GlobalTalk

Getting to the Principal Contradiction in Ukraine

The situation in Ukraine is complex and has caused a rift within the American Left.

Both sides oppose both Russian violence and US (NATO, western) provocation, but one wing – blindered by its staunch opposition to US imperialism – justifies Russia’s violence by the West’s persistent NATO expansion and (euro and dollar) financial penetrations.

“At some point," they say, "the West knew (or should have known), Putin would draw the line. They baited him, and, now, they hope to vanquish him.”

“Baited, no doubt,” says the other wing, noting a common imperialist ploy. “But, at every juncture since the socialist camp disintegrated, Ukrainians freely and reasonably chose independence from the Russian Federation rather than reintegration. Morality’s not about picking US or Russian imperialism but, instead, about siding with Ukrainian self-determination and its liberation from Russia’s military yoke.

In On Contradiction, Mao showed how to dissect complex realities (like Ukraine) and, accordingly, how to uncover the principal contradiction that controls the overall outcome. The essay deserves a complete read, but this excerpt sets forth its rationale:

As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictoriness within a thing is the fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other things are secondary causes. Thus, materialist dialectics effectively combats the theory of external causes, or of an external motive force, advanced by metaphysical mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism.

Saying the Ukraine crisis was caused by the US (or Russia) ignores the fundamental reality that it arose from centuries of occupation (oppression) of the Ukrainian nation by (generally Russian but occasionally Austria-Hungary, German or Polish) imperialism. Ukrainians want to set their own destiny and are in the process of doing so.

That is the principal contradiction in Ukraine. Once we leftists fully embrace this cause, we’ll find ourselves on the “right side” of history, aligned with the suddenly-emergent, global consensus against violence in international conflict and ready to deploy it against the Saudi war in Yemen (and other regressive force applications backed by US imperialism).

Accordingly, we can join Ukrainians in genuine solidarity while we continue our own domestic (internal) struggle to gain state power and end US imperialism, forever, in practice.

Steve Clark

A Proposal to Democratize and Restructure Global Finance

The war in Ukraine has revealed a potential fault line in the US left. A significant segment is justifying Putin’s invasion as a fair reaction to aggressive, US financial and commercial advances into eastern Europe and Ukraine since the end of the Cold War.

But, in a surprise for Putin, using war to tackle international problems has suddenly become morally reprehensible, and he has put himself and Russia on the wrong side of history.

Before this war, one line of leftist thinking already heralded a financial alliance of US-dissident states -- China, Russia, Iran, others -- concentrating their commerce and boosting a worthy currency alternative (the renminbi, perhaps) that would undermine the dollar's present hegemony, thus strengthening the struggle to overcome US imperialism (a view expressed, for example, by Michael Hudson). While such monetary competition could prove useful along the way, the mere advent of competition for world reserve status does not, itself, offer hope of a fair, stable and enduring financial system for the whole world.

There is a better way to fight US imperialism, and Russia – along with the US left and China – should get on board:

1. Rewrite the Bretton Woods Accords to replace the dollar as de facto international reserve currency with (a) a new, IMF-designated, digital, de jure world reserve currency (WRC) that is supported by (b) a system-wide, WRC-denominated tax on the electronic funds transfers (EFTs) of the world's corporate commerce.
2. Establish a new, integrated system of global fiscal and investment management in which a democratic assembly of central bankers of the world's currency-sovereign states systemically discourses with the world's governments (via the UN?) and people (via social media and advisory forums, TBD) and, with this popular input and oversight, directs public credit to pursue vital, global, social and ecological goals.
3. Cancel foreign-denominated debt held by all Global South nations to clear their path to domestic currency sovereignty and establish a level playing field, going forward, with IMF-designated, WRC-denominated reparations for past imperialist exploitation and expropriation.
4. Institutionalize a global system of WRC-denominated, direct, global-to-local block grants to deploy and administer flexible, community-based, Global Job Guarantee programs, at sustainable local compensation, for anyone unable to find suitable, private sector employment.
5. Institutionalize a global system of WRC-denominated, progressively-scaled, per capita block grants to every nation to administer two global policy (civilizational) initiatives: a Global Green New Deal and a World Health, Education and Reconciliation Service.

A month ago, restructuring global finance was on no one’s agenda, but Putin’s war and the West’s truly unprecedented financial sanctions have brought Chinese mediation into play.

Apparently, the short-cut to the future we all need is a global declaration against war that is enabled by a new, just, financial system in which no nation dominates and every nation has fair and equal access to the investment credits necessary to tackle the climate crisis according to its own specific needs and opportunities.

Speaking for all nations dissatisfied with the US dollar regime, China can advance global financial reform as a concession worthy of Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine. American leftists – including progressive MMT advocates – should encourage China’s involvement.

Steve Clark

What is Socialism with American Characteristics?

[Some friends from the old CWP are currently engaged in an assessment of "our mission" as we continue our year-long collaboration, Voices for New Democracy. To that end, it may be useful to reconsider and update conceptions of "socialism with American characteristics."]

Every socialist state is different from all others. Taken at their best, their commonality is the self-declared intention and real-world effort to put their nation’s broad, strategic, public interest ahead of narrow, immediate, private and corporate interests.

The Paris Commune, Soviet Union, China, Cuba and Viet Nam – history’s most prominent socialist states – each has (or had) characteristics unique to its particular time and place. Inevitably, American socialism will also display a unique character, one consistent with our nation’s history and temperament as well as its 21st century, domestic and global imperatives.

Marx, Lenin and Mao – each a practical and successful revolutionary in his time and place -- never composed a vision of socialism in a modern, post-industrial nation, much less a passed-its-prime, global superpower like the US. With no vision at hand, today’s American Left is aging in place, and the struggle for a new social contract cannot defeat the right’s manipulation of traditional values to perpetuate capitalist systems of power and profit.

What is a reasonable vision of socialism in America? Here’s a framework to start discussion:

1. Socialism with American characteristics is a national political-economy in which the “commanding heights of finance” (the dollar and its key functionalities) are (a) in the self-aware, overtly-acknowledged, public control of our democratic state and, accordingly, are (b) systemically deployed – legally and institutionally – to maintain full employment while tackling the social, economic and ecological crises of Americans and the world’s people.
2. Socialism with American characteristics does not entail the violent overthrow of the state. And aside from its full assumption of the Constitution-designated “power of the purse” (Art. I, Sec. 8), it involves no broad nationalization (state seizure) of current or future, private or corporate capital, nor any actual means of production. Neither does it mean the elimination of markets or systems of global commerce and trade.
3. Socialism with American characteristics is today’s same, democratic, constitutional government -- augmented with constitutional amendments in key areas, such as election systems and voting rights -- but with one crucial difference: complete, public control of the US dollar via the Treasury and the Federal Reserve and the formal delineation of private banks and bank corporations as “US-regulated agents” for private sector investment.
   

   With the dollar’s financial power under public control, the American socialist state augments traditional government spending with new tracks of public purpose investment. On the one hand, it implements a Federal Job Guarantee (FJG), a Green New Deal (GND) and other national, industrial policies that tackle key problems while also fostering for-profit, private sector enterprise (to enable entrepreneurialism, general production and exchange, employment, and private savings). On the other hand, it invests heavily -- directly and via block grants to tribal, state and local governments -- in non-profit, caring and service enterprise that is vital to social cohesion and stability but not profitable enough to attract capitalist investment (for example, indigenous and slave reparations; emergency civilian service corps; healthcare, childcare, and education for all, preschool through college).

4. Socialism with American characteristics holds the nation to account for its history as the last imperial superpower by paying reparations to victim-nations while casting US votes at the IMF/BIS and the UN to end the US-directed sanctions regime and democratize the world’s reserve currency.
5. Socialism with American characteristics relies on the steady perfection of democratic government through the persistent engagement of Americans in elections, policy and legislation and with our Constitution and its amendment. Unlike most socialist states from earlier eras, American socialism does not rely upon the collective viewpoint of any particular social or political entity (such as a communist party), though such entities – indeed, all kinds of entities -- may exist and contribute to the on-going reform and reconstruction of American politics and culture.

These five points comprise a working vision of socialism with American characteristics. When American socialism finally comes to life, contradictions between it and other socialist systems will be struggled out and resolved in the course of collaborative efforts to save the whole world.

Steve Clark

Review: Revolutions, a Podcast for Revolutionary Times

At heart, every revolution is the strain and chaos of conflicting social forces confronting and resolving an uncontrolled rush of life-and-death political crises. Darkest just before their new dawn, revolutions generally catch by surprise and overwhelm their antagonists.

No one should expect a revolution to run smoothly, but – if they succeed and enter history – revolutions, one way or another, discover their own, unique paths to liberation.

American podcaster and historian Mike Duncan has made it his business to examine and report on many of the world’s greatest and most important revolutions. Starting with Rome’s revolution – which he chose to research when, a decade ago, he discovered that no one had ever done a podcast on the topic. Duncan was captured by his listeners’ enthusiasm and went on to cover nine more of these momentous human events. In the process, Revolutions won awards, and Duncan has become perhaps the most prominent history podcaster in history. Caught up in his energy and style, I recently binged the Russian Revolution, just for the fun of it…and was not disappointed!

Readers may know that I referred to Lenin as “my political avatar and alter ego” in a book I published in 2015, titled: What Is To Be Done? Class Struggle in the 21st Century. Two things I especially like about Lenin: one, he relied on theory as a guide to action, yet was seldom dogmatic and intentionally creative in its application; and two, he got the job done! He led the Bolsheviks who led the Soviets who led the working class that led the national revolt against Russian absolutism that culminated in socialist revolution in 1917. Lenin’s truth was proven in practice.

So, yes, in general, I am a Lenin fan -- and that’s what drew me to Duncan’s story – but, it turns out, his history of the Russian Revolution is hardly focused on Lenin. Rather, Duncan provides a sweeping survey of all the class forces, would-be leaders (Tsar Alexander, Plekhanov, Stolypin, Kerensky, Martov, Trotsky, Krupskaya, Stalin, Rasputin, etc.) and political organizations (Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Cadets, Social Revolutionaries, the Bund, etc.) that played any serious role in the revolution, beginning with Catherine the Great’s last year on the throne (1796)…and he does it with the confident, immaculate voice of an accomplished story-teller.

If Duncan didn’t do such a good job pulling together and telling the whole story, I’d never recommend Revolutions because it’s just too long. I didn’t realize when I started that the Russian Revolution was going to run 80+ episodes, each about 30 minutes. That’s 40+ hours! I’d have never bitten off so big a chunk. But, when Tom Clark told me about it, he failed to mention its full length, and, after I listened to the first episode, I was hooked. That was the episode: 10.1 The International Working Men’s Association, I dare you to try!

Despite the longer-than-expected commitment in which I was thus entrapped, I cannot complain because, in addition to the refresher course in Russian history (which I’d studied but largely forgotten), the podcast was a lucid rendition of the interplay of class and social conflict that might unfold in any revolutionary situation (of which Russia had several during the 125 years covered in the podcast). Leaving aside any dry, academic expositions of such interplay, Duncan simply tells the story, enabling a listener’s search for relevance that might be applicable in other revolutionary settings (such as the US).

Of course, readers who are (or were once) Marxist-Leninists know the socialist revolution in Russia was the beacon for revolutionaries in all countries for pretty much all of the 20th century. But it’s been a long, long time since that beacon shined brightly. Duncan’s history respects the revolutionaries who prevailed – Lenin and the Bolsheviks – but his very wide scope also illuminates the power of the bigger, extremely complex, political milieu that that every revolution must navigate in order to succeed.

Today’s American society is far different but no less complex than Russia back in the day. It is rife with classes and class struggle and with a host of fascist, centrist and (less so, unfortunately) leftist organizations, each with leaders on a tumultuous but uncertain playing field, trying to figure out what to do. I find that very much today’s circumstance as our nation steers itself through a profound, enduring, political (I would say revolutionary) crisis that has no relief in sight.

Like the socialists in Petrograd after the February (1917) revolution, we socialists in the US today find ourselves sharing dual power with corporate-capitalist politicians who still dominate government, yet have little idea and no capacity to tackle the rapidly worsening crisis at hand. Our options and today’s remedies are far different than Russia’s, but the dynamics of flailing bourgeois enemies trying to bully the scene for their own sake is so similar that you can’t miss the parallels.

Revolutions won’t tell you what to do, but it will make you feel better and more confident that we can (and will) figure it out. Just like the revolutionaries before us.

Steve Clark

Sorting Lines in Climate-Change Struggles:Mass Migration, Land Back and a Sustainable Earth

At long last, our world seems to have accepted the reality of climate change and the devastation it portends. But, we still have a long way to go in assessing -- much less implementing -- an effective, global response.

Inevitably, the struggle for programmatic clarity unfolds against the backdrop of long-entrenched corporate domination of the key entities – the IMF and most of today’s nation-states -- that might do something about it. These cautious and self-interested perspectives controlled the agenda at the recent COP26 climate conference in Glascow. Outside the conference, however, more thoughtful voices are beginning to be heard.

"US immigration policy is harsh and xenophobic, but it’s also rear-looking and stupid,” says (I paraphrase) Parag Khanna, author of Move: The Forces Uprooting Us.

Khanna was interviewed November 20 on the MMT-themed Macro ‘n Cheese podcast by regular host Steve Grumbine.

In world system geographer Khanna’s mind, climate change will impose adaptations on civilization that, unfortunately, the recent COP26 conference barely mentioned. Anticipating the conference’s stance, he says, it will focus on mitigations to “virtue signal” that “we can do this, world.”

That’s not good enough, says Khanna. Instead, he is laser-focused on one imposing, yet well-ignored adaptation: mass migration. Already unfolding and irreversible -- just like climate change, itself – mass migration can be ignored only at civilization’s peril.

This is because, as climate change deepens and imposes its will, a great swath of the places where people live today will become increasingly uninhabitable. This devastation of ancient, previously-productive habitats distresses the Global South and indigenous people far more than the “modern” societies of the Global North. According to Khanna, mitigation efforts must, of course, be deployed, but they won't be adequate to prevent the impending catastrophe in the South. Independent of our will and efforts, our warming earth is going to make life for humans in equatorial regions difficult and sparse. Adapting to that reality, mass migration from South to North is vital, but unfortunately, excruciatingly difficult.

While tragic in so many ways, this inevitable migration, Khanna avers, is also a “silver bullet.” For people of the Global South, it provides a place to go to sustain families and build new lives. And for nations in the North that are already at or near zero population growth, migration provides the younger workforce that these aging societies can’t do without.

In Khanna’s prophecy, mass migration serves both North and South and helps get humanity to the other side of its ecological nightmare. In stark contrast, the indigenous radicals behind The Red Deal say mass migration (social displacement) is just the latest and greatest catastrophe imposed on Nature and native people by capitalism and settler colonialism. “Land Back!” is their demand. They insist on full, indigenous control of natural resource management everywhere because, without such strategic (anti-capitalist, anti-colonial) oversight and guidance, human life – indeed, all life – is in jeopardy.

To indigenous people, the earth – just like the water, animals, plants and other people – is a “relative” and, like all relatives, must be treated with care, justice and opportunity. Relative-care is the only way to save our planet from the destruction of capitalist exploitation. Thus, indigenous people look forward to managing the earth’s fragile, climate-ravaged, equatorial regions, and they will endure whatever hardship is necessary to restore their wounded relative -- the earth. But for this, indigenous people expect nothing less than the decisive voice in civilization’s long-range, natural resource management agenda (aka, the Green New Deal) as well as all the resources necessary to mitigate and abate the crisis wherever it exists or emerges. In the meantime, indigenous people expect the right to emigrate and to be welcomed wherever they choose (or are forced) to go.

Today’s ill-conceived, US immigration policy erects walls against the very workforce the nation needs for its own survival. Biden-Harris take note. A good policy would encourage immigration and a path to citizenship. Khanna cites Canada and Kazakhstan as nations that have sound immigration and citizenship programs and stand to prosper as people and production move north through the 21st century. After traveling extensively in Russia (where global warming is creating vast regions of newly arable land), he also reports rising interest in the Russian hinterland for a more welcoming immigration policy. The US, meanwhile, stands to lose substantially if it does not ease its anti-immigrant policies and correct its white-supremacist fringe.

Khanna acknowledges but doesn’t much concern himself with the injustice that, “once again,” hits the Global South far worse than the North. In his brief allowance that mitigations (as well as adaptations) must be deployed, Khanna expresses solidarity with those seeking redress of imperialism’s unjust equatorial legacy, yet he stresses the inevitability and redeeming worth of mass migration and, accordingly, urges an “incremental evolution” in anti-imperialist demands. He does not so much as mention “indigenous rights” or “indigenous authority,” apparently presuming that existing means of natural resource management and allocation can be adequately reformed within the framework of evolving but on-going capitalism and nation-state authority. He also never mentions socialism or any transformational vision of mainstream production and exchange.

His omission of indigenous impacts and roles is hardly unexpected given the white, settler, colonial blind spots of Western imperialism and the academics within. It is a major, ideological shortcoming but should not disqualify Khanna’s factual point that -- depending on various geographic factors (resources, borders, infrastructure and people) -- climate change is already having uneven and divergent impacts that will make life easier and more sustainable in northern regions than in southern. Sound public policy will ground itself in this reality.

Khanna also anticipates sharpening competition between the US and China because both are competing for younger workers, yet both are rather xenophobic. He says that China, with a younger domestic workforce, was ascendant as the (post-Soviet) global economy took shape in recent decades – and was more nimble with state finances than the West. But, going forward (post pandemic), it will endure strong competition as all economies seek to add (restore) local production and commercial circulation against the pandemic-made-apparent danger of over-reliance on global supply chains. Diversification and localization are the now the rising trend. China’s share of global trade is bound to shrink. He notes that Cuba and Viet Nam (among others) evidence sound practice in endogenous self-sufficiency. In contrast, he lists Norway and other Scandinavian countries that, despite their welcoming social perspective, cast a heavy global footprint due to their national reliance on oil revenue.

The divergence in viewpoint between Kahanna and the Red Nation reveals the depth that the present climate change discourse must still fathom. It’s a deep and wide chasm, but with only a decade or less to figure it out, a much intensified debate and a re-tooled strategy is indispensable. Who is going to lead us to salvation...the corporate sector with its financial and technological "fixes" or indigenous people at the head of a popular, global movement? Time is short; we need to get this right, and we need to do it soon.

The podcast is titled: Mapping the Future of Humanity with Parag Khanna. It runs 1 hr 7 min.

The Red Deal, Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth (2020) is an ebook by the Red Nation, a revolutionary collective of native people.

Steve Clark

Marvin Harris' Legacy for Today's Class Struggle

In my opinion, Marvin Harris (1927-2001) -- who passed away 20 years ago this month -- is the most significant anthropologist that no one (outside the profession) knows. I count myself lucky to have discovered and connected personally with Harris in the last years of his life.

In Cannibals and Kings (1977) Harris explained why and how humans' modes of production sometimes transform, creating wholly new tableaus of class struggle in economic, political and cultural affairs. Unfortunately, his insight has been buried in history, leaving today's socialists and revolutionaries to operate as if contemporary class struggle is essentially the same as that encountered by Marx or Lenin more than 100 years ago. If he were alive today, Harris would set us straight.

By 1995 (when our paths crossed), Harris -- a prominent chair of Columbia University's anthropology school in the turbulent 60s -- was a semi-retired professor emeritus at the University of Florida. With the end of his career in sight, he was keenly engaged defending cultural materialism (the school of thought he'd demarcated in 1968) against the loose relativism of then-rising post-modernism. But, he also had written two 1980s books -- America Now (1981) and Why Nothing Works (1987) -- on the unraveling of economic and cultural norms during the Reagan era.

During the 80s, I'd been a member of a New Left socialist party (CWP/NDM) that had outlived the demise of the Boomer-powered antiwar and national liberation movements of the 60s. In two significant efforts authored by Jerry Tung -- The Socialist Road (1981) and Post-Industrial Society (1985) -- we, too, had assessed trends emerging in the 80s. Not long after, however, our organization disbanded, leaving its cadre to uncover the path to revolution, each on our own.

Career-wise, I became a high school social studies teacher and, in the early 90s, encountered Harris' prolific work. Impressed with his insight, I quickly devoured a half-dozen of his books. As brilliantly illuminating as these were, however, it seemed to me that some especially worthy insight was underemphasized. In 1995, I wrote him saying, "In my opinion, further elucidation and application of these points would be a significant contribution to current debates about the way forward for humanity."

As succinctly as I could, I summarized the crucial insight of Cannibals and Kings:

As their populations grow, human societies always intensify production to sustain their established standard of living. However, these intensifications deplete the natural resources that are key to the established mode of production. Eventually, a depletion crisis ensues which, in the right conditions, may force discovery and adoption of a new mode of production, one reliant on different key natural resources.

Thus, under pressure of population growth and resource depletion, as Neolithic societies killed off the big game, some adopted agriculture. At a later time in history, when all land in certain agricultural regions was employed to the max, some societies adopted mass commodity production (aka, industrialism). Now (1995), I suggested, as the world's fossil fuel is depleted and its fresh air polluted, society is inventing a new mode that I characterized as service-oriented, niche production. I added that the emergence of a new mode implied the concurrent emergence of new classes and class interests that, in time, would likely wage decisive cultural and political struggles with the present regime.

Explicitly, I asked if he shared my view that his theory cogently illuminated our mid-90s reality. Surprising me, Harris responded this way,

Cultural materialism is quite powerful in retrodiction, but its predictive utility may not be as good. The problem is that the hyperindustrial mode of production (see my American Now) does not appear to be linked to rapid population increase in the former third world. There really is no great population cooker set to explode in the northern tier.

But here, Harris -- an early-cohort Silent, born before the Great Depression and raised before WWII -- evidenced none of the innate, global perspective that became a hallmark of postwar Boomers (and the GenXers, Millennials and GenZs who've followed). Given my generation's outlook (forged by mass telecommunications -- TV -- in the postwar era), I found it impossible, in contrast to Harris, to assess population growth and resource depletion within purely national parameters. To me, the world had "gone global," and imperialism had tightly and irreversibly fused the fates of first and third world nations.

Harris displayed a perceptual grasp of the global phenomena…he wrote of the importance of "China's example" and speculated that "we may be at an open moment in global history when the new mode of production will not be squandered on reproduction." An "imponderable," he wrote, is "the future of the state in relation to global capitalism." He identified the problem of transnationals' interest in "infinite consumerism," asking "will they ever make the effort to bring down the fertility of their customers?"

But, he refrained from any outright concession, per his theory, that a new mode of production had emerged.

Thus demurring, he wrote, "It seems to me you are as close to answering these questions as I am. In the mean time, I'll send you by post some of my more recent ruminations." When the package arrived, I reviewed it with great anticipation, but all of the content concerned his polemics with post-modernism.

Although our dialogue soon dropped off, events of the next 25 years amply proved his general thesis.

It is perfectly clear, now, that exponential, worldwide, population growth since the advent of imperialism's global exploitation has vastly intensified mass commodity production and steadily depleted its most crucial natural resource, fossil fuel, while also polluting humanity's vital, clean air and water. With industrialism thus strategically doomed, humanity has discovered and put in place its next mode of production, the service economy.

Harris summarized the theory, and -- despite his personal uncertainty 25 years ago -- history proved his thesis.

Now, if we Marxists accordingly update our class analysis, we can spur the struggle of our world's service class (aka, care workers, professionals, knowledge workers, post-industrial labor) and help lead the socialist revolution that is actually necessary and possible (and happening) at this stage in history.

To that end, I honor Marvin Harris on this anniversary of his death.

For any readers with interest in today's class structures and the emergence of servers as a "class for itself," this GlobalTalk essay -- grounded in Harris -- is a good place to start: Ecology and Class Struggle.

Steve Clark

At Last. Progressive Power Asserts Itself

Perhaps, I should quit being surprised by Biden's acumen. He has a next-to-nothing Democratic majority in the Senate, and critical pieces of that majority are reluctant allies. Yet, he's playing it like a violin.

Or, to mix metaphors, he's playing from a deck stacked by broad, energized, progressive-driven, public opinion.

Either way and both ways, the American people seem to have found a leader who will pursue our demands.

The bi-partisan deal that Biden announced yesterday with 11 Republican Senators (enough to overcome the threat of a filibuster) has two key pieces:

First is $570 billion in new infrastructure spending (roads, bridges, water system, electric grid, broadband, etc.) with no "pay-for" restrictions. This is part of a $1.2 trillion, eight-year infrastructure investment plan. Because 11 Republicans support it, the infrastructure plan will get and win an eventual floor vote in the Senate.

Second is $2-6 trillion in additional federal allocations for childcare, education, healthcare and the green new deal (details to be decided), none of which are supported by any Republican Senators (though a few may eventually go along). Because of the filibuster rule, this family care package cannot get a floor vote in the Senate, but the same 11 Republicans (above) stood quietly, then spoke heartily of bi-partisanship (see, some of us Republicans can get things done), after Biden explained that these family care matters may be included in September's "reconciliation bill" when the official FY 2022 Budget is approved by a simple majority vote of the Senate (thus, avoiding a filibuster).

With of summer of negotiations ahead over the actual content of these bills, plenty of time remains for political defections. It's been less than 24 hours, and, already, some of the 11, feeling rolled by the direct linkage of the two bills, are threatening to pull out. But the threat of House progressives (supporting progressive allies in the Senate) to refuse the stand-alone infrastructure bill and, instead, put them both in reconciliation and pass it without any Republican support (and leaving the 11 hanging) may have set the deal in stone.

The decision (when final) of the 11 Republicans to go along with Biden's deal is a concession to the political reality that the Trump era is over, and the nation will continue its political life in traditional democratic, two-party fashion, finally rebuking Reagan's long-ago, fool-hearty assertion that government IS the problem. Going forward, they agree that government is part of the solution…and, at least as far as physical infrastructure goes, they're putting their toes back in the water.

After the deal's announcement, Bernie Sanders, chair of the Senate Budget Committee (that will draft and approve the specifics of the Senate's reconciliation bill), expressed the gleeful opinion that the Senate would soon pass the "most important piece of legislation for working people in America since the 1930s."

This deal ensures that money will flow and the economy will pick-up all next year when the midterm elections roll. This should produce a landslide for Democrats and a big haul for progressives.

But this deal is not enough, and many progressives in and out of Congress are saying as much. It is a "down payment" on the trillions that must still be spent…and, after 2022, heading into 2024, progressives will be advancing and passing additional legislation in a host of areas. Indeed, 2022 through 2028 is likely to be the most creative, active period of progressive legislative action in the history of the nation.

This week's deal sets a basic framework for the coming social contract, but key features are still big blanks: reparations for slavery and indigenous dispossession; financial democracy and public investment; and international financial justice/opportunity for the Global South.

We've entered the last, fateful phase of this Fourth Turning. Now, codifying and institutionalizing programs to rectify these remaining injustices -- while moving ahead with public investments in infrastructure, education, healthcare, climate justice and a federal job guarantee -- is this revolution's practical next steps.

For this, progressives have three jobs: (a) designing constructive problem-solving programs to achieve social justice and avert climate change; (b) educating and mobilizing Americans to pursue the progressive agenda; and (c) electing enlightened progressives to public office to enact our agenda.

Steve Clark

Ecology and Class Struggle II

The case has been made -- Ecology and Class Struggle I -- that the service class in the US and elsewhere is currently engaged in a revolutionary struggle to delineate and institutionalize a vital, new social contract to "govern" the age of climate-change mitigation that now lies before us.

Further, it is stated that in the US (obviously, a key player in global affairs), the service class displays such powerful savvy and networking capacity that -- through the course of the revolutionary uprising in 2020 (upon George Floyd's murder) and the elections that followed -- it attained dual power with corporate neoliberalism.

Additionally, it is argued that the American State now endeavors to crush white supremacy, a strategic correction that will run its full course and eventually impart reparative justice in the nation.

Finally, the US will also tackle climate change while boosting unions, domestic infrastructure and American jobs.

Dual Power

While the Biden Administration's Build Back Better (BBB) plan is strong in many regards, it nevertheless lacks the clarity of true, service class science and vision. Accordingly, Biden stumbled out of the gate in some areas (on immigration limits and suspending Big Pharma's intellectual property rights on vaccines) but, under pressure of progressive forces, corrected himself. This reflects the dual power reality at the base of his administration.

Dual power -- a situation in which two classes with clashing strategic interests share real political power -- is inherently temporary, and, often, it is unstable. But in our present case, the dual power of the Biden Administration is the first sign of restored stability after the years-long, mounting crisis that led to 2020's revolutionary tipping point. Though inevitably transitory, today's emergent dual power is good enough (and about all that could be expected) for this moment, good enough to get the nation started in a new direction. And because infusive BBB spending is going to spur the economy, dual power is likely to spawn and entrench key elements of the coming social contract. More immediately and crucially, it is fueling the hunger of today's living generations to break with the corporate culture and the neoliberal politics that has brought civilization to the brink of total collapse.

Revolt Upends Corporate Cultural Hegemony

Biden, remarkably (IMO), is proving himself a capable spokesperson for the multigenerational "cultural revolution" now unfolding in American public affairs. In all modern, industrial nations, paradigm shifts of this order occur every 80 years or so as the last generational adherents of an old, fraying social contract die off (Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning (1997))…just as the mounting dissonance between the old order and emergent necessities forces a society-wide re-examination of social values and goals. In such times, nations re-galvanize and elevate a "Gray Champion" to embrace, chart and institutionalize the kind of social contract necessary to liberate society and allow its renewed advance.

Clearly, Biden and his people realize that he is positioned to be the Gray Champion for this era's historic turn. He -- like FDR, Lincoln and Washington before -- is going to do whatever he -- and, by extension, the popular movement that put him in office -- thinks must be done to marshal forces and defeat our national calamity.

Class Struggle Inside

Yet, within the generation tide for which Biden now so ably speaks rest two, distinct sets of class interest. Within his Administration, the service class -- a collective body of working people with real human needs -- presses demands to sustain life in a teetering, endangered, post-industrial world while, at the same time, impersonal, corporate power -- by default as well as manipulation -- pursues, as always, its innate, drive for profit, whatever the social and ecological cost for the world's people and other living things.

Eventually, this conflict -- this dual power -- must be resolved. No society remains on the "pins and needles" of revolutionary transformation forever.

Social turnings of today's scale are years in roiling fomentation, but, eventually, they bubble over, as in 2020, in stupendous culmination. Then, they spill out and flow, ever so slowly but rightly, into a final period of legal codification and institutional restructuring. In another decade, all is resolved.

American experience (Strauss and Howe, Generations: the History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 (1991)) indicates that the transformational spirit that now grips our culture will abate soon after the 2028 election, and we will generally make do (in the mitigation era beyond) with whatever social contract we construct between now and then.

Global Dimension

Nor is this social contract going to be, merely, an American one. Because the US is the world's remnant, imperial superpower and because of its prominence in core realms of civilization's contemporary political economy, the American resolution of this turning has out-sized implications for resolution of the worldwide socioecological crisis, a crisis that cannot be resolved in any single nation, nor one nation at a time.

Both the social justice and climate mitigation agenda are global endeavors that can succeed only if they are undertaken everywhere, in one collaborative endeavor, sooner rather than later.

Given this necessity -- and because wealth and access to investment credit go hand-in-hand, yet are highly concentrated in the global North (that is, in Europe, Japan and, especially, the US) -- the power of financial corporations has become the central issue in the future of our world's civilization.

Anti-Bank Populism

In all modern societies, distrust of banks is deep-rooted and long-held. Savers -- people and businesses -- have persistently looked to government to regulate banks and to protect deposits when banks fail. Banks, like most private business ventures, like to minimize public interference. Reacting to the last great wave of anti-bank populism (early in the 20th century), the banking "industry" (as it was known in the Industrial Age) managed and kept scrutiny to a minimum by creating central banks -- endorsed by governments but run by the industry -- that, in theory, placed their vast gold reserves at the government's disposal (eventually at Ft. Knox) in exchange for a perpetual, open-ended, interest-earning, private lending agency conducted in the government's currency and subject, if necessary, to government regulation (see Federal Reserve Act of 1913).

Thus, central banks, themselves, are structures of capitalist class rule that took shape in the turn-of-the-century merger of industrial and bank capital. Ideologically, central banks perpetuated the myth that the gold held by private banks was (is) the foundation upon and the only reason that such banks can lend. In fact, of course, it was the public's practical acceptance and the government's official endorsement (per the Constitution) that makes the system of US currency and credit viable.

The "regulate, if necessary" part of the Federal Reserve Act became crucially important in the Great Depression. Taking office in 1933, after almost four years of deepening economic collapse under the previous administration, FDR believed the government had to spend a lot of money to grease a revival of the nation's stalled economy. Tapping British economist John Maynard Keynes for advice, he played a trump card by calling a bank holiday and, then, reopening with the announcement that the US dollar and its creation/investment would no longer be constrained by the gold reserves of the banking industry. Instead, the government, henceforth, would spend as many US-backed, paper dollars into the domestic market as it wishes, but none of them, in a complete break from past policy, could be converted into gold. A few years later, in 1939, the wisdom of FDR's decision was proven ten-fold by the sudden need to fund a huge surge in domestic production to fight World War II.

Bretton Woods Steps Back

As that war came to its end in 1945 and believing, no doubt, that it faced an existential struggle with communism, Western capitalism strangled any possibility of international, anti-bank populism at Bretton Woods when today's international financial machinery (the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and Bank of International Settlements (BIS)) was set up. Instead of letting go, entirely, of the pre-war tradition of requiring gold in international payments, the US saw the possibility of using the leverage of its massive gold reserves to force its post-war, anti-communist allies into subordinate financial status.

Dominating the proceedings, the American delegation decreed that while the US dollar, in theory and alone, would be convertible at a fixed rate to gold, henceforth, all Western trade would be settled only in paper US dollars. As time passed, however, and as Europe's and Japan's economies strengthened through the Sixties (when the US mired itself in the wasteful Viet Nam war), the requirement that these nations dump their strengthening currencies for weakening dollars (to make international payments) produced a schism between the US and its allies. Threatening to demand actual gold for their dollars, Japan and Europe forced then-President Nixon, finally and formally, to renounce the gold standard in its entirety in 1971. Today, gold means nothing in currency, credit or international exchange. Nothing.

Expropriation of Capital

The decision to take the world off the gold standard was, in fact, an act of expropriation of finance capital by the State. Capital went along with -- even encouraged -- the shift because there was no other way, and, of course, the US government was already (seemingly permanently) under the effective control of capitalist interests. Even among the era's financial barons, the traditional, seamless relationship between the state-created but privately-operated Federal Reserve and the public US Treasury -- both generally led by Presidential appointees who had trained on Wall Street -- disguised the expropriation as a mere tweak in "business as usual." Thus, while settling the international exchange problem (with a fully-fiat, global currency market), the official end of finance capital's formal claim on the dollar left the State in full, practical control of the dollar, thereby made a public asset whether understood and acknowledged or not. Despite this underlying expropriation, finance capital continued its age-old practice of making profit by extending credit in the public's name and with the State's blessing.

Unleashed Inflation Spurs Reagan Revolution

Nixon's decision to take the world off the gold standard occurred at a time when the dollar was stretched thin by a fully employed economy fighting a war in Viet Nam while advancing the social programs of LBJ's Great Society at home. With aggregate demand exceeding available labor resources, inflation let loose. By the end of the 70s, it was a serious problem, a major factor in the "Reagan Revolution's" 1980 election win.

When mainstream and liberal economists of the 70s could not master inflation, they opened the door for a revival of austerity politics and economics, soon to be known as "supply side" and "trickle down." As Reagan put it, "Government is the problem." He slashed government spending on social programs and broke the union movement's power to press wage and benefit demands in the private economy. Inflation rapidly fell into line, but tightening production turned next into recession. To re-boot the economy (ahead of his first mid-term election), Reagan pumped vast sums into an arms race with the Soviet Union and a spat of local wars in the Caribbean and Central America. To suppress resistance in black and brown communities, he launched the war on drugs and built prisons for mass incarceration.

Market Forces Ascendant

Throughout his two terms, Reagan avoided financial system tinkering, preferring to let it run its course with little public oversight. Meanwhile, public sector retirement funds grew into massive market players while most traditional (union-affiliated, mostly) pension funds weakened and were jettisoned for individual retirement accounts, pulling a growing number of Americans into reliance on market investments yet with more limited market power than ever. Through the 80s, corporate stocks and bonds absorbed several severe shocks as millions of investors, large and small, adjusted to mounting competition and uncertainty in domestic as well as international markets.

The advent and steadily widening influence of financial markets established both the terrain and a vital cutting edge for the inevitable re-examination of economic theory and financial practice that the postwar age of service-based production required. Freed of gold and empowered to manage the economy, one particular strata of service providers -- financial forecasters, economists, portfolio managers, bank analysts, etc. -- suddenly had a big job to do.

Those in the establishment -- at the big banks, global investment funds (Vanguard, etc.) and the Federal Reserve -- adapted slowest, perhaps, because their existing positions of power and streams of flowing revenues dispelled any ramifications of their ignorance.

Service Class Political Economy Crystalizes

Those who reacted most nimbly fell into two groups, both rooted in the cultural criticism of "the Sixties" that was led by the Boom generation. On the one hand, young, Boomer economists and MBAs who'd gone into finance after college and were responsible, now, for managing other people's money (in corporate positions or, increasingly common, in their own ventures) needed to know, for real, how money works, or their service would fail. On the other hand, young radicals who were turning to academic careers in economics and finance (after the movements of the 60s died down) also wanted to know how the system works so they could properly educate the next generation of problem-solving activists.

Ultimately, Warren Mosler, a self-made American wealth manager, and Bill Mitchell, an Australian professor of economics, uncovered and explained the new truth that, indeed, money -- with the end of the gold standard -- had fully transformed into a public asset. As they explained, fiat currency, created solely by the government, enables a nation's economy by the government's mere act of requiring individuals and other entities to pay taxes in its currency. The tax requirement ensures that people will seek currency-paying jobs, thus allowing the government to provision itself (with willing workers) and forging a means (markets) by which, throughout a nation, labor can be exchanged for the goods and services needed for life.

The founders of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), as it's now known, observed the key fact that, in systems of fiat currency, the government creates money and spends it into the economy before anyone in the economy can pay taxes or lend to others.

For this reason, MMT asserts, the government never runs out of money, and it doesn't actually need to tax or borrow. It can pump as much money into the economy as it wishes, subject only to how much labor is available. Inflation will occur only when all labor is fully employed. Once there's full employment, more government spending will spark competition for limited labor and drive up its price, though without spurring any increase in overall production.

That's what causes inflation, but generally, in normal times, with population persistently tending to expand, employment is less than full. Yet, it is an unfortunate, continuing belief (and practice) of mainstream economists (and their financial boosters) that balanced Federal budgets or, even, surplus budgets, are useful to ensure the unemployment necessary to avoid any risk of inflation…and, following this advice, American administrations and the Fed long ago decided it is best simply to keep a permanent strata of Americans unemployed. The long failure of neoliberal politicians from Bill Clinton to George Bush to Barak Obama to address this basic, anti-worker bias -- even as they pursued policies that moved a huge wave of jobs out of the country -- fueled public resentment and led to Trump's 2016 election.

COVID Outflanks Neoliberal Caution

Despite such retrograde "conventional thinking," the financial and economic pressures of the COVID pandemic forced all governments, including the US, into deficit spending at levels not seen since WWII. Within the Biden Administration, some officials wrung their hands, fearing inflation and standing by a hugely cautious approach. They presumed -- as has been standard practice since the Republic's founding -- that the government's deficit would be "funded" by selling bonds to return dollars held in the private sector to the US Treasury. As these new government bond obligations will someday have to be settled, the banks (and their investing partners) want to be sure that future dollars are worth as much as the ones they're using today to buy the bonds. Fearing inflation more than anything, these traders discourage further government spending that might lead toward real full-employment and, thus, the danger of inflation beyond.

"Neoliberalism" is the name for the political thinking that, today, promotes the fiction that the US actually has to borrow from the banks to fund its operations and, therefore, must maintain unemployment to protect bank lenders of these funds against inflation.

In contrast to the neoliberal tip-toers, most Biden Administration financial advisors are pushing him to take the risk. Inflation, today, is virtually non-existent, and unemployment has gone off the chart. If ever there was a time to engage the risk of overheating the economy, this is it. Pressure is rising from every corner of Biden's agenda as issue advocates (from the service class) demand as much government spending as necessary to put Americans to work on all aspects of today's mushrooming social and ecological crisis.

Paradigm Shift in Macroeconomics

MMT is a paradigm shift, not only in macroeconomic and financial thinking, but also in politics and culture. By acknowledging and specifying the State's purpose, power and role in creating and maintaining a functioning, fair economy, MMT demands a transparent and democratic administration of the public's currency in service to the public's interest.

Currently, in the US and worldwide, governments do not overtly recognize, nor accept MMT's inherently service-class demand for a national, publicly-debated and democratically-adopted social investment program that ensures and advances full employment, social justice and ecological salvation.

Yet, while avoiding or rejecting MMT, today's governments -- including, still, the Biden Administration -- tolerate continuing, unsupervised, private bank credit extension, irrespective of national and global objectives. The President and the Treasury need to crimp the Fed's self-aggrandizing "independence" to bring strategic, socioecological realities into full consideration in matters of federal credit and the nation's money supply.

This means finally and publicly acknowledging the empowering insight of MMT and the real, practical, revolutionary, financial remedy that public, fiat currency provides for the difficult mitigation era ahead. Dual power will come to its end when the service class finally dispels neoliberalism's false claims and enshrines a new epoch dedicated to effective social investment of the public's currency for the public's sake.

When two major American parties compete for federal office on the basis of their plans for social investment, progressives may proudly declare the advent of "socialism with Service Age characteristics." If generational cycles are an accurate guide, we'll be there within a decade and that includes restructuring global political economy along the way.

Subjective Factor Leaping

The objective conditions of and for a socialist world already exist, most crucially in the form of State-ownership and direction of each nation's sovereign money supply, including the capacity to create and spend credit as willfully as the government wishes, subject only to inflation risks once full, global employment is achieved.

But, the subjective factor -- general human consciousness -- still lags because finance capital (via the governments and central banks under its sway) effectively misrepresents financial realities to protect and extend its own profit-oriented prerogatives.

With MMT's insight, the end of the road for social and political domination by the financial elite is now in view. Today, while advancing the crucial cause of social justice and ecological salvation, the service class also is refuting and attacking neoliberalism's big lie and its traditional financial power.

The service class has achieved dual power. Now, it's time to finish the job, and put Capital in its proper, subordinate place relative to Labor and all working people.

Steve Clark

Ecology and Class Struggle I

[This is Part I of a two-part post. Here's the link to part II.]

With Biden's election, science is back. Climate change is now an acknowledged "thing" that can't be ignored or avoided.

Now, America -- and the world -- is going to do something about it…and given the scale of the problem, the required remedy is a comprehensive social and ecological course correction.

Whatever the remedy's actual features, its structure and character must comport with civilization's rising and future needs. Yet, in real time, the industrial age is collapsing in crisis, opening the way to a post-industrial, socialist future of a sort barely imagined by Marx or Lenin.

What Marx and Lenin couldn't know, in their time, was the budding relationship between ecology and class struggle, now the central dynamic in civilization's political economy. The post-industrial era is distinguished by new ecological and class realities and a transformed class struggle. Together, these new forces are shaping a new social contract for the climate-crisis mitigation era now at-hand.

Industrial Capitalism Propels Demographic Crisis

Marx, the original social scientist, assessed conditions in 19th century Europe when industrialism had gained full force, and bourgeois nationalism was in the air. After his time (post-1880), the earth's human population grew exponentially as the modern, imperialist era unfolded. Now, 140 years later, human civilization is a global phenomenon of eight billion vastly integrated humans that crowds the rest of Nature and threatens our planet's ecological future.

Late in the 19th century, when factory and bank capital were merging and consolidating their control of modern nation-states, financial magnates roused national chauvinism and marshaled armed forces to seize, monopolize and guard foreign markets from rival industrialists in other states. This impulse toward imperialism was inherent in mass commodity production (aka, industrialism) under capitalist relations and exchange, to wit: Industrialists secure profit and accrue wealth by skimming surplus value from the labor product of their employees, yet are forced, by competition, to constantly reinvest in more efficient machinery to lower costs and remain competitive. Thus, over time, the rate of profit falls for all the nation's manufacturers. This competitive squeeze compels persistent efforts to expand sales by (1) enabling births (growing the domestic market as, otherwise, population tends to shrink as general prosperity expands); and (2) seizing (and growing) foreign markets. Industrialism breeds both imperialism and over-population.

Thus, humanity endured the ravages of the 20th century: great cycles of inter-imperialist rivalry, colonialism, national oppression, and war -- hot and cold, regional and global. Yet, through it all, our human numbers and aggregate consumption grew by leaps and bounds. Knowable but less obvious, fossil fuel depletion and air pollution also grew exponentially.

Population Pressure

While it was certainly in the interest of industrial capitalism to derail efforts to restrain global pregnancies and births, controlling population growth would have been (and is) difficult, in any circumstance, because the human mode of reproduction fosters persistent births, via the irresistible allure and satisfying pleasure of sex. Until the advent of safe birth control and the right of abortion near the end of the imperialist age -- services that are still not available to most women and communities worldwide -- the only way to assuredly control population growth was female infanticide. That being unpopular, population growth has been a reality of immense consequence whenever and wherever humans have lived.

The pressure of population growth is present in every society and, independent of human will, spurs economic development in each. In that regard, demographic growth is the engine of human ingenuity and creativity. Because populations expand, communities constantly intensify production to avoid drops in their accustomed standards of living. These efforts prove constructive, perfecting the existing means of production, but they also deplete the natural resources that are key to its success. If these key resources become so depleted or degraded that they can no longer support the existing (always expanding) population, a social and political collapse -- a dark age -- ensues (Sing Chew, The Recurring Dark Ages (2007)). City-states, nation-states and regional empires crumble; population drops sharply and disperses; and, ever so slowly, Nature begins the centuries-long rejuvenation of its depleted assets.

Mass Commodity Production Transforms Classes

For thousands of years, when civilizations "came back" from various regional dark ages, they re-established agricultural production with large-scale hydraulic infrastructure and, eventually, new empires, but in one circumstance -- northern Europe in the late 1400s -- unique environmental factors created a different outcome, a fundamental break with agriculturalism, a transformation of the mode of production, itself (Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings (1977)).

It is a bit wordy to explain this unique turn of events (an endnote summarizes Harris' explanation in as few words as possible); suffice to say, what previously had been merely the cloth-making handicrafts of peasant families -- sideline endeavors relative to the main work of farming and herding -- was transformed through millwork into a new, socialized mode of production, the property of the mill owner (a budding capitalist). With that, industrialism (mass commodity production) supplanted agriculture at the center of human production. Two new classes -- mill owners and millworkers -- emerged, and their struggle became the fulcrum of ongoing political and social development.

Industrialism Depletes Its Key Resource

While labor is the primary source of value in all human production, particular resources (beyond labor) were (are) key to various modes of production. For instance, the key resource in industrial development was the energy necessary to run ever-larger machinery (and transport goods to markets). Energy started as the waterpower of mills (and the sail power of ships), then turned to wood- and coal-fired steam and, eventually, to fossil fuels. As industrialism expanded and "took over" the world's economy, it steadily depleted the world's aggregate but finite supply of fossil fuel, raising its price while, also, dumping its waste into the air and water. Until it became broadly apparent that pollution was imperialism's most fundamental existential threat, its wars for oil were its most glaring, defining, devastating characteristic of the last century.

Unsustainable, Industrialism Yields to Service

Today, climate change is a thing, and, in our collective consciousness, civilization has come to a reckoning with it. But in the decades after WWII, such awareness did not yet exist.

Nevertheless, independent of conscious, intentional, human agency, the ravaged and rebuilding industrialists of Europe and Japan -- unable to compete in international mass markets dominated by the victorious American banks and oil corporations (leaving the socialist bloc out of the present discussion) -- were left to focus on niche and service-differentiated markets where their small size and nimbleness could facilitate effective production and exchange. Meanwhile, on the American side, the tasks of dominating a large, increasingly complex and diversified global market required retention of more skilled management and specialist personnel, along with investments in design and technology to enable and empower these servers. Relative to industrial (mass) production and exchange, service (niche) production and exchange did not depend on fossil fuel, either for manufacturing or for transport to markets. Rather, it depended on relatively cheap (and potentially renewable) electricity and involved information, not commodity exchange. In short, the adaptation and adoption of small-scale, niche, service-directed production was ecologically consistent with the constraint of rising population and depleting oil…and the Service Age was born.

Service Production

Thus, in the immediate wake of WWII, civilization's economic base transformed qualitatively, but it would take decades for humanity's political and cultural insight to catch up. Indeed, only now are we at the threshold of this transformation's final resolution.

By 1956, the majority of working people in the US were employed in the service sector, rather than the mining, industrial or agricultural sectors (since 1925, the industrial sector had superseded agriculture as the largest sector). Most Americans worked for large corporations (making appliances, automobiles, etc.) that, for the first time, were exploring the "sale of services" in addition to commodities (often through credit operations). But, many worked at partnerships and small businesses providing services to corporations or the government and filling gaps between them all. Over time, as the service economy blossomed, the balance of service purveyors shifted from existing corporations toward smaller, creative enterprises (the majority owned by women) and, eventually, to the sudden, 1990s entrepreneurial explosion of new corporate power: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook at the center of service age, information technology. Meanwhile, even as their power waned in the new economy, the big oil corporations (that had been the world's most powerful non-bank entities in the 1950s, 60s and 70s) continued their time-honored habit of mobilizing US military might in highly destructive efforts to impose world peace on their terms. Today, the long-range, strategic interests of industrial capital and service capital have diverged, and, with industrialism in strategic (ecological) decline, imperialism has a tenuous future.

Service Class

While the rise of service-based production has cleaved corporate capitalism and its managerial elite from their industrial roots, it also has restructured the working class. Of course, most Americans are not capitalists (who "earn" their living from the labor of others) but, instead, are workers, using their own talents and labor to sustain themselves. At one time, we hunted and gathered; later, we farmed and raised animals; still later, we made commodities in factories and bought them for use; at present and for the foreseeable future, we provide services to one another.

Because elites "owned" the key resources in agriculture (the aristocracy owned the land) and industry (the capitalists owned the energy fields and production machinery) and the workers owned none, the elite class was able to appropriate for itself all of the surplus (above the basic cost of labor) of whatever mode of production was in place.

But, in a service economy, the key resource is not owned or controlled by any elite class. Instead, the key resource in service production is contained in ("owned by") individual, service-providing workers, themselves. Today, the key resource in production is the combination of knowledge, skills, talent and connections that individual service providers bring to their place in the productive process. Service workers acquire this capability in the course of their lifelong learning and networking and, potentially (and increasingly), are valued accordingly in labor (including professional labor) markets. The most elite strata of service professionals are the CEOs, CFOs, corporate directors and other highly connected and talented (for what they do) managers who actually run corporations for corporate interest, including the exorbitant compensation packages by which their class traitorship is bought. Beyond the elite, every service enterprise must secure a workforce of worthy service providers. Their talents, networks and creativity are key to Service Age success. No entity, corporate or otherwise, can do without.

Other things also matter, but in the Service Age, for the first time in human history, workers, themselves, are the resource that is most vital to civilization's social production and survival.

Potentially, this shift in "ownership" of the key resource to individual workers is more broadly empowering than any shift, yet in history, in the balance of power between a society's elites and its labor force.

2020's Service Class Revolt

It is no accident that this underlying shift in class power is most evident in the attitude of society's Millennial and younger GenY generations. Nor is it any accident that these generations consider themselves "entitled" to more than their getting. Virtually no Millennial is an industrial worker; all are service sector, service class workers. Relative to the masses in history, they are highly educated and broadly acculturated. They are motivated to fight climate change because their future depends on it but, also, because they are trained service providers (problem-solvers, care-givers, value-adders and creators) and that's what they do (or, for the many unemployed, want to do). GenXers are also heavily weighted in the service sector, which includes gig and contract workers (aka, "precarians"). Indeed, in American society as a whole, only a small number of workers still manufacture commodities or produce fossil fuel, although there is a significant sector of "broken proletarians" and old Boomers who still dream of the good jobs "on the line" (like their dads') that they never got.

Last summer's nationwide occupations (street rebellions) against systemic, racist policing in the US were orchestrated on social media by Millennial and GenX activists who'd reach their collective limit. Today, occupations (usually of public squares) are the principle form of direct struggle (force application) between service workers and the government proxies of corporate elites. They are deployed in situations all over the world. They are organized via the professional, family and social networks of service-class people, operating through social media. In contrast, during the last cycle of social rebellion in the US (1930s) when occupations (of factories) became the main form of direct class struggle, the occupations were organized through industrial unions (in particular, the UAW).

In 2020, after George Floyd's murder, service and other workers, demanding intersectional justice, occupied America's public squares, forcing a reckoning with local police and the Trump Administration. This cultural rebellion aroused support in every corner of American society, and the US military sided with the protests and justice for Black lives (#BLM), setting the stage for the dual power (progressive-neoliberal) win in last year's elections. While these demonstrations -- that figuratively and actually defeated Trump's June coup and his Jan 6 insurrection -- were powerfully motivated by rebellion against racist, national oppression (and for intersectional justice), they were also driven by service class necessity. Servers exist to serve others, and a successful system of mutual service is inherently non-exploitative. Competition among servers is to provide better, more trustworthy service. Thus, servers applaud transparency and pursue democracy. They resist war and demand tolerance and mutual respect among peoples and nations. And today, they seek reparative justice and a new social contract with which to confront, in unity and collaboration, the rigors and challenge of the struggle to save civilization in the face of the climate change emergency.

It also is no accident that most of the popular, political gains of 2020 were achieved under the direct leadership of women. Relative to men, the service mode of production empowers women because their innate talent for empathy and communication -- genetically enhanced through millions of years of primate evolution in which males maintained isolated existences while females collaborated in raising their offspring -- is particularly useful and valuable (Helen Fisher, The First Sex, the Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World (1999)). Men are more than capable of effective social relations, but women's special intuition was lost to society when agriculture forced patriarchy on civilization some 10,000 years ago (Frederick Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1881)). Rightly now, as the surge behind #MeToo makes clear, women also feel "entitled" to more participation and power in society, and that feeling arises from the material realities and necessities of service age production...in which they should be our general leaders but, still, are not allowed.

Service Class Forging Next Social Contract

If humanity's ecological crisis sets the parameters in which the global service class must lead, the events of 2020 show that the American section (at least) of the class knows effective mitigation of climate change is impossible without a socially just, global, problem-solving (science-driven) collaboration. Since the summer's uprising and the conquest of dual power via the ballot box last fall -- and as generational, gender, national and racial forces shape and press transformational demands -- the service class, now in direct struggle with neoliberalism, is learning to be a class-for-itself, encouraging civilization, nation by nation, toward a new social contract between the service (working) class and corporate capitalism.

Objectively, a non-violent, service class revolution is in progress, demanding a new, clear, institutionalized social contract to match necessity in the very present, existential fight for social justice and ecological salvation. Subjectively, however, service class consciousness still has a ways to go. For now, it has dual power, but much of the government remains under control of vacillating (if not outright) neoliberal thinking. While the State actively suppresses rightwing, white supremacist forces, our task is to consolidate progressive influence in Congress and Cabinet departments on an agenda of social empowerment and socialist investment that permanently and institutionally restructures government in the broad, strategic, public interest. In defining and coalescing on such a program, socialists should think in terms of service class interest.

Today, the fulcrum of class struggle runs between service-providing labor and corporate finance capital. Socialists can help win this epic struggle -- to finally put the interest of the vast majority ahead of the elite few -- by joining the cause of the service class and forging it into a "class-for-itself," fighting for its own interest and, therefore, for a sustainable future for the whole of Nature and civilization.

Steve Clark

Endnote

Though the Roman Empire grew out of the Mediterranean region whose aridness required large-scale hydraulic infrastructure to sustain agricultural production adequate for its large population, as it extended to Europe's less arid, northern regions, it nevertheless brought its particular "system" of agricultural production along, building dams, aqueducts and public baths to sustain these regions. Along with good soil (then, still not depleted by millennia of large-scale agricultural production, as in the south), Rome's infrastructure investments allowed a significant leap in regional population. Later, however, when depleted forests forced the empire's collapse (around 350 AD), it was overrun and sacked by invading tribes from beyond its fringe. A near-thousand-year dark age set in, social organization disintegrated, production and population fell drastically, and infrastructure decayed beyond repair. Contact with the "old way" of life, except in the monasteries, was disassembled and lost.

Centuries later, after the dark age, when civilization again revived in northern Europe, population also began a slow but steady revival. This revival, of course, spurred intensification of farm production, which had sunk to most basic levels during the dark age. However, because it was no longer connected to the Mediterranean economy in any real way (other than historic), northern Europe expanded agriculture in its own, new and local (non-Roman) way. With plenty of rainfall, the region found no need to reconstruct large-scale hydraulic infrastructure; instead, the post-dark age economy relied on manor-scale agriculture under evolving feudal relations that tied the peasantry to the manor but obligated the manor's lord (part of the landed aristocracy) to use the land in a way that ensured the economic survival of the manor's peasantry. Meanwhile, the absence of any need to reconstruct hydraulic infrastructure also precluded any need to rebuild a Roman-scale state; instead, each manor's lord was its own "king of the realm." Subsequently, population growth relative to the small manors' production capacity quickly threatened another ecological collapse as the region came out of the dark age in the late 1200s. As the population crisis worsened, the struggling lords of lesser estates, desperately grappling with food shortages, found their own remedy. They turned away from farming and, instead, focused on the productive potential of their estates' mills, thus setting the stage for industrialism's unique transformation -- economically, socially and politically -- of northern Europe and, eventually, the whole world.

Reparations: Key Component in Social Justice

For decades, the late Representative John Conyers (D-MI) introduced House Resolution 40 to establish a commission to study the question of reparations -- aka, restorative justice -- for descendants of African slavery and whether such recompense would help address racial justice in the U.S.

The rest of Congress, for the most part, paid Conyers no mind.

But the world was paying attention, and in 2016, the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent determined that "compensation is necessary to combat the disadvantages caused by 245 years of legally allowing the sale of people based on the color of their skin" (PBS News Hour).

The Trump Administration ignored that UN assessment, but after 2020's summer of racial justice reckoning, Trump's ouster, and the Democrats' sweep of the fall elections, HR 40's focus is getting an update. No longer a question of "whether," the new focus is on what form should reparations take, who should be included, and who gets to approves the plan?

If you're tuning in to the relevance of reparations to a genuine "build back better" agenda and a new social contract in America, the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) provides the definitive learning resource:

Reparations Now TOOLKIT

The Toolkit is designed to facilitate teach-ins and group discussions and does so comprehensively, yet in a readily absorbable style. Key topics include:

• Why Reparations?
• Defining Reparations
• Reparations History
• Case Studies

Also included is a timeline, sources and learning activities.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also backs reparations. Its webpage, Reparations: HR 40 and the Path Forward, includes featured stories as well as a number of videos.

Reparations and Racial Justice (MMT Mondays, Real Progressives Podcast [19:14]) makes the case that reparations, a moral imperative, is entirely affordable and will set a stronger economic foundation for the whole country going forward.

Steve Clark