Founding Document: For A Democratic and Socialist Future

Posted by admin on December 6, 2008 under African American, Antiwar, CCDS History, CCDS Today, Climate Change, Elections, Energy, Health Care, Labor, Nationalities, Obama, Organizing, Racism, Socialism, Strategy, Trade Unions, Women, Youth and Students | 27 Comments to Read

Third Revision June 30, 2009 –This will be this version discussed at the convention



For a Democratic and Socialist Future:

CCDS Goals and Principles

Prologue: Crisis and Opportunity


Crisis: A Convergence of Economic, Environmental and Imperial Crises

We are in a historic moment of interwoven social, economic, environmental, and foreign policy crises.



An economic crisis claims millions of jobs and undermines the basic security of working families across the nation. It deepens the crises in health care, housing, and education, accelerating a downward spiral of growing homelessness, loss of health care, and deteriorating public education. State and local governments caught in persistent budgetary shortfalls are shredding vital public services and cultural endeavors.



An environmental catastrophe looms. Scientists warn that the world may have already passed a point of qualitative climate change from carbon emissions – with alterations of weather patterns causing deep irreversible ecological damage. The inexorable demand of capitalism to put profit before all else aggravates the economic crisis and underlies the system’s resistance to confronting the consequences of its environmental pollution.



A costly military establishment is undermining national security. Militarism has impeded democracy, undermined peace and security, and caused incalculable suffering around the world. The military-industrial complex has contributed heavily to the present economic crisis by wasting precious funds needed to create jobs in a new economy based on ecological survival, sustainable growth, and social development. Expenditures for the largest military in history have run to trillions of dollars. The military is a prime polluter and despoiler of the environment. The “sole superpower” must yield to a new global policy based on abolishing nuclear weapons, reducing conventional forces, closing of foreign bases, and reliance on diplomacy over confrontation.



The convergence of these crises has serious implications for a rising progressive majority. The interconnected issues suggest that the different currents of progressivism must achieve new levels of unity and mutual support. A new political consciousness leading to new ways of organizing and coalition building is needed to defeat a wounded but still dangerous right wing. A new level of unity will advance the country and the world down the road to a human epoch of peace, security, and justice.



Opportunity: A New Political Era is Unfolding



The election of Barack Obama to the presidency is an historic affirmation of centuries of struggle against oppression and racism – a struggle that continues with new inspiration.



The 2008 election is a blow against right-wing reaction that portends a left-center realignment of the nation’s politics. It is the fruit of a rising progressive majority that matured in response to eight years of neoconservative policies representing the most reactionary sectors of US capital. The Obama election was driven by the emergence of a broad array of forces suffering immense damage domestically and globally from the Bush neo-conservative regime.

The multiracial working class in alliance with trade unions, youth, African Americans, Latinos and other people of color, women, and progressive clusters of business now form the promising components of the progressive majority. The profound challenge before all working people and their allies is to organize into a coherent force responsive to the various issues it confronts. The conscious element within that broad alliance arrayed against right-wing reaction must develop a strategy of building the left-center realignment of the nation’s politics in a progressive majority.



1. Multiple and Inseparable Crises of Capitalism



The gap between wealth and poverty is greater than ever. Gross Domestic Product-production of goods and services- has been declining steadily. The traditional pillar of national identity expressed in dreams of upward mobility is in tatters. Education, the lever of hope for a better life, is ridden by crisis with college beyond reach for many young people. Millions are ground down by gnawing insecurity; the bottom is falling out of people’s lives’ as jobs are lost in the tens of thousands every month; pensions are wiped out in stock market deflation, exposing retirees to frightening uncertainty.



The equity held by millions in home ownership is threatened by deflation with foreclosure exposing mortgagees to being cast into the streets. Families struggle to make ends meet against rising food and energy prices. Illness exposes millions to bankruptcy, as the cost of health care in a profit-driven system rises inexorably. The prison and jail population, disproportionately youth of color, increased from 380,000 in 1975 to nearly 2.5 million today. Undocumented immigrants face round up, criminalization, jail, and deportation.



African Americans and other people of color face a dire situation. Centuries of racial and national oppression, the legacy of chattel slavery, have left a residue of disproportionate deprivation and suffering in today’s economic crisis. Joblessness among African Americans is well over thirteen percent, with nearly sixteen percent for males. Unemployment claims among African Americans are rising at more than 150,000 a month. Detroit, a predominantly African American city, reports unemployment at over 20 percent, close to Great Depression levels. Joblessness among African American youth is extremely critical with many communities reporting more than fifty percent unemployed. Latino workers’ unemployment hovers close to twelve percent, up from seven percent in the previous year, while the rate among white jobless stood at close to eight percent. All these figures are understated.



The mortgage crisis has hit minority communities with particular force due to racial targeting by home mortgage and financial institutions. Housing foreclosures are destroying whole neighborhoods in cities like Detroit, Flint, and Cleveland along with the economic assets of families and individuals who have worked lifetimes to build a secure future.



The election of the nation’s first African American president was a significant milepost on the road to democracy and equality. But entrenched doctrines and practices of white supremacy remain – frustrating and undermining the aspirations of all working people. Institutional racism is a central source of exploitation and division aimed at weakening the working class. The battle to wipe out white supremacy in the struggle to build unity is an essential requirement for advancing the interests of all working people.



Capitalism’s depredations have never gone unchallenged – not in the past, not today. Capitalism is exhausted. But it will not pass from the historical stage without ceaseless struggle by the working class and its allies engaged in a conscious battle against far right reaction, for concrete improvement in the lives of the vast majority, and ultimately for the democratic power to build a new society.



A. Crisis: The Cause is Capitalism



The collapse of the financial sector and repeated multi-billion dollar bailouts of insolvent banks and investment houses has provoked unprecedented public outrage. The transfer of trillions of taxpayer funds into the pockets of corrupt and incompetent Wall Street speculators, while millions of working people face foreclosure on their homes and loss of employment, has triggered demands for ‘bailouts of working people, not bailouts of banks.”



The Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations had systematically gutted the regulation of banking and investment practices. Regulations employed to save capitalism from its own worst abuses were jettisoned in the name of the “free market.” The unprecedented power of finance capital, accumulated since the Reagan era, enabled the greed and mindless criminal behavior on Wall Street, as well as the control of the political class and the regulatory agencies.



The collapse of the great financial fraud has led to widespread questioning of capitalism itself, especially among young people. The root cause of the economic crisis is capitalism itself. That is amplified by a review of basic political economy.



Labor is the source of value from which profit is derived. Surplus value is the difference between the full value of labor reflected in commodity exchange, and the wages and benefits paid to workers. The price of labor is determined by what is required for its survival and by its own struggles for a greater share of the value it creates. But capital seeks through exploitation to appropriate the maximum share of the value that labor creates and to minimize labor’s share.



While the economic crisis was precipitated by fraud in the credit sphere, economic instability had been building in the sphere of production in the real economy as capital appropriated an ever-greater share of surplus value from labor. Since the Reagan era, labor has been subjected to a relentless attack on its living standards. That attack has been focused on undermining labor unions, shifting production to low wage “right to work” states, and destroying the social safety net. The increased exploitation of labor was manifest in longer hours, discrimination, temporary and part-time work, speedup, layoffs, and anti-union employer campaigns.



The result is a crisis of overproduction at the same time that labor is increasingly saddled with debt. Overproduction brings about a decline in new production and workers are thrown out of work; joblessness means further decline in market demand; production is further slowed as businesses are forced into bankruptcy or simply closed. Surplus capital in the form of buildings and machinery is destroyed.



Each block of capital strives to expand – to increase profit, to produce and sell more products. Driven by the pressures of competition and the anarchy of the marketplace, capitalists have no choice but to seek to increase profits by reducing the amount of labor that goes into the product. Idle capital is an existential threat. Capital becomes devalued if it is halted at any stage of its circulation, as unsold goods or idle money. Marx pointed out that the optimum for capitalism is to move from production to exchange, from commodity to money, ‘at the speed of thought’.



Cyclical crises are driven also by competition that forces capitalists to buy new equipment to reduce costs of production to raise profits. The cyclical accumulation of capital in the form of factories and equipment to produce an abundance of goods eventually comes into conflict with the private accumulation of profit. At a certain point in the economic cycle the average rate of profit falls as too much capital is producing too little profit.



With greater capital investment, machinery increasingly replaces human beings. In essence: the more capital, the more production, the less labor-power is employed. The disproportion between the expansion of capital and the relative stagnation of workers’ consumption of goods is the ultimate cause of crisis. The effect on working people is constant downward pressure on their ability to buy what they make.



The crisis lasts until overproduction is expended by the devaluation of productive capital, including destruction of factories and machinery, until new productive needs emerge. This process was described by Marx in the Communist Manifesto: “…industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce…. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.”



Marx in Capital summed up the essence of capitalist relations: “The absolute general law of capitalist accumulation makes an accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labor, slavery, ignorance, brutalization, and moral degradation at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital.”



This contradiction at the heart of capitalism is the source of this latest cycle of boom and bust. With their unprecedented looting of trillions of dollars of the future earnings of the working class, it is likely that the financial sector will make a rapid recovery. The inexorable logic of capital will lead to another round of financial speculation in debt, equities, and commodities. The destruction of productive capital will keep Main Street in a prolonged depression of joblessness and depressed property values.



Many claim that the collapse of the system was caused by bad choices and bad behavior, and that the system can be restored by re-regulation, banking reform and/or currency reform. But the system itself, not the abuses of it, ultimately generated this crisis. It is very likely that another deeper financial crisis will further cripple the economy before the end of the Obama administration unless the financial center banks are nationalized, the troops are brought home, and a tremendous campaign of infrastructure and green jobs capital investments is begun.



B. The Crisis of Financialization



In recent decades, capitalism has staved off crisis by lending out ever more of the profits, by confiscating workers’ savings in retirement and pension funds, and by monetizing the earnings of future generations of workers to stimulate consumption. This works for a while, but the underlying contradictions inevitably surface and the period of expansion is replaced by economic contraction. When this credit expansion reached its inevitable limit, a financial panic ensued that triggered a spiraling collapse into depression.



Over the past four decades, capitalism’s inherent falling rate of profit has accelerated due to rising global competition, a work force producing more while being squeezed by technological advances, rising prices of core natural resources, and other factors. Investments in production of goods and services were increasingly shifted to shady financial instruments with money being created solely from debt, without the cost of real production. The surplus appropriated by capital no longer found outlet in material production and spilled into financial schemes and speculative bubbles, spreading pain and upheaval throughout the global economic system.



This is “financialization,” driven by massive debt imposed upon working people.



With the weakening of the industrial structure, financialization has become capitalism’s cash cow. Traditionally, credit has functioned as an engine to start and sustain enterprises and to compensate for the inability of labor to buy back all it creates. In the past, capitalists paid interest on credit by turning over a portion of value created by labor to financial institutions. Today, a “financial industry” has subjugated the real production of goods. Riding a tide of “free market” deregulation, exchanges of speculative paper have become the sources of dizzying fortunes that created no new wealth but are the fruit of cynical Ponzi schemes, symbolized by collateralized debt obligations, that ultimately depleted the shrinking resources of the working class.



Faced with collapse of a financial system plundered by greed and bereft of real value in real production, the Bush administration and the 112th Congress made a critical choice: rather than attempting to shore up the economy by creating jobs, the government committed $13.9 trillion of future earnings of the working class to banks and investment houses. The Obama administration and the 113th Congress are continuing on this path while promising change that is yet to come. This trend is deeply immoral and underscores the political and social bankruptcy of the financial oligarchy clinging to power. The growing impoverishment of millions of working people and local government agencies caught up with Wall Street’s speculative binge is deepening the present crisis. The credit system again proved incapable of cushioning the fatal contradiction of capitalism: an exploited labor force without the resources to sustain the system.



C. The Crisis of Capitalist Globalization



Capitalism has been global from its earliest days-seeking markets and sources of raw material from every corner of the world to increase profits. A newly integrated global capitalist system has been driven by vast technological changes that facilitate rapid capital movement. A transnational capitalist class with global interpenetration of ownership and with its own global interests has emerged. Over the last four decades, globalization intensified as the problems and contradictions of capitalism deepened.



Major sectors of U.S. industry virtually shut down as capitalists sought to stem the falling rate of profit by shifting production to low wage countries with favorable tax policies and hostility to labor unions. With transnational production and sale of goods and services, industry and government have assaulted unionization nation by nation. With a sharp decline in union protections and union growth, wages have stagnated. Labor has been pressed to greater productivity under the threat of removal of production to low wage countries.



Having turned their backs on domestic support for education, health care, and social services for working people, globalized capital has fostered a decline of schools, deteriorating cities, and serious neglect of the nation’s infrastructure. It has gutted welfare, marginalized and increased the poor and unemployed, and created a growing prison-industrial complex. Global capital has sought to privatize social benefits and deny working people the entitlements won by decades of struggle.



At the same time, those with economic and political power have exalted individual greed while preaching a doctrine of “personal responsibility” for the working class. Global corporations have pressed a “race to the bottom” in search of maximum profits, burdening much of the developing world with intractable debt. Wall Street bankers have spread toxic mortgages around the world, seriously undermining the banking and credit systems of Europe and Asia, while also spreading the philosophy of deregulation that accelerated the financial collapse. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank impose “structural adjustment programs” to privatize public wealth, savage the poor through demands for debt repayment, cut government benefits, and enact neoliberal “free trade” policies. This only benefits foreign investors and the domestic elites who exploit their own national labor force. This has accelerated disease, hunger, and grinding poverty, widening the great disparity between rich and poor on a world scale.



However, new social movements have arisen all over the world to challenge global capital’s neoliberal “free market” domination of the economies of developing regions. South America is now a primary area of struggle against the IMF and other agencies of capitalist globalization. Brazil has led the effort to throttle Washington’s effort to form a Free Trade Area of the Americas. The Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America (ALBA) promotes socialist principles of cooperative indigenous economic activity. Its Banco del Sur offers development financing based on regional solidarity.



New centers of emerging economic and political power such as Brazil, China, Indonesia, India, Mexico, Russia and Turkey are less prone to accept Washington’s unilateral domination of the global system. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, embracing China, Russia and the resource-rich states of Central Asia is a serious challenge to Washington’s global hegemony.



Whether the United States adapts peacefully to new world realities or continues to support the transnational capitalists’ domination of the global system through wars, military threats, and unbridled exploitation will depend in large measure on the demands of a growing progressive majority here and abroad for a new foreign economic policy based upon fair bi-lateral trade agreements and constructive peaceful relations with the other nations of the world.



D. The Crisis of the War Economy and the National Security State



The United States emerged as a superpower after World War II with a vastly expanded industrial capacity untouched by wartime destruction. With a huge advantage in nuclear weapons, the Cold War buildup of conventional forces established a war economy and the largest military in history. The emerging military-industrial complex became the lever to challenge radical, socialist, and communist movements, and eliminate alternatives to global capitalism.



Massive military spending was also advanced to stimulate a high growth manufacturing economy, serving as a right wing alternative to social spending and infrastructure improvement to deal with capitalism’s cyclical breakdowns. The military-industrial-government complex has been the underpinning for US militarism. It has launched scores of large and small interventions over the past sixty years that have killed and maimed millions, bringing unimaginable suffering and tragedy to many parts of the world. The imperial war on Iraq was fomented by criminal deception. The escalating war in Afghanistan underscores the senselessness of using military force to bring about “regime change.”



The US public has had its fill of costly misadventures that have produced near universal enmity against the United States. Military spending in the trillions of dollars over the last quarter century has overwhelmed annual budgets. The economic consequence of the war economy has not been economic stability, but the opposite: a major drain on national wealth and a crucial factor in undermining economic recovery. Production of increasingly expensive weapon systems ends in exorbitant piles of lethal technology, failing to generate new value through new economic activity. Such production drags down the civilian economy that increasingly needs new investment to sustain itself.



The war economy and related military adventurism are bankrupting the country. Estimates of the long-term costs of the Iraq war alone are three trillion dollars. Funds expended on weapons systems undercut urgent domestic needs for education, health care, clean energy, and rebuilding of the country’s roads bridges, railways and waterways at decent paying jobs. Those mandatory objectives cannot be met without ending the war economy.



With the dawn of the Cold War, the US government unveiled a policy to control and stifle dissent against the emerging military-industrial colossus. The national security state was born. In the name of fighting communism, US citizens were subjected to job loss, jailing and denial of the constitutional right to free association. After the McCarthyism of the high Cold War years, the national security state as an essential aspect of political rule went through ebbs and flows, but did not disappear. Government agents regularly infiltrated and spied on peace groups, phones were illegally tapped, and provocateurs disrupted demonstrations.



After 9/11, the “war on terror” gave renewed life to the national security state through the repressive Patriot Act. Widespread illegal wiretapping of US citizens, relentless harassment and assault on immigrants, illegal kidnapping and rendition, mistreatment and torture, denial of habeas corpus to prisoners held without charge for years-have all undermined the claims of US moral authority and earned worldwide disapproval.



The national security state, the source of systemic violations of constitutional rights, is inseparably tied to the war economy. The Obama administration, fueled by the efforts and aspirations of the progressive majority, should dismantle the national security state and end the violations of constitutional rights. To begin to restore full democracy the warfare state must be diminished and finally abolished. This administration must fundamentally revise the neo-conservative policy of global empire that projects US military power to every corner of the world. It must shrink the military’s global footprint and end its interventionist policies. That perhaps, is the most transforming and basic challenge facing President Barack Obama and his administration – and a challenge to all who want a world of peace and justice.



E. The Crisis of Climate Change and Unsustainable Resources



Two decades of detailed study by scientists from all over the world has ended in stark consensus: the climate crisis is real, urgent, and threatens massive human misery and habitat destruction. Three hundred and fifty parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments are now saying is the safe upper limit. Our current level is 387 parts per million. Consumption of fossil fuels, melting of the polar ice caps, increased frequency of devastating hurricanes, and wrenching changes in weather patterns – are all inextricably linked.



The depth of the climate crisis demands an end to the exceptional waste of natural and human resources under capitalism. The crisis demands that billions be invested and tens of thousands employed replacing 19th century carbon based fuels with energy drawn from sun, wind, and geothermal sources. The country needs new energy grids, non-polluting mass transportation, homes retrofitted to curb carbon emissions, and new global agreements to end the emission of pollutants, to reduce deforestation, and to share the world’s energy resources efficiently and equitably.



Inherently wasteful capitalist growth is not consistent with sustaining human life. The wealthy countries, led by the United States have consumed the bulk of the world’s resources. Justice demands that those who have gorged on consumption bear the greatest burden in the rationing of non-renewable resources in a finite world where emerging nations now aspire to greater consumption.



Billions of people are stripped of resources by global capitalism. A quarter of all deaths in the world are linked to environmental destruction, to the disruption of indigenous agriculture by global agribusiness, and to political pressure for developing countries to end subsidies to their own farmers. As energy resources shrink, food prices rise – causing widespread malnutrition and disease among three quarters of the world’s rural poor.



Disruption of traditional agriculture by global agribusiness has brought huge migrations to cities around the world where displaced rural masses are forced to fight for survival. At the core of such upheavals is the persistent racism reflected in the indifference of political leaders, the silence of media, and the continuing destructive activities of capitalists. The sense of justice and the self-interest of all human beings demand international cooperation to address and solve those basic violations of human rights and dignity.



II. The Progressive Majority: A Strategy for Change



CCDS’s principal strategy is to build and sustain a progressive majority. The concept was forged from an analysis of the country’s history and traditions that mandate the building of broad democratic alliances able, on the basis of their programs and activities, to defeat reaction and to place the country firmly on the road to progress that leads to deeper economic and social change.



The systemic basis of the interconnected crises of social life, the economy, climate, and empire makes the solution of any one crisis dependent upon progress in solving the others. The unity of the many currents of struggle around these issues into a conscious progressive majority is a prerequisite to attaining sufficient power to establish popular democratic control of our society. The political and social power of the progressive majority can achieve basic economic and social changes that lead to socialism.



The contours of that majority were strikingly manifested in the historic victory of Barack Obama, built with a coalition of both traditional and new political forces. The election represented a new high tide for popular democracy in the United States. The growing anger and frustration of the American people suffering decades of declining living standards, imperial wars, racism, and erosion of democratic rights has turned into a mighty wave of organized voters.



The election underscored the inseparable connection of issues and constituencies in the progressive majority rooted in race, class, and gender. The backbone of that majority is the combined force of the working class, communities of color, women, and youth. Articulation of the needs and demands of those constituencies in the first place is essential to advancing and consolidating the progressive majority.



The labor movement had accumulated several election cycles of experience developing its electoral organization and the cadre necessary to fully wield its power. Though seriously weakened by the anti-union policies of recent neo-conservative administrations, it effectively led the fight against racism and reaction, especially in the older industrial states of the Midwest. The role of the unions in challenging white workers to vote their interests rather than their prejudices represented the finest traditions of the labor movement going back to the great industrial organizing drives of the 1930′s that were largely built on interracial solidarity. This experience paid off in 2008.



Labor’s ability to assess and address the political tasks necessary to defeat reaction was exemplified by AFL-CIO Vice President Richard Trumka’s famous speech denouncing racism at the July 1, 2008 USW Convention: “…there’s no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism – and it’s something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge. It’s our special responsibility because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.” Polling data clearly reveals that union households embraced progressive ideas with greater conviction and clarity than non-union households. Rebuilding and reenergizing the labor movement are fundamental strategic aspects of advancing a strong progressive majority.



The election again confirmed that the African American community is in the forefront of progressive struggle and is a cornerstone of the progressive majority. The election of an African American president represented for millions of African Americans and many others an affirmation of centuries of struggle for equality. But institutional racism is far from dead. The impact of the gathering depression falls heaviest on communities of color, which continue to face the highest home foreclosure rates, the highest joblessness, the poorest public education, the greatest lack of adequate health care, and the highest rates of incarceration, especially among youth. The struggle against racism in all its forms is absolutely essential to building and fortifying the progressive majority. The left, with its experience and outlook, is called upon to play a leading and vital role in eradicating every form of racism as essential to advancing the progressive majority.



Women voted for progress in the greatest numbers. They are demanding effective action to curb the ravages of the gathering depression, especially in fighting for the interests of the majority of families with children caught in the mortgage crisis and the three quarters of mothers who are in the labor force struggling to cover the rising costs of child care, healthcare, and food. The strengthening of the progressive majority requires resolute action by all sectors of the progressive community to finally eradicate the disparities between male and female in work opportunities, wages and promotion, health care and education. A clear and persistent effort to eradicate sexism in all its forms is also mandatory to assuring the strength and solidarity of the progressive majority.



Latinos, the most dynamically growing segment of the population, have become a vital part of the progressive majority and were instrumental in moving western states into the progressive column. Motivated largely by battles to end discrimination, for fair and humane treatment of undocumented immigrants, and for fair trade policies with Latin American countries, the growing presence of Latino communities in the progressive majority will become increasingly significant.



A major strategic objective in advancing the progressive majority has to be the attainment of unity in struggle among labor, African Americans, Latinos, Asians and other communities of color, youth, and women. The young generation has emerged as a powerful force for progress and equality. Young people were the spark and early foundation for the vast new social movement that marched under the Obama banner and constitute a backbone for the future of the progressive majority.



Gays and lesbians have been a leading force in the fight for equal rights and have brought to the progressive majority enormous energy and political clarity on the fundamental need to preserve and extend constitutional rights. Their presence in the progressive majority is a force for commitment to democratic principles and strategies based on defending and extending equality in all areas.



In addition to those crucial social forces based on class, race and gender – the progressive majority embraces mass social movements generally – peace and justice, seniors, environmental movements, immigrant rights, civil liberties, reproductive choice, and sustainable agriculture. With those constituencies, a fundamental objective is to build a powerful fortification against a right-wing resurgence. That unifying objective must necessarily embrace additional social forces, segments of all classes, including elements of the corporate and business sector that have rejected the right wing and its policies as inimical to their own interests and aspirations.



Thus, CCDS distinguishes itself by strategically relating to the broadest constellation of progressive forces – those on the left as well as those in the middle between the poles of left and right. We seek to unite the left, win over the middle, and isolate and defeat the right.



The basis of left unity is recognition of and support for the progressive majority. There is no basis for strategic cooperation with those who attack mass movements and denigrate the progressive majority and its developing leadership.



With others on the left, CCDS seeks to help deepen our understanding of the nature of the present crisis and the dynamics of the social system that feeds it. We are encouraged that majorities or pluralities exist in support of most progressive issues. With others on the left, we work to advance an understanding of the interconnectedness of those issues, offering to the broad progressive majority a coherent and compelling insight into the working of the system as a basic means of serving that majority and strengthening its unity.



With others on the left, we reach out to those in the middle of the political spectrum to win their support for solidly progressive measures – “health care, not warfare,” single payer health care, strengthening public education, the right to organize unions, jobs with a “green” economy, and bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.



The stakes in the fight for a survivable present and a secure future are enormous. A huge, wasteful military machine did not exist in the thirties. The global capitalist system was not wired as tightly as today with a near universal breakdown. In the thirties, unemployment exceeded 25%, but the industrial structure had not been heavily dismantled as it is today. Thus, today’s battle is more complex and challenging – requiring the broadest unity of all progressive forces.



The strength of a united progressive community is required to push back against the power of the financial industry, the military-industrial complex, and the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Without counter pressure from the progressive majority, those regressive forces can be expected to prevail with the Obama administration.



At this historic juncture, the fight to preserve and extend democracy is central to all demands and is the basis for advancing towards a socialist future. The fight for an effective stimulus to create “green” jobs, to prevent climate catastrophe, to enact single payer universal health care, to give substantive relief to those losing their homes, to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to end the projection of military power in support of a fading empire – all hinge on the ability of the progressive majority to both safeguard and advance democratic openings.



The preservation and extension of democracy point down the road to new directions in our nation’s domestic and global policies: democratic control of the Federal Reserve, channeling stimulus funds to workers, not bankers; public ownership of banking and financial institutions that would finally place the people’s resources in their own hands; nationalization of energy as the assured road to eliminating fossil fuels, and opening the door to clean energy; giving the workers a controlling stake in the auto industry; the devolution of power to the local level such as neighborhood councils, community development corporations, parents’ school councils as genuine organs of power, alongside workers’ councils in the factories, offices and other job sites; reform of the electoral process to advance democracy and provide an arena for alternative progressive politics.



Throughout the world, people at the grassroots who have been subjected to the ravages of neoliberal globalization have turned to each other for survival in what is known as the “solidarity economy.” Fighting for control of resources from the bottom up, the solidarity economy involves the creation of new wealth in a green way with a component of worker and community ownership and control built into its structures from the start. It takes the form of worker-owned firms, peasant cooperatives, community owned credit unions and local schools and many other forms of mutual aid among the poor and unemployed.



Few have the illusion that the solidarity economy will turn into a wave overcoming capitalism of its own accord. Rather it is seen as one tactic among many – along with public ownership of financial institutions, workers’ equity in industries, etc. – that can help the most distressed among the progressive majority to secure strong points in their communities. When combined with independent political action and a platform of deep structural reforms that alter power relations, the solidarity economy can also point to wider economic democracy and the bridge to a socialist future.



Our core communities – workplace, neighborhood, senior center, school, etc. – should be arenas to reach out to those looking for progressive change, especially the legions that joined the Obama movement and now are seeking ways to remain connected to progressive politics and are seeking greater change. From there, issues can be raised, and crucially linked into a coherent progressive platform to be pursued through a variety of organized local activities. From an organized base, coalitions of organizations can be established with new paradigms. Alliances can be created based upon groups supporting those organizations best equipped to deal with the most urgent issue at the moment.



The progressive majority is predicated on the need to build the broadest unity to defeat a rabid right wing that is down but not out. It is the basis for dialogue, joint action and long-term cooperation between center and left. It is the way to defend democracy and the path to extend it into all political, economic and social realms. CCDS is committed to work with all progressive forces seeking to achieve a powerful and organized progressive majority on the road to a socialist future.



III. A Vision of Socialism



In the historic 2008 presidential election, the word “socialism” was bandied about as never before. The Republican attack machine accused Barack Obama of wanting to “spread the wealth around” through moderate adjustments to restore some equity in tax policy. That hardly constitutes socialism. But it has aroused public interest and has widened the field for discussion of the concept. For many, the notion of “spreading the wealth around” sounds good when the top one percent in the United States gained $600 billion annually in income while the bottom eighty percent lost the same $600 billion from 1979 to 2008, translating into an average gain of $500,000 for each person at the top and a loss of $8,000 for those at the bottom. That also translates into a swelling of the ranks of the working poor and unemployed, a surge in poverty, growing inequality, rising despair and financial panic among millions of working people of all ages.



Socialism has honorable roots in the nation’s history. Socialist aspirations and experiments predate the Civil War when efforts were launched to form cooperative communities built on shared labor, shared production, and a shared commitment to the common good. Many streams fed socialism in the United States from utopianism to Marxism. The populist movement that swept the Midwest and South in the late 19th century, while not avowedly socialist, advocated public ownership of banks and railroads as means to stave off economic crisis facing farmers and workers. The Socialist Party in the early twentieth century was a significant movement for public ownership of the means of production. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, large numbers looked to the Communist Party and other organizations for struggle against the ravages of crisis and for a vision of a transformed society shorn of the divisiveness, exploitation, and the inhumanity of capitalism.



Socialism does not emerge from sentiment, ideology, or wish fulfillment. Socialism emerges from recognition of necessity by a conscious working class in struggle. When the feudal mode of production could no longer accommodate the interests of the rising class of capitalists the system was replaced by a new economic and social order that arose from the conscious struggle led by the capitalist class and including the working class. Today, capitalism’s growing inability to provide a decent living for working people, its environmental devastation, its militarism and war, its fomenting of racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia, its inability to use new technology without casting workers into joblessness, its overweening greed, its nagging overproduction and destruction of productive capital, and dependence on bogus financial manipulation to enhance profits informs the struggles and consciousness of the working class.



Today it is widely noted that capitalism “socializes losses and privatizes profits.” Underlying that observation is a deeper reality: under capitalism production is increasingly socialized while the wealth created by that production is privatized into fewer and fewer hands. That is the fruit of exploitation of labor and the core contradiction of a system whose relations of production can no longer accommodate advances in the productive forces of society without ultimately impoverishing working people in growing numbers.



As the contradictions inherent in capitalism sharpen, the banner of democracy raised by that system in its early days is trampled by its ruling class as discourse in the public media becomes monopolized. The ruling oligarchy of capital seeks to marginalize dissent and ideas about social change. They attempt to limit politics as solely a preserve of the system’s rulers.



In contrast, socialism is the preservation and extension of democracy into all realms of activity, especially the economic arena. It is a political, cultural, economic, and ethical project: a struggle to transform power relations within a society dominated by a tiny minority for the benefit of the overwhelming majority of working people.



History and contemporary reality do not yield a schematic blueprint for socialism. However, a Marxist historical analysis of experiences in social struggle, combined with a critique of objective circumstances, suggest some guiding principles for the building of socialism.


Socialism’s fundamental building blocks are already present in US society. The means of production, for the most part, are fully developed and in fact are stagnating under the political domination of finance capital. The US labor force, again for the most part, is highly skilled at all levels of production, management, marketing, and finance. The kernels of socialist organization are also scattered across the landscape in cooperatives, socially organized human services, and centralized and widespread mass means of many-to-many communication and supply/demand data management. Many earlier attempts at socialism lacked these advantages.


Socialism is first of all a democratic political system where the interests and organizations of the working class and its allies have attained and hold the preponderance of political power and thus play the critical leading role in society. It is still a class society, but one in a protracted transition to a future classless society as exploiting class privileges are gradually abolished, and classes and class distinctions generally decline. Because it will be a mixed economy, with both public and private ownership, socialism will have classes, including some capitalists, for some time,. There will still be a need for entrepreneurial startups, both as worker cooperatives and as private firms serving the common good.


Socialism at the base is a transitional economic system anchored in the mode of production brought into being by capitalist development over several centuries. Its economic system is necessarily mixed, and makes use of markets, especially in goods and services, which are regulated, especially regarding the environment. But capital markets and wage-labor markets can be sharply restricted and even abolished in due time. Markets are a function of scarcity, and all economies of any scale in a time of scarcity have them. In addition to regulated markets, socialism will also feature planning, especially where markets have failed. Planning will especially be required to face the challenges of uneven development and harsh inequalities on a global scale, as well as the challenge of moving to an energy system based on renewable green energy sources.


Socialism will be organized in public and worker ownership of the main productive forces and natural resources. This can be achieved by various means: a) buying out major failing corporations at penny stock status, then leasing them back to the unions and having the workers run them; b) workers directly taking ownership and control over failed and abandoned factories; c) eminent domain seizures of resources and factories, with compensation; d) public funding for startups of worker-owned cooperative businesses. Socialism will also require public ownership of most finance capital institutions. Lease payments from publicly owned firms will go into a public investment fund, which will in turn lend money to community and worker owned banks and credit unions. A stock market will still exist for remaining publicly traded firms and investments abroad, but will be strictly controlled. A stock transfer tax will be implemented. Gambling in derivatives will be outlawed. Fair trade agreements with other countries will be on a bilateral basis for mutual benefit.


Socialism will require democracy in the workplace of public firms and encourage it in all places of work. Workers have the right to independent unions to protect their social and daily interests, in addition to their rights as worker-owners in the governance of their firms.


Socialism will largely be gained by the class-conscious working class and its allies winning the battle for democracy in society at large, especially taking down the structures and backward laws of class, gender and racial privilege. An important first step is campaign finance reform to curb the influence of wealth in our electoral system. It will need a true multiparty system, with fusion voting, proportional representation and instant runoff. All trends are guaranteed the right to speak, organize, petition and stand for election. These are the structural measures that can allow the majority of the people, especially the working class and its allies, to secure the political leadership of government and instruments of the state by democratic means, barring sabotage by reactionary forces.



Socialism will be a democratic political order with a representative government and state power. But the government and state components of the current order, corrupted with the thousand threads connecting it to the old ruling class, will have to be broken up and replaced with new ones that are transparent and serve the majority of the people. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights can remain the initial basic organizing principle for a socialist government and state. The democratic rights it has gained over the years will be protected and enhanced. Government will also be needed to organize and finance social development and environmental protection. Forces that try to overturn and reverse the new socialist government illegally will be broken up and brought to justice. Our society will need a state power for some time to come, even as its form changes. Still, government power has limits; the powers of any government necessarily will be restricted and subordinate to the universal and natural rights of all humankind. Attempts to ignore or reject these principles have severely harmed socialist governments and movements in the past.




Socialism will be a society in harmony with the natural environment. The nature of global climate change necessitates a high level of planning. We need to redesign communities, introduce healthier foods, and rebuild sustainable agriculture-all on a global scale with high design, but on a human scale with mass participation of communities in diverse localities. We need intelligent growth in quality and wider knowledge with a lighter environmental footprint. A socialism that simply reproduces the wasteful expansion of an earlier capitalism creates more problems than it solves.




Under socialism the government will serve as the employer-of-last-resort. Minimum living-wage jobs will be provided for all who want to work. Socialism is committed to genuine full employment. Every citizen will have a right to work.




Socialism values equality, and will be a society of far greater equality of opportunity, and far less economic inequality. All citizens and residents will have equitable access to a “universal toolbox” of paid-up free public education for all who want to learn, for as far as they want and are able to go; universal public pre-school care; a minimum income for all who create value, whether in a workplace or otherwise. Parents raising children, students learning skills, elders educating and passing traditions to younger generations – all create value that society should reward. Universal single-payer health care with retirement benefits at the level of a living wage is critical to start. Jobs for all who are able to work and no irrational barriers to achievement.




Socialism is a society where religion can be freely practiced, or not, and no religion is given any special advantages over any other. As important theologists have long pointed out, a Marxist critique of capitalism with its vision of a classless society is compatible with both belief and non-belief in God.




The role of armed forces under socialism will be transformed. Their mission will be to defend the people, secure their interests, and help in times of natural disasters. It will not be their task to expand markets abroad and defend the property abroad of the exploiting classes. Armed forces also include local police, under community control, as well as a greatly reduced prison system, based on the principle of restorative justice. Non-violent conflict resolution and community-based rehabilitation will be encouraged.




Socialism is internationalism. It extends a hand of cooperation to the rest of the world. It does not need or seek dominance over other nations. It propels mutually fair trade with others; it seeks to improve the conditions of working people the world over; it seeks to learn from the experiments in social justice and socialism proliferating around the world. At the same time, US socialism has no dogmatic attachment to other models, but respects and expresses solidarity with all who are trying to build just, humane, and secure societies.



The world has moved beyond the 20th century experiments in socialism. Those efforts went through uncharted territory under severe coercion from outside capitalist powers. In those contexts, the democratic soul of socialism was seriously undermined; the essential need for popular participation in building the system was largely unrealized; and economic advances were distorted by dogma.



We learn from those failures as we probe deeply into our own national history and traditions to create a vibrant and successful socialist vision. Most of all, socialism is the proximate solution to the intractable problems of an exhausted capitalism devoid of hope.



CCDS considers educating and organizing to build the path to socialism to be the primary task of our organization and all who wish to bring the human epoch into existence.



IV. CCDS: Its Outlook and Role



The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism is a national organization, united by a common commitment to struggle for democracy and socialism. CCDS embodies the legacy of the great social movements for peace, freedom, and democracy led by the working class, and racially and nationally oppressed people. CCDS carries forward the courageous traditions of the American democratic socialist and left leaders and activists.



We are governed by principles that empower our members to determine the policies, activities, and leadership of our organization. We strive for an organization that is multiracial and of all generations, both in membership and in elected bodies. Every member of CCDS is entitled to full participation in every aspect of the organization, in every level of leadership, in every formulation of policy, and in every democratically determined activity.



CCDS adheres to the principles of democracy and transparency, including full disclosure of all aspects of our organization and the decisions that we make. We welcome constructive criticism offered in the spirit of mutual respect. All members participate in decisions made by majority rule and are expected to participate in implementing the program and activities of CCDS.



CCDS views the concrete struggles against the depredations of capital as the basis for the development of class and socialist consciousness. The theoretical framework of dialectical and historical materialism that is Marxism provides CCDS the scientific and philosophical basis for collective conscious development. We draw upon Marxism, not as “revealed truth” but as a guide to understanding the dynamics of historical development and change, and as a scientific tool to discover the essential societal relations and social forces that advance the struggle for democracy and socialism.



Our organization has no theoretical test for membership-only a willingness to study, explore, debate, act upon, and develop the principles of human liberation exemplified by the theory and practical works of Marxists.



Our study embraces the many global currents that have nourished Marxist thought over nearly two centuries from Europe, to Asia, to Africa, and the Americas. It explores the meaning of Marx’s view of class struggle at the core of all history. It considers the meaning of the role of the working class as the essential agent of social transformation. It seeks to develop the struggle for equality drawing from the rich Marxist theory and practice developed in the movements for national liberation.



It seeks to understand Marx’s work in relation to the vast changes in science, technology, and the whole of human productive forces since his time. It explores the contradictions between modern advances in science and the fetters placed upon those advances by contemporary capitalism. It examines the dialectical relationship between nature and society; how external circumstances impact consciousness and how consciousness, in turn, acts upon nature.



CCDS seeks to promote a dialogue, a correspondence, between generations. Marxism is not static; it is always evolving with changing times. It is understood and acted upon by different generations in different ways. The dialogue between generations is aimed at a productive synthesis between past and present. It aims to merge the experience of older generations with the fresh outlook of the young, forging a deeper understanding by all of how past history informs the present and provides a vision of a socialist future.



CCDS seeks to understand and convey the history of all oppressed people as central to the struggle for the liberation of all. From that standpoint we stress the inseparable relationship between the struggles of all nationally oppressed people and the struggles of the working class for a new society. We have an unambiguous commitment to the leadership of people of color and of women, acknowledging both the essential historic and current contributions of these groups to all major progressive achievements.



CCDS stresses the dialectical relationship between theory and practice in the spirit of Marx’s critique of preceding philosophers: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”



In that spirit, CCDS advances an inseparable program of socialist education and democratic action. As a socialist organization, we engage in advanced theoretical and educational work to explore and refine the road to socialism; we conduct research and policy development aimed at charting and amplifying public and workers’ ownership. We study varying roads to socialism through discussion and organized travel to countries charting their particular paths to transformation. We seek to better understand and popularize socialism through study groups, forums and media.



At a historic moment filled with portents of change, our socialist education is an essential element of our program. Our Socialist Education Project is charged with developing web-based course outlines for study groups on a wide range of subjects relating to capitalism and socialism, to organize public forums, to participate in academic and movement conferences, to organize a speakers’ bureau, to develop popular programs through film and other media. In these endeavors we urge and welcome the full participation of our members.



In the realm of democratic action, we engage in mass campaigns for peace, justice, and economic security. We work to promote the consciousness and leadership of the working class in all struggles. At the core of this engagement is our determination to build and unite the progressive majority. We seek to build mutual respect and cooperation among all progressive forces through mature, honest, open relations and through primary commitment to the interests of the mass movements.



CCDS extends a hand to all who share a commitment to the interests of the working majority and a determination to help forge the broadest movement as the sure path to social transformation.



In political struggle, CCDS works in both electoral and non-electoral arenas, recognizing the dialectical connection between these spheres of activity. Thus, in advancing democratic action, CCDS favors a full range of tactics: electoral activity, lobbying, mass action, civil disobedience, picket lines, and strikes without mechanically favoring any particular tactic, while always acting based on a scientific analysis of concrete conditions.



We advocate a realignment of the nation’s politics, recognizing that the parties of the capitalist class cannot be agents of qualitative change. We also recognize that such realignment can only be achieved through mass movements and mass struggles. Socialists and progressives must participate fully in those currents – consulting, influencing, organizing, working to change the electoral system to accommodate new parties, and forging relationships inside and outside the current two-party system.



CCDS seeks to build cooperative relationships with other socialists and progressives, organized and unorganized. We seek our proper space on the political landscape by commitment to study, learning, and contributing to struggle based on developing socialist consciousness and Marxist theory. We strive to contribute a mature, principled, respectful voice to dialogue on the left. We seek to play an active role in effective movements to liberate the working class and its allies and to build a socialist future. We look forward to that future with anticipation and confidence.

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  • Carl Davidson said,

    Comment for the Discussion:
    Our Role and Organizational Forms

    From Carl Davidson

    In our basic document, it says:

    “CCDS’s theoretical framework is Marxist. We draw upon Marxism, not as ‘revealed truth’ but as a guide to understanding the dynamics of historical development and change and as a way to grasp the essential societal relations and social forces that generate change. Such inquiry and study does not require an acceptance of Marxist theory. Our organization has no theoretical test for membership-only a willingness to study, explore, debate, and act upon the principles of human liberation posited by Marxism.”

    I agree with this, but I want to spell out some of the implications for the organization form implied here that others may or may not agree with.

    Together with the fact that we are a socialist organization, in today’s conditions I think this means we also best see ourselves as an organization of the advanced. We’re not the only such organization in the country, but we are one of them. This distinguishes us from organizations that are simply mass democratic. Thus I’m arguing that two forms of organization are required of us: one to unite and do the work of the advanced; the other to unite and do the work of the masses. The two are linked, overlap and require each other to thrive, but they are not the same.

    What’s the difference?

    The tasks of one form are mainly our socialist tasks that are pertinent to this period—theoretical and educational work on socialism broadly speaking, what it is and where it’s developing and how; research and policy development of structural reform packages for worker ownership and public ownership as they apply to various sectors, industries and fronts in our struggle; and the work of popularizing socialism is study groups, public forums and the media. We can pull all who want to be involved in this work into the CCDS that agree with our general views and orientation, and we can work for wider unity with other socialist groups as is appropriate.

    The tasks of the other form are mainly those of the class struggle and a variety of wider mass campaigns—the fight for peace and justice, in defense of living standards and liberties, against all forms of discrimination, in defense of the environment and ecosystem. Here we need organizations open to all activists among the progressive majority, whether they agree with socialism of not. These will be organizations based where people live and vote, where they work and where they study. CCDS members here would take an active role in Groups like PDA, the Greens or Peace and Justice neighborhood groups; in their unions, or campus based groups like SDS or those coming out of the Obama campaign.

    The distinction is important for enable us to do the work of either well. If we are socialists mainly in a mass democratic form only, the serious work needed around our socialist tasks gets neglected or, on the contrary, our mass work is done too narrowly, making an appeal to socialism as part of it in inappropriate ways, keeping out those who should be drawn in to the wider work. As for our mass democratic tasks, these need organizational forms that are not anti-socialist, but make no socialist requirements to unite all who can be united.

    By not confusing the two or attempting to mush them up into one, we can actually do the tasks of both in a more serious and effective way. The time will come when socialism does become a mass question, not only for revolutionary education, by will be posed in both the electoral arena to win majorities and for mass action of all kinds to bring it into being. Unfortunately, we are not there yet, but by moving forward this way, we will be in a better position to make the transition when it’s demanded of us.

  • Duncan McFarland said,

    As a Marxist I believe it is highly likely that capitalism will be replaced by socialism in the US; the question is, how will it happen and what is the strategy to achieve this? The discussion on the progressive majority in the document “For a Democratic and Socialist Future” needs to explain more clearly and with more detail why the progressive majority may be the strategy most applicable in US conditions for creating the transition to socialism.

    Other socialist and radical groups have strategies or points of emphasis in their work to achieve social transformation. (E.g. organize a Bolshevik style party, work towrds huge street protests, build a third party, emphasize democratic process and decentralization of power, work in the electoral arena, etc.)

    Why does an “inside/outside” strategy, emphasizing the critical role of social movements in the long term, have particular relevance to the US conditions? A compelling presentation on this question would be greeted with considerable interest in the US left.

  • Carl Davidson said,

    Response from CarlD to McFarland:

    It’s important to get clear on what ‘strategy’ is in this context. It means taking into account the situation as a whole, in this case the entire country and all the forces in it.

    Then the first question of strategy is determining, ‘who are our friends, who are our adversaries’ in relation to the strategic task, ‘unite the progressive forces, win over the middle forces, and divide and isolate the backward forces, so as to defeat our adversaries one by one.’

    Putting things that way distinguishes us from many on the left, who hold a ‘class vs. class’ strategy. Some hold division in the camp of our adversaries to be unimportant; still others believe that the main blow needs to be struck at the middle forces, so as to ‘clear the decks’ for the main bout.

    In our view, we see the main progressive forces to be united and developed as the working class, the minority nationalities and the broad masses of women. That’s the implication of our stand on the ‘intersection of race, class and gender.’ But we also see the importance of social movements generally–youth, peace and justice, GLBT, seniors, climate change, environment, students and so on. Not only is each a force in its own right; they also constitute themselves both as components and allies of the basic main forces. We are not alone in this, but distinguish ourselves from some by seeing the ‘centrality’ of some of these, ie, race and class, for sure.

    We also distinguish ourselves from some by the attention we give to winning over middle forces, while also understanding the divisions in the camp of our adversaries also function as indirect allies. Without this as a component of strategy, we would not have had a good basis for our work in the Obama campaign. most groups calling themselves socialist or communist–save for ourselves, the CPUSA, DSA and FRSO–opposed Obama and saw little difference that made a difference between him and McCain, or they saw him as more dangerous because he created more illusions.

    There is also a subtext to our assessment of the situation as a whole. It’s that we live, at the moment, in non-revolutionary conditions. We distinguish ourselves from those to our right by an understanding that this is not a permanent condition, and that we need to prepare now for the future. At the same time, there are many activists, mainly among anarchists and the far left, who think we are in a revolutionary situation or this distinction doesn’t matter, since we have to act as if we are, or as if our activity could make it so, in any case.

    So these are the main points of strategy.

    There is another on which we have some debate, or at least the need for more discussion. Since we don’t attack all of our adversaries at once, what distinctions should we make? Some want to target big corporate capital or monopoly capital, and draw a line between it and small business in an anti-corporate or anti-monopoly coalition. Others draw the line between speculative and productive capital, and argue for ‘high road vs. ‘low road’ alliances with sectors of productive capital, as well as ‘third sector’ capital, ie, some nonprofits and foundations.

    As for tactics, we distinguish ourselves by favoring the full range of them, electoral, lobbying, mass action, strikes, civil disobedience and so on, without unduly provileging any one, or any one set, of them. when assessing the appropriateness of a given tactic, the guideline ‘wage struggle on just grounds, to our advantage and with restraint’ is a good one. ‘With restraint,’ by the way, means things like ‘don’t go out on strike the day before payday.’

    ‘Inside-outside’ usually refers to dealing with the Democratic party, and is meant to distinguish ourselves from those who think working for third parties now is the sole proper tactic in elections. It covers a number of views, from work in both third parties and as progressive Democrats at once, to work as progressive Democrats ‘inside’ while allying with social movements ‘outside’ (PDA), to work either inside or outside at any time, so long as your goal is replacing the Dems with something better, and a number of other nuances.

    What they all agree on is that we ignore the electoral arena at our peril; it’s required of us to develop a left pole within it in one way or another.

    There’s lot’s more to go into here, and it’s best done by making an actual assessment of what’s in front of us, the ‘concrete analysis of concrete conditions.’ The whole point of strategy and tactics is to wage struggle and grow in strength. If abstract principles prevent you from doing that, then something’s wrong.

  • Pat Fry said,

    The following is an exchange that originated on the CCDS member list serve beginning on December 24, 2008 with a message from Harry Targ. The lastest in this thread continues with an exchange between Pat Fry and Marian Gordon. The order of the comments are from the latest to the earliest:

    January 19, 2009 Pat Fry wrote the following respone to Marian Gordon:
    Thanks for responding to my message sent at the end of December. It would be helpful if you would be more specific by what you mean in your last sentence, “Also, but separately, CCDS needs to look at what we can learn from our relatively short history, who we are now, and where we want to go.”
    I agree that we need to learn from our history, but I don’t think we as an organization are in agreement on the summation of that history. For example, I continue to argue that had CCDS agreed to adopt a single national focus of practical work at our convention in Raleigh, NC in 1999 we would be further ahead organizationally. That huge disagreement in our ranks centered on the living wage campaigns and the disagreement on the role of leadership, and tension on the relationship between the local and national organization building.
    In my opinion, we continue to be plagued by a lack of definition that is shaped by common practical work beyond a generalized commitment to a “socialist vision” and even the latter has not given birth to on-going practical forms – the Bay Area’s Marxist school and the several faltering steps toward SEP study circles notwithstanding.
    I agree, it is essential to sum up our history and learn from our past. If we don’t, we have no future as an organization.
    Pat

    In a message dated 1/18/2009 margordon@sbcglobal.net writes:
    I have just a general comment – I think we are talking about two different, though related, things. Mainly, let’s keep in mind the concept – those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it. Of course, the past needs to be studied and analyzed by those of us on the Left who participated in the struggle for and defense of socialism. Also, but separately, CCDS needs to look at what we can learn from our relatively short history, who we are now, and where we want to go.
    Marian Gordon, Los Angeles
    (PS – I’m late in responding to all this because I was on the absolutely wonderful, moving, emotionally wrenching trip to Vietnam.)

    On December 26, 2008 Pat Fry wrote:

    I agree with John on this direction for discussion in CCDS. We have lived through such a reactionary period that the differences on strategy and tactics among us took a back seat to the defensive struggle. With the two year election mobilization and victories (culminating decades of struggle and experience), we now have an opening.

    And, I agree, now is the prime time to discuss who we are and how we see building the left and progressive movements and the road to socialism, including drawing the lessons of socialism in the 20th century.

    I am hoping that the document on CCDS goals and principles and the various initiatives that we are presently undertaking including organizing for our July convention, the eco-socialism west coast conference, our political statements, discussion of the economic crisis and what our role should be, engagement on proposals such as the What Next for Progressives for Obama will help to clarify the differences and point the direction that CCDS should take.

    It will take a commitment on the part of all members to insure that this discussion engages us seriously and deliberately. I urge everyone on this member list serve to participate in local discussions, and our on-line forms, and attend and mobilize for our convention, July 23-26, 2009 in San Francisco at the Whitcomb Hotel.

    Happy holidays to all and I look forward to the coming months. Pat

    In a message dated 12/26/2008 John Crawford Jcrawfor@unm.edu writes:

    I think there’s a more basic issue which we’ve all skirted for a long time.
    At the time of formation of Committees of Correspondence there was an
    ecumenical effort to bring members of the left (not all, but many) together
    to form what might be called a surviving left after the fall of the Soviet
    Union and the decline of some left tendencies in the U.S. and elsewhere.

    Some issues were not discussed fully, perhaps out of exhaustion or the
    sense that they would be pointlessly divisive in view of the rather fragile
    new unity. What happened to “really existing socialism” was one of them.
    Was its demise in the Soviet Union the deserved result of failures and
    mistakes, or could it be attributed in greater part to the economic and
    political pressures of capitalism and imperialism, to the failures of
    Gorbachev, or to other external causes?

    Even now it seems futile to “go there,” but I wonder whether the time might
    be ripe for more internal discussion of what we think REALLY happened, what
    it told us, whether there is a reason to see ourselves as the inheritor of
    a coherent socialism, what about the roots of the American progressive
    movement, the role of anti-slavery and civil rights, how then we conceive
    questions of American exceptionalism, and so on.

    In short, who are we? Before we decide in what voice to speak to Obama and
    others in the capitalist world, should we return to more fundamental
    discussions about who we are, now?

    I realize there have been discussions of basic strategy as well as tactics
    throughout the history of CCDS. Perhaps this comes to mind now because in
    an electoral campaign discussion usually focuses on tactics. But it could
    be the moment to discuss not only basic strategy, but the shared principles
    underlying it.

    I’m not insisting this is right–I’m throwing it out there if anyone wants
    to take it further.

    John Crawford

    PS–at a Christmas party yesterday someone mentioned H.H. Lewis, the
    “ploughboy poet of the Gumbo,” a true character in American radical
    history. I remember the lines from his very homegrown verses that begin, “I
    got a leanin’ for Lenin,/I’m a Roosian radical Red.” Both the seriousness
    and the humor of this admittedly eccentric old-timer might be taken into
    account in this season of change and reflection.

    –On Thursday, December 25, 2008 Per Fagereng
    wrote:
    “However, the discussion with Ted and Chris does raise interesting issues about targeted audiences for our advocacy and analytical political pieces. Who are we writing for? When we write for a more general audience, say “the progressive majority” do we want to raise issues of the inextricable connections between capitalism and imperialism? or the connections between the requisites of capitalism and the need to crush really existing socialism, including the former Soviet Union?”

    As long as you’re asking, my answer would be, yes, we can talk about the connections between capitalism and imperialism. The question is when — right at the start? Or do we let our listeners figure it out on their
    own? I would choose the latter approach.
    Per Fagereng

    on Thursday, December 25, 2008 Harry Targ wrote the original message with the subject A Little Nostalgia

    Hi all,
    I wrote my statement shortly before Obama’s victory in anticipation of the many “letters to Obama” which would be flooding the electronic space. I forgot about it until yesterday. And being inspired by the emerging debate about John Dewey, pragmatism, and liberal
    imperialists, I thought it would be fun to send the piece out. Originally i tried to send it on Facebook as “a test” because I have not figured out how to send written matter from facebook. In summation, I would say that the article I sent as a literary piece does not warrant too much attention.

    However, the discussion with Ted and Chris does raise interesting issues about targeted audiences for our advocacy and analytical political pieces. Who are we writing for? When we write for a more general audience, say “the progressive majority” do we want to raise issues of the inextricable connections between capitalism and imperialism? or the connections between the requisites of capitalism and the need to crush really existing socialism, including the former Soviet Union?

    Furthermore, as with the advocacy of progressive domestic policies, such as the economic stimulus package, do we want to let our own theoretical orientations about capitalism and imperialism drive our public discourse such that we either turn off our potential allies or create in them a sense of helplessness and hopelessness? In addition, do we want to underestimate prematurely the possibilities of our own work yielding very real reductions in imperial reach (even while capitalism survives)?

    In addition, we might ask how to engage in discourse, participate in mass movements, work to help build a “progressive majority” and be honest with ourselves and those we work with.
    Just as an aside, I find quoting anti-imperialists, such as Dwight Eisenhower, to be very useful in public discussion. Happy holidays,
    Harry

    On Dec 25, 2008 Harry Targ wrote:

    First, United States foreign policy must no longer be based on messianic notions of our moral superiority. Foreign policy must be based on limited goals and values recognizing that our propensity for global crusading has cost the lives and treasures of our citizens as well as peoples all over the world.

    Second, any new, and effective, United States foreign policy must reject imperial ambitions and goals. Our interventionist past must be rejected and replaced by a commitment to multilateral diplomacy to address the
    colossal issues of our time. While many supporters of the Obama candidacy will continue to debate whether turning away from empire is ultimately achievable in a capitalist global economy, in the short-run an Obama administration can reverse the historic drift toward empire.
    I share Ted Pewarson’s concern that this glosses over the fact that the US state already does run a global empire, an enormous enterprise with over 700 foreign bases, a huge military industrial machine, and centuries of practice at ruling other nations by massive force and the threat of force, cruelty, trickery and deception, and centuries of masking this imperial enterprise with pious and hypocritical appeals to democracy and freedom. It is not empire that the US has been sliding toward, but the end of the Republic, the end of the privileged status of the homeland. Obama’s campaign marks a very real – and conscious – reversal of that trend, based on an alliance of popular forces and a large section of the ruling class. I think it is important to see that clearly for what it is. It seems like a very solid alliance, but that is probably illusory. If the “centrists” and corporate insiders in Obama’s government feel deeply threatened by international threats or more seriously threats of domestic unrest, the alliance could collapse. Where Obama himself would stand in that circumstance is anybody’s guess, but a clue may be found in the fact that he’s putting his money where his mouth is around building an ongoing movement out of his presidential campaign, and in the fact that he is moving to follow through on getting the Fair Labor Standards Act passed.
    Not too long ago, we went through another period when millions formed or swallowed illusions about what could be expected from the future conduct
    of the US foreign and military policy. Right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, practically the whole country – nay the world – breathed a huge sigh of relief and bought or built a vision of the US, the sole remaining superpower, no longer facing a serious threat, devolving into a peaceful state in a peaceful world held together by enlightened diplomacy and compromise under the benign guidance of the US. It all sounded very logical and compelling if you accepted the premise that the US stance in the Cold War was driven by rivalry with and fear of the Soviet Union. I never really believed that but was drawn into the fantasy to some extent anyway. After all, who wouldn’t want that to be true?
    One of the connections that we need to make – and that others may fail to see without our help or be afraid to make – is that the Cold War was always a fraud, the issue was never Soviet aggression. Anti-communism
    was always an excuse to develop and use the US’s overwhelmingly technically superior military force, in order to control its client states and acquire more. McCarthyism used fear of the Soviet Union but it was never about that; it was about crushing and taming the opposition to imperial power at home. If people see that clearly they will better understand what we face now, and be less drawn in by the rhetoric. And yet that very rhetoric works because it embodies the core values that the American people share. It works for *us* it we soberly and – with our eyes wide open – take on the task of holding Obama to those promises.
    Peace,
    Christopher Horton
    Worcester, MA
    chrisahorton@yahoo.com

    Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

    On Dec 24, 2008, at 7:06 PM, Harry Targ wrote:
    A Letter to Barack Obama,
    From Harry Targ
    When I was growing up in the 1950s I did not have much exposure to politics. The virulent anti-communism of that day did not make much sense to me but I did not have context, experience, or information to begin to understand where it came from and why it existed. Also, I did not have a sense of why United Statesforeign policy was the way it was. Statements by politicians and pundits left me cold.
    I began to study political science, history, and journalism in the late 50s in college, political science in graduate school in the 1960s, and I gradually was drawn into the anti-war movement of the 1960s. Since I did not have political mentors: family or friends to explain the rapidly changing world, I relied on analysts who accidentally came to my attention. Three shaped my thinking about the world then. They still have much to offer as we begin to think of a new foreign and domestic policy for the United States.
    The first intellectual mentor of mine was the German émigré scholar, Hans Morgenthau who taught international relations at the University of Chicago. He wrote an international relations textbook called Politics
    Among Nations which went through at least a dozen editions. In it Morgenthau introduced certain ideas about human motivation. He thought power and greed were the most important. In addition, he claimed that
    nation-states personified these drives which had their roots in human nature. International relations, he said, like all politics was the struggle for power. His ancestral mentors were Thomas Hobbes who wrote
    that the state of nations was the state of nature and Machiavelli, who endorsed the view that the world was one of avarice. Machiavelli advised leaders to be sly as foxes and aggressive as lions.
    I soon became disenchanted with this Morgenthau “theory of political realism.” But one element of his analysis continued to make sense to me. That is, he convincingly asserted that nations and their leaders who make claims about how they are acting in the world because of high moral principles are lying. They are using these moral sounding arguments to trick their own citizens into following brutal and inhumane policies so that the nation and its leaders can acquire more wealth and power. Even the United States, the argument suggested, acted for reasons of greed and avarice in the world and not for higher purpose. This turned out to be a radical idea in the 1950s.
    Some years later, I discovered William Appleman William’s book, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. For me, Williams added eye-opening insights. First, the pattern of United States intervention in the world was not the result of error, accident, naïveté, or the fault of Republicans or Democrats. In fact, any honest reading of the history of United States foreign policy would suggest that the country embraced a
    pattern of interventions of one sort or another ever since the founding of the nation. This is so whether we reflect on the over 200 military actions of the United States in other countries since 1789; or the massacre of ten million native peoples; or the taking of half of Mexican territory from that country in the 1840s; or the 30 interventions in Latin American and the Caribbean between 1898 and 1932; or the overthrows of Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, Lumumba in the Congo, Allende in Chile, or any number of other similar cases.
    Second, this pattern of interventions, Williams suggested, was based on economic interests. He said there was a connection between the needs of
    capitalism for resources, cheap labor, investment opportunities, and customers for American goods and the pattern of United States interventionism. However, Williams differed from some of those students of diplomacy who were inspired by his insights in one major regard. Williams wrote that policy makers believed that capitalism and democracy could only survive if the United States remained an imperial state.
    Williams never said, as others did, that expansion was a structural necessity of capitalism. He just argued that most decision makers believed it to be the case.
    Finally, many studying social science in the early 1960s were exposed to C. Wright Mills, not because our teachers were impressed with his analysis but rather to bury what seemed to be a compelling hypothesis; that there existed a “power elite” that ruled America. The Power Elite shaped my early thinking about the world. This book accumulated data to
    suggest that their was an elite at the apex of our most powerful institutions: government, corporations, and the military. Those that dominated these three critical institutions in post World War II America circulated from one to another; serving in the corporate sector, the government, and/or the military.
    For Mills United States foreign and domestic policy was largely defined by this power elite who ruled in their interests and not in the interests of the public at large. The Mills analysis was inspired by his own Texas populist roots. The elite were not a “class” in the economic sense only but persons who by virtue of their institutional position represented the interests of their institutions. As American populists always claimed, elite interests were not necessarily the interests of the people.
    I think of these old books now as I reflect on the possibility of an election outcome in November, 2008 that can lead to significant change in the institutions and policies that have caused the people, at home and
    abroad, so much pain and suffering. I reflect on these books now not because I find their analyses adequate to understand the deeper structures of the global political economy and the role of the United
    States within it. Rather I think of the themes as I reflect on policy making in a new Obama administration.
    First, United States foreign policy must no longer be based on messianic notions of our moral superiority. Foreign policy must be based on limited goals and values recognizing that our propensity for global crusading has cost the lives and treasures of our citizens as well as peoples all ove the world.
    Second, any new, and effective, United States foreign policy must reject imperial ambitions and goals. Our interventionist past must be rejected and replaced by a commitment to multilateral diplomacy to address the
    colossal issues of our time. While many supporters of the Obama candidacy will continue to debate whether turning away from empire is ultimately achievable in a capitalist global economy, in the short-run an Obama administration can reverse the historic drift toward empire.
    Finally, what the Obama campaign has initiated, mobilizing the people, must continue. It must be sustained over the months and years ahead. As Mills suggested, the antidote to rule by elites includes an animated and vigorous public actively engaged in the political process. Today this means demanding that public institutions and policies be shaped by people of all classes, races, genders, ages, ethnicities, and political perspectives.
    I think these themes, gleaned from Morgenthau, Williams, and Mills, can inform the presidency of Barack Obama.
    END

  • Greg King said,

    The present version of the document is quite thorough in its analysis and in its coverage of a range of issues. Both Duncan’s and Carl’s contributions. are thought-provoking and substantive. However, while the document we’re considering does say various things about full democratic participation, it should specifically call for a radical democracy, not as a blueprint for the future, but as something to be striven toward, however far we may actually get toward it. To that end, let’s call for the devolution of power to the local level. Neighborhood councils, versions of community development corporations, parents’ school councils should be genuine organs of power, alongside, of course, workers’ councils in the factories, offices and other job sites. The emphasis on state-run, cooperative and worker-owned enterprises as the economic possibilities for the future is good. There should be more of an emphasis on grassroots, radical democracy spelled out.

  • Quentin Davis said,

    1. The document should go into detail on one of, if not the, greatest strategic goals today, socialized medicine. Nationalizing health care is more important than nationalizing banks.
    2. Explicit dedication to disarmament is crucial to the new foreign policy. This is implied in the discussion but I did not see it exposed as a strategic objective for the movement.

  • Randy Shannon said,

    The following is my suggested revision to the opening section of the document entitled “Prologue.” It is longer, but I believe it is important for us to characterize the election, the most important and most widely known event of our day, accurately and thoroughly. In large part our credibility as a left leader of the masses rests on explaining what happened in a way that lays the basis for understanding the need for a left organization. I welcome comments and revisions as my powers are much weaker than my ideals and my time is limited.

    The election of Barack Obama represents a new high tide for popular democracy in the United States. The growing anger and frustration of the American people suffering decades of a declining living standard, imperial wars, racism, and erosion of democratic rights has turned into a mighty wave of organized voters that broke the chains of the two-party system.

    The perfection of the two-party system by the ruling elite channeled and frustrated movements for change by atomizing the electorate into single issue groups, by marginalizing progressive candidates, by restricting access to the polls by minorities and the poor, and by constructing a nomination process that was arcane, complex, and costly. But this narrowing of the electoral playing field, which had for years allowed the wealthy elites to dominate government, turned into its own negation. As the base of the Democratic and Republican parties narrowed, their ability to contain the electoral expression of the popular will diminished.

    The quantitative accumulation of voter registration drives, local independent organization, and electoral initiative and experience by labor, progressive, and left forces in the 2004 and 2006 elections culminated in a qualitatively new campaign by these same forces at the core of the Obama organization. The Obama campaign ran on the Democratic ticket but was independent of the Democratic Party organization.

    The labor movement had accumulated several election cycles of experience developing its electoral organization and the cadre necessary to fully wield its power. This experience paid off in 2008. Labor’s ability to assess and address the political tasks necessary to defeat reaction was exemplified by AFL-CIO Vice President Richard Trumka’s famous speech denouncing racism at the July 1, 2008 USW Convention: “Well, there’s no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism — and it’s something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge. It’s our special responsibility because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.” This speech saw tens of thousands of hits on hundreds of union blogs, and was repeated by international union officers at rallies and union meetings across the country. Trumka’s speech awakened and energized labor activists who poured into the depressed working class neighborhoods of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania to bury right-wing reaction.

    The Obama campaign also based itself in the African-American community, which has repeatedly shown its high level of political sophistication and unity around progressive candidates. In 2008 the African-American community united around Barack Obama’s candidacy as never before. Neighborhood activists left no stone unturned in the drive to register new voters. And a new generation of African American political activists provided leadership at all levels of the campaign.

    An exponent of the intersection of the forces leading to Obama’s election is Patrick Gaspard. A Haitian immigrant, he worked on the 1988 Jesse Jackson campaign, then helped elect David Dinkins the first African American Mayor of New York City. He was then hired by 1199 Hospital Workers-SEIU to help organize protests of the murder of the unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo by New York police. He continued to work for 1199-SEIU as a staff member, political director, and finally vice president. In 2004 Gaspard became the national field director of ACT – America Coming Together. ACT was the largest get-out-the-vote operation of 2004, targeting twelve million households for phone calls and literature. On election day ACT deployed 45,000 staff and 12,000 volunteers from 86 offices, and spent $10million to moblize the Democratic vote. In 2008 this effort was perfected by Gaspard as political director of the Obama campaign. Patrick Gaspard is now the White House political director, the post formerly held by Karl Rove.

    The wave of progressive voters was enhanced by the new level of political awareness and involvement of Hispanic immigrants, women, youth, and the poor. These forces are expecting a new direction in government and a tangible difference in their lives. As this wave receeds, it leaves a new political landscape upon which the left and progressive forces must organize. Above all our task is to develop the political agenda and build the unity of the people’s forces that expressed itself in the victory of Barack Obama.

    The emerging progressive majority must become more organized and united around the various issues confronting it to coalesce into a coherent political force. That is the profound challenge before all working people and their allies.

  • Christopher Horton said,

    Basically good solid document that expresses my understanding and provides solid guidelines for action.

    A few suggestions:

    “The wealth created by production must inevitably overproduce, because the vast majority that labors is unable to recoup the full production that it generated.”
    This is overly simplistic. One could imagine a stable system in which part of the wealth goes to wage-earners and part goes for investment and reproduction of capital. It is the effort of the capitalist to invest the surplus in ways that reduce the amount of labor that goes into the product (mentioned elsewhere), driven by the pressures of competition amid the anarchy of the marketplace, that ultimately generates the overproduction. This shows up in gross statistics as rising productivity not being matched proportionally by rising wages. Statement should be corrected or stricken.

    Some mention should be made of the way in which abandoning New Deal efforts to prevent another depression – gutting regulations and undermining stability-enhancing institutions such as unions, Fannie Mae and the unemployment-compensation and welfare systems – was not done simply out of greed nor out of folly but out of the needs of a system that could only postpone collapse by pursuing such measures and policies. This is an important point because so many people believe that the collapse of the system was due to bad choices and that the system can be restored by re-regulation, banking reform and/or currency reform. We are the ones saying the emperor has no clothes, that it is the system, not abuses of it, that ultimately generated this fiasco. People need to be hearing this because they need to shed their illusions and to give up the dream of going back.

  • Christopher Horton said,

    Addition to my comments (in brackets):

    “This shows up in gross statistics as , rising productivity not being matched proportionally by rising wages, ”

    “…but out of the needs of a system that could only postpone collapse by pursuing such measures and policies. <Unlike the recessions of the ’50′s and the ’60′s, in each recession since the ’70′s the economists and financial managers have expressed fear that they were looking into the abyss. Each move to expand the financial system, from Nixon’s abandonment of the gold standard in ’71 to the deregulations of the ’80′s and 90′s, has in effect pumped more adrenaline into the corpse of the post-war economic expansion. Like a dying star that is consuming its last fuel the financial system has been running hotter and hotter, but collapse was inevitable. Postponing of the crisis through “financialization” has guaranteed that the collapse now underway will be catastrophic.

    the system can be restored by re-regulation, banking reform and/or currency reform. We the emperor has no clothes, that it is the system, not abuses of it, that ultimately generated this fiasco.

  • Christopher Horton said,

    Additions to my comments were apparently totally mangled by my use of brackets. Will try again later.

  • Christopher Horton said,

    (Rewritten
    A few suggestions:

    In the section “Economic crisis…” is found the statements:

    “… The wealth created by production must inevitably overproduce, because the vast majority that labors is unable to recoup the full production that it generated. The result is cyclical crises that last until overproduction is expended or until new productive needs emerge.”

    “Labor, the source of wealth is allowed only a fraction of what it creates. That remains the core contradiction at the heart of capitalism-and at the heart of the present calamity.”
    …………….
    This is overly simplistic, as anyone examining it logically can see. One could imagine a stable system in which part of the wealth goes to workers and part goes for profit. One could (and should) then argue about the morality of the division of wealth, but if the owners spent or invested their surplus in a sustainable way it would be stable. They don’t, and can’t do so, and their system is not stable.

    I would suggest something like the following language:

    “The effort of the capitalist to invest their profits in ways that increase profits by reducing the amount of labor that goes into the product (mentioned elsewhere) drives down the rate of profit per unit of capital until further investment is unprofitable. Driven by the pressures of competition and the anarchy of the marketplace, they have no choice but to do this. The effect on working people is constant downward pressure on their ability to buy what they make. This shows up as declining employment in the manufacturing sector, rising productivity not being paced by rising wages, and capital flight to low-wage countries in search of higher rates of profit.

    “The crisis can be postponed by lending out ever more of the profits, including lending money to the wage-earners – money taken ultimately out of the profits from their own work – for them to buy back what they themselves have made. When inevitably this credit expansion reaches its limit a financial panic ensues and the system goes into a state of collapse called a depression. ”

    Much of this is said elsewhere but not tied together.
    …………………………………..
    Something else that needs to be said – perhaps here:

    “Most of the safeguards put in place during and after the New Deal to prevent another depression from ever happening have been abandoned over recent decades. If one looks at the whole business cycle – difficult because this one measured panic-to-panic lasted 78 years which is longer than living memory – it is clear that abandoning those safeguards did not cause this crisis and indeed may even have postponed it. Gutting regulations and allowing them to become obsolete, and gutting or undermining stability-enhancing institutions such as Fannie Mae, the unemployment-compensation and welfare systems and the unions – was not done simply out of greed or folly, although greed and folly are intrinsic to the workings of the capitlaist system. Indeed by 1970 the long-term cycle had reached a stage at which the system could only postpone collapse by progressively relaxing the restraints that prevented further expansion of credit – and of the debt load.

    “Many claim that the collapse of the system was caused by bad choices and bad behavior, and that the system can be restored by re-regulation, banking reform and/or currency reform. We say that it is the system, not abuses of it, that ultimately generated this fiasco. The bad behavior and choices are to be condemned, but the system is the deeper culprit. Reforming it will not stop or end the crisis, and if the capitalist system emerges renewed and reformed from the wreckage it is doomed to repeat the cycle yet again, including shedding the reforms we make now as the expansion grows old and going into yet another “hyper-financialization” followed by a new panic and collapse.

    “It is not at all clear that humanity can survive another such cycle. It is our role to get people to see what is at stake as they consider what kind of world we want to have emerge out of that wreckage.”

  • Harry Targ said,

    Diary of a Heartland Radical

    Friday, May 1, 2009
    MAY DAY BRINGS THOUGHTS OF SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVES
    Harry Targ

    Sketching Today’s Global Political Economy

    During the latest phase of monopoly and finance capital (1945- to the present) enormous changes occurred in the global political economy. First, the United States emerged as a superpower and in an effort to crush the threat of socialism around the world committed itself to constructing a “permanent war economy.” This permanent war economy would create the military capacity to destroy alternatives to global capitalism, stimulate and maintain a high growth manufacturing economy, justify an anti-communist crusade to crush the left in the United States, and co-opt and/or repress working class demands for change. In addition, the permanent war economy would occasion the perpetuation of racism and patriarchy in public and private life.

    As the years passed corporate rates of profit began to decline as a result of rising competition among capitalist states, over-production and under-consumption, an increasing fiscal crisis of the capitalist state, and rising prices of core natural resources (particularly oil). With a growing crisis, global corporate and finance capital shifted from investments in production of goods and services to financial speculation. Thus capitalist investment steadily shifted to financialization, or the investment in paper-stocks, bonds, private equity and hedge funds and other forms of speculative investment. Financial speculation was encouraged by state tax policies, “free trade” agreements, an expanded international system of indebtedness, and increased reliance on consumer debt.

    Multinational corporations which continued to produce goods and services sought to overcome declining profit rates. This, they concluded, could only be achieved by reducing the costs of labor. To overcome the demand for higher real wages, health and other benefits, and worker rights, manufacturing facilities were moved from core capitalist states to poor countries where lower wages were paid. Thus, in wealthier countries millions of relatively high paying jobs were lost while production of goods increasingly moved to sweatshops in poor countries. Wealthy capitalist states experienced deindustrialization.

    Finally, assisted by technological advances, from computers to new forms of shipping, financial speculation and deindustrialization fueled the full flowering of globalization, or the radically increased patterns of cross border interactions-economic, political, and cultural. Globalization began to transform the world into one integrated global political economy.

    In short, we may speak of a four-fold set of parallel political and economic developments that have occurred since the end of World War II, in which the United States has played a leading role: creating a permanent war economy, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization.

    Should We Be Thinking About Socialism Today?

    A rich and vital set of images of a socialist future comes down to us from the utopians, anarchists, and Marxists, the martyrs of the first May Day, and the variety of experiments with socialism attempted in Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Extracting from the multiple reasons why individuals and movements chose socialism one reason stands out; that is, that capitalism historically is and has been a cruel and inhumane system, a system borne and fueled by slavery, genocide, super exploitation of workers, tactics of division based on race and gender, and an almost total disregard for the natural environment that sustains life. Building a permanent war economy, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization are merely extensions of the cruel and heartless pursuit of profit which has been the fundamental driving force of the capitalist mode of production.

    Drawing on the history and the images of a better future coupled with the brutality of the capitalist era, we might conceive of a 21st century socialist future that has four main dimensions.

    First, we need to create institutions that are created and staffed by the working classes and serve the interests of the working classes. While scholars and activists may disagree about what “class” means in today’s complicated world, it is clear that the vast majority of humankind do not own or control the means of production, nor do they usually have an instrumental place in political institutions. Therefore, socialism involves, in the Marxist sense, the creation of a workers’ state and since most of us are workers (more than 90 percent of the US population for example), a state must be established that represents and serves the interests of the many, not the few.

    Second, our vision of socialism is a society in which the working classes fully participate in the institutions that shape their lives and in the creation of the policies that these institutions develop to serve the needs of all the people.

    Third, socialism also implies the creation of public policies that sustain life. Socialism in this sense is about good jobs, incomes that provide for human needs, access to health care for all, adequate housing and transportation, a livable environment, and an end to discrimination and war.

    Fourth, socialism is also about the creation of institutions and policies that maximize human potential. A socialist society provides the intellectual tools to stimulate creativity, celebrate diversity, and facilitate writing poetry, singing and dancing, basking in nature’s glow, and living, working, and loving with others in humanly sustainable communities.

    Today we remain terribly far from any of these dimensions of socialism. But paradoxically, humankind at this point in time has the technological tools to build a mass movement to create a socialist future. We can communicate instantaneously with peoples all over the world. We can access information about the world that challenges the narrow ruling class media frames about the human condition. We have in the face of brutal war, environmental devastation, enduring racism, super exploitation of workers everywhere mass movements of workers, women, people of color, indigenous people, and youth who are demanding changes. Increasingly public discourse is based upon the realization that our future will bring either extinction or survival. Socialism, although it is not labeled as such, represents human survival.

    Where do we who believe that socialism offers the best hope for survival stand at this critical juncture? We are weak. Many of us are older. Some of us have remained mired in old formulas about change. Nevertheless we can make a contribution to building a socialist future. In fact we have a critical role to play.

    We must articulate systematic understandings of the global political economy and where it came from: permanent war, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization. We need to articulate what impacts these processes have had on class, race, gender, and the environment. In other words, we need to convince activists that almost all things wrong with the world are connected and are intimately tied to the development of capitalism as the dominant mode of production.

    We need to take our place in political struggles that demand an expanded role for workers in political institutions. We need to insist that the working classes participate in all political decisions.

    We need to work on campaigns that could sustain life: jobs, living wages, single payer health care, climate change etc. Our contribution can include making connections between the variety of single issues, insisting that participants in mass movements take cognizance of and work on the other single issues that constitute the mosaic of problems that require transformation. We must remember that in the end the basic policies that sustain life require building socialism. Most struggles, such as those to achieve living wages or a single payer health care system for example, plant the seeds for building a broader socialist society. We can incorporate our socialist vision in our debates about single issues: if we demand a living wage, why not talk about equality for example?

    We need to rearticulate our belief that human beings have a vast potential for good, for creativity, and given a just society, we all could move away from classism, racism, and sexism. We could pursue our talents and interests in the context of a sharing and cooperative society.

    By working for institutional incorporation (empowerment) and life-sustaining and enhancing policies we will be planting the seeds for a socialist society.

    “In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
    Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
    We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.
    For the union makes us strong”

    From “Solidarity Forever,” Ralph Chaplin lyrics, 1915.
    Posted by Harry Targ at 4:42 PM
    Labels: A New Society
    http://www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com

    ——————————————————————————–

  • John Curtis said,

    In Section II. A Vision of Socialism I am intested in discovering the source of the following information:
    “…the top one percent in the United States gained $600 billion annually in income while the bottom eighty percent lost the same $600 billion from 1979 to 2008, translating into an average gain of $500,000 for each person at the top and a loss of $8,000 for those at the bottom.”
    It’s a powerful statement that I want to use in an article I am doing for the labor press here in Maine. I expect to be asked to footnote or state my source for this information, as I would like to refer to it in my article. Who can help me nail down the source? Thank you. John

  • Greg King said,

    Those are a lot of good strategies for working toward socialism, Harry. You’re right that we’ve got to work with a lot of single-issue groups, and help them see the connections between their fights and others’ fights. Bill and Carl were also right on about the need to try to keep together and work with the many disparate elements of the Obama campaign, against the tendency for everybody to disperse following the victory. But you’re right that we’ve got to help working-class people empower themselves, inch our way toward it now and make sure it happens after we’ve won, so that they participate fully in the decisions affecting their lives. We can’t each be involved in everything. What I’ve chosen is trade union work. I was heavily involved in a campaign to unseat a reactionary-masquerading-as-progressive Local president. Against all odds, with a lot of hard work, we won. Now that Local belongs to its members again. We’re going to make sure that’s really the case, and that there’s no backsliding into authoritarianism. Lots of little victories and even defeats, which we learn something from, will one day result in our establishment of a far more just, equitable and humane socio-economic system than the present one. (I’m not kidding about the authoritarianism. You should have seen the way this woman operated.)

  • admin said,

    Mort Frank Rejects ‘Marxism’
    as Presented in Part IV of the April 25 Draft
    of the CCDS Goals and Principles

    Part IV contains 13 paragraphs. To aid discussion of how I think they fall short, I have identified them below by number.

    I do not agree that Marxism is first of all a “theoretical framework (Paragraph 3), a “theory” (Paragraph 4) or a set of “principles of human liberation” (Paragraph 4).

    Also, I cringe when I read in Paragraph 7 what the authors of this section call “Marx’s dictum:” “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”

    As presented, the citation robs Marx’s “dictum” of its historicity.

    As set out in the draft, the text includes the word “however” added years later by Engels. It omits Marx’s own emphasis of the words interpreted and change.

    Entering those changes gives us “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” (Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works, Vol. 5.)

    Looking at Marx’s hectic, rushed German handwriting of this statement (reproduced on p. 9 of the same Vol. 5), carries one back to the enthusiasm of this young man in 1845 (then only 27 years old) just breaking through to an understanding of the insufficiency of the “contemplative materialism” of his time.

    In the ten paragraphs that precede this one (in the original notes that are today called the “Theses on Feuerbach”), Marx is criticizing Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) and other Young Hegelians. These are the people he has in mind when he writes that “The philosophers have only interpreted the world.” And they are why he then goes on to insist that the point is to change the world.

    If the CCDS is to seek to be Marxist, the “point” needs to be our struggles to change the world and the wholly empirical generalizations that we draw out of them.

    As already stated, Part IV of the draft begins with Marxism as a “theoretical framework” (Paragraph 3). It then states that our organization asks for “a willingness to study, explore … and act upon the principles … posited by Marxism” (Paragraph 4).

    No! Since our struggles are always incomplete, the theories that we develop out of them are always and necessarily incomplete. The point of departure has to be what we do.

    Mort Frank
    May 25, 2009

  • Randy Shannon said,

    A third revision of the document is underway, but its not too late to offer suggestions.

  • Jonathan Nack said,

    I was in an informal discussion with some CCDS members regarding the proposed revised version of “For a Democratic and Socialist Future” and we noticed that some important concepts that are in the original version (published 2004) are not in the revised draft. We have some questions as to why.

    The original version has four paragraphs in the concluding section about how the CCDS is a pluralist organization. One paragraph reads:

    “For us, pluralism is much more than the tolerance of diverse views. It is a political culture in which people are joined in a common, profoundly humanistic project. That requires creation of an atmosphere which elicits different views, in which people engage in substantive and supportive exchanges to advance that cause.”

    The original goes on to say…

    “We reject the idea that any group or political tendency has a monopoly on the truth. We believe that developing an understanding of society requires freedom of thought, a clash of opposing views and constant testing of ideas in practice.”

    There is no mention of the the CCDS being pluralist in the revised draft. In fact, the word pluralist does not appear. Do we no longer believe this is an important concept? Do we no longer have unity on building a pluralist organization?

    In the original version, the final paragraph of the section entitled “The right’s attack on social gains,” it is stated:

    “We embrace the goal of building an independent progressive political party. The successful establishment of such a party requires the creation of independent political forms as well as dialogue and joint actions with progressives in all areas of politics. In that historic realignment of the nation’s politics, unity and cooperation of the broadest constellation of progressive forces is essential.”

    Do we no longer have unity on this point either? There is no mention of having the goal of building a independent progressive political party in the revised draft. The closest the revised draft gets to this point is in its final paragraph which begins,

    “We advocate a realignment of the nation’s politics, recognizing that the two parties of capitalism cannot in the long term be vessels of qualitative change. We also recognize that such a realignment can only be achieved through mass movements and mass struggles, with socialists a progressives participating fully in those currents – consulting, influencing, organizing, working to change the electoral system to accomodate new parties, and forging relationships with all progressives inside and outside the two-party system.”

    I don’t disagree with the language in the revised draft, but it’s not the same as making the clear statement that our goal is to build an independent progressive political party. Are we no longer united that this is a longer term goal?

    This was a critical point of unity when the CCDS was founded. While we had disagreement over how to get to the point where mass movements leave the Democratic Party to form their own independent progressive party (spawning inside and outside strategies in respect to the DP), we had unity that the Democrats are a capitalist party and can not ultimately be transformed into a party which represents the interests of workers and the oppressed. Has this unity changed?

  • admin said,

    Randy’s point is appropriate.

    If you think we need to affirm ‘pluralism,’ write a section, describe what you mean, and make an argument for it.

    The current draft takes this stand in lieu of the ‘pluralism’ from before:

    “CCDS’s theoretical framework is Marxist. We draw upon Marxism, not as “revealed truth” but as a guide to understanding the dynamics of historical development and change, and as a scientific tool to discover the essential societal relations and social forces that generate change.

    Such inquiry and study does not require an acceptance of Marxist theory. Our organization has no theoretical test for membership-only a willingness to study, explore, debate, and act upon the principles of human liberation posited by Marxism. Our study embraces the many global currents that have nourished Marxist thought over nearly two centuries….”

    This formulation covers almost all trends in the socialist left, but it is not nearly as loose as the early formulation. Mainly, it demarcates us from anarchism and liberalism.

    As for the goal of a new independent party, the current formulation is open to working with those doing so, by more accurately assesses the conditions. I don’t think you’ll find anyone who wouldn’t agree that the Dems are a party of capitalism, and must be supplanted, by parties or alliances, that are instruments of popular democracy. As you say the debate is over how and when to get from here to there. Most of us are NOT interested in efforts that strengthen the hand of rightwing populism and the GOP in practice. Nor do I think we could ever turn the Dems into a popular democratic party; those in charge of it would wreck and split it first.

    At present, Bill Fletcher and I put forward a proposal to begin building a nonpartisan alliance with a common platform and common tickets as the next step to political independence. But so far, there are few takers, from ‘inside’ or ‘outside.’ Unfortunately, the ‘independent party-builders’ seem to fade in non-election periods, but that’s when the much tougher work of election law reform needs to be done, if we are ever to have a real multiparty system.

    Again, make a proposal and argue for it on this matter, too, if you like. But I’d suggest you address some of these concerns.

  • Randy Shannon said,

    Jonathan raises some questions about the new G&P document’s changes that I would like to address.

    On the lack of emphasis on pluralism, the new situation requires focusing building left unity to make common cause for peace and prosperity against war and austerity. The demands of the new situation require more clarity now about what the character of the organization should be in order to respond. So the characterization of the organization is more specific and less general than in the previous document. Plurality has not been deleted…its no longer the emphasis.

    On the formulations about independent politics. Here too there is a maturation of outlook due to experience and the demands of the new situation. We are more focused on raising class and socialist consciousness so that the outcome of concrete struggles in the coming period answer the question of the forms of political independence. We recognize that with a less formulaic and more tactically flexible stance around the strategy of developing a political force that is less dependent on capital and more dependent on labor and its allies in the progressive majority. The reality today is that the Democratic Party is divided while the masses of voters have given them a mandate to end war, reverse the economic crisis, and solve the healthcare crisis. Our task is to build a mass movement to force action on these issues and to bring more of these voters into activist organizations.

  • Walter Teague said,

    Climate Change Crisis and CCDS:

    The climate change crisis and environmental issues are addressed briefly throughout the CCDS “Founding Document: For A Democratic and Socialist Future” posted on December 6th, 2008
    http://www.ccds-discussion.org/

    8 Environmental Points:
    1. Support for Green Jobs:
    2. A Progressive Majority needed to Prevent Climate Catastrophe:
    3. Nationalization of Energy Necessary:
    4. Worker based economics should be Green:
    5. Capitalism’s Devastation of the Environment:
    6. Socialism and Environment: [This is historically unclear and needs a future tense.]
    7. Global Planning of Green Energy:
    8. Pending Planetary Disaster needs Environmental Socialism: [Eco-socialism?]

    Support for Green Jobs:
    …With others on the left, we reach out to those in the middle of the political spectrum to win their support for solidly progressive measures – “health care, not warfare,” single payer health care, strengthening public education, the right to organize unions, jobs with a “green” economy, and bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan….

    A Progressive Majority needed to Prevent Climate Catastrophe:
    …At this historic juncture, the fight to preserve and extend democracy is central to all demands and is the basis for advancing towards a socialist future. The fight for an effective stimulus to create “green” jobs, to prevent climate catastrophe, to enact single payer universal health care, to give substantive relief to those losing their homes, to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to end the projection of military power in support of a fading empire – all that hinges on the ability of the progressive majority to both safeguard and advance democratic openings….

    Nationalization of Energy Necessary:
    …nationalization of energy as the assured road to eliminating fossil fuels and opening the door to clean energy,…

    Worker based economics should be Green:
    …the solidarity economy involves the creation of new wealth in a green way with a component of worker and community ownership and control built into its structures from the start. It takes the form of worker-owned firms, peasant cooperatives, community owned credit unions and local schools and many other forms of mutual aid among the poor and unemployed….

    Capitalism’s Devastation of the Environment:
    …Today, capitalism’s growing inability to provide a decent living for working people, its environmental devastation,… [This could be filled out.]

    Socialism and Environment: [This is historically unclear and need to be put in the future tense.]
    …Socialism at the base is a transitional economic system anchored in the mode of production brought into being by capitalist development over several centuries. Its economic system is necessarily mixed, and makes use of markets, especially in goods and services, which are regulated, especially regarding the environment….

    Global Planning of Green Energy:
    …Planning will especially be required to face the challenges of uneven development and harsh inequalities on a global scale, as well as the challenge of moving to an energy system based on renewable green energy sources….

    Pending Planetary Disaster needs Environmental Socialism: [Eco-socialism?]
    …Socialism will be a society in harmony with the natural environment. The nature of pending planetary disasters necessitates a high level of planning. We need to redesign communities, introduce healthier foods, and rebuild sustainable agriculture-all on a global scale with high design, but on a human scale with mass participation of communities in diverse localities. We need growth, but intelligence growth in quality and wider knowledge with a lighter environmental footprint. A socialism that simply reproduces the wasteful expansion of an earlier capitalism creates more problems than it solves….

    These 8 points are all true and important, even if only slightly addressed, but the statement puts forward no proposal or action plan suggesting how leadership, socialist and otherwise should act. It takes no position on the main eco-socialist strategies. It clearly shows a socialist understanding, but neglects to present even a minimal socialist (or whatever you want to call it) plan to address this crisis.

    Can we pull these together into a Position Statement and Call for Action?
    I have long argued that to provide effective climate change leadership (prevention rather than reaction) requires first analysis based on the science, second a perspective that includes all people in terms of their likely vulnerability, and third informs people of the nature of the danger we collectively face, with understandable time lines and consequences. Only with a fact based mass understanding and self-interested support do we have a chance to achieve sufficient and realistic actions capable of minimizing (prevent, minimize or reverse) the damages of catastrophic climate change.

    Whatever you call it, such leadership would be eco-socialist in nature and outcome.

    Walter Teague
    6/23/09

  • Duncan McFarland said,

    I would like to suggest a couple of additions to the second draft:

    1) re: IV. CCDS: Its Outlook and Role, add to first paragraph,

    “Members are expected to either support the democratically decided CCDS program of activities or to not stand in the way of implementation.”

    rationale: The paragraph emphasizes the rights of members in formulating policy, but has nothing to say about the expectations of members. If a relationship is to work, it has to be a two way street.

    2) re: III. The Progressive Majority: A Strategy for Change, add following the first paragraph:

    “The progressive majority is the strategy with most potential to make basic social change leading to socialism for the following reasons:

    a) a broad left-center coalition will involve the large numbers of people necessary to create the political power to make far reaching progressive change;

    b) bringing out the connections among the many issues makes clear the systemic nature of the problem, which is capitalism;

    c) the struggle for democracy demonstrates concretely the concern socialists have for the quality of life of working people and lays the foundations for the democratic content of the new society.”

    rationale: it is never explained in the document why the progressive majority is the CCDS strategy and not some other approach to socialism.

  • Mike Wolfson said,

    The Boston Chapter of CCDS is responding to the “Founding Document: For A Democratic and Socialist Future” on the http://www.ccds-discussion.org website, with a draft list of basic principles (see below). We are also submitting this draft list to our listserv and to Portside. The Boston Chapter’s members do not have consensus for all of these principles, but all of us agree that this draft should be submitted for discussion.

    Draft List of Basic Principles for the CCDS

    1. The CCDS has issued numerous statements on current political events which show considerable analytic clarity in presenting the issues from a progressive and left standpoint. However, this has not translated into corresponding impact on the movement. We need to give more emphasis on building organization to be effective. Therefore, every political statement should have a connection to a CCDS action program that is part of our larger purpose and goals. This will demonstrate our understanding of the dialectical connection between theory and practice.
    2. Being a member requires commitment to either help carry out action decisions by CCDS that are adopted democratically, or not to actively block those efforts.
    3. We adhere to the principle of democracy/transparency, including open knowledge of who we are and the decisions that we make.
    4. We have an unambiguous commitment to respect the leadership of people of color, our left labor leaders, and our women leaders, acknowledging both the essential historic and current contributions of these groups to all major progressive achievements.
    5. We are committed to support non-electoral and electoral activities that have dialectical connections between them.
    6. While recognizing our own principled opposition to the policies of the current leadership of the two major parties, we do not encourage membership in CCDS for those who have a principled objection to involvement with and support of any progressive elected officials and candidates who are associated with either of those parties.
    7. We need to establish basic rules of conduct for our activities, including commitment to the principle of constructive criticism (only expressing opposition to ideas and actions when you can suggest better alternatives).

  • Randy Shannon said,

    The “Boston Chapter Draft List of Basic Principles for the CCDS” presents some interesting issues for discussion and thus offers more opportunity for building our collective approach.

    Without any preamble explaining the purpose or the relationship of the “Draft List” to the “CCDS Goal and Principles Document” is the authors’ intention to substitute seven “Basic Principles” for the G&P document, to amend the G&P document, to offer seven points for discussion, or to present a shorthand summary of CCDS goals and principles? Some discussion on the Boston chapter’s part would provide some framework of the chapter’s views of CCDS.

    This last Saturday, I enjoyed the opportunity to engage in an extended and stimulating discussion with CCDS Co-chair Jim Campbell over lunch in Charleston, SC. Uppermost among his concerns was how to build CCDS and attendance to the CCDS convention from the South.

    He expressed satisfaction with the G&P document and the unfolding process of its development. He emphasized the importance of the fluidity and dynamism of the current political situation. He concluded that restraint from coming to definitive and conclusive positions in favor of emphasis on the processes of developing the struggle makes the document and CCDS more accessible. He mentioned the points on socialism as an example, with content and direction but without too refined a program that becomes dogmatic.

    Jim’s viewpoint meshes with Marta Harnecker’s point #2-5 in her Ideas for the Struggle: “More important than creating a powerful party with a large number of militants is to raise a political project that reflects the population’s most deeply felt aspirations, and thus win their minds and hearts. What is important is that its politics succeeds in procuring the support of the masses and consensus in the majority of society.” And in #2-11: “The level of hegemony obtained by a political organization cannot be measured by the number of political positions that have been won. What is fundamental is that those who occupy leading positions in diverse movements and organizations take up as their own and implement the proposals elaborated by the organization, despite not belonging to it.”

    So point #1 of the Boston Draft List does not take into account the potential of CCDS as a leading voice of the left whose Marxist and collective voice can provide analysis and programmatic direction to the broader movement without CCDS being in practical leadership of every initiative. Point #1 offers a mechanical fix that is untenable.

    Point #1 does state the important dialectical relationship between theory and practice. As I see it, CCDS’ role is to develop and advance political theory concretely based on our observations and experience in various struggles in order to articulate and argue a political program that unites the labor movement into a class struggle organization, coalesces the forces in struggle for healthcare, jobs, and peace into a united front against the main enemy – the financial oligarchy and their political servants.

    In order to accomplish that task, the quantity of our experience must be distilled collectively into a qualitative new program that is heard and adopted by the mass movement. Because we are there and involved, CCDS program must reflect the dialectical relationship between the needs of the movement…the pressure from below…and the political next step forward.

    In this context, Point #2 is counter intuitive because it limits the range of possibilities for CCDS to recruit from among the various mass political and social trends that are developing among the working class and its various components, in social formations, and within the Democratic Party and among independent and third party activists. It stands to reason that in this period there will be different levels of interest and of commitment to CCDS programs and activities…a dynamic and fluid situation. For the national and local leadership of CCDS, the core issue around membership is educational work related to the concrete struggles of the members and potential members that effectively addresses the level of experience and understanding at hand.

    If Point #3 is about being a public organization, then where and when that step will strengthen the individual’s and/or chapter’s work, it should be taken. If it is a step that isolates, then the situation should be monitored for the right opportunity. This is really not a principled question, but a tactical question.

    My only quibble with Point #4 is why we commit to respect these leaders rather than to follow these leaders. They are more the working class that is the agent of change in capitalist society than groups that have contributed to progressive achievements. But the point is important because without continually raising this point at ever level, consciousness erodes due to the constant pressure of the bourgeois culture.

    In relation to the CCDS Goals & Principles document under discussion and slated for even more discussion at the convention, Point #5 is a key thread in this document. As the point stands in the Boston Draft, it lacks content and meaning.

    Point #6 militates against Jim Campbell’s point of avoiding dogmatism. Who is the current leadership whose policies are opposed? Do we oppose everything? And is opposition to every policy a matter of principle, or are some positions in relation to the two major parties tactical. The premise of this point is unsustainable. We should encourage people who are fighting in any arena for what we regard as progressive and/or socialist principles, ideals, issues, or demands to join CCDS, because we offer them tools to make their efforts more rewarding.

    Point #7 is well taken, although I don’t think well defined. Constructive criticism is a dialectical process of building collective unity and growth by comparing experiences. In that sense, constructive criticism must also include self-criticism, for what do we know that has not been learned through mistakes? Expressing opposition to ideas stimulates the search for better alternatives, so it is a creative process that cannot be imposed by rule.

  • Marian Gordon said,

    Regarding the Boston document:

    1. Although I believe we at times need to work in the campaigns of progressive Dems., I certainly DO NOT FEEL that someone who does not believe in that work should not be this organization. That would go totally against our principles of inclusiveness.

    2. I also disagree that it is wrong to disagree with a proposal without having an alternative. I am quite sure that almost all of us has, at times, disagreed with an idea without being able to come up with another proposal at the time. Come on now!

  • Ann Fagan Ginger said,

    COMMENTS ON CCDS DOCUMENT
    “FOR A DEMOCRATIC AND SOCIALIST FUTURE”
    This document shows a lot of hard work. To be useful to build the CCDS, it needs certain basic changes:
    • Short paragraphs
    • References to specific fights CCDS members have won or are working on, with others.
    It never uses certain words and phrases that are essential to CCDS work:
    • “We will” not just “CCDS stands for”
    • “Congress” not just “campaign for Obama” or Pres. Obama
    • That is, CCDS is/should also work with Congress members on issues Eugene V. Debs and his 1,000,000 votes for Pres. on the Socialist ticket in 1920 while he was in prison for opposing WWI.
    • “Native Americans” and “Hawaiians,” not just African Americans and Latinos
    • “U.S. Constitution” general welfare clause and working for changes in Obama decisions on not releasing CIA photos of illegal questioning, and other Obama decisions on civil liberties issues
    • “Pakistan” (and dangers of U.S. military there sent by Obama)
    • “Egypt” and “Israel” and high U.S. appropriations for them — without getting into a long discussion supporting or opposing what Israel is doing now
    • “Cuba” and the increasing steps by Cuba toward political democracy as well as its socialist economy
    • The new Great Depression we are in right now. It never says we are in worse shape than in the 1930s because we got out of the Great Depression through military spending, and we are now in a Great Depression WITH massive military spending.
    • “United Nations” and “UN Charter provisions”: in discussing World War II, need to mention that the U.S. helped write the UN Charter that contains a specific commitment by the U.S. to “promote … higher standards of living, full employment, … and human rights” (UN Charter, Article 55 a) and c).)
    It needs to add that the Far Right today is growing — or becoming more active -¬and murderous — with the largest international corporations, is trying to move the U.S. to the Right in this Great Depression.
    It needs to add that CCDS members are now working, at the local level, to stop terrible budget cuts to basic programs.
    The National Convention program is interesting in terms of international speakers, but it needs to include speakers from other left organizations in the U.S. with whom we have some things in common, whether or not we agree with them about everything.

    Submitted by Ann Fagan Ginger

  • Alan Weinerman said,

    It’s The System, Stupid

    The following article was submitted to various left/liberal journals, like The Nation, and the Progressive Populist.

    The most critical issue raised by the current world capitalist meltdown has been almost totally ignored by the liberal/left media. Is the systemic crisis simply due to Republican greed and recklessness, or are we entering the period of the final breakdown of the system of private ownership of the means of production and finance. Marx long ago predicted a terminal crisis would eventually be inevitable due to the basic contradictions of capitalism. The crisis has of course been exacerbated by the Republicans, who represent the most divorced-from-reality sector of the “ruling class”. But their policies have often been supported and abetted by Banker Democrats like Summers and Geithner, who are hard at work bending Obama’s ear.
    Before the presidential election I sent an article to many liberal and left journals trying to raise this most basic of questions, but hardly anyone seems to think it was relevant enough to print. Only one small artistic-ecological-poetic journal called Plastic Ocean was interested in it. Apparently ecological poets are not so wedded to the delusion that their future is dependent on some miracle comeback of humane “managed capitalism”.
    In my previous article I referred to the three basic contradictions of capitalism, the economic and ecological contradictions, plus a third contradiction which I proposed, the psychological contradiction., This last contradiction postulates that capitalists can only continue to maintain their power by controlling the mindset and perceptions of the populace. The fact that left/liberals are not focused on whether the system itself is the problem attests to the success of the exploitation of the collective psyche by the ruling power structure. Think about it.
    In this article I’ll try to clarify what Marx meant by the basic economic contradiction of capitalism. Marx did not predict that capitalism is doomed because it is an evil system, he made no such value judgment. Rather, he proved, for the sake of argument, that there are contradictory mechanisms inherent in the capitalist economic structure which cannot help but lead to insoluble crises in which the financial/economic structure will no longer be able to function., Just take a look out the window. Everyone seems to agree that the recovery of the system depends on consumers spending giant gobs of money, at the same time that millions are becoming jobless, homeless, and altogether lousy credit risks. This contradiction is not just an unhappy coincidence, it is the inevitable result of the first contradiction of capitalism, generally known as the Private Expropriation of Socially Produced Wealth. People work collectively in vast economic enterprises to produce what society needs to survive, but the proceeds of that labor are privately expropriated., The owners of the major means of production make their decisions in order to maximize their profit. This is just ducky with the stockholders, but in the long run it contradicts the aggregate interests of the population. The owners will do everything possible in order to not pay the workers the full value of what they produce, or there would be no profit. Since the workers, taken as a whole, cannot buy back all they produce, the capitalists need to continually expand, to capture foreign markets, resources, and labor power. Liberals would like to think that capitalists can be convinced to be nice and not exploit underdeveloped nations, but according to Dialectical Materialist (Marxist) theory, the Capitalists can’t help themselves. Those who didn’t exploit went broke long ago. We’re all aware of the many ways capitalists, aided by government collusion, have ingeniously exploited labor through outsourcing, busting unions, deregulation, privatization, tax breaks for moving overseas, turning workers into part-time “contractors” with no benefits or protection, etc. Modern corporate charters even conveniently make it illegal to take into account anything but maximizing profits, or their shareholders can sue them. Everything is done by Capital to lower the buying power of working people in order to increase short-term profits, but these are the very same workers the system depends on to CONSUME. For those whose wages are too low, we have the credit card system. Can’t afford a house, we’ll give you a sub-prime mortgage, then bundle it and speculate upon it in the market. In a system where labor is systematically undermined, speculation becomes a mainstay of the economy. Vast sectors of the economy become a giant ponzi scheme. Madoff was a pioneer, How the basic economic contradiction is directly related to all the problems of budget deficits, trade deficits, deflation, inflation, housing bubbles, stock bubbles, and banking bubbles should be at the center of all the discussions of the current crisis.
    Obama is a brilliant capitalist. He not only knows that starving and homeless people are not good consumers, but he seems to actually care about people. In his first address to the joint session of Congress, Obama talked about great goals, a green economy, better schools, available healthcare, and modernizing our economy to compete in the 21st century. Wonderful goals, but impossible to achieve without coming to grips with the fact that “we the people” and our government do no own the economy. The economy is owned by private corporations., This obvious problem is usually completely ignored. The only time nationalizing an industry or company is discussed is when that industry is going broke. What a deal. Put the money losers in public hands, and leave the profitable businesses in private hands. Somehow I don’t think that would work. Until the commanding heights of industry and finance are all in public hands all the contradictions will continue to deepen. In Marxist terms, we need social, rather than private, expropriation or socially produced wealth. The Relations of Productions (i.e. capitalist/worker, or slave owner/slave) are out of synch with the forces of production, and can no longer utilize these forces sufficiently. Most ironic of all, all our \great technological advances are serving to deepen the contradictions and crises in the system.
    Marxism predicts that the development of technology will bring about the downfall of the system. Capitalists look at all advances in technology as ways to make their enterprises more cost effective. Replace workers with robots and computers. Great idea. And moving factories overseas is made much easier through technological advances. We were told we’d all get new jobs in “information technology”. Blame it all on the individual’s lack of proper expertise. This “rationalizing “ of enterprises is great for the bottom line in the short term, but destroys the consumer base of society in the long term. The more computerized technology is put to use, the deeper the contradictions become.
    Marx said that the ruling power structure controls the parameters of the public discussion and debates of society. Discussions of whether private corporations should be allowed to own our economy are never heard And why do most left/liberals seem to accept the common notion that real socialism is dead? If socialism is discussed, it is usually limited to the benefits of social democratic welfare policies, like health insurance, social security subsidized housing, etc. Social welfare policies are completely separate from the question of real socialism, which is all about who owns the major means of production in society, and who has to sell their labor power to survive. Public spending is of course very important but it’s dependent on the tax base, and if no one’s working, the coffers are bare.
    Right-wing think tanks are already hard at work trying to convince us that to stabilize the economic situation we will need to further cut entitlements and all public spending, Make the poor poorer, that’s fix things. Obama is not immune to these pressures, especially regarding entitlements. The liberal left needs to begin to inject into this debate the question of who owns the major productive forces of society (large factories, mines, industrial farms, power grids, etc.) and the need to use these productive forces for the public good.
    Just how the major means of production can be put into public hands is a complicated question. And it doesn’t mean we have to collectivize small entrepreneurships or corner grocery stores. But unless we begin to deal with the question of who owns our major means of production, the human species may not be around much longer.

    Submitted by Alan Weinerman, who is a Political Psychologist living in San Francisco, and an original member of the CCDS.

  • Michael Hersh said,

    I agree that if we want this document to inform the public of who we are, it should be written with fewer buzzwords and speak more immediately to the emotions workers feel today, including shorter paragraphs, but sounding more like a manifesto and call to arms than what now seems formulaic and wooden to my ears – perhaps the body will allow a literary reworking of the final draft?

    Here is what I would substitute for the paragraph on militarism, which currently does not define what militarism is:

    “But while the retirement plans of workers evaporate and our dreams of education and advancement are postponed, the war machine thrives. The public wealth, the product of our labor and sacrifice, that should be funding libraries, museums, earth-friendly industries, colleges and school is instead drained by the powerful weapons manufacturers and their many friends in government and in the media to feed their own warped dreams and hopes for military adventures, ever more exotic killing machines and endless wars that waste our children, our futures and decimate entire nations around the globe. Sanity and survival require that imperialist ambitions must yield to a new global policy based on abolishing nuclear weapons, reducing conventional forces, closing of foreign bases, and reliance on diplomacy over confrontation.”

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