by Steve Showen

SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE!

The Crucial Demand of Our Time!

Degrowing from Chaos to a Steady-State Economy

ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

• TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM, CHANGE THE MONEY!
• PARITY ECONOMY
• JUST TRANSITION
• MAKE CARBON OUR FRIEND NOT OUR FOE

People get it. The realization that we are in the midst of a climate emergency has galvanized youth, keenly aware their futures are at risk. The largest public demonstration since covid was held in the streets at Climate Week NYC, displaying signs demanding “System Change, Not Climate Change.” Having made virtually no progress in climate goals since the first Earth Day fifty plus years ago, the system is the obvious culprit, devouring Earth’s resources to feed an avaricious profit-making machine that’s never satisfied with enough, wreaking havoc and spewing carbon in its wake. Our growth-driven economic system has pushed us to the limits of our finite planet’s ability to sustain us, to the brink of environmental collapse and climate catastrophe. It is imperative that humans transform the way we live upon the Earth and relate to the web of life on which we depend, lest we cross a catastrophic tipping point.

Rachel Jetel of World Resources Institute lays out our challenge:

“And yet to limit global temperature rise, conserve nature, and build a fairer economy that benefits everyone, we will need deep change across every aspect of our economies at a pace and scale we have not yet seen.

“The latest science tells us that we must limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) to prevent increasingly dangerous and irreversible climate change impacts. It also tells us that we must protect, sustainably manage, and restore ecosystems, among other actions, to halt biodiversity loss as soon as possible. To achieve all this, we need fundamental change across nearly all major systems by 2030 — power, buildings, industry, transport, forests and land, and food and agriculture. Cross-cutting transformations of political, social, and economic systems must also occur to enable this and ensure the change is socially inclusive with equitable outcomes for all.”

ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

In accord with these criteria, the imperative for fundamental change necessitates stopping the runaway growth train and downsizing and reconfiguring our economy and its subsystems to operate within the carrying capacity of the Earth. This entails progressing through a phase of “degrowth” until a “steady-state economy” has been achieved, so that we and the planet may thrive with a stable economy, justly and sustainably, into the foreseeable future.

Degrowth and steady-state economy are related fields within ecological economics, pioneered by the late Herman Daly. Unlike mainstream neoclassical economics and environmental economics, ecological economics recognizes that our economy is an open subsystem within Earth’s finite ecosystem. For example, to mitigate the climate emergency directly, we clearly want to phase out fossil fuels and adopt some form of truly renewable energy. However, the immediate priority is to massively draw down atmospheric carbon and sequester it wisely in the soil, avoiding the costly farce of corporate carbon capture schemes. The expense of effective and realistic mitigation measures in relation to economic restructuring must be prefigured to prevent a continuation of the growth-based system, greenwashed in the guise of “green growth” or even “green degrowth,” to ensure we’re not still headed for disaster, and Sustainable Climate Goals (SCG’s) can actually be met.

In a steady-state economy, for example, a stable size of population and material wealth are sustained by a stable flow of natural resources, with low resource throughput and low emissions, not overshooting the ability of the earth to replenish human consumption and absorb waste.

In this report of the Steady State Economy Conference, a steady-state economy is defined as:

“an economy where the goal is enough instead of more. … It is an economy where energy and resource use are reduced to levels that are within ecological limits, and where the goal of maximising economic output is replaced by the goal of maximising quality of life…And an emphasis on high quality of life means that economic growth takes a backseat to things that really matter to people, like health, well-being, secure employment, leisure time, strong communities, and economic stability.”

The introduction to the Green Party U.S. platform Article IV. Economic Justice and Sustainability begins with: “Green economics is rooted in ecological economics.” Here follow selected excerpts from Article IV, which extends from Sections A. through N., comprising numerous policy proposals. 

Our economy should serve us and our planet. Our economy should reflect and respect the diverse, delicate ecosystems of our planet.

Green economic policy places value not just on material wealth, but on the things which truly make life worth living — our health, our relationships, our communities, our environment, and building peace and justice throughout our nation and the world. We aim to maximize our quality of life with a minimum of consumption. We aspire to less “stuff” but more happiness. We propose a shift away from materialism to help people live more meaningful lives as we save the planet from climate change and ever-larger mountains of waste. We need to acquire the ability to distinguish between need and greed.

From Section A. Ecological Economics: Recognition of limits is central to this system. The drive to accumulate power and wealth is a pernicious characteristic of a civilization headed in a pathological direction.

From Section B. Measuring Economic Health: From 1: The steady-state economy has become a more appropriate goal than economic growth in the United States and other large, wealthy economies. From 3: Ultimately, however, the global ecosystem will not be able to support further economic growth. Therefore, an equitable distribution of wealth among nations is required to maintain a global steady-state economy.  

A circular economy (CE) is a separate field with a similar sounding name that’s a source of confusion. CE aims “to tackle global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, waste and pollution”…by “sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible.” CE is lauded by proponents “as a facilitator of long-term growth.” While Herman Daly agrees such circular or closed loop processes are all good policies, he observes they are “destined to fall short of their goal of ‘sustainable growth’.” Recycling is limited, costing energy, material and equipment, and passing through a limited number of cycles before metals become more dispersed and inaccessible, according to the law of entropy. Sustainable growth is an oxymoron. “There is always a scale limit to a sustainable economic subsystem, beyond which growth, even in a ‘circular’ economy, breaks down, and sustainability requires a steady state economy.” Daly emphasizes: “The basic issue of limits to growth that the Club of Rome did so much to emphasize in the early 1970’s needs to remain front and center.”

 TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM, CHANGE THE MONEY!

To initiate the transition, we must derail the engine that drives the growth train: our privatized monetary system. Contrary to popular belief, commercial banks create our money from nothing when they make loans, at interest. Our money is a form of interest-bearing debt, driving economic growth, inflation, inequality, environmental plunder, political corruption, endless war profiteering, and generating a debt-based economy that funnels wealth and power to the top. Banks own our money system, which grants them immense power, determining who gets money and who doesn’t. They own controlling interest in the major corporations, back fossil fuel companies, and manipulate our political process. Our economy is overburdened by speculative finance. “On an average we pay about 50% capital costs [interest] in the prices of our goods and services.”  

Opening the political space to create and fund public policy for overhauling our economic system begins with ending the banks’ money creation privilege. We can then proceed to enact recovery and restructuring programs, as the growth oriented Green New Deal purported to do, which “is really about the transition to a steady state economy. At least, that’s what it must be about, to be truly green and new,” asserts Brian Czech, executive director of the Center for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy (CASSE). Daly and CASSE hold that money creation and allocation as a public utility is an essential feature of a steady-state economy. Thus a True Degrowth / Steady-State Green New Deal will be funded by a democratic sovereign public money system, established by a true peoples’ Congress that has recovered its money creation power to spend on the general welfare, debt free, as granted in the American Constitution, Article I, Section 8. Previously, a bought-and-paid-for Congress had surrendered its money power to the banking cartel with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

The U.S. Green Party’s Banking and Monetary Reform Committee (BMRC) educates about “Greening the Dollar,“ a critical initiative found in the party’s platform Article IV., Section N., outlining a program to democratize the money and restore Congress’s constitutional authority over currency creation, based on the NEED Act, introduced into Congress by Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers in 2011. Its core principles are:

1. End bank creation of money.
2. Restore to Congress the exclusive authority to create money, free from debt, and spend it for public purpose.
3. Nationalize the Federal Reserve System, now owned by private member banks, making all its remaining operations accountable to the public.

This makes our money system a public utility, able to fund a Truly Green New Deal debt free, and reshape our economy to run in balance with the Earth’s ability to sustain us.

An historic example of the success of public money was when President Lincoln issued debt-free government Greenbacks during the civil war, which were a major factor spurring the economy and retaining the union. There was also a diminution of debt and interest rates during that period, before the banking cartel overcame the Greenbacks.

The BMRC collaborates with other monetary reform organizations. In the U.S. this includes the Alliance for Just Money (AFJM), and the American Monetary Institute (AMI). AMI issued this urgent statement to COP28 regarding “The Monetary Dimension of Environmental Degradation,” inviting signatures from individuals and groups:

“We, the undersigned, believe there exists a significant correlation between the current, dysfunctional debt-based monetary system and environmental degradation, and we strongly believe that sovereign monetary reform will allow a substantial contribution to climate [solution] finance.”

AFJM is organizing a Mayday for Money rally and march in front of the Chicago Fed in 2024, reminiscent of Occupy Wall Street, but with a more informed, focused and transformative objective, to take back our money creation power from the banking cartel, via the NEED Act.

JUST TRANSITION

The IPCC defines “just transition … as a set of principles, processes and practices that aim to ensure that no people, workers, places, sectors, countries or regions are left behind in the transition from a high-carbon to a low carbon economy.” 

While the transition to a steady-state economy must be socially just, that does not necessarily mean transitioning to a “low carbon economy”as defined by the IPCC, permitting carbon credits and such. True, we want to get to low or net-zero carbon emissions. But what we really want is net negative carbon emitting industries that remove or capture more CO₂ from the atmosphere than they emit, and cycle it eventually to the soil. This would be an instrumental feature of a steady-state economy, which can be done by utilizing carbon to our benefit, by reversing its role from nemesis to benefactor, as we shall see in a moment.  

To achieve a just transition to a steady-state economy, a Report of the Steady State Economy Conference calls for global co-operation to be improved: 

“Many nations need to increase their consumption of resources to alleviate poverty and allow people to meet their basic needs. These nations stand in stark contrast to wealthy countries like the UK where the benefits of growth have already been realised. The UK and other wealthy countries must stabilise, if not degrow, their economies in order to provide the ecological space needed for poorer nations to grow.”

The fact is “we would need 5.1 Earths if everyone lived like Americans,” and roughly three Earth’s if everyone lived like Europeans. Quality of life is not determined by GDP, which is criticized for being more of an indicator of “illth” than wealth or health. Indices more suited to measuring development and social well-being include the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). Notably, growth is not the same as development. It follows that there is both a necessity and potential for every nation to creatively develop comfortable novel lifestyles and innovative means of production that require far fewer resources to avoid overshooting the one Earthship we have. For example, here is an inspiring proposal:

PARITY ECONOMY

Facilitated by monetary reform and applicable within a steady-state economy is a parity (pricing) economy, which is founded on economic research begun during the first decades of the 20th century, establishing raw materials production to be the foundation of the national  (income) economy, thus confirming the maxim of natural law that “All wealth comes from the Earth.” It was discovered that raw materials production had to be priced fairly (parity pricing) or the national income (which includes all sectors of the economy) would be impaired. The Raw Materials National Council educated all the State Commissioners of Agriculture about how our NATIONAL INCOME (our economy) depends on the production of raw materials. Its successor in the study of the economic record, the National Organization for Raw Materials (NORM), explains:

“When raw materials enter trade channels at prices in balance with the prices of labor and capital in the rest of the economy, THE ENTIRE COUNTRY can operate on an earned-income basis with no buildup of public and private debt. Conversely, when raw materials enter trade channels at less than parity prices with labor and capital, the economy lacks sufficient dollars to operate on a debt-free basis, therefore, public and private debt accumulates.”

Prompted by the necessity of providing for the nation during WWII, and educated by the Raw Materials Council, Congress passed a parity bill in April 1942, allowing the entire economy to function without debt. However, after 1952 federal farm policy was controlled by international traders and corporations aligned with the banking power, who slowly eroded prices placed to support our major raw material producer, the farmer. Since then we’ve lost a million and a half family farms to agribusiness. Rural communities have been impoverished.

Getting more farmers back on the land to grow healthy fertile soil while they produce food and fiber is the best way to reduce carbon in the atmosphere and rebuild rural communities, potentially becoming part of relatively self-sustaining bioregions. 

Today, with the control of federal economic policy in the hands of the financial sector, money flows to financial elites. They understand that a parity economy feeds the real economy with goods and services for the population, and that the same parity economy would cut them off.  They serve only their own interests and not those of our country.

Parity policy is not strictly for agriculture. It is for the ENTIRE ECONOMY — an economy where farmers can keep their farms without losing it to debt, where industrial businesses can pay solid wages and run a profitable business, where retailers can have customers that have money in their pockets to buy what they need for a decent life. A Parity Economy allows all citizens to stay out of debt to the private commercial banks, earn enough money to get their needs met, and support the local communities in our nation.

MAKE CARBON OUR FRIEND NOT OUR FOE

In their book Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth, Albert Bates and Kathleen Draper introduce a revolutionary approach to mitigating our climate crisis that would profoundly change our relationship to carbon by “transitioning carbon from a wasted resource to a (CO2) drawdown super hero.” Building upon ancient methods of “transforming impoverished soils into fertile black earth by converting organic materials into long lasting carbon, or biochar,… we can go from spending carbon to banking it.”

“This stable form of carbon can pass through many useful stages as food, filter, fodder, or building materials before returning to the part of the (carbon) cycle where the story began, the soil. During its transformation, useful services like heating, cooling, and power can also be generated. It can restore degraded lands and rebuild biodiversity. It can mitigate the effect of changing climate and ease or enable adaptation.”

“It contains the seeds of a new, circular economy in which energy, natural resources, and human ingenuity enter a virtuous cycle of improvement with bold new solutions that can begin right now.”

 SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE!

An overarching structural change of system is immediately imperative to enable the “deep change across every aspect of our economies at a pace and scale we have not yet seen, …that ensures the change is socially inclusive with equitable outcomes for all.”

This is the existential challenge of our lives. We know what must be done. Let’s do it!

by David Griscom

The Southern Tenant Farmers Union was founded on the principle of interracial organizing. It challenged the Southern landowning class and the Jim Crow white supremacist order, leaving a proud legacy for both the labor movement and the civil rights movement.  It’s 1935 and class war is brewing in Arkansas. Standing before 1,500 black and white sharecroppers, the radical Methodist minister Ward Rodgers thunders, “I can lead a mob to lynch any planter in Poinsett County.” The crowd erupts with applause.

by Daniel Wortel-London

The Spanish Civil War and Revolution of 1936 was arguably the 20th century’s greatest experiment in economic democracy. Spain’s workers and peasants built a new economy in the midst of chaos.  Altogether, approximately 18,000 enterprises – nearly all industries in Catalonia and 1700 villages across the country – were collectivized between 1936 and 1937. For a brief moment, ordinary people – not capitalists or bureaucrats – were in control of the economy.  Shortly after their victory, however, Spain’s newly empowered masses faced difficult questions. Should wealthy collectives be forced to support poorer ones, or did the principle of local autonomy outweigh the principle of mutual aid? Should radicals develop economy-wide strategies to defeat fascism, or were principles of voluntarism more important?

The world is going to hell in a handbasket:  war, poverty, inequality, climate change, etc., etc.  A look at the day’s headlines or social media flow and that becomes very clear.  It’s scary, and it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed and hopeless.

You probably don’t know me:  I’m an old guy, just turned 72 years old.  However, I’ve been a political activist for over 50 years.  Not one for the limelight, most people in the “movement” don’t know me either.  But I’ve been out here, organizing against the Vietnam war while on active duty in the US Marine Corps, where I got politicized fighting white supremacy and racism, to fighting plant closures and economic dislocation, to labor organizing, to building global labor solidarity while fighting the AFL-CIO’s “labor imperialism,” to community organizing, to running an NGO (Non-governmental organization, often referred to in the US as a “non-profit”).  I’ve also been active while getting my bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees (the latter at age 51), and active while teaching at a regional university in the Midwest for over 19 years.  And I’ve done some writing:  four books and over 260 articles published to date in the US and 11 different countries….  And I continue to be active today.

If you will indulge me, I’ve got a few things that I want to say; hopefully, they will resonate among those of you still reading.

Things are looking bad, I know.  There’s been an almost total failure of leadership in the US and the world among governmental figures, corporate executives, and even social leaders like university, religious, and labor “leaders” for things progressive (i.e., life enhancing).  For a younger person today, and especially those of you who are much younger, it’s hard to know what to do.  Yes, you can do drugs, or engage in mad, passionate sex 24 hours a day, but even if that works for you, you still have to deal with reality of today’s world; if nothing else, in the struggle to survive economically, including keeping a roof over your head, plus there’s the looming and existential crisis of climate change and environmental destruction, with nuclear war still a possibility.

(If you haven’t read my article, “Forty Years of the United States in the World (1981-2023)” at https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/special-history-series-40-years-of-the-united-states-in-the-world-1981-2023/, I would recommend you do so.  This will help give a context for what I’m about to say.)

We live in a very individualistic culture and society, and I find it extremely alienating.  But I also know it’s not natural; it’s been imposed.  How do I know it’s not natural?  I’ve lived long enough to where I have personally lived in a culture that is life-enhancing.  (Someday, I’ll write about my 1973 hitchhiking trip from Walla Walla, Washington to Tallahassee, Florida—via San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Chicago, Fredericksburg (VA), and Jacksonville—where I never stood by the side of the road for more than 20 minutes, where I ate and got high regularly, where I did this travel in 10 days, and where I left Walla Walla with 50 cents in my pocket!) 

In the late 1960s-early ‘70s, the ”left” in the United States, broadly speaking, scared the hell out of the ruling elites.  The Civil Rights/Black Power and Women’s Movement, intertwined with the youth and anti-Vietnam War movement and then later joined with the LGBT and environmental movements, was a serious challenge to the “status quo.”  All of this, in their various iterations and manifestations, also affected us in the military, in Vietnam, in Europe, and in the United States, and the US military largely collapsed in Vietnam.  (I highly recommend David Zieger’s excellent film, “Sir, No Sir!” to learn about our struggles inside the military, a story not well known.)

This caused Nixon and Kissinger to seek peace with the Vietnamese (who had shown their willingness to win their freedom and independence at any price), pull the US military out of Vietnam, and to do away with the hated military draft.  (Scholars can debate the impact of the left on the war, but what I KNOW was that the left affected us in the military, and it definitely inspired our efforts against the military.)

The elites were determined not to let this ever happen again.  They saw the core of the resistance based on the collective culture that had been created.

Along with the economic problems of the US in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s—including reduced rates of profit, inflation, increasing economic competition from global challengers and stagnant production—the elites cane up with an ideology called “neo-liberal economics,” which attacked US workers and countered our collective culture; they wanted to ensure that our collective culture never emerged again by doing all they could to separate and isolate people from each other.  They attacked our organizations, especially unions, but any efforts to join together. 

And if we “measure” success of their efforts, think of this:  other than Michael Moore’s two movies, “Roger and Me” and “Capitalism: A Love Story,” I cannot remember any sustained public challenge to the growing economic inequality we faced in our country between about 1971 and 2011.  (The US is the most economically unequal of any of the imperial countries in the world!)

Now that started changing with the protests in Madison, Wisconsin in early 2011 and was inspired by the movement called the “Arab Spring” that had recently began in Tunisia and which, in turn, helped inspire further protest in Madison.  (Recognizing the global nature of protests—see my “The Only Commonality is Uncommonality” at https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol10/iss1/4– I focus on domestic politics here.) The 2012 Chicago Teachers’ strike was important, later inspiring massive teachers’ strikes in a number of states across the country during the late 20-teens.  There was the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement after the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012, and there were mobilizations in Fergusson (MO) after the 2015 killing of Michael Brown.  There was a massive women’s strike against Trump right after his inauguration in 2017.  There was also the rise of the “Me, too!” movement during this period.  And, of course, the massive mobilization after the assassination of George Floyd in 2020.  And growing protests against environmental destruction and climate change have also contributed to what I believe is ultimately a reaffirmation of our collective culture.

Yet one thing we’ve yet to revive, especially outside of our unions, is the concept of “organization.”  (The issue of union reform efforts, such as in the United Auto Workers, is a different dynamic than here, and will be saved for elsewhere.)

Jane McAlevey, an experienced labor organizer in a very important 2016 book titled No Shortcuts:  Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, pointed out there were three ways people come together:  to advocate, through mobilization, and by organization. (I won’t say anything more about “advocacy.”)  We have seriously shown we can mobilize; at least one account claimed there were 26 MILLION people in the streets to protest George Floyd’s assassination.  That far surpasses anything in the 1960s!

But the difference between “the ‘60s and early ‘70s and today is that there were organizations at the core of the earlier movements.  (This is not widely recognized today.)  And there aren’t comparable organizations today, at least for most of these movements.  And that has meant that, no matter how powerful for a few days they might have been, these movements disappeared shortly thereafter, and those based on social media alone perished even quicker than those with some on-the-ground experience.

BUILDING AN ORGANIZATION

What that tells us, in my humble opinion, that if you truly want social change—and you can start with any issue you wish, although I think some are more important than others—you must get together with others and create an organization.  Your individual efforts, not matter how good, while necessary, are not sufficient:  you must create organization.

There are many reasons to take this on.  First, it is important to find other people who also think the issue at hand is important, and who are willing to put some time into building an organization; that gives you some basic support and cooperative thinking to figure out how best to proceed, whether in your community or workplace.  It forces you to think strategically:  how is the best way to build this organization so that collectively you have a chance to successfully win your stated goals?  What tactics are acceptable in your situation that can be utilized to achieve your strategy?  And how can you further develop your organization so that it is democratic, includes everyone who wants to participate, seeks to encourage members to recruit further members through their social networks, and inspires all who come into contact with the organization to join and advance its stated purpose?

There are going to be a number of conversations among those interested that take place before deciding to formally establish an organization.  These conversations are terribly important and deserve considerable attention because it is in the constitutive process that often lays the groundwork for success or failure.  You are going to have to consider who might get involved in your project—so you need to develop a clearly defined goal, a defined targeted audience, some plan (however currently inchoate) as to how to mobilize this audience and, ideally, how to get them involved in your organization.  You have to understand that most people will not jump at the opportunity to join you and your colleagues, but that their participation must be enticed; it must be sought; the organization must be built.  And it ain’t going to happen without building it!

And we need to understand what’s going on in these discussions:  those involved are creating meaning together.  This is the process that is crucial for holding organizations together, especially in the early days of existence.

FOUR KEY ASPECTS:

STRUCTURE, PROCESS, LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT, AND INTERNAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION

These four aspects seem to me key to building and expanding an organization.  I address them in that order.  (And would welcome comments and suggestions to enhance this discussion!)

Structure

You want to design your structure to get your work done, to accomplish your goals:  what is it you want to address overall?  I think you want to be successful at your particular political goal, but also want to involve as many people doing it as possible, and training them not only for success on your chosen goal, but to develop as many as possible as organizational and social leaders; i.e., should they leave your organization (for any reason), ideally they should be inspired and motivated to seek out others and (eventually)  start their own organization wherever they land.

When initiated, I think you will have—I hope you have!—several people to carry the load.  You need to identify the tasks that need to be accomplished.  Ideally, with the goal chosen and the tasks identified, you can distribute the load across those involved and work together.  Expecting one or two people to carry the load on their own will almost always lead to burn out and walking away, and that’s another reason why you want several people to join you to get an organization started.  It also helps indicate how important, how salient, this issue is to those around you.

You also need always to keep some of your focus on developing your organization, regardless of the particular goal you set.  Early on, you need to establish your decision-making process (see below). 

You will need to get commitments among those involved to work together for a set period of time:  two months, six months, two years, etc.  In other words, how long will each person plan to stay involved at a minimum?  Obviously, with any political organization, you will be seeking to understand salience to your targeted community; how important is it to them, and can they be encouraged to get them involved, in the issue and, ideally, your organization?  (Organizations whose goals are salient to the targeted “community” will be able to recruit and advance much quicker than those whose goals are not; the latter are more likely to fail.)  However, it takes some time for any new organization to become recognized in the community and their goals accepted:  you want to get everyone involved in the “organizing committee” to commit to staying involved for an agreed-upon time period so the organization can get established and recognized, after which there will be no hard feelings should one lose interest or simply walk away.  Also, however, should there be progress in one’s work, people are encouraged to extend their commitment to involvement!

So, you’ve found some people to work with you and they’ve each made a commitment to work together to build the organization:  great!  Now what?

A good way to think about any organization is to recognize that, ultimately, they will consist of three groups of people, and you can think of this as a set of three concentric circles, from the innermost and smallest to the larger surrounding circle to the largest outside circle. 

The “inner most” circle, the core, will be those who are really involved in the organization, helping it to achieve its agreed-upon goals; these are your activists.  These are the people who will prioritize organizational work, are interested in advancing its project (including fundraising), and who are interested in helping make organizational decisions.  This is your leadership group.  Ideally, you want to keep expanding this group over the life of organizational existence.

It is these people who will take responsibility to carry out organizational goals and projects, whether in actual campaigns and/or internal development.

Now, you have to be careful here; this isn’t the military, and these folks are not available 24 hours a day.  You want people to be involved, but you don’t want to work them so hard that they drop away.  Yes, you want them as much as they want to give, but you must keep in mind that they work, they probably have relationships, they probably like to do other things.  Leaders have to consciously keep her/his eye out for the well-being of one’s people, and you especially need to take care of the ones who take care of you!  You need to talk periodically with each of your activists to make sure they’re personally doing well, that their views on the organization are listened to, that they are given the appropriate responsibilities, etc.  And the thing to remember here is that the more people you can get into the core group, the more the work can be equally distributed, which means that there is less likelihood of burnout of key people.  These are also the organization’s key people, and they need to be educated in related issues, taught (and encouraged) to speak publicly for the organization, etc.; they should be trained to the highest level possible in line with their desires.

The surrounding, intermediate circle are your supporters.  They are the people who will contribute money and will generally respond to organizational mobilizing efforts.  These are people who will attend “annual general meetings” should they be held.  Basically, they are interested, they care about your organization and its projects, but won’t get actively involved on an on-going basis.  They will attend public events and should be so encouraged, and efforts should be made to enhance their participation and involvement; ideally, they should be encouraged to join the core group.

(One thing here:  the core group should set the criteria for those entering the core group, such as attending “x number” of core meetings/training sessions before being able to vote on organizational decisions; this will help those already in the core accept the new people more willingly as they, too, will be recognized as “serious,” which is what is wanted.)

The outside group are “bystanders,” people who know about your group and its projects, but who won’t get involved unless actively asked.  These folks are generally ignored.  However, should attention be paid to them, they can be mobilized, whether through showing up at a demonstration, contributing small amounts of money, etc.  They take a lot of work to get them to participate, so this is not a priority, yet it shouldn’t be overlooked; they can be mobilized.

And then there are those totally unaware or opposed to your organization and its goals.  If you can’t get them into even the outer circle, you can ignore them until you need to actively address them.

So, the general idea here is to accurately place each person the organization comes into contact with into the correct respective circle, and then, over time, seek to move each one possible into the next one closer to the core.

Process

This is something that often gets ignored, and I argue we need to specifically address it early on in the organization’s development:  by what process are decisions made?

Many groups simply adopt “majority rule” by which to be governed.  Thus, any decision needing to be made can be made by adopting the majority’s position; after all, it’s the “American” way.  The problem with this is that those in the minority often get their ideas and interests, etc., trampled.

The other way that some activist groups have adopted—so as to protect the minority—is to require “consensus.”  That way, everyone must agree before going forward.  However, this can lead to the “tyranny of the minority” as even one person can keep an organization from advancing its work.  And, at the very least, many hours of discussion and debate can be required to simply reach a position on an issue; time many people simply do not have due to interest, work and/or family commitments.

A better way forward is to bifurcate issues and have different decision-making processes for each of them.

Of course, organizations should always seek consensus on as many issues as possible.  But sometimes, it is simply not possible without threatening to tear apart the organization.

Almost any issue can be judged as being crucial or non-crucial to the organization.  Non-crucial issues include issues like should we participate/endorse this demonstration, this march; should we meet weekly/non-weekly, etc.  These are issues where we can seek a quick consensus, but if not available, can be quickly disposed of through a majority vote; 50% +1 wins.  The benefit is you don’t waste much time on a non-essential issue.

For crucial issues that might split the organization, we need a much higher degree of unanimity; again, while seeking consensus, how do we handle significant differences?  I encourage the pre-requirement of “modified consensus,” where people are required to get a two-thirds (67%) majority or higher to pass an issue.  In other words, it must be required to have an extra-high degree of unanimity before proceeding.  This way, you don’t get the problem of scrambling for one or two votes to win your position; i.e., this conservative approach is intended to preclude organizational splits.  The required vote level must be acceptable prior to any discussion on the issue so there are no claims of “manipulation” by the losers.

Does this work in practice?  The anti-war veterans’ organization that I was part of in San Francisco, Veteran Speakers Alliance, adopted this process in the mid-1980s; they are still active and united today!  And if it can work for a group of mostly combat veterans, I think it can probably work for most organizations!

Leadership Development

I’m not going to say much more than I did above on this subject.  I think it is incumbent upon all of us to recognize that not everyone has the same experiences, understandings, and skill levels at different aspects of organizing and organizational development.

The goal here, for each person who desires it, is to advance each person’s skills beyond what she/he has today.  Ideally, after a set period of time, anyone who remained (or left) the organization should be able to set up an organization/organizing project wherever they are.

Every organization should seek to enhance members’ skills and experiences.  This should specifically include education on the organization’s history, goals, and objectives, and it should include practice in public speaking.  And it should definitely include practice on strategic organizing, including on the one-to-one level.

Internal Conflict Resolution

One of the things I would advise is that you try to make your organization welcoming!  People who might visit to see if joining might like to be something they’d like to do want to find people who are respectful of each other, who are supportive, and who are friendly, and where the organization is democratically run:  they are not likely to join any organization that is in turmoil or featuring major conflict among members.

Interestingly, a good way to tell the internal health of an organization is by looking to see if members are inviting friends/encouraging members of their social networks to get involved and participate in the work of the organization; if it’s not good enough for friends, then you should be wary before joining.

This brings me to a point that I’ve become more and more aware of:  internal organizational conflict.  We may hope our organization never has internal conflict, and most groups probably don’t, but I’m convinced every organization must be prepared for it from early on; internal conflict can doom organizations if not prepared for and handled well.  First, I’m talking about internal conflict among members within an organization, and not conflict with outsiders, including provocateurs and saboteurs.  This should not be too much of a surprise since organizations are often founded and populated with passionate people; and sometimes that passion gets turned on our comrades. 

So, I argue that a “conflict resolution” committee, by whatever name you want to give it, be incorporated into the organizational structure from early on.  This gives legitimacy to both a particular “committee” to be dedicated to handle such conflict, and it gives as place where conflict can be addressed that is outside of the center of the organization; i.e., you want to have a separate committee to address such conflict, and it must not be obvious to casual visitors who might be considering joining the organization.

But within the committee, you want to have a pre-existing process established by which to handle any conflict so referred.  Remember, we’re talking her about conflict within the organization, and that’s a terribly important delineation.  In other words, you are wanting to resolve conflict so as to enable the organization to keep working on its program instead of destroying the organization.  So, a process needs to be established beforehand, so there’s no question of using it against someone who simply might be unpopular.  You want to establish such processes beforehand, and keep everything as clean, transparent, and as fair as possible.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This article is not “the” answer to organizing organizations:  it is intended to help you get started.  You will have to address many issues over the organization’s lifetime, including whether to remain all volunteers or to hire staff people, etc.  Generally speaking, I think the more people in the core group, with as much diversity and involvement as possible in your local community, will help you address difficult issues such as this.

At some point in time, you will meet/reach out to other organizations.  Hopefully, you will have respectful relations with each, so coalition building is possible—and desirable.  However, if your organization is really successful, it is likely at some point, it will be asked to dissolve and join a larger organization.  I want to urge extreme caution before accepting any such invitation:  by this time, people will have joined your organization and remained because of what it is and how it operates.  To dissolve and join another organization means changing most if not everything of what you’ve developed; and you are likely to lose many of your people and possibly everything you had previously established.  Please use extreme caution before accepting any such invitation:  seeking more, you might end up with less!

CONCLUSION

If you want not to surrender to despair and hopelessness, you can try individual solutions, and they may or may not work.  However, sociologists know that one of the best ways to good mental health is by extending your social networks and getting involved in social projects; breaking social isolation is a strong step forward.

A stronger way forward is to get involved in a project with others that enhances people’s lives and improves their well-being.  It’s been argued herein that building social change organizations is one of the most beneficial ways forward, enabling you to help others improve their lives while allowing you to meet new people and extend your social networks.

It sure beats taking psychotropic drugs and watching endless reruns of soap operas and situation comedies alone at home in your bathrobe, whether you add the ice cream or not!

Get involved now!

—

Kim Scipes, PhD, is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Purdue University Northwest in Westville, Indiana, USA.  A long-time scholar and activist, his web site lists all of his writings, with many linked to the original article, and his entire book on the KMU Labor Center of the Philippines is on-line for free at https://www.pnw.edu/faculty/kim-scipes-ph-d/publications/.

The United States in the World:  Making Sense of the Past Forty Years (1981-2023)-Part 5

—Kim Scipes

SUMMARY

The preceding four parts have laid out a view that differs vastly from what we are consistently told by our corporate, government, media, and even many of our teachers.  You, dear reader, are going to have to decide whether what has been laid out for you makes sense or not.  If it doesn’t make sense to you, ignore it; throw it out.  On the other hand, if it makes sense, what have you learned?

I think there are several arguments that have been presented and, I’d argue, have been well made and strongly supported.  I will discuss them and then, afterwards, I’ll discuss some possible ramifications for your consideration.

• We can only understand what’s going on in this country—and, by implication, elsewhere—by looking at things from a global level.  We must come to grips with the US being the heartland of the US Empire:  this is crucial to understand the tremendous number of resources that have been diverted away from “ordinary” Americans—such as money for funding public education, health care and infrastructure; addressing social inequalities and inequities; and mitigating and adapting to climate change and other forms of environmental destruction, etc.—which has meant worsening conditions if not actual deprivation for growing numbers of people.  In other words, I’m arguing we cannot make sense of things if we confine our thinking and analysis solely to the national level; we must take a global approach!
• US political, economic, and military leaders have betrayed most Americans:  efforts by US “leaders” to dominate the world are not beneficial to people around the world nor ordinary Americans, serving only the elites, and complicity with this betrays the interests of the large majority of the world’s peoples.  These so-called “leaders” have ravaged other countries—can we begin with Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan? The list is actually much, much longer—while using resources to do such that should go to improving this country and people within it.
• In addition to supporting military operations around the world, economic leaders have sought our consent to their global operations around the world, suggesting that top-down globalization is inevitable, preferable, and unchallengeable. 
• The privately held media is guilty of projecting their interests as if they were those of the US people.  These are capitalist corporations whose primary purpose is to make a profit for investors and top-level managers, not to necessarily inform people, and certainly not beyond what corporate elites think ordinary people should be told.  This is more than just television and cable news shows, but definitely includes the movie industry in all of its aspects.  We must confiscate the assets of private media and distribute them to community-based organizations around the country.
• This paper argues that there is another form differing from top-down corporate/militaristic globalization and that is bottom-up, life-enhancing globalization, generally represented by the global economic and social justice (GESJ)  movement.  Groups and organizations have been fighting this top-down globalization for decades and in multiple locations around the globe, and efforts are intensifying to link them up to fight in solidarity with other liked minded groups and organizations.  Groups and organizations that are fighting economic and political domination, even if not consciously doing from a global perspective, are objectively part of this global project, and we need to seek their conscious adherence to and understanding of the GESJ movement.  Political movements and particular struggles worldwide should seek to advance the values, issues, and perspectives of the GESJ movement, and should consciously seek out other existing organizations for the purpose of building and furthering this global movement.
• This paper implicitly argues that the values of the GESJ movement—enhancing life in all of its forms, ending inequities between all people, while valuing the natural environment—are much more congruent with most Americans than are efforts to dominate people at home and around the world.
• At the same time, this paper has conclusively established that the political-economic system in the United States can no longer guarantee an expanding and more equal social order; in fact, it can only provide a disintegrating social order where inequities continue to grow.  In other words, there is no possible return to the “golden years” (1947-1973), and anyone propagating otherwise is lying.
• And, finally, the US is officially bankrupt; the US government owes rich people and other countries who have bought our bonds over $32 trillion dollars, over 100% of the annual gross national product—and growing.  All of the central bankers of the world know this.  Should another country demand a shift in global reserves from dollars to a basket of currencies or a single currency (say, the Euro), this will likely cause our economy to crash.  Perhaps unlikely in the short, or even medium term, this is all-but-certain over a longer period of time.  When it happens—and it will—it could make the Great Depression a child’s game.
• In other words, while the current social order can hold in the short and perhaps even medium term, it definitely cannot hold in the longer term.  There is an economic/social collapse heading our way—and our military power won’t prevent it—and the longer we wait to address these concerns, the greater the social devastation will be upon its arrival.

However, it should be noted that these findings have been presented without any stated concern about climate change and environmental destruction, which is increasingly being seen as even a greater immediate threat to life on this planet than social collapse such as presented here.

The threat is from capitalism itself, our political-economic system.  To endure, capitalism must constantly expand production.  Yet it is expanding production that is attacking our atmosphere, which protects Earth from solar energy, ultimately weakening this protection, threatening the very existence of human, animal, and most plant life on this planet by the turn of the 22^nd Century.

In short, we have to reject capitalism in all of its forms, with its dependence on continued growth.  We are going to have to make some difficult but essential choices around the essential question:  continued growth with human extermination in the not-too-distant future, or creation of a world where production is minimized to essential levels, where environmental destruction is ended or at least severely constrained, where this production is done in the least detrimental manner and then done in the most egalitarian form conceivable, and where this production is distributed globally in the fairest manner possible.

To summarize:  things are much worse than presented in this paper alone.  A growing number of people are recognizing the worsening situation.  Still, we have a long way to go.  A few small steps that should be considered.

Possible ramifications:

• We must understand that these choices have been made by politicians and their appointees that we elect, and that a political system that is funded by private and/or corporate donations is almost a guaranteed cesspool of malfeasance and corruption.  We must end private/corporate donations and replace our election funding with public funding and strongly enforceable election laws that preclude jerrymandering and other projects that inhibit anyone from voting.
• We must drastically reduce our military and the funding on which it operates.  We must close all US military bases—formal and informal, temporary or permanent—outside of the United States, and we must drastically reduce the number of bases inside the US.  It seems that a 90 percent annual reduction in war spending is reasonable, will still protect the United States, and should be sought immediately; this should be combined with seeking similar spending cuts by each country in the world.
• We must greatly increase taxes on those making over $200,000 a year, and this must be progressive taxation:  the more you make, the more you pay.  Only one residence can be eligible for tax write-offs, and even that is ineligible beyond a certain square footage in size.  We must demand that no one owns a second house until all have one.
• Governmental spending must be transferred from propagating war projects to enhancing life, ending inequities, and valuing the natural environment in the US and around the world.
• These suggestions are much too limited, and I hope others will eagerly surpass them.

CONCLUSION

The rhetoric US political and corporate “leaders” have been using on the American population—and which the mainstream media has been dutifully transmitting—suggests that things are wonderful and that we should not question them or their operations, either at home or overseas.  Accepting this, as I’ve argued in this five-part article, we have allowed them to manipulate us and to do and accept things that have hurt people around the world as well as most Americans.

It is time to stop our acquiescence:  we need to think critically, we need to focus on what’s important for all of us, and we need to build organizations that create power from the ground-upward.  And we need to do this in alliance and consultation with good people around the world:  we either do this or perish ignobly.

By discussing the issues of imperialism, globalization, and neo-liberal economics—issues not commonly discussed in US society—we hopefully now understand, or are beginning to understand, that there are forces effecting US society that are critical to understand but which most Americans are consciously being denied knowledge thereof.  This is not a mistake; I argue it is intentional:  our elites want to keep us confused, angry at each other, and thus unable to engage in collective action against them to change the situation. 

This article began with a discussion of concepts to help us understand what is truly taking place.  It was not just done for general purposes, but to show that we need to seek and/or create social forces that will allow people to have a chance to change things for the better.  Clearly, if there’s anything to be learned from examining the past 40 years, it is that the economic and political elites of this country have consciously acted to initiate changes that have caused the resulting social problems, and they are not going to solve these problems for us:  we have to get off our couches, off our knees, and to seek allies wherever in the world that we can find, work with, and develop with them.

The United States in the World:  Making Sense of the Past Forty Years (1981-2023)-Part 4

— Kim Scipes

NOTE TO READER:  This is the fourth part of a five-part article.  It follows the first section on “Neo-liberal Economics,” and is part of explaining essential concepts of this study plus elaborating on how they interact.

NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMICS (continued from preceding section)

What has been presented so far, regarding changes in income distribution, has been at the group level within the US social order; in this case, quintile by quintile.  It is time now to see how this has affected society overall.

Sociologists and economists use a number called the Gini index to measure inequality.  Family income data has been used so far, and we will continue using it.  A Gini index is fairly simple to use.  It measures inequality in a society.  A Gini index is generally reported in a range between 0.000 and 1.000, and is usually written in thousandths, just like a winning percentage mark:  three digits after the decimal.  And the higher the Gini score, the greater the inequality.

Looking at the Gini index, we can see two periods since 1947, when the US Government began computing the Gini index for the country.  From 1947-1968, with yearly change greater or smaller, the trend is downward, indicating reduced inequality:  from .376 in 1947 to .378 in 1950, but then downward to .348 in 1968.  So, again, over the first period, the trend is downward.

What has happened since then?  From the low point in 1968 of .348, the trend has been upward (rising inequality).  In 1982, the Gini index hit .380, which was higher than any single year between 1947-1968, and the US has never gone below .380 since then.  By 1992, it hit .403, and we’ve never gone back below .400.  In 2001, the US hit .435.  But the score for 2005 has only recently been published:  .440.[1] So, the trend is getting worse, and with the policies established under George W. Bush, I see them only continuing to increase in the forthcoming period.  [And by the way, this increasing trend has continued under both the Republicans and the Democrats, but since the Republicans have controlled the presidency for 18 of the last 26 years (since 1981), they get most of the credit—but let’s not forget that the Democrats have controlled Congress across many of those years, so they, too, have been an equal opportunity destroyer!]

However, one more question must be asked:  how does this income inequality in the US compare to other countries around the world?  Is the level of income inequality comparable to other “developed” societies, or is it comparable to “developing” countries?

We must turn to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for our data.  The CIA computes Gini scores for family income on most of the countries around the world, and the last time checked in 2007 (August 1), they had data on 122 countries on their web page and these numbers had last been updated on July 19, 2007 (US Central Intelligence Agency, 2007, “The World Factbook.  Field Listing—Distribution of Family Income-Gini index.”  Updated as of July 19, 2007.  No longer available on-line.)  With each country listed, there is a Gini score provided.  Now, the CIA doesn’t compute Gini scores yearly, but they give the last year it was computed, so these are not exactly equivalent, but they are suggestive enough to use.  However, when they do assemble these Gini scores in one place, they list them alphabetically, which is not of much comparative use (US Central Intelligence Agency, 2007).

However, the World Bank categorizes countries, which means they can be compared within category and across categories.  The World Bank, which does not provide Gini scores, puts 208 countries into one of four categories based on Gross National Income per capita—that’s total value of goods and services sold in the market in a year, divided by population size.  This is a useful statistic, because it allows us to compare societies with economies of vastly different sizes:  per capita income removes the size differences between countries.

The World Bank locates each country into one of four categories:  lower income, lower middle income, upper middle income, and high income (World Bank, 2007a, “Country Classification.”  No longer available on-line.)  Basically, those in the lower three categories are “developing” or what we used to call “third world” countries, while the high income countries are all of the so-called developed countries.

The countries listed by the CIA with their respective Gini scores were placed into the specific World Bank categories in which the World Bank had previously located them (World Bank, 2007b, 2007b.  “Country Groups.”  No longer available on-line.)  Once grouped in their categories, median Gini scores were computed for each group.   When trying to get one number to represent a group of numbers, median is considered more accurate than an average, so the median was used, which means half of the scores are higher, half are lower—in other words, the data is at the 50^th percentile for each category.

The Gini score for countries, by Gross National Income per capita, categorized by the World Bank: 

Figure 8:  Median Gini Scores by World Bank income categories (countries selected by US Central Intelligence Agency were placed in categories developed by the World Bank) and compared to 2004 US Gini score as calculated by US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

As can be seen, with the (CIA-calculated) Gini score of .450, the US family income is more unequal than the medians for each category, and is more unequal than some of the poorest countries on earth, such as Bangladesh (.318—calculated in 2000), Cambodia (.400, 2004 est.), Laos (.370-1997), Mozambique (.396, 1996-97), Uganda (.430-1999) and Vietnam (.361, 1998).  This same finding also holds true using the more conservative Census Bureau-calculated Gini score of .440.[2]

Thus, the US has not only become more unequal over the 40 years, as has been demonstrated above, but has attained a level of inequality that is much more comparable to those of developing countries in general and, in fact, is more unequal today than some of the poorest countries on Earth!  There is nothing suggesting that this increasing inequality will lessen anytime soon.  And since this increasing income inequality has taken place under the leadership of both major political parties, there is nothing on the horizon that suggests either will resolutely address this issue in the foreseeable future regardless of campaign promises made.

 However, to move beyond discussion of whether the Democrats or Republicans are likely to address these and related issues, some consideration of governmental economic policies is required.  Thus, any president will be constrained by decisions made by previous administrations, as well as by the ideological blinders worn by those chosen to serve at the top levels of an administration.[3]

In short, for about 30 years (1982-2011), there was not a great deal of visible protest in the United States, as implementation of the neo-liberal program along with creation of an individualist culture had a debilitating effect on social movements and other political projects, as they were meant to do.

The economic situation in the United States has been bad and it has taken a long time for working people’s economic situation to improve even to the extent it has.  Obviously, the 2008-09 Great Recession was a disaster for most working people in this country.

We can see this by examining the economic situation circa 2013.[4]  The US economy for workers was in bad shape by 2007, prior to the onset of the Great Recession (see above for details; see also Greenhouse, 2008, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf.). Subsequently, over 8.7 million jobs were lost since the Great Recession, between late 2007-mid 2009 (Stephanie Hugie Barello, 2014, “US Employment from 2007-2009 Recession Through 2022.” Monthly Labor Review, October.  On-line at https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2.307/monthlylaborrev.2014.10.025), and American median income tumbled down 8.9% since 1999, the peak year since World War II; and median income for men and women de­clined 2.5% from 2010 to 2011 (Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, 2012, “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2011.” US Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-143, September: 5.  Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.  Original article no longer available on–line, but for press release and summary, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb12-172.html.

Writing in late 2010, David Leonhardt of the New York Times wrote:

Right now, the estimate is that 9.4 million jobs would need to be added imme­diately to get the jobless rate down to 6%, which some economists are calling “full employment.” That used to be around 4%, so these are skewed estimates. Nonetheless, the estimates are this: if the economy provided 300,000 jobs a month, we wouldn’t end the job shortfall until the middle of 2014. (In other words, that would get us down to 6% unemployment.) If the economy grew at 250,000 jobs a month, which was the pace of the mid-1990s during the longest expansion of the economy since World War II, we wouldn’t end the job shortfall under early 2016. And if the economy provided 200,000 jobs a month, the job shortfall wouldn’t end until early 2020. (Leonhardt, 2010 “In the Rearview, A Year that Fizzled.” New York Times, December 29: B-1.  On-line at https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/business/economy/29leonhardt.html.)

How were we actually doing? The title of a front page New York Times article on January 8, 2011, by Michael Powell and Sewell Chan suggested the answer: “Slow Job Growth Dims Expectation of Early Revival: Unemploy­ment rate is 9.4%—Recovery Could Require Another 4 or 5 Years, Fed’s Chief Says.” These reporters noted that in December 2010, only 103,000 jobs were added, unemployment was expected to remain over eight percent throughout the rest of Obama’s first term, and the so-called “real” unemploy­ment rate—which includes workers who are discouraged and have given looking for work, or who are working only part time when they seek full-time work—stood at 16.7 percent. Further, they quoted one analyst saying, “We are seeing evidence of structural employment among those in the prime, higher-earning 35- to 44-year old demographic where unemployment actually increased in December,” and they reported an estimate that it would take until 2037 to regain the number of jobs lost during the great recession, which is what they’re calling this crisis since 2007 (Powell and Chan, 2011, “Slow Job Growth Dims Expectations of Early Revival: Unemployment rate is 9.4%–Recovery Could Require Another 4 or 5 Years, Fed’s Chief Says.” New York Times, January 18: A-1. On-line at https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/business/economy/08jobs.html).

So far—as I wrote in mid-2013—things have worked out somewhat better than this, although not by much. Only 165,000 jobs were added in July 2013, and the unemployment rate was at 7.4 percent, only a little below the 7.8 per­cent level at which it had been between September and December 2012, and the lowest it’s been since 2008. A number of Americans had simply dropped out of the labor market, making things look better than they really were: “For every 100 American adults, 63 had jobs before the recession; now, only 59 do.”

The unemployment rate is falling nonetheless because it only counts people actively seeking work. And since the recession, a growing number of Americans are not even trying to find jobs. Some have given up; others appear to be avoid­ing the labor market by staying in school or at home (New York Times, 2013, “Highlights of the July Unemployment Report.” August 3: A-3).

Along with the jobs situation, poverty was increasing. The national pov­erty rate—at a terribly insufficient level that is approximately half of what is needed for long-term survival[5]—jumped from 13.2 percent in 2008 to 15 percent in 2011, while the numbers of people increased across the same years from 39.6 million to 46.2 million, the highest since the government began gathering data in 1959 (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith, 2012: 13).

Poverty had increased when we examined the experiences of the different racial and ethnic groupings, too. Poverty among whites grew from 8.6 percent in 2008 to 9.8 percent in 2011, while the Black impoverishment rate jumped from 24.7 percent to 27.6 percent; Latino impoverishment increased from 23.2 percent to 25.3 percent in 2011; while Asian impoverishment remained ap­proximately stable around 12.5 percent.[6] 

Poverty for children under 18 also worsened: from 19 percent in 2008 to 21.9 percent in 2011 (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith, 2012: 13). This is not surprising, as a 2010 report by researchers at the National Center for Children in Poverty stated, “Children represent 25 percent of the population. Yet, they comprise 36 percent of all the people in poverty. Among children, 42 percent live in low-income families [defined as below 200 percent of the poverty line-KS], and of those, 25 percent live in poor families [below the poverty line-KS]” (Michelle Chau, Kalyani Thampi, and Vanessa R. Wight, 2010. “Basic Facts about Low-income Children, 2009.” National Center for Children in Poverty, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York: October.  On-line at https://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_975.html.)

  Writing in the New York Times, Charles M. Blow noted, “The number of children living in poverty has risen 33 percent since 2000,” while the child population only increased about three percent during the same time. Further, he reports that, “according to a 2007 UNICEF report on child poverty, the US ranked last among 24 wealthy nations” (Charles Blow, 2010, “Suffer the Little Children.” New York Times, December 24.  On-line at https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/25/opinion/25blow.html). As Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times, “neuroscientists have found that ‘many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.’ The effect is to impair language development and memory for the rest of a child’s life” (Paul Krugman, 2008, “Poverty is Poison.” New York Times, February 18.  On-line at https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18krugman.html). In plain language: poverty poisons children’s brains.

Tragically, of those living below the poverty line, 44 percent of all people in poverty lived at half of the official poverty line or lower; that was 6.6 percent of the national population, increasing from 17.1 million in 2008 to 20.4 mil­lion in 2011. Altogether, 34.3 percent of all Americans lived below 200 per­cent of the poverty threshold (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith, 2012: 17).[7]

 What was causing this social devastation?  With the adoption of a neo-liberal economic program in desperate response to this intensifying global competition and threat to the US Empire, Reagan and his successors accelerated their attacks on the unions and working people in general. Corporations that employed many workers (i.e., were “labor intensive”) closed their operations at home and moved overseas, especially to places such as Mexico and China, where workers were controlled, and wages were limited. Corporations that relied on high-cost machinery (“capital intensive”) stayed in the US, but subsequent developments of their required machinery required fewer and fewer workers.[8]  On top of that, taxes were cut for the wealthy and corporations, allowing cases to be made to cut social services, despite many people increasingly needing them.

Steve Fraser discusses the impact:

During the 1970s alone, between 32 and 38 million jobs were lost due to …
disinvestment, which was common practice in old (New England textile factories)
and new industries alike (New England aircraft manufacturers). Manufacturing,
which after the Second World War accounted for nearly 30 percent of the
economy, by 2011 had dropped to a bit more than 10 percent. Since the turn of
the millennium alone, 3.5 million manufacturing jobs have vanished and 42,000
manufacturing plants closed. On average between the years 2000 and 2011,
seventeen American manufacturers closed each day (Fraser, 2015, The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to
Organized Wealth and Power. New York: Little, Brown and Company: 235).[9]

            Although things were bad before the 2008-09 Great Recession, the Recession ripped the scab off Americans’ unwillingness understand the impact of these economic changes on their neighbors and co-workers. Sarah Jaffe (2016, Necessary Trouble:  Americans in Revolt. New York:  Nation Books: 20) reports that approximately 8.7 million jobs were lost between December 2007 and early 2010.[10]

Economic and social conditions for many workers across the country plummeted, as Steve Fraser (2015: 223-263) brilliantly, but tragically, illuminates.

The fact is that capitalism can no longer provide jobs and economic opportunity for nearly as many people as it provided for in the past. And this will become limited to fewer and fewer people as time passes.

This job loss is going to continue if not actually escalate. Although much rhetoric has been expended on blaming foreigners and “unfair trade competition” for US job losses, research by Michael Hicks and Srikant Devaraj (2015, “The Myth and Reality of Manufacturing in
America.” Muncie, IN: Ball State University, Center for Business and Economic
Research. On-line at http://projects.cberdata.org/reports/MfgReality.pdf) of Ball State University in Indiana has shown that between 2000-2010, automation was responsible for 88 percent of all job losses in this period, while trade was responsible for 13 percent of the job losses. Already, according to McKinsey and Company, 45 percent of all jobs being done in early 2016 could be automated (Claire Cain Miller, 2016. “The Long-term Jobs Killer is Not China, It’s Automation.” New York Times, December 21. On-line at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs-killer-is-not-china-its-automation.html.)

But what about those declining unemployment figures? According to Lawrence B. Katz of Harvard and Alan B. Krueger of Princeton, both members of the National Bureau of Economic Research, all of the jobs created from 2005 to 2015 were of sub-standard conditions, meaning they were temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract company workers, and independent contractors or freelancers (Katz and Krueger, 2016, “The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work
Arrangements in the United States, 1995-2015.” March 29. On-line at http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/lkatz/files/katz_krueger_cws_v3.pdf?m=1459369766), and which generally resulted in lower pay, fewer benefits, and less economic security overall.

In short, things are bad, and all indications are that they will only get worse for increasing
numbers of working people. Between 1999 and 2014, people making less than $42,000 for a family of three lost ten percent of their income; for those between $42,000 and $125,000, their incomes declined by six percent; and for those making more than $125,000, their income fell by seven percent over this period. Overall, “Nationwide, the median income for US households in 2014 stood at 8 percent less than in 1999” with “median incomes falling in 190 of 229 metropolitan areas examined” (Pew, 2016, “America’s Shrinking Middle Class: A Close Look at Changes Within Metropolitan
Areas.” Pew Research Center, May 11: 10. On-line at https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2016/05/11/americas-shrinking-middle-class-a-close-look-at-changes-within-metropolitan-areas/)

Things had not changed dramatically by 2021.  With a poverty threshold of $27,740 for a family of four, 11.6 percent of all Americans were in poverty, numbering 37.9 million people.  Poverty rates for racial/ethnic groups that year were 10.0 percent for whites, 19.5 percent for Blacks, 8.3 percent for Asians, 24.3 percent for American Indians and Alaskan Natives, 14.2 percent for Two or More Races, and 17.1 percent for Hispanics (US Bureau of Census, 2022, “Poverty in the United States: 2021.” On-line at https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-277.html).

I have presented extensive data and supporting analysis in the first four parts of this article.  In Part 5, I draw out major ramifications from this analysis.

The United States in the World:  Making Sense of the Past Forty Years (1981-2023)-Part 3

— Kim Scipes

NOTE TO READER:  This is the third part of a five-part article.  It follows the section on “Globalization,” and is part of explaining essential concepts of this study plus elaborating on how they interact.

NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMICS[1]

Additionally, there is what is called neo-liberal economics.  This is an effort to try to explain the development particularly of the US economy within a global context.[2]  Often said to be based on the principles of the free market—itself an ideological conceptualization[3]—neo-liberal economics is definitely not free, but is highly developed to benefit the wealthy and powerful of the US Empire; thus, it is intended to further enrich those who are already well off while providing additional economic resources to support the US Empire.  And it serves to rationalize the domestic disembowelment of the US domestic economy, which has already destroyed the economic well-being and security of millions in this country, while making the disenfranchised think that the failure was their’s alone, and not the result of systematic design by the rich and powerful, and that they are unable to resist these larger social processes through their social isolation and feelings of individualism that have been further enhanced by the elites.

It is an analysis of these processes in the post-World War II (post-1945) period.

The US emerged from the global destruction of World War II all-but-unscathed and with the most technologically-advanced economy in the world; besides having the atomic bomb and dropping it twice on Japan, and the strongest naval and air forces in the world, they soon created the CIA (the Central Intelligence Agency) to help them maintain political dominance in the world whenever and whereafter possible.[4]  The US Empire was built on the back of a strong economy—McCoy (2017, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power. Chicago: Haymarket Books) points out that the US produced 50 percent of the world’s production of goods and services in the early 1950s (as much as that produced by all of the other countries in the world, combined)—and this was joined with international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), each designed to help protect the global economy from the flaws of unregulated capitalism that led to the Great Depression, a global economy that American economic architects assumed would always be dominated by the United States.

For people in the United States, this led to 26 years of increasing and almost equal real economic growth inside of US society.

The years between 1947 and 1973 are considered the “golden years” of the US society.[5]  The values are presented in 2005 dollars, so that means that inflation has been excluded and that the findings in this chart can be compared with Figure 2 and Figure 5, below:  these are real dollar values, and thus are valid comparisons.

Figure 1:  US Family Income, in US dollars, Growth and Distribution, by quintile,

1947-1973, in 2005 Dollars[6]

Source: US Commerce Department, Bureau of the Census (hereafter, US Census Bureau) at www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f01ar.html:  this data is no longer available.  All dollar values converted to 2005 dollars by US Census Bureau, removing inflation and comparing real values.   Differences and percentages calculated by author. Percentages shown in row labeled “Difference” show the dollar difference as a percentage of the first year of the comparison and have been rounded.

Data for the first period, 1947-1973, shows there was considerable real economic growth for each quintile.  Over the 26-year period, there was approximately 100 percent real economic growth for the incomes at the top of each quintile, which meant incomes doubled after inflation was removed; thus, there was significant real economic growth in the society.

And importantly, this real economic growth was distributed fairly evenly.  The data in the fourth line (in parentheses) is the percentage relationship between the difference between 1947-1973 real income when compared to the 1947 real income, with 100 percent representing a doubling of real income:  i.e., the difference for the bottom quintile between 1947 and 1973 was an increase of $11,386, which is 97 percent more than $11,758 that the top of the quintile had in 1947.  As can be seen, other quintiles also saw increases of roughly comparable amounts: in ascending order, 101 percent, 107 percent, 101 percent, and 91 percent.  In other words, the rate of growth by quintile was very similar across all five quintiles of the population.

By the mid-1960s, however, the World War II war-torn countries of France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom had recovered to such an extent that their corporations were able to compete with those of the United States in Europe and Japan. By the 1970s, some of these corporations were competing with US corporations inside the United States.  And by the 1980s, foreign corporations were increasingly investing in productive facilities inside the US, enhancing their competitive situation against US firms.

Ronald W. Cox points out that these changes resulted in “the falling rates of profit faced by US-based corporations during the late 1960s and early 1970s,” which extended throughout the 1970s into the mid-1980s.[8]  He focuses on “an examination of the measures taken by US corporations in response to lower profit rates,” which “include both market-based restructuring aimed at lowering input costs, combined with political organization aimed at shifting US state policy in a neoliberal direction,” results he and Cathy Skidmore-Hess had reported in 1999.

Cox explains in some detail:

For US corporations, the traditional approach to maintaining profit rates has been to use oligopolistic market power and position to raise prices.  This strategy could only be used by firms whose market share in a given industry was at a level of concentration that made it cost prohibitive for new firms to effectively enter the market and to compete at lower prices.  The most globally competitive US-based corporations in automobiles, steel, chemicals, and machine tools enjoyed such an advantage over their competitors through the immediate post-World War II period.  This enabled these firms to effectively capture the most dynamic, value-added segments of the US market against domestic and foreign competitors for the first two decades after World War II.  However, by the mid-1960s, there were visible cracks in the oligopolistic structures that allowed those firms to dominate the US market.

Rising competition from Japanese and German exporters, followed by market penetration from the newly industrializing countries of Asia, weakened the hold that US-based oligopolies had on the domestic market.  The ability of US oligopolistic firms in key industries to raise prices to maintain profitability was undercut by the influx of greater foreign competition.  Furthermore, foreign firms that retooled after World War II had a built-in advantage over their US counterparts: they adopted newer technologies that made them more competitive and had a lower time horizon of “sunken” costs compared to their US competitors.  US firms, having developed their productive assets during the 1930s, had higher pension and medical care obligations than their foreign counterparts—a reflection of both the high levels of privatization of these costs in the US compared to Europe and the lengthier time horizon for US firms in being obligated to these costs.  During the first two decades of the post-World War II period, the most globally competitive US firms could use their status as “early industrializers” to establish oligopolies that dominated the US market in all of the leading sectors of manufacturing.  That strategy was becoming untenable with the rise of increased global competition.

US corporations had to look to other strategies in an attempt to overcome the declining rate of profit.  A convergence of events in the late 1970s and early 1980s led corporations to restructure their operations through merger and acquisition strategies that involved buying out, or merging with, competitor firms, and subsequently shedding assets in a restructuring process designed to focus business operations around a core set of activities.  This involved a reorganization of the corporation around global supply chains in which the highest valued-added profits accrued to corporations at the top of the chain.  From the mid-1980s to the present, there has been a greater concentration of market share controlled by the corporations at the top of the value-added chain of production, especially in ‘the high-technology and/or strongly branded segments of the global markets….’  This process has coexisted with an increasingly complex global production system of small and medium-sized producers and suppliers that completes with each other to satisfy the terms of production that are increasingly being established by the ‘system integrators’ at the top of the supply chain (Cox, 2012: 15-16).[9]

The unfettered world that the US economy had operated within after World War II was changing: no longer under control of the United States, it was shifting from a centralized system dominated by one country to a decentralized one that was much more competitive. By the 1980s, increasing competition was also coming from corporations from some of the so-called developing countries. These trends have only continued to develop.  And, in fact, what we have subsequently seen is both competition against and collaboration with competing firms of other countries, including companies from formerly colonized nations.

Production in the US had stagnated in the 1970s, and this was joined with increasing monetary inflation. The US was clearly losing its economic advantages to competing countries.

The Business Roundtable—a grouping of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of leading US corporations—was formed in 1972 to begin offering “solutions” in response to the economic lethargy they saw developing.[10]  Basically, they decided that they could no longer tolerate trade unions that limited their managerial control on shop floors, and developed strategies to remove that problem.

The rise and triumph of the corporate neo-liberal agenda did not simply happen because of ‘market forces’ or globalization. The most powerful corporations in the US—many of them the most powerful in the world—organized to make it happen; they developed their own consensus and mobilized their vast resources and network to make it happen. They were determined to counter the surge in labor militancy and reverse the wage gains that took place in the 1960s and peaked during the last phase of the Vietnam War in 1969-71. The corporate offensive was not only aimed at constraining workers’ militancy and reducing wage gains, it was also a response to the challenges that seemed to be posed by the various protest movements of the 1960s, movements that appeared threatening to the status quo and had resonances among young and Black workers (emphasis in original) (Richard Roman and Edur Velasco Arregui, 2013: 7).[11]

These strategies included actions on multiple levels. They challenged trade unions on shop floors, but they went much further than that. They decided that they would “outsource” labor-intensive production to countries that had low labor costs, especially to those that had the means to control labor, and which would compete to get investment for their countries. They would work with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to get them to provide infrastructure investments for these countries to support any new foreign investment. They would upgrade technology in US factories, replacing workers with newly designed machines with “labor-saving” aspects. They would work with “leading” intellectuals to develop an understanding of the changes needed that was conveyable to the public—hence, the propagation of what became known as “neo-liberal” economics. They would support politicians and judges who would support their program. And they would support and fund politicians who would advance these ideas as part of their electoral campaign, especially at the national level.

The philosophy of neo-liberal economics was key to this strategy. Basically, it argued that the well-being of US corporations was central to the well-being of the US economy, that the US economy is central to the well-being of the United States Empire, and that key to the well-being of US corporations was to eradicate any restrictions on US corporations, no matter how deleterious doing so was to US society.[12]  This meant allowing US corporations unfettered control over their work forces, marginalizing if not destroying trade unions in their factories and other operations. It meant undermining strikes by allowing “replacement workers” (scabs) and ensuring their job “rights” after strikes ended. It meant allowing contractual workers and part-time workers to replace full-time workers. It meant undercutting health and safety protections, workers’ compensation schemes (for those hurt on the job), and any other restrictions that might limit production and productivity. And it meant prohibiting any regulations/ restrictions on corporate decisions as to where, and under what conditions, they could invest or disinvest from communities.

As I wrote in 1984, “This offensive [cutting production costs of corporations] has taken many approaches. It includes ‘rationalization” (getting rid of surplus and/or old plants), modernization, concessions, and bankruptcy. Oftentimes, an attack will combine several of these approaches.”

I further explained,

The point of mentioning these different industry and company approaches is to show many different ways workers are under attack. Each one of these attacks is ultimately an assault against unions. The important goal is to destroy worker resistance on the shop floor. Every company wants to be able to force workers to do what the company wants, when the company wants, how the company wants. They see unions as institutionalized forms of resistance, and if a union is standing up for its members at all, they want to subjugate and crush it (Scipes, 1984: 20-21).

Yet, neo-liberal economics went beyond “liberating” the particular corporations from the “oppression” of treating their workers respectfully: it meant restructuring the entire social order. As Francis Fox Piven notes, neo-liberal economic politics were a set of policies carried out, in the name of individualism and unfettered markets, for

the deregulation of corporations, and particularly financial institutions; the rollback of public services and benefit programs; curbing labor unions; ‘free trade’ policies that would pry open foreign markets; and whenever possible, the replacement of public programs with private markets (Piven, 2006: 17).[13]

It also included tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, as well as cuts in environmental programs.

The right-wing forces that opposed governmental intervention in the economy (unless it benefited them or their corporate sponsors)—whether opposing the social programs of the 1960s (often for racist reasons), or because of economic philosophy—coalesced in the presidential campaign and, beginning in January 1981, in the administration of Ronald Reagan. These people took an ideological approach that any governmental intervention in the economy was deleterious to economic growth and societal well-being: Reagan parsed it, saying “Government isn’t the solution; it’s the problem.”[14]

I argue, however, there was more than profit maximization that was driving this adoption of neo-liberal economics:  the elites were feeling the increasingly successful economic competition from other countries as a direct threat to their ability to support and maintain the US Empire, and so they began transferring economic resources away from the United States and its people toward supporting the US Empire and particularly the US military.[15]

In 1980, and again in 1982, the economy contracted. In 1982, the ideologues under Reagan convinced him of the necessity to wring inflation out of the economy, and the government did not intervene to “restimulate” the economy: although interest rates reached 21 percent, which were economically devastating, Reagan did not launch new social programs or increase funding for established ones. Unemployment exploded, reaching the highest levels since the Great Depression.

At the same time, Reagan attacked the labor movement, the one force—despite its many limitations—that had provided economic advancement for millions of Americans.[16] When the air traffic controllers’ union (PATCO—Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) struck in 1981, Reagan brought in military air traffic controllers to break the strike. (One of the great errors made by the national-level leaders of the labor movement, having disastrous effects, was refusing to shut down the entire airline industry, which was still heavily unionized, to stop Reagan’s union busing.) The Federal government’s union busting, and other right-wing legislative and court decisions that attacked the labor movement, unleashed business’ ability to increase productivity at the direct expense of workers—particularly by moving labor-intensive jobs to low wage countries like Mexico and China (destroying jobs in the US) and by investing in capital-intensive machinery that was also designed to eradicate jobs.[17]

Yet Reagan, despite the mythology that has been created around him, ended up hurting the economy in a long-term manner that has rarely been acknowledged. He engaged in massive deficit spending, only this spending was not to help the American people in general; it was to help the richest Americans, the US military and the arms industry: Reagan began spending hundreds of billions of dollars each year on the war department—I refuse to call it “defense”—and he did it by doubling the national debt in eight years: when he came into office in 1981, the US national debt—from 1789 under George Washington to the end of Jimmy Carter’s administration—was at $ .909 trillion dollars; when Reagan left, eight years later, it was $2.7 trillion.[18]  (It has continued rising since then under both Democratic and Republican presidents, and as of October 2022,  it is over $31 trillion (Alan Rappeport and Jim Tankersley, 2022, “US Debt Surpasses $31 Trillion.” New York Times, October 5: B-1 and B-3.  On-line at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/business/national-debt.html.).[19] 

In other words, the US economy has done as well as it has over the past 40+ years—although never as well for regular people as it did between 1947-73—because the US government has been writing “hot checks” to pay for its expenditures. At some point in time, that debt will have to be repaid—and it’s not going to be pretty.[20]

To return to our story: along with the attacks on unions, unfunded wars, etc., the philosophy of neo-liberal economics collapsed our dominant societal values into one thing: profitability. If something enhances the potential of increased profitability of business, it is good; if it does not—no matter how important anything else is—it is bad. If regulations on food or air/water quality or worker/food safety cost corporations money, they are bad and should be immediately disbanded, no matter how beneficial they are to people, the environment or to our general social order. It is this “philosophy” that the US government has been pushing around the world, and it has hurt billions of people, including tens of millions within the United States.

What this has meant for labor is that anything that has limited business’ power in the workplace—unions themselves, strikes, any type of health and safety regulations, etc.—has been attacked by corporations. Additionally, through legislative and/or court decisions, actions that have limited workers’ collective power—protecting strike breakers, contract labor, and efforts to destroy unions through privatizing public services, etc.—have been supported. Again, anything that hinders or reduces profitability, no matter how much of a social good it provides—is bad: that is the philosophy and impact of neo-liberal economics.

Yet something else has happened in the United States in addition to adopting neo-liberal economics. The social upsurge during the 1960s-early 1970s—including the Civil Rights/Black Power movements, the women’s movement, the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) movement, the environmental movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and especially the anti-Vietnam War movement inside the US military—scared the crap out of the ruling elites. They decided that they would do whatever they could do to ensure that collectivity, and especially collective action, would never again raise its ugly head in this social order.[21]

To accomplish this, they have been creating a culture of individualism to undercut any aspirations of collectivity. Basically, as long as you and your loved ones are ok, you do not have to worry about the well-being of anyone else in the country—and, in fact, they told people that caring about others would undermine their individual interests. They created what I called the “I’ve got mine, screw you, Jack” culture and society. And this “screw you, Jack” ideology has been very successful: despite growing income inequality in the United States—that is more extreme than some of the poorest nations on the planet (e.g., Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Mozambique, Uganda, and Vietnam; see Part 4)—there was no nationwide discussion of this income inequality from about 1973 until the Occupy Wall Street movement that emerged in the Fall of 2011, almost 40 years.[22]

So, starting probably in about 1978, but specifically with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, right-wing ideologues (including their allies in the mainstream media, such as the founders of FOX and the rest) have deceived the country into believing that anything that hinders business’ potential for enhanced profitability is bad, and that all forms of collectivity are self-defeating. Thus, Reagan not only moved the Republican Party to the far right, but he got the Democratic Party to move to the right as well: arguably, no subsequent US presidential administration has passed as liberal a domestic program as Richard Nixon’s between 1969-73.[23]

We can get some idea of the impact of all of this on ordinary Americans when we look at economic growth between 1973-2001, and especially when we compare the data in Figure 1 (1947-73), above:

Figure 2:  US Family Income, in US dollars, Growth and Distribution, by quintile,

1973-2001, in 2005 Dollars

Source: US Commerce Department, Bureau of the Census (hereafter, US Census Bureau) at www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f01ar.html; this data is no longer available. All dollar values converted to 2005 dollars by US Census Bureau, removing inflation and comparing real values.   Differences and percentages calculated by author. Percentages shown in row labeled “Difference” show the dollar difference as a percentage of the first year of the comparison and have been rounded.

When looking at the figures for 1973-2001, something vastly different from the 1947-73 figures (Figure 1) can be observed.  What can be seen?  First, economic growth has slowed considerably:  the highest rate of growth for any quintile was that of 58 percent for those who topped the fifth quintile, and this was far below the “lagger” of 91 percent of the earlier period.

Second, of what growth there was, it was distributed extremely unequally.  And the growth rates for those in lower quintiles were generally lower than for those above them; the impact was regressive, not progressive:  for the bottom quintile, their real income grew only 14 percent over the 1973-2001 period; for the second quintile, 19 percent; for the third, 29 percent; for the fourth, 42 percent; and for the 80-95 percent, 58 percent:  loosely speaking, the rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer.

Why the change?  I think three things in particular.  First, as industrialized countries recovered from World War II, corporations based in these countries could again compete with those from the US—first in their own home countries, and then through importing into the US, and then ultimately when they invested in the United States.  Think of Toyota:  they began importing into the US in the early 1970s, and with their investments here in the early ‘80s and forward, they now are the second largest domestic US auto producer.

The second cause was the restructuring of the US economy which, based on the work of Ronald W. Cox, was discussed above, moving from oligopolistic control to commanding global supply chains.  On the corporate management level, they obviously made decisions to do this restructuring.  Big business organizations worked very hard to find and elect politicians who would pass laws/make policies that would allow them to restructure and implement the projects they sought.  They supported Supreme Court candidates who would accept such changes and allow these changes to be institutionalized.  And they would work with foreign governments that would allow them into their countries, and especially where governmental leaders were willing to keep a tight rein on any workers’ movement that might emerge.  And the biggest prize was opening China to foreign transnational investment.

After a long-range and extensive campaign among politicians and the American public by the largest transnational business organizations,

China’s accession to the WTO [World Trade Organization] followed a little more than a year later.  It was a tremendous accomplishment for the interests of transnational capital, as US and EU policymakers negotiated concessions that far exceeded those of previous less developed country (LDC) members (Breslin, 2000).  These concessions would allow US transnational firms to deepen their profitability by allowing them greater access to the China market and by enabling them to integrate China into their global supply chains.  In short, China’s accession to WTO was a watershed for transnational capital, particularly for high-tech firms that were the most poised to incorporate China into already existing networks of transnational accumulation (emphasis added) (Cox and Lee, 2012: 36).

And as these transnational corporations integrated China into their global supply chains, they downsized and/or closed their US production facilities, wiping out millions of jobs in the United States.[25]

Third cause for the change has been the deterioration of the American labor movement:  from 35.3 percent of the non-agricultural workforce in unions in 1954, to only 12.0 percent of all American workers in unions in 2006—and only 7.4 percent of all private industry workers are unionized, which is less than in 1930![26] 

This decline in unionization has a number of reasons.  Part of this deterioration has been the result of government policies—everything from the crushing of the air traffic controllers when they went on strike by the Reagan Administration in 1981, to reform of labor law, to reactionary appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees administration of labor law.  Certainly, a key government policy, signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, has been the North American Free Trade Act or NAFTA.  One analyst came straight to the point:

Since … [NAFTA] was signed in 1993, the rise in the US trade deficit with Canada and Mexico through 2002 has caused the displacement of production that supported 879,280 US jobs.  Most of these lost jobs were high-wage positions in manufacturing industries.  The loss of these jobs is just the most visible tip of NAFTA’s impact on the US economy.  In fact, NAFTA has also contributed to rising income inequality, suppressed real wages for production workers, weakened workers’ collective bargaining powers and ability to organize unions, and reduced fringe benefits (Scott, 2003, “The High Price of ‘Free’ Trade:  NAFTA’s Failure Has Cost the United States Jobs Across the Nation.” Washington, DC:  Economic Policy Institute, “Briefing Paper # 147, November 17: 1.  On-line at https://www.epi.org/content/cfm/briefingpapers_bp147).

These attacks by elected officials have been joined by the effects due to the restructuring of the economy, especially by the largest transnational corporations.  There has been an overall shift from manufacturing to services. 

However, within manufacturing, which has long been a union stronghold, there has been significant job loss:  between July 2000 and January 2004, the US lost three million manufacturing jobs, or 17.5 percent, and 5.2 million since the historical peak in 1979, so that “Employment in manufacturing [in January 2004] was its lowest since July 1950” (CBO, 2004, “What Accounts for the Decline in Manufacturing Employment?” Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, Economic and Budget Issue Brief, February 18.  No longer available on-line.)

The job loss across the manufacturing sector was widespread and deep:

The AFL-CIO details the American job loss by the manufacturing sector in the 2001-05 period:

Computers and electronics: 543,000 workers or 29.2 per cent

Semiconductor and electronic components: 260,100 or 36.7 per cent

Electrical equipment and appliances: 152,500 or 26 per cent

Vehicle parts: 153,400 or 18.6 per cent

Machinery: 289,400 or 19.9 per cent

Fabricated metal products: 235,200 or 13.3 per cent

Primary metals: 144,800 or 23.5 per cent

Transportation equipment: 246,300 or 12.1 per cent

Furniture products: 58,500 or 13.4 per cent

Textile mills: 158,500 or 43.6 per cent

Apparel 220,000 or 46.6 per cent

Leather products: 24,700 or 38.3 per cent

Printing: 159,300 or 19.9 per cent

Paper products: 122,600 or 20.4 per cent

Plastics and rubber products: 141,400 or 15 per cent

Chemicals: 94,900 or 9.7 per cent

Aerospace: 46,900 or 9.1 per cent

Textiles and apparel declined by 870,000 jobs 1994-2006, a decline of 65.5 per cent (Source: AFL-CIO, 2006: 2.  “China Trade:  Deficits, Jobs, Investment and Exploitation.”  On-line at http://www.afl-cio.org/issues/jobseconomy/globaleconomy.upload/china_learnfacts.pdf.  No longer available, cited in Scipes, 2009: 16-17).

This is due to shifting to global supply chains at the highest levels (such as computers and other information technology-related products along with automobiles), combined with general outsourcing of labor-intensive production overseas (such as garments, shoes) and, more importantly, technological displacement as new technology has enabled greater production at higher quality with fewer workers in capital-intensive production such as steel (see Fisher, 2004, “Why Are We Losing Manufacturing Jobs?”  On-line at file:///Users/kimscipes/Downloads/ec%2020040701%20why%20are%20we%20losing%20manufacturing%20jobs%20pdfl; no longer available).

There are multiple “causes” given for these changes in manufacturing in addition to the above.  Some analysts have blamed burgeoning trade deficits for the rise: “… an increasing share of domestic demand for manufacturing output is satisfied by foreign rather than domestic producers” (Bivens, 2004, “Shifting Blame for Manufacturing Job Loss:  Effects of Rising Trade Deficit Shouldn’t be Ignored.” Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper. On-line at https://files.epi.org/page/-/old/briefingpapers/149/bp149.pdf).  Others have even attributed it to changes in consumer preferences (Schweitzer and Zaman, 2006).  Whatever the reason, of the 50 states, only five (Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming) did not see any job loss in manufacturing between 1993-2003, yet 37 lost between 5.6 and 35.9 percent of their manufacturing jobs during this period (Public Policy Institute, 2004, . “Manufacturing Employment.”  On-line at www.ppinys.org/reports/jtf2004/mfgemploy.htm; no longer available.)

However, part of the credit for deterioration of the labor movement must be given to the labor movement itself:  the leadership has been simply unable to confront these changes and, at the same time, they have consistently worked against any independent action by rank-and-file members.[27]

However, it must be asked: are the changes in the economy presented herein merely statistical manipulations, or is this indicating something real? 

This point can be illustrated another way:  by using CAGR, the Compound Annual Growth Rate, a tool commonly used in the financial world.  This is a single number that is computed, based on compounded amounts, across a range of years, to come up with an average number to represent the rate of increase or decrease each year across the entire period.  This looks pretty complex, but it is based on the same idea as compound interest used in our savings accounts:  you put in $10 today and (this is obviously not a real example) because you get ten percent interest, so you have $11 the next year.  Well, the following year, interest is not computed off the original $10, but is computed on the $11.  So, by the third year, from your $10, you now have $12.10.  Etc.  And this is what is meant by the Compound Annual Growth Rate:  this is compound growth averaged by year across a designated period.

Based on the numbers presented above in Figure 1, the author calculated the Compound Annual Growth Rate by quintiles (Figure 3). The annual growth rate has been calculated for the first period, 1947-1973, the years known as the “golden years” of US society.  What has happened since then?  Compare results from the 1947-73 period to the annual growth rate across the second period, 1973-2001, again calculated by the author.

Figure 3:  Annual average percentage of family income growth, by quintile,

1947-1973 compared to 1973-2001

Source: Calculated by author from gather provided by the US Census Bureau at www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f01ar.html.  (Page no longer available.)

What we can see here is that while everyone’s income was growing at about the same rate in the first period—between 2.51 and 2.84 percent annually—by the second period, not only had growth slowed down across the board, but it grew by very different rates:  what we see here, again, is that the rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer.

If these figures are correct, a change over time in the percentage of income received by each quintile should be observable. Ideally, if society were egalitarian, each 20 percent of the population would get 20 percent of the income in any one year.  In reality, it differs.  To understand Figure 4, below, one must not only look at the percentage of income held by a quintile across the chart, comparing selected year by selected year, but one needs to look to see whether a quintile’s share of income is moving toward or away from the ideal 20 percent.

Figure 4:  Percentage of family income distribution by quintile,

1947, 1973, and 2001, as measured in 2005 Dollars[28]

.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau at www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f02ar.html :  no longer available

Unfortunately, much of the data available publicly ended in 2001.  However, in the summer of 2007, after years of not releasing data any later than 2001, the Census Bureau released income data up to 2005.  It allows us to examine what has taken place regarding family income inequality during the first four years of the George W. Bush Administration.

Figure 5: US Family Income, in US dollars, Growth and Distribution, by quintile,

2001-2005, 2005 Dollars

Source:  US Census Bureau at www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f01ar.html:  no longer available.  (These values are from their 2005 dollar values and were calculated by the Census Bureau.)  Differences and percentages calculated by author, and percentages rounded.

Thus, what we’ve seen under the first four years of the Bush Administration is that for at most Americans, their economic situation has worsened:  not only has overall economic growth for any quintile slowed to a minuscule 1.94 percent at the most, but that the bottom 80 percent actually lost income; losing money (an absolute loss), rather than growing a little but falling further behind the top quintile (a relative loss).  Further, the decrease across the bottom four quintiles has been suffered disproportionately by those in the lowest 40 percent of society.

This can perhaps be seen more clearly by examining CAGR rates by period.

We can now add the results of the 2001-2005 period share of income by quintile to our earlier chart:

Figure 6:  Percentage of annual average income growth per year by percentile, 1947-2005

Source:  Calculated by author from data gathered from the US Department of the Census www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f01ar.html:  no longer available.

As can be seen below, the percentage of family income at each of the four bottom quintiles is less in 2005 than in 1947; the only place there has been improvement over this 58-year period is at the 95^th percentile (and above).

Figure 7:  Percentage of family income distribution by quintile,

1947, 1973, 2001, and 2005

Source: U.S. Census Bureau at www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f02ar.html:  no longer available.

What has been presented so far, regarding changes in income distribution, has been at the group level within the US social order; in this case, quintile by quintile.  It is time now to see how this has affected society overall.  This will be addressed in Part 4.

Globalization is an on-going process. Using the term means taking a planetary scope, no longer restricting one’s analysis to the level of the nation-state. This does not mean that the nation-state is obsolete, irrelevant, etc., but that we cannot confine our political analysis to just the nation-state level. Jan Nederveen Pieterse expands:

Among analysts and policy makers, North and South, there is an emerging consensus on several features of globalization: globalization is being shaped by technological changes, involves the reconfiguration of states, goes together with regionalization [e.g., European Union, Latinamericanization-KS], and is uneven (Nederveen Pieterse, 2015, Globalization and Culture:  Global Mélange, 3^rd Ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.: 8).[2] 

He further writes that while people oftentimes refer to time-space compression, “It means that globalization involves more intensive interaction across wider space and in shorter time than before” (Nederveen Pieterse, 2015: 8).

There are issues, however, concerning globalization where there are still considerable controversies. Following Nederveen Pieterse, this author argues that in addition to the above, globalization is multidimensional (i.e., cannot be confined to just one aspect, such as economics, but includes things like politics and culture) and should be seen as a long-term phenomenon that began thousands of years ago in the “beginnings in the first migrations of peoples and long-distance trade connections and subsequently accelerates under particular conditions (the spread of technologies, religions, literacy, empires, capitalism” (Nederveen Pieterse, 2015: 70-71).[3]  In other words, globalization predates capitalism and modernity, which means it predates the “West.” And, of course, that it did not begin in the 1970s.

While globalization is a much broader, deeper, and longer set of processes than is usually recognized, these processes began accelerating in the early 1970s.

If globalization during the second half of the twentieth century coincided with the ‘American Century’ and the period 1980-2000 coincided with the dominance of Anglo-American capitalism and American hegemony, twenty-first-century globalization shows markedly different dynamics. American hegemony has weakened, the US economy is import dependent, deeply indebted, and mired in financial crises.

The new trends of twenty-first century globalization are the centers of the world economy shifting to the global South, to the newly industrialized countries, and to the energy exporters (Nederveen Pieterse, 2015: 24).[4]

He further points out these changes are taking place in economic and financial spheres, in international institutions, and in changing patterns of migration. He summarizes, “The unquestioned cultural hegemony of the West is past” (Nederveen Pieterse, 2015: 24-25).

While this author agrees with Nederveen Pieterse’s thinking about globalization—including that it is multidimensional and that it predates modernity—I want to add another point about globalization: it is multilayered (Scipes, 2012a, “Globalization from Below:  Labor Activists Challenging the AFL-CIO Foreign Policy Program.” Critical Sociology, Vol. 38, No. 2: 303-323.  On-line at https://researchgate.net/publication/254084376_Globalization__from_Below_Labor_Activists_Challenging­_the­­_AFL-CIO_Foreign_Policy_Program; Vandana Shiva, 2005, Earth Democracy:  Justice, Sustainability and Peace.  Boston:  South End Press; Amory Starr, 2005, Global Revolt: A Guide to the Movements against Globalization). This is an important point.

Business and governments have appropriated the term “globalization,” insisting that is a monolithic force of “good” that is deluging the world, and is enveloping all within it, like a wall of flood water that cannot be stopped.

Activists initially responded to this by being against globalization; for existence, Amory Starr’s 2005 book was titled Global Revolt: A Guide to the Movements against Globalization. However, activists came to see that we were not against globalization, but against the type of globalization that was being promoted and propagated (e.g., Thomas L. Friedman, 1999, The Lexus and the Olive Tree:  Understanding Globalization.  New York: Picador.).

A number of authors think a better idea is to recognize that there are two levels of globalization—claiming there is “top-down,” corporate/militaristic globalization, and a “bottom-up,” global movement for social and economic justice—and that these two levels are based on values completely antithetical to the other (Shiva, 2005). By that, I mean that globalization is not a monolith, a single, collective phenomenon, but argue it has at least two layers, so we can refer to as “globalization from above,” and “globalization from below.”  What does that mean?

Accepting Nederveen Pieterse’s claim that “globalization involves more intensive interaction across wider space and in shorter time than before” (Nederveen Pieterse, 2015: 8), we must look at the values of each of these levels of globalization. The values of top-down globalization are those that promote the unhindered spread of economic exploitation and corporate domination around the world, and the militarism (and related wars and military operations) needed to ensure that is possible; in other words, top-down globalization is the latest effort to dominate the world, all living beings and the planet.

This can be seen when looking at the issue of culture globally.  Basically, top-down globalization promotes a “universal” culture whereby the culture of the dominant actors is projected as though it is, or should be, the culture of every human society; it ignores or seeks to decimate all local cultures for the sake of acceptance of the dominant one that it projects.

Globalization from below, on the other hand, is life enhancing: it rejects domination in all of its forms, and seeks to build a new world based on equality, social and economic justice, and respect for all living beings and the planet (again, see Shiva, 2005). The two worldviews, and the values on which each are based, could not be more opposed.

This is where my call for macro-level thinkers to incorporate progressive unionism into their analyses becomes even more important: these progressive unions[5] are part of the global movement for economic and social justice (whether they recognize it or not), and that as they gain such consciousness, they will find ways of developing solidarity with workers and other unions, women, peasants, students, the urban poor, etc., around the world.

Thus, understanding that there are two different levels of globalization, and that they are opposed to each other, means that people need to choose: which side are you on?

And, more practically, it means that our search for allies around the globe should be focused on building ties to those who are advancing the values, goals, and organizations of the “globalization from below” movement as they seek global economic and social justice from all places in the world for all places in the world.

The United States in the World:  Making Sense of the Past Forty Years (1981-2023)-Part 1

–Kim Scipes

NOTE TO READER:  This is a lengthy article, co-published with Z Network, that is broken up into five parts so as not to make it too overwhelming; the sections differ in length; it will be published on five consecutive days.  Each section has its own endnotes and references.  Each URL referenced was checked in late July 2023 and is operational unless otherwise noted. There are extensive endnotes, many with references, but it might better to not read the first time you read each part so that you can focus on the arguments being made in this article; however, the endnotes are worth reading!  (Should you wish to read the entire article, it has been published altogether by Z Network at https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/special-history-series-40-years-of-the-united-states-in-the-world-1981-2023/.)

This is worthy of your attention because, to the best of my knowledge, no one has put these components together in such a coherent way that pulls this period together. I argue that we cannot understand the US’s role in the world without examining all three components (imperialism, globalization, and neo-liberal economics) and their interactions.  Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome!

This series is broken into five sections.

• Part 1:  Introduction, focus on three important components in series:  imperialism, globalization, neo-liberal economics, and delves into understanding imperialism, which goes beyond the Marxist analysis;
• Part 2:  Globalization, distinguishing between top-down and bottom-up globalization;
• Part 3:  Neo-liberal economics, with this part focusing on the impact of neo-liberal economics on US society, which a focus on impact on economic equality;
• Part 4:  Neo-liberal economics, with this part focusing on the impact of these policies on the country as a whole and put into a global context; and
• Part 5:  Conclusion.

Kim Scipes, PhD, a former printer, is a long-time trade unionist and labor activist, currently a member of the National Writers Union Local 1982, AFL-CIO.  He is also Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Purdue University Northwest in Westville, Indiana, USA.  He has published four books to date, and over 250 articles—in peer-reviewed, general specialty, and activist journals and newsletters—in the US and in 11 countries around the world.  His work, including his entire book on the KMU Labor Center of the Philippines, can be accessed for free at Publications – Purdue University Northwest (pnw.edu).  He is also a co-founder of LEPAIO (Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO International Operations), whose web site is at https://aflcio-int.education/.

INTRODUCTION

The United States of America has been the pre-eminent country on Earth for over 40 years.[1]  There are many competing analyses of these developments, different understandings, etc., and with all kinds of various intellectual ramifications from these.  However, along with genuine efforts to accurately understand this period, there is much misinformation, obfuscation, and plain lying about its role in the world and its economic, political, military, and cultural activities in which it engages; part of this is conscious, part of it is not, but it means there is a massive amount of confusion about it, not only among academics and journalists but, more importantly, activists and the general public.

This article seeks to untangle our understanding of the economic, political, and cultural history of the United States over the past 40 or so years so we can consciously discuss where the country should go, and what that means for the American people.[2]

That requires a global perspective, which differs from our traditional national focus. 

While it is necessary, it is not sufficient to limit our attention to the United States and/or the other imperial countries.  We must act from a global perspective, and one which specifically includes the formerly colonized countries.  Yes, this makes things more complicated and more complex–and it forces us to consider things that we may have never considered.  Yet we simply cannot prevail without taking a global perspective; from all I’ve seen and learned over the years, it is essential; it simply cannot be done any other way.

Accordingly, what must always be recognized is that social developments always take place within a particular social context, which affects them, for better or worse.  And again, this social context must take a global perspective.

The social context that must be understood is that since at least the end of World War II in 1945, the elites of the United States have tried to dominate the rest of the world; the US is an imperial country.[3]  This means we cannot understand the US simply as another country, but—at all times—must recognize that this is the heartland of the US Empire.  This has had a dynamic designed to advance the interests of the United States—as determined by the elites of this country—over those of every other country. Through developing what can only be called realistically as “American nationalism”—based on white supremacy—and propagating this through the school system, churches, and other societal institutions (and lying extensively about it in the mass media), the elites have gotten large numbers of Americans to support their imperial adventures.[4] 

One of the interesting things about American social self-deception is that this imperial project of the elites has been said to be the basis of our high standard of living and national well-being; i.e., we need to be imperialist, to dominate other countries, to live so well, although it’s never projected in these terms.

However, since about 1973—and certainly by 1979—the US standard of living has stagnated, if not gotten worse for growing numbers of people; this will be detailed in Part 3 of this overall project.  The “solution,” as put forth by our political and social leaders has been what is called “neo-liberal economics”; yet as shown unequivocally, what has been proclaimed the solution has really only made things much worse.  Neo-liberal economics, against what was “promised,” actually has channeled resources from the national population to the managers of the US Empire instead of benefiting our people.  This has been a disaster for many Americans; social inequality has mushroomed as millions of good paying, mostly unionized jobs have been destroyed; our social services and educational system have been under attack; mass shootings have proliferated and, for the first time in US history, today’s generation will not do as well economically as their parents’.  And things are only going to get worse for increasing numbers of people.

It is time for us to consider a new way of relating among ourselves, to other Americans, as well as to human beings around the world, as well as to the planetary environment.

ESSENTIAL CONCEPTS:  IMPERIALISM, GLOBALIZATION, NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMICS

To make sure we are on the same page, there are three essential concepts that must be explained:  “imperialism,” “globalization,” and “neo-liberal economics,” and they are each discussed in this and following parts.  These are terms that do not get discussed in general (imperialism), are bandied about as though we share a common understanding (globalization), or simply are generally undefined but necessary to understand (neo-liberal economics); and they are generally not examined together.  They need to be disentangled and then each developed and shown how they interact, and that is done herein.

There has been considerable debate among analysts about the relationship between imperialism and globalization;[5] in fact, some refer to it as “imperialist globalization.”

That is not the approach that some of us take; perhaps most clear is Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2004, Globalization or Empire?).[6] Globalization has been going on for tens of thousands of years. Sometimes this has taken the form of imperialism—Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, etc.—but other times it has not, like when we discuss cross-border migration. Modern imperialism, however, starts with the “voyages of discovery” by sea-going projects of the Western European countries, roughly around 1500.  In other words, these are separate but overlapping processes; they need to be understood accordingly.

It is to these concepts—imperialism, globalization, and neo-liberal economics—to which I now discuss in turn; I begin by discussing imperialism.

UNDERSTANDING IMPERIALISM:  COLONIALISM AND NEO-COLONIALISM[7]

Imperialism is often dismissed as a rhetorical term, but it is used empirically herein to discuss reality on the ground. It basically refers to the idea that different countries do not have equal political-economic power; imperialism refers to the fact that some countries are more powerful than others, and that the stronger use this power to maintain or extend their domination over the weaker when other countries do not voluntarily subjugate themselves to the more powerful country.

One of Marxism’s greatest contributions to political struggle is development of the concept of “imperialism.”  To summarize quickly, based on Lenin’s “Imperialism:  The Highest Stage of Capitalism” (Lenin, 1916, New York:  International Publishers) and considerable subsequent empirical elaboration of the concept, imperialism is a process whereby some countries are able to exploit other, weaker, countries for their raw materials (such as agricultural land and its products, such as timber, fruits, etc.), natural resources (minerals such as gold, silver and copper), and sometimes their human resources (slaves or, more recently, labor migrants), which are accumulated, then gathered, and returned to the “home” imperial country to be used to further develop the imperial country.

At the same time, this is done with little to no consideration by the imperial forces of the harmful impact upon the targeted people.  Obviously, invasion and war have incredibly deleterious and immediate effects on a population, in and of themselves.  Robert McNamara, the former US Secretary of “Defense,” claims that 3.8 million Vietnamese were killed during what the Vietnamese call “The American War,” and Nick Turse (2013, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. New York: Henry Holt) documents another 5.7 million wounded, and the physical, environmental, social, and individual costs (which continue today with continuing cases of unexploded ordinance from the war that ended in 1975, and continued casualties from Agent Orange poisoning).[8]

Another level of impact is due to intervening into other nation’s affairs—using either covert operations by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) or “public” operations by the NED (National Endowment for Democracy)[9]—to enforce US imperial desires.  These almost always cause a great deal of societal disruption at least and often times death, imprisonment, torture, and destruction of people and urban areas, especially should they be successful in overthrowing democratically-elected governments, which the US under Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger did to Chile on September 11, 1973—the first 9/11—50 years ago this year (2023).

There is also the role of political sanctions.  This is where one country—generally the US—imposes limits on what a country can import and export, and this is done through pressure, naval blockade, and other means.  Perhaps the classic case is the case of Iraq—between the first and second US-led invasions (1991-2003)—where US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stated unequivocally when asked by CBS News Correspondent Leslie Stahl, that “We think the price is worth it” that approximately 500,000 (no misprint) Iraqi children below the age of five died as a result of US sanctions (Stahl, 1996, ”CBS Interview with Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State under Bill Clinton.  May 12.”  On-line at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP1OAD9jSaI).  The US has imposed sanctions unilaterally around the world and has had especially deleterious effects on Cuba and Venezuela, in addition to Iraq.

In addition to the violence perpetrated, the impact of exploitation can be understood by understanding the simple theft of these raw materials, natural resources, and people, or it can be recognized through the physical, social, emotional, and environmental impacts of such theft that can continue for generations over centuries, and which can be labeled oppression. 

In other words, to begin to understand imperialism, one must recognize that it is an interactive process between a stronger country and a weaker one, intended to benefit the stronger one at the expense of the weaker one; where the stronger country uses its military, economic, political, diplomatic, and/or cultural resources to impose its rule over the weaker one; and this rule is intended to further the exploitation and oppression of the peoples and the environment of the weaker country so as to maintain domination by the stronger one over time.[10]

These dominating processes, however, go farther:  they are intended to establish control by the dominating country not just over the country and resources as a whole, but over the culture and thus the individual minds of the subjugated country’s citizens, getting the latter to at least accept if not embrace the ideas that the dominating country is so superior that it naturally should control the lives of the people in the subjugated country and that it should continue indefinitely.[11]

However, there are two forms of imperialism:  colonialism and neo-colonialism.  What is the difference?

Colonization is the process of direct physical invasion and occupation of a particular land by a stronger country, regardless of whether the invaded land is organized in a nation-state or territorial form; in contemporary terms, it is when the stronger country puts “boots on the ground.”  It is done to establish colonies of the imperial country in a way that ensures continued economic exploitation and political domination by the imperial country for the benefit of the imperial country; it is done against the will of the common people of such a land, whether local “elites” agree or not.

However, during the period of colonialism, the imperial countries generally have groomed sons—and increasingly, daughters—of the pre-colonial elites to run the country after independence, especially by educating them, whether at “home” or in the imperial country, of the “wonderfulness” of the imperial society.  Key to that is to “convince” these future “leaders” (i.e., elites) that the best way forward for their country is to “voluntarily” accept the exploitive economic relations established during colonialism by the imperial country and maintain them after independence.  In other words, while granting political independence, the colonizer seeks in all cases to maintain the same exploitive economic relations after independence; this is known as neo-colonialism.[12]  It keeps the independent country under the economic, and often political, control of the imperial country, without the obvious military domination.

This is not necessarily all bad for the newly independent country; after all, colonial violence against the citizenry is almost always reduced after independence; and oftentimes, qualitatively.  And people see that people who look like them can run the affairs of the independent country, challenging the ideology of “white supremacy” that had been established during colonialism.  These definitely are gains for all concerned.  Yet the gains are always limited in that they generally do not affect—or, at worse, intensify—the economic relationships established under colonialism; relationships that were designed to benefit the imperial country at the expense of the colonized one.

While Lenin’s and his political descendants’ analysis of imperialism is important, it is also too limited; it is basically confined to economic exploitation.[13]  What is ignored here is that an imperialist country usually seeks to dominate a number of countries, sometimes in the same part of the world, sometimes in other parts, and sometimes in multiple parts at the same time.[14]  And sometimes, the individual imperialist relationships are limited to exploitive economic relationships.

Yet sometimes they are not.  What the Marxist tradition generally ignores are the political relationships, both between the particular imperial and colonized countries, and between the different imperial countries themselves.

Jan Nederveen Pieterse has surpassed Lenin’s thinking.  In his path-breaking Empire and Emancipation:  Power and Liberation on a Global Scale (New York: Praeger, 1989), Nederveen Pieterse accepts Lenin’s economistic analysis but adds a political analysis to the economic.  In other words, Nederveen Pieterse argues that imperialism has both economic and political motivations and, by adding this, it allows us to consider issues of domination and subjugation in nation-state relations, which allows us to consider geo-strategic positions and empires, and their effects on world history.[15]  Further, in some cases, economic motivations are primary whereas in others, political motivations are primary; one cannot assume either motivation is primary, but must be confirmed by empirical analysis.

However, Nederveen Pieterse’s understanding of imperialism extends beyond the nation-state level. In a 2010 article, I elaborated:

A political community usually refers to a nation-state; however, while including nation-states in this category, Nederveen Pieterse’s understanding of imperialism extends beyond the nation-state level.  He recognizes that because of external domination during past history, groups who share common culture, traditions, languages, and political organization (I.e., “political communities”) may have been incorporated within the boundaries of other political communities.  Examples of this include Native American nations having been incorporated into the U.S., the Palestinians into Israel, the Kurds into Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, and certainly this is also true of the indigenous peoples around the world.  Thus, instead of ignoring these peoples or making them irrelevant by confining the understanding of imperialism to only nation-states, Nederveen Pieterse broadens the conception of imperialism to include the domination of one political community over another, and this can exist within the current boundaries of a nation-state: these cross-political community border relationships are based in unequal power relations, with the stronger dominating the weaker (Scipes, 2010b: 468).

However, in addition to recognizing that imperialism is not just limited to nation states, Nederveen Pieterse argues that organizations at different levels of the social world can engage in imperialism, and that can aid established empires. Accordingly,

Nederveen Pieterse extends the concept of imperialism “vertically” to include different levels of domination. He not only focuses on dominative relations at the nation-state level, but he includes dominative relations at levels higher and lower than the nation-state level. For example, at the suprastate level (at a higher level than nation-states/political communities), dominative relations can be established, such as between the United Nations (UN) and people of any particular country (such as UN “peacekeeping forces” and Haitian slum dwellers). Likewise, dominative relations can be established at a substate level (at a lower level), such as between a labor organization in the U.S. and labor organizations in other countries. In other words, Nederveen Pieterse not only expands the concept of imperialism on a horizontal axis through broadening it to include domination across political community borders, but he also extends it vertically by including different levels of domination. It is in recognizing that domination can take place at a level below nation-state domination that allows Labor’s across-political-community-borders domination to be included within the concept of imperialism (Scipes, 2010b: 468).

Subsequently, and coming from a different perspective, scholars such as Alfred W. McCoy (2009, 2017, 2021) have further developed the understanding of empires.  McCoy (2017), focusing on the decline of the US Empire, argues that the claim of empire is resonating.  After discussing a number of writers from a range of political perspectives, he points out that, “In short, analysts across the political spectrum had come to agree that empire was the most appropriate word to describe America’s current superpower status” (McCoy, 2017: 47).  And further, “Calling a nation that controls nearly half of the planet’s military forces and much of its wealth an ‘empire’ became nothing more than fitting an analytical frame to appropriate facts” (McCoy, 2017: 43).[16]

So, in dominating weaker countries, the stronger ones coalesced their power into empires. 

And empires, over the years, have competed to dominate other empires.

And imperialism, in all of its forms, has been based on violence, whether it is used in any particular situation or not.  Thomas Ferguson (2012, “Preface:  Rethinking the State and “Free Markets” in Neoliberalism” in Ronald W. Cox, ed.: xi-xv) presents a fascinating chart (see his Figure 1) which shows commencement of US use of force or covert intervention abroad between 1798-2001.  It is based on data from the US Congressional Research Service, which had compiled a report, “Instances of US Armed Forces Abroad From 1798,” and from Blum (2014).  What it shows is a persistent but low level number of interventions until about 1947 (when the CIA was created via the National Security Act),[17] and then it jumps up dramatically until about 1975:  “Uses of armed force abroad and covert action rose sharply during the Cold War, before declining suddenly as a rest of the Church Committee hearings…”  He continues:  “The drop in interventions did not persist; instead, it dramatically reversed with the proclamation of the “Reagan Doctrine” (Ferguson, 2012: xi), when it surpassed by a considerable amount the 1947-75 period.

Recognizing this requires us to understand, in trying to account for the global development of capitalism, that capital does not operate within a “neutral” capitalist world, where owners’ or corporate managers’ decisions rule, but rather within a highly organized political world based on empire as developed by particular nation-states (see McCoy, 2021).

Over time—and this can be decades, if not centuries of subjugation—the colonies generally have gotten their political independence from their respective imperial colonizer.[18]  Sometimes, independence has come through armed struggle; i.e., revolutions.  Other times, the benefits to the colonizer have become so limited that the colonizer has granted political independence so as to minimize future costs to the imperial country.  However, again, most of the former colonies gained only their political independence; they remain tied economically to their former colonial master (s).[19]

So, to summarize:

Imperialism is an interactive process between a stronger political community (nation-state, or at supra-national or sub-national levels) and a weaker political community, intended to benefit the stronger one at the expense of the weaker one; where the stronger political community uses its resources (including, as appropriate, military, economic, political, diplomatic, and/or cultural resources) to impose its rule over the weaker one; and this rule is intended to further the exploitation and oppression of the peoples and the environment of the weaker country so as to maintain domination by the stronger one over time.

In our next section, Part 2, we’ll discuss the concept of “globalization.”

In San Bernardino, California, where retail giant Amazon has a massive warehouse and fulfillment center, daily temperatures reached triple digits for the majority of days in July and have been dangerously hot all summer. Workers with the Inland Empire Amazon Workers United (IEAWU) protested the dangerous conditions and complained to CAL-OSHA, the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health. One worker, Daniel Rivera, told Fox11, “Amazon’s main focus is production. Safety is not the priority until it’s too late.”

What we are witnessing with such increasingly common instances is capitalism-induced climate change intersecting with capitalism-induced labor exploitation. It’s a deadly combination and one that is being discussed in ways that obscure its causes and solutions.

Take the corporate media, whose coverage has focused on the pro-business buzzword of “productivity.” CBS worried in an August 1, 2023 story, “How Hot Weather Affects Worker Productivity—and What That Means for the Economy.” The New York Times similarly lamented in a July 31, 2023 headline, that “Heat Is Costing the U.S. Economy Billions in Lost Productivity.” The cost to the economy (a euphemism for stock values and profit margins) is the bottom line—not the safety and health of human beings. Therefore, it matters a great deal that, as per the Times, “more than 2.5 billion hours of labor in the U.S. agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and service sectors were lost to heat exposure.”