Perspectives on the U.S. Financial Crisis

Perspectives on the U.S. Financial Crisis

Sam Gindin and Leo Panich

Canadian Dimension magazine, July/August 2008

http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2008/07/09/1907/

It is time to take stock. The centrality of the American economy to the capitalist world — which now literally does encompass the whole world — has spread the financial crisis that began in the U.S. housing market around the globe. And the emerging economic recession triggered in the U.S by that financial crisis now threatens to spread globally, as well.

Capitalism has had an incredible run — politically and culturally, as well as economically — since the stagflation crisis of the 1970s. The resolution of that crisis required, as economists put it at the time, “reducing expectations” of the kind nurtured by the trade-union militancy and welfare-state gains of the 1960s. This was accomplished via the defeats suffered by trade unionism and the welfare state since the 1980s at the hands of what might properly be called capitalist militancy. It was accompanied by dramatic technological change, massive industrial restructuring alongside labour-market flexibility, and the over–all discipline provided by “competitiveness.”

That discipline brought with it an enormous increase in economic inequality, the spread of permanent working-class insecurity and the privatization of various public functions and structures. But this did not mean capitalism was no longer able to integrate the bulk of the population. On the contrary, this was now achieved through the private pension funds that mobilized workers savings, on the one hand, and through the mortgage and credit markets that loaned them the money to sustain high levels of consumer spending, on the other. At the centre of this were the private banking institutions, which, following their collapse in the Great Depression, had been nurtured back to health during the postwar decades, thereafter to unleash the explosion of global financial innovation that has defined our era.

The question begged by the current crisis is whether capitalism’s capacity to integrate the mass of people through their incorporation in financial markets has run out of steam. That the fault line should have appeared in “sub-prime” mortgage loans to African-Americans is hardly surprising — this has always been the Achilles heel of working-class incorporation into the American capitalist dream. But an economic earthquake will actually only result if there is a devaluation of working-class assets in general through a collapse of housing prices and the stocks and bonds in which their retirement savings are invested.

The State and Financial Crises

We are by no means there, yet. The role being played by the Federal Reserve — very much acting as the world central bank in light of the global implications of a U.S. recession — to prevent exactly this scenario should once and for all dispel the illusion that capitalist markets thrive without state intervention. The Fed has repeatedly poured liquidity into its financial system at the first sign of trouble. The question is whether the capacity of the system to go on integrating ordinary Americans though the expansion of investor and credit markets in this way has reached its limit. This was indeed suggested by the Bush Administration’s sudden (non-military) Keynesian turn, with a $150-billion fiscal stimulus. That fiscal stimulus at the federal level may, however, be undone at the state level, especially with municipal government cutbacks, given their massive dependence on property taxes. The way financial institutions that specialized in selling risk insurance on municipal bonds were enveloped in the credit crisis has further compounded the problem. This indeed brings to mind the extent to which it was municipal governments that were on the front lines of the Great Depression.

But while the US may very well move into a recession, which even when it ends may mark the beginning of a new era of slower growth, this is very different from a depression. While there is no doubt that mortgages in Black communities and for the working poor more generally will be tightened, it seems most likely that banks, competing for markets, will continue to extend credit to working families more generally. We need to remember that the top twenty per cent and their families are extravagant consumers. While growing inequalities are grotesque, the Left has consistently underestimated the extent to which the rich can sustain overall spending. The “correction” in the dollar (alongside the strength of U.S. manufacturing in the higher-tech sectors) has already led to offsetting growth in markets abroad; U.S. exports have been growing at double-digit rates over the past few years.

Finally, the U.S. state may revive its capacities for substantive infrastructural spending, if only to stimulate the construction industry now that the housing boom is over. There is a long-neglected need to rebuild U.S. infrastructure — as the collapsed levies of New Orleans and the collapsed bridges of Minneapolis dramatically showed.

Finance and Neoliberalism

There is an understandable tendency on the Left to take hope in capitalism’s current dilemmas. The extreme liberalization of finance (and along with it the era of neoliberalism) seems discredited. Finance today appears as no more than high-flying speculation — absurdly wasteful and ultimately not sustainable. U.S. corporations remain profitable, but with the credit crunch, who will buy the goods? Discredited as well, it therefore appears, is the U.S.’s capacity to keep its own house in order, never mind lead the process of globalization. Yet, before we assume that the openings created by this crisis place us on the verge of a matching new oppositional politics, we need a more careful reading of our times. While the new openings provide the space for a new politics, we must soberly appreciate the problematic link between such openings and a radical response.

To begin with, as immoral and irrational as finance might seem, financialization has been absolutely essential to the making and reproduction of global capitalism. Second, the growing consensus that finance must be re-regulated is hardly an attack on finance or neoliberalism more generally. Rather, it is about the engineering of finance such that it can continue to be “innovative” in the service of both itself and non-financial capital. Third, whatever problems the U.S. currently faces, its dominance will not fade because of a crisis in housing or a lower exchange rate; it does us no good to underestimate the staying power of the American capitalist empire.

It is not only finance but capitalism in general that rests on speculation. Behind a new firm or a new product rests the “speculation” that it can be sold at a cost and price that generates profit. Behind the distinction between finance and the “productive sector” is therefore something else: the notion that finance speculates in pieces of paper, not in providing goods or real services; it is a parasitic drain on the economy, not a constructive addition to it.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it mistakes what is rational from the perspective of certain moral criteria with what is rational within capitalism. The financial system is necessary to capitalism’s functioning. The discipline finance has imposed in the neoliberal era on particular capitalists and workers has forced an increase in U.S. productivity rates by way of increased exploitation, the more efficient use of each unit of capital, and the reallocation of capital to sectors that are most promising — all from the standpoint of profits, of course.

The penetration by American finance of foreign countries and the inflow of foreign capital into the U.S. has given the U.S. access to global savings, shored up its role as the greatest global consumer and reinforced the U.S. state’s power and options. Especially important, financial markets have come to provide non-financial corporations with mechanisms for managing their risks and for comparing and evaluating diverse investment opportunities in a highly complex global economy. Absent this role, globalization — at least to the extent we have experienced it — would not have been possible. Finally, as emphasized earlier, the “democratization” of American finance has given workers access to finance as savers and debtors, thereby contributing to their integration into, and dependence upon, capitalism and finance.

This does not mean that the explosion of finance is not a highly contradictory process; highly volatile financial markets inevitably generate financial crises. Rather, it shifts the question from whether financialization is irrational to whether its contradictions can be managed insofar as the crises can be contained. What working classes do in this context will be crucial to answering this question.

The Dialectics of Regulation
Finance cannot exist without regulation, and the U.S. financial sector, even before the latest crisis, was the most heavily regulated of any section of the U.S. economy. In fact, the dynamics of finance cannot be understood apart from how regulation shapes financial competition, how banks and other financial institutions try to escape or reshape that regulation, and the state’s subsequent counter-responses. The current dilemma for American regulatory institutions lies in how to re-regulate finance, so as to overcome its costly and dangerous volatility, without undermining finance’s needed innovative capacity.

We need to be clear that this is about re-engineering finance to strengthen capital accumulation, not to control it in the name of a larger public interest. To place democratic regulation of finance on the agenda would require asking: “regulation for what purpose?” — and so would mean going far beyond finance itself. It would mean raising the fundamental question of social control over investment, and therefore get to the heart of power in a capitalist society.

In the context of the failed promises of the past quarter century and the current crisis, to see this issue go completely unmentioned in the Democratic primary debate may not be surprising, given the absence of even a trade-union campaign around this — but it bespeaks an impoverishment of American politics that in fact goes all the way back to the New Deal. The issue of economic democracy that had been placed on the political agenda alongside the New Deal’s public infrastructure projects was set aside for the remainder of the century after the FDR’s administration’s self-described “grand truce with capital” in the late 1930s.

It will not do, therefore, to resort to the abstractions and obfuscations of calling for “re-regulation” or a “new, new deal.” It is the undemocratic power of private control over investment that needs to be put on the agenda.

American Empire in Crisis?

Four particular aspects of the limited fall-out from the present crisis demand more serious reflection. First, the fact that the crisis surfaced in the context of strong profits and low debt loads in the non-financial sector is important, and this accounts for the limited damage thus far.

Second, it is notable that, despite the IMF calling this the most serious banking crisis since the Great Depression, we have not seen a series of bank failures. This is certainly linked to the interventions of the U.S. Fed, but it also speaks to the strength of private U.S. financial institutions. In no other country could such a crisis have unfolded without massive financial bankruptcies.

Third, it is especially worthy of note that no major state saw an opportunity in the crisis to challenge or undermine the American state. Rather, their integration into global capitalism meant that they identified this crisis as their crisis, as well. They effectively recognized the U.S.’s central bank as the world’s central bank and cooperated with it in coordinating internationally repeated provision of liquidity to the banks. As in the previous instances of financial crises during the 1980s and 1990s, this reproduced and extended the American state’s leading role in managing global capitalism.

The fourth and most important factor is the remarkable “imperial flexibility” the U.S. enjoys by virtue of the weakness of its working class. Had U.S. workers, for example, insisted upon higher wages to compensate for rising food and oil prices and the devaluation of their homes, and had they taken advantage of the competitive space offered by a falling dollar, the Fed would have had to cope with the fear of inflation, and this might have meant higher rather than lower interest rates. And that could very well have aggravated the crisis and risked a financial meltdown. But rather than the working class demanding more, in fact it showed restraint — or, in the case of the autoworkers, accepted the greatest concessions the union has ever made.

The more important question, therefore, is not the economics of crisis but its politics. How will the working class respond to the crisis? If credit continues but becomes more costly; if the loss of private pensions, negotiated health care and the devaluation of homes force people into having to reduce consumption to shore up their savings; if food and oil prices leave less discretionary spending — if this is the near-term future, will workers rebel? Or will workers once again tighten their belts to preserve what is left from their past gains? And if frustrations are expressed politically, will the politics be limited to a longing for the good-old days before the crisis or before Bush?

Absent what Alan Sears at the recent Great Lakes Political Economy Graduate Student Conference at York University called “an infrastructure of resistance,” any opposition that does surface is most likely to be localized and contained, rather than built upon. A coherent alternative is not just a set of economic policy proposals, but a political movement that can develop the popular appreciation and capacities for radical democratic control over investment. There should be no illusion that a recession, or even a depression, will necessarily bring the issue of economic democracy back onto the U.S. political agenda. It would require a transformation of American politics to do so — and that, like the current economic crisis, would also have global implications.

This article was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 and is filed under Canadian Dimension Magazine, Economy, USA Issues and Politics.



“Perspectives on the U.S. Financial Crisis”

Comment by:

Alan L. Maki,
writing from United States on July 13th, 2008 at 7:47 am:


“Perspectives on the U.S. Financial Crisis” by Sam Gindin and Leo Panich misses a very important point in concluding: “There should be no illusion that a recession, or even a depression, will necessarily bring the issue of economic democracy back onto the U.S. political agenda. It would require a transformation of American politics to do so — and that, like the current economic crisis, would also have global implications.”

The exact same thing should be noted of Canada and every other country in the world.

In fact, Gindin and Panich, along with most of the “left” have been content to be satisfied with the concept of “many Marxisms” in the name of promoting an image of “democratic” socialism… when what they really mean is they are “free” from Communist Parties.

The result has been very weak Communist Parties incapable of carrying out the role of uniting the national working classes into a powerful international working class movement capable of challenging capitalism in its most advanced and decadent stage—imperialism— with everything sacrificed on the alter of corporate profits controlled through the national corporate interests by state monopoly capitalism.

It is very apparent and obvious that the Canadian working class is light-years ahead in thinking compared to the U.S. working class. Because of very parochial, anti-communist party mind-sets on the part of many in the Canadian and U.S. left there is little if any cross-border contact between rank-and-file workers.

Unfortunately, the Communist Party USA is currently hobbled by a particularly pernicious strain of revisionist leadership which has rejected industrial concentration and thrown its lot in with the dumb donkeys of the Democratic Party instead of becoming engaged in rank-and-file and grass-roots organizing against big-capital.

With Gindin and Panich continuing to ignore the fact that building strong, vibrant Communist Parties as being an integral part of Marxist thinking, they don’t do anything to help resolve the mess they describe so well… for articulating the political problem Gindin and Panich have made an important contribution; however, without following through with a clear analysis on what needs to be done, we remain bogged down without much progress on the class struggle front.

If Gindin and Panich think the working class will make any advances without very larger, powerful and extremely influential Communist Parties, I would like to hear how they think this will be possible.

I would just close by noting that during the 1930’s, the period Gindin and Panich single out as being a period of tremendous working class advances… the Communist Party of Canada and the Communist Party USA were very powerful and influential… one need only look at the organization of the auto and steel industries to see how strong Communist Parties made the real difference in these struggles.

Now, after considering the importance that Karl Marx attached to having strong Communist Parties in every country, let us examine this statement, again, and notice what is missing: “There should be no illusion that a recession, or even a depression, will necessarily bring the issue of economic democracy back onto the U.S. political agenda. It would require a transformation of American politics to do so — and that, like the current economic crisis, would also have global implications.”

Today, where capital has become even more powerful than it was in the 1930’s; it will take even stronger Communist Parties initiating the organization of huge mass movements, working in close cooperation across borders and oceans, in order for the working classes to make any significant headway.

Gindin and Panich, in addition to their failure to acknowledge the important function and role of Communist Parties in their socialist thinking, they also fail to bring forward what Marx thought was most important and fundamental as workers struggle against capital… the property question which has left Gindin and Panich without any clear analysis or solutions to plant closures throwing millions of workers in Canada and the U.S. out into the streets. The time has come to consider public ownership of these plants… after all, the auto industries in Canada and the United States have been subsidized to the hilt by tax-payers in both countries… and workers have created all the wealth… it is only common sense that public ownership now be considered together with nationalizations of this important industry. Again, there needs to be cross-border working class unity and this probably isn’t going to happen without strong Communist Parties in Canada and the United States.

Then again, it s unfortunate that the New Democratic Party doesn’t have a companion party down here in the United States… the time has come for rank-and-file Canadian trade unionists to introduce their sisters and brothers to the benefits of a labor party… the health care issue might be the logical place to begin.

Let’s get delegations of rank-and-file trade unionists crossing the border to get acquainted with each others problems… a discovery might be made that there is much to share and learn from each other which will advance class consciousness in a way that will resolve the problem Gindin and Panich are concerned about.

Alan L. Maki,
Secretary-Treasurer,
Minnesota/Dakota District
Communist Party USA

The Murder of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg... framed by the United States government for their political beliefs

June 19 marks the 55th Anniversary of of the murder of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.

The Rosenberg's were framed by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

Find out the facts:

http://www.rosenbergtrial.org/

This is another sad chapter in American history that is not taught in our schools.

From the genocidal mass execution of thirty-eight Dakota Indians in Mankato, Minnesota--- executed for the crime of defending their homeland; to the brutal execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg whose only crime was being members of the Communist Party USA... the disgraceful and shameful real history of our country goes unnoticed and untold.

Cuba's Urban Agrarians Flourish

Cuba's Urban Agrarians Flourish

City Gardens Abound On Island Nation, Where 70% Of Vegetables And Herbs Are Organic

HAVANA, June 4, 2008

Seventy percent of the vegetables and herbs grown in Cuba are organic and can be found in urban gardens. (CBS/ Reinaldo Gil)





(CBS) This story was written by CBS News producer Portia Siegelbaum in Havana.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Buy local. Eat seasonal. Eat organic." All now commonplace admonitions in the United States.

But while none of these slogans are household words in Cuba, 70 percent of the vegetables and herbs grown on the island today are organic and the urban gardens where they are raised are usually within walking distance of those who will consume them. So in one blow Cuba reduced the use of fossil fuels in the production and transportation of food. And they began doing this nearly 20 years ago.

The island nation’s move to organic and sustainable farming did not arise from its environmental consciousness, although there was an element of that also. The main reason was the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Cuba’s only source of petroleum and main trading partner at that time.

Overnight long lines formed at gas stations that all too often ran out before all their customers could fill up. Traffic was virtually non-existent. Chinese “Flying Pigeon” bicycles replaced both private and public transportation.

“Puestos” as Cubans call the produce section of their rationed grocery stores displayed only empty bins as agriculture ground to a halt. Chemical pesticides and fertilizers vanished. Tractors became relics of a former time. Oxen pulled the plows that furrowed the fields.

Finding food for the dinner table became a day-long drudge. Cubans visibly lost weight. The communist youth daily, Juventud Rebelde, ran articles on edible weeds. Daily caloric intake dropped to about 1600 calories.

Organic agriculture "made its appearance at that moment as a necessity and that necessity helped us to advance, to consolidate and expand more or less uniformly in all 169 municipalities," says Adolfo Rodriguez. At 62, he is Cuba’s top urban agrarian, with 43 years experience in agriculture.

He says there are now 300,000 people employed directly in urban agriculture without counting those who are raising organic produce in their backyards as part of a State-encouraged grassroots movement. In all, Rodriguez claims nearly a million people are getting their hands dirty organically.

With 76 percent of Cuba’s population of just under 11 million living in cities, the importance of this form of farming cannot be over emphasized, says Rodriguez.

I think that Cuba’s urban agriculture has come to stay.

Adolfo Rodriguez, urban agrarianThe urban gardens have been dubbed "organoponicos." Those located in never-developed empty lots primarily consist of raised beds. More complicated are those created in the space left by a collapsed building, not uncommon in cities like Havana where much of the housing is in a very deteriorated state and where all it takes is a heavy tropical rainfall followed by relentless sunshine to bring down a structure.

"We have to truck in the soil," before anything can be planted, explains Rodriguez. "The basic issue is restoring fertility, the importance of producing compost, organic fertilizers, humus created by worms," he says.

In a majority of cases the fruits and vegetables are freshly picked every morning and go on sale just with a few feet of where they grew. Only in exceptional cases, such as the densely population municipality of Old Havana (as the colonial section of the capital is named) do the organic fruits and vegetables travel a kilometer or so by a tricycle or horse drawn cart to reach consumers.

Lucky are the Havana residents who live near the organoponico at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue. Occupying nearly an entire city block, it grows a wide variety of vegetables, fruits and herbs, as well as ornamental plants. It will even sell fresh basil shoots for customers to plant in their own herb garden. On a recent day, customers were offered the following fresh produce at reasonable prices: mangos, plantains, basil, parsley, lettuce, garlic, celery, scallions, collard greens, black beans, watermelon, tomatoes, malanga, spinach and sweet potatoes.

Luckily for Cubans in general, organic here is not equivalent to expensive. Overhead costs are low. The produce is sold from simple aluminum kiosks, signs listing the day’s offer and prices are handmade, electricity is used only for irrigation, and no transportation other than walking from the raised beds to the kiosks is involved. The result? Everything is fresh, local and available.

Convincing Cubans to buy this produce, especially the less familiar vegetables, so as to prepare earth friendly meals, presented a hurdle. The ideal meal on the island includes roast pork, rice and beans and yucca. A lettuce and tomato salad was popular. But the idea of vegetable side dishes or an all vegetarian meal was inconceivable to most.

"We’re cultivating some 40-plus species but you have to know who your customers are," says Rodriguez. "We can’t plant a lot of broccoli right now because its not going to sell but we’re making progress." For example, he notes, in the beginning practically no one bought spinach. Now, all the spinach planted is sold. Persuading people to eat carrots, according to Rodriguez, was an uphill battle. "We had to begin supplying them to the daycare centers,” so as to develop a taste for this most common of root vegetables.

The "queen" of the winter crop is lettuce. The spring/summer "queen" is the Chinese string bean. Cuba’s blazing summer sun doesn’t allow for growing produce out of its season, even under cover, except in rare circumstances.

The saving of heritage fruits, vegetables and even animals has also gotten a boost from the urban agrarian movement. The chayote, a fleshy, pear-shaped single-seeded fruit, had virtually disappeared from the market. Now, Rodriguez says, 130 of Cuba’s 169 municipalities are growing the fruit that many remember from their grandmother’s kitchen repertoire in which it was treated as a vegetable, often stuffed and baked.

"We are working to rescue fruit orchards that are in danger of extinction," stresses Rodriguez. "We’ve planted fields with fruit species that many of today’s children have never even seen, such as the sapote. To save these species we’ve created specialized provincial botanical gardens," he explains.

Similarly, the urban agrarian movement is rescuing native animal species such as the Creole goat and the cubalaya chicken, the only native Cuban poultry species.

Currently spiraling global food prices are hitting the island hard. Cuba has been importing just over 80 percent of the food consumed domestically. The government is making more land and supplies available to farmers and this may well include chemical fertilizers and pesticides in an attempt to greatly reduce this foreign dependency.

Rodriguez does not believe this push to quickly increase agricultural output will negatively impact on the urban organic movement. Even during the 1990s, known in Cuba as the "Special Period,” he says, the potato crop continued to receive chemical pesticides and fertilizers. And even today, the 30 percent of the non-organic produce includes, for example, large-scale plantings of tomatoes for industrial processing.

"I think that Cuba’s urban agriculture has come to stay," concludes Rodriguez. "That there is a little increase in the application of fertilizers and pesticides for specific crops is normal but that’s not to say that the country is going to shift away from organic farming, to turn our organic gardens into non-organic ones."


By Portia Siegelbaum

Rethinking the History and Future of the Communist Party

Rethinking the History and Future of the Communist Party

By Gerald Horne




Note: This is the text of a speech delivered at the reception of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University.


First of all, I would like to thank both the CPUSA and NYU for this marriage – it is one, perhaps not made in heaven but no less celestial and lofty for that. The thrust of my brief remarks is to suggest that the history of the CPUSA and, indeed, the global movement of which it is a part, has been distorted grievously by the infestation of anti-Sovietism and anticommunism and the opening of these wonderful archives should not only lead to a reassessment of the party but help to push back the right-wing which has profited so handsomely from anti-Sovietism and anticommunism – forces which have brought this nation to the brink of catastrophe, not only in Iraq and the Middle East generally but vis-à-vis China as well. I suggest in these remarks that future generations will not necessarily be as seized as this one apparently is with how and why the former USSR was a supposed "Evil Empire" and how and why some in the US – e.g. the CPUSA – could support this state; I think future generations in the US will take note of the fact that the presumed primary victims of the so-called ‘Evil Empire – in Soviet Russia, for example – tend to agree with President Putin, whose popularity ratings are about double those of the current US President, in his assertion that the fall of the USSR was the greatest geo-political catastrophe of the 20th century. I think future generations in the US-as my remarks suggest will wonder instead how and why the US aligned with so-called Islamic fundamentalism against the former USSR – an appropriate question, I think, as we sit in the shadow of the former World Trade Center – particularly given that the period from 1941-1945 demonstrated decisively that these two nations could collaborate for mutual advantage.


Let me begin by quoting the fortunately retired NY Times right-wing hack columnist William Safire: "Before Nixon died," he said, "I asked him – on the record – if perhaps we had gone a bit overboard on selling the American public on the political benefits of increased trade with China. That old realist," continued Safire, "who had played the China card to exploit the split in the Communist world, replied with some sadness, that he was not as hopeful as he had once been: "We may have created a Frankenstein [monster]," said Nixon.


Nixon, the hard-boiled realist was on to something for although contemporary analysts have managed to convince the chattering classes in this nation that the former Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight and that China’s role in the encirclement of Russia had little or nothing to do with the retreat of socialism, that China’s waging war on socialist Vietnam or backing genocide in Cambodia or collaborating with US imperialism and apartheid South Africa in Angola thereby causing over-stretching of resources in Moscow – none of this had anything to do with the tumultuous events of 1989-1991.


Yet, once again, history has proven to be a cruel teacher and taskmaster for because of Nixon’s decision to "exploit the split in the Communist world," U.S. imperialism just exchanged one Communist antagonist in Moscow for a far larger, far stronger Communist antagonist in Beijing. Future dictionaries may well illustrate the definition of the phrase "Pyrrhic victory" with a picture of Nixon’s trip to Beijing in 1972. In fact a future project for a comparative diplomatic historian is to analyze how long French elites thought they had pulled a fast one on Britain by backing the rebellious colonists in North America at the end of the 18th century and compare when did it dawn that they may have outsmarted themselves with how long it took US elites to realize that they were in an analogous position to French elites when it comes to China or how long did it take British elites to recognize that they had erred grievously when approximately 100 years ago they began to build up Imperial Japan as their watchdog in Asia – certainly London was aware of their blunder by December 7, 1941.


To be sure, certain perspicacious journalists have recognized that with its spectacular growth rates, its astonishing $1 trillion in foreign reserves (part of which is slated to be invested globally which will be shaping global markets for decades to come), its space program – including shooting down a satellite – its busy activity in resource rich Africa, China presents a formidable challenge to US imperialism going forward. In that context I recommend to you a raft of books that I have reviewed in the CP journal, ‘Political Affairs,’ particularly Joshua Cooper Ramo’s ‘The Beijing Consensus’ or Ted Fishman’s ‘China Inc.’ or the recent book by Financial Times columnist, James Kynge, ‘China Shakes the World.’ Unfortunately, this journalistic insight has not trickled down to the scholars, most of whom are still peddling the fool’s gold of "Cold War triumphalsm’, blithely unaware that the Cold War may be seen by future generations not as an era of US victory but an era not only of Asian recovery – as China and India followed Japan into the front rank of nations with monumental consequences for the fate of white supremacy – but, ironically, as some were chortling about the supposed "death of communism", Communist parties in Beijing especially, and to a degree in New Delhi and Tokyo were strengthening. Indeed, just as anticommunists in the 1950s had a bitter battle over "who lost China?" – or how did the CP take over in China – future anti-Communists may well be asking "who lost the US?", i.e. how did US imperialism lose its pre-eminent position in a so-called uni-polar world? Ironically, China policy will be Exhibit A when these future analysts begin to answer these questions.


Now it is often said that every generation has to rewrite history. For example, at one time there was a prevalent "moonlight and magnolias" version of slavery and Reconstruction that fundamentally portrayed "happy Negroes" during the slave era and portrayed the period following slavery as a dastardly period of Negro misrule and corruption. This began to change in the 1930s with the publication of Du Bois’ magisterial ‘Black Reconstruction’ and changed decisively with the publication of Eric Foner’s ‘Reconstruction.’"


One of the reasons why I personally – and I daresay future generations – are so pleased by the depositing of these CPUSA archives is because it is painfully obvious that the history of the Communist movement in this nation is long overdue for a massive rewriting and these archives will prove indispensable in that process.


It is easy to see why future generations will be displeased with much of the present history that has been written to this point about the Communist Party because it has been incredibly biased, one-sided, deeply influenced by the conservative drift of the nation – not unlike pre-Du Bois histories of Reconstruction – and, fundamentally, anticommunist.


For this exhilaration at the collapse of the Soviet Union has continued even though, I think, future generations may eventually view the events of even recent weeks as a blaring wake-up call, that we are residing in the midst of a tectonic shift basically induced by Nixon’s fateful decision to "exploit the split in the Communist world", which opened the door for massive direct foreign investment in the Chinese economy thereby creating an economic juggernaut that is viewed by hawks in Washington as a threat that combines the most fearsome aspects of the old Soviet Union with that of US imperialism’s other antagonist of decades past – Japan of the 1980s and 1930s.


For a future scholar might well entitle a future book on the crisis faced by US imperialism, ‘From 9/11 to 2/27." For just as 9-11 announced the arrival on the global stage of yet another antagonist that is a direct product of Cold War strategy – so-called "Islamic fundamentalism" –2/27 marked the moment when a hiccup in Shanghai contributed to convulsions on Wall Street. The consequences of the chain of events unfolding is hard to predict – though I do find it curious that recent coverage in the bourgeois press of the debate on protection for private property in China seemed to be strangely supportive of the "left" in Beijing, as if it was thought that this might slow down the Chinese juggernaut.


Of course, the challenge from Asia is sufficiently formidable for the myrmidons of imperialism and white supremacy but there is another aspect of the heralded Cold War that is now coming back to bite this nation in a big way – I refer, of course, to the aforementioned so-called "Islamic fundamentalism." The "death of communism" analysts are akin to the man who jumps out of the Empire State Building, and as he passes the 40th floor shouts out "so far, so good." In other words, the collapse of the USSR seems like a good thing to critics – if you ignore the impact of "Islamic fundamentalism" in years to come, as this tendency was a foundational aspect of the Soviet Union’s collapse and U.S. imperialism’s strategy to attain this goal.


Now I find it heartening that so many are joining the amen chorus that asserts that George W. Bush is the worst President in US History – the follically challenged Donald Trump being the latest among these. Now admittedly this title of being the worst has considerable competition – how can one omit the slave-owning, Native American hating Andrew Jackson, for example? – yet, in any case, I think that future generations may well conclude that yes, Bush, was the worst, but the errors were as much those of his class as they were of himself individually.


For let us not forget that it was more than 25 years ago during the administration of Jimmy Carter, then Democratic Party leader, that US imperialism escalated its interference in the internal affairs in Afghanistan – as his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski conceded in a remarkable interview a few years ago – thereby helping to induce Moscow’s escalated assistance to a besieged left-wing government in Kabul, in an attempt to bleed the Soviet Union figuratively and literally. This strategy involved the inflaming of religiosity in the Islamic world and, as is well-known, brought Osama bin Laden himself to Kabul and the creation of foreign legions of Islamic fighters who are now bedeviling the planet from New York to Algiers to London to Madrid to Baghdad to Kashmir to Southern Thailand to Manila to Bali. Again writers like Kathy Gannon, Robert Dreyfuss, Mahmood Mamdani and others have written in detail about this Faustian arrangement – and, again, I have reviewed many of these works in ‘Political Affairs.’


But even these writers, as perceptive as they are, have not detailed the entire scope of the monstrosity that was created in order to subdue the former USSR and, yes, future scholars will be spending a considerable amount of time exploring this phenomenon. For, as is well known, it was once thought that Shia Islam was little more than a seedbed for the emergence of Communists, as the history of both the Tudeh Party of Iran and the Iraqui Communist Party exemplified. But then with its maniacal anticommunism, US imperialism engineered the downfall in 1953 of the progressive Mossadegh regime, not least because of its displeasure about its oil policies, which led directly to the rise of Ayatollah Khomeni in Teheran, then collaborated with Saddam Hussein in the repression of Iraqui Communists. Again, Brzezinski, a prolific writer, wrote openly about the strategy of whipping up nationalism as a counterweight to Marxism.


Nevertheless, scholars of the future, I’m sure, will be struck by the evasions employed by those who have sought to deny a connection between the Cold War and the fact that US imperialism and so-called "Islamic Fundamentalism" shared the same trench during this conflict. These fathers refuse to take responsibility for parentage. The question is often narrowed to asking in regard to the largest covert action in CIA history – the intervention in Afghanistan – whether Osama bin Laden himself was on the US Payroll; being a multi-millionaire bin Laden hardly needs a check from Washington in any case. Or they try to argue that the CIA basically was a passive conduit for funding to Pakistani intelligence, which then should be held responsible for US policy in Afghanistan that led to the building up of so-called Islamic fundamentalism – as if Washington has no control or influence with Islamabad, which is ludicrous, of course.


A tell-tale sign of how the bourgeoisie chooses to interpret the rise of so-called "fundamentalism" will be revealed later this year when Universal Studios releases the blockbuster movie, ‘Charley Wilson’s War’ starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts; the best-selling book that this movie is based on whitewashes CIA aid to the anticommunist rebels in Afghanistan and refuses to confront the fact that part of the payoff to Pakistan in backing this US sponsored insurgency was at least tacit or willfully ignorant support for the so-called "Islamic bomb", which is now causing sleepless nights in Washington for fear that the US stooge Musharraf will be overthrown in Islamabad and this deadly weapon will fall into the hands of Osama bin Laden’s allies. The preliminary reading is that Hollywood will provide its mass audience with the ‘moonlight and magnolia’ version of history – but we shall see. Stay tuned.


Of course, this strategy of relying on ultra-nationalism in order to destabilize a secular left has had a domestic counterpart. Indeed, the domestic Cold War has had the unsurprising result of weakening the left, strengthening the right and therefore not only making it more likely that the nation will be ensnared by quagmires such as those unfolding in Iraq and, ironically, Afghanistan but, as well, insures that labor will continue to be pulverized by capital at home.


Nowadays, too many scholars feed their audiences a form of verbal comfort food meant to reassure their readers as they sate their appetites. Thus few acknowledge that months before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the nation was aflame with headlines about the "Plan of San Diego." According to this breathtaking scheme, revolutionary Mexico in the midst of turmoil was collaborating with Japan – and possibly Germany – to reclaim the territories seized by the US during the war of aggression of 1846, establish in its stead independent Black and Native American Republics and, not least, liquidate the Euro-American male population – a subject I write about in my book, ‘Black and Brown:’ Obviously, the obscenity of white supremacy and the appearance that it was a policy driven by a monolithic white community was driving Washington’s victims on this continent to desperate measures. But then came the Bolshevik Revolution and after that the formation of the Communist Party USA with its emphasis on working class solidarity and staunch opposition to white supremacy, as evidenced by its signature campaigns of the 1930s – the labor organizing drives that led to the formation of the CIO and the crusade to save the Scottsboro 9 from lynch law. Such efforts helped to convince many in the Black community particularly that this nation could be redeemed and schemes like the "Plan of San Diego" lost resonance. This conclusion was reached in the face of an unrelenting effort by Tokyo to convince African Americans that this land of white supremacy was beyond redemption and that Japan was the "champion of the colored races." Black Communists like James Ford and Ben Davis – who was elected to the NYC Council from Harlem – argued vehemently against this notion with no small result, a subject I discuss at length in my book ‘Race War!’.


Yet after Japan was vanquished not least due to this popular front of left and center – both domestically and globally – US imperialism turned its venom on the Black Left in particular, forcing it to retreat and thus preparing the ground for the rise of various forms of nationalism, including the Nation of Islam which was born in the 1930s as something of an acolyte of Tokyo as evidenced by their still articulated notion of the so-called "Asiatic Black Man." Strikingly, the Nation – with its notions that those who are defined as "white" are little more than devils – did not begin to grow until the 1950s when the left was in retreat.


Indeed, the reigning metaphor for US politics might be Jack Benny, the comedian. You remember the violin playing comic from Waukegan, Illinois, known to be a notorious cheapskate, tight with a dollar, who was notorious for a routine when faced by a robber who placed a gun at his head and shouted, "your money or your life." Benny, the cheapskate worried more about money than life itself, then tells the robber as he ponders, "I’m thinking, I’m Thinking." The unrealistic wing of the bourgeoisie, like Benny, has been willing to run the risk of losing life itself by allowing right-wing nationalism to flourish on the grounds that this environment is better suited for guaranteeing profit-making.


Nevertheless, scholars e.g. Mary Dudziak and Thomas Borstelman among others have pointed to the unavoidable conclusion that the civil rights gains of the 1960s were driven in large part by the existence of the Soviet Union – in that Washington had difficulty winning hearts and minds among the "colored" majority in their ideological contest with Moscow as long as people of color in this nation were treated so atrociously. Therefore, Jim Crow had to go. Similarly, there were those who predicted that the collapse of the USSR would lead to a new birth of freedom for social democracy, as it escaped the supposed albatross of being associated with Moscow. Yet, as the recent elections in Finland demonstrated, social democracy has not flourished in the absence of the USSR (simply trace the baneful impact that neighboring Estonia has had on Helsinki, for example), even in its erstwhile citadel of Scandinavia, where conservatives have made a remarkable comeback. And, yes, it is fair to give the existence of the Soviet Union for the fact that social welfare measures developed in the U.S. in the 1930s, as the ruling elite feared what might arise if they did not compromise, and, yes, the attack on these measures followed like clockwork the demise of the Soviet Union.


Thus, in many ways, we can attribute the agonized retreat of white supremacy to the existence of the former Soviet Union and its allies in the US – who are reflected in profusion in the CPUSA archive – just as we likewise, can give credit for this historic retreat to heroic Haiti, whose victory some two centuries ago against slavery was similarly an important intervention against racism and, likewise, has led to a punishment of Haiti that has lasted to this very day.


This also reminds us that our foremothers and forefathers of the 19th century were similar in many ways to Black Communists in that they were strict internationalists. In fact, I think future scholars will demonstrate that during a time when Washington was in constant conflict with London – most notably during the War of 1812 when the redcoats burned down a good deal of this nation’s capital – leaders as diverse as Frederick Douglass and Ida Wells-Barnett were as close to London as Paul Robeson was to Moscow. This stretches back to the origins of this nation for as historians Simon Schama of Columbia and Cassandra Pybus of Australia have both pointed out in recent worthy books, by far more Negroes fought on the side of the British during the 1776 war than on the side of the rebellious colonists, led by slaveholders e.g. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.


It is an elementary part of diplomatic statecraft that an oppressed people – e.g. African Americans – will seek to ally with the antagonists of those who are oppressing them and that those opposed to the oppression of this group (e.g. progressive Euro-Americans) will tend to do the same thing. Indeed, one can argue that even those who have not been oppressed have acted in this fashion. Consider one of antebellum Va.’s leading sons, Matthew Fontaine Maury – a huge statue in his honor continues to stand in Richmond – despite the fact that during the Civil War, this leading Confederate conspired with France, after it seized Mexico, against the U.S. and offered to return California to Mexico if France backed the Confederacy. My most recent book, ‘The Deepest South’, explores this matter in detail. Yet, just the other day, leading legislators in Georgia were pushing a bill to establish a Confederate History Month in April in order to deflect attention away from apologizing for slavery. This is one of the many reasons I do not take too seriously the commonly accepted idea that hostility to Communists stems from their ties to a foreign power – Moscow; if that were true why does this nation continue to honor not only those who tried to overthrow the govt. in order to maintain slavery but conspired with foreign powers in order to do so? – yet there are statutes built in their honor and their deeds are celebrated.


Indeed, I think historians of the future will be struck by the fact that in attempting to assess the impact of the CPUSA, some scholars spent more time seeking out documents in Moscow, as opposed to this country – and, thus, this NYU archive will continue to gain in importance. I am continually struck by the fact that there has been a repetitive ideological tendency reflected in the writings of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Walter Benn Michels, Richard Rorty – and a host of other liberal and social Democratic writers – who lament the decline of a conversation about class and deride what they see as the undue emphasis on race in the U.S. But such analysts rarely put this discussion in the context of a concerted effort by the US to basically outlaw Marxism – and a conversation on class which it has exemplified – as reflected in the Smith Act trials that swept the nation from New York City in 1949 when the entire CPUSA leadership was placed on trial, then jailed, to Honolulu where a similar trial occurred in 1952. It is striking that there are hundreds of thousands of pages of transcripts from these trials which are gathering dusts in archives across this vast land and have yet to be tapped by historians.

When these sources are explored, I think scholars of the future will be struck by, for example, the response in Honolulu when tens of thousands of workers went on strike when labor and CP leaders were convicted of Smith Act violations in 1953 – a response totally unlike the response on the mainland. Of course 98% of these workers were of Asian-Pacific ancestry, which suggests that scholars have also been derelict in analyzing why these workers were less anti-communist than their Euro-American counterparts. In any case, deploring these convictions in Hawaii was an African-American poet and journalist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, who was certainly in the orbit of the CP – if not a member – and who was born in Kansas and spent a good deal of his adult life in Chicago, before decamping to Honolulu in 1948 at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson. Eventually, he befriended another family – a Euro-American family – that had migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago. In his best selling memoir ‘Dreams of my Father’, the author speaks warmly of an older black poet, he identifies simply as "Frank" as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American, a people who have been the least anticommunist and the most left-leaning of any constituency in this nation – though you would never know it from reading so-called left journals of opinion. At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack’s memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis’ equally affecting memoir, "Living the Blues" and when that day comes, I’m sure a future student will not only examine critically the Frankenstein monsters that US imperialism created in order to subdue Communist parties but will also be moved to come to this historic and wonderful archive in order to gain insight on what has befallen this complex and intriguing planet on which we reside.

Communist Workers' Party of Finland

Comrade Hannu Harju, delegates, guests and members of the Communist Workers’ Party of Finland;

Greetings and success in your deliberations during your 18th Party Congress. Your deliberations will be important contributions to the communist and working class movements around the world.

Your Party Congress comes during the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 160th Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto. Without the active leadership from Communist Parties the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights will remain mere words on a piece of paper which will never materialize under capitalism; socialism will be required for full implementation.

Your Party Congress comes at a time when a great deal of disorientation and unclear thinking detached from the struggles of working people for a better world still remains within the Communist and working class movements which has become fertile ground for revisionism to fester, grow and spread.

The imperialists have had temporary successes to one degree or another in overturning socialist revolutions from the Soviet Union to trying to undermine socialism in China.

The imperialists responded to the democratic aspirations and the struggles for justice, human dignity and socialism on the part of the Finnish people and the working class by drenching the revolution in blood using the most bestial, repressive and undemocratic methods ninety years ago--- murdering tens of thousands, and forcing many tens of thousands more Finns to flee their homeland lest they be beaten, imprisoned, hacked to death or shot before firing squads by the agents of the feudal lords and the rising capitalist class and their international backers with the Wall Street coupon clippers always at the helm of reaction in orchestrating this repression and terror.

Among the “red” Finns who fled the repression in their homeland were those who became organizers of the powerful industrial unions in mining, forestry, auto and steel in North America.

We have found great strength and inspiration and support from among the “red” Finns of the Iron Ranges of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan in our current struggles to organize casino workers, and in the struggles to end the war in Iraq and for socialized health care.

Gus Hall, the former Chair of the Communist Party USA, came from a family of “red” Finns on the Mesaba Iron Range in Minnesota.

Gus Hall led the Communist Party USA in the struggles for peace and socialism and was a relentless battler against revisionism, and against all forms of national, racial and ethnic chauvinism. Gus Hall was North America’s most well known Finnish-American and true son of our working class; Hall kept the Communist Party USA on a straight and steady course of working class internationalism in solidarity with the heroic Soviet peoples who blazed the path for the great accomplishments the working class made under socialism.

The imperialists drenched the Finnish revolution in blood in order to thwart the aspirations of the people for socialism; in the Soviet Union these imperialists tried time and again to halt, through armed intervention and fascist war and economic blockade and sabotage, the forward march of working people in peacefully and cooperatively building socialism--- resulting in tens of millions dead, leaving millions more to live in misery as millions starved as the capitalist “philanthropists” looked on with glee and delight; then the imperialists used the threat of nuclear annihilation against socialism, and the peoples of the former first successful socialist revolution fought back each and every attempt to destroy their progress in building a prosperous country for working people--- agriculture was successfully collectivized to feed a hungry nation as a huge, powerful industrial base owned by the people was built up to provide--- for the first time in human history--- for the general welfare of all the people.

Because of weak, muddle-headed and confused leaders who gave in to revisionism, and others, like Gorbachov, who sold out the Soviet people--- working people of the former Soviet Union are now being subjected to a most vicious form of gangster capitalism as punishment for having had the courage to stand up to the imperialist beast. Finnish people know only too well how imperialism punishes the working class and farmers for having the courage to stand up to feudal lords and the capitalist masters.

The imperialists have never missed an opportunity in distorting Finland’s history; to spread the most outrageous slanders about socialism using the most disgusting and malicious lies concocted to distort and twist history with regards to the so-called “Winter War” where the capitalist sooth-sayers turn history on its head and turn Hitler’s fascist henchmen and butchers into heroes while revolutionary workers fighting for human dignity are demonized. Finnish Communists, almost alone, have struggled to tell the truth to the world regarding this big-lie.

Your Party, the Communist Workers’ Party of Finland, carries on in the great, best and important traditions of the progressive Finnish people… from the heroines and heroes of the epic Kalevala, to Minna Canth the great advocate of women’s rights, to A. B. Mäkelä the heroic Finnish Communist and Marxist theoretician who after being forced from Finland by the reactionary feudal lords led the efforts to establish Sointula--- a cooperative community in British Columbia, Canada, to the great Marxist teacher, heroic Communist and true internationalist--- Otto Ville Kuusinen.

The revisionists have given up on building Communist Party Clubs among the working class in their communities and places of employment; these Clubs are fundamental to all progressive advance and social change because they are the “think-tanks” and “action centers” of the working class and progressive movements for peace and social and economic justice; the Communist Party Clubs are basic and fundamental to establishing working class power. The so-called “non-Marxist socialists” and the anti-Leninist “Communists” have abandoned the Marxist-Leninist method of building Communist Party Clubs essential and fundamental to fighting for needed reforms and the day-to-day needs of working people as the working class struggles for--- and to attain and hold on to--- working class political power. Grassroots and rank-and-file working class activism through these Communist Party Clubs has always been, and always will be, the key to building strong and powerful Communist Parties capable of leading the working class in the struggle against capital--- locally, nationally and internationally. Through these Communist Party Clubs we seek to educate, organize and bring the working class into united, militant action against capital… it is with this in mind that we extend warm, Comradely greetings in the class struggle to the Communist Workers’ Party of Finland as you deliberate at your important 18th Party Congress.

The struggle against revisionism is an integral part of the struggle for socialism and international working class solidarity and unity!

The future belongs to the working peoples of the world who will find peace, justice, dignity, freedom and happiness through socialism!

Long live the Communist Workers’ Party of Finland!

All power to the working class!

For international working class solidarity in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism!

On behalf of the Minnesota/North Dakota District of the Communist Party USA and the Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council;

Yours in the struggle,

Alan L. Maki
Secretary-Treasurer,
Minnesota/North Dakota District, Communist Party USA

Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

Representing over two-hundred thousand casino workers struggling for union recognition in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa... presently employed in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws.

Cc: Rita Polewski, District Organizer, Minnesota/North Dakota District, CPUSA
Jeff Sippila, Chair, Iron Range Club, CPUSA
Dean Gunderson, Chair, St. Paul Club, CPUSA
Gus Hall Action Club, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Sam Webb, Chair, CPUSA
Maggie Bird, President, Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council (sent by U.S. mail)
David Bednarczuk, Mesaba Cooperative Park; Hibbing, Minnesota

58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota USA 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my blog, a voice for rank-and-file working class activism:

Thoughts From Podunk

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Overcoming Unscientific Concepts of "Working Class"

Note: First is my commentary, then is the distinguished Professor Marquit's essay on Overcoming Unscientific Concepts of "Working Class" followed by a study guide including questions and comments.

A comment: For many years Erwin Marquit, the distinguished professor of physics from the University of Minnesota, dabbled in trying to teach Marxism to students. In the words of one student--- David Bednarczuk who now Chairs the Board of Mesaba Co-op Park--- "Professor Marquit put everyone to sleep, and left everyone wondering what the heck he was talking about."


Overcoming Unscientific Concepts of "Working Class"

A response by Alan L. Maki,

I have never seen such a gross distortion (see essay below from Political Affairs magazine) of Marxism and definition of class together with such a false conclusion in my entire life.



Surely this buffoon is not a Communist; he is an egg-head.



The conclusion arrived at gives away the author’s intent to set up a strawman to knock down in order to produce an excuse for the most crass and bankrupt form of revisionism for this writer, and the CPUSA mis-leadership, to use as an excuse to withdraw from the class struggle.



The only real idea that has been enforced in my having read this essay is that I must remember to always read the writer’s final conclusion before reading the entire article; lest I waste my time.



Marquit concludes: “Marxist political parties should not focus policies of labor concentration on levels of production of surplus value. Rather they should seek those sectors of the economy where the living and working conditions of the workers, and the character of socialization of the labor process, enable the greatest number of workers to be brought into militant class struggle.”



Please Professor Marquit, provide a concrete example of what workers you think the Communist Party should be focused on, and what needs to be done. Not a single specific brought forward here, quite typical of revisionism. In fact, like so much coming from the leadership of the CPUSA these days; here we have one more text-book case of revisionism.



When and where has any communist party ever focused “policies of labor concentration on levels of production of surplus value”? I would like for Professor Marquit to name just one instance of this.



Obviously, Professor Marquit has taken us through a completely meaningless exercise and pointless ramblings in order to tell us that our policy of “industrial concentration” is no longer correct or relevant. Any honest theoretician would have used this as the opening to this itsy-pitsy. Really, why didn’t Professor Marquit let us know what his real argument was in opposition to as he began his essay? Why such deceitful dishonesty?



In fact, I know of only two Communists in the entire world who have a stated opposition to organizing “unproductive workers;” these two Communists are Professor Marquit, and his side-kick Peter Molenaar--- who told me in front of dozens of people that people employed in casinos “are not workers.” Professor Marquit told me the same thing on at least three occasions.



Only a complete and utter fool would suggest that workers employed in call centers working for a credit card company should be the primary focus of Communist activity. Professor Marquit makes this point to absolve himself of any responsibility for not acting to defend the jobs of workers who now find their livelihoods in jeopardy due to the Ford Motor Company’s projected closing of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant. Professor Marquit makes this point knowing that the Communist Parties in India, and not the CPUSA, will have to take up the task of organizing call centers as Professor Marquit sits at his desk fabricating scenarios that have no basis in reality. I seriously doubt Professor Marquit knows where the nearest call center to his home is.



Professor Marquit brings forward these utterly absurd argument to cover up the fact that he is afraid to take socialist ideas into the working class. Socialist concepts concerning “ownership;” and bringing forward ideas like public ownership and nationalization



Professor Marquit, do you have an inkling of what needs to be done after providing us with this “analysis?”



Since you don’t have any ideas; I do. I would suggest that the key to uniting the working class--- productive and unproductive workers--- is to focus on winning a real living--- non-poverty--- minimum wage which would see federal legislation enacted keeping the minimum wage tied to the calculations of the United States Department of Labor and its Bureau of Labor Statistics--- taking into consideration the real cost of living as articulated by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of what working people are entitled to by birth. December 10, 2008 marks the 60th Anniversary of this Declaration… I think perhaps the Communist Manifesto has an Anniversary this year, also. It would be kind of unique if the working class had a few think-tanks and action committees working on a project… you know, a Communist Party club is supposed to be like a think-tank and action center of sorts, isn’t it? I’m wondering off point here.



I assume you do agree with me that one of the primary tasks of Communists is to forge the greatest possible unity between “productive” and “unproductive” workers? This is our goal, if I am not mistaken. Of course such unity must have some kind of purpose.



Professor Marquit, must we determine if legislators and the researchers and statisticians are productive or non-productive workers in order to proceed with initiating such struggle over the minimum wage being a real living wage; or, do you think we should just allow bourgeois politicians to continue pulling figures out of the hat at election time?



Apparently the learned professor has not taken the time to read Alan Greenspan’s new book, “The Age of Turbulence” or he would have known that state-monopoly capitalism has prepared for any such attempt by workers to undermine the financial markets; unless of course, Professor Marquit is an advocate of terrorism… and even at this, according to Greenspan, life on earth could be annihilated in a nuclear holocaust and the financial records and market information will be left secure and in good order until the cockroaches learn to push a few buttons.



Oh, Professor Marquit, since you understand that “socialist consciousness” does not arrive in the ranks of the working class spontaneously, what exactly is the Communist Party Club of which you are a member doing to impart socialist ideas among the workers in the Twin Cities? I would think that workers employed in a Plant that a company intends to close over the objections of the workers and the community would be THE PLACE to begin to impart some of these socialist ideas… preferably not the “socialist ideas” that you espouse here because there is already plenty of confusion.



I find it interesting that you would write so many words about “Overcoming Unscientific Concepts of ‘Working Class’" when only you hold to such “unscientific concepts.” In fact, had you not invented these “Unscientific Concepts of ‘Working Class’," we would never have known such “unscientific concepts” even existed… who, but you, has brought forward such “unscientific concepts”?



Where is this great debate you allude to? Only in your own mind is there such a debate. I believe Karl Marx had something to say about that little scientific concept known as “materialism.”



Professor Marquit, you could have at least had the courage to hold up the ideas of Gus Hall concerning “overcoming unscientific concepts of the ‘working class’” to refute; winning a debate against a dead man shouldn’t be as difficult as winning a debate with yourself, which you haven’t faired to well on.



Professor Marquit, why don’t you ask the Canadians to publish this essay of yours in “Spark?”



Actually, some of the Trotskyite publications might look upon your essay very favorably; as would the anarchists. I would be willing to bet Ron Gettelfinger and Bob King are studying every word you have written here. Ford Management might even be interested in having you come to teach your brand of Marxist revisionism at the UAW-Ford-MnScu Training Center. The Chinese capitalists driving around in their new Cadillacs, I bet, are studying this essay thoroughly trying to figure out how they can pound such thinking into the heads of Chinese workers. The whole darn bunch of you can sit around discussing productive vs unproductive labor as the wrecking ball strikes the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant.



Your perverted translation of the French language for the purpose of twisting and confusing ideas along with your bastardization of the views of the French Communist Party is pathetic.


http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/6687/1/325


Overcoming Unscientific Concepts of "Working Class"
By Erwin Marquit


4-01-08, 12:00 pm

Is a computer software designer, for instance, or a waiter in a tourist resort, a member of the working class? Is their labor productive or unproductive? In this paper I address some longstanding prejudices about the class identification of workers employed in the production of nonmaterial commodities or in sectors usually categorized as services. My hope is that a re-examination of some aspects of accepted, and often unquestioned, definitions of the terms working class and productive versus unproductive labor will give a sharper focus to current political decisions.

Marxist political parties have historically considered the working class as their class basis and have oriented their policies primarily on the interests of this class. They have paid, and continue to pay, special attention to recruiting members from the working class and concentrate on mobilizing these workers for the class struggle in defense of their interests. This traditional working class, however, constitutes only one part of those who, not possessing their own means of production, are forced to sell their labor power to sustain themselves and their families.

The distinction made by Marx between productive and unproductive labor has long served as a key to the class identification of those earning wages and salaries. Marx used the term productive labor to describe the labor that gives rise to surplus value – the unpaid labor appropriated from the worker’s labor by the capitalist. Marx and Engels concluded very early on that the working class (or proletariat, to use their preferred term) would form the core of the revolutionary movement for the transformation of society from capitalism to socialism because their objective class character placed the members of this class in an irreconcilable conflict of interest with the bourgeoisie:

The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

The revolutionary Marxist movements have, therefore, focused on bringing a socialist consciousness to the proletariat, knowing that such a socialist consciousness expresses the objective class interest arising from the material conditions of life of the proletarians. No other class in a society dominated by the capitalist mode of production has such a clear-cut material interest in the replacement of capitalism by socialism.

A socialist consciousness does not emerge spontaneously from the class struggles of the proletariat. Experiences acquired by workers through participation in class struggles facilitate their understanding of the dynamics of the social forces at work in capitalist society. A socialist consciousness can then be awakened in them by supplementing their class-struggle experiences with theoretical education provided by the political parties of the working class on the true nature of exploitation by capital. This scientific understanding of the process of societal development is necessary because the working class does not accumulate material resources for seizing power from the bourgeoisie as the bourgeoisie was able to do in effect the transition from feudalism. Only masses of workers organized as a material force can form the basis for the transition from capitalism to socialism. “Material force,” wrote the young Marx, “must be overthrown by material force; but theory becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.” During the lifetimes of Marx and Engels, and well into the twentieth century, the industrial proletariat formed the overwhelming majority of those sections of the proletariat participating in organized class struggle. As a result, revolutionary Marxist organizations concentrated their activities around the struggles of the industrial proletariat.

This focus on the industrial proletariat has led to a tendency in some Communist parties to regard only industrial workers as proletarians. It was this definition of working class that led the French Communist Party, at its 29th Congress in 1996, to declare that it was dropping the “working class” as the class basis of the Party. The reason it gave was that the working class no longer constituted the majority of wage earners. The French Communist Party applied the term worker (ouvrier) to manual industrial workers and distinguished them from wage earners (salariés), applying this latter term to nonindustrial wage earners.

Another question of class identity arises with the great increase in the number of workers employed in the knowledge and information branches of the economy as well as in the service sector. Do these workers have the same class interest as industrial workers? The answer is not self-evident. It is useful in this context to consider the class character of several types of wage earners who are not industrial workers. Here is how Karl Marx defined productive workers:

Since the direct purpose and the actual product of capitalist production is surplus value, only such labour is productive, and only such an exerter of labour capacity is a productive worker, as directly produces surplus value.

Thus Marx’s sole criterion for what constitutes productive labor under the capitalist mode of production is the labor performed under conditions in which surplus value is appropriated by the capitalist employer. Any worker whose labor leads to the appropriation of surplus value is a proletarian, or equivalently, a member of the working class. In distinguishing productive from unproductive labor in relation to the production of surplus value, Marx was not characterizing unproductive labor as useless labor.

Let us now consider the distinction between wage earners and proletarians. Are there wage earners who are not proletarians? By wage earner I mean generally a person who is engaged to perform labor by hire. Two principal groups of wage earners need to be considered. One group consists of wage earners within an enterprise who are primarily employed by capital for the extraction or realization of surplus value in the course of producing nonmaterial commodities. We can put aside for the moment the special category of corporate executives or others who are paid annual salaries as direct representatives of the capitalist employer. Wages of most workers are calculated on the basis of the hours worked. When the wages of workers are calculated on a longer period – monthly or yearly, for example – they are often referred to as salaried workers. This terminology can have a bearing on how such workers perceive their class status, but it has no bearing on their objective class identity.

To begin our consideration of workers producing nonmaterial commodities, I will cite Marx’s brief discussion, in which he pointed out that productive workers were not only industrial workers: He gave as examples “a literary proletarian who produces books ... at the instructions of his publisher,” “a singer ... engaged by an entrepreneur,” “a schoolmaster who is engaged as a wage labourer in an institution along with others” – in brief, people who are employed for wages to perform services that are turned into material or nonmaterial commodities in order to provide surplus value to the person or establishment that employs them.

Marx, however, cautioning against giving too much weight to such capitalist investments, noted, “Here capitalist production is applicable on a very restricted scale.” Today, of course, capital investments in the employment of wage labor for providing material services as commodities (for example, for-profit hospitals and nursing homes, hotels and motels, restaurants and fast-food providers) and various forms of nonmaterial services and products (private schools, computer software, consultancies, systems management) make up a significant portion of all new investment arising in the process of expanded reproduction of capital. The overwhelming majority of wage earners in the industrialized countries, despite the changes in the character of labor, remain productive workers, and as such are part of the working class. Consequently, Communist parties have had, in general, no problem in recognizing the working-class character of wage laborers employed in the production of nonmaterial commodities and services.

Let us consider computer software industry as an example of an industry producing nonmaterial commodities. Produced for sale or exchange, the product of this industry is essentially a nonmaterial commodity, even if its form of transfer is a material object such as a computer disk. It has all the attributes of a commodity. It is produced for sale. It has a use value. The exchange value of a computer program is determined by the socially necessary labor time embodied in its production. The price differs from the exchange value in the same manner as in the case of material commodities. The availability of competitive products can be affected by copyrights in a manner similar to the protection of the right to produce material commodities by patents. It is subject to depreciation – although not by use, but by becoming antiquated with the passage of time. The Internal Revenue Service sets three years as the useful life of computer programs for the purposes of calculating depreciation for tax purposes. The difference between productive and unproductive employees in this industry (that is, between those who produce surplus value and those who do not) can be determined in the same way as in the case of the production of material commodities.

Software companies as well as many companies producing computer hardware frequently have personnel serving as support teams to assist users of their products when the instruction manuals do not suffice. This is not unique to the computer industry, but the scale of such service increased dramatically with its growth because of the large-scale distribution and intrinsic complexity of the product. Moreover the outsourcing of such services has become almost an industry in itself with the establishment of call centers in countries with lower wage costs to serve clients in higher wage countries.

Support workers working for companies that produce computer hardware (a material commodity) or computer software (a nonmaterial commodity) are essentially serving as extensions to the instruction manual that is normally provided with the product. The instruction manual is a component of the product since it can be a necessary component of its use value. As such, the writer of the manual is a productive worker producing a nonmaterial commodity (distinct from the physical aspect of the manual). Even though the product has already been purchased, the availability of the support service is implicit in the purchaser’s understanding of his or her ability to realize the use value of the product. The labor of the support worker, therefore, must be considered part of the socially necessary labor embodied in the production of the commodity, regardless of whether the producing firm charges separately for such support. The labor of the support worker should be regarded as productive labor.

The class character of the labor of what are referred to as service workers – for example, hotel employees – is not as obvious as in the case of software programmers. The dynamics of the extraction of surplus value from the labor of the hotel staff is somewhat different from that in industrial production. If we neglect the labor of the hotel employees not engaged in housekeeping services, we can look at the exchange value of the room rental as primarily consisting of two factors: replacement of depleted constant capital and value added by the labor of the housekeeping staff (which includes, for this purpose, room equipment and maintenance staff). The daily housekeeping can be viewed as replenishment of the disturbed furnishings, which can be considered to be similar to the replacement of depreciated objects of constant capital in industrial production. In industrial production, the replacement of depreciated constant capital does not serve as a source of surplus value, but is transferred to the exchange value of the commodity. In the case of hotel rooms, however, the daily replenishment of the room furnishings to the state needed for room rental has a twofold character. The exchange value represented by replenishment of material objects such as soap, shampoo, body lotions, and other toiletries, and replacement of any worn-out towels, sheets, furniture, etc. (including building depreciation) is transferred to the exchange value of the room rental. The exchange value that represents the socially necessary labor time of the housekeeping staff necessary for the daily replenishment of the condition of the room constitutes another part of the exchange value of the room rental, but is less than the wages paid to the housekeepers for their labor; the difference represents the surplus value extracted from their labor.

I will not attempt here a discussion of the character of the labor of other employees such as porters, staff at the registration desk, bookkeeping staff, and reservation clerks. Each must be examined separately. Although surplus labor time is extracted from all of them, not all of them are producers of surplus value. This will be clearer as we discuss some other types of labor not producing material commodities. The discussion here, however, can readily be applied to custodial workers in rental properties such as apartment and office buildings.

The determination of the productive or unproductive character of service workers in restaurants and other establishments that process and provide food involves more complex theoretical issues. Insofar as the food is prepared on order (or pre-prepared in anticipation of the order), the labor involved in processing the food order can be productive labor if it is done for the purpose of converting capital into surplus value by its processing. The character of the labor involved in taking the order and the handing over the food so prepared to the customer either by the server in a restaurant, or worker at the counter or takeout window and accepting payment for it is not so readily classified if one follows Marx’s discussion of the selling and buying of commodities.

In Capital II and III, Marx discusses the costs of circulation of commodities and commercial profit. Industrial capitalists usually sell their products to merchants, who in turn either sell the commodities to the ultimate consumer or to a succession of other merchants until they are sold to the ultimate consumer. Marx calls the costs incurred here the costs of circulation – Marx’s discussion of the economics of this stage in the process of extended capital reproduction can be readily applied to the case in which the industrial capitalists market their commodities to the ultimate consumer. With the sale of the commodity, the capitalist converts to monetary form the constant and variable capital transferred to the commodity by productive labor, as well as the surplus value extracted from the worker, so that the proceeds can be reinvested as industrial capital in the process of expanded reproduction.

The circulation costs have a twofold character. They may involve necessary operations such as transportation, storage, and any further processing in form so that the ultimate consumer can consume the product’s use value. These extensions of the production process require both constant and variable capital, the variable labor giving rise to additional surplus value. Other circulation costs such as advertising, repackaging in form to promote or facilitate sales to other merchants or to make the product attractive in retail trade, and bookkeeping to maintain the integrity of the capital as the product is bought and sold from merchant to merchant or even to the final consumer, add no value to the commodity. The merchant's profit is obtained from the difference between the exchange value of the commodity and the price paid for it by the merchant. In this way, the capitalist shares with the merchant part of the surplus value that is created by the labor power of the workers employed in the production sphere of the commodity. The circulation costs that do not produce value include the cost of labor employed by the merchant. The wages of the workers employed by the merchant in unproductive labor are similarly derived from reduction of the surplus value retained by the industrial capitalist by the mechanism of difference between exchange value and price. But these workers receive as wages only some fraction of the socially necessary labor time they put at the disposal of the merchant, just as in the case of the industrial worker. The merchant’s exploitation of the labor of the mercantile workers augments the merchant’s profit and facilitates the ability of commercial capital to achieve the average rate of profit without any surplus value being generated by the merchant’s employees. Nevertheless, the merchant’s workers are exploited in the same manner as the employees of the industrial capitalist.

Here is Marx’s summary:

"The difficulty as concerns mercantile wage workers is by no means to explain how they produce direct profits for their employer without creating any direct surplus value (of which profit is but a converted form). This question has, indeed, already been solved in the general analysis of commercial profits. Just as industrial capital makes profit by selling labour embodied and realized in commodities, for which it has not paid any equivalent, so merchant’s capital derives profit from not paying in full to productive capital for all the unpaid labour contained in the commodities (in commodities, in so far as capital invested in their production functions as an aliquot part of the total industrial capital), and by demanding payment for this unpaid portion still contained in the commodities when making a sale. The relation of merchant’s capital to surplus value is different from that of industrial capital. The latter produces surplus value by directly appropriating the unpaid labour of others. The former appropriates a portion of this surplus value by having this portion transferred from industrial capital to itself.

"It is only through its function of realizing values that merchant’s capital acts as capital in the process of reproduction, and hence as functioning capital draws on the surplus value produced by the total capital. The mass of the individual merchant’s profits depends on the mass of capital that he can apply in this process, and he can apply so much more of it in buying and selling, the more the unpaid labour of his clerks. The very function, by virtue of which the merchant’s money becomes capital, is largely done through his employees. The unpaid labour of these clerks, while it does not create surplus value, enables him to appropriate surplus value, which, in effect, amounts to the same thing with respect to this capital. It is, therefore, a source of profit for him."

In Marx’s view, workers in the retail branch of the economy are therefore not productive workers in the sense that they do not generate surplus value for their employers. The nature of their exploitation, however, is so similar to that of productive workers that their class interests should not be considered to be separate from those of industrial workers. Many jobs in commerce (and other branches of the economy such as finance and insurance, not discussed here) are of such a nature.

Marx did not discuss retail store employees in great detail. Their labor can involve a certain degree of productive labor. Imagine a society that has already attained a stage where distribution of the product is based on need rather than profit. Some sort of distributive labor will be necessary to match the needs of the consumer to the products that are available. To the extent that the labor of a retail store employee has this character, it can be considered as the completion of the production process. Whether engaging in productive or unproductive labor, retail store employees have the same class interests as industrial workers.

To return now to the work of food-service employees, we see that insofar as the work involves the transfer of the food from the preparer to the consumer, the labor is productive labor. To the extent the labor involves inducing the potential customer to order one or another type of product, the labor is unproductive.

The last group of workers that I will discuss here comprises workers in the advertising industry. If an industrial capitalist establishes an advertising department within the enterprise, Marx would not consider the labor to contribute to the production of surplus value in the commodity. The constant capital costs and the cost of labor connected with such advertising are not transferred to the commodity, but detract from the surplus value added to the commodity by the productive workers. Suppose, however, the industrial capitalist outsources the advertising to an advertising firm established to provide promotional material to industrial, commercial, or financial enterprises. The promotional material has a use value to the clients of the advertising firm. The use value of advertising is the procurement of sales. Although the promotional material will generally have a material form for transferring its message, it is largely a nonmaterial commodity. Employees of such firms producing promotional material are indeed productive workers in the same manner that software programmers can be productive workers, or, to go back to Marx’s original example, a singer employed by an impresario. Similar arguments can be made for other workers employed in the production of nonmaterial commodities that do not add to the value of commodities produced by firms that “consume” their use values.

The growth of the mass of capital and the accompanying technological development continue to lead to increases in the number of wage earners engaged in productive and unproductive labor. The decline of the relative percentage of workers in the manufacture of material commodities in relation to non-material commodities and the growth of the percentage of workers in involved in unproductive labor have not led to the decline in the percentage of wage earners exploited by capital.

What political conclusion can be drawn from this analysis? Narrow and outdated definitions of working class, and speculation about where the mass of surplus value is produced, cannot guide effective political action. Political parties of the working class must attempt to understand where the character of the labor process lends itself most strongly to the development of advanced concepts of class struggle among the workers. Failure to grasp the common quality of exploitation faced by productive and unproductive workers can lead to the erroneous conclusion that only class struggles in industries producing material commodities have the potential to contribute to social change. A view that arose in United States in the 1980s maintained that almost all surplus value was produced in the mass production industries, so that only strikes in that sector could force capital to make concessions to the working class. In the present, and for the foreseeable future, this view is untenable. If the workers processing credit card transactions were to strike, it would disrupt the capitalist economy more (although their labor is unproductive), and capital would be more concerned, than if an auto works were to strike.

Marxist political parties should not focus policies of labor concentration on levels of production of surplus value. Rather they should seek those sectors of the economy where the living and working conditions of the workers, and the character of socialization of the labor process, enable the greatest number of workers to be brought into militant class struggle.

--Erwin Marquit is a contributing editor of Political Affairs and editor of Nature, Society and Thought. Send your letters to the editor to pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net

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Following are a few questions, citations and quotes from a working class friend to help guide discussion of Professor Marquit's "Overcoming Unscientific Concepts of 'Working Class':"

* Are workers in the advertising industry more situated to land blows to capitalism than workers in the industrial sector?

* Would capitalism crash if all the hotel cleaners walked out tomorrow?

* Who are "the front rankers in the class struggle"?

* Are university professors to be equated with workers in basic industries?

* Henry Winston, former leader of the Communist Party USA, using Lenin’s term ’front rankers’, called the workers in basic industries "the front rankers in the class struggle." (Henry Winston, "Class, Race and Black Liberation" 1977, International Publishers)

* Henry Winston said: "Class consciousness must be expanded from its minimum form--the recognition of the common interest of the majority who sell their labor power--to a higher level: the recognition that all who have a common interest in fighting monopoly do not have a common place within the capitalist system from which to carry on that fight.... It is imperative to recognize that while the basic industrial sector has a common interest with the majority of wage workers, it does not have an identical place with them in the system of capitalist exploitation and the struggle against it. Because of its unique position, this sector is decisive in forging the unity of all the diverse segments of wage workers and in forming an alliance between the workers of hand and brain with all the exploited and oppressed... Not only is this industrial nucleus the most cohesive sector of the working class, it is also the greatest direct producer of surplus value, the source of capitalist profits. And, to a greater degree than any of the other producers of surplus value, the ’front rankers’ occupy the central position within the system: they are the ones who, in the struggle for the division of the value they produce, most directly confront the decisive sectors of monopoly. Thus, the influence of the industrial nucleus--the most potent force in the class struggle--is decisive in every aspect of the economic, social and political battle of the exploited and oppressed." (Henry Winston, "Class, Race and Black Liberation, " 1977, International Publishers)

* Winston called the role of the industrial workers to be "the advance detachment providing the unifying center for leadership of all the oppressed and exploited." And he quotes Lenin: "’...by the development of capitalism and the socialization of labor in general...the factory workers play the role only of front rankers, the vanguard.’ (Lenin, "Collected Works, " Vol. 1, pg. 316.)" (Henry Winston, "Class, Race and Black Liberation, " 1977, International Publishers)

* Winston wrote that the growth in "the number of wage and salaried workers in the service areas--clerical, educational, scientific, professional"--does not minimize the role of the industrial working class, those "workers in mass industry and transport...the production and transport core of the working class." (Henry Winston, "Class, Race and Black Liberation, " 1977, International Publishers)

* Winston writes: "as Lenin pointed out, the numerical increase of this stratum (office and professional workers, ’intellectuals, ’ etc...) cannot lend it the characteristics needed for playing the leading unifying role." (Henry Winston, "Class, Race and Black Liberation, " 1977, International Publishers)

* Winston stresses: "The new additions and allies to the working class confirm, not refute, the Marxist-Leninist concept of the role of production workers as the unifying nucleus of the working class. Just as no change in the role of science and technology can put the university on the plane of industry in the class struggle, no change in working-class structure can put the role of scientific, professional, clerical or service workers on the plane of the industrial working class, the leading force in carrying out the mission of the working class as the grave-diggers of capitalism, the builders of socialism." (Henry Winston, "Class, Race and Black Liberation, " 1977, International Publishers)

* Winston writes, it isn't about "’play(ing) favorites, ’ putting one sector of workers over and against others." Policy must be based, not on "subjective ’preferences’ but on the Marxist-Leninist science of class struggle." (Henry Winston, "Class, Race and Black Liberation, " 1977, International Publishers)

* Henry Winston, former leader of the Communist Party USA, called workers in basic industries "the front rankers in the class struggle." (Henry Winston, "Class, Race and Black Liberation, " 1977, International Publishers)



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