Archive for December, 2009

Jobs Campaigns, New Deal History, National Service and Socialist Values

by Editors @ Tuesday, December 29th, 2009. Filed under Economic Democracy, Economy, Labor Movement, Organizing, Socialism

A Left Role, Renewed Identity,

and How-To, in Campaigns for

National Service Jobs Programs

 

By John Case

Socialist-Economics Group

 

Does the current crisis justify an expanded role for government as an employer of last result?

Consider the following facts from EPI research:

Number unemployed: 15.4 million (up from 7.5 million in December 2007) Portion of official unemployed considered structural: 3.9 million Portion of unemployed who have been jobless more than six months: 38.3% Total jobs lost during the recession: 8.0 million Jobs needed to return to pre-recession unemployment rate: 10.9 million Number of job-seekers per job opening: 6.1 Unemployment rate: 10.0% Underemployment rate: 17.2%; Share of workers un- or underemployed: more than 1 in 6 States with double-digit unemployment in October, 2009: 15 White unemployment: 9.3%; African-American unemployment: 15.6%; Hispanic unemployment:12.7% Manufacturing jobs lost since the start of the recession: 2.1 million (15.5% of sector's jobs) Construction jobs lost in the recession: 1.6 million (20.8%, nearly one in five construction jobs) Mass layoffs (50 or more people by a single employer) in October 2009: 2,127; jobs lost:217,182 Under- and unemployed, marginally attached and involuntary part-time workers: 26.9 million

Americans with no health insurance in 2008: 46.3 million Annual Social Security benefit for average retiree: $13,922; Share of older Americans receiving all their income from Social Security: more than 1 out of 4 Number of children in poverty in 2008: 14.1 million (over one-third) Drop in real median income from 2007 to 2008: 3.6% (largest one-year drop since 1967) Growth rate of nominal, hourly wages of production workers over the last three months:1.7% Additional people covered by Medicaid/SCHIP in 2008: 3 million

Not since the Great Depression has structural unemployment been so intense or sustained. Despite faster and smarter liquidity and fiscal efforts by government than occurred then, employment decline has merely decelerated 24 months into what is now dubbed 'The Great Recession'. It is not yet near enough to avert 5-10 years of unemployment rates above 6% (the level at which the 'Great Recession' started). The foundation of New Deal anti-depression actions, and one of the most successful and long lasting in its effects, was directly putting men to work in public works projects that became associated with several national service programs. The economist Hyman Minsky coined the term 'Employer of Last Resort' to describe government full employment efforts, which were part of his economic prescription, discussed more below, for countering capitalism's inherent vulnerability to financial instability.

This article explores the appropriateness, precedents and how-to's of national service programs (the chief US version of employer of last resort). in responding to the current crisis. The moral and social virtues of putting the unemployed to work in the creation of useful and meaningful public goods, instead of subjecting them to sustained idleness, should be self-evident.

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Marxism and Keynesianism: Contested Ground of Alliance and Struggle

by Editors @ Sunday, December 27th, 2009. Filed under Economy

Reviving

Keynesianism:

A Critique


By Rick Wolff


The global crisis has undermined the neo-liberalist phase of capitalism that dominated the last 30 years of the world economy.  It has likewise challenged the hegemony of neo-classical economics as the theoretical rationale of neo-liberalism's celebration of private enterprise and markets.  The form this challenge takes is a revival of Keynesian economics.  As the crisis requires states everywhere again to intervene in the "private" economy -- and massively this time -- Keynesian economics provides much of the rationale and many of the prescriptions of what the state should do.

Of course, different interpretations of Keynes (as of Marx) have always contested with one another.  Multiple interpretations emerged because of pressures upon Keynesians from both the left (those who criticized them for "saving" capitalism) and the right (those who attacked them for "threatening" capitalism).  What matters are the stakes among contesting Keynesianisms, the social consequences that flow from the hegemony of one versus another of them.  How are we to understand differences and overlaps between Keynesianisms and Marxisms?  What political alliances might be crafted between some Keynesians and some Marxists?

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Mondragon, Solidarity Economy Get a Peek in Mainstream Media

by Editors @ Thursday, December 24th, 2009. Filed under Economic Democracy, Trade Unions

Photo: Coop Bakeries in California

In Cleveland,
Worker Co-Ops Look
to a Spanish Model

By Judith D. Schwartz
Time Magazine

Dec 22, 2009 - While officials, pundits and the everyday folks who have to pay bills lament unemployment rates that won't go down and wages that won't go up, some Rust Belt planners and union leaders are feeling optimistic: they're taking inspiration from the Basque region of Spain, where a network of worker-owned cooperatives launched amid the rubble of the Spanish Civil War has grown to become the country's seventh-largest corporation, and among its most profitable.

The Mondragon Corp. (MCC), based in northern Spain, is a multilayered business group with 256 independent companies (more than 100 of which are worker-owned cooperatives) that employs more than 100,000 people. It has long been legendary among scholars and activists seeking to bolster workers' rights. (See the top 10 everything of 2009.)

The Mondragon story began in 1941, when a Catholic priest, Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta (often shortened to Arizmendi), found in the Basque town war-torn devastation where there had been a thriving manufacturing base. He opened a polytechnic school, which in 1956 spawned its first cooperative, a stove factory. Half a century later, the Mondragon enterprise encompasses firms making everything from machine tools to electronics to bicycles, along with a retail division, a university and a significant financial sector, with the large cooperative bank Caja Laboral at its core.

While many think of cooperatives as a small-scale hippie mainstay, the Mondragon Corp. is huge, hard-nosed business-wise and successful; in 2008, with Spain's economy in the doldrums, MCC's income rose 6%, to 16.8 billion euros. The Mondragon Corp. maintains its commitment to one-worker, one-vote democratic governance through a complex, carefully honed organizational structure in which the corporation serves as a kind of metacooperative for the individual companies. Through representatives and resources drawn from the larger network, it provides support for planning, research and generation funding for new businesses.

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Worker Co-ops: Green and Just Jobs You Can Own

by Editors @ Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009. Filed under Economic Democracy, Environment

 

A South Bronx Worker Co-op

Turns Trash into Treasure

 

By James Trimarco and Jill Bamburg

Yes! MagazineOmar Freilla wants to see worker co-ops, like ReBuilders Source, everywhere. ReBuilders Source, owned and operated by workers from the South Bronx, sells salvaged building materials that would otherwise be destined for a landfill. Photo by Erica McDonald for YES! Magazine


Photo: Omar Freilla wants to see worker co-ops, like ReBuilders Source, everywhere. ReBuilders Source, owned and operated by workers from the South Bronx, sells salvaged building materials that would otherwise be destined for a landfill. Photo by Erica McDonald for YES! Magazine

Difficult times call for creative strategies. Time and again during periods of economic hardship and market failure, cooperatively owned businesses have emerged as a democratic, grassroots, and DIY response. It happened during the economic upheavals of the 19th century and again during the Great Depression.

Today, as the current economic crisis deepens, co-ops are again coming to the fore as producers and consumers seek stable sources of employment, goods, and services. There are no easy numbers to quantify this growth, but signs of a new upsurge are becoming clearer. The farmer-owned agricultural cooperative Land O’Lakes, for instance, chalked up its strong performance in 2008 to its co-op status.

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Yankee Doodle Ecologist: Tom Friedman and the Green Revolution

by Editors @ Tuesday, December 15th, 2009. Filed under Economy, Environment, High Road Economics, Socialism

Hot, Flat, and Crowded

by Thomas Friedman.

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

$27.95. Pp. 438.

 

By Jerry Harris

SolidarityEconomy.Net

Thomas Friedman is always the head cheerleader for the next big thing. At first it was globalization and now it’s the green revolution. Friedman’s instincts are good, it’s just his analysis and politics are lacking. There are certainly valuable and interesting insights in his work, but his adolescent enthusiasm for capitalism often turns his critique to shallow propaganda.

The book’s title, Hot, Flat, and Crowded is a good indicator as to how Friedman understands environmental problems. Underline that word crowded because the book takes us on a Malthusian ride through the Third World. It’s overpopulation, not capitalism and its need for every expanding accumulation that is destroying the world’s environment.

Friedman marches us through China, India, Brazil and Nigeria offering a myopic view that only occasional refers to the developed countries and their use of energy and resources. When it comes to energy markets transnationals such as Exxon and Shell disappear as does any discussion of imperialism and its history in the Middle East. Instead Friedman targets “petrodictorships” and “Sheikhs…with bags of cash” indoctrinating madrassa students to “breed like rabbits” and “swarm” over the Islamic world. (p. 88)

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Word to the Wise: China Launches New Green Industries

by Editors @ Thursday, December 10th, 2009. Filed under China, Environment, Socialism

Chinese Leader Calls

for Development of

Environmental Industry

From Xinhua

Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang Tuesday called for advancement of environmental protection industry to strengthen a stable, coordinated and sustainable economic development.


Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang (C) visits the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 8, 2009. (Xinhua/Liu Jiansheng)

The environmental protection industry concerned aspects such as infrastructure building, equipment manufacturing and services and it should be considered as a strategic emerging industry, Li said during an inspection tour in the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences and China National Environmental Monitoring Center.
He said as the Copenhagen conference was held currently to address the climate change, "the development of green, low carbon and recycling economy has become a global trend."

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Food for Thought Dept: Tennessee’s New Wave of High-Road Green Jobs

by Editors @ Monday, December 7th, 2009. Filed under Economy, High Road Economics, Organizing

 

Green Tide: State

taking big steps toward

energy-efficient future

 

By Ed Marcum

Sunday, December 6, 2009

A modest zero-energy project has multiplied into a major career change for one-time software developer David Bolt.

The Roane County resident may be on the cutting edge of an industry wave that could mean valuable jobs for an East Tennessee economy hungry for new investment.

Bolt grew interested in sustainability - also known as energy and environmental conservation - as he was renovating his family's 2,400-square-foot home in Harriman. Through various energy savings features, he modified the house to become a "zero energy" home - one that creates as much energy as it consumes.

Then in 2005, Bolt founded Sustainable Future, an online company that does turnkey design and installation of solar energy systems to homes and businesses.

Bolt may be the tip of a trend that area economic developers pray will lead to widespread employment opportunities in the near future.

By many estimates, a wave of green jobs is about to wash over Tennessee. But some observers question whether the swift current will lift all boats.

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Mondragon Staking Out a Foothold in the U.S.

by Editors @ Thursday, December 3rd, 2009. Filed under Economic Democracy, Organizing

Photo: Evergreen's Industrial Laundry Coop in Cleveland 

This Import

Might Preserve

American Jobs

By: Judith D. Schwartz

Miller-McCune Report

As the U.S. unemployment breaches the 10 percent mark — with manufacturing sector rates even higher — policymakers and industry representatives in the Midwest are seeking strategies to keep the Rust Belt from getting even rustier. In this war for economic survival, groups in cities like Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago, as well as the million-plus-members-strong United Steelworkers Union, have turned to a model borne of another war-torn region: the Mondragón Corporation in the Basque area of Spain.

The Mondragón Corporation (MCC) is a multilayered organization with worker-owned cooperatives and participatory governance at its core. The corporation is a group of cooperatives and cooperative members, a seat of governance as well as planning, researching and generating funding for new businesses — a kind of meta-cooperative.

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