Albert responds to R. Burke's critique of Parecon (Participatory Economics)

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Mark Harris speculates that the recent Women's March on Washington, as well as its' sister marches in other cities, is the beginning of a successful movement against capitalism in the US.

The Socialist Imperative

In recent years Michael A Lebowitz, a writer associated with the Monthly Review current of socialist thought, has produced a number of books regarding practical matters involved with the building of socialism. In The Socialist Alternative he discussed the concept of the elementary triangle of socialism: social ownership of the means of production, production organized by workers councils, and production planned to meet communal needs. The Contradictions of Real Socialism; the Conductor and the Conducted examined the structure and functioning of the Soviet economic system, demonstrating how it was undermined by the contradiction between the socialist logic of planners and workers versus the logic of capital followed by managers of enterprises, motivated by maximizing their material rewards. In his most recent book The Socialist Imperative; from Gotha to Now Mr. Lebowitz has presented a collection of essays expanding upon the themes of his earlier works, including some rather interesting insights into the weakness of the Yugoslavian model as well as making links between his views on a socialist alternative and environmental concerns.

While these essays all touch on different issues, there is a recurrent theme running through them all. This is “a focus upon Marx’s key link of human development and practice, the importance of building the capacity and strength of the working class through spaces and practices like worker’s councils and communal councils, and what happens when you do not.” One particular insight of Marx that Mr. Lebowitz calls attention to is that capitalism produces a working class that assumes the need for a capitalist class. This is a lesson that needs to be kept in mind when contemplating contemporary political events, in which a growing discontent over the dominance of neoliberalism may take nationalistic and ugly forms.

Lebowitz begins with an essay, “The Capitalist Nightmare and the Socialist Dream.” Here he makes use of images derived from popular culture- vampires and zombies- with which to critique capitalism. Like the living dead of our television shows, capitalism feeds on living labor. Mr. Lebowitz calls attention to the way that capitalism’s hunger for profit thrives on the overcoming of barriers, obstacles to its growth that cause it to develop by overcoming those barriers. This he likens to the living dead. In the process two waste products are created: nature and society. Nonetheless we can invert the capitalist nightmare and have the socialist dream instead. This requires that capitalism must encounter its’ limit, its’ final end.

An important chapter of the book deals with the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx’s unpublished thoughts on the attempt to create what would become the German Social Democratic party in May 1875. Marx criticized the influence of Lassalle, one of the German socialist leaders, in the wording of the document. Lebowitz calls attention to the fact that older societies are built upon the basis which a previous one has left them, and that a process must consciously be engaged in leading towards the newer society being able to reproduce itself on its’ own basis. Like Alain Badiou, Lebowitz finds the forms of political organization resorted to in the Paris Commune, self governing communes, as the political institution necessary for the building of socialism, intimately connected with the planning of production for the satisfaction of communal needs.

Two chapters are focused on the shortcomings of previous attempts to build socialism.

Whereas the Soviet Union was beset by a contradiction between the logic of capital represented by managers and the socialist logic of planners, in Yugoslavia self-managing enterprises competed on the market without any attempt to plan for collective needs. As a result there was a tendency to treat the enterprise as ‘group property’, competing with other such units for the maximization of self-interest. While there were some attempts in the 70’s to encourage the development of planning from the bottom up, these were fiercely resisted by managers, and came to naught. While the Soviet Union neglected one side of the socialist triangle, workers self-management, Yugoslavia neglected another, production planned to meet communal needs.

Beyond his insights into the elementary triangle of socialism Lebowitz stresses the importance of self-development and transformation. He reminds us that, for Marx, the working class becomes revolutionary through its’ struggles with capitalism, that is through a process of self-transformation. The revolutionary potential of the working class lies in its’ position within the process of production, yet without the struggles to improve its’ lot it does not learn to develop those potentials, or gain the confidence that would allow it to overcome capitalism. Indeed his concept of ‘socialism for the 21^st century’ is of a society organized to encourage “the full development of the potential of all members of society.”

Also important is his views regarding communal councils as the basis of a new form of state. Mr. Lebowitz recognizes however that this is a process of development, not something that is accomplished in one stroke and is done. While the new state is coming into being, the old one will for some indefinite time continue to exist. He is therefore critical of those who attempt to build a new society by refusing to take power or to engage in the control of the state. In a transitional period in which the foundations of a new process of social self- reproduction are being laid while the remnants of an older system still persist, to avoid the taking of power in the ‘old state’ is to allow an important instrument of governance to remain in the hands of those who would suppress the emergence of a new society. “The socialist mode of regulation involves a combination of the nurturing of the new state and the withering away of the old.”

Overall The Socialist Imperative, from Gotha to Now is a timely set of essays that address rather practical matters about the construction of socialism. Michael A. Lebowitz displays a mastery of the details regarding previous attempts to create a socialist alternative and the lessons to be learned from this. His use of the concept of the ‘elementary triangle of socialism’ shows us what is necessary in order to avoid the mistakes of the past and be more successful in the future. The emphasis on the process of human development and the vital role that human self-activity plays in this provides insight into the question of ‘what is to be done’ to end the capitalist nightmare and fulfill the socialist dream. This book is yet another worthy effort from Mr. Lebowitz.

The Socialist Imperative; from Gotha to Now

By Michael A. Lebowitz

ISBN978-1-5836754-6-5

Monthly Review Press, New York, 2015

224 pages, Paperback, $22.00

1959- Founding of the pro-independence organization Movimiento Pro Independencia (MPI) and its newspaper Claridad.

1964-66- The local press informs that the government plans to approve strip mining projects. The MPI and the autonomist group Vanguardia Popular present environmental objections. The debate around mining marks the birth of the modern ecology movement in Puerto Rico.

1969-79- A period of generalized violence against the independence movement, which included police brutality, mob violence, bombings of homes and businesses of prominent independentistas, arson attacks against Claridad and its printing press, abductions and assassinations. The evidence gathered from journalistic investigations and declassified documents of the Puerto Rico and US governments points that these attacks were the doing of corrupt agents of the Puerto Rico Police Intelligence Division, Cuban exile terrorists, the FBI and the CIA.

1970- Founding of Misión Industrial, Puerto Rico’s leading environmental organization.

1971- The MPI is transformed into the Puerto Rico Socialist Party (PSP).

1973-76- A golden era for the PSP and the Puerto Rican left in general. The PSP supports feminist, labor, community, peace, anti-imperialist and environmental struggles, and runs candidates for the 1976 elections.

The Claridad newspaper, now affiliated with the PSP, makes its mark with its adversarial investigative journalism and practically invents Puerto Rican environmental journalism. Both the party and the newspaper link environmental problems to colonialism, militarism and capitalism.

1976- Formation of the clandestine pro-independence organization Los Macheteros, which engages in covert action and military operations against the US dominion over Puerto Rico. Its political organ is the Revolutionary Party of Puerto Rican Workers (PRTP) and its military arm is the Boricua People’s Army (EPB).

Members of the PRTP found the political journal Pensamiento Crítico, which publishes hard-hitting investigative pieces about political repression and right-wing terrorism in Puerto Rico, as well as longer articles of debate and analysis. Some of these cover environmental issues and can be considered the start of a Puerto Rican political ecology.

1977- A number of independentista militants form a marxist study circle that meets on a weekly basis. Initially known as the Monday Group, this informal gathering studies Puerto Rico’s history and contemporary reality from a progressive, anti-imperialist perspective. Eventually this group transforms into the Political Formation Workshop, a think tank and university without walls that produces educational documents and pamphlets, some of them published as books.

1979- The grassroots campaign against the US Navy’s presence in the municipality of Vieques island steps up and escalates into civil disobedience. The campaign, spearheaded by the Puerto Rico Socialist League and old timers from the Nationalist Party, brings about a convergence of environmentalism, independentista nationalism, the anti-imperialist left, and non-violent peace activism.

Over a dozen activists are sent to prisons in the United States for trespassing into the firing range in Vieques. One of these, Socialist League member Angel Rodríguez-Cristóbal, is found dead in his cell. Prison authorities rule the death a suicide but the independence movement believes it was a political assassination. Weeks later the Macheteros respond to Rodríguez-Cristóbal’s death by ambushing a bus carrying US Navy personnel in Sabana Seca, killing two of its occupants and wounding another ten. They cite United Nations resolution 1514, which grants colonized peoples the right to fight against colonialism by all means available, including armed struggle.

1980- Juan Antonio Corretjer, veteran of the Nationalist Party, leader of the Socialist League, and one of the main predecessors of the modern environmental and agroecology movements, sends various activists to go live in the central mountain range (cordillera central) to devote themselves full time to the anti-mining struggle. The group of volunteers, led by engineer Alexis Massol, launches the Arts and Culture Workshop, which combines environmental education with arts and culture.

1982- Corretjer receives from an anonymous source some secret documents from the Puerto Rico governor’s office which seem to describe some kind of infrastructure plan for the country. He sends the documents to Massol and various other experts for analysis. After studying them, they inform that they constitute a detailed plan for strip mining, industrialization based on dependent capitalism, and further militarization of Puerto Rico, along with a massive infrastructure of highways and aqueducts, which is supposed to be completed by the year 2020.

1984- Claridad’s book publishing venture, Editorial Claridad, publishes El Huerto Casero, an organic farming manual by social ecologist Nelson Alvarez-Febles which becomes the foundational text of Puerto Rico’s agroecological literature.

1985- Death of Corretjer.

The Arts and Culture Workshop acquires a building in downtown Adjuntas, which is turned into a community cultural center named Casa Pueblo. The organization eventually takes on its name.

The FBI arrests over a dozen Macheteros, including PRTP leader Jorge Farinacci, editor of Pensamiento Crítico, and EPB commander Filiberto Ojeda.

1987- Public disclosure of the so-called “carpetas”, secret dossiers compiled for decades by the PR Police Intelligence Division on independentistas and environmentalist individuals and groups, including Casa Pueblo.

First documented open air field tests of GMO crops on Puerto Rican territory. Puerto Rico would go on to have more such tests per square mile than any US state, with the possible exception of Hawaii.

1989- Pioneers of the organic farming movement form the Boricuá Organization.

A federal jury acquits Filiberto Ojeda of all charges against him, and is released.

1989-1990- A time of reorganization for the independence movement. PSP leader Juan Mari-Brás quits the party and forms Causa Común Independentista, organization that seeks to put an end to the dispersion of the independence movement by promoting a respectful dialogue among the estranged independentista organizations.

The PSP disbands and some of its core members form the Nuevo Movimiento Independentista (NMI).

Mari-Brás and his closest collaborators organize national dialogues among independentistas, known as “congresos hostosianos”. These efforts lead to the formation of the Congreso Nacional Hostosiano (CNH), a coalition that- at least initially- attempts to bring all of the independentista movement together.

The Puerto Rican left also goes through a phase of dialogue and reorganization, which leads to the founding of the Socialist Front. Its founders included the Socialist Workers’ Movement, the PRTP, the Pensamiento Crítico collective, and the Political Formation Workshop.

1990- Ojeda goes back underground.

1992- Neftalí García, chemist and community organizer with a long history of work with Misión Industrial, Pensamiento Crítico and the Political Formation Workshop, unsuccessfully runs for the Puerto Rico Senate as an independent candidate on a community activism and environmental protection platform.

1996- Neftalí García runs for the Senate a second time, again unsuccessfully.

1998- Victory against mining. Governor Pedro Rosselló signs into law a bill that prohibits strip mining in Puerto Rico.

Grassroots campaign against the launching of NASA rockets in the town of Vega Baja.

1999- The struggle against the US Navy presence in Vieques is reactivated with a massive wave of civil disobedience with the active support of numerous civil society organizations, churches, labor unions, independentistas, peace activists, artists, and politicians of all ideologies and political parties. Participating organizations included the PR Independence Party (PIP), the CNH, and the Socialist Front. Casa Pueblo and Neftalí García carry out in situ scientific studies of toxic military pollution in the Vieques firing range.

2002- Casa Pueblo wins the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

2003- Victory in Vieques. Target practice and military maneuvers in the island come to an end.

2004- The CNH merges with the NMI to form the Movimiento Independentista Nacional Hostosiano (MINH).

2005- Playas Pal’ Pueblo protest camp set up in Isla Verde beach to oppose the enclosure and destruction of Puerto Rico’s beaches.

Filiberto Ojeda is murdered by the FBI.

2006- Death of Jorge Farinacci.

2008- Members of the Political Formation Workshop and the PRTP split from the Socialist Front to form the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS).

2009- MAS members start the Working People’s Party (PPT), which runs candidates for the 2012 elections.

2010- Death of Sarah Peisch, important community organizer, environmental activist, and Socialist Front member.

2011- First protest in Puerto Rico against GMO crops, organized by Boricuá.

2013- Nada Santo Sobre Monsanto anti-GMO coalition founded.

2016- Center for Transdisciplinary Studies in Agroecology founded in the town of Lares.

Carmelo Ruiz is a Puerto Rican author and journalist and a research associate at the Institute for Social Ecology. His journalistic blog (http://carmeloruiz.blogspot. com/search/label/eng) is updated daily, and his Twitter account is @carmeloruiz.

by R. Burke

In their new book People Get Ready; the Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy Robert McChesney and John Nichols contemplate a coming scenario which had been foreseen by Karl Marx in the Grundrisse, his posthumously published outline for Capital: “but to the degree that large industry develops, the creation of real wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose ‘powerful effectiveness’ is itself in turn out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the general state of science and on the progress of technology…labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the  human being comes to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself…as soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well spring of wealth labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure…”(1) In the past the economics profession has rejected such predictions, claiming that as technology advances new fields of employment would be opened up. Increasingly there is evidence that this may no longer be the case. As automation proceeds fewer jobs become necessary, and those that remain tend to pay less.

McChesney and Nichols begin with a survey of recent developments in technology and its effects on employment. “In 1988, one hundred years after it’s founding, Kodak employed 145,000 people. But history, innovation, and a record of treating workers like human beings was no match for the new age of cell phone communication and instantaneous photo-sharing tools such as Instagram… by 2015 the total number of Kodak workers was less than 5 percent of what it was just a quarter century earlier.” Referring to the recent words of Google chairman Eric Schmidt they report that he “acknowledged that due to rapid advances in technology, including some of the projects Google was working on, countless middle-class jobs that had seemed beyond the reach of computers and automation were going to be at risk in the near future. More and more middle-class workers were going to lose their jobs and there was little on the horizon to suggest there would be new jobs for them. This would be, according to Schmidt, the “defining” issue of the next two to three decades.” The authors back up their position with numerous statistics demonstrating that, as automation and technology have continued to advance, there has been greater unemployment and a decline in labor force participation; meanwhile profits per employee and income shares of the wealthiest have increased. Globalization and offshoring have undoubtedly played a role in exacerbating these trends; McChesney and Nichols show however that even the low wage zones of the less developed countries are not immune to the technological onslaught. “In 2010, world attention shifted to Foxconn’s factories that produced Apple products following a string of suicides by its workers. Soon thereafter Foxconn began an aggressive program to eventually replace many, or most, of its workers with one million robots.” Citing a recent New York Times article headlined “Cheaper Robots, Fewer Workers” the authors quote that: “so although building robots to replace workers is seldom cheap, a growing number of companies are finding it less costly than paying ever-higher wages in China or moving to another country.” When automation becomes cheaper than offshoring, the consequences for workers become grim.

The authors are far from being luddites and in fact celebrate the potentially liberating effects of the new technologies. Their concern is directed instead at the political and economic arrangements that allow the benefits to accrue to those at the top of the income scale at the expense of workers and citizens. As these technological trends have proceeded, recent decades have seen an undermining of the ‘democratic infrastructure’ that allows citizens to respond appropriately to these developments. A major factor in this situation has been the promotion of the ideology of neoliberalism, with its fetishizing of the “free market’ and the denigration of government as the source of our collective problems. Since the 1970’s both the Democratic and Republican parties have accepted this ideology, and have promoted policies derived from the neoliberal worldview. McChesney and Nichols argue that this ideological offensive was carefully promoted by the capitalist ruling class as a response to the ‘crisis of democracy’ resulting from the social movements of the 1960’s and early ‘70’s. As a result economic doctrines that had once been considered marginal and extreme have come to dominate public discourse. The objective was precisely to undermine and disillusion potential opposition to the schemes of the ruling class, in a word to foster what the surrealist movement has termed miserablism.

Far from succumbing to miserablism, the authors find much reason for hope, especially in looking back at similar periods in US history. They demonstrate that a concern for fostering the public good and checking the power of economic elites, however imperfect, has been a recurring theme since the founding of the country. The Progressive and New Deal eras in particular are a point of reference for McChesney and Nichols. They point to the recent, and growing concern about economic inequality as a reason for optimism regarding the future.

While People Get Ready is invaluable for making the case regarding ongoing trends relating to technology and employment, as well as for fostering an optimistic mindset about the possibilities for progressive change, one area in which they fall short is in providing practical proposals for dealing with our current dilemma. The idea of a guaranteed income is dismissed in a cavalier fashion, the authors laboring under the fallacy that it was first posited by left wing proponents in the 1960’s. Correctly recognizing that there are also right wing advocates of the idea, they then proceed to set these up as a straw man to knock down without even attempting to engage with the more progressive versions of this proposal. Instead the authors argue vaguely that “a more humane approach would be to go in the opposite direction and simply remove certain functions from the market altogether as the society grows wealthier,” without explaining how this would work, in what way it differs from previous social-democratic welfare-state reforms, how this reduces unemployment or why doing so would be mutually exclusive with a guaranteed income.

To begin with, anyone familiar with the history of socialist thought beyond a narrow focus on the Marxian current is aware that socialists from the beginning of the movement have advocated for some form of a guaranteed income. Early utopian socialists such as Charles Fourier and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon made it part of their schemes for social reform. Edward Bellamy’s 19^th century classic Looking Backward depicts a society in which the means of production are publicly owned, and each citizen receives a guaranteed, indeed equal, income. George Bernard Shaw in The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism also argued for a guaranteed share of equal income for everyone, which for him was the very definition of socialism. In Bertrand Russell’s Roads to Freedom he advocated that “a certain small income, sufficient for necessaries, should be secured to all, whether they work or not”(2) along with Guild Socialism, and germane to McChesney and Nichols’ argument, he called for the free distribution of products that society produced in abundance as a long term goal. The suggestion that guaranteed income proposals are a right-wing idea adopted by leftists in the 1960’s is demonstrably wrong, and the truth is rather the other way around. Ironically, one advocate for this measure who comes from the Marxian current is conspicuous by his absence: Andre Gorz. Indeed it was Gorz who linked guaranteed income proposals to a demand for the progressive reduction of working hours precisely in response to increasing automation, pointing out that this would allow everyone to work, but to work less. Clearly McChesney and Nichols did not do their homework on this issue!

That aside, People Get Ready the Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy, is of major importance. The authors call attention to technological trends, and their impact on employment, which many on the world-left have been ignoring to their political peril. The book is well researched, backed up with statistics, and full of important historical insights that counter the prevailing cultural trends toward miserablism. For that, Robert McChesney and John Nichols’ new book deserves to be widely read.

1. Karl Marx, Grundrisse; Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, translated by Martin Nicolaus, Vintage Books, 1973 pp 704-705.
2. Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom, Routledge 1993, p 93.

People Get Ready; the Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy
By Robert McChesney and John Nichols
ISBN 9781568585215
Nation Books, New York, 2016
360 pages, Hardcover, $26.99

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