Contributors:
Arcadie
CJLocke
Jake (Midnight818)
Sisyphus
Travis Haan
Thanks to everyone who contributed! The deadline for the September issue is September 10th, 2011.
August 2011 issue of All the Left zine available
August 16th, 2011 
arcadie Race to the bottom leads to corporatism
August 2nd, 2011 arcadie by Matt Bruenig
Right-wing advocates of limited government often argue that locating political power in state governments is preferable to locating it in the federal government. The reasoning they give for why this is the case is a bit complicated. On its face, it seems like it is irrelevant where government power is located. After all, a state government can be just as involved in regulation and social programs as the federal government is. Advocates of this view do not deny that, but they typically claim that locating power in state governments will force states to compete with one another which will lead them to reduce regulations and taxes in order to attract businesses.
That is, they believe that the natural conclusion of inter-government competition for capital investment is a race to the bottom which will force governments to increasingly dismantle labor laws, environmental laws, taxes, and other regulations. When the federal government sets nationwide standards, owners of capital have no way to escape them except of course to move out of the country, something they increasingly do. However, if a state sets a particular standard, owners of capital can just shift that capital to another state and easily avoid it. Thus, this strategy of relocating power in the states will usher in the kind of limited government those on the right-wing would like to see.
That is the theory at least. In reality, the mechanism used to force the creation of limited state governments — the profit-motivated decisions of investors — will actually create large state governments that provide generous handouts to attract businesses. Advocates of this strategy typically think of it in terms of the pairwise comparisons of investors. An investor choosing between two states would choose the one that had less environmental regulations, assuming everything else about the states was identical. Along the same lines, an investor deciding between two states would pick the state that had lower taxes, no workplace safety rules, and no unions. The state that was imposing these profit-reducing measures would then be starved of capital investment, and would thus be forced to dismantle them to stay competitive.
This analysis of what would happen makes good sense, but it does not go far enough. There is nothing that would constrain states that are competing with one another to only use decreased state intervention to attract investors. In fact, at some point all of the regulations would have to be repealed which would leave the states no choice but to compete in some other way. That other way would of course be through subsidies, corporate welfare, and other sorts of monetary bribes. If an investor is choosing between a state which will cut them a check from the public coffers and one which wont, clearly the state giving them money would be preferred. The same competition effects would kick in, and states would be off to the races to see who could hand out the most money to attract capital.
This kind of corruption of the state by owners of capital is quite natural and pops up in almost any place where a free market is supposed to exist. Noam Chomsky’s talk on this phenomenon which he refers to as the “really existing free market theory” is illuminating:
And the principle of really existing free market theory is: free markets are fine for you, but not for me. That’s, again, near a universal. So you — whoever you may be — you have to learn responsibility, and be subjected to market discipline, it’s good for your character, it’s tough love, and so on, and so forth. But me, I need the nanny State, to protect me from market discipline, so that I’ll be able to rant and rave about the marvels of the free market, while I’m getting properly subsidized and defended by everyone else, through the nanny State.
The brute fact of the matter is that a capitalist who has to choose between a perfectly laissez-faire state and a corporate welfare state will always choose the latter. Forcing states to compete to attract capital will consequently always lead to the construction of corporatist states, not limited-government paradises. To suggest otherwise is to pretend that owners of capital will not invest that capital where it will yield the best return, i.e. that capitalists will not act as capitalists.
Matthew Bruenig is the author of MattBruenig.com. You can follow him on Twitter @MattBruenig and subscribe to his work via RSS.
Regional left statement in solidarity with PSM: Free all political prisoners! Democracy for the Malaysian people!
July 27th, 2011 arcadie submitted by glparramatta, (read original here: http://links.org.au/node/2392)
On June 19, 2011, a campaign called Bersih 2.0 was called by the Malaysian people for a free and fair elections in the country with the 13th General Election around the corner. Bersih 2.0 also called a gathering for July 9, 2011. On June 24, the Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM, Socialist Party of Malaysia) launched a Udahlah BN, Bersaralah (Enough BN, retire now) campaign. The PSM campaign aimed to expose the corruption of the Barisan Nasional (BN) government and also to drum up support for the Bersih 2.0 rally.
Since June 22, more than 100 individuals have been arrested because they have expressed their support for a mass rally on July 9, called for by the Coalition for Free and Fair Elections (Bersih). As of now, 81 people have been arbitrarily arrested and detained by the police at various locations in the country before the Bersih 2.0 rally. A further 15 people have been called or summoned by the police for their statements to be recorded in relation to the Bersih 2.0 rally. The police harassment and intimidation included arresting people for wearing Bersih 2.0 T-shirts, distributing Bersih 2.0 leaflets, holding and carrying Bersih 2.0 T-shirts, taking 112 statements for more than one time, denying access to lawyers and medication during the detention period and the sexual harassment of women activists.
On July 3, six PSM members, including Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj (a member of parliament), have been rearrested under the Emergency Ordinance (EO), which allows for 60-day detention without trial, renewable for up to two years at the discretion of the home minister. The six were part of a group of 30 PSM activists who were remanded on June 25 for allegedly “waging war against the king”.
We view these acts of the Malaysian government as the suppression of the democratic rights of the Malaysian people. This is part of an attempt to protect the elite power that has been in power for years in Malaysia through the United Malays National Organisation-Barisan Nasional (UMNO-BN) regime.
We strongly condemn the Malaysian government for using harassment, arrest and intimidation as a method to try to silence opposition to the anti-democratic, anti-poor and anti-working-class policies of the Malaysian government.
We demand:
a. That the government of Malaysia immediately and unconditionally release all the PSM activists in detention.
b. That the government of Malaysia must stop all forms of repression and intimidation against the Malaysian people from expressing their democratic rights.
c. We call on all the socialist and pro-democratic movements, in South East Asia and all the world, to build and give solidarity to the PSM and to the Malaysian people who are being repressed and arrested.
We also declare our fullest support for the ongoing campaign and the struggle of the Malaysian people for democracy.
Signed by:
Asia-Pacific
Socialist Alliance (Australia), Reorganize Committee-Working People Association (KPO-PRP Indonesia), Resistance (Australia), Labour Party Pakistan (LPP), Party of Labouring Masses (PLM, Philippines), Socialist Aotearoa (New Zealand), Solidarity (Australia), Peoples Democratic Party (PRD Indonesia), Political Committee of the Poor-People’s Democratic Party (Indonesia), All Pakistan Federation of United Trade Unions, Radical Socialist (India), Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP, Sri Lanka), All Together (South Korea), Revolutionary Socialist Party (Australia), Australia Asia Worker Links, Vi Pham (Vietnam), Partido ng Manggagawa (Philippine), Herlounge (Indonesia), Empower Foundation (Thailand), Confederation Congress of Indonesia Union Alliance (KASBI), Vipar Daomanee, Turn Left Organisation Thailand, Turn Left Organisation Thailand, Socialist Alternative (Australia), Socialist Worker-New Zealand, International Marxist Tendency.
North America
Toronto New Democrats (Canada), Fightback journal (Canada)
Europe
Left Party (Sweden), Communist Party of Sweden (SKP), Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR, Spain).
Latin America
Union de Militantes por el Socialismo (UMS, Argentina).
If your organisation would like to sign this statement, please email peterb@greenleft.org.au.
The race and class dynamics of old age entitlement programs
July 26th, 2011 arcadie by Matt Bruenig
The President and leaders in Congress have been bandying about different ideas for reforming Medicare and Social Security. As one might expect in a deficit reduction showdown, these ideas uniformly seek to reduce the costs of the programs for the federal government. Of course, any time a politician or commentator mentions reducing the costs of entitlement programs, they actually mean something a little bit different. What is really going on in these plans to cut costs is not a reduction in spending, but a shift in who carries out the spending. Cutting Social Security benefits, for instance, does not magically make seniors need less food; it just shifts the cost of that food on to the seniors and off of the federal government.
In the last year alone, there have been numerous and creative approaches to making old people pay more. Paul Ryan’s budget plan — which replaces Medicare with a voucher program that is indexed to inflation instead of health care inflation — was designed in a way that ensures that the rising costs of health care will be increasingly shouldered by seniors instead of the federal government. An idea which changes the way the cost of living adjustment for Social Security is calculated would decrease monthly outlays to pensioners by 9% in the next 30 years relative to current law. Finally, a recent proposal to increase the Medicare eligibility age to 67 would require seniors to pay for two additional years of private health insurance before they become eligible for Medicare.
This last idea — which was apparently endorsed by Obama at times in the debt ceiling negotiations — runs into more than just the typical cost-shifting problems. In addition to requiring old people to pay more, it has a disproportionate impact on poor people and oppressed racial groups. This is something that does not typically get brought up in the debates surrounding increasing the age qualifications for entitlement programs. For instance, I have never heard it mentioned when the occasional plan surfaces to increase the retirement age for the Social Security program.
The reason raising the qualifying age for entitlement programs disproportionately hurts poor people and oppressed racial groups is that these constituencies have a shorter life expectancy than average. A study published in 2010 provides a snapshot of the life expectancy differentials of various socioeconomic and racial groups. Differential socioeconomic status — which includes considerations of education, income, job type, and other factors — neatly correlates with differential life expectancies. Those in the lowest socioeconomic group have a life expectancy of 75.4 years while those in the highest group have a life expectancy nearly 6 years higher at 81.2 years. As this chart indicates, significant differences are also found along racial lines, with Blacks enjoying a life expectancy significantly shorter than their otherwise similar white counterparts.
While raising the qualifying age for Medicare or Social Security does take away benefits from all of the racial and socioeconomic groups, it takes away a higher percentage of benefits from the groups that have shorter lives. Taking away 2 years of benefits — as raising the Medicare qualifying age to 67 would do — from someone who lives to 70 years of age strips them of 40 percent of all of the benefits they would have ever received from the program. Meanwhile, someone who lives to 75 years of age would only be foregoing 20 percent of their benefits in such a change. At the extreme end, some groups — namely Blacks in the lowest socioeconomic group — would, on average, miss out on Medicare benefits altogether if the qualifying age was increased to 67 since the life expectancy of that group is 65.3 years.
Compounding the injustice even more is the fact that the payroll taxes which fund Social Security and Medicare are only paid up to a certain level of income. These regressive taxes are not paid on any income made above $106,800. So wealthier individuals are paying a smaller percentage of their income into the Social Security and Medicare programs despite the fact that they live longer, and therefore reap more of the benefits from them. Raising the qualifying age will only increase the already existing imbalance of burdens.
The proposal to increase the age for Medicare eligibility is thus truly heinous. If forcing seniors to pay more for the health care is not enough by itself to reject the proposal, the class and race dynamics ought to be. Reducing the deficits by giving poor people and oppressed racial groups an ever worse deal in this society than they already have is totally unacceptable.
Matthew Bruenig is the author of MattBruenig.com. You can follow him on Twitter @MattBruenig and subscribe to his work via RSS.
July 2011 issue of the All the Left zine available
July 25th, 2011 arcadie 
July 2011
Featuring work by:
Arcadie
Ben F.
CJLocke
Hilario Galan
Jake (Midnight818)
Kane O’Leary
Mike Mitchell
Nick Wyatt
Thanks to all who submitted! The deadline for the August issue is August 10th.
The ideological significance of the financial crisis
July 19th, 2011 arcadie by Matt Bruenig
The financial crisis is nearing its three year anniversary, and the ideologically-tinged battles over identifying its causes are still roaring on. For champions of the free market, much is at stake in explaining what led to the 2008 financial meltdown. On its face, it appears that banks and investors foolishly jumped on the bandwagon of an asset bubble driven by the extension of easy credit. When that bubble popped, the investment vehicles built on top of it saw a huge loss in value, causing a panic that would have — if not for government intervention — precipitated a world-wide financial collapse and great depression.
Investors and banks incompetently bankrupting themselves and bringing down the rest of the world with them is hard to reconcile with the usual rhetoric about the self-correcting, rational, efficient market. Defenders of that particular ideology are then pressed to find some way to explain away the crisis that absolves the market actors from the colossal mistakes that they made. If they can blame their actions on something else — ideally government behavior — then they can protect their free market ideology from what would otherwise be a devastating counter-example to its practicality.
Efforts to provide a government-blaming explanation have revolved around two main claims. The first is that the Community Reinvestment Act — a 1977 law that outlaws the racist practice of redlining — forced banks to make the bad mortgages that drove the asset bubble and the eventual financial collapse. At first glance, this argument is very implausible given that the law has been around for three decades, and only requires community banks not to discriminate between equally creditworthy individuals. Whatever one thought of the viability of the argument, it was crushed in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report which found the following:
The Commission concludes the CRA [Community Reinvestment Act] was not a signifcant factor in subprime lending or the crisis. Many subprime lenders were not subject to the CRA. Research indicates only 6% of high-cost loans — a proxy for subprime loans — had any connection to the law. Loans made by CRA-regulated lenders in the neighborhoods in which they were required to lend were half as likely to default as similar loans made in the same neighborhoods by independent mortgage originators not subject to the law.
With that attempt to blame the government defeated, the only other argument coming from those trying to defend the market ideology centers around Fannie and Freddie. The arguments surrounding that are fairly technical and largely depend on disputes about definitions. I wont go into the discussion in depth here, but Mark Thoma provides an abundance of different analyses explaining where those arguments go wrong. The short of it is this: even though Fannie and Freddie did foolishly participate in subprime lending and securitization, they were late to the game and were only responding to existing market trends set by private originators and investment houses.
To that analysis, I would add that even if the behavior of Fannie and Freddie did lead banks and investors to create a speculative bubble, there is no reason it should have. Private market actors were under no obligation to buy mortgage-backed securities; ratings agencies were under no obligation to provide AAA ratings to those securities; investment firms were under no obligation to leverage themselves in a way that left them insolvent when the bubble burst; AIG was under no obligation to insure the mortgage-backed securities in a way that would eventually leave the firm bankrupt; and, other mortgage originators and investment banks were under no obligation to copy the practices of Fannie and Freddie (although we know that Fannie and Freddie were actually copying their bad practices).
The fact that market actors freely chose to do all of these things reflect that they had misjudged the risk the housing bubble posed, a sector-wide misjudgment that had catastrophic consequences for the entire world. Defenders of the ideology of unrestrained markets have nothing that they can say about those freely chosen decisions. Market actors are supposed to be acting on all of the knowledge that is available to them, including any distortions that Fannie and Freddie introduce, information about which was public and accessible. They are not supposed to make decisions which bankrupt their own firms and bring down the entire financial sector, certainly not en masse. But in this case, they did exactly that.
What the financial crisis represents is a real-world refutation of the idea that the market is rational and can be counted upon to self-regulate. In theory that argument has some compelling features. After all, why would a firm trying to maximize profits take actions which destroys itself. Whatever the reason is — incompetence, misplaced incentives, or irrational exuberance — we have a perfect example of firms doing just that.
If proponents of a wide-open free market were intellectually honest about this financial crisis, they would have to revise their views in the same way that Alan Greenspan — previously a proponent of the ideology of self-regulating markets — did soon after the meltdown took place. Of course, just because they should do it does not mean that they will. Given the central importance of this view for the entire ideology of the right wing, I am doubtful anything could ever convince them to abandon it.
Matthew Bruenig is the author of MattBruenig.com. You can follow him on Twitter @MattBruenig and subscribe to his work via RSS.
Good labor news for once: Connecticut mandates paid sick days
July 12th, 2011 arcadie by Matt Bruenig
Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy announced Tuesday that he had signed into law a bill which requires employers to provide paid sick days to their workers. The bill is the first of its kind in the country. Under the new rules, firms with 50 or more employees are required to provide their workers one hour of paid sick time for every 40 hours worked, up to 40 paid sick hours a year.
Along with Vermont’s single payer healthcare bill, this bill is one of the few bright spots in what has otherwise been a brutal year for poor and working people. Providing paid sick days to all workers has so many far reaching benefits that at least 21 nations already legally require it.
In addition to being fundamentally humane and moral, paid sick days decrease the spread of contagious illnesses. Workers who cannot afford to take time off when they are sick end up going into work despite being ill, potentially infecting those whom they interact with at their jobs. As the Economic Policy Institute points out, highly paid workers are typically already provided paid sick days, and so this bill will have more significant impacts for low-income employees. Ellen Bravo of Family Values @ Work makes the point that it is precisely these kinds of low-income workers — restaurant workers, service workers, and child-care providers — who interact with the public the most, making paid sick days a universal benefit for all of us who can now avoid catching whatever they might have.
As with all worker-friendly improvements — even those as seemingly uncontroversial as this one — business groups claim it will spell doom and gloom for the economy. According to Bridgeport News, the Connecticut Business and Industry Association lobbied against the bill, saying that it would “further hurt the economy and drive away business.” Joe Brennan, a lobbyist for the group, is quoted in the Associated Press story forecasting a coming dystopian world of mandated vacation time and work breaks.
Indeed, what a horror that would be. If Brennan is right, Connecticut’s support for paid sick days may have put it on the precipice of a slippery slope to the humane working conditions already standard across Western Europe.
In addition to Brennan’s unintentionally self-parodying comments, the familiar, less humorous set of business objections were also raised. As mentioned above, the threat of businesses fleeing from the state to escape the burden of providing minimally humane working conditions has been floated out. The bogeyman of higher prices to accommodate the paid sick days was highlighted in the MarketWatch article about the change. The article also featured Heritage Foundation talking points saying that ultimately workers would be forced to pay for the sick days in lost future raises — you know, those raises that fast food workers are always getting.
These lines of rhetoric of course are predictable. The race to the bottom logic so pervades our present political discourse that anyone paying close attention could probably tell you what the businesses opposition to any given set of worker-friendly initiatives is. But this is nothing new. The history of labor in the United States has been saturated with industry objections to positive worker treatment from the very beginning. As Philip Dray records in his book There is Power in a Union, identical objections about economic destruction were made against the now-celebrated movements to shorten the workday, improve workplace safety, and provide minimal wages.
Initiatives tagged as business-destroying and burdensome share a history with all the great workplace improvements of the last two centuries. Connecticut’s mandatory sick pay initiative is the newest member of that club, and hopefully many more like it — perhaps with identical bills in other states — will soon follow.
Matthew Bruenig is the author of MattBruenig.com. You can follow him on Twitter @MattBruenig and subscribe to his work via RSS.
93 Years Ago Today Eugene V. Debs was Arrested for Speaking Out Against the War
June 28th, 2011 arcadie 
by Kevin Reuning
The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives. They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. [Full Speech]
On June 30th, 1918 Eugene Debs was arrested for speaking out against World War I in Canton, OH. He had made several speeches against the war, but after his Canton speech they finally decided enough was enough. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail, although he only remained in jail until December 23rd 1921 when President Harding commuted his sentence to time served. He was imprisoned under the Espionage Act, along with hundreds of others, some high profile, but many just regular people who spoke out against the war. Throughout this time, the socialist press was dismantled. They were driven even further underground, many feared publishing anything that was anti-war or pro-socialist. Soon, just having membership in the IWW constituted a breach of the Espionage Act and the red scare gripped the nation.
The Espionage Act still stays in effect today, although it’s enforcement has thankfully diminished. Even with the lack of legal persecution(although it can still exist), culture and corporations alone can squelch free speech and press. In a world with 24 hour news and easily inflamed public opinion, it is important to always be aware of how flimsy our free speech protections are. It wasn’t just the government that squashed the free speech of Debs and others, but also groups of citizens, sometimes under the title of the American Protective League, other times in just ad hoc mobs.
As the 4th of July approaches, remember not only the Americans and American Immigrants that has been canonized, but those who have been demonized: John Brown, Eugene V. Debs, Emma Goldman, and others.
Another Debs quote to end this, from the speech he made during the trial:
I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men. [Full Speech]
Use your library
June 26th, 2011 arcadie 
by Arcadie
as seen in the June 2011 issue of the zine
When I decided to become a librarian, at the ripe age of six, I figured the hardest part of my job would be convincing people to read my favorite books. Several years and a work-in-progress Master’s degree later, I still find myself convincing people – but instead of persuading them to read Avi’s books, I’m working tirelessly to show the masses how integral libraries are to society.
As an activist for free speech, information literacy, and human rights, I can’t imagine not having the library around to help facilitate my research and plan of action. To me, a library represents the foundation of socialist ideology; a communal facility where creativity and learning are encouraged, where all members have access to any information they can get their hands on. This simplifies socialism, of course, but a library’s mission is not far from the values of a Left solidarity movement.
We should be using libraries because they offer what we need – free resources ranging from ancient texts to the newest fringe technology, and a place to gather, plan and discuss. Librarians are duty-bound to protect the privacy of their users. I can’t even recall how many books about socialism, anarchism, and feminism I have checked out over the years, and how thankful I am to have my records protected in an era of privacy infringement at every turn. The library encouraged my curiosity, and although I now have a college degree, I attribute most of my lifelong knowledge to the hours I spent in the stacks or on the web with everything I could ever imagine to learn at my fingertips.
What I value most about the library, and even more so in librarians, is the notion that it’s not enough to just give people information. That is undeniably important, but what takes precedent is understanding how people think. Librarians value critical thinking above all, and work with the many unique thinking processes of their patrons. This is something we need to keep in mind as we attempt to share our knowledge with others.
As an almost-librarian, this is my mission. And this is my call to you, my comrades, to use an existing resource to your advantage. You will benefit from having an established community that openly invites you and your ideas in the midst of a society that fights against your every belief, and the library, too, will continue flourish. It goes beyond stacks of books or a row of computers, or a kindly white-haired woman stamping the due date on the inside cover; as our university system moves further into a bureaucracy, we need to value the institutions that still see education and learning as more important than money.
If you haven’t been in a while, stop by your local public library. Maybe its hours have been seriously reduced due to budget cuts, and maybe the selection of DVDs is outdated, but I guarantee that its staff is passionate about that place and wants to see it thrive. I also guarantee that at least one librarian there is a radical. Never underestimate a librarian.
Arab spring, global summer?
June 26th, 2011 arcadie 
by Jake (Midnight818)
as seen in the June 2011 issue of the zine
Large anti-austerity protest movements have been growing in Europe following revolutions in several Arab states. What brought about the current movement, and how can a united Left play a role in the future?
This year, we have observed the unthinkable in many Arab and North African states. Massive protests and demonstrations – often yielding revolutions or insurrections – had begun to flower and spread across the region. Movements for change and democracy began in Tunisia, spreading across Egypt and Yemen and has since moved to Libya, Syria and still other nations. The rulers of the Arab world have been handed a clear message from their people: We are no longer willing to face economic hardship to line your pockets, political oppression to keep you in power, or social injustice to create the illusion of uniformity. This message was received loud and clear in places like Tunisia and Egypt, where dictators who have ruled for decades have been shown the door. The “Arab Spring” uprisings have been the most successful revolutionary actions in decades, bringing a real chance for democracy to people in the region.
Fast-forward to the events of the past few weeks. Societies around the world are currently fighting the strong grip of a severe economic depression, driven by globalized capitalist greed and prolonged by sheer governmental failure across the board. In the wake of bailouts of financial industries, lax regulatory environments and political capitulation, the current “debt crisis” continues to stagnate in countries across the Eurozone. Suggested measures to deal with this crisis, implemented in the form of “austerity measures,” are slowly suffocating the people of Europe and unfairly punishing them for problems created by the reckless elite. Rather than casting an eye toward those responsible for the crisis or even attempting to address falling tax rates for the upper class to support revenue, these austerity measures chip away at social safety nets in each country and encourage large-scale privatization of state industries. With unemployment at record highs and government income at perilous lows, it seems that attacking the working class and importing a dangerous neoliberal agenda has become fashionable for economic and political elites alike. The preachers of austerity in government and the financial sector alike have told us that we must pay for their mistakes, that we must continue to support their unconscionable bonuses, and that we must be made to suffer in their stead. These actions are the vanguard for an even greater transfer of wealth to the private sector, masked in the sell-off of publicly owned assets like parks, power plants and even water systems. These actions risk further price gouging and could shut the poor out entirely from essential services.
Nowhere is this ridiculous doctrine of austerity and economic liberalization more present than in Spain, where people have been suffering through the financial crisis for quite some time. A previous housing bubble, exacerbated by foolish government programs promoting home ownership and subprime loans, continues to resonate across the country. This has created a prolonged recession and has contributed to the country’s 21% unemployment rate, effectively a staggering 45% among young people. Now that the modern “debt crisis” seeks to tighten the screws further with austerity programs, the Spanish people have quite clearly had enough of the nonsense. Encouraged by the successful people-power movements in the Arab states, and heartened by the anti-austerity victories of their comrades in Iceland, Spaniards have coalesced around the so-called 15th of May Movement. The 15th of May Movement includes supporters from across the political spectrum and focuses the power of protest towards a list of common grievances. They have brought tens of thousands of people to the streets and public squares with a message of change. Their manifesto, cobbled together at the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid, demands an end to austerity measures, the reaffirmation of the fundamental truths of democracy, and the end of political collusion with economic elites. Their demonstrations have already dealt a big blow to the ruling social-democratic party, the PSOE, for colluding with the elites and supporting the dangerous push for austerity. While this movement has had little coverage in the mainstream corporate media (unsuprisingly), outlets like Reflections on A Revolution (http://www.roarmag.org/) have done a great job in bringing the news to us.
Make no mistake, the Spanish dissidents are not alone in their struggle. Staying true to the catalyzing Arab Spring movement, the demonstrations appear to be spreading to cities across Europe. Groups are staging protests in the same spirit, taking public squares in France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. These groups are coalitions of people-power movements with different purposes but common goals. In Spain, the 15th of May Movement was formed by anti-mortgage groups joining forces with the youth and unemployed to create “Real Democracy Now.” In France, the spreading protests have been aided by the popular alter-globalist “Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and Help to Citizens” (ATTAC), which is now supporting anti-G8 protests ahead of global meetings in Le Havre.
A united Left coalition’s role in these modern day movements cannot be understated. The organizations mentioned above have done a great job at including their respective constituents and focusing them on a real and focused course of action. Their anger is part of a large-scale rejection of the more inhumane tenets of capitalism. Greed, power and control of the upper class is being challenged in the basic movements, which seek to restore power and dignity to the people. Whether we are anarchists, socialists, communists or anything else, it is now up to all of us to support these movements and continue to provide real alternatives to the predatory system. Our common goals include an end to wage slavery and corporate control of society; as such, the formation of a new coalition of the Left can be vital to supporting and sustaining anti-capitalist and anti-globalist actions, no matter where they occur.