I cite

Blame the people

A prominent meme in right wing/main stream media all over the world is that the people are the cause of the deficits. In the US, poor people took out mortgages on houses they couldn't afford, thus causing global economic chaos. Public sector workers, like teachers, have demanded job security, rights to bargain collectively, decent wages, benefits, and pensions. These demands are too high and must be cut back. In the UK, working class students demand rights to an education, rights that mean more than a right to take out horrific student loans. In Greece, workers refused to work themselves to death, retired too early, and led their country to the brink of disaster. Given the greediness and laziness of the people, the only rational solution is austerity. The people can't have it all.

What is the truth of these stories, these stories that rely on the erasure of the dictatorship of the financial class?

One truth involves the primary of the people, the people as a political cause. The welfare states of Europe and the remnants of Keynesianism in the US and UK were the products of political struggle. They were achievements, achievements by the people. Workers struggled for wages, benefits, pensions, some kind of control over their conditions of employment. The people demanded these rights and for about 40 years, capital had to pay. It had to restrain itself. The people disciplined capital.

The rhetoric of "can't afford", of deficts and cuts, of austerity and unbearable debt and all the rest is just the way that capital says it won't pay anymore. Defaulting on loans is a problem for the lenders more than the borrowers. Capital wants more and so it is demanding more--accumulation by dispossession. So the second way that the meme of blame the people is right is that the people are still the obstacle in the way of capital getting its more. It blames the people--if people didn't insist on wages, benefits, health care, and education, then there would be more for finance capital. (Finance capital focuses on its own short term interests; it doesn't worry that it will 'eat its stores' or destroy the people it feeds off of--that's for someone else to worry about.)

There's a third reason to blame the people, though, once we recognize that the people are a political cause. It's not that we've demanded too much. It's the opposite, we've demanded too little. We haven't been demanding enough. We've followed up on our demands, demanding more. We haven't taken control back. We haven't smashed the banks. We've told them enough is enough.

Fortunately, this third reason is the point of overlap with the story that relies on the erasure of the dictatorship of finance capital. The solution to our problem also relies on erasing, abolishing, the dictatorship of finance capital. We have to realize in practice the same abolition that the mainstream story tells.

Update from dictatorship of finance capital: The Supreme Court’s continuing defense of the powerful - The Washington Post

The United States Supreme Court now sees its central task as comforting the already comfortable and afflicting those already afflicted.

If you are a large corporation or a political candidate backed by lots of private money, be assured that the court’s conservative majority will be there for you, solicitous of your needs and ready to swat away those pesky little people who dare to contest your power.

via www.washingtonpost.com

Whose independence?

Over the next four or five days, we in the US will be indundated with patriotic platitudes. These are lies. To escape the lies, many people will go to movies about superheroes. The feeling will be the same--something great, something heroic, something familiar, something safe, something resolved. These feelings will blur into the patriotic propaganda.

They will blur some more with the sights and sounds of fireworks and the smells and flavors of cookouts. These sensations will produce feelings of ease, nostalgia, familiarity. Everything is the same. These are also lies.

American freedom is a myth and a lie. It's a lie that benefits the big banks, the top one percent. It lets them feel at ease as public sector workers's benefits and rights are cut, as people's houses are taken, as our pensions are appropriated. The term for this: accumulation by dispossession. The rich have more because the rest of us have less.

It is getting worse, this dictatorship of finance capital. And, the thing is, we all know it. Mass culture already is wallowing in our relation to our Chinese overlords, the collapse of unions and employment, the demolition of what was the way of life for the US working and middle class. That past is gone. The Tea Party proceeds as if we can go backwards. The only way is forward, in solidarity and struggle with workers globally.

To be independent, we have to be communist.

Greek austerity package: Social counterrevolution in Europe

With the votes of the social democratic PASOK party, the Greek Parliament approved a new package of austerity measures on Wednesday. The vote marks a political watershed for the whole of Europe.

No serious economist doubts that the austerity measures will reverse the living standards of broad social layers by decades. The first austerity package adopted last year already contained massive cuts to public service salaries, pensions and other benefits. At the same time, it increased consumption taxes, thereby triggering a deep recession and a sharp increase in unemployment.

Now an additional €28 billion is to be saved by 2015. This represents 12 percent of the gross domestic product of this country of 11 million people. In Germany, equivalent cuts would amount to €300 billion, and in the US to $1.7 trillion. A further €50 billion will be raised through the privatisation of state enterprises.

The new program will lead to 150,000 job cuts in public services, reductions in social spending and health care, together with huge tax increases for median incomes. The Value Added Tax for pubs and restaurants will be increased from 13 to 23 percent. In Greece, where the economy relies heavily on such small businesses, this will mean ruin for thousands, and will deepen the recession.

Even Wolfgang Münchau, a leading columnist for the Financial Times and, until now, an advocate of austerity has come to the conclusion that such austerity measures are “financially reckless and politically irresponsible.” “The program, as it stands, is politically, morally and economically hard to justify,” he writes.

via www.wsws.org

One thousand teachers to be fired in Chicago

This week, 1,000 pink slips are being sent out to Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teachers. In addition, 150 educational support staff members who provide extracurricular help in mathematics and reading are also to lose their jobs.

Teachers who are fired as part of budget cuts are not eligible for their pensions, and are only eligible for day-to-day work as substitute teachers. Since 2009, around 4,000 teachers have been laid off as part of school closures, consolidations and budget cuts.

Chicago’s new Democratic mayor, Rahm Emanuel—Obama’s former chief of staff—recently announced a $75 million budget cut for CPS. The cuts are expected to result in increased class sizes, poorer transportation services for students, and the lack of janitors t o clean classrooms.

Earlier this month, the Chicago Public Schools board rescinded a scheduled salary increase for teachers. Board members appointed by Emanuel include billionaire heiress Penny Pritzker and other corporate figures. The cutback was publicly attributed to budget concerns, which apparently do not affect the salaries of CPS executives.

In fact, the newly appointed CPS executives were given record salary increases, drawing up to 30 percent above the salaries of their predecessors. Emanuel's appointee to head CPS, Jean-Claude Brizard, signed a contract to draw a $250,000 salary this year, with a 15 percent incentive. CEO Brizard's remarkably high compensation package was the subject of national attention, even for cash-driven “educational entrepreneurs” in other cities such as New York.

via www.wsws.org

From the protests in Greece

more images here

Public Workers Strike in Britain Over Pensions - NYTimes.com

Public Workers Strike in Britain Over Pensions

Sang Tan/Associated Press

Teachers and public sector workers marched through London on Thursday during a one day strike over pension cuts and other austerity measures.

via www.nytimes.com

Greek parliament approves crucial financial measures - The Washington Post

The austerity measures proposed by Papandreou — including taxes on lower income wage earners and a nationwide emergency levy — sparked outrage among a populace living through a third year of recession. Another key parliamentary session is scheduled for Thursday, when further legislation will lay out in detail how a series of economic policy and other changes will be implemented.

Papandreou’s governing Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) holds a slim majority, with 155 seats in Greece’s 300-member legislative body. He survived a vote of no confidence last week, a positive sign that his colleagues would back him despite the unpopularity of the austerity measures among unions, public sector employees and other party faithful.

Along with the package of budget and tax measures, the parliament must approve a $70 billion privatization program that will see the government sell off public power and transportation companies and other businesses that have been a major source of political patronage for PASOK and other political movements.

Tens of thousands of protesters have jammed Syntagma Square during the past two days, with unions joining anarchists, student groups, pensioners and others who have kept a steady protest presence to oppose the measures. A nationwide strike has disrupted major services.

Considered by the IMF and European officials to be a necessary step to cure years of overspending by the Greek government, the austerity plan has arguably deepened the country’s recession and driven unemployment beyond 16 percent, higher than the IMF expected.

Opponents argue that the plan is being imposed largely to protect German, French and other European banks that hold Greek bonds and don’t want to face losses if the government defaults.

via www.washingtonpost.com

When A Socialist Speaks For Most Republicans, Who Speaks For You? | OurFuture.org

The question is whether we reduce the deficit only through spending cuts, or also by raising taxes on the rich. This should be an easy issue for Democrats to stand on ... and run on. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed that 72% of of those surveyed agreed that federal taxes should be raised for households making more than $250,000 - including 55% of Republicans. Yet even with the GOP leadership far to the right of the country on this issue, Democrats haven’t taken an unequivocal position.

Who's speaking for this Republican majority (and most everybody else) in Washington? Only Sen. Bernie Sanders, Socialist from Vermont. Sanders has unequivocally said that he won't support a deal to raise the debt ceiling unless it includes higher taxes on on the rich. Where are the Democrats? Nancy Pelosi's been marginalized from the discussions, even though a deal won't be possible without the support of Democrats in Congress. The White House and Harry Reid have refused to take a firm stand.

Sanders laid out his position in a speech in the Senate chamber yesterday with a “shared sacrifice" theme:

"The wealthiest Americans and the most profitable corporations in this country must pay their fair share. At least 50 percent of any deficit reduction package must come from revenue raised by ending tax breaks for the wealthy and eliminating tax loopholes that benefit large, profitable corporations and Wall Street financial institutions. A sensible deficit reduction package must also include significant cuts to unnecessary and wasteful Pentagon spending."

The Republicans insist on rejecting a majority of their own voters, as well as 74% of Independents and 83% of all Democrats, by pushing for a plan that would reduce government deficits exclusively through spending cuts - cuts that affect the middle class, poor people, and everyone who hopes to receive Social Security and Medicare benefits someday.

The "shared sacrifice" principle expressed by Sanders also included demands that there be no cuts to Medicare or Social Security. The 50/50 goal is a reasonable one, which makes it surprising that others haven't embraced it already. In fact, the only problem with a 50/50 split is that it may be too reasonable, now that the rich have become so much richer and the rest of the country has been forced to struggle so much.

via www.ourfuture.org

Sean Parker On Why Myspace Lost To Facebook

Napster co-founder Sean Parker explained why Myspace succumbed to Facebook in an interview with Jimmy Fallon at the NExTWORK Conference in New York.

While the entire interview is a delight to watch, the highlight is when Fallon starts asking Parker about whether Facebook is “it,” (“Is Facebook the end game?”) bringing up the failed Myspace for comparison. Parker answers,

“It’s never the end game. Facebook is now a platform upon which all kinds of applications are being built it’s definitely not it. It would be incredibly presumptuous and self-serving of me to believe that Facebook was the end of history. The only way it could possibly be the end of history is if it becomes some sort of artificial super intelligence that takes over the world.”

Able to put being the possibility that it was victim of some artificial super intelligence aside, at minute 20:54 Fallon asks Parker, “Where did Myspace go wrong?”

“The failure to execute product development,” Parker replies. “They weren’t successful in treating and evolving the product enough, it was basically this junk heap of bad design that persisted for many many years. There was a period of time where if they had just copied Facebook rapidly, they would have been Facebook. They were giant, the network effects, the scale effects were enormous.”

Parker goes on to credit the ingenious move of targeting college kids for Facebook’s eventually market dominance, “Facebook entered the market through college and the reason we went in through college was that college kids were generally not Myspace users. College kids were generally not Friendster users …”

Taking an almost Machiavellian tone, Parker also alludes to the latter social network’s displacement being deliberate, “It was this completely open market and it was a real longshot. Nobody actually believed, outside of us three or four people in Palo Alto, that you could enter the market through this niche market and then gradually through this carefully calculated war against all the social networks become the one social network to rule them all.”

via techcrunch.com