ccds-button
CCDSLinks
News & Views  From
Posts We Like
Radical Ideas for Radical Change
May 31, 2013
In This Issue
Full Employment
American Povertty
War on Democracy
Graduates and Jobs
New Film on the Boss
Low Wage Workers
China in Perspective
Book on Israel
Film: Great Gatsby
CCDS Convention
Join Our Mailing List
 The Rock and Roll Womanist:
Nina Simone - Sinnerman
Nina Simone's  'Sinnerman' from a new Site on Rock and Roll, Black Feminism, and Critical Consciousness.

  June 5: Left Unity Meeting
 CCDS, CPUSA, DSA, FRSO
New 'Online University of the Left' Now at 3100+ Friends. 25,000 Visitors and reaching 100,000+ More...Check It Out and Be Amazed!


Check out the various departments, study guides and archives for doing the work of revolutionary educations
Quick Links...
CCDS Discussion
If you like CCDSLinks, dig in and lend a hand!
Tina at AFL-CIO
 CCDS Statement on Korea 
 

US Must Talk, Not Threaten North Korea
 


The new annual edition of our journal of discussion and analysis is now out. More than 130 pages, it includes 20 articles on organizing, racism and the right. Cost is $10 plus shipping. Or get one by becoming a sustainer. Click the title to buy it directly.
 New Issue of Mobilizer

Check out what CCDS has been doing...
Blog of the Week:

Edited by Carl Davidson

 

 Revolutionary Youth the the New Working Class: The Praxis Papers, the Port Authority Statement, the RYM Documents and other Lost Writings of SDS  


Changemaker, 273pp, $22.50

For the full contents, click the link and view 'Preview' under the cover graphic.
'They're Bankrupting Us!': And Twenty Other Myths about Unions
Tina at AFL-CIO

New Book by Bill Fletcher, Jr. 

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.

Order Our
Full Employment Booklets

Buy Now
Tina at AFL-CIO

...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.
We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century
By Rod Bush, NYU Press, 1999

 
A Memoir of the 1960s

by Paul Krehbiel


Autumn Leaf Press, $25.64

Shades of Justice:  Bringing Down a President and Ending a War
Shades of Justice Video: Bringing Down a President, Ending a War

Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary



By Giuseppe Fiori
Verso, 30 pages
Gay, Straight and the Reason Why



The Science of Sexual Orientation


By Simon LeVay
Oxford University Press
$27.95



New Book: Diary of a Heartland Radical

By Harry Targ

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

Tina at AFL-CIO

Edited by Jenna Allard, Carl Davidson and Julie Matthaei

 Buy it here...
Study! Teach! Organize!
Tina at AFL-CIO

Introducing the 'Frankfurt School'

Voices from the Underground Press of the 1960s, Part 2
  • Foreword by Susan Brownmiller
  • Preface by Ken Wachsberger
$37.50 + $6 shipping

Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement




By Don Hamerquist
An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
 
Imposing
Austerity,
Thwarting Democracy  

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 [email protected]!

Most of all, it's urgent that you defend voter rights, plan for 2014 races now, oppose austerity, support the Congressional Progressive Caucus' 'Back to Work Budget' 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...
The Real Numbers: Half of America in Poverty
-- and It's Creeping Upward



By Paul Buchheit

Alternet.org

May 26, 2013 - The Census Bureau [3] has reported that 15% of Americans live in poverty. A shocking figure. But it's actually much worse. Inequality is spreading like a shadowy disease through our country, infecting more and more households, and leaving a shrinking number of financially secure families to maintain the charade of prosperity.

1. Almost half of Americans had NO assets in 2009

Analysis of Economic Policy Institute [4] data shows that Mitt Romney's famous 47 percent [5], the alleged 'takers,' have taken nothing. Their debt exceeded their assets in 2009.

2. It's Even Worse 3 Years Later

Since the recession, the disparities have continued to grow. An OECD report [6] states that "inequality has increased by more over the past three years to the end of 2010 than in the previous twelve," with the U.S. experiencing one of the widest gaps among OECD countries. The 30-year decline in wages [7] has worsened since the recession, as low-wage jobs havereplaced [8] formerly secure middle-income positions.

3. Based on wage figures, half of Americans are in or near poverty.

The IRS [9] reports that the highest wage in the bottom half of earners is about $34,000. To be eligible for food assistance, a family can earn up to 130% [10] of the federal poverty line [11], or about $30,000 for a family of four.

Even the Census Bureau recognizes that its own figures [12] under-represent the number of people in poverty. Its Supplemental Poverty Measure [13] increases, by 50%, the number of Americans who earn between one-half and two times the poverty threshold. ...(Click title for more)

Bill Would Enact Voter ID, End Disclosure, Limit Early Voting and Expand Lobbyist Influence


By Brendan Fischer
PRWatch Report via Truthout

May 30, 2013 - A Wisconsin legislator has managed to bundle nearly all of the excesses associated with dirty elections into a single bill that good government advocates are describing as a "sweeping assault on democracy:" the legislation would try reinstating restrictive voter ID requirements, make it easier for donors to secretly influence elections, expand lobbyist influence, restrict early voting, and make it harder to register, among other measures.

The legislation is "so huge, covers so much ground, and has so many independently controversial parts of it," that it appears "intended to cut-out any public input or to render [that input] meaningless," says Andrea Kaminski, Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin.

Announced on the Friday afternoon before Memorial Day weekend, and in the midst of the budget-writing process that consumes most state news coverage, the bill from Rep. Jeff Stone (R) seems designed to be rushed-through before the public has a chance to respond.

Eliminates Most Disclosure Requirements

The most troubling provision in the bill, says Jay Heck, Executive Director of Common Cause Wisconsin, is that it "codifies protection [from disclosure] for phony issue ads."

Wisconsin, like most of the country, saw millions spent in the 2012 elections on so-called "issue ads" whose donors skirted disclosure requirements by stopping short of urging viewers to "vote for" or "vote against" a candidate. Because of the "issue ad" loophole, voters do not know how much was actually spent on elections, and most importantly, they don't know where the money came from....(Click title for more)
Socialist Worker via Truthout

    What happens to a dream deferred?

    Does it dry up
    like a raisin in the sun?
    Or fester like a sore--
    And then run?
    Does it stink like rotten meat?
    Or crust and sugar over--
    like a syrupy sweet?

    Maybe it just sags
    like a heavy load.

    Or does it explode?
    --Langston Hughes

May 25, 2013 - College graduation is supposed to be a time of celebration--a time for graduates to look back on years of hard work and achievement, and forward to a bright future filled with promise.

Yet the class of 2013--the young women and men who were submitting college applications in the fall of 2008 as the world financial system came to the brink of Armageddon following the collapse of Lehman Brothers--are facing a future that of uncertainty and diminished prospects.

They are the latest entrants into what has been dubbed the "lost generation"--so-called because the high rates of unemployment and underemployment its members endure at the start of their working lives drag them down throughout their working lives, making it more and more difficult to maintain the standard of living of their parents.

Only half of recent graduates have been able to find a full-time job that makes use of their degree. Yet all are still left with the bill from college, with the average student loan burden nearing $30,000. With the number of new graduates expected to outstrip the number of new jobs requiring a degree over the next several years, this trend will only get worse.

If the current priorities of big business and the politicians who serve them continue to set the agenda, millions of young people will be robbed of their hopes for the future.

But this isn't inevitable. For most of the class of 2013, their best possibility for a decent future lies not in the rat race for ever-scarcer decent jobs, but joining together to fight to improve conditions in the jobs they do have and to demand a fundamental transformation of a system that treats them as expendable.

A report released last month by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), titled "The Class of 2013: Young graduates still face dim job prospects," paints a picture of a jobs crisis for youth that has multiple layers....(Click title for more)
New Film: 'Springsteen and I' ...Coming July 22

SPRINGSTEEN & I (Official Trailer) - Coming this July
SPRINGSTEEN & I (Official Trailer)


By Ned Resnikoff

MSNBC

Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus will soon begin a nationwide tour intended to "highlight the problem of stagnant and low wages for American workers," caucus co-chair Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota told MSNBC Wednesday. Dubbed the "Raise Up America" campaign, the tour will officially launch on June 22 at the Netroots Nation conference in San Jose, California.

"We're going to talk about the need to increase wages," he said. "We're going to talk about growing inequality, the growing concentration of wealth at the top, and how that growing concentration is not just economic but also translates into political influence."

This is the second time Ellison and other members of the Progressive Caucus have gone on tour to promote these issues. In the summer of 2011, the caucus launched the "Speak Out For Good Jobs Now" tour, in opposition to Republican-supported spending cuts. Citing lessons learned from the tour, Ellison re-introduced the Put America to Work Act in late June of that year. The legislation, intended to provide a $350 billion boost to state and local job creation efforts, died in committee.

This year, the tour will begin in the midst of what one Detroit-area organizer promised would be a "long, hot summer" for low-wage worker activism. Over the past six months, workers in low-wage retail and fast food jobs across the country have initiated an historic series of strikes against American business giants like Walmart and McDonald's. While Ellison emphasized that the Progressive Caucus' campaign was being planned before the first major fast food strike occurred in New York, he emphasized that he and his colleagues share a common cause with the striking workers in New York, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and other cities.

In March, Ellison co-sponsored the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, which would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour. While that's more than the $9 minimum wage that President Obama has proposed, it doesn't match the $15 base wage demanded by striking fast food workers. Speaking to MSNBC, Ellison said he would like to peg the minimum wage in private companies to the level of pay their CEOs and executives receive....(Click title for more)


By Luzheng Song

China Elections and Governance

May 29th, 2013 - Today, China has attained a level of prosperity and stability not seen since 1840. It has the best governing system to date, and compared to other major countries in the world, is the best-performing in terms of development. These facts lay the foundation for the Party's spiritual guidelines as highlighted during the 18th Party Congress: 'confidence in our road, our theory, and our system.'

A Horizontal Analysis Since 1840

The year 1840 marks a turning point in Chinese history. China, the former "central empire", was forced into a global system dominated by Western imperial powers. Both the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China that followed tried but failed to rescue China from the lowest point in the country's long, renowned history by adjusting to this new historical reality. However, the entire Chinese nation deteriorated to the point that threat of national implosion was imminent.

China signed 1,175 treaties with other nations after the 1840 Opium War, most of which were unequal,These treaties involved ceding of territories, war reparations,  stationing of foreign troops, tariffs, and judicial rights. Imperial forces from around the world bullied and humiliated China, carving up China among themselves with no regard to the feeble Qing government's sovereignty.

The Qing government's submission to these unfair treaties led to the unequal treatment of the Chinese people, an example of which is the Chinese Exclusion Act pass by the U.S. Congress in 1882 which discriminated against Chinese immigrants. However, China managed to remain a nominally sovereign and independent nation under the Qing government, with intermittent periods of peace between incessant wars and domestic unrest.

The Republic of China, on the other hand, fared even worse. Its 37 years (1912-1949) of rule brought China neither independence nor unity, not to mention the widespread poverty and loss of dignity that continued during this period. The financial system broke down, warlords continued fighting, civil wars and foreign invasions continued, and corruption was rampant. The Republic of China not only failed to solve any of the challenges left behind by the Qing Dynasty-extreme poverty, foreign invasion and threats, division of the nation and dominance of the military by warlords-it aggravated them.

In the first years of the Republic of China, China was presented with three paths for its future: First, to follow Yuan Shih-kai's autocratic monarchy; second, to pursue Liang Qichao's constitutional monarchy; and third, to take on Sun Yat-sun's revolutionary path. However, none of the three leaders managed to realize their visions, and China lingered on in a dead end.

China's inferior status improved little even after becoming a victor in World Wars I & II. When World War II ended, the three allied powers-the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom-continued to infringe on China's sovereignty to the extent that all three countries had a military presence in China and enjoyed extraterritoriality.

It was the People's Republic of China, established in 1949 by the Chinese Communist Party, that finally rescued China from its impoverished and feeble past, reestablishing China's long-lost independence for the first time since 1840.

China in the Past Sixty Years

The People's Republic of China has existed for over sixty years. From a historical perspective, today's China has already transcended both the Han and Tang Dynasties. A horizontal comparison between China and the other two Asian powers-Japan and India-further illustrates the advances China has made.

Japan completed industrialization before World War II and became one of the five major powers in the world. It was able to retain its advantages in both technology and human resource despite its devastating defeat. Moreover, the country enjoyed huge peace dividends under American military protection and preferential terms of trade from the United States due to the Cold War. During the 60 years following the war, Japan was able to develop free of wars and civil unrests.

However, Japan now finds itself in a severe debt crisis and is experiencing political chaos. It has undergone several cabinet reshuffles and virtually lost the ability to govern. The 2011 nuclear meltdown also found the then prime minister Naoto Kan unable to deal with the crisis, leaving the refugees unattended months after the disaster. Furthermore, the current prime minister Yoshihiko Noda recently had the political insensibility to challenge China's sovereignty by nationalizing the Diaoyu Islands.

India, on the other hand, became an independent country in 1947 and inherited British democracy, the rule of law, a constitutional system and the English language. The country lagged behind China even after the latter experienced ten mournful years during the Cultural Revolution, a gap that inceased exponentially after China's reform and opening up began in 1978. Today, compared with China, India is more populated, less urbanized and less regulated in terms of public hygiene. India also has higher child mortality rates and widespread hunger. Moreover, both Japan and India lag behind China in terms of gender equality.

As for the United States, it is now struggling with the worst financial crisis ever experienced since the 1930s, with the amount of its foreign debt weighing more than 160 trillion dollars. Many medium-sized and small cities went bankrupt during the crisis, and even some state governments almost went broke. Since 1960, the US has raised its debt ceiling 78 times, averaging almost twice a year. The so-called debt ceiling has long been defunct....(Click title for more)

Translated by Xiaoyuan Li, a volunteer for the China Program at The Carter Center.
By Rod Such
The Electronic Intifada


May 28, 2013 - 'Pretending Democracy: Israel, an Ethnocratic State' is a collection of essays by Israeli, Palestinian and South African intellectuals dissecting the nature of the Israeli state and proposing how to get beyond the ethnic nationalism that characterizes Zionism and Israeli apartheid.

The book follows a conference held in Pretoria in 2010 by the Afro-Middle East Centre, a South African think-tank.

The argument that Israel cannot be both "Jewish and democratic," especially when 20 percent of its citizens are Palestinian, is one that is finally beginning to resonate among US intellectuals who have long given the ideology of political Zionism a free pass because of the Holocaust.

Most recently, Joseph Levine, a philosophy professor at the University of Massachusetts, wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times challenging the idea that a state can belong to one ethnic group without, as Levine put it, "violating the core democratic principle of equality" ("On questioning the Jewish state," 9 March 2013).

A majority of Americans have soundly rejected its corollary - "a white, Christian and democratic country" - as a result of the struggles waged by blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and other people of color against a long-standing system of white supremacy.

So if not a democracy, then what kind of state is Israel? In this volume, several authors find common ground, though each has a slightly different emphasis.

Oren Yiftachel writes that Israel is more properly defined as an ethnocracy because the organizing principle around which the state is structured is based on what ethnic group one belongs to, rather than on citizenship....(Click title for more)
The Great Gatsby (2013) - Official Trailer [HD]
The Great Gatsby (2013) - Official Trailer [HD]

By Bill Mullen

Socialist Worker

May 30, 2013 - AS A student at Princeton University, F. Scott Fitzgerald discovered Fabian Socialism by reading up on the political views of H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. In his first novel, This Side of Paradise, protagonist Amory Blaine exhibits contempt for the poor, but says he wants to become a "militant socialist." As early as 1924, Fitzgerald was describing himself as a "communist," even while he attempted to climb the social ladder of New York City.

Though he came from a respectable southern family, Fitzgerald was not rich. He called himself with some exaggeration a "poor boy in a rich boy's world." He also described himself as a racial outcast to his generally WASPish milieu:

    I am half black Irish and half old American stock with the usual exaggerated ancestral pretensions. The black Irish half of the family had the money and looked down upon the Maryland side of the family, who had, and really had, that certain series of reticences and obligations that go under the poor old shattered word "breeding" (modern form of "inhibitions"). So...I developed a two-cylinder inferiority complex.

In his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald projected some of these personal conflicts onto his characters. Nick Carraway, the young, upward climbing Wall Street trader who narrates the story, feels he is both an "insider" and "outsider" to the world of lavish wealth and consumption that surrounds him in West Egg on Long Island.

The excess is best symbolized by the lifestyle of his preposterously wealthy and mysterious neighbor Jay Gatsby. Gatsby himself is part Fitzgerald: he is newly rich, but from low stock. His parents are described as "shiftless and unsuccessful farm people." Gatsby feels a lingering "inferiority complex" among the blueblood minions he seeks desperately to impress.

As a writer, social critic and a lay student of socialism, what Fitzgerald got most right about the scene of mid-1920s bourgeois New York was its commodity fetishism. The novel is a catalogue and shopping list of the objects Gatsby surrounds himself with which render him mystifying and alluring to onlookers: "blue gardens" in which "men and girls came went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars;" a Rolls Royce; "five crates of oranges and lemons from a fruiterer in New York;" "spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold."...(Click title for more)

Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism

The struggle for our nation's future has intensified. The rainbow coalition and multi-class alignment that coalesced around the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama defeated the far- right appeal to racism, misogyny, homophobia and rejection of science.  

 

This reflects the growing strength and cohesion of the multiracial labor movement and its allies within a larger progressive majority. Yet the 1% retains power and strives to manage economic crises in a way that sticks working people with the bill.

 

Unemployment, hunger and homelessness increase, union membership declines, and too many impoverished, crisis-shocked communities, especially in the South, remain captive to messages of hate. A rational response to the existential crisis of humanity-accelerating climate change-is blocked by capitalism's irrational profit drive. The 99% can solve these problems on the basis of our common humanity.

 

Pressures of war, austerity and climate danger demand new levels of unity and struggle. New forms of labor activism lead beyond traditional trade union organizing toward a broader working class movement. The uprisings from Wisconsin to Occupy to Wal-Mart, and from Trayvon Martin to the UndocuBus, represent an emerging democracy movement. Based in the working class, linked with the community, and following the path boldly taken by the civil rights movement, today's movements can win new demands.

 

Through years of experience, the Left has learned that building lasting unity among allies involves tactful, constructive and unrelenting struggle. Our work can replace neo-liberal influences with class, political, cultural and moral solidarity and democracy. CCDS focuses on the intersection of class, race and gender as fundamental to both an objective social analysis and an effective political agenda. The Left is indispensable to weaving the threads of struggle into a mass formation independent of the 1%.

 

Polls reveal a growing plurality of youth that prefer socialism to capitalism. With determination, we socialists proceed toward our common future. In pre-convention discussion, we will examine the economy, the environment, civil society, the commons and the state within the context of the class struggle. Now CCDS calls upon its members and allies to convene in Pittsburgh in July, 2013 to assess our experience and to plan for the future.

 

Access the Main Pre-Convention Discussion Documents at http://ccds-discussion.org   

 

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