Jobless in Cuba? Communism faces the unthinkable

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AP – ** FOR USE SUNDAY, JULY 18, 2010 ** In this photo June 24, 2010 photo, construction workers labor inside …

• Play Video Cuba Video:Fidel Castro warns of nuclear war Reuters
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HAVANA – At a state project to refurbish a decaying building in Old Havana, one worker paints a wall white while two others watch. A fourth sleeps in a wheelbarrow positioned in a sliver of shade nearby and two more smoke and chat on the curb.

President Raul Castro has startled the nation lately by saying about one in five Cuban workers may be redundant. At the work site on Obispo street, those numbers run in reverse.

It's a common sight in communist Cuba. Here, nearly everyone works for the state and official unemployment is minuscule, but pay is so low that Cubans like to joke that "the state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work."

Now, facing a severe budget deficit, the government has hinted at restructuring or trimming its bloated work force. Such talk is causing tension, however, in a country where guaranteed employment was a building block of the 1959 revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power.

Details are sketchy on how and when such pruning would take place. Still, acknowledgment that cuts are needed has come from Raul Castro himself.

"We know that there are hundreds of thousands of unnecessary workers on the budget and labor books, and some analysts calculate that the excess of jobs has surpassed 1 million," said Castro, who replaced his ailing brother Fidel as president nearly four years ago. Cuba's work force totals 5.1 million, in a population of 11.2 million.

In his nationally televised speech in April, Castro also had harsh words for those who do little to deserve their salaries.

"Without people feeling the need to work to make a living, sheltered by state regulations that are excessively paternalistic and irrational, we will never stimulate a love for work," he said.

Indeed, the process of labor reform may already have started, albeit slowly.

Workers in the tourism sector say some of their colleagues have been furloughed during the lean summer months, while others have been reassigned to jobs on state-run farms.

"Since we are now in the low season, the hotel where I work has sent many workers home for two or three months," said Orlando, a chef in Varadero, a sand-and-surf enclave east of Havana.

"It's very hard because you're left with no salary at all," said Orlando, who like almost all state employees, didn't want his full name used to prevent problems at work. He added, "I'm lucky since I'm still in my job."

Veronica, a receptionist at another Varadero hotel, said she feared she may be sent home in August, when her resort will be only half-occupied.

"Sometimes they offer alternatives, to study in a particular course or another job," she said, "but sometimes, when (workers) are sent into the agricultural sector for instance, they just quit."

With the government giving no details of its thinking, rumors have spread that as many as a fourth of all government workers in some industries could lose their jobs or be moved to farming or construction. But Labor Minister Margarita Gonzalez has promised that "Cuba will not employ massive firings in a manner similar to neoliberal cutbacks," using "neoliberal" as a description of free-market policies.

The government has moved to embrace some small free-market reforms. It handed some barbershops over to employees, allowing them to set their own prices but making them pay rent and buy their own supplies. Authorities have also approved more licenses for private taxis while getting tough on unlicensed ones.

The global financial crisis, and the $10 billion in damage inflicted by three hurricanes in 2008, have forced authorities to run a deficit of 5 percent of GDP, leaving them unable to pay back credits received from China and elsewhere.

Cuba slashed spending on importing food and other basics by 34 percent to $9.6 billion in 2009, from $12.7 billion the previous year. But so far, the moves have not been enough to rein in the deficit.

Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Cuba economics expert and professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, said Cuban officials have spent months debating cuts in the labor force and economic reforms. He said they know what's needed, but face "a problem of political viability."

Various government perks like cars, gas, uniforms and office supplies have become incentives to bloat the payroll, since they are based on the size of a company's work force.

But low pay means low productivity. On Obispo street, a state-run cafeteria sells heavily subsidized soft ice cream and pork sandwiches for the equivalent of a few American pennies — meaning wages and tips are so tiny that the staff is complete indifferent toward customers.

Three waiters sit at the counter cracking jokes. A fourth is the only one working, making coffee for three tables. Nearby, a cashier stares into space, a cook flirts with a scantily clad teen and a supervisor sits idly by.

The state employs 95 percent of the official work force. Unemployment last year was 1.7 percent and hasn't risen above 3 percent in eight years — but that ignores thousands of Cubans who aren't looking for jobs that pay monthly salaries worth only $20 a month on average.

Salvador Valdes Mesa, secretary-general of the nearly 3 million-strong Cuban Workers Confederation — the only Cuban labor union allowed — has instead written that "reorganization" will ensure redundant workers are reassigned rather than fired.

He said the government wants more jobs in construction and agriculture.

Still, 35-year-old computer engineer Norberto fears for his job. He thinks it's unfair to keep workers under communist domination and yet call them unmotivated. "I didn't graduate from college to now work as a day laborer or a peasant, he said.

If he loses his job and gets an offer to work abroad, he said, "my question is 'Will the Cuban authorities put aside their paternalism and let me leave?'"

Maoists rally in Nepal, announce general strike

AP – A Communist flag flutters as supporters of Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) participate in a mass protest …

KATMANDU, Nepal – Tens of thousands of former communist rebels and their supporters rallied in the capital Saturday demanding Nepal's coalition government be disbanded and replaced by a Maoist-led government.

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal refused to resign and instead called on the Maoists to resolve the Himalayan country's political crisis through dialogue.

In response, Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal announced to cheering supporters they would launch an indefinite general strike from Sunday.

"It is not our pleasure but compulsion to impose the general strike to save the nation and the people," Dahal said. "Revolutionstreet protests." and major political changes in Nepal have come through

Police estimated some 125,000 people joined the Maoists' rally.

The standoff has raised fears of renewed violence in Nepal, where the Maoists ended their decade-old insurgency and joined a peace process in 2006.

Since the bloody insurgency ended, the Maoists have confined their fighters in U.N.-monitored camps and contested general elections in 2008. They briefly led a coalition government but their leader resigned as the prime minister following differences with the president over the proposed firing of the army chief. Political tensions have escalated again in recent months.

In a nationally televised speech, the current premier, Nepal, refused to step down.

"The government formed with the support of majority in parliament can be changed only through legal parliamentary process," Nepal said, urging the Maoists to cancel their general strike and "move toward forming national consensus."

Some 15,000 police in riot gear were guarding the streets of Katmandu for Saturday's rally. Traffic was halted and shops and markets were closed. The protesters chanted slogans against the government and waved their party's red flags.

No violence or clashes between police and protesters were reported, Katmandu police chief Ramesh Kharel said.

Karin Landgren, chief of U.N.'s peace mission in Nepal, said she met Maoists leaders to appeal for a peaceful resolution to the crisis and had been assured the demonstrations would be peaceful.

"I am deeply concerned that despite these peaceful intentions, potential spoilers of the peace process could provoke a clash," Landgren said Friday.

A statement from the U.S. Embassy in Katmandu appealed for the parties to exercise restraint, work toward consensus and find a way through the impasse.

"Nepal has come a long way since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in 2006 and these gains should not be lost," it said.

At least 13,000 died during the decade-long Maoist rebellion that preceded the peace agreement.

A replica tank rolled through the streets of the city

Vietnam has marked 35 years since the end of its war by staging a re-enactment of the fall of the Saigon.

Thousands of troops marched through the streets of what is now officially called Ho Chi Minh City to mark the day the communist North claimed victory.

Vietnam's President Nguyen Minh Triet used the event to praise the country's economic development.

The Vietnam War claimed the lives of three million Vietnamese and some 60,000 US soldiers.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in front of the former presidential residence, now called Independence Palace, in Ho Chi Minh City, to watch the military and cultural display.

The BBC's Nga Pham in the city said the events began in the early hours to avoid the heat of the day, with a play recounting the history of the country from ancient times to when the North's tanks smashed through the gates of the palace, leading to the surrender of the southern government.

We feel happy but we always are grateful to those who died for our country Vu Thi Nham, veteran

A replica tank drove through the city to the palace, greeted by cheers from the crowds.

The event was an emotional one for many who lived through the war itself, with some people crying as they watched the display.

"We are here today, very emotional, and thinking of what happened 35 years ago," said Vu Dang Toan, a member of the tank unit involved in the victory in 1975.

"It was a great victory, it was very quick to liberate Saigon and the country is reunited."

Others said it was a time to remember those who died in the devastating conflict.

"I think of my comrades who sacrificed their lives for the country. We feel happy but we always are grateful to those who died for our country," said 80-year-old veteran Vu Thi Nham.

Thousands missing

The ceremony in Ho Chi Minh City - named after the man seen as the founder of the revolution - was attended by leaders and dignitaries from Cuba, Russia, Laos and Cambodia.

The ceremony led to some mixed reactions

President Nguyen Minh Triet praised the country's development since the war, saying its "economy has steadily grown while socio-political stability and national defence have been guaranteed".

"The country's status in the international arena has been lifted while its people's lives increasingly improved," Vietnam News quoted him as saying.

Mr Triet attributed the country's success to the Communist party, armed forces and the Vietnamese people.

By the time the US-backed South Vietnamese government collapsed, millions of people had died. Many thousands on both sides are still missing in action.

The war also left deep divisions within the nation, with millions fleeing Vietnam in fear of persecution from the new regime, says our correspondent.

Vietnam remains under communist rule and the government keeps tight control over politics and the media.

But its economy has improved dramatically since the war, and diplomatic relations have resumed with the United States.

Our correspondent says the celebrations acted as a reminder of the atrocities of the war as well as a sign of how keen the Vietnamese people are to develop their country.

Cuba Begins Peforming State-Sponsored Sex-Change Operations

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 

Moveon.org Issues Warning to Democrats Opposed to 'Public Option'

Any Democrat who opposes the government option will lose support from the organization's 5 million members, according to an e-mail sent by the group to its supporters.

FOXNews.com

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

60 Years After Revolution, Mao's Popularity Surges in China

Monday, October 05, 2009 
By Dana Lewis

  AP

Mao, the leader of China from the Chinese Revolutoon in 1949 until his death in 1976, has made a comeback in recent years. And it's not only in Laurence Brahm's trendy Beijing restaurant, the Red Capital Club.

Ironically, Mao — who railed against capitalism — is now so popular that he has become a source of immense capital income across China. Mao's face is ever-present among souvenir vendors; he's on T-shirts, matches, even a revolutionary Mao alarm clock. And now, he's on the big screen.

Mao's status as the founder of modern day China is celebrated in a new state-sponsored film starring 200 of the country's biggest actors. In the film, Mao is depicted as the caring father of the nation, a leader who loves his soldiers and citizens. The filmmakers make few references to Mao's brutality, glossing over policies and political purges that resulted in the deaths of 40 to 70 million of his people.

"I think every culture, every people wants to have an icon and a hero. And very often they're kind of you know, the dirt of history gets covered over by the romanticism of an era," Brahm told FOX News.

And Mao has certainly taken on the role of icon with many in subsequent generations — the former leader's literature remains widely popular 60 years after his ascension to power. A bookstore in Beijing is seeing writings by the late Chinese leader fly off the shelves. Many of the store's customers claim that the global financial crisis supports Mao's belief that following the path of capitalism would lead the country to ruin and that communism is the true path.

"We started with nothing. Everyone had to work together. No rich, no poor," says Kong Dong Mei, granddaughter of Mao. She tells FOX News that her grandfather is a symbol of China's power and the spirit of communism.

So how would Mao, the champion of socialism, feel about his country 60 years after the Revolution?

On one hand, it was a dream of Mao's to see China emerge as a superpower. On the other hand, he wanted to close the gaps between rich and poor — gaps in wealth that are widening in modern China.

Mao was said to be fascinated by contradiction. And he once wrote, "The world is contradiction — contradiction is the world."

What's more contradictory than a communist government ruling a capitalist nation, with Mao as its modern symbol of unity?

Barack Obama is a Fabian socialist. I should know; I was raised by one. My Grandfather worked as a union machinist for Ingersoll Rand during the day. In the evenings he tended bar and read books. After his funeral, I went back home and started working my way through his library, starting with T.W. Arnold's The Folklore of Capitalism. This was my introduction to the Fabian socialists.

Fabians believed in gradual nationalization of the economy through manipulation of the democratic process. Breaking away from the violent revolutionary socialists of their day, they thought that the only real way to effect "fundamental change" and "social justice" was through a mass movement of the working classes presided over by intellectual and cultural elites. Before TV it was stage plays, written by George Bernard Shaw and thousands of inferior "realist" playwrights dedicated to social change. John Cusack's character in Woody Allen's "Bullets Over Broadway" captures the movement rather well.

Arnold taught me to question everyone--my president, my priest and my parents. Well, almost everyone. I wasn't supposed to question the Fabian intellectuals themselves. That's the Fabian MO, relentless cultural and journalistic attacks on everything that is, and then a hard pitch for the hope of what might be.

That's Obama's world.

He's telling the truth when he says that he doesn't agree with Bill Ayers' violent bombing tactics, but it's a tactical disagreement. Why use dynamite when mass media and community organizing work so much better? Who needs Molotov when you've got Saul Alinski?

So here is the playbook: The left will identify, freeze, personalize and polarize an industry, probably health care. It will attempt to nationalize one-fifth of the U.S. economy through legislative action. They will focus, as Lenin did, on the "commanding heights" of the economy, not the little guy.

As Obama said, "the smallest" businesses will be exempt from fines for not "doing the right thing" in offering employer-based health care coverage. Health will not be nationalized in one fell swoop; they have been studying the failures of Hillary Care. Instead, a parallel system will be created, funded by surcharges on business payroll, which will be superior to many private plans.

The old system will be forced to subsidize the new system and there will be a gradual shift from the former to the latter. The only coercion will be the fines, not the participation. A middle-class entitlement will have been created.

It may not be health care first; it might be energy, though I suspect that energy will be nationalized much more gradually. The offshore drilling ban that was allowed to lapse legislatively will be reinstated through executive means. It may be an executive order, but might just as well be a permit reviewing system that theoretically allows drilling but with endless levels of objection and appeal from anti-growth groups. Wind and solar, on the other hand, will have no permitting problems at all, and a heavy taxpayer subsidy at their backs.

The banking system has already been partially nationalized. Bush and Paulson intend for their share purchases to be only non-voting preferred shares, but the law does not specify that. How hard will it be for Obama, new holder of $700 billion in bank equity, to demand "accountability" and a "voice" for the taxpayers?

The capital markets are not freezing up now, mostly because of what has happened, although community organizers' multidecade push for affirmative-action mortgages has done enormous harm to the credit system. Markets are forward looking.

A quick review of the socialist takeovers in Venezuela in 1999, Spain in 2004 and Italy in 2006 show the same pattern--equity markets do most of their plummeting before the Chavez's of the world take power. Investors anticipate the policy shift in advance; that's their job.

It's not just equity markets, though; debt markets do the same thing. Everywhere I turn I hear complaints about bankers "hoarding" capital. "Hoarding" is a word we've heard often from violent socialists like Lenin and Mao. We also hear it from the democratic left as we did during the 1930s in America. The banks, we're told, are greedy and miserly, holding onto capital that should be deployed into the marketplace.

Well, which is it, miserly or greedy? They're not the same thing. Banks make money borrowing low and lending high. In fact, they can borrow very, very low right now, as they could during the Great Depression.

So why don't they lend? Because socialism is a very unkind environment for lenders. Some of the most powerful members of Congress are speaking openly about repudiating mortgage covenants. Local officials have already done so by simply refusing to foreclose on highly delinquent borrowers. Then, there's the oldest form of debt repudiation, inflation. Even if you get your money back, it will not be worth anything. Who would want to lend in an environment like this?

Will Obama's be the strong-man socialism of a Chavez, or the soft socialism that Clement Atlee used to defeat Churchill after WWII? I don't know, but I suspect something kind of in between. Despite right-wing predictions that we won't see Rush shut down by Fairness Doctrine fascists. We won't see Baptist ministers hauled off in handcuffs for anti-sodomy sermons. It will more likely be a matter of paperwork. Strong worded letters from powerful lawyers in and out of government to program directors and general mangers of radio stations. Ominous references to license renewal.

The psychic propaganda assault will be powerful. The cyber-brown-shirts will spew hate, the union guys will flood talk shows with switchboard-collapsing swarms of complaint calls aimed at those hosts who "go beyond the pale" in their criticisms of Obama. In concert with pop culture outlets like The Daily Show and SNL, Obama will use his podium to humiliate and demonize those of us who don't want to come together and heal the planet.

You've heard of the bully pulpit, right? Well, then get ready, because you're about to see the bully part.

Jerry Bowyer is chief economist of Benchmark Financial Network and a CNBC contributor.

Slogan hailing Stalin returns to metro station, draws scorn

By Yuri Pushkin
CNN

 

  

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Two sentences inscribed above the refurbished entrance hall of Moscow's Kurskaya metro station are causing great agitation for survivors of Russian labor camps.Yuri Fidelgoldsh, who had five ribs removed after imprisonment six decades ago, is one of the offended survivors.

This slogan at a Moscow metro station has stirred controversy: "Stalin reared us on loyalty to the people."

 

"Stalin reared us on loyalty to the people," says the inscription above the pristine marble floors of the metro station. "He inspired us to labor and to heroism."

Fidelgoldsh, now 82, doesn't use the metro station much, but he has been there to see the restoration. When he invokes the name "Stalin," he gets angry. "For people who were imprisoned, punished and whose parents were killed, this is still in their hearts," Fidelgoldsh says.

Kremlin critics are outraged by the restored motto at the station. They say it's the latest attempt by the government to rehabilitate the image of Joseph Stalin, the late Soviet leader largely responsible for the division of Europe, the deaths of nearly 20 million people and the creator of the Eastern Bloc.

"I have no positive emotions towards Stalin," Fidelgoldsh adds. "He's a college dropout who went into politics and became a leader of a party which fit his needs. He didn't exactly impress me with his 'great' mind."

The phrase at the metro station came from the original Soviet national anthem, written in 1944 by Sergey Mikhalkov. During the de-Stalinization process that began under Nikita Khrushchev after Stalin's death in 1953, statues and other vestiges of his immense cult of personality were removed. In 1977, Mikhalkov rewrote the anthem to delete references to Stalin, and the metro station removed the original inscription of his words.

The entrance hall to the station underwent extensive renovation over the past year, complete with new columns and polished marble floors. It's located on the main metro line around the city's center, through which tens of thousands of commuters pass every day.

On a recent day, a woman named Nadia said she had no problem with the slogan honoring Stalin. She grew up after the fall of the Soviet Union and during the prosperous Putin years. "I think we shouldn't be ashamed because this is a part of our history. We have to somehow accept the history," said Nadia, who didn't want to give her last name.

The Kremlin declined comment for this story. Pavel Suharnikov, the press director for Moscow Metro, said, "We do not wish to discuss this matter anymore, but I will say that I don't see any political motivation behind the restoration of Kurskaya."

Travelers at the metro station first saw the words hailing Stalin at the start of 1950, when the station opened as one of the grand post-World War II constructions. It was contracted by Stalin himself.

"This metro station was built by prisoners of gulags who were in there for no reason, just because. They were the ones building this station. I think all of this is simply wrong," says Valeri M. Shevchenko, a musician, whose father suffered at the hands of Stalin's regime.

"They came in the morning, Stalin's police, took everyone outside and shot my grandfather in front of his family. My grandmother and her eight children, including my father who was 8 at the time, were sent to work camps. Only three children survived."

As Shevchenko looks around the metro station today, he shakes his head.

Irina Sherbakova, Moscow director of the Russian-based International Memorial Society, says this new "re-Stalinization" is a step back for democracy in Russia. "It's clear that our nation has declined to accept democracy and individual freedoms, as a principle."

The Memorial Society is a community of dozens of human rights organizations in different regions of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Georgia that formed in 1990. It is responsible for preservation of the societal memory of the severe political persecution of the Soviet Union.

The return of the anthem line at Kurskaya may prove to be culturally dividing. According to the Memorial Society, more than 40 percent of citizens favor Stalin's rehabilitation. "That means people don't care about what was happening to their ancestors. There are no plaques on our buildings and in our schools. It's not at all about restoration and preserving the memory," says Sherbakova.

Fidelgoldsh, the gulag survivor, was arrested by Stalin's militia on the streets of Moscow in 1948. A friend of his had admitted under questioning -- with a promise to be released -- that they had privately criticized Stalin's regime. The two, along with another friend, were charged with anti-Soviet agitations and forming an anti-Soviet group.

They were sent to a labor camp near Magadan, in eastern Russia. Fidelgoldsh was imprisoned for eight years. The friend who turned him in spent the next 30 years in various camps and prisons, where he eventually died.

Fidelgoldsh shows a picture of himself at the time of his illness, which was taken by camp authorities and sent to his mother to show that her son was alive and well. He looks weak and pale.

"I nearly starved a few times. They gave me a small loaf of bread daily, but I couldn't survive on that, and quickly became too thin and weak to perform," Fidelgoldsh says. "Eventually, I became sick with tuberculoses and spat blood."

Sherbakova, the Kremlin critic, says it's a slippery slope when a nation like Russia appears to be rewriting history.

"No matter what our politicians may say and do, unless they are willing to accept the past for what it was and treat it properly, the current generations, who are growing up with World War II as a thing of the past, are under threat of repeating the same tragic mistakes," Sherbakova says.

 

Joseph Stalin became the general secretary of the Communist Party in 1922. When Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, Stalin essentially installed himself as the Soviet heir.

Stalin purged the party of "enemies" in what was known as the Great Terror of the 1930s. Tens of thousands of people were executed and millions were forced into the gulag labor system.

 

Another Obama Marxist

For me, hearing Chomsky speak for the first time was a life-changing experience. His ability to take preconceptions and destroy them-to completely remodel one's understanding of reality with cold, hard facts-blew me away. When I left what was then the ARCO Forum last fall, I felt as though I had been through the Matrix and back. Chomsky really has this effect because he bombards you with evidence and logic, not empty rhetoric. It is nearly impossible to hear him or read him-once you've actually checked his facts yourself (he even cites page numbers in public addresses)-and deny what he's saying.

"The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people."

"If the Nuremberg laws were applied today, then every Post-War American president would have to be hanged."

"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."

"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media."

"The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - "indoctrination," we might say - exercised through the mass media. "

"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."

"I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system."

We continue to have an optimistic outlook about the revolutionary potential of the world working class to rule society in its own name-socialism. We are optimistic that the working class, united across borders, and acting in its own class interests can solve the devastating crises of war, poverty, oppression, and environmental destruction that capitalism is responsible for.
 - The Socialist Viewpoint

truthdig.com
Why I Am a Socialist

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081229_why_i_am_a_socialist/

Posted on Dec 29, 2008

By Chris Hedges

The corporate forces that are looting the Treasury and have plunged us into a depression will not be contained by the two main political parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have become little more than squalid clubs of privilege and wealth, whores to money and corporate interests, hostage to a massive arms industry, and so adept at deception and self-delusion they no longer know truth from lies. We will either find our way out of this mess by embracing an uncompromising democratic socialism—one that will insist on massive government relief and work programs, the nationalization of electricity and gas companies, a universal, not-for-profit government health care program, the outlawing of hedge funds, a radical reduction of our bloated military budget and an end to imperial wars—or we will continue to be fleeced and impoverished by our bankrupt elite and shackled and chained by our surveillance state.

The free market and globalization, promised as the route to worldwide prosperity, have been exposed as a con game. But this does not mean our corporate masters will disappear. Totalitarianism, as George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell wrote, “that is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Force and fraud are all they have left. They will use both.

There is a political shift in Europe toward an open confrontation with the corporate state. Germany has seen a surge of support for Die Linke (The Left), a political grouping formed 18 months ago. It is co-led by the veteran socialist “Red” Oskar Lafontaine, who has built his career on attacking big business. Two-thirds of Germans in public opinion polls say they agree with all or some of Die Linke’s platform. The Socialist Party of the Netherlands is on the verge of overtaking the Labor Party as the main opposition party on the left. Greece, beset with street protests and violence by disaffected youths, has seen the rapid rise of the Coalition of the Radical Left. In Spain and Norway socialists are in power. Resurgence is not universal, especially in France and Britain, but the shifts toward socialism are significant.

Corporations have intruded into every facet of life. We eat corporate food. We buy corporate clothes. We drive corporate cars. We buy our vehicular fuel and our heating oil from corporations. We borrow from corporate banks. We invest our retirement savings with corporations. We are entertained, informed and branded by corporations. We work for corporations. The creation of a mercenary army, the privatization of public utilities and our disgusting for-profit health care system are all legacies of the corporate state. These corporations have no loyalty to America or the American worker. They are not tied to nation states. They are vampires.

“By now the [commercial] revolution has deprived the mass of consumers of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water,” Wendell Berry wrote in “The Unsettling of America.” “Air remains the only necessity that the average user can still get for himself, and the revolution had imposed a heavy tax on that by way of pollution. Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.” 

The corporation is designed to make money without regard to human life, the social good or impact on the environment. Corporate laws impose a legal duty on corporate executives to make as much money as possible for shareholders, although many have moved on to fleece shareholders as well. In the 2003 documentary film “The Corporation” the management guru Peter Drucker says: “If you find an executive who wants to take on social responsibilities, fire him. Fast.”

A corporation that attempts to engage in social responsibility, that tries to pay workers a decent wage with benefits, that invests its profits to protect the environment and limit pollution, that gives consumers fair deals, can be sued by shareholders. Robert Monks, the investment manager, says in the film: “The corporation is an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine. There isn’t any question of malevolence or of will. The enterprise has within it, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it was designed.” Ray Anderson, the CEO of Interface Corp., the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer, calls the corporation a “present day instrument of destruction” because of its compulsion to “externalize any cost that an unwary or uncaring public will allow it to externalize.”

“The notion that we can take and take and take and take, waste and waste, without consequences, is driving the biosphere to destruction,” Anderson says. 

In short, the film, based on Joel Bakan’s book “The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power,” asserts that the corporation exhibits many of the traits found in people clinically defined as psychopaths.

Psychologist Dr. Robert Hare lists in the film psychopathic traits and ties them to the behavior of corporations:

• callous unconcern for the feelings for others;
• incapacity to maintain enduring relationships;
• reckless disregard for the safety of others;
• deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning others for profit;
• incapacity to experience guilt;
• failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior.

And yet, under the American legal system, corporations have the same legal rights as individuals. They give hundreds of millions of dollars to political candidates, fund the army of some 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals to write corporate-friendly legislation, drain taxpayer funds and abolish government oversight. They saturate the airwaves, the Internet, newsprint and magazines with advertisements promoting their brands as the friendly face of the corporation. They have high-priced legal teams, millions of employees, skilled public relations firms and thousands of elected officials to ward off public intrusions into their affairs or halt messy lawsuits. They hold a near monopoly on all electronic and printed sources of information. A few media giants—AOL-Time Warner, General Electric, Viacom, Disney and Rupert Murdoch’s NewsGroup—control nearly everything we read, see and hear.

“Private capital tends to become concentrated in [a] few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones,” Albert Einstein wrote in 1949 in the Monthly Review in explaining why he was a socialist. “The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.”

Labor and left-wing activists, especially university students and well-heeled liberals, have failed to unite. This division, which is often based on social rather than economic differences, has long stymied concerted action against ruling elites. It has fractured the American left and rendered it impotent.

“Large sections of the middle class are being gradually proletarianized; but the important point is that they do not, at any rate not in the first generation, adopt a proletarian outlook,” Orwell wrote in 1937 during the last economic depression. “Here I am, for instance, with a bourgeois upbringing and a working-class income. Which class do I belong to? Economically I belong to the working class, but it is almost impossible for me to think of myself as anything but a member of the bourgeoisie. And supposing I had to take sides, whom should I side with, the upper class which is trying to squeeze me out of existence, or the working class whose manners are not my manners? It is probable that I, personally, in any important issue, would side with the working class. But what about the tens or hundreds of thousands of others who are in approximately the same position? And what about that far larger class, running into millions this time—the office-workers and black-coated employees of all kinds—whose traditions are less definite middle class but who would certainly not thank you if you called them proletarians? All of these people have the same interests and the same enemies as the working class. All are being robbed and bullied by the same system. Yet how many of them realize it? When the pinch came nearly all of them would side with their oppressors and against those who ought to be their allies. It is quite easy to imagine a working class crushed down to the worst depths of poverty and still remaining bitterly anti-working-class in sentiment; this being, of course, a ready-made Fascist party.”

Coalitions of environmental, anti-nuclear, anti-capitalist, sustainable-agriculture and anti-globalization forces have coalesced in Europe to form and support socialist parties. This has yet to happen in the United States. The left never rallied in significant numbers behind Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader. In picking the lesser of two evils, it threw its lot in with a Democratic Party that backs our imperial wars, empowers the national security state and does the bidding of corporations. 

If Barack Obama does not end the flagrant theft of taxpayer funds by corporate slugs and the disgraceful abandonment of our working class, especially as foreclosures and unemployment mount, many in the country will turn in desperation to the far right embodied by groups such as Christian radicals. The failure by the left to offer a democratic socialist alternative will mean there will be, in the eyes of many embittered and struggling working- and middle-class Americans, no alternative but a perverted Christian fascism. The inability to articulate a viable socialism has been our gravest mistake. It will ensure, if this does not soon change, a ruthless totalitarian capitalism.