Blog of the Week: The Daily GreenHelpful hints for a lighter ecological footprint
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Lost Writings of SDS..
Revolutionary Youth the the New Working Class: The Praxis Papers, the Port Authority Statement, the RYM Documents and other Lost Writings of SDS
Edited by Carl Davidson 
Changemaker, 273pp, $22.50
For the full contents, click the link and view 'Preview' under the cover graphic.
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Marv Davidov, Presente!
An appreciation written by Randy Furst in Minneapolis
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By Randy Shannon, CCDS
choice "Everyone has the right to work, to free of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."
- United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948
I. Introduction
The "Great Recession" that began in 2007 has caused the greatest percent of job losses since the Great Depression of 1929. This crisis is the end of an era of unrestrained 'neo-liberal' capitalism that became public policy during the Reagan administration. The crisis marks a new level of instability with the growth of a global financial elite that targeted US workers and our trade unions after World War II.
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Order Our
Full Employment Booklets
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...In a new and updated 2nd Edition
Capitalism may well collapse under its own excesses, but what would one propose to replace it? Margaret Thatcher's mantra was TINA...There Is No Alternative. David Schweickart's vision of "Economic Democracy" proposes a serious alternative. Even more fundamentally, it opens the door to thinking about alternatives. His may or may not turn out to be the definitive "successor system," but he is a leader in breaking out of the box. |
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Quick Links...
CCDS Discussion
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Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Revolution
A Political Biography
By David S. G. Goodman
Routledge Press
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Planet of Slums
by Mike Davis
Verso
Paperback
List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $8.00
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Carl Davidson's Latest Book:
New Paths to Socialism
Essays on Mondragon, Marx, Gramsci and the Green and Solidarity Economies |
Solidarity Economy:What It's All About
Edited by Jenna Allard, Carl Davidson and Julie Matthaei
Buy it here...
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An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
 Fights at the Top,
Street Heat and
Organizing Below
We're the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism...Do you have friends who should see this? Pass it on...Do you have a blog of your own? Others you love to read every day? Well, this is a place where you can share access to them with the rest of your comrades. Just pick your greatest hits for the week and send them to us at carld717@gmail.com!
Most of all, it's urgent that you oppose austerity, make solidarity with the Occupy! movement and end the wars! We're doing more than ever, and have big plans. So pay your dues, make a donation and become a sustainer. Do it Now! Check the link at the bottom...
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We're All in the Same Boat?
On the Topic of Obama, the GOP Can't Even Blush Anymore
By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On!
If Hollywood gave Oscars for shamelessness, the Republican responses to President Obama's State of the Union speech last night, Jan 24, would have swept the field.
Take Indiana's Gov. Mitch Daniels, who gave the official GOP response:
"No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others," he said. "As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat."
Amazing. One top GOP candidate, Newt Gingrich, is running around the country attacking Obama as the 'Food Stamp President,' while the other, Mitt Romney, whose newly released tax returns show he takes in more in a day than a well-paid worker does in a year, critiques Obama's business skills using a shuttered factory as a stage prop.
Obama, of course, never shut down a single factory, yet that was precisely the business Mitt Romney and his outfit, Bain Capital, was famous for, including shutting down a factory in Florida, where his video message was being recorded.
"All in the same boat" and 'castigating others' indeed. Governor Daniels uttered these words as the state he presides over is currently engaged in a notorious 'right to work for less' battle to strip Indiana's workers on their ability to bargain collectively.
Like many Americans, I watched the President's speech with a critical eye. As he detailed a number of manufacturing and alternative energy industrial policies, I thought, finally, he's giving some voice to his 'inner Keynesian' and forcing a crack in the neoliberal hegemony at the top. I cheered when he took aim at Wall Street and declared, "No more bailouts, no more handouts, and no more cop outs." On the other hand I winced more than once at the glorification of militarism and the defense of Empire-I'm one quick to oppose unjust wars and who has long believed a clean energy/green manufacturing industrial policy needs to trump a military-hydrocarbon industrial policy.
This speech was also Obama in campaign mode. One thing we've learned over the last four years is that his governing mode is not the same thing, and requires much more of us in terms of independent, popular and democratic power at the base to make good things happen.
But one thing is clear. My critical eye has nothing in common with what's coming from the GOP and the far right. The first Saturday of every month, the pickups trucks from the local hills and hollows, growing numbers of them, fill the parking lot of the church on my corner, picking up packages from the food pantry to help make ends meet. In these circumstances and lacking better practical choices, I'll go with the 'Food Stamp' President any day of the week.
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Note to Obama: If You Want to Keep Jobs in the U.S., It Helps to Have Worker-Owned Factories
How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work
By CHARLES DUHIGG and KEITH BRADSHER
SolidarityEconomy.net via New York Times
Jan. 21, 2012 - When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley's top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.
But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?
Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
Why can't that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.
Mr. Jobs's reply was unambiguous. "Those jobs aren't coming back," he said, according to another dinner guest.
The president's question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn't just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple's executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that "Made in the U.S.A." is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.
Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.
However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple - and many of its high-technology peers - are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays.... (Click title for more)
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An Alternate View at the Top:
Considering a U.S.-Iranian Deal
[Editor's note: Strator is a private intelligence agency with its main clients in energy fields]
By George Friedman
Stratfor.com
Jan 24, 2012 - Last week, I wrote on the strategic challenge Iran faces in its bid to shape a sphere of influence stretching from western Afghanistan to Beirut on the eastern Mediterranean coast. I also pointed out the limited options available to the United States and other Western powers to counter Iran.
One was increased efforts to block Iranian influence in Syria. The other was to consider a strategy of negotiation with Iran. In the past few days, we have seen hints of both.
Rebel Gains in Syria
The city of Zabadani in southwestern Syria reportedly has fallen into the hands of anti-regime forces. Though the city does not have much tactical value for the rebels, and the regime could well retake it, the event could have real significance. Up to this point, apart from media attention, the resistance to the regime of President Bashar al Assad has not proven particularly effective. It was certainly not able to take and hold territory, which is critical for any insurgency to have significance.
Now that the rebels have taken Zabadani amid much fanfare -- even though it is not clear to what extent the city was ceded to their control, much less whether they will be able to hold it against Syrian military action -- a small bit of Syria now appears to be under rebel control. The longer they can hold it, the weaker al Assad will look and the more likely it becomes that regime opponents can create a provisional government on Syrian soil to rally around.
Zabadani also gives outside powers something to help defend, should they choose to do so. Intervening in a civil war against weak and diffused rebels is one thing. Attacking Syrian tanks moving to retake Zabadani is quite another. There are no indications that this is under consideration, but for the first time, there is the potential for a militarily viable target set for outside players acting on behalf of the rebels. The existence of that possibility might change the dynamic in Syria. When we take into account the atmospherics of the Arab League demands for a provisional government, some meaningful pressure might actually emerge.
From the Iranian point of view, this raises the risk that the sphere of influence Tehran is pursuing will be blocked by the fall of the al Assad regime. This would not pose a fundamental challenge to Iran, so long as its influence in Iraq remains intact, but it would represent a potential high-water mark in Iranian ambitions. It could open the door to recalculations in Tehran as to the limits of Iranian influence and the threat to their national security. I must not overstate this: Events in Syria have not gone that far, and Iran is hardly backed into a corner. Still, it is a reminder to Tehran that all might not go the Iranians' way.
A Possibility of Negotiations
It is in this context that the possibility of negotiations has arisen. The Iranians have claimed that the letter the U.S. administration sent to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that defined Iran's threats to Strait of Hormuz as a red line contained a second paragraph offering direct talks with Iran. After hesitation, the United States denied the offer of talks, but it did not deny it had sent a message to the Iranian leadership. The Iranians then claimed such an offer was made verbally to Tehran and not in the letter. Washington again was not categorical in its denial. On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a meeting with the German foreign minister, "We do not seek conflict. We strongly believe the people of Iran deserve a better future. They can have that future, the country can be reintegrated into the global community ... when their government definitively turns away from pursuing nuclear weapons."
From our perspective, this is a critical idea. As we have said for several years, we do not see Iran as close to having a nuclear weapon. They may be close to being able to test a crude nuclear device under controlled circumstances (and we don't know this either), but the development of a deliverable nuclear weapon poses major challenges for Iran.
Moreover, while the Iranians may aspire to a deterrent via a viable nuclear weapons capability, we do not believe the Iranians see nuclear weapons as militarily useful. A few such weapons could devastate Israel, but Iran would be annihilated in retaliation. While the Iranians talk aggressively, historically they have acted cautiously. ... (Click title for more)
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A Natural Gas Field Worker Who Quit
Tells the Truth About 'Fracking'
 | | Ex-oil worker blasts shale gas industry / Ex-oil worker's concerns |
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Workers' Governments and Socialist Strategy
Discussion and Debate over the Early Comintern's Ideas and Today's Realities
"The FSLN government in Nicaragua immediately after the fall of the Somoza dictatorship may qualify as a workers' government" -- David Camfield.
January 17, 2012 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- A discussion is taking place at John Riddell's website on the demand for a workers' government and issues raised in the article by Riddell, "A 'workers' government' as a step toward socialism". Below are article-length responses from David Camfield and Nathan Rao, a comment by Tim K, and a response by John Riddell. Workers' governments and the crisis of politics
By David Camfield
New Socialist Webzine
January 10, 2012 -- John Riddell is right that, "The Comintern's decisions on governmental policy were rooted in a political environment that no longer exists."
Before offering some comments on the demand for a "workers' government" (WG) today, I think it's important to clarify what kind of government we're talking about. There has been a lack of clarity about what distinguishes a WG from a far more common phenomenon: left governments in capitalist states that rule for capital, as "administrators of the capitalist order" as John puts it.
This lack of clarity has led to cases of revolutionary socialists mistakenly supporting examples of the latter.
I think a WG should be understood as a government of working-class forces (or worker and peasant forces) in a capitalist state (or some other exceptional institutional setting other than working-class rule) that objectively doesn't rule for capital. This means a government that disrupts capitalist rule in some ways rather than just reproducing it. For this to happen, a government must actually engage in "a resolute struggle at least to achieve the workers' most important immediate demands against the bourgeoisie", to use a phrase from the 1922 Comintern resolution (from "The Comintern's Unknown Decision on Workers' Governments"). This is only possible when the balance of class forces is very favourable to the working class (or workers and peasants).
A WG is different from socialist democracy: a government organised through new institutions like workers' councils through which the exploited class(es) rules. The Paris Commune and the soviet government in Russia formed in 1917 were examples of socialist democracy, not WGs.
WGs have historically been extremely unusual, unstable and inherently short lived. Perhaps the left Social Democrat governments in the German states of Saxony and Thuringia in 1923 would qualify as WGs, along with the government of the People's Assembly in Bolivia under Torres in 1971. The FSLN government in Nicaragua immediately after the fall of the Somoza dictatorship might also qualify (I haven't reviewed the history of any of these examples in detail). No government in the world today is a WG....(Click title for more)
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The First Sexual Revolution - Hint: It took
Place Long Before the Hippies of the 1960s.
 | 'Portrait of a Courtesan,' Nell Gywnn
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New Book Excerpt: Lust and Liberty in the 18th Century: Adulterers and prostitutes could be executed and women were agreed to be more libidinous than men - then in the 18th century attitudes to sex underwent an extraordinary change
The Origins of Sex:
A History of the First Sexual Revolution
The Guardian Bookshop
By Faramerz Dabhoiwala
The Guardian.co.uk
Jan 20, 2012 - We believe in sexual freedom. We take it for granted that consenting men and women have the right to do what they like with their bodies. Sex is everywhere in our culture. We love to think and talk about it; we devour news about celebrities' affairs; we produce and consume pornography on an unprecedented scale. We think it wrong that in other cultures its discussion is censured, people suffer for their sexual orientation, women are treated as second-class citizens, or adulterers are put to death.
Yet a few centuries ago, our own society was like this too. In the 1600s people were still being executed for adultery in England, Scotland and north America, and across Europe. Everywhere in the west, sex outside marriage was illegal, and the church, the state and ordinary people devoted huge efforts to hunting it down and punishing it. This was a central feature of Christian society, one that had grown steadily in importance since late antiquity. So how and when did our culture change so strikingly? Where does our current outlook come from? The answers lie in one of the great untold stories about the creation of our modern condition.
When I stumbled on the subject, more than a decade ago, I could not believe that such a huge transformation had not been properly understood. But the more I pursued it, the more amazing material I uncovered: the first sexual revolution can be traced in some of the greatest works of literature, art and philosophy ever produced - the novels of Henry Fielding and Jane Austen, the pictures of Reynolds and Hogarth, the writings of Adam Smith, David Hume and John Stuart Mill. And it was played out in the lives of tens of thousands of ordinary men and women, otherwise unnoticed by history, whose trials and punishments for illicit sex are preserved in unpublished judicial records. Most startling of all were my discoveries of private writings, such as the diary of the randy Dutch embassy clerk Lodewijk van der Saan, posted to London in the 1690s; the emotional letters sent to newspapers by countless hopeful and disappointed lovers; and the piles of manuscripts about sexual freedom composed by the great philosopher Jeremy Bentham but left unpublished, to this day, by his literary executors. Once noticed, the effects of this revolution in attitudes and behaviour can be seen everywhere when looking at the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. It was one of the key shifts from the pre-modern to the modern world....(Click title for more)
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Red Tails in the Sunset:
New Film on the Tuskegee Airmen
By Jean Damu
Portside.org
Jan 23, 2012 - Red Tails, the new George Lucas film depicting the exploits of the Tuskeegee Airmen is to the history of black fighter pilots during WWII what a sunset is to a day- it's pretty to watch but no illumination is forthcoming.
However, (and with all due respect), for those of us who wrote their high school book reports after reading the Classic Comic version or watched the Disney Channel version and perhaps even more worrisome, for those of us who may be Tyler Perry fans, then Red Tails, is surely a must see.
For those however who took the time to read a book or take seriously African American's participation and contributions to everyday life probably will want to take a pass. Red Tails is decidedly not another Glory, the 1989 Morgan Freeman film that was relatively accurate in it s' telling the story of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, the first all black infantry unit of the Civil War.
Red Tails, so named because the Tuskeegee airmen painted the tails of their planes red, is a cartoonish caricature of great fighting men who contributed much to the world's titanic struggle against fascism that was WWII. But who, according to Lucas and film writers John Ridley (Under Cover Brother and Fox News contributor) and Aaron McGruder (Boondocks), had no personal relationships with family or black women (not one black woman appears in the film) and who were hopelessly criminal in their refusal to follow orders and complete a mission as assigned.
To be fair all the exploits attributed to the black pilots in Red Tails are absolutely true. Black pilots were originally assigned to strafing duty (the most dangerous of all air assignments) with outdated planes. They did blow up an ammunition train. They did destroy a German airfield and one airman was among the first allied pilots to shoot down an ME (Messerschmitt) 262 fighter jet.
But for purposes of calming and soothing the qualms of Lucas's financial backers and film industry banks who feared a film with a nearly all black cast would bomb (figuratively speaking of course) at the box office, all these exploits are depicted as being carried out by one lone rogue pilot, a pilot so undisciplined and uncontrollable that in real life he would have been subjected to court martial and likely expelled from the service.
Actually in real life the 332nd all black fighter group was assigned to clear the sea-lanes and provide air cover for the Allies invasion of Sicily....(Click title for more)
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Album Review: Etta James' 'The Dreamer'
 LA Times Music Blog
Nov 7, 2011 - Etta James' health has been deteriorating in recent years (she died Jan 20, 2012 -ed), so as sad as the announcement is that "The Dreamer" is her final album as she retires from music, it isn't a shock.
The songs on the 73-year-old R&B-blues-jazz singer's first collection in five years have none of the overt swan-song character of the album Glen Campbell turned out earlier this year with the help of producer Julian Raymond. Instead, we get a career-twilight portrait of James and her darker-than-ever voice in a set of moody, bluesy and slow-jam groove numbers. One exception may be the chugging "Too Tired," an up-tempo workout in which she nonetheless embodies the world-weary sentiment of the title. Axl Rose is not a master of funk and blues, but after hearing James' in-the-pocket treatment of Guns N' Roses' signature song, "Welcome to the Jungle," he may be considered one of the genre's noted songwriters.
 | | Etta James-Cigarettes & Coffee (Dreamer 2011) |
Experiments aside, she's mostly ruminating on the topic that's been ground zero for most of her long career: love. The album high point may be her seven-minute exploration of Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee," as she sorts through all the emotional possibilities in this intimate conversation between lovers, taking what seems like all the time in the world. That time on Earth is a finite proposition just makes it resonate that much stronger.
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Become a CCDS member today!
 The
time is long past for 'Lone Rangers'. Being a socialist by your self is
no fun and doesn't help much. Join CCDS today--$36 regular, $48
household and $18 youth.
Better yet, beome a sustainer at $20 per month,
and we'll send you a copy of Jack O'Dell's new book, 'Climbing Jacobs
Ladder,' drawing on the lessons of the movement in the South in the
1950s and 1960s.
Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS |
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