Cool Trailer for Tarantino's Upcoming 'Django Unchained'
The film is set around plantation life in the antebellum south. Jamie Foxx will play the 'Django' in question, a freed slave who returns to the plantation to find his wife. Standing in his way is the villainous slave owner
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Visit Our New 'Online University of the Left' and Be Amazed!
Check out the various departments, study guides and archives
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Dialogue & Initiative 2012 The new annual edition of our journal of discussion and analysis is now out. More than 130 pages, it includes 13 articles related to the Occupy! movement, as well as seven others vital to study in this election year. Cost is $10 plus shipping. Or get one by becoming a new member or sustainer. Click the title to buy it directly.
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Blog of the Week:
Remember Jack A. Smith from the Guardian? His longtime newsletter is now a blog. This one takes on the attempt to reverse the verdict on the Vietnam war
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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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By Randy Shannon, CCDS
"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 |
Sex and the Automobile in the Jazz Age
By Peter Ling in History Today: 'Brothels on wheels' thundered the moralists but Peter Ling argues the advent of mass motoring in the 1920s was only one of the changes in social and group relationships that made easier the pursuit of carnal desire.
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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...
 Far Right Wins in Wisconsin: What It Means for November
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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The Heartbreak in Wisconsin
By Tom Hayden
The Nation
June 7, 2012 - The triumph of Scott Walker and the Tea Party Republicans in Wisconsin is heartbreaking for the many thousands who devoted over a year of their lives to one of the most inspired social movements of the current century.
Electoral campaigns are governed by deadlines and voting results, unlike social movements, which can ebb and flow for decades. The pain of a stunning defeat inevitably takes a psychic toll on its participants, similar in ways to a seven-game World Series. It takes time to recover, and some never will.
But politics never stops. If Democrat John Lehman holds onto his narrow lead over Republican Van Wanggarrd for a state Senate seat, Wisconsin Democrats will wrest majority control of that chamber from the Republicans, setting the stage for another showdown this November, when sixteen of thirty-three senators will face election. The legislature ordinarily is out of session during the summer, possibly limiting the ability of the new Democratic majority to foil Walker's triumphal agenda.
But the big picture is disastrous for Democrats and progressives. Walker beat Democrat Tom Barrett solidly, 53 percent to 46 percent, in a campaign fueled by unprecedented levels of corporate money. The Tea Party, which became relatively isolated during the Republican presidential campaign, is back in the saddle. Its triumph in Wisconsin will embolden advocates of slashing social programs and deregulating the economy to become even more adamant during the coming national budget debates.
President Obama may benefit politically in the short term if the Tea Party overplays its hand in the immediate budget and presidential debates. But Obama disillusioned many Democrats in Wisconsin by his tepid support for the recall and the foolish White House argument that "he had a full plate and did not have time to come." Obama still holds a slender lead over Romney in most battleground states.
What explains the defeat in Wisconsin?
From the beginning there was a utopian expectation among many progressives that the recall effort was such a righteous cause that it was destined to succeed. One leader of the utopian faction was The Nation's brilliant narrator John Nichols, who is described by his wife, Mary Bottari, as one of the most idealistic bearers of good tidings in progressive America. MSNBC pundits Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow were swept up in the drama as well and expected the election to be so close that returns would take all night. Michael Moore wrote that the sight of the Capitol Rotunda packed with protesters "would bring tears to your eyes," and that he was witnessing Corporate America's "come-to-Jesus moment" in Wisconsin. Despite all the hope, the devil won big. ...(Click title for more)
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Five Lessons of The Walker Recall
By Robert Borosage
Campaign for America's Future
June 6, 2012 - That Gov. Scott Walker survived the recall in Wisconsin is a tragic setback for the stunning citizen's movement that challenged his extremist agenda in Wisconsin.
Its implications are likely to be exaggerated by the right, and underplayed by progressives. Here are some thoughts on its meaning.
1. Extremism will be challenged
Scott Walker is now a conservative hero. The right's mighty Wurlitzer will argue that Republican Governors and legislators will be emboldened because he survived. The attack on public sector workers and basic worker rights, the sweeping cuts in education combined with top end tax cuts, the efforts to restrict voting rights, they will boast, will now spread even more rapidly across the country.
Really? Walker barely survived the backlash his policies caused. He lost effective control of the Senate even before last night's recall returns are known. He had to go through a brutal recall, and watch his popularity plummet.
I suspect that most governors with a clue will see this as a calamity that they want to avoid. They'll be looking to find ways to compromise, to avoid this brutal backlash. No question that the Tea Party and big money right will be lusting for more blood. But I suspect that Walker's travails -- and those of John Kasich in Ohio and Rick Scott in Florida - will sober Republicans up a bit.
2. This is only Round One
That said, progressives should not dismiss the recall as idiosyncratic, dismissing its import since exit polls showed President Obama would win the state against Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and many voters voted for Walker because they objected to the recall itself, not because they endorsed his policies.
Conservative columnist Russ Douthat suggests that Wisconsin represents the new era of American politics, where scarcity and slow growth limits the ability of politicians to find win-win compromises. Instead, he predicts more Wisconsin-like battles, "grinding struggles in which sweeping legislation is passed by party-line votes and then the politicians responsible hunker down and try to survive the backlash." As noted above, I think more politicians will seek to find middle ground than Douthat suggests. He, for example, risibly argues that Obama's first two years were an example of sweeping partisan legislation. In fact, Obama's two years were devoted to painful efforts to find middle ground - compromising on the stimulus, wasting months on Democratic Sen. Max Baucus' phantom health care negotiations with "Republican moderates," pre-diluting Wall Street reform....(Click title for more)
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What Comes Next?: Building
on Occupy and the 99% Spring
By Robin Broad and John Cavanagh
Yes! Magazine
May 31, 2012 - Where does the Occupy movement turn next? Can social movements build on its momentum? Will protest and new forms of mobilization create change to transform the economy to one that works for people and the planet?
When would-be Occupiers pitched the first tents in New York's Zuccotti Park eight months ago, hand-written signs declaring "we are the 99%" grabbed the public imagination. This 99 percent reality-millions of young people saddled with student debt joining the jobless and homeless to confront an increasingly vulnerable and bleak future-suddenly had a face and a voice that resonated across the nation and around the world.
So too were observers struck by the novelty and creativity of Occupiers able to make decisions by consensus, posing a stark contrast to a U.S. Congress where decisions seemed increasingly to be bought and sold by and for the one percent. Across the United States, thousands of encampments echoed the core message: a healthy society was a more equal society and Wall Street's lock on our economy and our politics had to be broken.
In dozens of cities, actions reinforced this message as the victims of this unjust system started to fight back with verve and effectiveness. In some cities, occupiers stood guard in front of foreclosed homes to block banks from evicting inhabitants. In others, occupiers urged people to "move their money" from Wall Street banks to locally-rooted credit unions and community development financial institutions. From Washington, D.C., a 22-year-old, indebted college graduate named Molly Katchpole catalyzed such an outcry against outrageous bank fees that some banks retreated and cancelled the fees. Even as mayors and university administrators closed down encampments, Occupiers found new spaces to continue their general assemblies and plan local actions.
And then came spring 2012. In March, Jobs with Justice, National People's Action, several unions, and nearly four dozen other groups came together to form what they called 99% Spring. As a result, during the month of April, close to 100,000 people underwent training to be able to tell the story of the economy, to learn techniques for non-violent direct action, and to plan a next set of joint actions. ...(Click title for more)
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Reforms, Radical Reforms & Transformative Claims
By Peter Marcuse
pmarcuse.wordpress.com
Not all reforms are alike. Some are short-term, address a particular problem, are ameliorative; others are long-term, structural, aimed at the deeper sources of a range of problems. The former are realizable within the existing legal, economic, and social structures of power; others appear remote from realizable agendas of change. How can we distinguish between the three types, or locate demands and claims on the spectrum they represent? And do so in a situation, such as that outlined in Blog#10, in which the objective potential of wholesale transformative change is drastically limited by the limited strength of the forces for change?
What are groups, such as the Right to the City One movement or the Occupy movements, deeply critical of existing social, economic, and political structures, to do in a situation in which the realistic possibilities for achieving their fundamental goals are remote? Both the Right to the City movement and many of the Occupy movements increasingly recognize capitalism as a fault-ridden system in which the major faults do not arise because the system is not working, but are simply because it is the way the system does work. The protest slogan, THE SYSTEM IS NOT BROKEN, IT IS FIXED, expresses the point colloquially. What programs, proposals, actions, might be adopted to move best in the direction of the ultimately desired goals, not to fix it, but to replace it? (With what, is of course another question, and a big one; the term "socialism," for instance, is not frequently foregrounded in discussions; but that is another matter.)
Four different paths might be considered on the road to action. To begin with the criteria used to distinguish them from each other (and there are very tentative, and should certainly be thought through further, perhaps amended or replaced - but being explicit on what criteria are use is important.
What does "transformative" mean, recognizing that there are gradients to it?
I. The criteria for Transformation
1. Does the proposal redress the relations of power that cause and maintain the problem being addressed? 2. Is the proposal deep enough, going to the roots of the problem, or only address symptoms? 3. Is the proposal broad enough, taking into account all of the other factors affecting the desired outcome? 4. Does the proposal guarantee that the basic needs addressed by the issue are met, before resources are devoted to, or distributed according to, other criteria, i.e. contribution or merit? 5. Does the proposal give priority to human use values over economic market values, and respect the natural environment 6. Does the proposal provoke questions and make legitimate actions that go outside the existing framework of laws and institutions?
Examples below will help clarify application of these criteria. It should be clear that none will be met absolutely; they will be on the spectrum of actions categorized below.
II. The Four Types of Proposals
A. Efficiency reforms.
Some proposals are simply designed to make what is already being done more efficient, to achieve existing goals more economically or more cheaply. They may be simple proposals for greater use of technical advances (sharing medical information on a common computer system , facilitating larger markets and faster transactions in it), or streamlining administrative structures (one-stop regulatory decisions, consolidating bureaucracies, avoiding duplication of functions), or better accounting practices (requiring consistency in reporting, setting uniform standards, more requirements for more transparent reporting). These are reforms that can be accomplished with the existing patterns of power, on which often full consensus of all parties can be achieved. They are system-maintaining.
Every such change has some distributional impact: better reporting can help outsiders more than insiders, sharing information can reduce patients' health costs or doctors' incomes, larger markets can be more of a benefit for big firms than small. But these are side effects, of marginal significance, and do not move in the direction of significant social change.
They rely on the pressure of technical opinion for implementation....(Click title for more)
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Climate Denial Dept: North Carolina
Tries to Outlaw Sea-Level Rise
By Jess Zimmerman
Grist Magazine
North Carolina is no stranger to the "if you dislike it then you should have made a law against it" model of legislation, but this is extreme: The state General Assembly's Replacement House Bill 819 would rule that scientists are not allowed to accurately predict sea-level rise. By all legal calculations, the sea level will now rise eight inches by the end of the century. Sure, so far models have predicted an increase of more than three feet, but if they keep that shit up, they're going to JAIL.
OK, there's not really a prison sentence attached to this proposed rule, but that doesn't stop it from being crazeballs. See, actual sea-level rise is nonlinear, because there's feedback - the warmer it gets, the more the water volume expands, and the more stuff melts, and the more it expands, etc. That's how most scientific models arrive at their predictions, because that is how physics works. But an increase that big is extremely inconvenient for a state with a beach-based tourist trade. So North Carolina's solution is simple: Change how physics works, or at least change how people do physics.
Accordingly, this bill mandates that models use a linear increase - a consistent amount of change every year, based on historical data. This will lead to predictions that are much less catastrophic, and much more reassuring for people building resorts in the Outer Banks. The predictions will also be flat-out wrong, but that's nothing new for North Carolina.
If it's not obvious why this is stupid, look at it this way: In 1790, the year North Carolina is stuck in, the population was about 400,000. In 1900, it was 1.9 million. That's an increase of 1.5 million in 110 years - so if there were an analogous rule for population, the state would prepare for 3.4 million residents in 2010. Which might cause some strife among the 9.7 million people who live there now, but you know, whatever - the law is the law, so screw you, math. If the 6.3 million people unaccounted for by the legal model wanted housing and services, they should have fallen in line with North Carolina reality.
Anyway, we wish North Carolina the best of luck in staving off disaster by legislating what mathematical calculations people can perform. It will probably be about as effective as fixing the health-care crisis through etymology, or balancing the budget with entry-level yoga. But if it works, I'm moving to North Carolina, where living in a fantasy world has the force of law.
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Germany's Left Party Survives a Cliffhanger
Photo: Gregor Gysi
By Victor Grossman
MRZine / Monthly Review
The media were keen for a real wide split in the Left Party. In truth, a lot of the members feared the same.
The long-standing quarrel between the two wings -- often called the reformers versus the fundamentalists -- had crippled activities in the party far too long. It seemed very possible that all the hopes of past years might be buried at the election congress this past weekend in Goettingen.
The party's victory in 2009, with nearly 12 percent of the national vote and 76 deputies in the Bundestag, had been frittered away; there had been one defeat after another on the state level; the national polling figures had dropped to about 6 percent, thus threatening the ability of the party to even remain in the Bundestag after next year's elections. The other parties were simply ignoring the Left as if it was already a goner, and the key role of the Left as an example and support for leftist parties all over Europe had all but disappeared. Would the Gottingen congress sound a tinny death knell to all the old hopes?
If you believe some of the media you might think it did. Some journalists dug hard to explore and exploit any differences, disappointments, or disagreements. That is, after all, their assignment. But it would seem that they missed the boat.
It is true that one grand old man of the party, Gregor Gysi (now 64), started things off with a merciless analysis of past blunders, especially of the sharp political division which has split the Bundestag members into two feuding factions -- he even used the word hatred to describe the worst outcroppings -- and said that if things continued that way he could no longer act as caucus chairperson, indeed if they can't overcome differences it must be considered whether the two groups should not separate. His analysis dwelt on the dispute about whether the Left should welcome or join coalitions with the Social Democrats, as often advocated and sometime practiced in the eastern German states, or condemned, as by some in the West. He pointed out that for historical reasons the situations were completely different in the two regions; at the height of its strength in 2009 the Left got 8.7 percent in the western states, in no small measure thanks to Oskar Lafontaine, 68, the West German leader from Saarland, while getting 28.5 percent in the East (but with a far smaller population). Considering past history and media hostility both were remarkable achievements, but the differences obviously required different strategies and tactics, which must be understood and appreciated by the other side.
Then, after his polemics about the disagreements, nasty as they have been, Gysi pointed out that a strong revival of the Left is not only important to its own members. As the only true fighter for the needs of most people, the only real antagonist of the financial interests now ruling the roost, and ruining it, the only fighter for a policy of peace -- no military deployment, no export of weapons -- it bears a responsibility to the people of Germany and Europe as well. ...(Click title for more)
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Help Kickstart a New Film
on Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee
Life's Essentials with Ruby Dee, a documentary style film about love, art and activism, tells the story of one of the most enduring couples of our times, Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee.
Ossie & Ruby's achievements in love (sustained marriage for 57 years), art (pioneers in black theater) and activism (always using their influence to help "the people") parallel nearly a century of change in America. With this story being told through the lens of their grandson (filmmaker), an innate hunger to learn everything possible about Ossie & Ruby's lives and apply it to today's fight to preserve love, art and activism is always present.
Based on candid questions, revealing conversations, and never-before-seen family archival material, Life's Essentials with Ruby Dee shares the wisdom of the ages with this present generation and carries the legacy of Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee forward in history for the first time in feature documentary form.
Ossie & Ruby's Website: http://www.ossieandruby.com
Click title above for the preview
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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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