Category: U.S. Politics

Stratfor's Second Quarter Forecast 2014.

Recently, there are hopeful signs that retailers and manufacturers are pressuring Congress to end the impasse over the spending limit. [ref name=”NRF calls for Immediate End to Government Shutdown”]NRF”]NRF Call for Immediate End to Government Shutdown. October 9, 2013. Available: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nrf-calls-immediate-end-government-160000729.html;_ylt=A2KJjagM3lZSjWoAC9zQtDMD[/ref]  [ref name=”GOP Lobbyist: Business Needs to ‘Step Up’ Against the Tea Party”]Fang, Lee, GOP Lobbyist: Business Needs to ‘Step Up’ Against the Tea Party, The Nation Magazine. October 9, 2013. Available: http://www.thenation.com/blog/176578/gop-lobbyist-business-needs-step-against-tea-party[/ref] Of course if the taxpayer walkout suggested by [intlink id=”1305″ type=”post”]General Honoré[/intlink] had anything to do with it, we’ll never hear it from John Boehner.  Sadly, we have yet to see evidence of his good intentions.  

According to an Associated Press article, [ref name=”House GOP leaders seek short-term debt extension”]Associated Press. House GOP leaders seek short-term debt extension. October 10, 2013. Available: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/10/house-gop-leaders-seek-short-term-debt-extension.html[/ref]  Boehner is offering to increase the debt limit, but only through November 22.  In addition, he intends to hold on to the bargaining chip of the government shutdown, meaning that the decision to reopen the government will remain in the hands of a few rogue politicians and we will go through this again before the end of the year.  

To be fair, the bit about the default came at the end of my last article. Depending on one’s level of cynicism, that post could be interpreted as a plea to avoid a default on the debt, never mind the government shutdown.  Obviously, nothing can be left to chance.  

I agree with Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew who stated that the United States should not be put in this position.  He was referring to the Republicans’ determination to hinge their spending bill on deficit reduction and cuts in government programs.  Lew also objected to the attempts by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and other GOP senators to extend the debt limit for the shortest period they can get away with.  

“Our view is this economy would benefit from more certainty and less brinksmanship.  So the longer the period of time (for the debt extention) is, the better for the economy.”

In my opinion the Republicans’ proposals are doubly unacceptable because of the time constraint.  The House is not scheduled to pass this bill until Friday.  That pushes a resolution into next week, assuming the Senate approves the bill.  They should be made aware that if they continue to work on a bill that merely postpones this train wreck until a later time, they are wasting precious time. 

The outlines of a reasonable agreement are there:  Obama is willing to sign a short-term increase so that Boehner has more time to work with the Tea Party faction.  That would head off a default.  Even Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. has dropped his demands on ‘Obamacare’ and would extend the borrowing cap for four to six seeks to allow talks on a budget deal. Then, as Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. said, “We need to reopen the government and pay the nation’s bills, no strings attached.”  

I’m aware that when taxpayers forego discretionary spending it is a hardship on retailers and manufacturers, but the Republicans in the House, the Democrats in the Senate, and President Obama know how to remedy that. Our walk out should continue until Congress passes an acceptable bill as described above.  

When the crisis has passed, we should make changes in procedure to assure this can never happen again. [ref name=”How to Solve the Debt Ceiling Crisis Forever”]Green, Joshua. How to Solve the Debt Ceiling Crisis Forever. Businessweek. October 7, 2013. Available: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-07/how-to-solve-the-debt-ceiling-crisis-forever[/ref]

Many in the media may not be representing the most authoritative interpretation of what is happening in Egypt. The following is from an article in Ahram online published by Al-Ahram Establishment, which has since 1875, published the Middle East’s oldest newspaper, The Daily Al-Ahram. ((About the Daily Ahram. Availiable: http://english.ahram.org.eg/UI/Front/Aboutus.aspx)) This article puts into perspective Obama’s support of the Brotherhood in Egypt, and the scorn his policies have received from the right.

There has always been a certain amount of mistrust between the Saudi royal family and the brotherhood. It’s true that the Al-Saud family has supported the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations since the time of President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 60s, but this is because they both opposed Nasser’s policy of exporting to the Arab world a socialism and Arab nationalism hostile to the West. The Islamists were useful to the Saudis in resisting Nasser, although they have always had ideological differences. Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism is a form of Salafism, which is ‘austere, puritanical, and rigorous’, while the doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood movement is more flexible. The Brotherhood sought to reconcile Islamic tradition and Western political experience, while it also tried to counter socialism and Nasserism in the Arab world. While this alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood served their purpose, “…the Al-Saud family saw the activist and “republican” formula of Islam promoted by the Brotherhood as a threat to the absolute monarchy formula established in Saudi Arabia, which advocates popular obedience and prohibits revolt against the political regime.”

Not only do the Saudis fear the challenge to their rule of the Brotherhood’s doctrine, some Saudi leaders fear an alliance of Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, which would reduce their influence. These fears came to a head when the Brotherhood came to power in Egypt and Tunisia. ((Mourad, Hicham. The Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia. Ahramonline. May 15, 2003. Available: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentPrint/4/0/71498/Opinion/0/The-Muslim-Brotherhood-and-Saudi-Arabia.aspx))

It’s probably not news to most of you that we have been given an inaccurate picture of Egypt’s situation, but it goes deeper than that. For years we have been given an oversimplified, if not completely wrong, view of Islam. Islam is far more complex that we realize. For example, there are distinct factions that have been locked in struggle for generations, and they are represented today in Egypt. There is fundamentalist versus extremist Islam. Americans tend to confuse the two, but they differ in many ways: basically, fundamentalists want all of life to be influenced by religion, while Extremists want a puritanical system influenced by an anachronistic vision of history. Iran is fundamentalist; Wahhabism is extremist. ((Didier Chaudet, Florent Parmentier, Benoît Pélopidas. When Empire Meets Nationalism. Sciences Po, France, University of Geneva, Switzerland and Monterey Institute of International Studies, USA. Ashgate. 2009))  More to the point, the Muslim Brotherhood combines fundamentalism with activism and republicanism. Then there is the secular faction. The heroes of this faction include Nasser in Egypt and Kemal in Turkey. Secularism often coincides with military rule. This is the faction behind the current military coup in Egypt.  In his support for the coup, Dreyfuss has some strange bedfellows. The neocons also happen to prefer secular government in the Middle East.

You will recall that Obama’s previous efforts to be conciliatory toward Islam have consistently resulted in accusations that he is a Muslim. The good news here is that the U.S. government’s factions are alive and well.  The bad news is that we don’t see these factions at work because of the incestuous relationship between the ‘democratic imperialists’ and the media.

The neocon view of Islam has been disseminated by specialists such as neoconservative Stephen Schwartz and neocon followers like Bernard Lewis. They begin by making a distinction between two types of Islam: Arabic, which they reject; and European, Turkish, preferably Sufi Islam, which they represent. Yes, even as the Muslim label continues to hover over Obama, the neocons are in deed Muslims:

“Ahmed Chalabi is a friend of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, and Stephen Schwartz converted to Islam under the name Suleyman Ahmad Stephen Schwartz. He was influenced by a group who is favored by Pipes and by neocon Orientalists, the American Naqshbandi Sufis, led by Sheikh Hisham Kabbani.”[backref name=”When Empire Meets Nationalism”]

Kabbani shares the neocons rejection of Arabic Islam. The neocons’ sufi-ness serves this agenda and allows them to assert that Islam is an individual religion chosen by individuals in a spiritual rather than political perspective, whereas Islamism (Arabic Islam, i.e. Wahhabism) is a political ideology. However, the effects of these assertions are much broader than the condemnation of Wahhabism. They have allowed the neocons to appear supportive of Islam while discounting the beliefs of the majority of Muslims.[backref name=”When Empire Meets Nationalism”]

If we believe the media, Islam as it is practiced by the majority can’t win. On the one hand, they argue that it has always had imperialistic politics. On the other hand, economic, social and political explanations for terrorism must be rejected. Terrorism is merely evidence that dialogue is futile. The only option that remains is to conquer enemy territories regardless of what the populations of those territories want.(When Empire Meets Nationalism”)

In the [intlink id=”985″ type=”post”]last post[/intlink] I said that the creation of self-governing communities should be one of the first steps toward the reorganization of society and I used the matrilineal clan as a model. I’ll defend this recommendation in the next few posts, but for now I’ll just say that while we may never return to that way of life it is a useful ideal, and can reveal important principles for political organization. I’ve also argued that the patriarchal family is not a solid foundation for the kind of social organization I have in mind. We hear over and over how important the family is to modern society but recently, when 38% of Wisconsin’s union families voted to retain the union busting governor Scott Walker, they demonstrated that whatever the patriarchal family’s function might be, it is foreign to the principles of true community.

The Sources of Division

The election of Scott Walker was a disaster for the public image of organized labor, not only because of the effects of antiunion legislation, but because his legislative attacks were accompanied by antiunion propaganda–in other words, divisive tactics. Repression combined with propaganda has always worked to delegitimize unions in the eyes of the public. Critics say union leaders lost momentum by channeling the protests into the electoral process, ((Gordon Lafer, Doug Henwood, Jane McAlevey, Bill Fletcher, Adolph L. Reed Jr., Mike Elk. Opinion Nation: Labor’s Bad Recall. The Nation. Cited July 3, 2012. Available: http://www.thenation.com/blog/168435/opinionnation-labors-bad-recall)) and they may have a point, but union strategy in the United States has always been a delicate proposition. The forces that divide have been especially active among the unions. Chief among those forces are the nation’s churches, defenders of the patriarchal family.

Since Wisconsin’s recall election, union leaders have been talking about the need for community outreach. This deserves more discussion, but in the business of community building, unions face stiff competition. Churches have already perfected the art of providing a family-like environment for their members. Unfortunately, many ministers see nothing wrong with dividing families and communities to achieve political goals. There is no parallel among advanced nations for the level of church meddling in American politics.

     Religion

The 1890s were a crucial time for American unions. According to Robin Archer, the second Great Awakening had led to impressive growth in evangelical Protestant churches and for the duration of the nineteenth century, they boasted the largest number of members. During this period, the largest denominations were the Methodists and the Baptists–both of them heavily influenced by evangelicalism. Most Protestant clerics and revivalists were hostile to the labor movement, and in each period of industrial unrest they denounced unions. Some of them even suggested the use of “bullets and bayonets” and “Gatling guns.” As sinister as this sounds, the explanation for these attitudes is more disgraceful.

In most Protestant churches, the clergy depended on lay members for their initial appointment, their personal income, support for their projects, and even their continued employment. This was especially true of revival leaders. Leaders like the Chicago-based Dwight L. Moody, offered to help protect the interests of wealthy businessmen in return for the financial backing necessary to organize big city crusades. (Previously, we have seen that the [intlink id=”689″ type=”post”]Moody Bible Institute[/intlink] in Texas is a supporter of Christian Zionism.)

     Religion in Politics

Evangelicals have always collaborated to force the government to legislate morality, leading in the 1850s to a realignment of the party system and the establishment of the Republican party. In response, the Democratic party was formed of those who didn’t believe governments should establish cultural norms. While the evangelicals emphasized personal conversion experiences and moral activism, the Democrats belonged to churches that emphasize formal rituals and traditional authority. Religion amplified conflicts and caused each party to became a sort of political church.

     State Repressison

And then we come to the phenomenon of physical repression. While the ministers merely threatened violence, the armed forces acted on the threats. After the 1877 railroad strike, business leaders called for the return of state militias to help control discontented workers, and they personally funded many of the units. Today those militias are known as the National Guard. Some states outlawed the use of armed forces on civilians, and in response, the industrialists simply created their own private armies. They also made use of public and private police. It was not unusual for American armed forces to fire on strikers, and such severe repression naturally came with higher levels of propaganda to justify the government’s actions.

     Conflicts among union leaders

As if these sources of division are not enough, there are also conflicts among union leaders, especially those on the left. In the early 1890s the American debate took place between union leaders and the socialists, and was based on two interpretations of Marx’s writings. In the rules that Marx drafted for the IWA, he stated, “that the economical emancipation of the working classes is therefore the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinated as a means.”

One group believed this meant that the establishment of economic organizations of workers ought to be the focus of activity and that political action would have to wait until a sufficient level of class organization and class consciousness had been achieved. The other group interpreted it to mean that the establishment of a working-class political party was the essential prerequisite for economic emancipation. [ref]Archer, Robin. Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States? Princeton University Press. Princeton and Oxford. 2007[/ref]

Left Factions in Europe and the United States Compared

Because of differences in the political and economic environment, Europe and the United States took different paths. However, conflicts among union leadership persist in both countries. For example, Shalom Lappin defends the European Social Democrats, and their emphasis on “strong unions, market regulation, and the development of a comprehensive welfare state through mainstream democratic processes.” He argues that this strategy was successful in western Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand from 1945-1975, and partially successful in America in the same period; and that the current decline of western social democracy is merely a result of globalization.

In Europe, according to Lappin, the radical and liberal left have allied themselves with anti-western, militant and political Islamic movements. This tendency began during the cold war and involved the rejection of working class politics for the politics of culture and identity. This faction now operates within antiwar and antiglobalization movements, with the Islamic jihadists claiming to represent the third world poor.

In the 1960s, the radical left in the United States came to be identified by opposition to Vietnam. Lappin argues that by “dabbling” in the counterculture the radicals managed to alienate the conservative working class and allowed the right to invent a counter movement that has dominated American politics for the last thirty years. One of the tools of the right is the myth of a liberal elite who controls the media and holds the reigns of power. This myth has allowed conservatives to pose as the populist opposition to the liberal power structure. The result is that American voters consistently vote against their own class interests by supporting conservative Republican politicians.[ref]Lappin, Shalom. How Class Disappeared From Western Politics. Dissent Magazine. Winter 2006. Cited July 7, 2012. Available: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/how-class-disappeared-from-western-politics[/ref]

A little History

In Gerald Friedman’s history of labor unions in the United States, he writes that in the American labor movement, one of the most divisive events was the 1949 expulsion of all Communist-led unions from the CIO. This meant the loss of the organization’s most energetic and imaginative leaders. Those who remained were left with no choice but to accept a place in the capitalist hierarchy, and in 1955 they merged with the AFL.

In the periods when conservatives are voted into power, state support for unions has been withdrawn and American unions have had no leverage over capitalist forces. In Europe, governments have generally supported the labor movement. For example, they require nonunion employers to match union concessions. In the United States, union employers are the only ones affected by labor negotiations, making it hard for them to compete with nonunion rivals. This has caused American firms to prefer a nonunion workforce, and sometimes to move to nonunion locations.

   Control of women as a motive, again

Private union membership in the United States began to decline after World War II, and since the 1990s, unions have had little effect on wages or working conditions for American workers. For this reason, it seems curious that Walker and others are so obsessed with them. However, one reason for this obsession may be that even though private unions have shrunk, the United States has seen the growth of female unionization. In contrast to the largely male unions in Europe, female membership in public sector unions have ‘feminized’ the American labor movement. ((Friedman, Gerald. Labor Unions in the United States EH.net. February 1, 2010. Cited July 7, 2012. Avaliable: http://eh.net/encyclopedia/labor-unions-in-the-united-states/))  When Walker first launched his attacks, several articles called attention to the possibility that he was motivated by gender and race. This seems more likely in light of the war on reproductive rights.  

But if Walker intended to divide one union from another by not going after the largely male unions like the police, he was disappointed. Those unions demonstrated solidarity with those under attack.  This brings us back to the importance of community.

Collective action is always difficult because it requires that individuals commit themselves to the group effort. In the case of the unions, “individualist logic” leads workers to opt out of membership, creating a free-rider problem. This means that if subsequent union efforts win concessions for workers, the nonmembers will benefit equally with members. On the other hand, if collective action fails, only the activists will suffer. That is what divisiveness looks like at the community level. In Wisconsin, it has led to political defeat.

“In capitalist labor markets, which developed in the nineteenth century in the United States and Western Europe, workers exchange their time and effort for wages. But even while laboring under the supervision of others, wage earners have never been slaves, because they have recourse from abuse. They can quit to seek better employment. Or they are free to join with others to take collective action, forming political movements or labor unions.”((Friedman, Gerald. Labor Unions in the United States. EH.net. February 1, 2010.))

Unfortunately, the effects of dismantling this system can be shared by everyone.