A shining light within the U.S. labor movement over the past several years has been the rising wave of unionization and militancy among graduate workers, whose labor helps prop up the entire system of U.S. higher education. Tens of thousands of graduate workers have unionized over the past half-decade at institutions like Stanford, UChicago, MIT, Duke, Minnesota, and many more.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Anti-Fascist Women’s Front (AFŽ) as an organisation formed in the Second World War enabled women at that time to have their say in an organised way and for that voice to be heard. They needed women so badly that they could promise them everything they needed. That organisation is the foundation of everything that emerged in socialism. But it wasn’t so simple or quick. The AFŽ was disbanded in 1954 mainly because Vida Tomšič, who was leading the organisation at the time, judged that women had become too closed off in their organisation and therefore could not achieve anything that was really important, while at the same time high politics was doing its own thing and there were no women there.
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There was some extremely troubling news out of Argentina last week. On March 28th, the Melei administration Presidential Spokesman Manuel Adorni announced that the government would be suspending all worker co-ops created between 2020 and 2022 and auditing all those formed last year. While this official statement was quickly gainsayed by other government agencies, what had happened was just as bad: the National Institute of Associativism and Social Economy (INAES) – the agency responsible for registering co-ops – had voted to suspend 11,000 co-ops for lack of documentation and other alleged non-compliance.
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In a mass demonstration of solidarity, trade union activists from across Britain blocked the entrance of a Birmingham waste depot as part of an ongoing dispute between the city’s refuse collectors and the Labour-led council. Birmingham’s bin workers, many of whom are members of the trade union Unite, have been taking intermittent action against planned pay cuts since the beginning of this year – and have spent the past two months on strike.
As part of an extreme austerity agenda, the city council is planning to downgrade at least one section of the workforce. This proposal has raised concerns not only about workers’ income but also about health and safety conditions.
The post Mass Solidarity Picket Backs Striking Bin Workers In Birmingham appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Despite endless insistence by privatizers that charter schools are public schools, many people spontaneously think that charter schools are not public schools.
Much of the public does not automatically see charter schools as public schools proper. They are viewed as being different from public schools and put in a separate category than public schools.
When asked what they think a charter school is, the average person often says something like: “I’m not really sure, aren’t they some sort of private school, I really don’t know, but I have heard of them, they seem like private schools to me.”
In this vein, people often share different things they have heard about charter schools. For example, they have heard that charter schools are deregulated schools, take money from public schools, have high teacher turnover rates, cherry-pick students, offer no teacher retirement plan, have no teachers union, pay teachers less than public school teachers, etc. Such facts naturally infiltrate the public sphere and produce a certain social consciousness about charter schools, which have been around for 33 years.
Although the mass media works overtime to promote disinformation about the “publicness”/”privateness” of charter schools, it is significant that people generally see charter schools as being private in some way. There is a pervasive sense that charter schools and public schools are dissimilar entities with different structures, functions, aims, and results.[1] A main problem here though is that while people are aware of certain facts about charter schools they rarely have an integrated, cogent, well-worked-out analysis of what charter schools represent as an education arrangement in the U.S. A detailed big-picture view connecting many important dots is often missing, leaving many vulnerable to disinformation about charter schools.
A main reason for the widespread public perception of charter schools as private education arrangements is that charter schools do in fact differ from public schools in many ways, despite neoliberal efforts to mix up the “publicness” and “privateness” of these two different organizations.
But to add even more confusion to the mix, even some prominent “critics” of charter schools claim that charter schools are neither completely public nor completely private in character. They are supposedly “a little bit of both;” they are “a mix” of public and private.
According to this view, charter schools, all of which are owned-operated by unelected private persons, organizations, or companies, are supposedly “hybrid schools”—they are semi-private and semi-public, so to speak.
In other words, charter schools ride the public/private fence without being fully one or the other. This implies that one aspect (public or private) does not eclipse the other, which suggests that it is erroneous to see charter schools as the essentially privatized arrangements that they really are.
Keeping in mind that the U.S. constitution does not recognize education as a basic human right, it is important to discuss whether charter schools really operate as public schools or privatized education arrangements. This is not a trivial issue. Moreover, can charter schools be considered “hybrid” schools with both private and public features in the proper sense of both words, as some claim?
For starters, public and private mean the opposite of each other; they are antonyms. Importantly, public law deals with relations between the state and individuals, while private law deals with relations between private citizens. Contract law, for example, is part of private law. Charter schools are contract schools. Charter means contract. Thus, the laws that apply to charter schools differ from the laws that apply traditional public schools. This is why, for example, teachers’ rights in charter schools are not the same as teachers’ rights in public schools.
Public refers to everyone, the common good, all people, transparency, affordability, accessibility, universality, non-rivalry, non-discrimination, and inclusiveness. Examples of public goods include public parks, public libraries, public roads, public schools, public colleges and universities, public hospitals, public restrooms, public housing, public banks, public events, forests, street lighting, and more. These goods are available to everyone, not just a few people. They are integral to a civil society that recognizes the role and significance of a public sphere in modern times. Such public provisions can be optimized only in the context of arrangements that are genuinely and thoroughly democratic.
Private, on the other hand, means exclusive, not for everyone, not for the common good, not for all people, not collective, not governmental, not free, not broadly obtainable, only available to or accessible by a few. Something is private when it is “designed or intended for one’s exclusive use.” Examples include private property, private facilities, private schools, private clubs, designer shoes, Ferraris, first class plane tickets, mansions, and more. Such phenomena usually cost money, they are based on ability to pay.
To further elaborate, private also means:
-Secluded from the sight, presence, or intrusion of others.
-Of or confined to the individual; personal.
-Undertaken on an individual basis.
-Not available for public use, control, or participation.
-Belonging to a particular person or persons, as opposed to the public or the government.
-Of, relating to, or derived from nongovernment sources.
-Conducted and supported primarily by individuals or groups not affiliated with governmental agencies or corporations.
-Not holding an official or public position.
-Not for public knowledge or disclosure; secret; confidential.
In its essence, private property is the right to exclude others from use of said property; it is the power of exclusion;[2] it is not concerned with transparency, inclusion, the common good, collective well-being, or benefitting everyone. This is why when something is privatized, e.g., a public enterprise or social program, it is no longer available to everyone; it becomes something possessed and controlled by the few, for the few. This then ends up harming the public interest and social progress. Privatization typically increases corruption, reduces efficiency, lowers quality, raises costs, and restricts democracy. This applies to so-called “public-private partnerships” as well.
It is also worth noting that something does not become “public” just because it is called “public” many times a day. Simply repeating over and over again that something is public does not magically make it public. Nor does an entity spontaneously become “public” just because it receives public funds. This is not the definition of “publicness.” Thus, for example, as contract schools, charter schools do not automatically become state actors (i.e., public entities) just because they receive public funds. “Publicness” requires something more under State Action Doctrine.[3]
It is not surprising that there has always been a big chasm between charter school rhetoric and reality. Over-promising and under-delivering has been a stubborn but down-played feature of this deregulated private sector for 34 years. This can be seen in the large number of charter schools that have failed and closed in three decades, leaving millions out in the cold (see here and here).
Charter schools may look, sound, and feel public on paper, but they work differently in practice and under the law. Most charter schools operate in a manner that is the opposite of their description on paper. They do not live up to their description on paper.
Unfortunately, many do not question the description of charter schools on paper. They impulsively assume that if something is written on paper and declared “legal,” then it is automatically valid, unassailable, and true in reality. They embrace “paperism.” Critical thinking disappears in this scenario and anti-consciousness takes over. Dogmatic repetition of legal text takes hold and all thinking freezes.
The reason this obstinate large gap between rhetoric and reality remains under-appreciated by many to this day is because neoliberal discourse on charter schools keeps everything at the superficial level, regularly eschewing deep analysis, especially analysis that exposes the private character of charter schools and rampant corruption in the charter school sector. And combined with confounding what is on paper with what exists in reality, many are prevented from discerning the inherently privatized character of charter schools and the significance of this conclusion for education, society, the economy, and the national interest.
To be clear, charter schools are not hybrid public-private schools, nor are they public schools, properly speaking. They are private entities. And in the final analysis, the fundamental principle at stake is that public funds must not flow to private entities or so-called “semi-private” entities because public funds belong only to the public. The private sector has no legitimate claim to public funds that belong solely to the public. Only the public sector can control and use public funds for public goals.
Non-profit and for-profit charter schools are private businesses, regardless of their size, name, education philosophy, type, authorizer, general makeup, or location. Charter schools have always been owned-operated by private organizations. They are not state actors. They are not political subdivisions of the state or government agencies. They are not organic or natural components of state public education systems. They are not set up like that under state laws. Charter schools are not created by the State even though they may be delegated certain functions by the State. Creation and delegation are not synonymous. Furthermore, delegating a function (a way of doing something) is not the same as delegating authority (enforcing obedience). Charter schools are started/created by unelected private persons.
Charter schools have always been a different type of entity altogether: contract schools owned-operated by unelected private persons or organizations. They are performance-based contracts entered into by two distinct parties: a private organization and the government (or government-sanctioned entity). Naturally, partnering with the government is not the same as being part of the government. This is an important distinction in State Action Doctrine. Charter schools are not an arm of the government like traditional public schools are. They are not acting on behalf of a governmental body. Nor do they act with the same authority as the government. Interestingly, the appearance of the word “charter” before “school” is actually one of the many ways charter schools are distinguished from traditional public schools. It is also significant that the unelected private persons or corporations that own-operate charters, typically business people, derive more than an incidental benefit from owning-operating a charter school. Charter school administrators and trustees, for example, often derive a large amount of wealth and privilege from owning-operating a charter school.
For these and other reasons charter schools are intentionally called “independent,” “autonomous,” and “innovative” schools that do not follow most of the laws, rules, and regulations followed by public schools. These descriptors are key to the non-public character of charter schools. Consistent with “free market” ideology, charter schools are deregulated “schools of choice”—something “consumers” seek, even though most of the time it is the charter school that “chooses” the “shopper.”
Another major feature of the private character of charter schools is that, unlike public schools, they cannot levy taxes either. This is a particularly revealing difference between charter schools and public schools. Only the State and specific political subdivisions of the State (e.g., traditional public schools, cities, counties) can levy taxes. Charter schools are not part of this sovereign power. Also unlike public schools, charter schools are generally not zoned schools and their teachers are treated as “at will” employees, just like in a corporation. Many states even legally permit teachers to work in charter schools without any certification. Numerous other differences can be found here.
Public schools, on the other hand, are state agencies, actual government entities (1) created, (2) authorized, and (3) overseen by the State. They are therefore engaged in state action, while charter schools are not. Put differently, “Action taken by private entities with the mere approval or acquiescence of the State is not state action.”
As “autonomous,” “independent,” “innovative, “rules-free” schools, charter schools are not entangled with the state in the same way that traditional public schools are. The state’s mere labeling of an institution as public or private does not determine whether it is a state actor in State Action Doctrine. Under the law and in practice, the state exercises far more control over traditional public schools than it does over charter schools, which are “schools of choice,” at least on paper. Enrollment in a charter school is voluntary. In this sense, charter schools are more like private schools that have dotted the American landscape for generations. The main point is that the State does not coerce or compel charter schools to act in the same way as public schools proper. The degree of “entanglement” between the State and the entity in question is a very important consideration in State Action Doctrine. Artificial indicators, superficial signs, or various labels are not sufficient forms of “deep entwinement” with the State. The State must be “significantly involved” in a private entity’s actions in order to conclude that State action (and therefore the 14th Amendment) is at play. For decades, the actions of deregulated charter schools have not been attributable to the government, certainly not in the same way as the actions of traditional public schools have.
This is precisely why various provisions of the U.S. Constitution do not apply to privately-operated charter schools. Many private actions are not subject to constitutional scrutiny under State Action Doctrine. Certain constitutional standards generally do not apply to acts of private persons or entities. Constitutional standards apply mainly to the States and their subdivisions (like cities, counties, and school districts). Thus, as deregulated private actors, charter schools are generally not subject to liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983,[4] while traditional public schools are. Never mind the fact that government has long been dominated by narrow private interests anyway. All levels of government today privilege private interests over the public interest. Americans exercise no control over what takes place in society.
The main reason neoliberals tirelessly repeat the disinformation that charter schools are public schools, or that charter schools have enough meaningful public features about them to render them “public” schools, is in order to justify siphoning billions of dollars a year from traditional public schools that have educated about ninety percent of America’s youth for generations. Charter schools could not seize these public funds if they were not called “public.” If they were openly recognized as the privatized entities that they are, what valid claim would they have to public funds? Public funds belong to the public. Why should public funds be handed over to private interests?
To go further, charter schools are privately-operated schools that increase segregation, intensify corruption, spend millions on advertising, have high teacher turnover rates, and constantly seek ways to maximize profits regardless of whether they are designated as non-profit or for-profit entities. They are fundamentally pay-the-rich schemes that are proliferating in the context of a continually failing economy dominated by major owners of capital. For these and other reasons, the intrinsic character of charter schools cannot be changed easily or quickly, especially given how long they have been around and how charter school laws have been written for 34 years. Can a charter school not be a charter school? Charter school owners-operators are big supporters of no governmental control and have long-referred to charter schools as “free market” schools.
For more than three decades this neoliberal financial parasitism has been cynically carried out in the name of “serving the kids,” “empowering parents,” “promoting innovation,” “getting results,” “providing choices,” “busting teacher unions,” and “increasing competition.”
Individualism, self-interest, consumerism, competition, and a dog-eat-dog ethos—the so-called “free market”—frame and drive this assault on public education and the public interest. Charter school advocates have long promoted a survival-of-the-fittest view of human relations. They believe parents are consumers who should fend-for-themselves in their quest to secure a “good education.” They think it is normal if a charter school fails, closes, and abandons everyone. This is how “businesses operate,” neoliberals casually declare.
Charter school promoters do not view parents and students as humans with an inalienable right to education that must be guaranteed in practice. You are basically on your own as you spend an extensive amount of time “shopping” for a “good” school. Fingers crossed. There are no guarantees of stability, quality, or security. Such an arrangement is claimed to be “the best of all worlds” in which the “fittest” survive while the “weak” fail. There is supposedly no conceivable alternative to this Social Darwinist ethos and the discredited racist doctrine of DNA that underlies such an obsolete ideology.
The private character of these outsourced contract schools also comes out in the fact that all charter schools in the U.S. are not only governed by unelected private persons, but many, if not most, are routinely supported, operated, or owned directly by wealthy individuals and organizations that are wreaking havoc in other spheres of society in the name of progress. In fact, many charter schools are openly operated as for-profit schools, which means cashing in on kids is their “education model.” Students are seen as a source of profit for these privately-owned-and-operated contract “schools of choice.”
Widespread patronage and nepotism in the charter school sector only add to the problems plaguing this deregulated sector, and a persistently low level of transparency and accountability in this deregulated sector does not help either. Charter authorizing bodies, the entities that supposedly oversee charter schools for a fee, have had little impact in ensuring high standards and quality in this nonpublic sector. In practice, “free market” accountability has actually lowered quality and standards.
Philosophically, legally, academically, organizationally, programmatically, and socially charter schools have little in common with public schools. They have more in common with private organizations and corporations than with public entities.
It is no accident that in recent years, neoliberal disinformation about the “publicness” and “privateness” of charter schools has become more debased in a desperate attempt to justify the expansion of charter schools across the country. Deliberate mystification about the “publicness” and “privateness” of charter schools has been at the forefront of neoliberal ideology and school privatization, disorienting even some critics of charter schools. But such “justifications” do not work because they lack legitimacy and authority; they are belied by reality.
A main thrust of the decades-long neoliberal antisocial offensive of neoliberals is to blur the distinction between public and private so as to promote narrow private interests in the name of serving the public interest. Such a top-down agenda carried out under the veneer of high ideals is self-serving because it damages education, society, the nation, and the economy. It undermines a modern nation-building project that empowers people and rejects monopolization of the economy by major owners of capital.
Charter schools prove that not every “innovation” that comes into being in the name of “education reform” benefits education, society, the economy, and the national interest.
The oral arguments presented on April 30, 2025 in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) on the public funding of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic K-12 Virtual School in Oklahoma show that there is a strong push to treat charter schools as the private entities they are, and that the long-standing critical distinction between public and private is marred by more confusion and disinformation than ever. Keeping in mind that charter schools are “public” only on paper, if SCOTUS deems charter schools to be state actors (i.e., public schools), then the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause applies, which means that charter school cannot be religious. However, early news reports suggest that, for the first time in history, SCOTUS may well approve the funneling of public funds to private religious actors like St. Isidore. While no court decision will change the long-standing private character of charter schools for the last 34 years, a final decision on this divisive landmark case by the SCOTUS is expected in June 2025. More on this in a future article.
The first charter school law in the U.S. was established in Minnesota in 1991. Today, about 3.8 million students attend roughly 8,000 charter schools across the country. Charter schools are legal in 47 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
ENDNOTES:
[1] The vast majority of teacher education students in the United States pursue teaching credentials in order to teach in a traditional public school. Very few, if any, are striving to become charter school teachers.
[2] The right to exclude is “one of the most treasured” rights of property ownership.
[3] It should always be borne in mind that the State today is a State of the rich and not a State that serves the public interest.
[4] The 14th Amendment is central to State Action Doctrine.
The post Can a Charter School Not Be a Private Entity? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
From 2020 to 2022, Americans saw the state mobilize immense resources to boost their standard of living—and then witnessed the hard political constraints hemming in this capacity.
This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.
We have witnessed the destructive effects of financialization. Can the millions held in bank deposits, corporate equities, and bonds be used instead to provide for society’s most pressing needs?
This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.
Two days after the Ecuadorian presidential election, leftist economist and politician Diego Borja traveled by car to the Colombian border with his wife. They hoped to vacation in the neighboring country for the Catholic holy week of Semana Santa. But there, Ecuadorian border agents confiscated his ID cards and detained him. They said Borja, whose party lost the country’s election on April 13…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
An interview with Quinn Slobodian, the author of Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right.
This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.
On April 13, a runoff presidential election between the incumbent Daniel Noboa and the progressive candidate Luisa Gonzalez was held in Ecuador. Leading up to the election, a very tight race was expected and conditions pointed to a likely victory by Gonzalez. However, on election day, Noboa was declared the winner with a lead of more than 11%. Clearing the FOG speaks with Pedro Labayen Herrera, who is a researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research where he focuses on Ecuador. Labayen was present for the elections. He reports on the scandals just before the election, violations of the Constitution by Noboa and what happened on election day. He also describes the deterioration of conditions within Ecuador and the challenges ahead.
The post Following Unfair Presidential Election, Ecuador Faces A Grim Future appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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On April 24, thousands of Panamanians took to the streets to protest the recent approval of the pension reform in Panama promoted by the neoliberal government of José Raúl Mulino. Law 462 has been the source of a lot of controversy in the Central American country because, according to several unions, it will reduce retirement pensions compared to the previous system. The mobilization was called by the Association of Professors of Panama (ASOPROF) and the Single National Union of Industry and Construction and Similar Workers (SUNTRACS), who have announced that they will embark on an indefinite national strike on April 28.
The post Panamanians Gear Up For Indefinite Strike On April 28 appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Why has US President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on countries all around the world? And in particular, why is Trump waging a trade war on China? What are his real goals?
Well, to try to answer these questions, I spoke with the economist Michael Hudson, who is the author of many books, and who just published the new report “Return of the robber barons: Trump’s distorted view of US tariff history“.
Michael Hudson outlined the history of the use of tariffs in the United States and in other countries, and he explained how Trump is using tariffs as a weapon of class war, to benefit the rich at the expense of the vast majority of the population, and also how Trump is trying to reshape the global financial system, in order to benefit the United States at the expense of everyone else.
The post Trump’s Tariffs Hurt The US Much More Than China appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Donald Trump’s tariff policy has thrown markets into turmoil among his allies and enemies alike. This anarchy reflects the fact that his major aim was not really tariff policy, but simply to cut income taxes on the wealthy, by replacing them with tariffs as the main source of government revenue. Extracting economic concessions from other countries is part of his justification for this tax shift as offering a nationalistic benefit for the United States.
His cover story, and perhaps even his belief, is that tariffs by themselves can revive American industry. But he has no plans to deal with the problems that caused America’s deindustrialization in the first place.
The post Return Of The Robber Barons: Trump’s Distorted View Of US Tariff History appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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So wrote the epochal scholar and thinker W.E.B DuBois as part of his elegant polemic of the father of Black accommodationism and an ancestor of the Black Misleadership Class, Booker T. Washington. Whereas Dr. DuBois was diplomatic with his opprobrium of Mr. Wasington, I cannot offer the same semblance of benevolence when it comes to Senator Cory Booker, who represents a pernicious manifestation of bootlicking and an exemplar of the fact that white “supremacy” ideology can be upheld and exercised by anyone regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, or other identity.
The post From Uncle Tom To Cousin Cory appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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As Ecuador heads into a very important run-off election on April 13, the issues of security, state violence and the economy remain at the forefront for many Ecuadorians. Dollarization, submission to U.S. dictates, the proliferation of arms shipments through privately owned ports, and the expansion of international drug cartels to justify military presence have all combined to make the living conditions of the poorest unbearable, especially for African and indigenous communities with a constant war directed at them from the militarized structures of the state, like the case of the Guayaquil Four .
The post As Elections Near, Ecuador’s Working Poor And Colonized Under Siege appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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This Sunday, March 30, as the electoral campaign for Ecuador’s presidential elections on April 13 progresses, Luisa González, candidate of the leftist Citizen Revolution movement, participated in the National Meeting for an Equitable, Plurinational, and Violence-Free Ecuador. There, she signed an agreement with indigenous movements and other social organizations ahead of the runoff.
Before tens of thousands of people gathered in Tixán, Alausí canton, Chimborazo province, González signed a roadmap to advance toward unity with Guillermo Churuchumbi, national coordinator of the Pachakutik movement.
The post Ecuador: Luisa González Signs Unity Pact To Counter Neoliberalism appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Donald Trump is back in power, and, to put it mildly, he’s no fan of globalization. The president has publicly “rejected globalism and embraced patriotism” and said that “it’s left millions and millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache.” To better understand the current era of globalization that he’s trying to bring to an end and its track record, it’s useful to compare it with the globalization that took place between 1870 and the outbreak of World War I.
Both globalizations represent pivotal periods — watershed years that shaped today’s world. And both saw the largest expansions of global economic output to date.
The post What Comes After Globalization? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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The administration is attempting to incapacitate the redistributive and social protective arms of the state, while exploiting its vast bureaucratic powers to silence, threaten, and deport.
This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.
As transpired in Weimar Germany, cataclysmic times invariably induce great suffering, yet they can also serve as inspiration for poignant and moving works of art. What follows is a discussion of six works of insightful and intellectually nuanced contemporary American cinema which explore this distressing age in all its viciousness and depravity, while engaging the anguish of the individual struggling to survive amidst a maelstrom of unprecedented corporate pillage and political and socio-economic chaos.
While I have tried to limit them as much as possible, these reviews may contain spoilers.
The East, directed by Zal Batmanglij; starring Brit Marling, Alexander Skarsgård, and Elliot Page (2013)
The East tells the gripping story of Jane, a young woman (played by Brit Marling) who is employed at a private intelligence company, and who is awarded the sought-after assignment of infiltrating a radical environmental organization called The East. Like many Americans who have “good jobs,” Jane is zealously devoted to her career and devoid of a moral compass. Her unbridled ambition is on full display when Jane is told by her boyfriend that she’s still a winner to him if she doesn’t get this coveted commission (the details of which are unbeknownst to him), to which she responds, “I’m only a winner if I get it.”
When Jane infiltrates the group, which she is able to do because of her youth and because of certain strategies she employs to gain the group’s trust, she realizes that she is unable to intellectually counter any of their arguments regarding ecological degradation caused by unfettered corporate power. Indeed, Jane is a conformist, and like many highly credentialed Americans has never learned to think for herself. This raises the possibility of her potentially becoming a double agent.
The environmentalists are exquisitely cast, and the leaders of the group possess remarkable depth. They are also well educated, having come from privileged families and having attended elite schools. Their dilemma is that they have managed to retain firm moral convictions making them unemployable.
In a more democratic and civilized society, the leaders of The East would likely hold positions of power and influence. Instead, they live as outcasts. The time Jane spends with the radical collective forces her to reexamine her preconceived understanding of success. Is true success possible without principles and ideals?
The two worlds Jane navigates, the ruthless corporate world of violence and skulduggery and an America enraged at corporate malfeasance, shake the foundation of her identity and sense of reality. The East’s methods for combatting corporate villainy – actions they call “jams” – are extreme and of dubious legality, further straining the protagonist’s sense of right and wrong. What happens to the rule of law when what is legal and what is moral no longer coincide?
Having never spent time around articulate people who value honor over money (in stark contrast with her pitiless boss and hard-driving colleagues), the time Jane spends with the collective catapults her into an existential crisis where her value system is upended and she is forced to make extremely difficult and life-altering choices.
Wendy and Lucy, directed by Kelly Reichardt; starring Michelle Williams (2008)
No film in the post-New Deal era embodies the tragic destruction of the American working class more than Wendy and Lucy. In this harsh world millions have been left without jobs, health insurance; or in the case of the film’s protagonist, Wendy, even a family member to crash with.
Caught up in a tempest of economic devastation, Wendy is left with nothing except a few hundred dollars, a jalopy which serves both as makeshift home and means of transportation, and her beloved dog Lucy – her only companion.
The grave circumstances of her situation are tragic and soulful cinema viewers will all feel a deep sense of compassion for her increasingly dire situation. As she passes through flyover country the lack of communities and economic life almost resemble that of a post-apocalyptic tale. Deindustrialization, the outsourcing and offshoring of countless jobs, and the financialization of the economy have cut millions of Americans adrift, of whom our suffering protagonist is one.
Wendy and Lucy is the antithesis of mass market Hollywood cinema where everyone seems to magically have friends and money. Wendy’s brother-in-law and an elderly security guard she meets feel pity for her plight, yet they are also “strapped” and are in no meaningful position to assist her.
How many trillions of dollars have been spent on wars, cannibalistic proxies, and on maintaining hundreds of bases around the world while destitute Americans drown in a sea of oligarchic avarice?
Having heard that there is work there, Wendy is headed to Alaska. Yet when her car breaks down and events threaten to separate her from Lucy her poverty, loneliness, and despair become almost unbearable. Instead of job opportunities, friends, and family she is enveloped by a shroud of silence.
Margin Call, directed by JC Chandor; starring Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore and Zachary Quinto (2011)
Perhaps the best movie ever made about Wall Street, Margin Call tells the story of the financial crash of 2008. The story, which unfolds over a 24-hour period, revolves around a powerful Wall Street investment bank, and one of the key motifs of the film is not only how these demonic corporations treat their fellow Americans, but how they treat their own workers.
When an entry-level analyst is covertly handed a flash drive by his recently fired boss, he discovers that the firm is in danger of going bankrupt due to having invested too heavily in unstable mortgage-backed securities whose value is rapidly deteriorating. He alerts his superiors and senior management calls an emergency meeting in the dead of night. The firm’s CEO (brought to life in an unforgettable performance by Jeremy Irons), whose helicopter makes a dramatic landing on the roof of their skyscraper, reminds everyone that his motto is, “Be first, be smarter, or cheat.” Only concerned with self-preservation, he is prepared to do virtually anything to prevent the firm from going under, and this rabid tribalism supersedes loyalty to one’s country and even to the financial services industry itself whose fellow vultures they are preparing to swindle.
The firm is infested with sociopaths like New York City garbage is crawling with cockroaches. At one point a young analyst is found crying in the bathroom after being notified that he will shortly be let go, and one of the senior managers indifferently takes note of his distress while simultaneously shaving with a cold-blooded hauteur and likely pondering ways to unload “The biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of capitalism” (to quote their CEO). Here, apart from one’s ability to generate significant profits, human life has no value. There are only “winners” and “losers,” and the “winners” are the ones that continue to make the big bucks.
No less disturbing are instances where employees are not allowed to quit, such as one Kafkaesque situation where the firm sends its people scouring the bars of lower Manhattan to try and find the recently laid off and now distraught head of risk management, who they learn has important insights into how they ended up in this disastrous situation in the first place, yet who was cruelly fired after nineteen years of devoted service with even his phone being shut off. Despite his wife informing the firm that her husband doesn’t want to speak to them, he is eventually located and forced to return to work when threats are made to revoke his severance package.
There is a scene where one of the senior managers played by Kevin Spacey comes out of his office applauding after a huge number of the firm’s employees were just laid off. Participating in this death cult ritual, his obsequious subordinates mimic his behavior. Speaking of those recently sacked, he says, “They were good at their jobs. You were better.”
Spacey’s character is later treated in a similar fashion when he returns to his former home to bury his dog (whom he evidently cares for far more than the small business owners undoubtedly run into the ground by his firm), only to be told by his ex-wife that, “You don’t live here anymore,” and that, “The alarm is on so don’t try to break in.” In a mirroring of how he has long treated his employees, his wife has replaced him with another husband.
Margin Call vividly portrays a diseased America that is at war with the world and at war with itself.
Martha Marcy May Marlene, directed by Sean Durkin; starring Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson, and John Hawkes (2011)
Dying societies invariably become a field of lost souls, and no soul is more lost than the protagonist of Martha Marcy May Marlene, a profound examination into how a disintegrating society can facilitate the rise of cults that prey on, ensnare, and entrap vulnerable human beings. The lead character, Martha, is renamed Marcy May by the cult leader (who is reminiscent of Charles Manson), while Marlene is the name female cult members use when answering the phone and following a script designed to attract new followers.
In a neoliberal America where people increasingly no longer identify themselves as Americans but by their profession, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, Martha no longer has any idea who she is, thereby offering easy prey to the cult. All the ties that may have once bound her to an American history or a personal history have been severed, making her as impressionable as a small child.
Part of the cult’s seductive nature is how it makes use of a vaguely anti-capitalist language. However, its raison d’être is ultimately to annihilate all vestiges of privacy and individuality, resulting in a violent and authoritarian existence for the cult’s members who are taught to share their clothes, their beds; and ultimately, their bodies. The protagonist has many names, and yet no name. For her lack of a cultural value system has dissolved her sense of self.
Initiation into the cult is done by drugging a young woman so that she can be raped by the cult leader, yet the protagonist is told that this is actually a good thing, revealing a Tartarean world where ethics are amorphous and reality is something that can be invented. (To quote Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”)
Martha represents millions of young Americans who grow up without a loving family, a real community, and are denied a proper humanities education. Indeed, she is a shell of a human being, a cultural amnesiac devoid of reason, a sense of the past, and a sense of the sacred.
The only place Martha can seek refuge is with her sister and brother-in-law, shallow people concerned only with money and accumulating possessions. Their crass consumerism and indifference to serious socio-economic problems is cultlike in and of itself, offering Martha no clear way to escape from this existential crisis she finds herself in.
The harrowing tale unfolds in a disjointed and fragmented manner, which mirrors the fragmented psyche of the suffering protagonist – and in many ways, of American society itself.
The Girlfriend Experience, directed by Steven Soderbergh; starring Sasha Grey, Chris Santos, and Philip Eytan (2009)
Steven Soderbergh’s thought-provoking film The Girlfriend Experience (not to be confused with the mini-series) takes us on a journey through another dark circle of this second Gilded Age, where sexual relations have been rendered largely transactional and thereby stripped of tenderness and romance.
Chelsea (Sasha Grey), the film’s protagonist, works as a high-end prostitute for an affluent Manhattan clientele, while her boyfriend is employed as an honest athletic trainer earning a small fraction of what she makes – an all too common paradox, yet one which also serves as a metaphor for how incomes are typically doled out in 21st century America.
In this nihilistic culture that places profit-making over all other considerations, the protagonist has come to believe that one’s sex partner is no different than one’s tennis partner, and that her life as a prostitute for jet-setters will lead to freedom and liberation.
Chelsea worships wealth and will do anything to be with those who have it. In a country where the masses are saddled with trillions of dollars of household debt while a small group of plutocrats enjoy unbridled power, there is virtually no moral barrier she won’t violate in order to spend time with the mega rich, even if it means becoming their plaything and forgoing all traces of dignity.
The film raises disturbing questions about the nature of a hyper-privatized America and its impact on social relations. If a society ceases to hold anything sacred, is it still a real society? Is it possible to retain one’s humanity when one regards people as mere commodities to be used and then discarded? Due to its adoration of materialism and emotionless sexual encounters, is contemporary Western feminism compatible with love?
Chelsea’s hapless and no less delusional boyfriend initially approves of her degenerate lifestyle, and only insists that she doesn’t go on any trips with her “clients,” which, during one heated quarrel, she condemns as “selfish.” Like his wayward would-be lover, he has been taught by the media and education system that his girlfriend can work as a prostitute and that this somehow won’t inevitably destroy their relationship.
The Girlfriend Experience depicts a dystopia where people are incessantly using one another for material gain and real communities have been eradicated under a deathly hand of relentless exploitation, job destruction, and hyper-consumerism which for many Americans have swept away all traces of trust and love.
Michael Clayton, directed by Tony Gilroy; starring Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, and George Clooney (2007)
There is a riveting scene in Michael Clayton that unfolds in a lower Manhattan neighborhood I know all too well, where Arthur Edens (in a role masterfully executed by Tom Wilkinson), one of his law firm’s lead litigators, is berating Michael Clayton (George Clooney) for continuing to blindly follow their firm’s orders, to which a defensive Clayton says, “I’m not the enemy.” To which Arthur replies, “Then who are you?” Michael Clayton is a story about a society drowning in corporate savagery and two men who are consciously or subconsciously trying to reclaim their humanity.
Arthur represents U-North, an agricultural corporation that has polluted the environment with a carcinogenic weed killer. The problem – at least for his law firm and the corporation they are defending – is that Arthur knows that he has squandered years of his life defending diabolical corporations and, wracked with guilt, has decided that he is tired of fighting on the side of these dastardly forces. To the amazement of his colleagues, one day he suddenly snaps and goes rogue, turning on U-North, which his law firm has been hired to defend in a multibillion dollar class action lawsuit. While initially exasperated, Michael can’t help but be influenced by his friend’s strange behavior, and his amoral ethos is challenged.
Of great significance are the unhappy private lives of Michael, Arthur (who lives alone in an enormous dimly lit Soho loft), and the loyal corporate soldier Karen Crowder (performed chillingly by Tilda Swinton), all of whom make significant six figure salaries yet live lonely lives devoid of meaning and a sense of purpose.
Michael Clayton underscores the catch-22 that many Americans find themselves in, where those who are able to break out of the ignominious cycle of debt slavery and modern serfdom often do so by selling their souls and relinquishing all semblance of morality and freedom of speech, while many of those who have “made it” don’t have time to think about anything other than their extremely demanding jobs which devour every waking moment. Leaving this information bubble by exploring alternative news sources in an attempt to search for answers to these troubling times can lead to thinking, thinking can lead to posting heretical thoughts, which in turn can only lead to being ostracized from elite circles, unemployment, and death – professional, or even literal. And so it pays not to think.
In one haunting scene Clayton is driving in a rural area in upstate New York when he suddenly exits his car to approach three mysterious and strikingly beautiful horses. Like the inversion of the three witches in Macbeth, the animals seem to be calling on him to abandon a life of ambition and to return to a simpler and more humane existence devoid of materialism, dissembling, and relentless competition. The mysticism and primordial timelessness of this moment mesmerize the mind of a man who has lost his way in a brutal world, and serve as a clarion call to reclaim a life that is more dignified and honorable before it is too late.
The post Masterpieces of Contemporary American Cinema: Neoliberalism through the Looking Glass first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
A class consciousness among the working masses, one that takes the issue of race seriously, is critical at this moment. Still, the democrats are working to disrupt this effort to organize against the capitalist elite. “War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped […]
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Author Bruce Lerro, Co-Founder and Co-Organizer for Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism
Summary of Part I
In Part I of this article I contrasted sixteen ways in which communist macro-psychology differs from liberal micro-psychology as it is practiced in the United States. I described communist psychology in action in the field of eating habits and the impact of advertising on the public’s emotional life. I discussed the reasons why my readers might have a difficult time appreciating what communist psychology has to offer and I used the science fiction book Flatland as an analogy to show that using communist psychological concepts is like living in the third dimension of a two-dimensional world of capitalist micro-psychology.
In Part II of my article, I will describe how even when communist psychology books are translated from Russian into English, they are unconsciously or consciously distorted or censored by those Ratner calls neoliberal psychologists to fit better with the structure and dynamics of capitalism. As an example of macro-cultural psychology in this article I will also use an example of how capitalism is connected to mental illnesses, specifically in schizophrenia and the pressure to be thin.
What is Neoliberal Activity Theory?
As many of you know, neoliberalism in the field of economics and politics hit the United States and England full-force with the election of Reagan and Thatcher. It was characterized by economic policies designed to hollow out of the technological infrastructure, attack unions and the wages of workers. Neoliberalism is also connected to the rise of transnational, financial capitalism. It would appear that these conditions would breed a kind of pessimistic psychology with individuals seen as more or less determined by socio-structural forces. But that did not happen in the field of psychological activity theory in the United States. In fact the opposite happened.
It was in early 1980s that Vygotsky’s work was brought to the United States thanks to the educational psychologist Michael Cole. But Cole’s presentation of Vygotsky’s work played down the fact that Vygotsky was a communist set on building a Marxist psychology. Instead, Vygotsky’s interest in learning, education and his work on “defectology” (social education of blind and deaf children) was emphasized. The main problem is that neoliberal psychologists want to eclectically use Vygotsky’s work in education while either intentionally or unintentionally leaving out the fact that Vygotsky and his colleagues were trying to build a communist psychology. Ratner writes that this is akin to writing about Darwin and holding conferences about his ideas yet never exploring his concept of evolution. As American psychologist Carl Ratner writes:
Eighty years later, under much less social pressure, and with many more resources, contemporary activity theorists have generally regressed from the limited concrete emphasis in Vygotsky, Luria and Leontiev’s theories. (Page 240)
In addition, almost as a reaction formation to the hard neoliberal economic times, these psychologists emphasized the active nature of individuals in relation to social structure (with a romantic conception of individuals as free as birds – see image at beginning of article). For example, they selected peer group cooperative learning as opposed to learning through an individual instructor. They emphasized language and conversations in cooperation as opposed to Leontiev’s emphasis on collective tool use. Neoliberal Vygotskians were more interested in the cooperative settings of school and play and less in work settings. Some of them caught the postmodern bug and questioned scientific objectivity as the ultimate aspiration of psychologists.
The Fear of Macro-Cultural Psychology
Ratner points out that in world neoliberal psychology the subjects of consumer capitalism, commodification, alienation, exploitation and ideology are never mentioned in their leading journals on culture. For example, he tells us these subjects are not mentioned in the 17-year history of Michael Cole’s journal Mind, Culture and Activity, supposedly sympathetic to Vygotskyan work. Neither did these subjects ever appear in the Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology over a period of forty years. The Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology mentions the word capitalism twice in 850 pages. Ratner explains that the most famous social psychology text ever, The Social Animal, never once mentions social class. There is a neglect of macro social factors involved in mental illness – for example the link between psychological depression and capitalist economic instabilities (to be covered shortly). Why is this? Drug companies want patients to use their products and not question the economic system that might be ultimately the reason these patients have these problems. Ratner says that every one of the authors of DSM manual’s sections on mood disorders and schizophrenia had financial ties to drug companies
Qualifications About Micro Neoliberal Psychology
These journals and books fail to discuss in detail exploitation, alienation, commodification, ideology, mystification, hegemony or social class. Social class is rarely mentioned, yet research proves that it affects mortality, diseases, opportunities, privileges, health care, literacy, vocabulary and working memory. Neoliberal psychology admits that the micro-level reflects effects of these macro events, but it does not reveal the power and depth of macro cultural factors in their full complexity which go beyond the level of face-to-face interaction. Neoliberal psychologists sometimes acknowledge the effect of exploitation – poverty, stress, anxiety, prejudice – but they attribute them to factors other than an exploitive political economy. For example, instead of blaming the political economy of capitalism we hear of the “corruption of individuals”, “rotten apples”, “rogue criminals”, “greedy businessmen” or “disturbed individuals”. These are all vices of individuals. Structures get away scot-free. Lastly, it is not enough that cross-cultural psychologists point out that most Americans have more individualistic self-concept and North Koreans have a collectivist orientation. It is necessary to analyze the political character of the individualistic self-concept.
Macro-Cultural vs Micro-Cultural Activity Theory
Socio-historical activity theory says it is a collectivist, mediated and object-oriented activity system which is the prime unit of analysis. Secondly, the activity system is always a community, not a dyad or triad. Thirdly, contradiction has a central role as sources of change and development. In other words, conflict in real objective systems is the mother of change. Fourthly, these activity systems get transformed over long periods of historical time – centuries. Lastly, it is collective-creative activity such as new inventions like the printing press, the telescope and the microscope, qualitative changes that drive psychological changes in the individual. An example is the need for merchants to develop insurance policies for their ships that led to the emergence of formal operational thinking among 17th century merchants and scientists.
In the case of neoliberal theorists of Vygotsky it is the local group, not the collective which is the mediated form of activity. The collective institutional framework in which activity takes place – whether the society is feudal, capitalist or socialist – is ignored. Secondly, the places where Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development takes place are usually among peers. If teachers are involved, they are teaching in a permissive way and less in a way wherein the teacher takes the lead. Thirdly, liberal Vygotskians usually don’t pay much attention to the changing historical contexts in which activity takes place. In the macro activity case, Luria conducted studies shortly after the Russian Revolution about how peasant life psychologically changed as peasants were introduced to the industrialization process. He tracked how peasants’ sense of perception, cognition and personality were transformed. Neoliberal activity theorist rarely delve into the history of activity in their own country. Fourthly, in liberal theory contradictions are not usually understood as opportunities for transformation. They are seen as problems that need to be worked out to re-achieve stability. They might also be dismissed as the products of faulty reasoning. Lastly, activity theory is not often presented as having undergone major changes due to the phases of capitalism, the invention of the telescope, microscope or changes in industry. Rather, activity engagements might be contrasted to before or after the internet, Facebook, texting or Twitter.
Micro Cultural Activity Theory reduces the activity process to simple, small, personal, casual, apolitical and spontaneous interactions. But as Ratner says, whole societies are not re-formed on the model of someone helping a neighbor turn off the gas. The telecommunications industry does not operate by individuals broadcasting from their home radios. The macro conditions of the Wall Street 2008 crash and what bankers got away with cannot be understood by a cooperative meeting between an individual client and their financial planner.
Individuals do not spontaneously categorize artifacts with personal meanings. If they did there would be no commonality to individuals’ psychology. Each would imbue artifacts with different idiosyncratic meanings. Terms like “cultural factors” and “cultural context” are lifeless abstractions that exclude the political and economic driving forces that design and maintain these factors in the face of competing intersections for other classes. The term “context” obscures the active way capitalists and their politicians create context and make and structure our behavior in the service of their political interests. Without these macro institutions, Ratner points out that there would be tremendous slippage in micro interactions from the first dyad to the last – as studies of rumor transmission document. Macro-institutions already inform any micro social interactions and hold them together.
Micro-cultural psychologists treat verbal language and symbolic culture as at least equal to the material culture of work. In macro-cultural psychology work is the center of human activity and symbols and language were first used to assist the work process. Language and symbols do not arise spontaneously. Lastly, micro-cultural psychologists do not pay enough attention to the existence of the core, periphery and semi-periphery nations in the world-capitalist system. Countries in each of their zones had unique political economic institutions that produced a unique psychology. Grouping these societies as individualist or collectivist tells us nothing about their political economy. Collectivist societies can be tribal or agricultural and this kind of collectivism is very different from the collectivism of socialist societies. So too, there were some individualist selves in the commercial civilizations of the Minoans, Phoenicians and Carthaginians. But this proto-individualism is a far cry from the individualism of industrial capitalist societies.
Examples of Neoliberal Micro Cultural Psychology in the Workplace
Ratner argues that Barbara Rogoff redefines society in novel, abstract terms such as a list of scattered, abstract “community routines”. There are no exploitation, alienation, market forces, profit motives, commodification, bureaucracy or ideology at all here. Here “culture” is a surface mix of bedtime stories, trips to school, and show-and-tell narratives. Rather than mention social class she called them depoliticized terms like “participation status”. So the only difference between the president from Exxon Mobil and a migrant peasant are positions in a conversation. Life imprisonment, coal mining, working in a slaughterhouse, and the obliteration of one’s country by an invading army is a no more than a “format”.
Jann Valsiner engaged in a conceptual watering down of social reality by re-naming “cultural factors” to “social suggestions”. So being terminated from your job, having your country invaded, being imprisoned, having your pension cancelled are “social suggestions”. Ratner adds we cannot remake the Federal Reserve Bank by altering a few words. Neither can the institution of slavery be abolished by changing a word such as calling it “racism”. There need to be workers’ self-organization and strikes to have a chance for a deep change. Valsiner and Litvinovich claim that individuals continuously changed culture through the simple act of dialoguing. It takes a lot more than conversations to do that.
Another problem for these neoliberal micro-psychologists is that subjectivity and psychology are treated as dichotomous to culture rather than dialectically related with macro culture as the leading edge. Culture is treated as a tool that an individual decides how and when to use. The current purposes of the participants always seem to trump established macro cultural structures. Micro-cultural psychologists define social life in whatever area seems to be within our personal control as individuals. Ratner says this is like looking for a lost key under wherever the streetlight is. Micro-cultural psychologists “zoom in” on individuals so much that they lose sight of mega social conditions that inform them. Consequently, the individual appears to be acting on his or her own because these larger conditions have been cut out of the picture.
For example, in the case of Abu Ghraib the torturers seem to be acting on their own and the state of military elites are only too happy to blame working class soldiers. However, Ratner tells us, when we zoom out we see that entire chain of command encouraged the guards. Six hundred military and Blackwater personal were on hand to abuse 460 Iraqi detainees. This was a spontaneous eruption by the personal decision of 600 six hundred soldiers. The neoliberal micro-psychologists theory would seem to think so.
Lastly, any attempt at objectivity is looked upon skeptically by many micro-cultural psychologists who insist on glorifying their subject’s subjective experience as the subject matter of psychology. Any objective interpretation that superseded theirs and critically evaluates subjective experience as possibly being due to illusions, short-sightedness or narcissism is condemned as elitist and coercive because it does not emanate from the individuals themselves. Ironically, a denial of objectivity traps people more because it tells them that nothing outside of them is really going on.
See the table at the end of the article below to view the contrasts between macro-cultural activity theory and micro-cultural liberal theory.
Example of Macro-Cultural Psychology Regarding Mental Illness
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia has been defined as the disorganization of thinking processes, emotional states and the inability to plan and carry out actions. But for macro-cultural psychology this state is not separate from the conditions of modern life. Ratner quotes T.S. Eliot as saying that in modern life there is also a separation between thought, emotion and sensation and a failure to reach what he calls a “unity of sensibility”. The symptoms of schizophrenia – withdrawal, highly idiosyncratic and abstract patterns of thinking and behaving and a preoccupation with hidden meanings – bare an unmistakable congruence with the broad social relations and concepts of capitalism (individualism, privacy and privatized meaning).
Ratner points out that catatonia was not described until after 1850. Even more telling is the absence of schizophrenia, at least of the chronic, autistic form, either in medical books or general literature prior to the 19th century. Detachment, being naïve, cynicism, subjectivism and other psychological mechanisms of mental illness were not spontaneously constructed by mental patients. Psychological constructs emerge from macro-level forces that are widely known in a population. They were reported on by novelists and in painting styles of the time.
Ratner says that the experience of the individual feeling worthless is also historically recent. It used to be in the past that under Christianity an individual felt guilty from a sense of sinfulness. But with the relative decline of religion in the 19thcentury, personal inadequacies were less hinged to religion and more simply a personal problem, a self divided against itself.
But this “divided self” emerged only in the late 19th century in conjunction with the increased number of roles the individual was expected to play. In earlier times individuals might be conflicted between the soul and the body, but the individual was still pulled in only two directions. The 19th century marked a new conception of different selves or personalities within one individual. The extreme case of this is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), but there were also reports of multiple personalities within a single individual. Psychological processes generally have followed changes in the history of capitalism. In the activist 1960s the psychic disorders were linked to social factors like poverty and migration. In the lean and mean times of neoliberalism these social factors disappear and the social environment shrinks to the nuclear or extended family, which is blamed for almost everything.
Tyranny of bodily slenderness
In the worst case scenario it appears that disorders like anorexia or bulimia are simply sudden eruptions of pathology that don’t have any social rhyme or reason. More socially oriented psychologists might say these disorders have something to do with advertising or movies that want women to be thin. Evolutionary psychologists will point out that a desire to be thin goes against evolutionary psychology principles and tell us that convincing adult women to be thin will sell a lot more products than showing voluptuous women on the cover of magazines. This is because after a couple of children, most woman naturally become voluptuous and there are more limits on the products that advertisers can sell them. Evolutionary psychologists call the intervention of advertising into Darwinian sexual selection “evolutionary mismatches”. All these points have some merit but they still ignore capitalism.
Here is what Ratner has to say about this:
Slenderness is represented in sleek thin light consumer products such as cell phones, flat panel televisions and thin, lightweight laptop computers. It is reflected in architecture that emphasizes sleek lines and sharp angles… Slenderness symbolized as agility and the ability to move and change directions quickly, free of encumbrances, independently. These attributes are important to modern capitalist society.
What kind of capitalism is this? Why, it’s finance capitalism, liquid capital. Ratner continues:
The investor is nimble in shifting his capital to maximized profit. The employer is nimble in anticipating production demands and increasing or decreasing his or her labor supply to prepare. The manager is nimble in shifting work to low wage areas and shifting suppliers to lower costs.
Sleekness and slimness represent nimble capital. They represent finance capital on a psychological plane. Anorexia or bulimia is like a crisis in finance capital visited upon psychological disorders. On the other hand, overweight or even voluptuousness is antithetical to these sleek qualities. Ratner says it is slow, ponderous, inertial, regulated and weighted down. Hence it is looked down upon. There certainly are Darwinian reasons for rejecting corpulence, but that is not the end of the story. What does full body or voluptuousness represent in the field of capitalism – industrial capitalism – in which capitalists invest in infrastructure, repair, goods and services? It is heavy capitalism.
So:
Sleekness = finance capital
Voluptuousness or chubbiness = industrial capital
Since we are living in the heyday of neoliberal finance capital it would make complete sense that being overweight is looked down upon just as investing in industry is something neoliberal capitalists in Yankeedom don’t want to do.
Ratner concludes:
Sleekness does not require waiting, preparing, thinking or training. It is always moving to a new location, getting away, diversifying, expanding horizons and novelty… The tyranny of slenderness that defines the female body is an element of the general lightness of being…This is the cultural root of eating disorders.
On the other hand:
In collectivist society life is slower, more integrated, more committed more encumbering with considerations for a large community. One sticks around, consults with others, sacrifices for others, accedes to others, supports others over the long hall.
This is why in collectivist societies there is little in the way of eating disorders except for perhaps within the upper middle classes. On the other hand, a hunter-gatherer may look at an anorexic person in the United States and wonder, “has there been a famine”?
Historical Underpinnings of Macro-Cultural Psychology
In reviewing the history of macro-cultural psychology Ratner says the first theorist was Abu Al-Biruni, a Muslim scholar who conducted an extensive ethnology of Indian psychology and mentality in 1017. In the west tenets of macro-cultural psychology originated in the cultural movement in Germany in the 1770s. They considered the texts of Moses, Homer and Plato not to be the wisdom of an individual sage but the expression of a nation’s achievement at a particular stage in its cultural development. They wanted to understand the collective development of the human mind in society, a process these scholars came to describe as culture. Herder and Vico were interested in this.
The term Völkerpsychologie was coined by Wilhelm Humboldt at the turn of the 19th century. Its use was continued by Wilhelm Wundt in his cross-cultural psychology writing. Another cornerstone was the historical school known as Annales. It arose in France in the 1920s under the leadership of Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. Febvre was interested in how the impact of the printing press affected sense ratios. Henri Corbin studied the history of smell (The Fowl and the Fragrant), hearing (Village Bells) and the impact of the sea on perception (The Lure of the Sea). Philippe Aries, as many of you know, studied the history of childhood.
Macro-cultural psychology has a promising history, but it was taken to new heights by communist psychologists in Russia in the 1920s and 1930. Vygotsky, Luria and Leontiev left us a rich legacy. It is up to us to keep Vygotskyan psychology communist and not let it become watered down and truncated by neoliberal micro-cultural psychologists, however well-intentioned they may be.
Macro-Cultural Communist Activity Theory vs Micro-Cultural Neoliberal Activity Theory
| Macro-Cultural Activity Theory | Category of Comparison | Micro-Cultural Neoliberal Theory |
| A collective, macro artifact mediated and object oriented activity is the primary analysis in work. School and play are secondary. Class is emphasized | Scale of interaction | Limited to local interactionThe macro-framework is ignored
The activity is limited to school and play Work and class relations are ignored |
| Authorities, then peers | Who drives new learning? | Anti-authoritarian emphasis of local interaction of peers
They understate the hierarchical settings in which people work |
| Activity systems take shape and get transformed over lengthy periods of time | Temporal duration | The variations in activity over the long historical settings are ignored
|
| The central role of contradictions as sources of change and development. In medicine the conflict between holistic and western medicine. played out in doctor vs patient fights over medications. |
What is the place of contradiction? | Contradictions are seen as temporary problems to be smoothed over in a quest for equilibrium or understood as logical inconsistencies which are amended by formal logic |
| Activity moves through long cycles of qualitativetransformation including the printing press, telescope, microscope, capitalist boom and bust cycles or the rise of industry | Historical place of technology | They might contrast activity theory before the rise of the internet, Facebook, Instagram or text messaging but not usually before that |
| Collective work with tools is the central activity which makes us human. Symbols and language are derivative | Relationship between tools and verbal language | Symbolic culture and verbal language co-construct cooperative learning
Importance of conversations |
| Is aware of how international power hierarchy in the world system impact psychology
|
Place in the core, periphery or semi-periphery of the capitalist world system | Cross-cultural psychology is somewhat aware of it but not rooted in political economy “Individualism vs collectivism” is about it. |
| Agency is a biproduct of macro culture and sets the tone for both freedom and necessity | Structure and agency | Is afraid of structure
Treats structure as automatically reifying Glorification of “agency” is independent and resisting structure |
| Ratner, Tulvistie | Theoreticians | Valsiner, Shweder, Rogoff, Gergen, Harré |
| Realism All psychologies are not equal Some explain more than others |
Ranking of psychologies | Pluralistic Relativism Says there are many psychologies but they are not ranked— |
| Evolving, relative objectivity | Place of objectivity | Anti-objectivity Subjectivity |
| Scientific knowledge is superior to common sense knowledge of other groups | Place of science relative to other groups | The knowledge of scientists is not superior to the knowledge of other groups (Gergen) |
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Argentina’s President Javier Milei is a self-declared libertarian and “anarcho-capitalist” who has completely subordinated his country to the United States.
In a previous article, Geopolitical Economy Report showed how Argentina’s real economy is in severe crisis under Milei. 53% of the population is in poverty, and manufacturing and construction are collapsing amid rapid deindustrialization. However, the stock market has boomed, enriching Milei’s oligarch backers — although even the financial sector took a hit after Milei promoted a crypto scam that caused thousands of his own supporters to lose millions of dollars.
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The supporters of the Ukraine Solidarity Network (USN) inhabit the same contradictory moral and political space as the European leaders who met with Volodymyr Zelensky, their frontman from Ukraine, to reaffirm their collective commitment to the proxy war in Ukraine. The language of self-determination and rights easily flowed from their lips but not one of them had a word to say about the self-determination of Palestinians who are now facing another illegal siege by Israel in occupied Gaza.
This is the terrain of white privilege that must be confronted. The power to define who is human and who has rights.
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[This article titled The History of Regime Change in Ukraine and the IMF’s Bitter “Economic Medicine” by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky was first published by Global Research. You may read it here.]
Author’s Introduction
We must understand the history of the U.S.-sponsored February 2014 Coup d’Etat which paved the wave for the adoption of IMF-World Bank shock treatment, namely the imposition of devastating macro-economic reforms coupled with conditionalities. This process –imposed by the Washington Consensus– was applied in developing countries since the 1980s, and in Eastern Europe and in the countries of the Soviet Union starting in the early 1990s.
Below is an the article describing the IMF reforms which I wrote in early March 2014, in the immediate wake of the Euromaidan Coup d’Etat which was led by the two major Nazi “parties”: Right Sektor and Svoboda, with the financial support of Washington.
What Is the End Game
The World Bank and the IMF reforms –while establishing the ground work– are no longer the main actors, representing the country’s creditors.
The traditional IMF-World Bank reforms are in many regards obsolete.
The Neoliberal Endgame for Ukraine –resulting from unsurmountable debts– largely attributable to military aid is the outright privatization of an entire country by BlackRock which is a giant portfolio company controlled by powerful financial interests with extensive leverage.
BlackRock signed an agreement with President Zelensky in November 2022.
The Privatization of Ukraine was launched in liaison with BlackRock’s consulting company McKinsey, a public relations firm which has largely been responsible for co-opting corrupt politicians and officials worldwide, not to mention scientists and intellectuals on behalf of powerful financial interests.
The Kyiv government engaged BlackRock’s consulting arm in November to determine how best to attract that kind of capital, and then added JPMorgan in February. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced last month that the country was working with the two financial groups and consultants at McKinsey.
BlackRock and Ukraine’s Ministry of Economy signed a Memorandum of Understanding in November 2022. In late December 2022, president Zelensky and BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink agreed on an investment strategy.
—Michel Chossudovsky, April 27, 2024
The February 23, 2014 Coup d’Etat
In the days following the Ukraine coup d’Etat of February 23, 2014 leading to the ousting of a duly elected president, Wall Street and the IMF –in liaison with the US Treasury and the European Commission in Brussels– had already set the stage for the outright takeover of Ukraine’s monetary system.
The EuroMaidan protests leading up to “regime change” and the formation of an interim government were followed by purges within key ministries and government bodies.
The Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Ihor Sorkin was fired on February 25th and replaced by a new governor Stepan Kubiv.
Stepan Kubiv is a member of Parliament of the Rightist Batkivshchyna “Fatherland” faction in the Rada led by the acting Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk (founded by Yulia Tymoshenko in March 1999). He previously headed Kredbank, a Ukrainian financial institution largely owned by EU capital, with some 130 branches throughout Ukraine. (Ukraine Central Bank Promises Liquidity To Local Banks, With One Condition, Zero Hedge, February 27, 2014)
Kubiv is no ordinary bank executive. He was one of the first field “commandants” of the EuroMaidan riots alongside Andriy Parubiy, co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda), and Dmitry Yarosh, leader of the Right Sector Brown Shirts (centre in image below), which now has the status of a political party.
Kubiv was in the Maidan square addressing protesters on February 18, at the very moment when armed Right Sector thugs under the helm of Dmitry Yarosh (image above, centre) were raiding the parliament building.
The Establishment of an Interim Government
A few days later, upon the establishment of the interim government, Stepan Kubiv was put in charge of negotiations with Wall Street and the IMF.
The new Minister of Finance Aleksandr Shlapak (image below) is a political crony of Viktor Yushchenko –a long-time protegé of the IMF who was spearheaded into the presidency following the 2004 “Colored Revolution”. Shlapak held key positions in the office of the presidency under Yushchenko as well as at the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). In 2010, upon Yushchenko’s defeat, Aleksandr Shlapak joined a shadowy Bermuda based offshore financial outfit IMG International Ltd (IMG), holding the position of Vice President. Based in Hamilton, Bermuda, IMG specialises in “captive insurance management”, reinsurance and “risk transfer.”
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Minister of Finance Aleksandr Shlapak works in close liaison with Pavlo Sheremeto, the newly appointed Minister of Economic Development and Trade, who upon his appointment called for “deregulation, fully fledged and across the board”, requiring –as demanded in previous negotiations by the IMF– the outright elimination of subsidies on fuel, energy and basic food staples.
Another key appointment is that of Ihor Shvaika (image below), a member of the Neo-Nazi Svoboda Party, to the position of Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food. Headed by an avowed follower of World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, this ministry not only oversees the agricultural sector, it also decides on issues pertaining to subsidies and the prices of basic food staples.
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The new Cabinet has stated that the country is prepared for socially “painful” but necessary reforms. In December 2013, a $ 20 billion deal with the IMF had already been contemplated alongside the controversial EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Yanukovych decided to turn it down.
One of the requirements of the IMF was that “household subsidies for gas be reduced once again by 50%.”
“Other onerous IMF requirements included cuts to pensions, government employment, and the privatization (read: let western corporations purchase) of government assets and property. It is therefore likely that the most recent IMF deal currently in negotiation, will include once again major reductions in gas subsidies, cuts in pensions, immediate government job cuts, as well as other reductions in social spending programs in the Ukraine.” (voice of russia.com, March 21, 2014)
Shortly after his instatement, the interim (puppet) prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk casually dismissed the need to negotiate with the IMF. Prior to the conduct of negotiations pertaining to a draft agreement, Yatsenyuk had already called for an unconditional acceptance of the IMF package: “We have no other choice but to accept the IMF offer”.
(Image: Neo Nazi Svoboda Party glorify World War II Nazi Collaborator Stepan Bandera)
Yatsenyuk intimated that Ukraine will “accept whatever offer the IMF and the EU made” (voice of russia.com, March 21, 2014).
In surrendering to the IMF, Yatsenyuk was fully aware that the proposed reforms would brutally impoverish millions of people, including those who protested in Maidan.
The actual timeframe for the implementation of the IMF’s “shock therapy” has not yet been firmly established. In all likelihood, the regime will attempt to delay the more ruthless social impacts of the macroeconomic reforms until after the May 25 presidential elections (assuming that these elections will take place).
The text of the IMF agreement is likely to be detailed and specific, particularly with regard to State assets earmarked for privatization.
Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice, according to Bloomberg, are among key individuals in the US who are acting (in a non-official capacity) in tandem with the IMF, the Kiev government, in consultation with the White House and the US Congress.
The IMF Mission to Kiev
Immediately upon the instatement of the new Finance Minister and NBU governor, a request was submitted to the IMF’s Managing director. An IMF fact-finding mission headed by the Director of the IMF’s European Department Rez Moghadam was rushed to Kiev:
“I am positively impressed with the authorities’ determination, sense of responsibility and commitment to an agenda of economic reform and transparency. The IMF stands ready to help the people of Ukraine and support the authorities’ economic program.” (Press Release: Statement by IMF European Department Director Reza Moghadam on his Visit to Ukraine)
A week later, on March 12, 2014, Christine Lagarde met the interim Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk at IMF headquarters in Washington. Lagarde reaffirmed the IMF’s commitment:
“[to putting Ukraine back] on the path of sound economic governance and sustainable growth, while protecting the vulnerable in society. … We are keen to help Ukraine on its path to economic stability and prosperity.” (Press Release: Statement by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde on Ukraine)
The above statement is wrought with hypocrisy. In practice, the IMF does not wield “sound economic governance” nor does it protect the vulnerable. It impoverishes entire populations while providing “prosperity” to a small corrupt and subservient political and economic elite.
IMF “economic medicine” while contributing to the enrichment of a social minority, invariably triggers economic instability and mass poverty, while providing a “social safety net” to the external creditors. To sell its reform package, the IMF relies on media propaganda as well as persistent statements by “economic experts” and financial analysts which provide authority to the IMF’s macroeconomic reforms.
The unspoken objective behind IMF interventionism is to destabilize sovereign governments and literally break up entire national economies. This is achieved through the manipulation of key macroeconomic policy instruments as well as the outright rigging of financial markets, including the foreign exchange market.
To reach its unspoken goals, the IMF-World Bank –often in consultation with the US Treasury and the State Department– will exert control over key appointments including the Minister of Finance, the Central Bank governor as well as senior officials in charge of the country’s privatization program. These key appointments will require the (unofficial) approval of the “Washington Consensus” prior to the conduct of negotiations pertaining to a multibillion IMF bailout agreement.
Beneath the rhetoric, in the real world of money and credit, the IMF has several related operational objectives:
1) to facilitate the collection of debt servicing obligations, while ensuring that the country remains indebted and under the control of its external creditors.
2) to exert on behalf of the country’s external creditors full control over the country’s monetary policy, its fiscal and budgetary structures,
3) to revamp social programs, labor laws, minimum wage legislation, in accordance with the interests of Western capital,
4) to deregulate foreign trade and investment policies, including financial services and intellectual property rights,
5) to implement the privatization of key sectors of the economy through the sale of public assets to foreign corporations,
6) to facilitate the takeover by foreign capital (including mergers and acquisitions) of selected privately owned Ukrainian corporations, and
7) to ensure the deregulation of the foreign exchange market.
While the privatization program ensures the transfer of State assets into the hands of foreign investors, the IMF program also includes provisions geared towards the destabilization of the country’s privately-owned business conglomerates. A concurrent “break up” plan entitled “spin-off” as well as a “bankruptcy program” are often implemented with a view to triggering the liquidation, closing down or restructuring of a large number of nationally-owned private and public enterprises.
The “spin off” procedure –which was imposed on South Korea under the December 1997 IMF bailout agreement– required the break up of several of Korea’s powerful chaebols (business conglomerates) into smaller corporations, many of which were then taken over by US, EU and Japanese capital. Sizeable banking interests as well highly profitable components of Korea’s high tech industrial base were transferred or sold off at rock bottom prices to Western capital. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal, 2003, Chapter 22).
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These staged bankruptcy programs ultimately seek to destroy national capitalism. In the case of Ukraine, they would selectively target the business interests of the oligarchs, opening the door for the takeover of a sizeable portion of Ukraine’s private sector by EU and US corporations. The conditionalities contained in the IMF agreement would be coordinated with those contained in the controversial EU-Ukraine Association agreement, which the Yanukovych government refused to sign.
Ukraine’s Spiraling External Debt
Ukraine’s external debt is of the order of $140 billion.
In consultations with the US Treasury and the EU, the IMF aid package is to be of the order of $15 billion dollars. Ukraine’s outstanding short-term debt is of the order of $65 billion, more than four times the amount promised by the IMF.
The Central Bank’s foreign currency reserves have literally dried up. In February, according to the NUB, Ukraine’s foreign currency reserves were of the order of a meagre $13.7 billion, its Special Drawing Rights with the IMF were of the order of $16.1 million, its gold reserves $1.81 billion. There were unconfirmed reports that Ukraine’s gold had been confiscated and airlifted to New York, for “safe-keeping” under the custody of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
Under the bailout, the IMF –acting on behalf of Ukraine’s US and EU creditors– lends money to Ukraine which is already earmarked for debt repayment. The money is transferred to the creditors. The loan is “fictitious money.” Not one dollar of this money will enter Ukraine.
The package is not intended to support economic growth. Quite the opposite: Its main purpose is to collect the outstanding short-term debt, while precipitating the destabilization of Ukraine’s economy and financial system.
The fundamental principle of usury is that the creditor comes to the rescue of the debtor: “I cannot pay my debts, no problem my son, I will lend you the money and with the money I lend you, you will pay me back”.
The rescue rope thrown to Kiev by the IMF and the European Union is in reality a ball and chain. Ukraine’s external debt, as documented by the World Bank, increased tenfold in ten years and exceeds 135 billion dollars. In interests alone, Ukraine must pay about 4.5 billion dollars a year. The new loans will only serve to increase the external debt thus obliging Kiev to “liberalize” its economy even more, by selling to corporations what remains to be privatized. (Ukraine, IMF “Shock Treatment” and Economic Warfare by Manlio Dinucci, Global Research, March 21, 2014)
Under the IMF loan agreement, the money will not enter the country, it will be used to trigger the repayment of outstanding debt servicing obligations to EU and US creditors. In this regard, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) “European banks have more than $23 billion in outstanding loans in Ukraine.” (Ukraine Facing Financial Instability But IMF May Help Soon – Spiegel Online, February 28, 2014)
What Are the “Benefits” of an IMF Package to Ukraine?
According to IMF’s managing director Christine Lagarde, the bailout is intended to address the issue of poverty and social inequality. In actuality what it does is to increase the levels of indebtedness while essentially handing over the reins of macro-economic reform and monetary policy to the Bretton Woods Institutions, acting on behalf of Wall Street.
The bailout agreement will include the imposition of drastic austerity measures which in all likelihood will trigger further social chaos and economic dislocation. It’s called “policy based lending”, namely the granting of money earmarked to reimburse the creditors, in exchange for the IMF’s “bitter economic medicine” in the form of a menu of neoliberal policy reforms. “Short-term pain for long-term gain” is the motto of the Washington-based Bretton Woods institutions.
Loan “conditionalities” will be imposed –including drastic austerity measures– which will serve to impoverish the Ukrainian population beyond bounds in a country which has been under IMF ministrations for more than 20 years. While the Maidan movement was manipulated, tens of thousands of people protested they wanted a new life because their standard of living had collapsed as a result of the neoliberal policies applied by successive governments, including that of president Yanukovych. Little did they realize that the protest movement supported by Wall Street, the US State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was meant to usher in a new phase of economic and social destruction.
History of IMF Ministrations in Ukraine
In 1994 under the presidency of Leonid Kuchma, an IMF package was imposed on Ukraine. Viktor Yushchenko –who later became president following the 2004 Colored Revolution– had been appointed head of the newly-formed National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). Yushchenko was praised by the Western financial media as a “daring reformer”; he was among the main architects of the IMF’s 1994 reforms which served to destabilize Ukraine’s national economy. When he ran in the 2004 elections against Yanukovych, he was supported by various foundations including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). He was Wall Street’s preferred candidate.
Ukraine’s 1994 IMF package was finalized behind closed doors at the Madrid 50 years anniversary Summit of the Bretton Woods institutions. It required the Ukrainian government to abandon State controls over the exchange rate leading to a massive collapse of the currency. Yushchenko played a key role in negotiating and implementing the 1994 agreement as well as creating a new Ukrainian national currency, which resulted in a dramatic plunge in real wages:
Yushchenko as Head of the Central Bank was responsible for deregulating the national currency under the October 1994 “shock treatment”:
- The price of bread increased overnight by 300 percent,
- electricity prices by 600 percent,
- public transportation by 900 percent.
- the standard of living tumbled
According to the Ukrainian State Statistics Committee, quoted by the IMF, real wages in 1998 had fallen by more than 75 percent in relation to their 1991 level. (http://www.imf.org/external/
pubs/ft /scr/2003/cr03174.pdf ) Ironically, the IMF sponsored program was intended to alleviate inflationary pressures: it consisted in imposing “dollarised” prices on an impoverished population with earnings below ten dollars a month.
Combined with the abrupt hikes in fuel and energy prices, the lifting of subsidies and the freeze on credit contributed to destroying industry (both public and private) and undermining Ukraine’s breadbasket economy.
In November 1994, World Bank negotiators were sent in to examine the overhaul of Ukraine’s agriculture. With trade liberalization (which was part of the economic package), US grain surpluses and “food aid” were dumped on the domestic market, contributing to destabilizing one of the World’s largest and most productive wheat economies, (e.g. comparable to that of the American Mid West). (Michel Chossudovsky IMF Sponsored “Democracy” in The Ukraine, Global Research, November 28, 2004, emphasis added)
The IMF-World Bank had destroyed Ukraine’s “bread basket.”
By 1998, the deregulation of the grain market, the hikes in the price of fuel and the liberalisation of trade resulted in a decline in the production of grain by 45 percent in relation to its 1986-90 level. The collapse in livestock production, poultry and dairy products was even more dramatic (see this). The cumulative decline in GDP resulting from the IMF-sponsored reforms was in excess of 60 percent from 1992 to 1995.
The World Bank: Fake Poverty Alleviation
The World Bank has recently acknowledged that Ukraine is a poor country. (World Bank, Ukraine Overview, Washington DC, updated February 17, 2014):
“Evidence shows Ukraine is facing a health crisis, and the country needs to make urgent and extensive measures to its health system to reverse the progressive deterioration of citizens’ health. Crude adult death rates in Ukraine are higher than its immediate neighbors, Moldova and Belarus, and among the highest not only in Europe, but also in the world.”
What the report fails to mention is that the Bretton Woods institutions –through a process of economic engineering– played a central role in precipitating the post-Soviet collapse of the Ukrainian economy. The dramatic breakdown of Ukraine’s social programs bears the fingerprints of the IMF-World Bank austerity measures which included the deliberate underfunding and dismantling of the Soviet era health care system.
With regard to agriculture, the World Bank points to Ukraine’s “tremendous agricultural potential” while failing to acknowledge that the Ukraine bread-basket was destroyed as part of a US-IMF-World Bank package. According to the World Bank:
“This potential has not been fully exploited due to depressed farm incomes and a lack of modernization within the sector.”
“Depressed farm incomes” are not “the cause,” they are the “consequence” of the IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment Program. In 1994, farm incomes had declined by the order of 80% in relation to 1991, following the October 1994 IMF program engineered by then NUB governor Viktor Yushchenko. Immediately following the 1994 IMF reform package, the World Bank implemented (in 1995) a private sector “seed project” based on “the liberalization of seed pricing, marketing, and trade.” The prices of farm inputs increased dramatically leading to a string of agricultural bankruptcies. (Projects: Agricultural Seed Development Project | The World Bank, Washington DC, 1995)
The IMF’s 2014 “Shock and Awe” Economic Bailout
While the conditions prevailing in Ukraine today are markedly different to those applied in the 1990s, it should be understood that the imposition of a new wave of macro-economic reforms (under strict IMF policy conditionalities) will serve to impoverish a population which has already been impoverished.
In other words, the IMF’s 2014 “Shock and Awe” constitutes the “final blow” in a sequence of IMF interventions spreading over a period of more than 20 years, which have contributed to destabilizing the national economy and impoverishing Ukraine’s population. We are not dealing with a Greece Model Austerity Package as some analysts have suggested. The reforms slated for Ukraine will be far more devastating.
Preliminary information suggests that IMF bailout will provide an advance of $2 billion in the form of a grant to be followed by a subsequent loan of $11 billion. The European Investment Bank (EIB) will provide another $2 billion, for a total package of around $15 billion. (See Voice of Russia, March 21, 2014)
Drastic Austerity Measures
The Kiev government has announced that the IMF requires a 20% cut in Ukraine’s national budget, implying drastic cuts in social programs, coupled with reductions in the wages of public employees, privatisation and the sale of state assets. The IMF has also called for a “phase out” of energy subsidies, and the deregulation of the foreign exchange markets. With unmanageable debts, the IMF will also impose the sell off and privatisation of major public assets as well as the takeover of the national banking sector.
The new government pressured by the IMF and World Bank have already announced that old-aged pensions are to be curtailed by 50%. In a timely February 21 release, the World Bank had set the guidelines for old-age pension reform in the countries of “Emerging Europe and Central Asia” including Ukraine. In an utterly twisted logic, “Protecting the elderly” is carried out by slashing their pension benefits, according to the World Bank. (World Bank, Significant Pension Reforms Urged in Emerging Europe and Central Asia, Washington Dc, February 21, 2014)
Given the absence of a real government in Kiev, Ukraine’s political handlers in the Ministry of Finance and the NUB will obey the diktats of Wall Street: The IMF structural adjustment loan agreement for Ukraine will be devastating in its social and economic impacts.
Elimination of Subsidies
Pointing to “market-distorted energy subsidies”, price deregulation has been a longstanding demand from both IMF-World Bank. The price of energy had been kept relatively low during the Yanukovych government largely as a result of the bilateral agreement with Russia, which provided Ukraine with low-cost gas in exchange for Naval base lease in Sebastopol. That agreement is now null and void. It is also worth noting that the government of Crimea has announced that it would take over ownership of all Ukrainian state companies in Crimea, including the Black Sea natural gas fields.
The Kiev interim government has intimated that Ukraine’s retail gas prices would have to rise by 40% “as part of economic reforms needed to unlock loans from the International Monetary Fund.” This announcement fails to address the mechanics of full-fledged deregulation which under present circumstances could lead to increases in energy prices in excess of 100 percent.
It is worth recalling, in this regard, that Peru in August 1991 had set the stage for “shock treatment” increases in energy prices when gasoline prices in Lima shot up overnight by 2978% (a 30-fold increase). In 1994 as part of the agreement between the IMF and Leonid Kuchma, the price of electricity flew up over night by 900 percent.
One of the central components of IMF intervention is the deregulation of the foreign exchange market. In addition to massive expenditure cuts, the IMF program requires “enhanced exchange rate flexibility” namely the removal of all foreign exchange controls. (Ukraine: Staff Report for the 2012 Article IV Consultation, See also http://www.imf.org/external/
Since the outset of the Maidan protest movement in December 2013, foreign exchange controls were instated with a view to supporting the hryvnia and stemming the massive outflow of capital.
The IMF-sponsored bailout will literally ransack the foreign currency reserves held by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). Enhanced exchange rate flexibility under IMF guidance has been endorsed by the new NBU governor Stepan Kubiv. Without virtually no forex reserves, exchange rate flexibility is financial suicide: it opens the door to speculative short-selling transactions (modelled on the 1997 Asian crisis) directed against the Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia.
Institutional speculators, which include major Wall Street and European Banks as well as hedge funds, have already positioned themselves. Manipulation in the forex markets is undertaken through derivative trade. Major financial institutions will have detailed inside information with regard to Central Bank policies which will enable them to rig the forex market.
Under a flexible exchange rate system, the Central Bank does not impose restrictions on forex transactions. The Central Bank can however decide –under advice from the IMF– to counter the speculative onslaught in the forex market, with a view to maintaining the parity of the Ukrainian hryvnia. Without the use of exchange controls, this line of action requires Ukraine’s central bank (in the absence of forex reserves) to prop up an ailing currency with borrowed money, thereby contributing to exacerbating the debt crisis.
The graph below indicates a decline of the hryvnia against the US $ of more than 20% over a six-month period.
(Source: themoneyconverter.com)
It is worth recalling in this regard that Brazil in November 1998 had received a precautionary bailout loan from the IMF of the order of $40 billion. One of the conditions of the loan agreement, however, was the complete deregulation of the forex market. This loan was intended to assist the Central Banking in maintaining the parity of the Brazilian real. In practice it spearheaded Brazil into a financial crash in February 1999.
The Brazilian government had accepted the conditionalities. Marred by capital flight of the order of $400 million a day, the money granted under the IMF loan –which was intended to prop up Brazil’s central banks reserves– was plundered in a matter of months. The IMF loan agreement to Brasilia enabled the institutional speculators to buy time. Most of the money under the IMF loan was appropriated in the form of speculative gains accruing to major financial institutions.
With regard to Ukraine, enhanced exchange flexibility spells disaster. Contrary to Brazil, the Central Bank has no forex reserves which would enable it to defend its currency. Where would the NBU get the borrowed forex reserves? Most of the funds under the proposed IMF-EU rescue package are already earmarked and could be used to effectively defend the hryvnia against “short-selling” speculative attacks in the currency markets. The most likely scenario is that the hryvnia will experience a major decline leading to significant hikes in the prices of essential commodities, including food, fuel and transportation.
Were the Central Bank able to use borrowed reserves to prop up the hryvnia, this borrowed money would be swiftly reappropriated, handed over to currency speculators on a silver platter. This scenario of propping up the national currency using borrowed forex reserves (i.e. Brazil in 1998-99) would, however, contribute in the short-term to staving off an immediate collapse of the standard.
This procedure provides “extra time” to the speculators, who are busy plundering the Central Bank’s (borrowed) currency reserves. It also enables the interim government to postpone the worst impacts of the IMF’s “enhanced exchange rate flexibility” to a later date.
When the borrowed hard currency reserves of the Central Bank run out –i.e. in the immediate aftermath of the May 25 presidential elections– the value of hryvnia will plunge on the forex market, which in turn will trigger a dramatic collapse in the standard of living. Coupled with the demise of bilateral economic relations with Russia pertaining to the supply of natural gas to Ukraine, energy prices are also slated to increase dramatically.
Neoliberalism and Neo-Nazi Ideology Join Hands: Repressing the Protest Movement Against the IMF
With Svoboda and Right Sector political appointees in charge of national security and the armed forces, a real grassroots protest movement directed against the IMF’s deadly macroeconomic reforms will, in all likelihood, be brutally repressed by the Right Sector’s “brown shirts” and the National Guard paramilitary led by Dmitry Yarosh on behalf of Wall Street and the Washington consensus.
In recent developments, Right Sector Dmitry Yarosh has declared his candidacy in the upcoming presidential elections. (Popular support for the Yarosh is less than 2%)
“Russia put Yarosh on an international wanted list and charged him with inciting terrorism after he urged Chechen terrorist leader Doku Umarov to launch attacks on Russia over the Ukrainian conflict. The ultra-nationalist leader has also threatened to destroy Russian pipelines on Ukrainian territory.” (RT, March 22, 2014)
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s State prosecutor, who also belongs to the Neo-Nazi faction, has implemented procedures which prevent the holding of public rallies and protests directed against the interim government.
The post The History of Regime Change in Ukraine and the IMF’s Bitter “Economic Medicine” first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Argentina is governed by a right-wing libertarian named Javier Milei. He proudly identifies as an “anarcho-capitalist”.
His career has been cultivated by powerful billionaire oligarchs, such as Eduardo Eurnekián, who employed Milei and several of his cabinet members.
Milei has also enjoyed the support of US billionaires like Elon Musk and Silicon Valley oligarch Peter Thiel. US President Donald Trump considers Milei to be an obedient ally.
When he campaigned for president in 2023, Milei embraced the nickname “el loco” (the madman). He brought a chainsaw to rallies, pledging to cut government down to the bone.
The post Javier Milei Is Destroying Argentina’s Economy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
The results of Germany’s February 23 election have cemented a chilling trend that has increasingly characterized European politics in the 21st century: the collapse of social democracy and the subsequent resurgence of far right parties and movements, with some of their followers openly glorifying fascism. The snap national election left no room for doubt about Germany’s sharp rightward shift.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: ‘Abolition of the wage system!’ Karl Marx, Value, Price, and Profit
Today, the point that Marx made in his 1865 address to the First International Working Men’s Association is largely lost on the trade unions and even with many self-styled Marxists. The distinction between the goal of “a fair day’s wage” and the goal of eliminating exploitation– the wage system embedded in capitalism– is lost before a common, but unfocused revulsion to the exploding growth of inequality. It is one thing to deplore the growth of inequality, it is quite another to establish what would replace the logic of unfettered accumulation.
Marx offered no guidelines for a “fair wage”. Indeed, his analysis of capitalism made no significant use of the concept of fairness. Instead, he made the concept of exploitation central to his political economy. He used the concept in two ways: First, he employed “exploitation” in the popular sense of “taking advantage of” — the sense that the capitalist takes advantage of the worker. “Exploitation of man by man” was a nascent concept, arriving in discourse with the expansion of mass industrial employment and borrowed from an earlier, morally-neutral usage regarding the exploitation of non-humans. Its etymology, in that sense, arises in the late eighteenth century.
Marx also uses the word in a more rigorous sense: as a description of the interaction of the worker and the capitalist in the process of commodity production. Even more rigorously, it appears in political economic tracts like Capital as a ratio between the axiomatic concepts of surplus value and variable capital.
As a worker-friendly concept, exploitation is most readily grasped by workers in the basic industries, especially in extractive and raw-material industries. Historically, an early twentieth century coal miner– bringing the tools of extraction with him, responsible for his own safety while risking a more likely death than a war-time soldier, and accepting the “privilege” of going into a cold, damp hole to dig coal for someone else’s profit– intuitively understood exploitation. A reflective miner would recoil from the fact that ownership of a property could somehow– apart from any other consideration– confer to someone the right to profit from a commodity that someone else had faced mortal danger to extract from the earth. What is a “fair day’s wage” in such a circumstance?
Organically, from its intuitive understanding by workers, and theoretically, from class-partisan intellectuals like Marx and Engels, as well as their rivals like Bakunin, exploitation became the central idea behind anti-capitalism and socialism.
Today, most workers’ connection to the exploitation relation appears far removed from the direct relation of a coal miner to the coal face and to the owner of the coal mine. The immediacy of labor and labor’s product in extraction is often of many removes in service-sector or white-collar jobs. Moreover, the division of labor blurs the contribution of the individual’s efforts to the final product.
Well into the twentieth century, “labor exploitation” fell out of the lexicon of the left, especially in the more advanced capitalist countries, where Marx thought that it would be of most use. Left thinkers, as well as Marxists, rightly attended to the colonial question, focusing on the struggle for independence and sovereignty; they were discouraged by the tendency for class-collaboration in many leading working-class organizations; Communist Parties correctly felt a primary duty to defend the gains of the socialist and socialist-oriented countries; and the fight for peace was always a paramount concern.
Exploitation was attacked from the academy. The Humanist “Marxist” school trivialized the exploitation nexus to a species of the broad, amorphous concept of alienation. The Analytical “Marxist” school congratulated itself by proving that given an inequality of assets, a community of exchange-oriented actors would produce and reproduce inequality of assets, a proof altogether irrelevant to the concept of exploitation, which the school promised to clarify. Both schools influenced a retreat from Marxism in the university, followed by a stampede after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Liberal and social-democratic theory revisits the “fair day’s wage” with the explosion of income inequality and wealth inequality of the last decades of the twentieth century that was too impossible to ignore. But what is a “fair wage”? What level of income or wealth distribution is just, fair, socially responsible, or socially beneficial? The questions are largely unanswerable, if not incoherent.
Thanks to the empirical, long-term study of inequality shared in Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century, we learn that capitalism’s historical tendency has been to always produce and reproduce income and wealth inequality, a conclusion sobering to those who hope to refashion capitalism into an egalitarian system and making a “fair wage” even more elusive. Piketty’s work offers no clue to what could constitute a “fair wage.”
Others point to the productivity-pay gap that emerged in the 1970s, where wage growth and productivity took entirely different courses at the expense of wage gains. Researchers who perceptively point to this gap as contributing to the growth of inequality often harken back to the immediate postwar era, when productivity growth and wage growth were somewhat in step, when the gains of productivity were “shared” between capital and labor. But what is magical about sharing? Why shouldn’t labor get 75% or 85% of the gain? Or all of the gain? Is maintaining existing inequalities the optimal social goal for the working class?
Where the concept of a “fair wage” offers more questions than answers, Marx’s concept of exploitation suggests a uniquely coherent and direct answer to the persistent and intensifying growth of income and wealth: eliminate labor exploitation! Abolish the wage system!
Thus, the return to the discussion of exploitation is urgent. And that is why a serious and clarifying account of exploitation today is so welcome.
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Jack Rasmus takes a step toward that end in a carefully argued, important paper, “Labor Exploitation in the Era of the Neoliberal Policy Regime.” I have followed Rasmus’s work for many years, especially admiring his respect for the tool of historical inquiry and his scrupulous research, interpretation, and careful use of “official” data. On the other hand, I thought that his work failed to fully consider the Marxist tradition, unduly drawn to engaging with the pettifoggery of academic “Marxists.”
However, his new work proves that assessment to be mistaken. Indeed, his latest work reflects an admirable reading of Marx’s political economy and offers an important tool in the struggle to end the wage system.
Rasmus understands that we are in a distinct era of capitalism, forced by the failure of the prior “policy regime” and typified by several features: intensified global penetration of capital and trade expansion (“globalization”), a massively growing role for financial innovation and notional profits (“financialization”), and most significantly, the restoration and expansion of the rate of profit (“the intensification of labor exploitation in both Absolute and Relative value terms that has occurred from the 1980s to the present”).
It should be noted that Rasmus does not discuss why a new “policy regime” became necessary in the 1970s. Both the stagflation that proved intractable to the reigning Keynesian paradigm and the attack on the US profit rate by foreign competition (see Robert Brenner, The Economics of Global Turbulence, NLR, 229) necessitated a sea change in the direction of capitalism.
I might add that while so-called globalization was an important feature of “the neoliberal policy regime,” the 2007-2009 economic crisis has diminished the growth of global trade. Indeed, its decline has fostered the rise of economic nationalism, the latest wrinkle on the “neoliberal policy regime.”
Rasmus carefully and methodically documents and explicates the intensification of labor exploitation in commodity production (what he calls “primary exploitation”) over the last fifty years. He recognizes the important and growing role of the state in enabling this intensification. This is, of course, the process that Lenin foresaw with the fusing of the state and monopoly capitalism– a process associated in Marxist-Leninist theory with the rise of state-monopoly capitalism. Today’s advanced capitalist states fully embrace the goal of defending and advancing the profitability (‘health’) of monopoly corporations (‘a rising tide lifts all boats’), including intensifying labor exploitation.
Just how that intensification is accomplished is the subject of Rasmus’s paper.
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Rasmus is aware that Marx expressed the exploitation nexus in terms of labor value. He avoids the scholasticism that side-tracks academically trained economists who obsess over the price/value relationship — the so-called transformation problem. Value– specifically a labor theory of value — is central to Marx because it explains how commodities can command different, non-arbitrary exchange values and how the different proportionalities between the exchange values of commodities are determined. That is the problem Marx sets forth in the first pages of Capital, and value — as embodied labor — is the answer that he gives.
Using labor value as his theoretical primitive enables Rasmus to discuss exploitation in Marx’s framework of absolute and relative surplus value– exploitation by extending the working day or intensifying the production process. While Rasmus offers a persuasive argument that his use of “official” data couched in prices can legitimately be translated into values, it is unnecessary for his thesis. The relations are preserved because the proportionalities are, in general, preserved. It is a reasonable and adequate assumption that prices and values run in parallel, though a weaker claim than that prices can be derived from values.
Methodological considerations aside, Rasmus sets out to show — and succeeds in showing — that exploitation has accelerated in the “neoliberal” era in terms of both relative and absolute surplus value:
Capitalism’s Neoliberal era has witnessed a significant intensification and expansion of total exploitation compared to the pre-Neoliberal era. Under Neoliberal Capitalism both the workday (Absolute Surplus Value extraction) has been extended while, at the same time, the productivity of labor has greatly increased (Relative Surplus Value extraction) in terms of both the intensity and the mass of relative surplus value extracted.
Regarding Absolute Surplus Value, he demonstrates:
[I]t is true the work day was reduced during the first two thirds of the 20th century—by strong unions, union contract terms, and to some extent from government disincentives to extend the work day as a result of the passage of wages and hours legislation. But that trend and scenario toward a shorter work day was halted and rolled back starting in the late 1970s and the neoliberal era. The length of the Work Day has risen—not continued to decline—for full time workers under the Neoliberal Economic Regime.
Through a careful combing and analysis of government data, as well as original arguments, Rasmus shows how capital has succeeded in extending the workday. His discussion of changes in mandatory overtime, in temporary employment, in involuntary part-time employment, in paid leave, in changing work culture, in job classifications, in work from home, internships, and other practices form a persuasive argument for the existence of a trend of the lengthening of the average workday.
Similarly, Relative Labor Exploitation has accelerated in the “Neoliberal” era, according to Rasmus:
Rising productivity is a key marker for growing exploitation of Labor. If real wages have not risen since the late 1970s but productivity has—and has risen at an even faster rate in recent decades—then the value reflected in business revenues and profits of the increased output from that productivity has accrued almost totally to Capital.
In this regard, the numbers are widely recognized and non-controversial. Labor productivity has grown significantly, while wages have essentially stagnated. Rasmus tells us that it is even worse than it looks:
So, wages have risen only about one-sixth of the productivity increase. But perhaps only half of that total 13% real hourly wage increase went to the top 5% of the production & nonsupervisory worker group, according to EPI 10 (Economic Policy Institute, February 2020). That means for the median wage production worker, the share of productivity gain was likely 10% or less. The median wage and below production worker consequently received a very small share in wages from productivity over the forty years since 1979. It virtually all accrued to Capital…
According to the US Labor Department, there were 106 million production & nonsupervisory workers at year end 2019—out of the approximately 150 million total nonfarm labor force at that time. Had they entered the labor force around 1982-84, they would have experienced no real wage increase over the four decades.
Rasmus notes that the US maintained the same share of global manufacturing production through the first two decades of the twenty-first century, but doing it with six million fewer workers. This, of course, meant a rising rate of exploitation and a greater share of surplus value for the capitalists. Though the job losses struck especially hard at an important section of the manufacturing working class relegated to unemployment, the remaining workers lost further from concessionary bargaining promoted by a business-union leadership. Thus, they were unable to secure any of the gains accrued by rising productivity. They experienced a higher rate of exploitation.
*****
Demonstrating that labor exploitation has increased in the last 45-50 years in terms of absolute and relative surplus value does not, according to Rasmus, close the book on labor exploitation. Drawing on a suggestive quote in Volume III of Capital, he develops an original theory of “secondary exploitation.” Marx writes:
That the working-class is also swindled in this form [usury, commerce], and to an enormous extent, is self-evident… This is secondary exploitation, which runs parallel to the primary exploitation taking place in the production process itself. Capital, Volume III, p. 609
Rasmus explains secondary exploitation this way: “Secondary Exploitation (SE) is not a question of value being created in exchange relations. It’s about capitalists reclaiming part of what they paid initially in wages. It’s about how capitalists maximize Total Exploitation by manipulating exchange relations as well as production relations.”
To be clear, Marx is not using the technical sense of “exploitation” here, but the popular sense. However, the fact that the worker has “earned” a measure of value and that capitalists can wrest some of it away in various ways is exploitation and important and worthy of study.
Here, however, Rasmus digresses, reverting back to the price form in his explanation of secondary exploitation. He seems to assume, without elaboration, that systemic “taking advantage of workers” outside of the production process must be explained in terms of prices and not values. He also seems to believe that all means of secondary exploitation must be within the exchange nexus. And he seems to believe that all secondary exploitation must be systemic. It is not clear why these assumptions should be made.
These methodological questions, however, bear little relevance to his fresh and original insights on secondary exploitation. Rasmus presents five mechanisms for capital to “claw back” from the working people the variable capital captured by the class in the value-producing process: credit, monopolistic price gouging, wage theft, deferred or social wages, and taxes. Importantly, Rasmus connects much of this exploitation to the active intervention of the state on behalf of capital.
Credit: Allowing workers to acquire commodities through deferred payment is not a sympathetic act by the capitalist, but a method of furthering accumulation in an environment where demand is restricted by the inequalities of income and wealth. The capitalist extracts additional value from the worker through interest charges. Additional value is “swindled” from the worker through the credit mechanism. Rasmus points out that interest-bearing loans to working people have expanded from $10 trillion-plus in 2013 to $17 trillion-plus in 2024, with dramatically higher interest rates in the last few years.
Monopolistic price gouging: Rasmus is fully aware that when prices go up, they are the result of decisions by capitalists to secure more revenue– that action is not to benefit society, not to help the workers, but to secure more for investors. Insofar as they succeed, their gains are at the expense of workers– a form of secondary exploitation.
Our current run of inflation is the result of a cycle of price increases to capture more of the consumers’ (in the end, the workers’) value and to catch up with competitors. But the impression must not be left unchallenged that this price gouging is painlessly left to the capitalist at his or her whim or that it is without risk. The impression must not be left, as it was in the 1960s with Sweezy/Baran, Gillman, and others, that monopoly concentration meant a sharp decline in the power of competition to retard and even thwart monopoly power to do as it liked. That lesson was sharply brought home in the 1970s with humbling of the US big three automakers and the US electronics industry. Monopoly and competition play a dialectical role in disciplining price behavior around labor values.
Wage theft: While theft is not exploitation, when it is common, frequent, and rarely sanctioned, it resembles exploitation more than theft! Rasmus provides an impressible list of common ruses:
The methods [of wage theft] have included capitalists not paying the required minimum wage; not paying overtime wage rates as provided in Federal and state laws; not paying workers for the actual hours they work; paying them by the day or job instead of by the hour; forcing workers to pay their managers for a job; supervisors stealing workers’ cash tips; making illegal deductions from workers’ paychecks; deducting their pay for breaks they didn’t take or for damages to company goods; supervisors arranging pay ‘kickbacks’ for themselves from workers’ pay; firing workers and not paying them for their last day worked; failing to give proper 60-day notice of a plant closing and then not paying workers as required by law; denying workers access to guaranteed benefits like workers’ compensation when injured; refusing to make contributions to pension and health plans on behalf of workers and then pocketing the savings; and, not least, general payroll fraud.
Deferred or Social wages: Rasmus shows how the government mechanisms that are meant to socially meet needs are skewed to draw more from workers proportionally while benefiting them less proportionally. He has in mind retirement, health care, and welfare programs that politicians persistently demand more sacrifices from working people to fund, while restricting their ability to draw the benefits through various tests of eligibility.
Taxes: Rasmus reminds us that the dominant political forces espousing the “Neoliberal policy regime” have dramatically increased the tax burden on workers:
Since the advent of Neoliberalism, the total tax burden has shifted from capitalists, their corporations, businesses, and investors to working class families.
In the post-World War II era the payroll tax has more than doubled as a share of total federal tax revenues, to around 45% by 2020. During the same period, the share of taxes paid by corporations has fallen from more than 20% to less than 10%. The federal individual income tax as a percent of total federal government revenues has remained around 40-45%. However, within that 40-45%, another shift in the burden has been occurring—from capital incomes to earned wage incomes…
Not just Trump, but every president since 2001 the US capitalist State has been engaged in a massive tax cutting program mostly benefiting capital incomes. The total tax cuts have amounted to at least $17 trillion since 2001: Starting with George W. Bush’s 2001-03 tax cuts which cut taxes $3.8 trillion (80% of which accrued to Capital incomes), through Obama’s 2009 tax cuts and his extension of Bush’s cuts in 2008 for another two years and again for another 10 years in 2013 (all of which cost another $6 trillion), through Trump’s massive 2017 tax cuts that cost $4.5 trillion, and Biden’s 2021-22 tax legislation that added another $2 trillion at minimum—the US Capitalist state has reduced taxes by at least $17 trillion!
Reducing capital’s taxes, as a proportion of tax revenue, increases future national obligations– national debt– that will ultimately be paid by working-class taxes. Or, if that proves unfeasible, it will be met by a reduction of social spending, which reduces social benefits for workers. Either way, the working class faces secondary exploitation through ruling-class tax policy.
Interestingly, Rasmus acknowledges that the state plays a big role in what he deems “secondary exploitation.” Yet, he also suggests that the proper province of secondary exploitation is in the bounds of exchange relations. This seeming anomaly can be avoided if we understand the increasing role of the state in engaging, broadly speaking, in the arena of exchange, as well as regulation. It is precisely this profound and broad engagement that many twentieth-century Marxists explained as state-monopoly capitalism.
*****
Jack Rasmus’s contribution is most welcome because it argues that returning to the fundamentals– the concept of exploitation– can be a fruitful way of looking at contemporary capitalism. It establishes a firm material base for an anti-capitalist politics that addresses the interests of working people as a class, the broadest of classes.
Further, the theory of exploitation unites people as workers, but allows for the various ways and degrees of their exploitation. And it links the material interests of the protagonists in the class struggle to the many forms of social oppression and their contradictory interests in promoting or ending those oppressions: the capitalist sows oppressive divisions to gain exploitative advantage; the worker disavows oppressive divisions to achieve the unity necessary to defeat exploitation. That is, exploitation motivates the capitalist to divide people around nationality, race, sex, culture, social practices, and language. Ending exploitation motivates the worker to refuse these divisions.
In an age where capitalism owns a decided, powerful advantage because of the splintering of the left into numerous causes and where capitalism elevates individual identity to a place superseding class, the common goal of eliminating exploitation is a powerful unifying force.
Today’s left has too often interpreted anti-imperialism as simply the struggle for national sovereignty, rather than through the lens of exploitation. Consequently, the dynamics of class struggle within national borders is often missed.
Of course, for Lenin and his followers, an advanced stage of capitalism — monopoly capitalism — was the life form of imperialism. And its beating heart was exploitation.
The vital tool that Marx, Engels, and Lenin brought to the struggle for workers’ emancipation was the theory of exploitation.
The post A Return to Basics: Rasmus, the “Neoliberal” Turn, and Exploitation first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Thousands of farmers and agricultural workers began an indefinite protest sit-in on Monday, February 10, at Freedom Park in Bangalore, in India’s southern state of Karnataka, to oppose the ongoing corporate looting of their resources and demand economic protections.
The farmers and agricultural workers gathered in the capital from different parts of the state under the leadership of Karnataka Prantha Raitha Sangha affiliated with the left wing All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) and other groups affiliated to All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU).
The post Farmers Launch An Indefinite Strike In India’s Karnataka State appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.