GlobalTalk

Full-Employment, Global Problem-Solving

A year ago, the notion that a global tax on commercial transactions might be enacted was a visionary pipedream, but today it seems all but inevitable.

Why it’s not quiet inevitable is the question of how it would be managed. The presumption is that it will go to nation-states, but which ones, by what proportion and at whose authority? Can states even agree on how to divvy the spoils, much less how to pursue proactive, effective, global programs?

Today’s nation-states are already demonstrating a woeful lack of orientation and capacity to roundly and strategically address the big problems we face.

The presumption of nation-state management needs to be challenged.

States need to be reformed. Meanwhile, the more immediate (and feasible) task is building a transnational, full-employment, service economy dedicated to eradicating social and ecological problems in local communities worldwide under the popular guidance of a Global Problem-Solving Authority (GPSA) and a vastly expanded civil society.

While working to reform our world’s governments, we must demand that the revenue stream of the commercial transactions fee – the Robin Hood Tax – go to local-global problem-solving via mechanisms that the popular movement can and will develop through its use of social media. This will be the GPSA.

The Jobs and Social Salvation Program of the emergent era is full-employment, global problem-solving.

Let’s unite a movement to get it.

Steve Clark (Local-Global Nexus.net)

2012 Beckons:

2011 Sets Revolutionary Base Camp;
Assault on Summit Begins This Year

By Steve Clark

Cheer it or fear it, a global revolution is now in the making.

Staring a bleak and desperate future in the face, the world’s coming-of-age generation launched a broad social rebellion in 2011, occupying public spaces and demanding fundamental reconstruction of social, economic and political power all over the world.

Because this rebellion is driven by necessity – by the harsh, despairing realities of life for most young adults – and because the world’s financial elite and heads of state cannot stem the crisis, our world’s youth are bound to step up their efforts in 2012. They will:

• Broaden the Occupy Movement;
• Direct struggle against the banking and corporate elite and their operations;
• Clarify political demands and install progressive politicians in states where elections allow; and, ultimately,
• Force the banking system to collect a fee on all commercial transactions for the full employment of youth and others in vital, community-based, globally-coordinated problem-solving.

In this, they will have the support of their Gen X next elders and the progressive wing of elder Boomers and will be praised by future generations for their bravery and perseverance when the world needed it most. Most immediately, they will look after their own essential need to survive in a corporate-dominated world threatened with cataclysmic collapse.

When the banks and the corporations are compelled by popular pressure to disgorge a revenue stream from commercial transactions, the revolution will be in full fruition, with only the details to work out of how to popularly manage this new, revolutionary, global problem-solving endeavor.

Of course, those details area no small matter, but the movement that comes together to impose social accountability on the global banking system will certainly be capable of fulfilling its more strategic destiny as well. No doubt, the movement will empower civil society and the global grassroots. It will enshrine public service, ensure social security and embrace sustainability.

The fact that this outcome can now be so readily visualized is powerful testimony to the fast, accelerating pace of this revolution. Conditions are rapidly ripening. Articulation of the demand is ever-sharper. Take a moment to view this powerful spot, The Banker, from Britain.

As even this spot shows, however, the main danger is the thoughtless assumption that genuine social and ecological problem-solving must or can be handled by the same bloated, corrupt, stagnant system of corporate-dominated nation-states that runs the world today. While nation-states and national treasuries need to be compelled to collaborate in the new problem-solving, the work must be popularly-managed, led not by states themselves, but by a new, global, social and political network in which any interested person can participate. Just as the social media now enable resistance and rebellion, they will someday – sooner rather than later – enable popular direction of the world’s problem-solving capacity as well.

Unfortunately, however, corporate forces and professional politicians, who abhor the notion of popular control, are currently well-positioned to influence events to retain exclusive nation-state authority over the revenue stream. Nevertheless, while it now seems possible that the initial adoption of a commercial transaction fee may merely channel revenues to bail out the banking system (again), the necessity of a genuine, full-employment, problem-solving alternative will only compel the further development and power of the present global revolution.

2011 has set the stage. Judging by the past year’s rapid developments, 2012 promises startling revolutionary advance.

You can help. First step, master the simple intricacies of Facebook networking and info sharing. Second, promote establishment of a commercial transaction fee (robin hood tax) and, most importantly, popular administration of this revenue stream. Third, get ready for struggle and prepare for success. Our future is rapidly coming into view.

How Will the Correct Political Line Find Followers?

By Steve Clark

An old adage says, “A correct political line finds followers.”

Events are moving fast now. Since the advent of the Occupy Movement, the revolutionary situation is developing powerfully. As that first and most persistent anti-corporate fighter, Ralph Nadar, said last week, “Just wait to you see the American Spring!”

Since Occupy Wall Street, all occupations and much other resistance explicitly target finance capital. In the spring and through next summer, against the backdrop of the approaching American elections, the Occupy Movement is going to deepen, spread and link up with occupations that are developing worldwide.

We might all use this winter to get prepared. For my friends who have not done so, this is the time to get on Facebook and master the art of social media networking.

The service economy sanctions networks rather than organizations. The rising forces of the new economy – the service class, civil society and the progressive global grassroots – are networked through social media. We are entering a decisive phase in the struggle against the hegemony by the big banks and corporate sector. In the period ahead, progressive global forces will debate, then settle on the core demands of our revolt.

Currently, the movement’s political line is unclear. Indeed, as a spontaneous mass rebellion, the movement is very small-p, more cultural than political. In that sense, it manifests the popular desire for a new social contract, a new deal between the elites and the masses. In the realm of values and structures, the movement is utopian socialist, accepting the reality that we are all in this world together and that we have to learn to manage it for our common interests.

Ultimately, however, political power is a fact of social existence, and it is through politics – revolutionary or not – that society decides its course of action. Not only will the Occupy Movement begin to gravitate toward more definite political demands, so too will the unionists (aroused since last winter in Wisconsin), the environmentalists and the legions of unemployed, educated youth and mortgage victims whose needs the corporate system is ignoring. This trend will be accelerated by the pressures of next year’s American elections.

All these forces (and similar counterparts in other nations worldwide) want to hold finance capital to social account, but despite the worthy exception of Elizabeth Warren, few mainstream practical or opinion leaders consistently express need of a new social contract. The concept needs to be more broadly articulated and clearly explained so that mass movement participants can become more conscious of their objective. THIS SHOULD BE ONE EXPLICIT GOAL OF PROGRESSIVE FORCES.

Separate from the concept of a new social contract, a variety of ideas are being discussed among progressives about how to pursue social justice and security vis-a-vis the financial sector: for instance, re-enactment of Glass-Steagall, debt forgiveness, a bank tax. Of these, the bank tax is the most strategic as it creates a new and potentially vast revenue stream (a trillion dollars per year from transactions taxes on global commerce). Opinion leaders are beginning to line up behind this concept. The first was Dean Baker, shortly after the 2008 financial crisis (and the formal onset of the present global depression). About a year ago, Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy started touting it to the G-20 (apparently, Brazil already has some form of transaction tax). Though the City (the London financial center) opposes such a tax, British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed interest last summer. The National Nurses Union (NNU) picked up the demand last August, and it has been floated in every journal that provides favorable coverage or comment on the Occupy Movement. Two weeks ago, Senator Tom Harkin (D—IA) and Representative Peter DeFazio (D—OR) introduced legislation calling for a tax in the US Congress. Last week, Bill Gates, in his address to the G-20, urged adoption of a “modest” and limited transaction tax.

Given the extent of the world’s mounting catastrophe and the inevitable need to contain and abate social unrest, it is essential that the global economy find new revenues to blunt the crisis. Thus, adoption of a “bank transactions tax” is all but inevitable. However, there are two lines on how to manage and direct this revenue stream. The lines turn on two questions: what is the purpose of the tax and who should manage it? CLARIFYING THE TWO LINES ON THESE QUESTIONS SHOULD BE THE SECOND EXPLICIT GOAL OF PROGRESSIVES.

Bill Gates has been clear in saying that the money should to go to global development (vague as he left the term, I find the track record of the Gates Foundation within a reasonable framework of social necessity). Baker would probably agree with Gates. The Nurses Union says the money should be used to pay for social services provided by nurses and others (I like the way the union links service provision and employment). The European politicians, while noting that some funds should go to global development, see the bulk of the money flowing into their own national coffers, to be used as each state thinks appropriate (that is, to fund the same things that domestic tax revenue currently supports). It doesn’t appear that Harkin or DeFazio has well-developed ideas about how the tax would be used.

As to how the tax would be managed, the presumption, even among progressives such as Baker, Gates, the NNU and virtually all commentators on OWS, is that revenue would flow to national governments (of course, this is the perspective of Merkel, Sarkozy, Cameron, Harkin and DeFazio). While progressive advocates of the tax cannot fail to see the danger of turning the revenues over to the same governments that are currently failing to address the world’s problems, they seem incapable of imagining anything different or better.

Though my inclination is to demand direct, popular control over the use of the bank transactions tax revenue stream (through mechanisms that the global movement creates), I accept that the revolutionizing of nation-states – and, subsequently, their participation in the social problem-solving agenda of civil society and the global grassroots – is part of the struggle. It certainly is strategically and tactically correct to press the demand for a new social contract funded by a bank transaction tax in American politics next year. It is conceivable that politicians (even Obama) will find it in their interest to embrace this demand and win election on an objectively revolutionary program. If so, the struggle will continue to force the political system to reform itself in the interest of the revolution.

But, as the Occupy Movement and its global scope already show, the revolution is not mainly about taking control of states, even the US state. It is about demanding social accountability from finance capital and thereby launching a sustained, generations-long effort to tackle the global crisis, to put people to work solving humanity’s problems.

The Occupy Movement is a movement of mainly young people struggling to have a future in a corporate-dominated world that always puts private profit for the already-wealthy ahead of social stability. Without victory, this movement cannot wilt and disappear. Moreover, due to social media, it is well-organized and, also, well-equipped for broad social decision-making.

What a movement of youth lacks, as we know from the Sixites youthful rebellion, is the insight of elder progressive leaders. It is the duty, responsibility, necessity and opportunity of Boomer progressives to provide this leadership. We need to hook up with our world’s youth and help them fight for a bright future.

For this, we need to join Facebook, learn to blog and tweet. It’s not that hard, it’s fun and it’s the means of revolutionary networking in the era ahead.

This Ain’t Your Granddaddy’s Hooverville!

By Steve Clark

Yesterday, NYC Mayor Bloomberg conferred official sanction on the Occupation of Wall Street, saying occupiers would not be evicted.

No doubt, Bloomberg had clear recollections of Egyptian Premier Hosni Mubarak in mind and did not want to be culpable for mass arrests just at the moment when the Occupy Movement is finding broad support among Americans. “We’re the 99%,” the Movement says, and the nation seems to agree.

In providing sanctuary, Bloomberg aligned himself and his Presidential aspirations with the motion of history.

For the moment, he also boosted the credibility for Obama and Democrats in general, provided they are willing to endorse the Movement. If they are not and if Obama’s re-election campaign falls off the cliff, Bloomberg – an independent who has worked closely with Democrats, has roots in the financial services industry and is the 30th wealthiest person in the world – is now positioned to split the Democrats and assume national leadership in the counterattack on the Republican coalition of social and fiscal conservatives, Neocons, Tea Party extremists and corporate energy goliaths.

More shaky days await. Winter will heighten the issue of practical support for the occupiers. Will NYC provide food? How will occupier camps and lives be protected against the weather? What will happen next summer as the number of occupiers swells into the tens of thousands?

And what about the angrier, defiant elements of the Movement which will not be satisfied to just sit on their hands, who want the wars to end and Wall Street to cough up funding to address human needs. What if “business as usual” on Wall Street is disrupted by occupiers who conduct non-violent, confrontational guerrilla warfare by day only to return to the encampment at night? Will defiance and confrontation be enough to force Bloomberg’s hand – or Obama’s in Washington or local authorities' in any of the growing number of cities and towns with occupied public spaces – or will Bloomberg and other local elected officials continue to condone the struggle?

The Millennial Generation – collaborative to a fault, networked to the hilt, globally aware yet staring a hopeless future straight in the face – has invented its form of struggle: Occupy and Confront. Now, the rest of us are on for the ride.

What is yet to be broadly and clearly embraced is the actual political demand that will tip the balance and force social accountability from the world’s corporate banks. Articulating that demand – for a worldwide bank transactions tax to empower civil society and global grassroots problem-solving – and building consensus for this revolutionary new social contract is the particular duty of today’s progressive Boomers. Once that demand is firmly embraced and broadly advanced, this revolution’s course will be set.

“Social Contract” Hits the Headlines

By Steve Clark

Spurred by President Obama’s call for a “millionaire’s tax” and the Republican counter-charge of “class warfare,” the social contract got a lot of well-deserved attention this week, what with Elizabeth Warren’s remarks and Paul Krugman’s column.

Politics, ultimately, is a populist enterprise, so with the 2012 elections only a year away, this spat of controversy was long overdue. Perhaps, Obama’s advisors finally let the poll numbers sink in. His were falling off the chart. Meanwhile, across-the-board majorities of 75-80 percent persistently favor higher taxes for the wealthy and the corporations.

But winning an election – assuming Obama and the Democrats can do it – is one thing; reforming the social contract is quite another. For very specific reasons beyond human control, it’s not possible to simply reconstruct the last one. If we’re ever going to have a social contract again – and if we don’t, only chaos lies ahead – we need one built on an entirely new foundation.

Why not the old one?

The last social contract was known as the New Deal in the US and Social Democracy elsewhere. It arose out of the conditions of the 1930s and 40s: the Great Depression, the anti-fascist war (WWII) and socialism in Russia. Basically, what happened was this: at a time when government-managed social safety nets did not exist, (a) the world’s industrial nations hit a huge crisis (the Great Depression – which, noticeably, did not impact Russia’s planned economy); facing broad social unrest, (b) some industrial powers (Germany, Italy, Japan) turned to fascism and war while (c) others (the western democracies) brokered a deal with industrial Labor to fight fascism in exchange for the immediate right of unions to bargain collectively and for movement toward government-managed social safety nets (which were set up after the war ended).

The key to the success of this social contract was the existence of a socialist state and industrial unions which, externally and internally, applied the pressure for social accountability from the banks and corporations and the means (collective bargaining and the right to strike) that enforced the deal.

Nature of the new

Today, while China is socialist in name, no genuine socialist (state-planned) economy exists; worldwide, market forces are in complete control. More importantly, within the US, Europe and Japan, industrial production – with its massified factories and workforces – no longer rules the economy. Instead, generally small-scale, service-driven and service-oriented business is the economic foundation. With small business predominant, industrial unions have lost their power and influence.

Thus, there is no outside and little internal pressure for government-managed social safety nets and no internal force capable of compelling such a bargain. That old social contract is gone, and it is not coming back.

Modern populism

The next social contract must be rooted in the realities of the modern economy which is (a) service-based and (b) global in scope (that is, transnational).

The vast majority of people in the US, Europe and Japan, as well as the majority of the most powerful people in all the world’s countries, are service-providers of some sort, working in a global economy that is dependent on the further development of service-based production. While governments and corporations are the most entrenched, powerful and organized structures in which these service providers work, they are not the most effective. Governments are focused on national concerns; corporations on profits.

The most effective service-providing organizations are known as civil society. They are mission driven, public-oriented entities that work locally and across national borders to address the key problems that the world’s developing service economy faces (primarily, issues of economic polarization and ecological destruction in all their manifestations). Civil society is woefully underfunded, but strategically, it is capable of mobilizing humanity to solve our great problems.

Unlike industrial unions, however, civil society will never have the kind of tight, mass organization that was required to compel a social contract four generations ago. Yet, a new kind of social organization is emerging to accomplish this task. It is global in scope, political by nature, knowledgeable, well-informed and socially organized through new technology and media. Though its political potential and power is still in its infancy, the times require and the technology enables its rapid development in the years directly ahead.

It is this social force that must compel a new social contract from the banks and corporations. The service sector can and will demand that nation states, their central banks and the banking industry in general establish a permanent revenue stream for global problem-solving led by civil society and conducted at the global grassroots. The means to do this is a bank-collected transaction fee on all electronic, corporate commercial transactions.

US Politics

Obama’s turn to class warfare, Warren’s endorsement and the Democrats’ inevitable drift along the same line is the first big step forward – however, spontaneous and lacking in strategic direction – in the battle for the new (not the old) social contract. While we welcome this advance, progressive leaders should help sharpen the public’s understanding of where this battle is headed.

Worst Case, Best Option

By Steve Clark

Worst Case…

Obama made his pitch last night. Unspecified billions (apparently $450 billion) for jobs, and it’s all to be matched by spending cuts. Not that it’s going to pass Congress – because the Republican opposition will not take the risk that anything Obama wants might work, giving him a campaign claim of progress – but if it did pass, it would only exacerbate the problem (we have a service-based economy, and government spending is a major part of that; if jobs spending is matched with other spending cuts, net increased demand for services is zero; no progress will be made, and the Democrats will look even more impotent).

The purpose of his speech was not so much to pursue enactment of its jobs program (since that won’t happen) as it was to define the parameters of his re-election campaign. On that score, his speech failed miserably (though it may have staunched the bleeding with his union base).

Obama’s Presidency has completely dissatisfied the majority that, hoping for change, elected him. Without a vision for change, he has succeeded in achieving virtually no change. The wars go on; middle class life is deteriorating. Black issues are ignored; Hispanics see no progress; young adults, despite good educations, are in debt and underemployed.

The only real base that Obama has is (a) Democrats, (b) union voters and (c) independent voters who are consciously opposed to the scapegoating, evangelical moralism, war mongering and fanatical budget-cutting that is the new creed of the Republican minority that controls Congress. Democrats, of course, will vote for him. Union voters mostly support him, but enthusiasm will be low so turn-out will weaken. As the default leader of the defacto anti-fascist coalition, Obama will get left-leaning independent voters, but most independents are not so socially conscious as to care. They will look at his bungling Presidency and, especially, his consistent drift to adopt whatever the fiscal conservatives advocate and say, “I might as well vote for a fiscal conservative.” Obama’s inability to address the continuing calamity of fractured middle class security in America means he is unlikely to be elected for another term.

Most likely, Republicans will increase their majority in the House, they will establish majority control of the Senate (though a minority, they already control it through filibuster politics) and Rick Perry will be the next President. Come January 2013, what was begun last winter in Wisconsin (and Ohio, Michigan, Florida and elsewhere) will be implemented at the federal level. Obamacare will be repealed. Domestic spending will be slashed (along with some military). The strategic rollback of Social Security and Medicare will begin. Immigrants and Muslims will be scapegoated. Federal unions will be attacked, and the right of collective bargaining will be mothballed. Government spending – local, state and federal – will fall off an historic cliff, and unemployment will shoot up. Private spending will drop; private sector hiring will end. A truly Great Depression will ensue. Anger and recrimination will explode (we haven’t seen anything yet).

The dismantling of the government as we have known it since the New Deal will be earnest and unimpeded, and it is not going to be pretty. The old social contract – long undermined, now tattered, bloated and ineffective – will be called on the carpet and banished. But no alternative will take its place because the Republicans have no forward vision. They actually think it is possible and preferable to go back, back to some imagined time before the New Deal.

With their deep roots in the Republican Party, the energy giants will press a more focused “war on terror” which, really, is war to control oil. They also will press for an end to environmental regulation. Meanwhile, the big banks will fend for themselves, hoarding cash for their investors and insisting on austerity from government. Absent the organizing function that factory production once provided – and the industrial unions that were it by-product – the majority of Americans will be defenseless, “free” to make it (or not) entirely on their own. Social dislocation will reach extremes unseen since the Industrial Revolution. Chaos will reign supreme.

It is unlikely that the Democratic Party will survive this crushing defeat of the social agenda it once championed. It will split, perhaps in several directions. The Republicans will have two years before the 2014 mid-terms, but the cascading denouement of American life will also threaten their opportunistic integrity. What was the oft-manufactured “anger” of the Tea Party will be magnified and amplified by the anger of the vast majority of Americans. Perry will be a hated President, and major splits in the Republican Party are inevitable. 2016 shapes up as the most decisive election in American history.

It will be, that is, if world events don’t intrude sooner on the scenario above. The famine in Africa isn’t going away; it’s going to spread. Youth-inspired rebellions in the Arab world aren’t going to be satisfied with ousting dictators; they’re going to demand the means to address the insecurity of their lives. Europe’s burgeoning financial crisis isn’t going to abate; it’s going to worsen. US and British banks aren’t going to be protected by the Atlantic and the English Channel; they’re going to be sucked in. Climate change events aren’t going to ease; they’re going to intensify, but the ability of government (the US or any other) to respond is going to diminish. The cost of oil isn’t going to stabilize; it’s going to soar, making both war for its control seemingly more worthwhile and undermining the global distribution of goods that is the hallmark of the US-China collaboration. China isn’t going to live off the interest on US Treasuries; it’s going to face a domestic industrial, environmental and health crisis of never-seen-before proportions.

Any of these situations – and many others – could intrude on America’s imagined “exceptionalism,” its go-it-alone mangling of its own lifestyle.

Best Option…

No, the alternative is not another New Deal, some massive federal spending program that restores the consumptive middle class lifestyle of America and, in the process, pulls the whole world up by its bootstraps. For readers who lack the economic foundation to fully appreciate why this is not possible – like it would take eight earths to provide the resources necessary to provide the equivalent American middle class lifestyle to all the world’s people – surely, you cannot believe that it is politically possible to restore the New Deal. Given today’s politics, that is simply fool’s gold (a fool’s goal), and the right’s view that it can restore 19th century American small business entrepreneurialism is even more fantastic (and hopeless). There is no going back in history.

On the other hand, history always has its own way out of its crises. Today’s way out needs to be discovered and heavily invested in. The sooner we get started the better, because the alternative, recurrent in history, is a dark age, and we’re skating dangerously close to the thin ice of no return.

We need to invest in service, and government should lead us in that direction. But big government is a poor service provider. Big and bureaucratic in the US and the West, it sucks all the energy out of the market by imposing a stagnant, ossified, hugely expensive infrastructure on its services and those that it purchases. In the world’s poorer regions, government is weak, ineffective and corrupt.

The best service providers are commonly known as civil society. They are local NGOs addressing local, social and environmental problems with resources from the global economy. Unfortunately, the global economy, due to the speculation, hoarding and greed of the corporate sector (particularly the big banks), provides only meager resources. Civil society does not have the funds necessary to actually tackle our world’s problems (in all their local diversity).

What we need is a global investment program that funds sustained, creative, social and environmental services provided by local people, especially young adults, working in community-based NGOs that are led by civil society. This is the most cost-effective way to employ people while simultaneously attacking the wide range of vital problems that now threaten and undermine human security.

The way to do this is to require social accountability from the global financial system (state treasuries and big banks). They should collect a small fee on every electronic commercial transaction that passes through the global banking system, and this revenue stream should be dedicated to local-global problem-solving organized and guided by the flexible, creative initiative of civil society. This will put people to work, locally, on the actual manifestations of our world’s great problems. And, by putting people to work, it will establish networks of security – personal and social – that arise from stable employment even if the wages of problem-solving are low (lower than what was the norm of union jobs in America). We – the world’s majority, even in the US – will not all (or many) have a middle class lifestyle (that is impossible), but we will have a means to ensure security and survival as we face the challenge of restoring our environment and reducing our population over the decades and centuries to come.

This is a future to which humanity can aspire with confidence that it is attainable and sustainable, and it must be upon this question that the 2016 election in America turns.

That’s the way to turn the worst case into our best option. And that defines the political objective of progressive Americans.

World in Crisis

By Steve Clark

Famine in Somalia, twelve million lives threatened. Three days of riots spread now across Britain. Emergency meetings convene in Europe to stave off financial collapse in Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain. Wall Street drops almost 2,000 points in the last five days of trading. Syria’s regime attempts an all-out crush of the nation’s democracy movement. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis join anti-government protests. The worst day yet of American casualties in Afghanistan. And Tuesday voters in Wisconsin attempt the recall of the rightwing bandits who took the state hostage in February.

What ties all these situations together is the world’s mounting economic and social polarization. The world’s big banks and wealthy corporate elites are getting theirs while leaving the rest of humanity to languish. Yet, it won’t languish. It rebels.

Lenin, a man who knew something about revolution, said a revolutionary situation exists when the ruling class can’t rule in the old way and the masses can’t live in the old way.

We’re there. The problem is that the progressive forces are in disarray, without a clear program and without substantial organization. Without a progressive option, the people are flailing, lashing out angrily, frustrated, sometimes despairing.

Given the lack of leadership, the present explosion of spontaneous revolt is likely to run its course, and a new but temporary calm may emerge. But the underlying problem – the polarization of wealth – is not being addressed. Unaddressed, the crisis will explode again and again.

In all likelihood, we have entered a decisive phase of struggle. Progressives must define an agenda that can impose social accountability on the big banks and global corporations. We must insist that civil society and the global grassroots – the emerging service class of would-be social problem-solvers – be empowered to attack the polarization with practical programs that foster and enable collaborative human survival in local communities worldwide.

There is a way out, but it is going to get more difficult and complex until we find cogency and direction and a progressive global movement gels. If you want to demand and fight for social accountability from the corporate elites, if you want to redistribute some of their expropriation to civil society and real, global, grassroots problem-solving, go to and register for struggle. Consider the action agenda we offer in Digging Out: Global Crisis and the Search for a New Social Contract. We’ll get back to you with help and direction.

It’s Not about Compromise: the Way Forward for American Progressives

If only the problem really was intransient politicians unwilling to compromise. It’s actually much deeper and more profound than that.

Today's situation is similar to those in the years immediately before Lincoln’s election and the outbreak of the Civil War and before Roosevelt’s election in 1932 in the depths of the Great Depression. While the possibility of an armed rebellion (South Carolina in 1861) is unlikely in our present context, a revolutionary transition in political power in the years immediately ahead is all but inevitable.

Of course, that notion flies in the face of current mainstream punditry that stresses the need for “adults to take over” and find a compromise so we can all get back to business as usual. Such talk is always a strong stable of political thought on the eve of revolutionary change, but it is delusionary.

The Civil War crisis is a case in point. For a decade leading up to the 1860 election, American politicians, enduring the mushrooming catastrophe of slavery, sought ways to compromise. Progressive Americans had no real way to affect the political process, but their agitation (Harriet Beecher Stowe, for instance) steadily advanced their cause. Overall, they lacked the resources, organization and access to the media to contend for political power. Some (John Brown), feeling the impotence of their position, resorted to insurrection, first in Kansas and then in Virginia. In 1854, the Republican Party formed in opposition to slavery, but, even in 1860, when Lincoln won the Presidency on its ticket, it was still dominated by anti-slavery compromisers (including Lincoln, himself).

Despite all the compromising, however, time had run out on slavery and the nation’s first social contract (the Constitution) which tolerated it. Each successive compromise was essentially a sell-out to the slave owners, and each brought forth more despair and dissatisfaction with government. The Southern elite, sensing ultimate defeat, finally felt compelled to attempt to pull out of the national bargain. They attempted to secede, and war broke out.

The crisis of the 30s was rooted in issues much more like today’s – not slavery but, rather, the balance of power between corporate interests and the working masses. It, too, might have resulted in a political rebellion except for one thing: unlike in the years before the Civil War, progressive forces were highly organized and well-resourced in the thirties due to the emergence of the Labor Movement. Because Labor was so strong, it was able to win a bargain with capital (the New Deal and the right to collective bargaining). The rightwing was marginalized, and violence was averted.

Although similar forces are involved, today’s crisis is significantly different than that of the 1930s. For one thing, the economic base of U.S. society is no longer mainly industrial (it is service-based), and industrial unions have lost most of their power and influence as a result. Much as they might like to do so, unions cannot provide the agenda and organized power that they did 80 years ago.

A second key difference is the emergent split between the two key wings of the ruling elite. At the time of the last crisis, the big bank and big oil (and other industrial) corporations were working hand-in-glove with each other to secure as much international power (vis-à-vis Britain, Germany and the other Great Powers) as possible. Today, owing to changes in the economic base, industrial power has shifted to China, India, Brazil and other nations with low labor costs, leaving the U.S.-based oil monopolies as the only really significant industrially-oriented force in the country. Meanwhile, the same changes have untethered financial interests from any particular interest in the well-being of U.S. society (and Americans), except that they live here and want to maintain the high quality lifestyle and options that American elites enjoy.

Strategically, the oil barons are on the decline (though, relying on the oil-connected Bush/Cheney Administration, they asserted themselves and took control of the government in the aftermath of 9/11, dragging the nation into a catastrophic and hopeless war for control of Iraq’s oil), but the big bank elites, the rising clique, remain a long-term force to be reckoned. Unfortunately, their agenda (always the case but particularly evident, say, in the 1920s, 1980s and the last decade) is nothing more than aggrandizing profit through cycles of bubble-building speculation followed by debtor-squeezing hoarding and austerity. Unconnected to real people and real production, the big banks are unfit and unable to rule society on their own. Thus, as we have seen since September, 2008, under their domination (through Geithner and Obama in the US, Prime Minister Cameron in Britain and Chancellor Merkel in Germany), chaos is unleashed, and the downward spiral spurs grassroots fascist elements (as well as, in Egypt and Greece, for example, grassroots revolutionaries).

The problem for Americans is that, today, we have no progressive force capable of putting demands to the financial elite and the government for productive investment nor for containment of fascist elements. Thus, the situation is deteriorating.

The present political crisis over the debt ceiling is likely to be just one of a series of major, escalating crises leading up to the 2012 elections. Even then, it is hard to see how the crisis will be resolved, but those elections provide the first glimmer of opportunity for progressives to coalesce nationally and begin to project a program of real change to the nation. Bernie Sanders’ call for a challenge to Obama is a step in the right direction. While Obama, in an objective sense, is the leader of the united front against fascism (and, as such, should be supported against whatever candidate wins the Republican nomination), it is vital that progressives begin to establish a public, organized presence for the decisive battles that lie beyond 2012.

On the Brink Again…

By Steve Clark

You wouldn’t know it in America, but the global financial system is teetering on the brink of collapse, just as in September, 2008.

Then, it was the bankruptcy of a Wall Street giant, Lehman Brothers, that threatened to pull down the whole system. This time, it’s Greece.

In moral terms, of course, the two situations are incomparable. It’s only as matters of factual impact that the two compare.

Lehman Brothers was a big bank that had made billions repackaging – with insurance giant AGI – home mortgages as speculative investment “opportunities” for the pension fund and 401(k) managers of middle class savings plans. When the over-heated housing market collapsed, sucking all the big banks to the brink of disaster, Lehman happened to be the most vulnerable and took the hit just before the U.S. Treasury moved in to bail-out the rest.

Greece isn’t a lender; it’s a borrower. Like the homeowners who were enticed by banks into putting meager savings into down payments on mortgages they ultimately could not afford, the Greek government was enticed into borrowing heavily from big banks in Europe to finance government services and jobs for its citizens. That worked okay as long as the global (and Greek) economy was expanding, but when the recession hit, the government couldn’t keep up the payments.

Here in America, strapped homeowners were forced to hand over their homes, but the Greek government’s collateral isn’t so finite and physical. Rather, its collateral is only the ability to collect more taxes from its citizens (or, alternatively, to keep up the present tax rate while providing less service).

A series of austerity packages has further collapsed the Greek economy, and the Greek people are rebelling. Some of that is in the streets; more significant, they are withdrawing their savings from the banks. Meanwhile, the “socialist” government, hanging by a thread, alternately begs and berates its citizens, unwilling to break from its failed policy.

Yesterday, in an open letter to the Greek people, Britain’s Ann Pettifor urged what amounts to revolution in today’s context. The founder of Advocacy International and a leader of the Jubilee 2000, Pettifor called on the Greeks to abandon the Euro and restore the Drachma. Only in this way, she said, could the Greeks dump the harsh demands of the European banks and the European Central Bank.

A voice in the wilderness, perhaps, Pettifor at least offers real and consistent clarity about the world’s financial crisis. Don’t imagine that it’s over. Indeed, coming up on three years running, it is grinding harder and ever more harshly on the world’s people. No progress is evident because the world’s politicians, particularly those leading France, Germany, Britain and the U.S., are committed to saving the banks because they are “too big to fail.”

By directing their government to abandon the Euro, the Greek people can take charge of their own destiny, keeping their taxes in their own country for real investment in the local economy.

Greek Collapse Threatenes Global Catastrophe

By Steve Clark

Fear is again in the eyes of the world’s financial titans. Again, our banking system stands at the brink of collapse.

For the past decade or two, suggesting that Greeks (and Icelanders, Irish, Portuguese, Spaniards and, apparently, Italians as well) could attain the same high-consumption lifestyle common to France, Germany, Britain and the U.S. by having their government borrow heavily to expand government programs, the banks of these richer neighbors lent heavily by buying Greek treasury bills. With the banks’ credit rating organizations (e.g., Moody’s, Standard & Poor, etc.) providing low but adequate ratings on Greek instruments, the banks achieved exceptionally high rates of return (interest) on their speculations. All along, they knew that if the Greek government could not pay the interest, it would have to go to the Greek people for the money, through higher taxes or cuts in government spending.

So now, inevitably, the worst case scenario is playing out. The amount that Greece owes these speculators (banks) is far in excess of what it can reasonably pay, despite a series of increasingly draconian austerity measures imposed in recent years. Jittery, the banks considered easing the crisis (by extending the term of the bills or lowering their interest payments) but ultimately refused, instead saying to their central bank (the European Central Bank – the amalgamation of the quasi-governmental central banks of, primarily, France and Germany) that it would have to provide the indemnification necessary to make the “private investors” (again, the banks, themselves) whole.

Meanwhile, the limit of the Greek people was reached. This week, violent protests erupted, and a government default is likely.

Observers are comparing a Greek default to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which kicked off the 2008 crisis and almost toppled the entire global financial system.

Iceland, a small state, has already collapsed (but to its people’s credit, it refused to accept the staunch terms of the European banks and is rebuilding its economy on its own). Ireland accepted the terms, and the harsh, imposed austerity is killing its economy (but the banks were saved!). Greece is much larger, and the popular temperament, perhaps, more like Icelanders (despite their opposite climates!).

The whole of Euro zone finance is threatened, but today the New York Times suggests that British and American banks may be insulated enough to dodge the bullet. Yet, the article highlights just how intertwined they are with the European banks.

Of course, I don’t know if a Greek default will bring the whole system to the brink of a new collapse, but I’m certain that sooner rather than later, some default will do the deed. Neither speculation nor hoarding, the two wings of contemporary financial “investment,” is real investment in real productivity. Rather, they are the swinging pendulum between bubble-building and bubble-bust management. The financial titans do not do real investment, and they have squandered whatever claim they might make to define the terms of the next social contract.

I’m not cheering for collapse with its immense human suffering, but only a popular movement for real investment through civil society-led initiative at the global grassroots will deflect this careening big bank catastrophe. The situation is dire.