Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Labor Needs to Improve Conditions for Nonunion Workers, Official Warns

There is one problem here--- Ed Ott cites organized workers whose union contracts don't even provide wages that rise to the level of real living wages. Here on the Iron Range, business unionism, as opposed to class struggle trade unionism, has led to a drastic decline in the standards of living for working people. We know all too well what Ed Ott is talking about. Finding solutions is another matter.

What working people need from those in positions of influence in the labor movement, like Ed Ott, is action to correspond to the talk. These people are sitting on resources, our dues, that need to be invested in the class struggle.

Labor Needs to Improve Conditions for Nonunion Workers, Official Warns

Patrick Andrade for The New York Times

All union workers’ gains are vulnerable, says Ed Ott of the New York City Central Labor Council.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/nyregion/23workers.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: June 23, 2008

Ed Ott, the executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council, an umbrella group for the city’s labor unions, has an unexpected and unnerving warning for New York’s more than one million union members.

He warns that their wages and living standards will be threatened unless the city’s unions do far more to lift the incomes and living standards of the city’s nonunion working poor, including restaurant workers, supermarket cashiers and taxi drivers.

“Going forward, if we don’t raise the standards for the lowest-paid workers in the city, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of them, our own levels that we achieved — of wages, pensions and time off — they’re not sustainable,” said Mr. Ott, whose group is a federation of 400 union locals. “For a working class that is going to be making minimum wage or slightly above, what’s going to happen is that as taxpayers, that will create a social base for an attack on our own standards.”

Mr. Ott’s remarks, made in a recent speech at City University and in a follow-up interview, were an impassioned plea as well what he said was a “wake-up call” to the city’s labor movement. New York’s union movement has far more members than any other city’s, although it is widely viewed as less aggressive in unionizing and helping low-wage workers than the labor movements in Los Angeles and several other cities.

He said that many low-income workers who receive no paid vacation or sick days were bound to ask why many municipal workers are entitled to 40 days off per year — combining vacation days, personal days and sick days — in their first year on the job.

“There’s a danger that in the eyes of the majority of people we might be seen as too expensive,” said Mr. Ott, a former official with the Communications Workers of America and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union who became leader of the labor council in 2006 after its previous president, Brian McLaughlin, was indicted on embezzlement charges. “If you have an extremely low-paid strata, you can’t believe they’ll say, ‘You should have another two sick days when I don’t have any.’ We have to find ways to elevate their status.”

Mr. Ott is glad that many union members — for instance, construction workers, telephone workers and teachers — have achieved middle-class status. But he voiced frustration that many unions showed little concern about lifting the status of low-wage nonunion workers. He made his remarks at a time when the number of nonunion workers has soared in traditionally union-dominated industries like construction and hotels.

Mr. Ott sees two working classes in New York: a unionized one that is doing well and a nonunion one that is struggling to get by.

“You see a working class on the subway at 6:30 in the morning and you see them at 8:30 at night heading home,” he said. “They work in the back of restaurants, they clean buildings nonunion, they’re child care workers, they’re in retail. Frankly, I marvel that these guys can find a way to live in this city. They work very hard. Most of these workers who work outside a union setting, they work more than one job or they work one job many hours.”

Mr. Ott said the union movement needed to work closely with less-well-off groups of workers — taxi drivers, domestic workers, restaurant workers, even freelance writers and computer workers — to help raise their living standards, not just for moral reasons but also for their own self-interest. “Every time you go to the bargaining table now, there’s downward pressure,” he said. “Even in the public sector, it’s ‘Any improvements you want, you have to pay for with concessions.’ That’s downward pressure, too.”

As part of his strategy, Mr. Ott took the unusual step of inviting the Taxi Workers Alliance, a group of several thousand nonunion immigrant taxi drivers, to join the Central Labor Council.

In his view, unions need to embrace immigrant workers and work closely with their advocacy groups. The labor council is working with Domestic Workers United to help enact legislation in Albany to improve wages and benefits for nannies and housekeepers. The labor council is also trying to make common cause with the Freelancers Union, a Brooklyn-based group that is seeking to provide affordable health and disability benefits to tens of thousands of freelancers and independent contractors.

In his view, a major problem is that many struggling workers are viewed as independent contractors and do not have many of the basic protections guaranteed regular workers, including the right to overtime pay and workers’ compensation.

Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance, praised Mr. Ott’s strategy and agreed with his analysis.

“Unless we lift the floor, the ceiling is going to collapse,” Ms. Desai said. “Some of the mainstream labor movement is all about fending for yourself as opposed to working together to raise conditions across the board for all workers.”

Mr. Ott said several New York unions have become more serious about helping low-wage workers. He cited the United Federation of Teachers, which has unionized 28,000 home-based child care providers, as well as the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which has organized nearly 1,000 workers at H & M clothing stores in Manhattan. He also praised the efforts of Unite Here to raise wages for Aramark workers, who earn an average of about $20,000 a year in corporate cafeterias at Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York and other financial institutions.

“One of the dangers we have in this city is the city is polarizing economically,” Mr. Ott said. “There is some fabulous wealth toward the top. And there is this growing body of working-class folks. The middle could collapse. The danger is, are our standards not sustainable in a city’s that’s politically and economically polarized?”

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Gus Hall to be featured in Finn Fest 2008 talk

Thursaday, July 24 -

12 pm,

Gus Hall,

A Finnish-American Don Quixote,

with Tuomas Savonen; renown Finnish reporter

PRESENTER

Starting from his Finnish roots and Minnesota childhood, Savonen will look at Gus Hall's studies in Moscow's International Lenin School, his actions as a labor organizer in Ohio in the 1930s, the Smith Act trial of the late 1940s and his prison sentence in Leavenworth. His four decades as the general secretary of the CPUSA, his presidential campaigns and his relations with the Soviet Union will also be discussed. A brief look at the dissolution of the CPUSA in the early 1990s will conclude the presentation

Tuomas Savonen is a 38-year old journalist and a graduate student of history from Helsinki. He earned his Master's degree in history from the University of Helsinki in 1997. Since 2000 he has worked as a journalist for the Finnish News Agency STT.

Below is a letter sent to Tuomas Savonen by

Alan Maki:

Mr. Tuomas Savonen,

I saw where you are going to be making a presentation on Gus Hall at FinnFest 2008:

I took note of this on the FinnFest 2008 Website:

Thur, July 24 - 12 pm, A Finnish-American Don Quixote, with Tuomas Savonen
Gus Hall, PRESENTER
Starting from his Finnish roots and Minnesota childhood, Savonen will look at Gus Hall's studies in Moscow's International Lenin School, his actions as a labor organizer in Ohio in the 1930s, the Smith Act trial of the late 1940s and his prison sentence in Leavenworth. His four decades as the general secretary of the CPUSA, his presidential campaigns and his relations with the Soviet Union will also be discussed. A brief look at the dissolution of the CPUSA in the early 1990s will conclude the presentation

Tuomas Savonen is a 38-year old journalist and a graduate student of history from Helsinki. He earned his Master's degree in history from the University of Helsinki in 1997. Since 2000 he has worked as a journalist for the Finnish News Agency STT.

I think this is great that such a prominent and distinguished member of the Finnish media would undertake this project… however, I have noticed on the information provided on the FinnFest 2008 website, that you will mention the “dissolution” of the Communist Party USA--- as if the CPUSA does not exist anymore; in fact, it does exist and there are members here in Minnesota, including myself.

There is also a Gus Hall Action Club in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There were serious problems in the CPUSA during the period you reference, many of those problems exist today… but, what is new? If it were not for problems life would be rather boring and you probably would not have a job in the news business. We are working on resolving the problems.

I will be distributing a leaflet at FinnFest 2008… “Gus Hall… North America’s most famous Finnish-American and the “Red” Finns of the Iron Range…. Because of their struggles and sacrifices working people have Social Security, unemployment compensation and powerful unions like the United Steel Workers, the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters Union today.”

I knew Gus Hall personally, and you are very likely to come across many of his friends and relatives while spending time at FinnFest 2008.

I hope your presentation will encourage many people to join the Communist Party USA, get involved in the peace movement and the struggle for socialized health care.

Please feel free to check out my blogs… the link is below.

I assume you have available the Gus Hall bibliography… it is a great informational book about Gus Hall and his writings.

Here is a list of some of the other blogs by Communists here in Minnesota:

http://gushallactionclub.blogspot.com/

http://theminnesotaproblem.blogspot.com/

http://thelunchpail.blogspot.com/

I have a number of blogs you may find of interest, including these two:

http://socialismtheoryandpractice.blogspot.com/

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

You might consider taking a visit to historic Mesaba Co-op Park about an hour’s drive, west, from Duluth while you are at Finn Fest; this was the meeting place of the “Red” Finns for over 50 years.

I am sure in doing your research on Gus Hall, you have come across some very slanderous, anti-communist materials. This is nothing new in the United States.

Anti-communism is like a state religion here as you are probably aware. Even Barack Obama is being attacked just because his “mentor,” Frank Marshall Davis, was a member of the Communist Party USA.

By the way, Mesaba Cooperative Park will have a table at FinnFest 2008… they will be selling their 75^th Anniversary publication and you will find material in there about Gus Hall and the Communist Party USA including two big advertisements from the Communist Party, so, you know the Communist Party USA is still around and kicking… our activities are reported in the media in Minnesota and Communists often write letters to the editors of their local newspapers as well as participate in all kinds of labor, environmental, civil rights and peace activities.

You might want to mention in your presentation that many of us learned about the class struggle and socialism from Gus Hall and we continue to fight on… As American Communists, we are naturally very proud of Gus Hall’s very important legacy and his many contributions to helping working people think through some very complicated and complex problems as they organized.

You may not be aware, but you can find tremendous historical materials about Gus Hall in the Communist Party USA files recently donated to the Tamiment Library in New York.

I have shared this letter with several others including the Communist Workers’ Party of Finland.

I have also shared this e-mail with John Meyers, a reporter for the Duluth News-Tribune; perhaps their newspaper would like to send a reporter to cover your presentation.

I travel widely and will prepare a poster on your talk encouraging people attending FinnFest 2008 to take in your presentation on Gus Hall.

Oh, and it is unfortunate that publications written by Gus Hall are no longer available through International Publishers, the publishing house of the Communist Party USA… but, for an explanation of this you might want to contact Betty Smith who is associated with a new group of “leaders” who are mired in confusion, hence, perhaps, giving you the idea that there has been a “dissolution” of the CPUSA. Betty Smith can be contacted at: service@intpubnyc.com

I hope to meet you at FinnFest 2008.

Alan

Alan L. Maki

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my blog:

Thoughts From Podunk

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Ok, Alan Maki has laid it on the line

(Photo: Alan Maki at Wellstone Monument south of Eveleth, Minnesota on Bodas Road)

This "Red" Finn tells it like it is...

From the blog of Alan Maki

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Ford may review truck plant closure plans, Coleman says

Two news stories, two approaches towards plant closings:

One headline reads:

Ford may review truck plant closure plans, Coleman says

Another headline blazes:

CAW boss disappointed after meeting with GM on plant closure, considers strike, other options

Obviously this closing of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant is far from the “done deal” that many, including the Minnesota AFL-CIO, Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, the UAW leadership and others have proclaimed as an excuse for not uniting working people in a struggle to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant and hundreds of jobs.

The time has come for Minnesota DFL State Senator James Metzen to boldly step forward pushing to pass S.F. 607 now!

It is time for the leaders of UAW Local 879 to fully mobilize the retired and active workers, flex their political muscle, and demand pay-back from the MN DFL for many years of loyal support.

The MN DFL has slavishly and shamefully been manipulated by the architects, contractors, bankers and real-estate speculators along with reactionary leaders of the building trades unions who have piggishly put a few jobs for their own members before the rights of autoworkers to continued employment and the welfare of the local community and the economy of our state.

Republican Norm Coleman opportunistically got involved in this issue to try to take the wind out of the sails from the huge Obama rally. However, what Coleman has done is reignite what we all know are the feelings of the vast majority of the people who want to see this plant kept opened.

If Ford won’t keep the plant open now; then, as we have been saying, public ownership is the only solution to saving this plant.

Working people should not be relying on Norm Coleman and the Ford Motor Company to keep this plant operating… this plant can easily and cheaply be re-tooled to produce many other socially necessary and useful products--- from the components for rail to electric or solar or wind generating equipment to making a product making hydro-electric generating plants more productive and efficient or even manufacturing hi-technology systems to bring fresh water to millions of people languishing from drought around the world to pollution control equipment to retrofit a vast assortment of polluting industries... what can be produced in the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant is only limited by our imaginations to turn production in this country towards meeting the needs of people and our living environment rather then seeing production which now takes place with the sole motivation of expanding the bottom line of the Wall Street coupon clippers.

The time has come to take the concept of "people before corporate profits" from mere rhetoric to reality in a way that creates a better life for working people and all of humanity.

Look, let’s be frank; a factory is a factory--- only a fool would destroy this kind of wealth embodied in the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant by taking a wrecking ball to it; workers don’t care what they produce, just so they continue getting a pay-check. Obviously, there are products which could be produced that are more socially useful and beneficial than others--- but, right now, our goal is to save hundreds of union jobs by saving this plant. If Ford doesn’t want to continue production, that is their problem--- our problem is to see that workers continue producing in this plant.

It is time for those like Norm Coleman who talk about “democracy” to bring Ford workers and Minnesotans who have subsidized this operation for over eighty-years into the decision making process. Up until now, politicians like Norm Coleman and Mayor Coleman have maneuvered to prevent working people and tax-payers from having a say in the decision-making process so fundamental to democracy.

It is shameful that Norm Coleman would opportunistically raise expectations about keeping this plant open for his own self-serving political reasons while leaving the final decision on the future of this plant to a bunch of greedy, exploiting parasites and Wall Street coupon clippers operating behind closed doors in Ford’s Detroit corporate boardroom.

It is time to bring the decision-making process over the future of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant to Minnesota--- where it belongs: with Ford workers and tax-payers having the final say.

The response from United States DFL Congresswoman Betty McCollum is equally as shameful as Norm Coleman’s self-serving attempt to use this issue as she belittled Coleman’s efforts instead of offering to join him and by bringing pressure to bear on State Senator Jim Metzen to get S.F. 607 through his Senate Committee on Business, Industry and Jobs which is dominated by the DFL over Republicans--- eleven to seven.

Which brings me to wonder if Coleman is really sincere; why doesn’t he pressure the seven Republicans on this Committee to get behind passing this very straight-forward piece of legislation which brings the decision–making process into Minnesota?

Why DFL Congressman James Oberstar and his staff of displaced iron ore miners has been in hiding every time this issue is brought forward needs to be explained, also; perhaps Peter Makowski would like to explain?

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s Iron Range staff member, Jerry Fallos, has been shamefully silent, too.

The Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party state convention is underway in Rochester this weekend… what will we hear from the Minnesota DFL on where it stands on the future of the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities assembly Plant?

In the past, James Oberstar has mesmerized convention delegates with his outstanding oratory of “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs;” will Congressman Oberstar have the moral and political courage to open his big mouth in defense of the jobs of Ford workers… which is also a defense of his constituents in the iron ore mines and taconite industry.

It is also time for Canadian and U.S. autoworkers to join hands in searching for solutions to the issues involved in these plant closures... combining the militancy and left-wing thinking of Canadian auto workers with cross-border calls for public ownership of these auto plants and/or nationalizations of the entire industry could prove to be a very powerful force for real change, which someone might want to talk to Barack Obama about; Canadian NDP leader Jack Layton should be up for this discussion.

Let's get former Manitoba NDP Premier Ed Schreyer involved in helping us in finding a solution to saving these auto plants... he managed to save a huge bus plant and hundreds of jobs in Manitoba... we could use his help here in Minnesota. Is anyone curious about how Premier Ed Schreyer, with help from the Communist Party of Canada-Manitoba, saved the bus plant in Winnipeg?

CAW leader Buzz Hargrove might want to consult with Ed Schreyer and the leaders of the CAW in Manitoba, too, in looking for a solution to keeping auto plants open. His sleazy affair with Liberalism hasn't seemed to pay off in saving a single job.

Ford may review truck plant closure plans, Coleman says

By KEVIN DIAZ, Star Tribune

June 6, 2008

WASHINGTON - Sen. Norm Coleman left a meeting with Ford Motor Co. officials Friday expressing optimism that the automaker will review its decision to close the plant in St. Paul that makes the Ranger pickup.

"I'm not raising any false expectations; all I've done is raise the curtain," Coleman told reporters during a conference call from Detroit.

"We'll see if it's fruitful or not."

The Minnesota Republican said he was given no time frame for the review. Ford plans to shutter the plant in September 2009, and Coleman acknowledged that "nothing's been changed, as of right now."

But he said that Ford officials told him that the changing vehicle market responding to $4-a-gallon gasoline is prompting sweeping reviews of operations, including the future of the Ranger, a medium-size pickup that is made exclusively at the plant in St. Paul's Highland Park neighborhood.

"It was clearly expressed to me that Ford is looking at all aspects of their operations," including the company's plans to close the plant, Coleman said. "That decision is being looked at. It is being reviewed."

Ford spokeswoman Angie Kozleski said Friday that the plan to close the plant has not changed, but that all operations are under review. "We are aggressive in lining up our capacity with demand, and are examining all areas of our business," she said.

Coleman flew to Detroit on Thursday, a day after he wrote Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally, asking that the company review its decision about the truck plant. Coleman noted that Ranger sales have increased this year, as car buyers move away from bigger and heavier sport-utility vehicles and pickups.

Coleman met Friday with Joseph Hinrichs, Ford's vice president for global manufacturing, and Curt Magleby, the company's director of government relations. He said the meeting came at "an opportune time," in light of two recent industry reports praising the Ranger and the plant where it is built.

On Wednesday, a J.D. Power survey ranked the Ranger second in its market segment for quality. On Thursday, a Harbour report ranked the St. Paul plant first in productivity.

"The [1,000] workers of the Ford plant should feel very proud of what they're doing," Coleman said.

Coleman, who has been criticized for not including other Minnesota politicians in his overtures to Ford, said he would talk Friday with Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a fellow Republican. He also said that he plans to talk with some Democrats.

"There are internal things that Ford has to do," Coleman said. "The good news is that all options are on the table."

CAW boss disappointed after meeting with GM on plant closure, considers strike, other options

By TOM KRISHER , Associated Press

June 6, 2008

DETROIT - The Canadian Auto Workers could strike or take other action against General Motors Corp. because the company won't budge on plans to close an Ontario pickup truck factory, the union's president said Friday.

Buzz Hargrove said the automaker committed to keeping the Oshawa plant open in a contract agreement on May 15. But earlier this week, GM said it would close the plant in 2009. It employs 2,600 hourly and 300 salaried workers.

After meeting with GM CEO Rick Wagoner on Friday in Detroit, Hargrove said the company wouldn't change its latest stance.

"We're walking away incredibly disappointed," he said. "We still feel betrayed."

GM said it can idle factories if market conditions warrant. In May, U.S. pickup sales fell more than 38 percent, and the company has said the market declined more rapidly than expected last month.

Detroit-based GM announced Tuesday it was closing Oshawa and three other pickup truck and sport utility vehicle factories as $4 per gallon gas has caused sales to tumble.

Union officials described the 90-minute meeting as tense. Hargrove said the CAW would decide its next move after its national convention later this month. Other moves could include arbitration, legal action or filing a complaint with Canada's labor board, he said.

A union blockade of GM's Oshawa offices will continue, union officials said.

Hargrove said market conditions haven't changed in the 2 1/2 weeks since GM agreed to the new three-year deal with the CAW.

"We haven't seen any evidence of that whatsoever," he said, adding that gasoline prices haven't changed since then.

Hargrove said the union has time to decide its next move because the plant isn't scheduled to close until 2009.

"They made a clear-cut commitment on the truck plant" to keep it open and invest in it, he said.

Wagoner told Hargrove and other union officials there was some promise of new products for the Oshawa car plant, Hargrove said. But the CAW president said that wasn't good enough.

Chris Buckley, president of the union local at the truck plant, said GM wrecked any trust it had with the union.

"They fractured the relationship severely," he said.

GM spokesman Stew Low said the factory commitments in the CAW contract are contingent upon board approval, market conditions and making a viable business case.

At the time of negotiations, GM still believed that the slumping pickup market could recover, Low said. Since then, the the trend away from trucks to cars has accelerated, he said.

"We're not in a situation where this is a cyclical type of economic condition where we can wait it out," he said. "We think it's a fundamental shift."

The decision to cease production at the four plants, including Oshawa truck, was made just a few days before Tuesday's announcement and after the bargaining was concluded, he said.

"We absolutely bargained in good faith," Low said.

Oshawa truck was picked for idling because it makes high-end pickups with more expensive options, a segment of the market affected severely by the sales decline, Low said.

Low said GM committed during contract talks to build a second car at the Oshawa car plant, and is looking at a third because the plant is flexible enough to build several models. He would not say what models.

The union's office blockade has forced GM employees to work from their homes, Low said.

GM shares fell 83 cents, or 4.9 percent, to $16.22 Friday after sinking to a 52-week low of $16.20 earlier in the session.

Posted by Alan L. Maki at 9:20 AM

Here is another view from Canada we aren't getting here in the States...

Union vows to step up action against GM

CAW fails to win reprieve for Oshawa plant

Last Updated: Friday, June 6, 2008 | 11:08 PM ET

CBC News

Canadian Auto Workers President Buzz Hargrove talks on a cellphone before entering a meeting with General Motors executives in Detroit, Mich., Friday. (Dave Chidley/Canadian Press)

Autoworkers blockading General Motors' corporate offices to protest the decision to shut down its Oshawa, Ont., truck plant vowed to introduce "phase two" of actions against the automaker on Saturday.

"What I can guarantee, and I said this to General Motors about an hour ago on the highway, they want their building back and they're not getting their building back," Chris Buckley, president of Canadian Auto Workers local 222 in Oshawa, told a crowd of union supporters Friday.

Buckley requested all union members be at the site of the blockade Saturday morning, where they will announce how they will step up their action.

The comments came just hours after CAW president Buzz Hargrove came out empty-handed Friday after asking GM executives to reverse a decision to close the truck plant.

GM officials and Hargrove met in Detroit to discuss the announced closure.

"He is leaving with nothing," the CBC's Havard Gould said.

Hargrove met GM CEO Rick Wagoner and other company executives to discuss the decision, announced Tuesday. The company said the Oshawa plant is one of four North American plants closing because of falling truck sales.

GM 'pulled the rug out from under us': Hargrove

"I'm very, very disappointed," Hargrove told CBC News. "I've worked with these people for a lot of years and they pulled the rug out from under us here."

As many as 2,600 jobs are at stake, and CAW members are continuing to blockade the Oshawa site to protest the planned closing, set for 2009.

Hargrove says GM is disregarding the terms of a new collective agreement reached just last month, but the automaker says the soaring price of gas has hit pickup truck sales hard, with no relief in sight.

'Good exchange' at Detroit meeting: GM

A spokesman for GM's Canadian operations, Stew Low, said the company understands the union's disappointment, but maintained there was a "good exchange" between the two sides at the Detroit meeting.

Low said the company did bargain in good faith for the latest collective agreement with the CAW, but demand for trucks and SUVs had plunged "rapidly and dramatically."

Angry union members reacted to the surprise closing announced Tuesday by setting up the blockade at GM headquarters.

Hargrove said he's determined to keep the truck plant open past 2009.

"We'll explore every avenue that's available to us," Hargrove said after the meeting with GM. "We think we have some legal grounds and we'll review all of our options with the local [union] leadership."

The CAW leader said those options included going to court and arbitration, but he wouldn't say whether any sort of strike action might be possible.

"I'm not going to speculate on that," he said.

General Motors executives have said their decision to close the Oshawa plant is within the terms of the three-week-old collective agreement.

Analysts have said there is a loophole in the agreement that allows GM take action if the market changes.

Truck sales off 39%: GM

Wagoner told a news conference in Wilmington, Del., on Tuesday that higher gasoline prices are changing consumer behaviour and rapidly affecting the auto industry sales mix.

"We at GM don't think this is a spike or a temporary shift. We believe that it is, by and large, permanent," he said.

As part of the consumer shift away from large trucks and SUVs, GM plans a 2010 launch of a new Chevrolet compact car, which will be built in Ohio. Wagoner also said the company has approved the launch of the Chevy Volt extended-range electric vehicle, which is tentatively slated to be built in Detroit.

Wagoner said GM is reviewing the future of the Hummer brand.

The company also said Tuesday that its U.S. sales of trucks in May were down 39 per cent compared to the same month last year. GM's overall sales of all vehicles were down 30 per cent year over year.

Closure 'a betrayal': union

In May, the CAW reached an agreement with GM to postpone a 900-worker layoff at the Oshawa truck plant until September 2009.

Chris Buckley, chairman of the CAW's master bargaining committee with GM, said he felt betrayed by the company's latest move.

"We just ratified a new three-year collective agreement on May 16," Buckley said. "We gave General Motors some cost savings to remain competitive here in Canada. General Motors felt comfortable enough to agree with the tentative agreement. They committed to products in this plant … and as of today they've pulled that product out from underneath us. It's nothing short of betrayal."

Buckley is one of the leaders of the blockade of GM's Oshawa headquarters, and said the action will continue until the company reverses its decision to close the truck plant.

With files from the Canadian Press

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The United States has 800 military bases on foreign soil...

What we need--- instead--- is 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States where people can universally access, for free, all their health care needs from pre-natal care, to general health care to eye, dental and mental care right through to burial.

Instead of moving in this progressive direction, President Barack Obama and the United States Congress are moving in a most reactionary direction towards establishing military bases in outer space as they seek to insure the profits of both the merchants of death and destruction and the profit-driven health care industries... talk about skewed priorities and your wacky ideas devoid of common sense.

In addition to these 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil, Barack Obama and the United States Congress continue funding--- with our tax-dollars--- the Israeli killing machine to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

A network of 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States would create over four-million good-paying, decent jobs--- talk about your "economic stimulus" package!

We would be planting the seeds of socialism while helping to eradicate poverty as we keep people healthy and get them well when sick.

Think about this kind of solution in relation to what Barack Obama, the U.S. Congress and the Wall Street bankers and coupon clippers are offering the American people, and the peoples of the world... just what is the reason for bailing out the banks and AIG and maintaining more than 800 expensive U.S. military bases of foreign soil?

The Mt. Carmel Clinic in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada offers us a glimpse at what militarization and wars continue to rob us of.

The problems created by Wall Street will not be solved as long as the military-financial-industrial complex is allowed to squander human and natural resources on militarism and wars... we might just as well be dumping these resources out into the ocean... at least no one would die in wars.

These merchants of death and destruction must be stopped if humanity is to survive in a livable world.

The time has come to talk about the working class Marxist politics and economics of livelihood... capitalism has failed humanity miserably and left us a real mess.

Something for working people to think about and discuss around the dinner table... the capitalist sooth-Sayers certainly are not going to broach such solutions to the problems of working people as they hide behind the skirt of Rosy Scenario as this global capitalist economic depression intensifies.

Alan Maki

The Real Lesson of the New Deal for the US Left

Mar 03, 2008 at 08:00 PM

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

It never did and it never will. --Frederick Douglass

Seventy-five years ago this March, the Presidential inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt ushered in a new era of US capitalism in response to the seemingly bottomless decline of production, trade, and employment which began with the stock market crash in October of 1929. Dubbed the “New Deal,” the policies of the Roosevelt administration sought to restore growth and employment in new and untested ways.

Political liberals and a large section of the left fondly remember the New Deal as a great era of reform and social change that established a more benign social order befitting the nation’s democratic tradition. Conservatives and business interests demonize the period as a vast social experiment that harmfully distorted the normal functioning of a market economy, only to be corrected by the neo-liberal restoration brought forth by Ronald Reagan.

Much of today’s two-party politics is couched in these popular views. What remains of the Democratic Party progressive wing seeks a twenty-first century version of the New Deal while the rest of the Democrats and nearly all Republicans subscribe to the neo-liberal vision of radical individualism and unfettered markets revived by Reagan and those who followed.

Both views draw upon a flawed picture of the New Deal era.

When Roosevelt became President in March of 1933 (the last campaign to include a four-month span between the election and the inauguration), he faced both a deep and deepening economic crisis (The Great Depression) and great popular resistance to the human costs of the economic contraction. Between 1929 and 1933 gross national product in the US had fallen 46% and industrial production more than 50%. In human terms, unemployment reached 20-25% of the work force, totaling at least 13 million. Nearly half of all employees were either out-of-work or underemployed. Of those employed, average weekly earnings of production workers dropped by a third, compensated only partially by slipping consumer prices. Foreclosures, repossessions, hunger, failing health, mass migration, crime, and disillusionment plagued the working class.

The nation’s 6 million farms suffered greatly with over a million foreclosures in this period. Most farmers owned small farms or were tenant farmers (half of all farmers earned little more than $350 in 1929). Farmers were especially hard hit: their share of national income dropped from 12% in 1929 to 5% in 1932, a time when national income was dropping dramatically for every sector of the economy.

And, of course, African-Americans suffered the most. With most African-Americans living in the South under the brutal repression of institutional segregation, incomes and living standards were roughly half of that of white workers before 1929. African-Americans experienced the constant threat of lynching and a repressive apartheid regime that retained the de facto conditions of the pre-Civil War South. Conditions in the North were only marginally better. The economic decline pressed them even further behind the white working class.

The Hoover Response

From the October 1929 crash until the installation of Roosevelt in March 1933, President Herbert Hoover led the national response to the deepening crisis. Though faced with a Democratic House after November 1930, Hoover had no difficulty mustering political support for his recovery program. For the most part, he viewed the crisis as one of confidence. His deep faith in the rationality and ultimate soundness of capitalist markets led him to anti-crisis measures more dependent on confidence-building than action. Nonetheless, he moved to grant business a 1% reduction in income taxes in order to stimulate growth. Though the stock market rebounded, it crashed again in May 1930, followed by a grinding decline of prices, production and employment for the next two years.

Contrary to popular liberal lore, Hoover did not stubbornly refrain from all action. He acted vigorously to support big business, banks, and wealth. One of his first acts was to increase tariffs to the highest levels ever seen, hoping to protect the domestic market from dumping by other distressed economies. There is no reason to believe this had any noticeable ameliorative effect on the crisis.

In the face of agricultural impoverishment brought on by the collapse of prices and a persistent drought, Hoover signed a $20 million drought relief package for seed loans, but available for farm relief as well. The Hoover administration created a National Credit Corporation with assets of $500 million on November 10, 1931 to stimulate the flow of credit (gross domestic product was $91.2 billion in 1930). This move was also his answer to unemployment, assuming that increased business activity would “seep down” to the working class – an early version of what came to be called “trickle down” economics in our era.

Nearly immediately after the formation of the NCC, the administration established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend money to banks, insurance companies and other enterprises with a government subsidy of $500,000,000 and another $1,500,000,000 available from the sale of notes guaranteed by the government. Nonetheless, bank failures continued through 1932. It is, perhaps, useful to note that this stimulus package totaled well over 3% of the GDP at that time, a percentage greater than the plan agreed to by Bush and the Congress this year.

Often lost in the popular view of the Great Depression is the profound role of turmoil, struggle and rebellion. Too many histories of the period recount the actions of politicians while ignoring the mass upsurge that influenced and shaped their actions. Bonus marchers – World War I veterans seeking their promised bonuses from the war – gathered in Washington DC in June 1932 to protest. The Communist-led Workers Ex-Servicemen’s League called the march after Congress rejected its demands for immediate relief. Twenty-five thousand vets and their families responded, forced to set up squalid shelters on the barren land called Anacostia Flats, across the Potomac from the Capitol. In late July, Hoover ordered the military, under the leadership of the future military “heroes,” MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Patton, to attack the bonus marchers’ makeshift city. These brave warriors shamefully drew swords and bayonets and, quoting the New York Times, “Amidst scenes reminiscent of the mopping up of a town in the World War, Federal troops… drove the army of bonus seekers from the shanty village…” Indeed, this was a proud moment for our military. As one of the protester’s slogans said, “Heroes in 1917- Bums in 1932.”

Similarly, forced evictions were met by resistance. As soon as residents and their belongings were removed, neighbors and supporters returned them to the foreclosed homes. This process was repeated again and again throughout the US. It was the Communist-led Unemployed Councils that organized and inspired these defiant actions. The National Unemployed Council was founded on July 4, 1930 from the deliberations of 1,320 delegates (by 1938, the organization had 800,000 members). The first national demonstration against unemployment was called by the Communist- led Trade Union Unity League and the Communist Party on March 6, 1930 with over 1,250,000 participating (110,000 in NYC, 50,000 in Chicago, 50,000 in Pittsburgh…).

In the Midwest, farmers fought eviction and falling prices through various organizations: the bigger farmers followed the Farm Bureau Federation and the National Grange while the more numerous small farmers supported the Farmers National Holiday Association and the Communist-led National Farmers Union. NFU leader, John Simpson, was especially vocal and respected among small farmers. The latter two organizations were famously militant, often packing courtrooms and even threatening judges bent on granting evictions.

Communists were crucially active in the southern Sharecroppers Union, an organization uniting poor African-American and white farm workers in the segregated South.

Clearly, anger and resistance to the hardships of the Depression and the callousness of the Hoover administration were growing dramatically. This judgment was expressed emphatically in the Presidential election of 1932.

The First New Deal

Many historians usefully divide the New Deal into two periods: the first beginning with the Roosevelt inauguration of 1933 and the second beginning in 1935 after the landslide electoral victory of the Democrats in the 1934 midterm elections.

Roosevelt’s career as governor of New York was suggestive of the kind of liberalism he favored (the term really only took on its contemporary meaning with the New Deal). In general, he had no principled objection to limited public ownership of some assets when he deemed it beneficial. In addition, he supported legislation, on different occasions, that would afford working people an opportunity to better their conditions. Whether this was because of the political climate in New York or because of some deeper ideological commitment is hard to determine. Clearly, however, Roosevelt understood the profound sentiment for change that was stirred by the misery of the Great Depression. He also appreciated the insurgency that was springing up around the country.

In the primary campaign leading to the Democratic Convention, Roosevelt defused the contentious Prohibition issue and emphasized farmers, relief to banks and homeowners, tariff policy and the “forgotten man.” The latter phrase struck a chord that led him to speak even more forcefully for working people: “The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are in easy reach.” This statement clearly was presented as a reminder to the Democratic Party conservatives that the masses were in motion and needed to be heeded. An early clue to his policy approach was revealed by his unspecific endorsement of “bold, persistent experimentation.” Roosevelt won the nomination on the fourth ballot.

In the campaign against Hoover, Roosevelt supported the call for a repeal of Prohibition, a stance that would find favor with modern-day liberals advocating a live-and-let-live lifestyle. Conservatives attempted to force the issue to the center of the campaign, but Roosevelt had the good sense to subordinate the issue to economic policy.

To address the unemployment issue, Roosevelt called for greater relief. Paradoxically, he also endorsed the platform commitment to a balanced budget. His recovery program was a vague commitment to corporatism, the bringing together of all interests, all classes to cooperate under the banner of economic nationalism. To some on the left, this sounded dangerously like the program projected in fascist Italy and soon-to-be-fascist Germany. In hindsight, it may be difficult to understand this fear. But in 1932, many on the left saw the economic and political crisis of the time as intimately linked. Fascism was gaining ground in the world precisely as the world economy appeared to be spiraling towards disaster. It was not far-fetched to view fascism as a ruling class response to the growing economic disaster. Like the vague, early Roosevelt program, fascists advocated a strong state that would balance the interests of all classes under a nationalist banner. Some saw Roosevelt’s folksy, fatherly addresses to the nation as a New World version of the Old World charismatic leader.

One early left critic of the Roosevelt program was Lewis Corey, the pen name of one of the founders of the US Communist Party, Louis Fraina. Corey, an independent, eccentric, but sometimes insightful Marxist, saw state capitalism as the logical and necessary antidote to economic catastrophe. With this view, he was an early, prescient expositor of the theory of State Monopoly Capitalism. In his 1934 book, The Decline of American Capitalism, Corey sees the roots of fascism in the rise of state capitalism as a response to the Great Depression. He found state capitalism in Roosevelt’s vision and feared a desperate transition to fascism.

Nonetheless, Roosevelt’s promise of a new “economic constitutional order” proved popular with voters who wanted nothing if not change. Roosevelt won the election with nearly a seven million popular vote plurality, the largest majority since 1864, and all but five electoral votes. Such was the thirst for change.

It became clear during the transition that Roosevelt was determined to attack the Depression domestically, rather than pursue Hoover’s more often internationalist strategy. He saw the fundamental problem as a lack of domestic purchasing power to keep pace with domestic production Therefore, the key to recovery was to bring them in line. And recovery was the watchword of the first New Deal.

The notion of increasing mass purchasing power – increasing effective demand – to overcome a slumping economy has become associated with the thinking of economist John Maynard Keynes. Of course Keynes major work was not published until 1936, too late in the life of the New Deal to count as a major influence. Nonetheless many in the New Deal administration retrospectively embraced Keynes’ work as a further confirmation of the wisdom of their approach. Keynes’ views grew to dominate mainstream economics only to be overshadowed by neo-classic, liberal economics in the last thirty years. We shall see, however, how it remains a pillar of the post-war economy in the US.

Like most inaugural addresses, Roosevelt’s churned with rhetorical flourishes and vague, but suggestive proposals. His statement “[W]e must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline… with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife” further stoked the fear of fascism. His pronouncement that “The measure of the restoration lies in the extent in which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit” aroused those thirsting for social justice. And the “Good Neighbor” policy promised a peaceful, fair foreign policy.

But the first New Deal was about action and Roosevelt quickly called a bank holiday and an embargo on gold before meeting with some of the nation’s leading bankers. The crisis was so demoralizing that they were in no mood to resist government action. As a historian of the New Deal notes: “If the administration had been bent upon achieving radical reforms as a condition of recovery, it could have had them… including nationalization of the nation’s banks. As it was, a conservative solution, highly acceptable to bankers and businessmen, and symptomatic of the First New Deal, was decided upon.” (Basil Rauch The History of the New Deal, p. 63-64).

The Roosevelt Emergency Banking Bill was seen by many as a move strengthening the hand of big bankers. Swift action to balance the budget came at the expense of veterans’ benefits and federal salaries. For the most part, business was pleased, resulting in a fifteen per cent jump in the stock market.

Agricultural policies were largely shaped by conservative George Peek who was appointed to administer the program. The National Farmers Union and the Farm Holiday Association vigorously opposed them, calling a farmers' strike which was only postponed when the President intervened.

Roosevelt’s unemployment relief initiative was threefold: a Civilian Conservation Corps to employ 250,000 young workers in the national forests at subsistence wages, grants under the Federal Emergency Relief Administration that supplied states with monies in contrast to the Hoover administration’s loans, and the Public Works Administration, providing employment on federal infrastructure – an expansion of Hoover’s earlier program.

For industrial policy, Roosevelt hoped to achieve a compromise between labor’s demand for minimum wages and reduced hours (a thirty-hour work week) and management’s demand for a relaxation of anti-trust restraints and the tolerance of price-fixing. Labor’s gain in the resultant National Industrial Recovery Act was the famous Section 7a which promised that industrial codes would guarantee unspecified minimum wages and maximum hours along with collective bargaining rights. The NIRA was to be administered by General Hugh S. Johnson famed for organizing war production in World War I – a man not noted for liberal ideas. Roosevelt expressed the goal of NIRA as “…the assurance of a reasonable profit for industry and living wages for labor.”

In addition, the first New Deal brought the Tennessee Valley Authority into being, a project that established public ownership, if only in this exceptional instance, and brought affordable, rural electrification to a large sector of the South.

A Securities Act was passed in late May 1933 to protect the public from fraud and misrepresentation in the sales of financial instruments. And in June, the Glass-Steagall Act was passed separating investment banking from commercial banking, FDIC was established to minimally protect designated accounts from loss, and the Federal Reserve was given powers to influence interest rates and to restrain speculation. The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed late in the Clinton administration, contributing greatly to the financial chaos now afflicting the economy.

In foreign policy, the Roosevelt administration recognized the Soviet Union, but gave questionable support to the London Economic Conference, the last effort to apply an internationalist solution to the Great Depression.

For workers, the centerpiece of New Deal action was Section 7a of NIRA. The remainder of NIRA fostered the recovery of business, allowing enterprises to regulate themselves to restore prices and profits. Throughout 1933 that was precisely what the capitalists did with the encouragement of General Johnson, the administrator.

Section 7a was inspirational to labor, but in fact it was relatively toothless. Under pressure, Roosevelt urged business in June 1933 to voluntarily accept a thirty cents per hour minimum wage and a thirty-five hour work week. To further assuage labor, the Blue Eagle campaign – allowing compliant businesses to display the Blue Eagle insignia – was mounted. Neither changed the existing relationship between capital and labor. In early 1934, General Johnson conceded that that big business had accrued all the benefits of NIRA at the expense of small business, labor, and the consumer.

Nonetheless, despite the weak Section 7a and a nearly moribund AFL, workers took the spirit of 7a into their own hands, often prodded by Communists and the left. As Boyer and Morais recount in Labor’s Untold Story:

The law said that an employer had to bargain collectively with unions and millions of workers were suddenly becoming fanatically determined that employers would do just that. It became more imperative to them when the gains of NIRA as to wages and hours proved in the overwhelming majority of cases to be unsatisfactory. And when company unions were set up, their members often determined to capture them and transform them into real unions.

And it was on the picket lines that the workers struggled with their employers to make Section 7(A) of the NIRA mean something. In 1933 more than 900,000 workers went on strike for union recognition and wage increases, three times more than the previous year. Trade union membership zoomed as 775,000 workers flocked into labor organizations, 500,000 into the AFL, 150,000 into independent unions, and 125,000 into

the Communist-led Trade Union Unity League. The latter organization led strikes in steel, auto, coal mining, meatpacking and the beet sugar industry. In 1933 alone the TUUL conducted strikes of 16,000 autoworkers in Detroit, 5,000 to 6,000 steel workers in Ambridge, Pennsylvania and 2,700 meat packers in Pittsburgh. (p. 276)

Thus, the gains of workers from the first New Deal were won on the mass action front and not in the legislative chambers. As Basil Rauch recounts in The History of the First New Deal: “A wave of company union organizing swept the country when NRA was launched. Under these circumstances it became possible for businessmen to observe the child-labor and hours-and-wages provisions of the codes and at the same time reduce labor costs… [S]killed and semi-skilled categories lost more than unskilled and women workers gained, so that overall hourly earnings declined.” (p. 98)

Similarly, agricultural workers and farmers saw no gains from the first New Deal. Again Basil Rauch paints a bleak picture: “Dissatisfaction with the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration) became widespread… the farm products which were benefited were raised chiefly by large landowners, farming corporations, and banks and insurance companies which had become large owners of farm lands through foreclosures… Farm laborers, who were excluded from the provisions of the NRA, sharecroppers, and tenants usually received no share of AAA checks or found themselves put off the land as a consequence of the landowners’ reduction of acreage.” (p.102) Both the National Farmers Union and the Farm Holiday Association resisted these results.

Towards the end of 1933, the administration succumbed to public pressure and empowered the Civil Works Administration thereby staving off mass dissatisfaction by employing four million workers on various civil tasks, but the program was ended, nevertheless, the following April 1.

The year 1934 was a watershed – a year of aggression on the part of capital and ferocious fight back from labor. Capital organized under the banner of the viciously anti-labor Liberty League, spent vast sums on labor spies and security services, and cracked down hard on labor organizing. The KKK, the Black Legions, and the Sentinels of the Republic were unleashed to sow discord, ethnic intimidation and anti-Communism. The Smedley Butler affair – overtures to General Butler with the hope of staging a coup – occurred in 1934.

Perhaps no event signaled labor’s determination to meet these threats than the San Francisco general strike in May of 1934. Nearly 127,000 workers shut the city down in solidarity with striking seamen. The militancy of that action both inspired and foretold the mass uprisings to come.

The Roosevelt administration suffered a self-inflicted wound when it established the National Recovery Review Board in March of 1934. The independent Board was to review business practices during Roosevelt’s presidency. Chaired by Clarence Darrow, the Board delivered a scathing indictment of the advantages gained by capital under the NIRA. Darrow’s references to the advantages of socialism embarrassed the administration which never published the three reports.

The pro-business NIRA brought rising prices in 1934 coupled with falling production, employment and payrolls. At the same time, the administration witnessed a wave of strikes unprecedented since 1922 with militia called out in 19 states and 46 workers killed resisting. In general, Roosevelt was hostile to these labor actions.

Nonetheless, labor stood by Roosevelt in the interim election producing what historian Charles A. Beard called “thunder on the left.” A new, more radical Congress came to be, with the Republicans losing 10 Senators and 10 Representatives.

At the end of 1934, the first two years of the Roosevelt administration were characterized by intense, widespread and often violent class struggle between capital and labor. At best, the administration stood aloof. At worst, it demonstrated a partisanship for capital despite rhetorical disclaim. The unusual shift in a midterm election in a leftward direction was to redirect that trend.

The Second New Deal

Roosevelt fully understood the meaning of the 1934 elections. He spoke, in his January, 1935 State of the Union address, of the “clear mandate” given. Nonetheless, he offered a tortured explanation of that mandate: “We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.” It should be noted that despite these high sounding words, the administration opposed, early on, the Wagner Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act advocated by the new Congress.

On January 17, 1935, the Social Security Act was placed before Congress addressing unemployment and retirement benefits. The debate on and evolution of this bill serves as a pattern for much of later New Deal legislation. For the most part, critics saw it as too limited in scope. The AFL leadership objected to its reliance for funding upon payroll taxes instead of income taxes. Earl Browder, speaking for the Communist Party, went further. He argued that funding should come from taxes on the wealthy and capital. The bill passed in August, amended to block the administration’s desire to allow private insurance companies to offer larger annuities outside of the system.

One can say that the second New Deal was a response to the recognition that “seep down” (“trickle down” in the Reagan-era jargon) policies of stabilizing prices and offering assistance and encouragement to capital had failed. Instead, the administration accepted that only by directly increasing the economic means of the masses could the economy recover. The Keynesian notion of the necessity of massive public spending on jobs and relief was largely adopted. In the view of Roosevelt’s team, increasing effective demand by putting cash into the hands of under and unemployed workers would stimulate the economy where business incentives had failed. Payrolls in December of 1934 were only 60% of those in 1926 while dividends and interest were 150% of their level in that year.

Thus the alphabet soup of New Deal programs increased and enlarged through 1935. Four billion dollars were allocated to state relief programs. The Works Project Administration (WPA) was established in May which in the next two years accounted for 1600 new schools, 105 airport landing fields, 1600 clinics, 36,000 miles of rural roads, dams, traveling libraries, millions of school lunches and medical home visits, and the well-known arts projects. Wages were below prevailing levels, but above welfare payments. An unforeseen (and likely unwelcome) consequence of this program was stirrings among the WPA workers for union representation.

The administration’s agricultural program, AAA, had only added to the process of reducing farmers to tenancy. As a result, over 40% of all farmers were saddled with tenancy. To address this, the administration established the Resettlement Administration which offered tenants farm ownership on easy terms and cooperative farm equipment. Little distribution of new farm acreage was achieved and Southern sharecroppers and migrant workers were essential ignored.

Under pressure from leftist youth organizations and massive youth unemployment and poverty, the administration created the National Youth Administration which spurred a national organization, the American Youth Congress. The organization proved to be a seedbed for left, radical recruits and an embarrassment to the administration (except Eleanor Roosevelt!). Redbaiters attacked the organization vociferously.

Under pressure from the crackpot Townsendites, the legitimately populist ideas of Huey Long, the labor movement and Communists, Roosevelt sought to revise tax policies. Like the Social Security Act, the Wealth Tax Bill was a minimalist program designed to add purchasing power to the masses without a shock to the basic mechanism of capitalism. As it passed in August 1935, corporate taxes were lowered slightly for small businesses and raised slightly for large corporations. Taxes on individuals with earnings over $1,000,000 were graduated steeply to 75% on incomes over $5,000,000. An excess profits tax was also passed.

Probably the most important legislative action of 1935 was not initially supported by the administration. Though the Wagner-Connery Labor Relations Act was overwhelmingly passed by Congress, the administration feared the hostility of capital and leaned towards extending NIRA and Section 7(a) instead – recovery was one thing, social justice another. The bill outlawed company unions and guaranteed exclusive union recognition by majority assent. NRA’s General Johnson fought the measure to the end, arguing for “minority” rights for workers who did not support the majority decision. While the AFL strongly supported the bill, President William Green made the curiously conservative argument: “We cannot and will not continue to urge workers to have patience, unless the Wagner bill is made law, and unless it is enforced, once it becomes law.” But while Green was flaunting his restraint, a maverick group of AFL dissidents, leftists, and Communists was moving to take the labor movement in a different, more radical direction, a direction that would militantly and successfully confront capital and shift the balance between capital and labor for many years.

Led by Mineworkers’ John L. Lewis, the Committee for Industrial Organization (later the Congress of Industrial Organizations) was founded on November 10, 1935. The event was electrifying, releasing all the pent-up frustration and determination of unorganized, super-exploited industrial workers. A massive strike wave swept through industrial plants through the remainder of 1935 and throughout 1936. Rubber workers, autoworkers, steelworkers, electrical workers and other industrial workers, organized and encouraged by selfless, often Communist, CIO organizers, took to picket lines, frequently resorting to the militant and effective tactic of the sit-down strike. Despite hostility and red-baiting by the AFL leadership, despite violent, organized resistance on the part of capital, despite brutal, anti-labor actions by police and militia and a hysterical media, they succeeded in organizing millions of workers into new industrial unions. Unlike their AFL counterparts, these new, fighting unions embraced democratic principles, anti-racist policies, and, most importantly, class struggle. By 1940, the CIO had organized 3.8 million members into the CIO unions.

This historic movement had two consequences seldom acknowledged in standard accounts of the New Deal. Firstly, the wage gains added much buying power to the New Deal effort to stimulate economic activity. The shift in the balance of forces between capital and labor corrected some of the crisis-inducing inequalities of the “prosperity” of the twenties. In his address to the 1939 CIO Convention, Phillip Murray noted: “[We] have increased the national purchasing power of the workers in the United States approximately $5,000,000,000 per year.”

Secondly, the organizing campaign also marshaled enormous influence over the 1936 elections, benefiting both Roosevelt and the Congress. The landslide victory of the Democrats owed much to the sympathies stirred by this powerful struggle. Despite demons concocted by the capitalist media, most voters identified with the fighting workers.

Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s attempt to derail the New Deal in 1935-1936, the legislative agenda continued, led by a Congress generally more aggressive than the administration. To his credit, Roosevelt chose to ride the wave of change and economic justice unleashed by the CIO in his 1936 election campaign. Unlike modern “triangulators,” he spoke to and for the masses of workers and farmers. Some of his most militant rhetoric came forth in the 1936 campaign such as his oft-cited attack upon “economic royalists”.

Roosevelt spoke of 200 corporations controlling half of the nation’s wealth: “This concentration of wealth and power… has been a menace to the social system as well as to the economic system which we call American democracy.” He took this message vigorously to all reaches of the country.

The 1936 election was a landslide victory for the Democrats and New Deal policies. Roosevelt received 60.8% of the votes and the new congress was overwhelmingly Democratic (3/4 of the Senate, nearly 4/5 of the House). Even the “independent” Supreme Court felt the wave and softened its opposition to the New Deal.

The Communists ran Earl Browder and James Ford in the presidential election. Though placing the dangers of fascism and reaction at the center of their campaign, they sought to raise issues that would, in fact, strengthen the popular base of the New Deal. Where the Democrats were weakest – on racial equality – the candidacy of Ford, an African-American, brought greater awareness to the forefront.

Armed with this powerful mandate, the administration curiously emphasized organizational issues over social justice. It used the early part of 1937 to advocate Supreme Court reorganization – despite the Court’s newfound spirit of cooperation – and an Executive Reorganization Bill which sought to make changes in the executive branch of the government. While Roosevelt argued that these moves would be both democratically and managerially sound, mistrust fractured the unity of the New Deal coalition. The component designed to expand civil service was clearly democratic in character, but the other elements were not nearly as unambiguous. Many wondered why a President with unprecedented power and an overwhelming mandate pressed so hard for mere formal shifts in power, for example by trying to weaken the judicial branch.

No satisfactory explanation of Roosevelt’s path is available, but clearly it was a setback for both the quest for social justice and a deepening of progressive reforms. We can only speculate that Roosevelt lacked a confidence in the support of the masses or, more likely, felt a fear of unleashing further radical change, choosing institutional changes over stoking the democratic upsurge that propelled him to unprecedented popularity. Perhaps, there are some similarities with the recent institutional changes urged by President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Like the Roosevelt administration, the Chavistas lost some of the momentum won by enormous electoral victories by choosing institutional change over engaging the masses more directly in the pursuit of change.

The Administration lost further steam by aggressively attempting to balance the budget in 1937. With the economy sharply rebounding, administration officials began to sound the fear of inflation, urging budgetary restraint. Federal spending was cut drastically, with the WPA nearly shut down. Consequently, the economy quickly sank into decline.

Industrial production fell drastically (35% in 9 months), prices fell and unemployment jumped dramatically.

Through the first months of 1938 Roosevelt stayed firmly with the policy of fiscal restraint urged by capital. This appeasement of business only deepened the crisis. In April, Roosevelt reversed his policies, reviving WPA with $1. 25 billion for employment and further funding other programs to the total of $3 billion. The Congress overwhelming approved these moves.

The turnabout of policy led to a turnabout in economic activity. Almost immediately, industrial production, employment, prices, and payrolls begin to climb. Nonetheless, the US economy never reached pre-Depression levels of employment and industrial production until 1939, seven years after their lows. By then, the mandate of 1936 was gone, eroded and crippled by the retreat of 1937 and the fresh economic slump of 1937-1938. The momentum of New Deal progressive legislation was lost without achieving the goals of full recovery or social justice.

The Roosevelt administration passed only one important New Deal policy in 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act. It gave minimum wage and maximum hours protection to non-union workers and restricted the use of child labor. The administration’s interest started shifting to the looming European War and managing the US attitude towards it. Defense spending began to rise and war fears were stoked, diverting attention from domestic problems. Right-wing legislators successfully exploited these fears, warning of “un-American” activities. A new red scare emerged, fueling intense red-baiting extending even to unions and the more progressive New Dealers. The attack on labor reached absurd heights: Eighty-five unions faced indictment in 1940 under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Recovery came only with the massive war spending of the Second World War. The ruling class found a new economic stimulus with military employment and the Federal government pumping massive revenues into war industries. Military Keynesianism brought high productivity and labor cooperation through patriotic sacrifice and effort. Military pump priming brought huge profits through government contracts tolerant of waste and cost-escalation. The destructiveness of war and the race for more lethal weapons promised an endless growth of demand. Thus, capital found, for that moment, the answer to the challenge of the Great Depression without conceding much ground to the people.

THE NEW DEAL BALANCE SHEET

We have in no way offered a complete or thorough history of the New Deal. We have, however, unlike most histories of this period, presented these six or seven years as a history of class struggle. Where most accounts stress the political maneuvers of the two parties or the legislative agenda of the Roosevelt team, we have attempted to show the impact of mass action upon the policies of the ruling class. Faced with a groundswell of dissatisfaction backed with organized opposition, desperate elites sought to treat a wounded capitalism while restraining the radically democratic expectations of those participating in this struggle.

Writers stress the two-fold goals of the New Deal as recovery and reform. In fact, the Roosevelt administration sought to stabilize a system that had, by the resounding dominance of capital over working people, run aground. As the Labor Research Association publication Trends in American Capitalism shows the average industrial worker gained only 15% in real annual earnings between 1919 and 1929 while producing 53% more than in 1919. Thus, the so-called “golden age” of capitalism was only golden for those who reaped the fruits of this increase in production and not the workers producing the “gold.” Moreover, workers were in no position to absorb the commodities generated by this rapid growth in production. The authors of Trends in American Capitalism concluded, “It was this very sharp disparity between the expanded volume of production and the relatively restricted incomes of the workers that helped bring on the violent crash of 1929 and the ensuing great crisis and depression.”

Leading up to the 1932 election, the only certainty was that Hoover had failed and change was desired. Entering office with these strong winds behind him, Roosevelt set out on a deliberately cautious and experimental course. Like Hoover, he hoped that incentives to capital would produce a growth in employment and prices which would “jump start” the economy and “seep down,” increasing the buying power of the masses. These quaint, shallow metaphors still serve conventional bourgeois economics in our time.

Unemployment remained stubbornly high and wages desperately low. But capital fared rather better after 1933. Small businesses were devastated between 1929 and 1932 (50% more failures in 1932 than 1929), a time of survival of only the fittest (and biggest) enterprises. From 1933 on, business failures and annual liabilities dropped precipitously. By 1936 failures were 40% of the failures reported in 1928 with liabilities reduced almost as much. Clearly the New Deal was successful in stabilizing the business community!

Real gross private domestic product per man hour (productivity) grew consistently from 1933 through 1939 with only a pause for the 1937 relapse. The level of productivity rose by 28% between 1933 and 1939 with the productivity level of 1929 surpassed in 1934. At a time of mass unemployment and a deteriorating standard of living, those lucky enough to have jobs were squeezed even harder – labor exploitation increased steadily during the New Deal. Likewise, farm labor failed to recover until 1942. The wage rate per day without room and board stood at $2.30 in 1928. In 1940 it was only $1.60.

The only counterforce to this trend was the intense struggle on the part of labor.

But even with the mass militancy, consumer price-adjusted spending per capita only surpassed 1929 levels in 1940! The New Deal achieved little in improving the standard of living of the masses.

Thus, contrary to the conventional liberal view, the New Deal generated a business recovery without a concomitant recovery for the working class. Despite an intense, militant class struggle bringing millions into confrontation with capital, the numbers show that the Roosevelt administration betrayed their hopes in fact.

Popular accounts view the second New Deal as an era of the reform of capitalism. While the number of programs grew dramatically, the figures cited above challenge the performance of the second New Deal if not the actual merit of the reform claim. Undoubtedly, the second New Deal brought relief, some institutional relief, like Social Security and a legal minimum wage and restrictions on child labor. But even in this arena, the record shows a measured, cautious commitment. During the Hoover years of the Great Depression, social welfare expenditures grew from 3.9% of GDP to 7.9% of GDP, an increase of over 100%. Social welfare expenditures rose even more under Roosevelt, peaking at 13.2% of GDP in 1936, the year of Roosevelt’s greatest electoral mandate. But spending dropped dramatically in the next two years to 9% of GDP, only to spike again in 1939 in response to the mini-depression of 1937-38. Even at its peak in 1936, nearly 40% of the relief total was veteran’s benefits of the long denied World War I bonus provided in the form of US bonds One might be cynically tempted to see the administration as using veterans’ relief as an election year ploy.

Where the dominance of capital was actually challenged – the Wagner/Connery Bill – the Roosevelt administration was at best neutral, at worst in opposition.

The acronymic expansion of New Deal programs brought an accompanying explosion of government employees. Paid civilian government employees rose from 603,587 in 1933 to 953,891 in 1939, topping a million the following year. Thus, the New Deal did succeed in increasing Federal employment at a much faster rate than in the private sector.

Further evidence of this failure to restore employment is demonstrated by WPA figures: Works Project Administration Employment numbers marched steadily forward, peaking in 1939 at 2,911,000. Even in 1941 1,638,000 workers were employed by WPA. Similarly, Civilian Conservation Camp employment expanded consistently to a high of 919,000 in 1941. Thus, on the eve of World War II, there was a surplus of employable citizens totally 8,117,000 engaged in WPA, CCC, or without work - roughly 8% of the entire adult population. This reserve army of workers, workers desperate for real employment, makes the successes of union organizing in the New Deal period even more impressive and the plight of the unorganized even more tragic.

Apart from the liberal myths surrounding the achievements of the New Deal, a look at the statistics regarding civilian consumption between 1933 and 1937 – the most intense period of government intervention – reveal a mixed, but significant decline. While beef, fish, fresh vegetable, and egg consumption were up, pork, chicken, turkey and – staples of the working class diet – lard, milk, potatoes, wheat flour, corn flour and meal were down. In the same period, gross national product grew by 62.6%. The fruits of the New Deal were not “seeping down” to the masses. After a decade of government intervention, earnings in key industries still trailed their 1929 levels: by 12% in manufacturing, 10% in mining, and 24% in construction.

Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor” foreign policy proved to be neither always neighborly nor always virtuous. When fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia, the administration invoked the Neutrality Act of 1935 to deny weapons shipments to either party. This course flaunted the fact that Italy was the aggressor and Ethiopia desperately needed assistance against this unprovoked attack. And when Franco and his fascist allies attempted to destroy the legitimate government of Spain the following year, millions everywhere saw the struggle as a bulwark against the further military aggression of the extreme right militarists. The US response was to again invoke the Neutrality Act, effectively blocking any but the most determined assistance to the Republic. At the same time little effort was made to restrain the insurgents and their German and Italian allies.

Similarly, the Neutrality Act thwarted needed aid to the Chinese when the Japanese invaded China in 1937. Even the sinking of an American gunboat by the Japanese failed to change this false neutrality that, in fact, encouraged aggression and fascist audacity. Good neighbors should be able to distinguish between friendly visitors and brutal intruders.

The Roosevelt administration showed a more aggressive side to its neighbors to the south. When Mexico nationalized oil in 1938, reprisals came quickly, including a boycott of Mexican oil. Basil Rauch notes “[t]he suspicions [at the time] that the Good Neighbor policy was merely a new mask for economic imperialism…”(p. 336).

THE REAL LESSON OF THE NEW DEAL

Howard Zinn wrote of the New Deal: “The Roosevelt reforms went far beyond previous legislation. They had to meet two pressing needs: to reorganize capitalism in such a way to overcome the crisis and stabilize the system; also, to head off the alarming growth of spontaneous rebellion in the early years of the Roosevelt administration – organization of tenants and the unemployed, movements of self help, general strikes in several cities.” (A People’s History of the United States, p. 383)

Zinn gets many things right: he understands the undercurrent of class struggle that fundamentally shaped the populist aspects of the New Deal, he appreciates the imperative of stabilizing and recharging a stagnant capitalist system, and he recognizes that the Roosevelt administration brought something new to the state’s relationship with capital. But he gets some important things wrong as well.

But Zinn is not alone in misunderstanding the meaning of the period between the onset of economic decline and the beginnings of the US engagement in World War II.

Today liberal Democrats and social democrats point to the New Deal as a model for a humane and democratic society.

Undoubtedly, there was a massive effort to bring relief to those harmed most by capitalism’s stumble. But the facts show how this effort was forced by the organized resistance and near rebellion of millions of working people and farmers. The ever-growing electoral mandate for more radical change was pacified by both relief efforts and moralistic rhetoric. Yet the Roosevelt administration neither proposed nor wholeheartedly accepted any change that fundamentally altered the relationship between capital and labor to the benefit of the people. There was no nationalization and little expansion of public ownership outside of the TVA. Government employment in such agencies as the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps was always assumed to be temporary with the exception of a swollen Federal bureaucracy. True, hitherto untried government regulation expanded enormously, but all in the interest of establishing rules that would smooth the way for a more viable capitalism. A majority of an occasionally divided ruling class recognized from harsh experience that slash-and-burn capitalism threatened the continued existence of the system. That was the thrust of the first sentence of NIRA Title I: “A national emergency productive of widespread unemployment and disorganization of industry, which burdens interstate and foreign commerce, affects the public welfare, and undermines the standards of living of the American people, is hereby declared to exist.” Thus, NIRA was both an emergency and a temporary ameliorative to be entrusted to the administration of a conservative, business-friendly General Johnson.

Liberals see the New Deal as a forbearer of the welfare state that bloomed in Europe after the Second World War and less vigorously in the US. There is some truth to this, though the trend to offer relief began during the Hoover administration in the US and with mass pressure and popular front and labor governments in Europe (Social insurance was established in France in 1930, family assistance in 1932. The US was among the last industrial countries to adopt a national pension system.). Clearly what has come to be viewed as a feature of mature capitalism was directly and proportionally based upon the relative strength and organization of the workers’ movements in their respective countries. Its continuance after the War was thanks to a militant left and the necessity on the part of ruling circles to present a humane face against the appeal of socialism throughout most of the world. This is apparent from the mounting efforts to dismantle the welfare state after the fall of the Soviet Union and the simultaneous decline and confusion of the left. As neo-liberalism spread in the 1980’s and 1990’s as the dominant and pervasive ideology in capitalist countries, much of organized labor shifted from pressing labor’s interests to defending and promoting their national industries and enterprises against borderless competition. The attempted destruction of the welfare state further sapped the strength of labor, creating a larger pool of impoverished, unorganized, desperate workers forced by the market to settle for lower wages. The labor movement’s less than effective defense of the welfare state did not forestall releasing what Marx called the “Reserve Army of the Unemployed” from the bondage of relief.

Another shamefully ignored lesson from the New Deal era is the relationship between crime, poverty, and economic desperation. As in every period since industrialization, crime and incarceration are guides to the true status of the working class. Over a twenty year span, the suicide rate peaked in 1932 and the homicide rate in 1933, the crest of unemployment. Incarceration, as one might expect, reached its zenith a few years later. With more US citizens incarcerated today than anywhere else in the world, one looks in vain for a mainstream leader who makes the connection.

While welfare economics was often seen as offering a stimulus to capitalism, the capitalists found an even better, more agreeable mechanism during the Roosevelt administration. If we were to pretend that 1941-45 was not a period of unparalleled, devastating international bloodshed, we would credit Roosevelt with achieving his goals in this period: the economy recovered and grew enormously, unemployment was virtually eliminated, and there was relative peace between capital and labor. But, of course, we know that was because conscription absorbed the unemployed, war production boomed, and patriotism brought unity in place of class struggle. And this would prove to be a profound lesson for the ruling class. Even as early as 1938, with war in Europe and even greater war looming, military orders for home and abroad were accounting for more and more of the economy’s recovery. With the full hitching of the economy to military needs, unemployment was statistically non-existent by the end of 1942, wages and industrial growth rocketed past pre-depression levels, and the trend continued until the post-war recession. And the war brought an important moral reminder to the ruling class: depravation and sacrifice on the part of the working class is more palatable when clothed in nationalism and accompanied by patriotic music. An unspoken truth about the Great Depression is that it was overcome by a partly planned, “command,” non-market war economy – the economic mechanism often associated with socialism. But this was not socialism of the people, but a “socialism” of capital.

One can see the scope of this war-induced road to recovery by comparing the public debt incurred during the New Deal with the public debt accumulated during wartime. At its peak, the New Deal public debt never exceeded $59 billion (1939). At the end of World War Two, the public debt stood at $265.9 billion. From 1933 to 1939 New Deal reform and recovery grew public indebtedness by $18.4 billion. From 1939 to 1945, the debt grew by $206.9 billion! Imagine the US if the “sainted” Roosevelt and the New Deal politicians had made a similar commitment to the people’s needs, a commitment to education, public health, infrastructure, leisure, incomes, etc. But it was not to be.

The war against fascism and Japanese imperialism was justified; the elimination of Nazism, fascism, and Japanese imperialism was a costly, but necessary calling. The sacrifices were great, but not for capital. Wartime profit well exceeded historic rates.

Perhaps Roosevelt’s greatest legacy is the establishment of a war economy as the basis for expanding economic activity. Absent a world conflagration of the tragic dimensions of World War II, US ruling circles have nonetheless chosen to pursue a perpetual war economy over developing public assets, encouraging productive employment, or expanding equitably the consumption of the masses. They have created threats where little or none exists to demoralize a public that succumbs to a manipulated, media-driven trade off between the common good and bogus security. The Cold War and the current “Global War on Terror” serve as a constant, never-ending framework for imperial adventures on behalf of a state which serves monopoly capital. From covert activities, military interventions and surrogate wars in Greece, Indo-china, Iran, Guatemala and Korea to the interventions in Grenada, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua at the end of the Cold War, anti-Communism served as a handy excuse for maintaining a war footing. Those who foolishly thought that the Soviet Union’s demise would slow the tempo of military spending were rudely presented with an international “liberation mission” in Iraq and “humanitarian intervention” in the purposely dismantled Yugoslavia. Today, of course, the excuse for war comes from a new set of imaginary adversaries: the comic book “axis of evil,” “Islamo-fascists,” and exotic “terrorist cells.” The very words conjure bigotry-laced images of fanatical, childhood bad guys.

This devotion to military spending affords many opportunities for capital: nearly all of the corporate world can participate in this enormously wasteful enterprise – weapons manufacturers, construction companies, myriad services, technology firms, transportation, etc, etc; demand emanates from government orders and is predictable, precise, and ever growing; competition is minimal or non-existent; payment is guaranteed; there is little pressure for cost containment. Where once these were presented as the supposedly fatal inefficiencies of a Soviet-style planned economy, they are today wholly embraced by the titans of monopoly capital. And they are extraordinarily profitable.

Chalmers Johnson, an always insightful progressive, estimates that military spending from 1947 to 1990 added up to an astounding $8.7 trillion. Add several trillion to get us to 2008 and one gets some rough idea of the enormous opportunity lost by what Johnson calls “military Keynesianism” (Of course the costs of a war economy far exceeds the annual official budget). One cannot calculate how many lives were adversely affected by establishing this priority over a war on cancer, poverty, mental illness, environmental hazards, etc, etc.

Sixty years before Chalmers Johnson’s condemnation of “military Keynesianism”, Communist leader William Z. Foster anticipated his point by describing “big capital” Keynesianism.

In a speech in 1948, he said: “Building a war economy has many political advantages for the reactionary capitalist Keynesians… Armament expenditures by the government are incomparably more favorable from a profit standpoint to the capitalists… in contrast to the less profitable reformist program of public works and the strengthening of the workers’ buying power and social security systems. Moreover, gigantic munitions orders can easily be secured under the cover of hysterical war scares, and besides this, the resultant militarization greatly facilitates big capital’s drive toward fascism… At the same time that the big capitalists readily agree to have the government spend billions yearly for the war economy, they also fill the air with strident cries for government “economy”. It will be seen, however, that their ideas of economy in government sum up pretty much to reducing the outlay of all sorts of social services and to the securing of lower taxes for themselves.”

And so it came to pass. This too is the legacy of the New Deal.

Soviet writers correctly saw the New Deal as the beginnings of the fundamental shift from monopoly capitalism to state-monopoly capitalism in the US. They perceptively note that: “American historians tend to ignore the objective fact that statist processes underlay FDR’s reforms, and exaggerate the importance of FDR himself while underestimating the working class struggle for progressive reforms” (The US Two-Party System: Past and Present, unidentified authors, p. 242) Born with the New Deal was the notion that the state had a right – more a duty – to steer the economic ship of capitalism over rough shoals. Of course government was never the neutral arbiter of bourgeois fiction. States are captured by classes and require revolutionary restructuring to serve a different class. But before the New Deal, the affairs of business were the affairs of business alone. The New Deal brought a blending of government and monopoly. Insofar as mass action may press militantly for reforms, the state will accommodate this pressure in ways that will protect monopoly capital and disarm the challenge of radical change. Otherwise, the state will oversee the workings of monopoly capital in ways that will promote its growth and dominance. This new, enlarged role for the state was necessitated by the failings of laissez-faire capitalism prior to the Great Depression. Ironically, as state-monopoly capitalism has matured, both its corporate and state managers have arrogantly assumed that there are no rough shoals in sight, embracing the neo-liberal ideology of de-regulation, privatization and rampant speculation – the “slash and burn” capitalism that fueled the Great Depression.

To a great extent, state-monopoly capital has born the responsibility of collaborating with capital, indeed merging its interests with monopoly capital, in two ways, depending upon the circumstances. In times of crisis, the state acts as they did in the New Deal periods to obviate the knots and competitive destruction that slows and obstructs the health and growth of capital. For the New Deal this included encouraging the cooperation of capital in pricing and business practices between large firms. This was the thrust of NIRA and its codes, retreating from the former laissez-faire policies of anti-trust action against combination and collusion. In addition, credit and loans were extended to businesses to encourage growth. The function of job creation and maintenance was directly assumed by government through WPA and CCC. As a result, business fared rather well throughout the thirties, contrary to popular belief, while labor struggled for its very limited gains. In better times, state-monopoly capital strives to remove regulatory fetters from capital, develop new ways to remove tax burdens from capital, and direct public funds to capital. Privatization, "non-profit" expansion, and so-called "Public-Private Partnerships" are tools in this endeavor. All of these mechanisms shift public wealth into private hands under the guise of efficiency or cost savings. The railway system is a good example. When rail transportation was extremely profitable, capital insisted that it remain in private hands. As profitability declined, the services necessary for interstate commerce were assumed by the government and supported by public funds. When rail transportation became potentially profitable again, private ownership was resumed. The marginally profitable, publicly useful, passenger services remained starved for funds.

The emergence and maturation of state-monopoly capitalism is a fundamental legacy of the New Deal.

Are there lessons for today?

The current economic crisis has generated fear and panic in ways that recall the Great Depression. We also see policies that echo the recovery efforts proffered by both the Hoover administration and the early New Deal. But unlike the New Deal period, we have yet to witness the mass upsurge that pressured and propelled the Roosevelt administration to offer reforms benefiting the “forgotten man.” Yes, there is widespread dissatisfaction, anger and even desperation. All gauges of the public mood reflect this. But these sentiments are unfocussed, confused, and, most importantly, unorganized. Howard Zinn mentions in his commendable characterization of the New Deal of “the growth of spontaneous rebellion in the early New Deal…” There was rebellion, but it was hardly spontaneous. The undercurrent of resistance and rebellion, so important to the people’s gains in this period, were highly organized. To deny this fact is to diminish the efforts and energy of the many organizations rallying workers, farmers, youth, African-Americans, and veterans to challenge a course bringing misery to the masses. Without the unions, the Communist Party, the left, the CIO, and the farmer’s organizations, the struggle would have been left to the demagogues: Father Coughlin, the Townsendites, Huey Long, the KKK, and many others of this ilk.

Those on the left who are waiting – waiting for a spontaneous upsurge of the masses – miss the real lesson of the New Deal. Those who put their confidence in the Democratic Party alone also miss the lessons of the New Deal. Putting aside our often stated criticisms of the corrupted, corporate dominated Democratic Party, putting aside our profound dissatisfaction with the two-party system, the New Deal period demonstrates that even with a “friendly” Democratic administration, nothing comes without pressure from the masses, which must be organized and led by the advanced forces.

Today, again, we have deep and widespread dissatisfaction with the past administration, economic, military, and political crises posing ominous threats to our future, and a tremendous thirst for change. But the two-party system possesses an enormous resiliency to divert, channel and absorb these hopes and aspirations unless intense pressure is exerted from outside. The false hope and cheap rhetoric accompanying the electoral season are inevitably followed by the inertia and broken promises of incumbency. The New Deal proves that this inevitability is not broken with faith, loyalty, or zeal, but with the full weight of an organized, militant movement.

Seventy-five years after the inauguration of Roosevelt and the emergence of the New Deal, we are faced with an even more powerful, resourceful, and dominant state-monopoly capitalism. This moment requires even more organization and agitation, even more militancy, and an even greater dedication to building a revolutionary movement for socialism.

A brief bibliography:

Boyer, Richard O. and Morais, Herbert M., Labor’s Untold Story (New York, 1955).

Corey, Lewis, The Decline of American Capitalism (New York, 1934).

Hosen, Frederick E., The Great Depression and the New Deal (Jefferson, North Carolina, 1992).

Labor Research Association, Trends in American Capitalism (New York, 1948).

Rauch, Basil, The History of the New Deal (New York, 1963).

Robertson, Ross M., History of the American Economy (New York, 1964)

Singh, V. B., Keynesian Economics: A Symposium (Delhi, 1956).

The US Two-Party System: Past and Present (Moscow, 1988).

Zinn, Howard, A People’s History of the United States (New York, 1980).


Richard Earl Gose, 60, of Duluth, Minn., died quietly June 7, 2008, at Saint Mary's Hospital in Duluth, following a two-month fight with cancer. Richard was born in Kalamazoo, Mich., on July 24, 1947, to Darel and Ilene (Klein) Gose. Raised in Michigan, he was a graduate of Constantine High, and served two tours in Viet Nam from 1966-1968. He flew over 500 missions with the Army's 134th Assault Helicopter Company, earning several awards and commendations for his service. Richard graduated from Northern Michigan University with a B.A. in education & history. He worked with VISTA from 1974 to 1975, and was a paralegal at Indian Legal Assistance in Duluth. Employed for 18 years by Woodland Hills Juvenile Correctional Facility, he helped organize the Chisholm House Program, touching the lives of hundreds of young people. He also worked as a caretaker at Mesaba Co-Op Park in Hibbing, and served on their board of directors, where he was an active member & volunteer for over 25 years. A resident of Duluth for over 30 years, Richard was an avid fisherman and outdoorsman. He leaves behind many relieved fish. He was preceded in death by his father, Darel. He is survived by a son, Mikhail Gose-Simrak of Duluth; a step-daughter Jasmine (Joe) Lake of Vernon Hills, IL; grandson Tony Simrak Vernon Hills IL; his mother, Ilene Gose of White Pigeon, MI; a sister, Norma (Tim) Logan of Centreville, MI; brothers Phillip (Barb) Gose of Three Rivers, MI, Greg (Natalie) Gose of Brentwood, TN., Joe Gose of Sturgis, MI., Andrew Gose of White Pigeon, MI; several nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, aunts, uncles and cousins. CREMATION: has taken place. Per his wishes, his ashes will be scattered at Mesaba Co-op Park (3827 Mesaba Park Road Hibbing, MN 55746). A memorial service will be held there during Midsummer Fest at 10 a.m. Saturday June 21st. A memorial service will also be held in White Pigeon, MI at a later date. Farrand Funeral Home in White Pigeon is handling the arrangements there. Local arrangements by Dougherty Funeral Home, 600 E. 2nd St, Duluth, MN 55805, 218-727-3555.

Longtime political activist and Communist Helvi Savola died at the age of 91 on Nov. 20 in Wausau, Wis. She had lived in Wausau since 2000, after retiring from many years of leadership in the Minnesota/Dakotas District of the Communist Party USA.

As one of her comrades from the Minnesota Iron Range recently observed, “Helvi certainly knew the meaning of the Finnish word ‘sisu,’ roughly translated as ‘grit and determination.’ She worked her whole life to make this a better world.”

Born in Wakefield, Mich., in 1915, Helvi grew up in a family that was deeply involved in community activities, including those of the Finnish Workers Federation. The federation offered activities — sports, drama and dancing — as well as practical assistance in setting up consumer and production cooperatives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Helvi was active in the federation and subsequently joined the Young Communist League in nearby Ironwood. In 1937, she went to work in Superior, Wis., for the Farmers and Workers Cooperative Unity Alliance, and in September of that year received a call to work for Local 15 of the Timber Workers Union in Marenisco, Mich. That is where she met Matt Savola, the leader of the union.

Helvi and Matt were married in October 1939. They spent time in Butte, Mont., where Matt worked for a few months in one of Anaconda’s copper mines. From there, the couple returned to Michigan. Helvi served as manager of the Ironwood Co-op Store for a period of time.

During the repressive and anticommunist McCarthy period, Helvi and Matt answered an advertisement in the progressive Finnish-language newspaper Tyomies for a management team for the Clifford Co-op Association in Tripoli, Wis. They stayed there for 21 years, until Matt’s retirement in 1972.

Shortly thereafter, while spending time relaxing in California, the couple was approached by Gus Hall, then general secretary of the CPUSA, who asked them to help lead the party in Minnesota. They promptly agreed to do so.

Among their many interests, Matt and Helvi were acutely sensitive to the plight of small farmers, and often spoke at national meetings of the party about the ravages of corporate agribusiness on rural America.

After Matt died in 1977, Helvi continued organizing for the CPUSA for another 20 years. She and fellow organizer Helen Kruth teamed up to put out the People’s Path, a bimonthly progressive newsletter for political activists in Minnesota and the Dakotas. They spent a good amount of time selling Marxist literature at the Paul Robeson Bookshop in Minneapolis or taking the books on the road in their travels.

Helvi was known for her coalition-building skills and her active involvement in groups ranging from the Mesaba Co-op Park in Hibbing, Minn., to the Twin Cities Peace and Justice Coalition. Until she moved to Wisconsin, she would never miss a Midsummer Festival or an annual meeting at Mesaba Park. She was also on the board of a progressive, nonprofit foundation, the John E. Forchette Foundation, at the time of her death.

Helvi never lost her way. She was always “in the trenches,” even when the going got rough during the Great Depression and the McCarthy witch-hunt era. She leaves behind a rich legacy of working-class struggle and progressive values to inspire future generations.

She is survived by her son Michael, daughter Patricia Gohs, grandchildren and one step-great-granddaughter.

Cherry upbringing shaped life of noted Communist leader

By Aaron J. Brown

CHERRY, Minn. - A young idealistic man named Arvo Halberg left Cherry in 1927 and in the next 70 years did things that many couldn't do in 700.

He changed his name, traveled around the world - from Moscow to Cuba to New York City - and ran for the U.S. presidency four times. When Halberg left the small town of Cherry, Minn. three quarters of a century ago, few could have imagined that the controversial political leader now known worldwide as Gus Hall could have come from such a humble place. But to Hall, it was his Minnesota upbringing that helped set him on his way.

Gus Hall, widely considered Cherry's most famous son, is the General Secretary of the Communist Party USA Born in 1910, he has spent a lifetime fighting for labor unions and working class issues across the country and world.

In a telephone interview from the CPUSA offices in New York, Hall reminisced about his treasured days in Cherry and commented on the differences he sees in society today.

"I have a feeling that everyone was closer as a family," said Hall. "I've often marveled, for instance, how some families were religious - mine was not - but they were all friends."

It was his family more than anything else that inspired Hall when he was young. His father, Matt Halberg, was one of the founding members of the American Communist Party and both his parents were heavily involved in labor organizations and rallies. Being Finnish immigrants, Hall's parents were blacklisted and his father couldn't work in the booming mine industry of the time. This was the time that many Finnish immigrants in northern Minnesota organized into labor unions and Hall's family was at the forefront. It was then that Hall began to develop his own views.

"The family was what I guess you would call a radical family, so the struggle against big business was something we always discussed," said Hall. But I didn't really get into it until I started working in the lumber camps."

When he was 15, Hall quit school to work as a lumberjack near Rainy Lake. The working class environment of the deep woods influenced Hall greatly. By the time he was 17, he decided that he had soaked up enough knowledge from the other lumbermen and put up with enough difficulty from the lumber company owners.

"They were really unbelievable in those days," said Hall.

So, before he turned 18, Hall had joined the Communist Party and the Young Communist League. It was then that he set out on the road with the YCL.

His first stop was Minneapolis. His work through the YCL had him organizing unions and coordinating labor rallies, but it also had him trying something entirely new to him at the time - public speaking.

"When I started to speak I had never made a speech in my life," said Hall. "I think my first speech was ten minutes long. The next speech was 15 minutes. And the people around here say they're still growing."

In the YCL he traveled through three states - Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan - speaking and organizing.

"To get there you had to hitchhike and I did," said Hall. "There was no money for travel."

In time, Hall went to Youngstown, Ohio, where he took industrial classes and got a job as a steelworker in one of the plants. To get the job he took the name Gus Hall, since he had already run for city council on the Communist ticket under the name Arvo Halberg. The name was simply derived from his full name: Arvo Gus Halberg. He became involved in more labor organization but later decided to join the Navy.

"I wanted to volunteer," said Hall. "But I had to get a court in Youngstown to drop some charges."

The charges, relating to his labor activity, were dropped and Hall spent a term in the Navy - primarily stationed in Guam.

When Hall returned he began his political activities once again. He spent more time in the industrial city of Youngstown before going to the Soviet Union to study Communist theory in Moscow. This action made Hall a very controversial figure in the United States. With the Communist scare of the 1950s and McCarthyism he had few allies and many bitter enemies. He sought refuge in Mexico but was captured by the FBI. He was convicted of conspiracy to commit treason and was imprisoned in Leavenworth.

When he was released, he became a hero to the remaining American Communists. In 1959 he was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party USA He went on to run for president on his party's ticket four times - in 1972, '76, '80, and '84. His best finish was with nearly 80,000 votes in 1976.

Gus Hall is now 89 and he isn't running for president anymore. He has reduced his public speaking schedule, but still goes to the office four days a week. Looking back he says he is most proud of organizing the unemployed.

In 40 years of heading the CPUSA., Hall has brushed shoulders with many world leaders.

"I think I've met them all," said Hall. "I met Brezhnev and the rest of them - (Fidel) Castro a number of times."

He remembers one story abut visiting Castro in Cuba.

"Castro went to Ethiopia once and because everyone said they have the best coffee in the world there he brought some back. When I went to Cuba, he cooked it himself and we drank it together," recalls Hall.

Hall fondly remembers a great deal about Cherry as well. He still has many relatives here, but he hasn't been to Cherry for quite awhile.

"It must be about four or five years since I've been there. I don't visit enough."

Mesaba Co-op Park, which recently celebrated its 70th anniversary, is one special source of memories for Hall. "My father and I built that place," said Hall.

He recalls how his father, then a lumber worker familiar with the area, convinced the committee that was selling the land that the area by Northstar Lake was nothing but a swamp. The group of workers buying the land got it for a much better price as a result.

"Building the auditorium, I worked on that a lot," said Hall. "Everyone was more friendly than nowadays."

Gus Hall has done some incredible things in his life, yet his Cherry, Minn. upbringing still means a great deal to him.

I've been away from there for many years now, but people still say I have a Cherry-Finnish accent."

Andrew Miller contributed to this article.

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The man and the people around him

By Andrew Miller

CHERRY, Minn. - Gus Hall grew up during trying times for Northern Minnesota's Finnish population. The era of the mining blacklist did not inhibit Hall, though. It was instead an experience which would influence him throughout his life.

Although Hall left the Cherry area when he was still a teenager, he already possessed a strong work ethic and knowledge of labor organization. His absence created a void, but he did not leave before impacting the area and leaving behind memories among those who remained. These memories of Hall are becoming part of Iron Range folklore.

Longtime Iron resident Arnie Koski spent a lot of time with Hall when he was a boy and still remembers Hall's unmatched integrity.

"I knew him when he was poor," Koski said. "We grew up together here. He was the straightest-shooting guy ever."

Not only was Gus Hall an excellent friend, Koski said, but his family were admirable neighbors and the most honest group of people he ever met.

"They weren't religious, but they never made fun of religion," Koski said.

"We had a piano, and my mother would play a little piano now and then, and they would come over and have a great old time."

Helvi Savola, a former leader of the Communist Party of Minnesota, said she met Hall in Michigan in 1937, while she was working for a timber workers' union.

Hall had brought his honest hardworking disposition with him to Michigan and everywhere he went after that she said.

"My husband Matt and Gus had done a lot of walking around the area of Northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula organizing for the young communist league," Savola said. "Gus was really personable, and he was well respected and liked everywhere he went."

Savola's husband was related to Hall, and their families grew close in the years to follow. "We always kept in touch, but after they moved to New York we haven't got to see them as much," Savola said. "Gus was responsible for my husband and I coming to Minnesota for leadership of the Communist Party of Minnesota."

Even after Hall left for New York and became influential in world affairs, he still periodically returned to his roots in the Cherry area.

Ironworld Historian Dana Miller said he met Hall at the Midsummer Festival at Mesaba Park in the 1970s. "It was kinda funny. I expected this rebel rouser Communist leader, and he was there looking like the chair of IBM. He had a three-piece suit. He looked like city folk," Miller said.

Though Hall did return to Northern Minnesota from time to time, it was his family who handled the publicity he brought to the area, much of which was negative. When Rudy Perpich was Minnesota's governor in the 1970s and '80s, he was known to visit Hall's family, filmmaker Tom Selinski said.

"Perpich had come out to Cherry to visit the Halbergs. Somebody told him you shouldn't be associated with them. It will ruin your career. But he knew the family for years and he said no one was going to tell him he couldn't visit them."

In one of his more recent contacts with the Cherry area, Hall again spoke with Dana Miller, this time about the status of communism in the world. "He asked me, 'Say what's the difference between the United States and the Soviet Union now?' And I said, 'I don't know, Gus.' And he says, 'the United States still has a Communist Party,'" Miller said.

Hall has not been back to the area for a number of years, but he is still remembered and highly regarded among those who remember him.

"One thing is for sure and that is that Gus is a true American worker," Savola said. "Every now and then you run into people like him."

Gus Hall to be topic of discussion at Petrell Hall

Pancake Breakfast Sunday, August 31, 2008, 8:00-11:00 a.m. Petrell Hall; Brimson, Minnesota

Cost: Adults $5.00, Children, 5-12 $3.00, Children under 5 Free.

Guest Speaker: Tuomas Savonen, Finnish News Agency STT, Helsinki, Finland

Topic: Gus Hall and the Communist Party USA

Time: 10:00-11:00 a.m.

Tuomas Savonen, a journalist and graduate student of history at the University of Helsinki will give a presentation on the labor leader Gus Hall, the long time General Secretary of the Communist Party USA, and his political thought.

Gus Hall (1910-2000) was born Arvo Gustav Halberg in Cherry, Minnesota. His parents were immigrants from Lapua, Finland who had been involved in the Industrial Workers of the World and were founding members of the Communist Party.

Gus was the Party’s candidate for U.S. President on four occasions and is most closely associated with the “Little Steel” Strike of 1937, an effort to unionize the nation’s smaller, regional steel manufacturers.

Alan L. Maki

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my blog:

Thoughts From Podunk

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Spice Cake Recipe

Good luck with this recipe... we loved it... Sally Stone

A lovely, soft spice cake with a surprise ingredient - whipped cream! Minna Canth (1844-1897) was a Finnish playwright, novelist and essayist as well as an energetic fighter for women's rights and social justice. This recipe comes from the Canth family recipe collection and was printed in the Perinnemakuja maakunnista cookbook. I've modified it slightly - the original recipe called for 1 tbls of ground bitter orange peel, which I don't like at all, so substituted cinnamon instead. You can of course experiment and find your favourite spice combination, too!

Ingredients

· 2 egg

· 200 ml sugar

· 400 ml whipping cream, whipped

· 600 ml all-purpose flour

· 2 teaspoons baking soda

· 2 teaspoons cinnamon

· 1 teaspoon ground cloves

· 1 teaspoon ground ginger

· 200 ml treacle

· 4 tablespoons melted butter

Directions

1.

Preheat oven to 175 C.

2.

Grease and flour a 2 litre cake pan (I use a Bundt pan).

3.

Whip eggs with sugar until light and fluffy.

4.

Add the whipped cream to the egg mixture, mix to combine.

5.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour with baking soda and the spices.

6.

Add dry ingredient mixture alternately with the molasses, mixing well after each addition.

7.

Finally, add the melted butter, mix to combine.

8.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake at 175 C for 30 minutes.

9.

After the first 30 minutes, lower the oven temperature to 150 C and bake for further 20-30 minutes, or until cake tests done.

Mesaba Cooperative Park

Built by the "Red" Finns of the Iron Range as a place for working people to gather, share culture and organize against the bosses, and where the advocacy of socialism was welcome. Historically, Mesaba Co-op Park had been an important part of the struggles of the people for peace, freedom, social & economic justice and where solidairty with workers around the world was organized. Today, Mesaba Co-op Park has drifted away from the intended purpose of the "Red" Finns and the class struggle is seldom discussed as old hippies dance around the "May Pole."

The Lunchpail

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Labor Needs to Improve Conditions for Nonunion Workers, Official Warns

Labor Needs to Improve Conditions for Nonunion Workers, Official Warns

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Gus Hall to be featured in Finn Fest 2008 talk

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Ok, Alan Maki has laid it on the line

From the blog of Alan Maki

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Ford may review truck plant closure plans, Coleman says

Here is another view from Canada we aren't getting here in the States...

Union vows to step up action against GM

CAW fails to win reprieve for Oshawa plant

Last Updated: Friday, June 6, 2008 | 11:08 PM ET

CBC News

GM 'pulled the rug out from under us': Hargrove

'Good exchange' at Detroit meeting: GM

Truck sales off 39%: GM

Closure 'a betrayal': union

Meetings

The United States has 800 military bases on foreign soil...

What we need--- instead--- is 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States where people can universally access, for free, all their health care needs from pre-natal care, to general health care to eye, dental and mental care right through to burial.

Info on the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party

We get the problems and the pits; the mining companies get the profits

Video Tribute to Gus Hall

Hauling off the profits; leaving us with the social, economic and environmental problems

We are fed up! Boycott Mobil/Exxon/Esso:

The Gus Hall Reader

Join the Iron Range Club of the Communist Party USA

Iron Range Club of the Communist Party, USA blog list

Benson and Bernard at Mesaba Co-Op Park... 1940

Fourth of July at Mesaba Co-Op Park... 1937

John T. Bernard speaking at Mesaba Co-Op Park 1938

Elmer A. Benson speaks at Mesaba Co-Op Park... 1940

Blog Archive

About Me

Paul Robeson

The Real Lesson of the New Deal for the US Left

Gus Hall to be topic of discussion at Petrell Hall

Greetings to the Communist Party of Finland

Utah Phillips and the Red Finns

Spice Cake Recipe

Ingredients

Directions

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Mesaba Cooperative Park