from an identity crisis, floundering through a divide between a more centrist, economically liberal wing and leftist one.
The party's past leaders, especially Matteo Renzi, have often been accused of eschewing the PD’s leftist roots, and indeed her leading opponent in the primaries, Stefano Bonaccini, occupies a politically centrist ground, despite having formerly been a Communist Party member.
Schlein, for instance, supports a minimum wage — a proposal which the Democratic Party has endorsed but failed to push through while in government. She speaks about a Green New Deal and bringing the party back to the trade unions and city outskirts, all of which have drawn comparisons to the platform of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Schlein's reputation for being a gutsy conviction politician breaking through the ranks of Italy's stuffy political establishment has also led commentators to see her as the left's answer to fresh-faced PM Giorgia Meloni, whose own meteoric rise from the margins of Italian politics was attributed to her charismatic persona and mass appeal.
While Schlein resists the anti-Meloni label, she has certainly not pulled the punches on Italy’s new — and first female — premier.
"Not all female leaderships are feminist leaderships," she said earlier this month. "Politically, we’re poles apart."
Schlein is often compared to US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her platform advocating social justiceMarco Vasini/Copyright 2022 The AP. All rights reserved.
A diverse background
Italy's political class has garnered a reputation for homogeneity -- throughout the decades, its members have been overwhelmingly male and advanced in age.
Schlein’s background stands in obvious contrast, not only for her gender and youth but for her heritage as well.
Born in Switzerland, the leftist politician hails from an ethnically diverse family. Schlein's father is a Jewish American political scientist, her mother an Italian law professor, and she consequently holds triple Swiss-Italian-US citizenship.
If elected as head of the Democratic Party, Schlein would become both the first woman and openly LGBTQ person to lead the centre-left bloc.
Schlein makes no secret of how her background makes her something of an outlier in Italian politics.
Back in 2020, she came out as bisexual on a popular television show, announcing that she had a girlfriend.
"I have loved many men, I have loved many women. At the moment I'm [in a relationship] with a woman, and I'm happy," the MP told TV presenter Daria Bignardi, to rapturous applause from the audience.
From campaigning for Obama to battling Salvini: Schlein's political journey
As a triple citizenship holder, it comes as little surprise that Schlein's career would be as international as her background.
Following the completion of a law degree from the University of Bologna, the leftist politician started her career 7,000 km from home by working on Barack Obama’s campaign trails in 2008 and 2012.
After cutting her political teeth across the Atlantic, Schlein became an impassioned youth activist for the Democratic Party and was elected as a member of the European Parliament in 2014.
Come the following year, and increasingly opposed to the labour reforms of the then-PM and party leader, Renzi, she ultimately parted ways with the PD and joined a splinter party, Possible (Possibile).
In 2020, Elly Schlein was elected on a centre-left ticket in Emilia-Romagna, a historically communist region that risked succumbing to Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigrant, populist Northern League in the regional elections. She emerged as the single most successful candidate in the region’s history, becoming regional vice-president — the current President, Bonaccini, is her opponent in next year’s primaries — and effectively halted a supposedly "unbeatable" far-right wave.
On how she managed to beat Salvini? "By asking the right questions," she quipped.
Schlein casts her ballot at a polling station in Bologna, Sunday, 25 September 2022.Michele Nucci
A new hope for the left? Or the same old?
The media buzz surrounding Elly Schlein is such that the young candidate is already being heralded the new protagonist of Italy's left. But when one scratches beneath the surface, is she as popular as she is made out to be?
The picture is perhaps less rosy than one might think. Schlein herself is currently not in the lead to win the PD’s primaries, lagging 18 points behind her main opponent in a recent poll.
Schlein remains a popular choice among the PD’s leftist youth, many of whom are pinning their hopes on her to revive the party and its values.
"A regeneration of the party is necessary," one PD member, Laura Leuzzi, told Euronews. "I think [Schlein] can bring about this renewal and I always try to support leftist female leadership that pays attention to younger generations."
For many Italian leftists, who, like Schlein, had ditched the PD as a result of its increasingly centrist positions over the past decade — especially following Matteo Renzi’s leadership of the party — the aspiring candidate remains a welcome potential change.
Among these is Giacomo, 29, who left the party after disagreeing with its political line.
"I will vote for her in the primaries," he told Euronews. "Unlike what her detractors say, she brings forward many more ideas than people give her credit for."
"As an MEP, for instance, she tried to reform the Dublin Convention on asylum seekers, while the PD was attacking the legal rights of migrants," he noted.
But other young leftists are less impressed.
Among these is Agostino Biondo, a 30-year-old Rome-based warehouseman and youth activist for the PD. Despite being on the party’s leftist wing, he is not convinced that Schlein's policies are sufficiently socialist.
"[Saying you’re a leftist] is not enough," he told Euronews. "What does it mean to be a leftist?"
"Being in favour of a minimum salary is not leftist enough… you need to be in favour of the nationalisation of the means of production at least, and even that isn’t enough."
Over the past years, the PD has suffered from stagnancy and is seen as having abandoned the working class, leaving members like Biondo sceptical that she can bring about any major changes.
"The PD needs to intercept workers, the unemployed, people who probably don’t even know who Elly Schlein is," he said.
"Yes, she talks about wanting to venture outside of the city centre, but so have other PD candidates in the past… The problem is, how are you going to go about doing it?"
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financialsmatter · 2 years
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Wokeness Is All About Division
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Many people still don’t to admit that Trump was right about his views on ‘Wokeness’ claiming it is all about division. But when you see it in action, there’s hardly any denying it’s destructive nature. Cue up: the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. On Saturday former presidential candidate and proud socialist, Sanders attacked President Brandon’s Inflation Reduction Act for failing to live up to its name. “I want to take a moment to say a few words about the so-called Inflation Reduction Act that we are debating this evening. "I say so-called because according to the CBO and other economic organizations that have studied this bill, it will in fact have a minimal impact on inflation." Wow! You know it’s gotta be bad when even Bernie Sanders mocks the Democrats Inflation Reduction Act. All About Division Sad to say that in the past, politicians used to be able to work together to solve important issues. Not anymore. Instead, they’re hell bent on division. And ‘Wokeness’ is at the heart of it. Our leaders not only preach war, but they also seek to divide our nation by turning brother against brother until our civilization exists no more. Classic Example About Division The Democrats have exploited every distinction to separate and divide us while they’re currently seeking 5 years imprisonment for those who only entered the capitol and took selfies. All of this to paint their opposition with hatred. As a result, the very cornerstone of civilization of bringing people together – because it is mutually beneficial to all – has been broken. Consequently, we must now plan for what comes after this house-cleaning that’s taking place right under our collective noses. Ironically (or NOT) creepy academics – such as Klaus Schwab – have always presented the greatest threat to societies. Schwab and his Great Reset Boyz at the World Economic Forum seek to turn our corporations into fascist limbs of the state. And it’s all in the name of ‘Wokeness’ while suppressing human rights. Even Putin said that ‘Wokeness’ is what destroyed Russia.     In the meantime, the division that’s taking place has set in motion dramatic changes in cultural shifts around the globe. On the brighter side, this will present opportunities of a lifetime for those with ears to hear. Learn more about those opportunities (HERE). Share this with a friend…especially if they’re NOT WOKE. They’ll thank YOU later. We’re Not Just About Finance. But we use our expertise in finance to give you hope. https://www.financialsmatter.com/category/in-plain-english/ ******************************************************** Invest with confidence. Sincerely, James Vincent World Leader in Simplifying Wall Street Copyright © 2020 It's Not Just About Finance, LLC, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Read the full article
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rotzaprachim · 3 years
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Don’t reblog. but anyway its like. I don’t think all fiction ever needs to be utopian. I don’t think all fantasy fiction needs to deal with issues of social structure and revolutionary change or live in nice democratic socialist societies etc etc etc. But IF you set up the function of a whole nation as the main a plot then you should maybe actually deepen our view of the nation beyond flat fantasy land Russia (in contrast to the capitalist/Puritan kerch ruled by a corporate oligarchy and theocratic militaristic Fjerda both of which are allowed to be terrible places that shape the behaviour and ill conduct of the people from there in ways that make them deeper and more dynamic) instead of making it flatly the good guys WHILe we get constant reminders of how fucked the nation ever is. even if it’s the good guys. So it’s there. I also am not gonna call for an end to all monarchism in fantasy lit but it sure feels diff when we’re talking about really clear approximations of later 20th century Russia and Scandinavia rather than like ye vague old fantasy land of elves and dwarves
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anarcho-smarmyism · 3 years
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Ⓐ WE WANT EVERYTHING! Ⓐ
We want all of the Earth to be free and no longer held captive by the specter of Capital that is currently destroying it. We want to reform our agricultural systems completely into something that is equitable and efficient, able to feed all; one that is sustainable and treats the Earth with respect and dignity; and one that treats livestock and animals we eat with respect and dignity, rather than leaving them to live horrible lives before they are slaughtered.
We want all nations to be free of the noose of imperialism that empires like the United States have spent decades or centuries tightening around their necks. We want indigenous lands to be returned to the hands of the indigenous peoples who lived on them and managed them successfully for thousands of years.
We want all industries to be placed in the hand of the workers, to decide how to run and what to produce democratically and equitably. We want to reform industry and factories to no longer pollute the Earth for profit, and no longer grind the laborers into dust with their unnecessary drudgery and indignity.
We want accommodations for disabilities of all varieties to be the social norm.  We want all mobility aids, medication, and medical treatment to be provided to those who need it free of charge. We want all people who cannot labor for their survival to be kept alive, comfortable, and with their dignity intact, knowing that they are valued for their humanity and not for what they can produce.
We want all prisoners freed, all the cages emptied, all prisons and police forces abolished, and to begin building alternatives to the Injustice System focused on rehabilitation and restorative justice for antisocial behavior, not focused on brutal punishment for punishment’s own sake.
We want all People of Color to be fully emancipated, to receive reparations, to rest easy at night knowing that white people have no power over them and will not be able to keep them from living their lives as they please. We, white anarchists and other leftists, want to learn to destroy racist social structures and cure ourselves of the disease of white supremacy, so that we will not brutalize or disrespect others in racist ways even on accident ever again. We want to decolonize our minds and our society, so that young people of color don’t have to grow up too fast to cope with the way the world treats people like them, so that they are not Othered and are not prevented from engaging in their cultures and presenting themselves and their bodies to the world in whatever way they so please.
We want all women to be fully emancipated from capitalist Patriarchy, to be full citizens of the world on equal ground with all other genders, to no longer be reduced to their reproductive capabilities or to sex objects, to no longer receive societal scorn and violence at the hands of men. We want to reclaim motherhood as a blessing for those who wish it and not a martyrdom for all who can give birth. We want to erase racism and transphobia from the Earth and from our minds so that our sisters will not have to suffer transmisogyny, misogynoir or any other racialized sexualization. We want to emancipate men from the poison of patriarchal conditioning and toxic masculinity, so that they can fully feel their emotions and connect as equals with their brothers and sisters in this life.
We want trans people, LGBT+ people, and queer people of all stripes to be fully free to be themselves and live their lives, looking and presenting however the hell we want, without fearing becoming the victims of violence and discrimination. We want to queer the culture to the point that straight/gay, trans/cis are no longer seen as strict binaries, so that all can be free to express their desires and their self-image however they want. We want HRT to be safely and freely available to all who need it. We want everyone to be able to marry whoever they please, and to adopt children if they please, regardless of their gender or sexuality. We want cops and corporations out of Pride. We want queer liberation for each and every one of us on the Earth.
WE. WANT. EVERYTHING!
And we’re not ashamed of that!
Each of these things will require a herculean effort on the part of unknowable multitudes of people to acquire. Each of them is something you may fight tooth and nail for your entire lifetime, and only see society progress in baby steps toward, if at all. Each of them is a demand that a liberal may tell you is noble but misguided, because obviously these things are too radical to be possible, and isn’t it better to keep an eye on optics and only demand things that are “reasonable” according to modern centrist liberals? A world where all these demands are met is so alien to ours that imagining it is virtually impossible. There are so many things that could go wrong between now and then, and when the forces of capital, the state, and low prejudice seem to hold such a monopoly on our entire lives, it’s easy to think that these things are impossible.
People thought the same about the divine right of kings. Just because it sounds excessive or impossible doesn’t mean it is, and when we surrender ground to only demanding “reasonable” things, we forget that we are in a struggle for the liberation of all humankind, not only a struggle for the next liberal reform -although some liberal reforms may be a goal worth pursuing in the short term, never take your eyes off that long-term goal! Once we achieve one short term goal on the path to fulfilling one of our demands, we celebrate the victory and then jump back into the struggle, because there is still work to be done, prisoners to be freed, chains to be broken, an Earth to save from climate disaster, a world to reclaim for us and for everyone who has suffered more than we have!
We have taken on a project of generations, passed to us from Marx and the first socialists, to stand in solidarity with the freedom fighters and revolutionaries who have been fighting to oppose the imperialist pigs taking their countries from them in our (white American, in my case) names. We contribute to this project not because the downfall of capitalism is a realistic 5-year plan, but because we believe a better world is possible, and because our consciences compel us to fight for that better world, even when the darkness of the current world seems overwhelming.
Don’t stop at demanding $2000. Don’t stop at demanding rent be frozen. Demand everything, and fight like hell to give it to your friends and your descendants.
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phroyd · 3 years
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I’m not going to pretend that I know how to interpret the jobs and inflation data of the past few months. My view is that this is still an economy warped by the pandemic, and that the dynamics are so strange and so unstable that it will be some time before we know its true state. But the reaction to the early numbers and anecdotes has revealed something deeper and more constant in our politics.
The American economy runs on poverty, or at least the constant threat of it. Americans like their goods cheap and their services plentiful and the two of them, together, require a sprawling labor force willing to work tough jobs at crummy wages. On the right, the barest glimmer of worker power is treated as a policy emergency, and the whip of poverty, not the lure of higher wages, is the appropriate response.Reports that low-wage employers were having trouble filling open jobs sent Republican policymakers into a tizzy and led at least 25 Republican governors — and one Democratic governor — to announce plans to cut off expanded unemployment benefits early. Chipotle said that it would increase prices by about 4 percent to cover the cost of higher wages, prompting the National Republican Congressional Committee to issue a blistering response: “Democrats’ socialist stimulus bill caused a labor shortage, and now burrito lovers everywhere are footing the bill.” The Trumpist outlet The Federalist complained, “Restaurants have had to bribe current and prospective workers with fatter paychecks to lure them off their backsides and back to work.”But it’s not just the right. The financial press, the cable news squawkers and even many on the center-left greet news of labor shortages and price increases with an alarm they rarely bring to the ongoing agonies of poverty or low-wage toil.
As it happened, just as I was watching Republican governors try to immiserate low-wage workers who weren’t yet jumping at the chance to return to poorly ventilated kitchens for $9 an hour, I was sent “A Guaranteed Income for the 21st Century,” a plan that seeks to make poverty a thing of the past. The proposal, developed by Naomi Zewde, Kyle Strickland, Kelly Capatosto, Ari Glogower and Darrick Hamilton for the New School’s Institute on Race and Political Economy, would guarantee a $12,500 annual income for every adult and a $4,500 allowance for every child. It’s what wonks call a “negative income tax” plan — unlike a universal basic income, it phases out as households rise into the middle class.
“With poverty, to address it, you just eliminate it,” Hamilton told me. “You give people enough resources so they’re not poor.” Simple, but not cheap. The team estimates that its proposal would cost $876 billion annually. To give a sense of scale, total federal spending in 2019 was about $4.4 trillion, with $1 trillion of that financing Social Security payments and another $1.1 trillion support Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Beyond writing that the plan “would require new sources of revenue, additional borrowing or trade-offs with other government funding priorities,” Hamilton and his co-authors don’t say how they’d pay for it, and in our conversation, Hamilton was cagey. “There are many ways in which it can be paid for and deficit spending itself is not bad unless there are certain conditions,” he said. I’m less blasé about financing a program that would increase federal spending by almost 20 percent, but at the same time, it’s clearly possible. Even if the entire thing was funded by taxes, it would only bring America’s tax burden to roughly the average of our peer nations.
I suspect the real political problem for a guaranteed income isn’t the costs, but the benefits. A policy like this would give workers the power to make real choices. They could say no to a job they didn’t want, or quit one that exploited them. They could, and would, demand better wages, or take time off to attend school or simply to rest. When we spoke, Hamilton tried to sell it to me as a truer form of capitalism. “People can’t reap the returns of their effort without some baseline level of resources,” he said. “If you lack basic necessities with regards to economic well-being, you have no agency. You’re dictated to by others or live in a miserable state.”
But those in the economy with the power to do the dictating profit from the desperation of low-wage workers. One man’s misery is another man’s quick and affordable at-home lunch delivery. “It is a fact that when we pay workers less and don’t have social insurance programs that, say, cover Uber and Lyft drivers, we are able to consume goods and services at lower prices,” Hilary Hoynes, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, where she also co-directs the Opportunity Lab, told me.
This is the conversation about poverty that we don’t like to have: We discuss the poor as a pity or a blight, but we rarely admit that America’s high rate of poverty is a policy choice, and there are reasons we choose it over and over again. We typically frame those reasons as questions of fairness (“Why should I have to pay for someone else’s laziness?”) or tough-minded paternalism (“Work is good for people, and if they can live on the dole, they would”). But there’s more to it than that.
It is true, of course, that some might use a guaranteed income to play video games or melt into Netflix. But why are they the center of this conversation? We know full well that America is full of hardworking people who are kept poor by very low wages and harsh circumstance. We know many who want a job can’t find one, and many of the jobs people can find are cruel in ways that would appall anyone sitting comfortably behind a desk. We know the absence of child care and affordable housing and decent public transit makes work, to say nothing of advancement, impossible for many. We know people lose jobs they value because of mental illness or physical disability or other factors beyond their control. We are not so naïve as to believe near-poverty and joblessness to be a comfortable condition or an attractive choice.
Most Americans don’t think of themselves as benefiting from the poverty of others, and I don’t think objections to a guaranteed income would manifest as arguments in favor of impoverishment. Instead, we would see much of what we’re seeing now, only magnified: Fears of inflation, lectures about how the government is subsidizing indolence, paeans to the character-building qualities of low-wage labor, worries that the economy will be strangled by taxes or deficits, anger that Uber and Lyft rides have gotten more expensive, sympathy for the struggling employers who can’t fill open roles rather than for the workers who had good reason not to take those jobs. These would reflect not America’s love of poverty but opposition to the inconveniences that would accompany its elimination.
Nor would these costs be merely imagined. Inflation would be a real risk, as prices often rise when wages rise, and some small businesses would shutter if they had to pay their workers more. There are services many of us enjoy now that would become rarer or costlier if workers had more bargaining power. We’d see more investments in automation and possibly in outsourcing. The truth of our politics lies in the risks we refuse to accept, and it is rising worker power, not continued poverty, that we treat as intolerable. You can see it happening right now, driven by policies far smaller and with effects far more modest than a guaranteed income.
Hamilton, to his credit, was honest about these trade-offs. “Progressives don’t like to talk about this,” he told me. “They want this kumbaya moment. They want to say equity is great for everyone when it’s not. We need to shift our values. The capitalist class stands to lose from this policy, that’s unambiguous. They will have better resourced workers they can’t exploit through wages. Their consumer products and services would be more expensive.”
For the most part, America finds the money to pay for the things it values. In recent decades, and despite deep gridlock in Washington, we have spent trillions of dollars on wars in the Middle East and tax cuts for the wealthy. We have also spent trillions of dollars on health insurance subsidies and coronavirus relief. It is in our power to wipe out poverty. It simply isn’t among our priorities.
“Ultimately, it’s about us as a society saying these privileges and luxuries and comforts that folks in the middle class — or however we describe these economic classes — have, how much are they worth to us?” Jamila Michener, co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, told me. “And are they worth certain levels of deprivation or suffering or even just inequality among people who are living often very different lives from us? That’s a question we often don’t even ask ourselves.”
But we should.
Phroyd
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