The Hudson Valley Radical September 22-29, 2012
Local Action, International Solidarity
Subscribe to our e-mail list and get this newsletter delivered to your inbox weekly by contacting us at leftunited@gmail.com
Contents
1. Jobs, Not Jails!
2. Winning the Struggle for Public Education Today
3. ENOUGH: Shelter Dutchess County's Homeless
4. The Two Souls of Socialism: Chapter 9 (Part 2)
5. Read On... and Take Action
Jobs, Not Jails!
"We should consider a 24 hour mental health crisis center as an alternative to jail and a possible expansion of beds for the chemically dependent; and alternative housing options for special populations including youth, women, individuals with mental health issues and other special needs groups as the need arises.
"The vast majority of the inmate population in the Dutchess County jail falls into one or another special population category. Recent surveys indicate that more than 80% of inmates had a history of treatment for a substance abuse disorder, a mental health disorder, or both prior to incarceration. At any given time, more than 20% of the inmates at the jail are receiving psychiatric care. The under 21 year old population at the jail can be as high as 15% of the total inmate population. Women, on average, represent 10% of the inmate population. Taken in the aggregate, nearly all inmates who fall into the category of having a history of mental illness or substance abuse are young or female."
Here, this "Criminal Justice Needs Assessment" essentially endorses the use of alternative housing for "special needs populations" such as those receiving psychiatric care (more than 20% of the total prison population), youth (up to 15% of the population), and women (10% of the population).
Furthermore, the report identifies the large part of the prison population that have been identified as having a substance abuse disorder. Many of those individuals are in jail solely because of drug offenses.
Nationally, a quarter of all inmates, either in jail or prison, are incarcerated because of a drug offense(Justice Policy Institute). Around half of those convicted of a drug offense are black. The reason for this racial discrepancy in drug offenses goes back to the Nixon Administration. Afraid of the advances made by blacks in the Civil Rights movement, Nixon struck back with what he called the "War on Drugs." This War on Drugs has led to the mass incarceration of blacks for drug offenses.
We believe that those incarcerated due to drug charges should constitute a fourth special needs group that should be transferred to a rehab center rather than a jail. Should national averages for jails and prisons hold true for the Dutchess County Jail, this group would represent around 25% of the prison population.
In August, the prison population in Dutchess County reached a record 502 people, whereas the current jail has only 252 beds. A rational assessment of the situation shows, by the Criminal Justice Committee's own logic, that alternative housing, mental health centers, and rehab facilities are the answer to prison overpopulation.
Incredibly, the very same report that endorsed "alternative housing options for special populations" and claimed that "the vast majority of the inmate population at the Dutchess County Jail falls into one or another special population category" went on to recommend the construction of a new, massive 500-bed prison. All of their long-term recommendations about "alternative housing," a "24 hour mental health crisis center," etc. is shoved onto the backburner and into the distant future. In the report's "Conclusion," on page 46, it claims that "the massive savings realized by the county will allow funds to be diverted into the programs discussed in this report concerning special populations."
So, there you have it, folks. We could have build alternative housing, mental health centers, and rehab facilities immediately, thereby making the construction of a new jail unnecessary. Instead, we have to wait until the construction of this new $78-$184 million jail to reap the "massive savings" that will of course result from it before we can build these facilities that we so desperately need right now.
If building a new jail to finance alternative housing sounds crazy, it's because the politicians don't really care about "special needs groups" and they sure as hell don't care about ending the war on drugs. In fact, they would rather see our black and brown brothers and sisters behind bars than see them as human beings fully realizing their potential as politically engaged members of society. They would rather see workers behind bars than see workers getting an education and thinking critically about our capitalist society. They would rather see us behind bars than in the streets, wondering why we have no jobs, no money, and no future. They would rather see mass incarceration than see mass resistance.
Yet, if the politicians don't care about the incarcerated, we, the members of our community, must care.
Join the End the New Jim Crow Action Network (ENJAN) this Wednesday (and every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month) @6:00 PM at the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library, Family Partnership Center, 29 North Hamilton Street, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601.
NO To Jail Expansion! YES to Alternative Housing, Mental Health Centers, and Rehabilitation Facilities!
NO to Austerity! YES to Social Services!
NO to Our Racist Criminal Justice System! YES to Systemic Change!
Winning the Struggle for Public Education Today
Historically, public education has been one of the great accomplishments of the United States. Early democratic ideals manifested itself into the establishment of a system of public education to be made available to all children. This was, and still should be seen, as essential for all citizens of a democratic society. However, the United States never has been a truly democratic society and free, quality education has never been truly accessible to all. Yet it has been through fighting for this ideal that many of America''s great social struggles have grown. The fight for school desegregation and its place in the civil rights movement is a prime example. Today, access to quality public education is being attacked and defended most visibly in the city of Chicago.
The city has not, of course, openly directed their attack at public education. They have instead aimed their fire solely at teachers, the workers who, along with the janitors, bus drivers, cooks, and secretaries, make public education possible. The attacks on teachers are very real: Longer hours and more days of work with little raise in pay; larger class sizes; the possibility of being fired based on standardized test scores. Yet all of these attacks on teachers will hurt students equally. It will mean that students will have to face overworked teachers in huge classes, with their success hinging upon their ability to take a standardized tests (which measure not creativity, ingenuity, or any other useful skill but instead largely determine a student's test-taking ability alone). These changes are designed to break the teachers union, discourage critical thinking by students, and impose a corporate model for public education.
Yet corporate influence on public education can only go so far. After all, these schools will remain public. That is, unless they are underfunded so badly, as they often are, that city authorities transform the public institution into a charter school. Charter schools are managed by organizations, sometimes even corporations, accountable only for maintaining high standardized test scores. The push towards charter schools is central to the education "reform" movement currently being championed by America's capitalist elite. When asked about the difference between public and charter schools, the principle of one Chicago area charter said that his school encouraged an "environment of competition." This represents the intrusion of capitalism into one of the only areas that has so far largely resisted its domination: Education.
This competitive education omelet promises to break more than a few eggs. While tax dollars are sucked into charter schools, only a select few students will receive their benefits, as admission is based on a lottery system. If a child falls behind or runs into trouble while enrolled at a charter school, they are simply expelled from the institution. Those who are not accepted or are expelled from charter schools are sent to languish in the public school system. Should the current trend persist, these public schools will be so badly underfunded that the children will have not even experience a taste of the free, quality education we are promised. These educational disparities will necessarily give way to economic disparities, widening the already unconscionable inequality in the United States. Already at the bottom of America's social and economic hierarchy, Blacks and Hispanics will be hit the hardest by this widening inequality.
Yet, although this nightmarish future has already been set in motion by capitalists and politicians across the country, it is not too late to stop it from being fully realized. In fact, the capitalists would like nothing more than for us to throw our hands in the air and resign from struggle. Used to their dictates being followed without challenge, capitalists and the capitalist press has gotten increasingly angry at the resistance being staged by the Chicago Teachers Union. In a recent Chicago Tribune editorial, this anger at the failure of teachers to submit to their God-given plans was articulated: "Chicago Teachers Union officials aren't merely fighting City Hall. They're fighting the inevitability of education reform. They are denying the arc of history." This logic mirrors the capitalists' proclamations about the inevitability of globalization and the backwardness of all opposing voices. Yet if it is inevitable that the capitalists will try to institute education reform, the fight-back is equally unavoidable. Let us rally in solidarity with the teachers in Chicago and stage a real challenge to the politics and polices of neo-liberalism and education "reform."
The outcome of the Chicago teachers strike is of critical importance to the future of public education in America. The struggle is for benefits, a fair contract, and job security not jeopardized by the results of standardized tests. It is this same struggle that represents our best hope of saving public education and realizing the dream of free, quality public education for all.
ENOUGH: Shelter Dutchess County's Homeless!
WHEREAS, as a result many of Dutchess County's homeless spent most of their summer nights hidden away in abandoned buildings, fearing the potential of becoming a victim of crime, saving their days at the shelter for the winter by sleeping in abandoned housing, and
WHEREAS, many fear that residents who are unable to find work or shelter may resort to crime, drugs, or alcohol themselves, costing Dutchess County taxpayers more; it is clear that our homeless need more resources to receive job training and education to become independent for our community to be a safer place, and
WHEREAS, according to recent U.S. Census Data. at least 400 homeless are wandering Poughkeepsie's alleys, doorways and abandoned buildings during any given night, and an average of fifteen people are turned away from shelter every night as it is right now according to a MidHudsonNews.com report September 5th, and
WHEREAS, Community Voices Heard and many others have called on Hudson River Housing to suspend the rules while local agencies work to find a better alternative, and therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the Dutchess County Legislature strongly urges that Hudson River Housing suspend these new rules and limits for the homeless until local agencies work to find a better alternative, with the help and support of the Dutchess County Department of Social Services, Dutchess County Coalition of Nonprofits, and the United Way of Dutchess-Orange Region, and be it further
RESOLVED. that a copy of this resolution be sent to the Dutchess County Department of Social Services, Hudson River Housing, Dutchess County Coalition of Nonprofits, and the United Way of Dutchess-Orange Region
The Two Souls of Socialism: Chapter 9 (Part 2)
Eastman is here pointing to the Communist Party writer Mike Gold; another excellent case is Harry F. Ward, the CP’s hardy clerical fellow-traveler, whose books theorize this kind of “oceanic” yearning for the shucking-off of one’s individuality. Bellamy’s notebooks reveal him as a classic case: he writes about the longing “for absorption into the grand omnipotency of the universe;” his “Religion of Solidarity” reflects his mistrust of the individualism of the personality, his craving to dissolve the Self into communion with Something Greater.
This strain is very prominent in some of the most authoritarian of the Socialisms-from-Above and is not seldom met in milder cases like the philanthropic elitists with Christian Socialist views. Naturally, this kind of “communionist” socialism is always hailed as an “ethical socialism” and praised for holding class struggle in horror; for there must be no conflict inside a beehive. It tends to flatly counterpose “collectivism” to “individualism” (a false opposition from a humanist standpoint), but what it really impugns is individuality.
5. Permeationism. – Socialism-from-Above appears in many varieties for the simple reason that there are always many alternatives to the self-mobilization of masses from below; but the cases discussed tend to divide into two families.
One has the perspective of overthrowing the present, capitalist hierarchical society in order to replace it with a new, non-capitalist type of hierarchical society based on a new kind of elite ruling class. (These varieties are usually ticketed “revolutionary” in histories of socialism.) The other has the perspective of permeating the centers of power in the existing society in order to metamorphose it – gradually, inevitably – into a statified collectivism, perhaps molecule by molecule the way wood petrifies into agate. This is the characteristic stigmatum of the reformist, social-democratic varieties of Socialism-from-Above.
The very term permeationism was invented for self-description by what we have already called the “purest” variety of reformism ever seen, Sidney Webb’s Fabianism. All social-democratic permeationism is based on a theory of mechanical inevitability: the inevitable self-collectivization of capitalism from above, which is equated with socialism. Pressure from below (where considered permissible) can hasten and straighten the process, provided it is kept under control to avoid frightening the self-collectivizers. Hence the social-democratic permeationists are not only willing but anxious to “join the Establishment” rather than to fight it, in whatever capacity they are allowed to join it, whether as cabin boys or cabinet ministers. Typically the function of their movement-from-below is primarily to blackmail the ruling powers into buying them off with such opportunities for permeation.
The tendency toward the collectivization of capitalism is indeed a reality: as we have seen, it means the bureaucratic collectivization of capitalism. As this process has advanced, the contemporary social-democracy has itself gone through a metamorphosis. Today, the leading theoretician of this neo-reformism, C.A.R. Crosland, denounces as “extremist” the mild statement favoring nationalization which was originally written for the British Labor program by none other than Sidney Webb (with Arthur Henderson)! The number of continental social democracies that have now purged their programs of all specifically anti-capitalist content – a brand new phenomenon in socialist history – reflects the degree to which the ongoing process of bureaucratic collectivization is accepted as an installment of petrified “socialism.”
This is permeationism as grand strategy. It leads, of course, to permeationism as political tactic, a subject we cannot here pursue beyond mentioning its presently most prominent U.S. form: the policy of supporting the Democratic Party and the lib-lab coalition around the “Johnson Consensus,” its predecessors and successors.
The distinction between these two “families” of Socialism-from-Above holds for home-grown socialism, from Babeuf to Harold Wilson; that is, cases where the social base of the given socialist current is inside the national system, be it the labor aristocracy or declassé elements or any other. The case is somewhat different for those “socialisms-from-outside” represented by the contemporary Communist Parties, whose strategy and tactics depend in the last analysis on a power base outside any of the domestic social strata; that is, on the bureaucratic collectivist ruling classes in the East.
The Communist Parties have shown themselves uniquely different from any kind of home-grown movement in their capacity to alternate or combine both the “revolutionary”-oppositionist and the permeationist tactics to suit their convenience. Thus the American Communist Party could swing from its ultra-left-adventurist “Third Period” of 1928-34 into the ultra-permeationist tactic of the Popular Front period, then back into fire-breathing “revolutionism” during the Hitler-Stalin Pact period, and again, during the ups-and-downs of the Cold War, into various degrees of combination of the two. With the current Communist split along Moscow-Peking line, the “Krushchevites” and the Maoists tend each to embody one of the two tactics which formerly alternated.
Frequently, therefore, in domestic policy the official Communist Party and the social-democrats tend
to converge on the policy of permeationism, though from the angle of a different Socialism-from-Above.
6. Socialism-from-Outside. – The preceding varieties of Socialism-from-Above look to power at the tops of society: now we come to the expectation of succor from the outside.
The flying-saucer cult is a pathological form, messianism a more traditional form, when “outside” means out of this world; but for the present purposes, “outside” means outside the social struggle at home. For the Communists of East Europe after World War II, the New Order had to be imported on Russian bayonets; for the German Social-Democrats in exile, liberation of their own people could finally be imagined only by grace of foreign military victory.
The peacetime variety is socialism-by-model-example. This, of course, was the method of the old utopians, who built their model colonies in the American backwoods in order to demonstrate the superiority of their system and convert the unbelievers. Today, it is this substitute for social struggle at home which is increasingly the essential hope of the Communist movement in the West.
The model-example is provided by Russia (or China, for the Maoists); and while it is difficult to make the lot of the Russian proletarians half-attractive to Western workers even with a generous dose of lies, there is more success to be expected from two other approaches:
a. The relatively privileged position of managerial, bureaucratic and intellectual-flunky elements in the Russian collectivist system can be pointedly contrasted with the situation in the West, where these same elements are subordinated to the owners of capital and manipulators of wealth. At this point the appeal of the Soviet system of statified economy coincides with the historic appeal of middle-class socialisms, to disgruntled class-elements of intellectuals, technologists, scientists and scientific employees, administrative bureaucrats and organization men of various types, who can most easily identify themselves with a new ruling class based on state power rather than on money power and ownership, and therefore visualize themselves as the new men of power in a non-capitalist but elitist setup.
b. While the official Communist Parties are required to maintain the facade of orthodoxy in something called “Marxism-Leninism,” it is more common that serious theoreticians of neo-Stalinism who are not tied to the party do free themselves from the pretense. One development is the open abandonment of any perspective of victory through social struggle inside the capitalist countries. The “world revolution” is equated simply with the demonstration by the Communist states that their system is superior. This has now been put into thesis-form by the two leading theoreticians of neo-Stalinism, Paul Sweezy and Isaac Deutscher.
Baran and Sweezy’s Monopoly Capitalism (1966) flatly rejects “the answer of traditional Marxist orthodoxy – that the industrial proletariat must eventually rise in revolution against its capitalist oppressors.” Same for all the other “outsider” groups of society – unemployed, farm workers, ghetto masses, etc.; they cannot constitute a coherent force in society.” This leaves no one; capitalism cannot be effectively challenged from within. What then? Some day, the authors explain on their last page, “perhaps not in the present century,” the people will be disillusioned with capitalism “as the world revolution spreads and as the socialist countries show by their example that it is possible” to build a rational society. That is all. Thus the Marxist phrases filling the other 366 pages of this essay become simply an incantation like the reading of the Sermon on the Mount at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The same perspective is presented less bluntly by a more circumlocuitous writer in Deutscher’s The Great Contest. Deutscher transmits the new Soviet theory “that Western capitalism will succumb not so much – or not directly – because of its own crises and contradictions as because of its inability to match the achievements of socialism [i.e. the Communist states]”; and later on: “It may be said that this has to some extent replaced the Marxist prospect of a permanent social revolution.” Here we have a theoretical rationale for what has long been the function of the Communist movement in the West: to act as border guard and shill for the competing, rival establishment in the East. Above all, the perspective of Socialism-from-Below becomes as alien to these professors of bureaucratic collectivism as to the apologists for capitalism in the American academies.
This type of neo-Stalinist ideologist is often critical of the actual Soviet regime – a good example is Deutscher, who remains as far as possible from being an uncritical apologist for Moscow like the official Communists. They must be understood as being permeationists with respect to bureaucratic-collectivism. What appears as a “socialism-from-outside” when seen from the capitalist world, becomes a sort of Fabianism when viewed from within the framework of the Communist system. Within this context, change-from-above-only is as firm a principle for these theoreticians as it was for Sidney Webb. This was demonstrated inter alia by Deutscher’s hostile reaction to the East German revolt of 1953 and to the Hungarian revolution of 1956, on the classical ground that such upheavals from below would scare the Soviet establishment away from its course of “liberalization” by the Inevitability of Gradualness.
Read on... and Take Action
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Local Action, International Solidarity
Subscribe to our e-mail list and get this newsletter delivered to your inbox weekly by contacting us at leftunited@gmail.com
Contents
1. Jobs, Not Jails!
2. Winning the Struggle for Public Education Today
3. ENOUGH: Shelter Dutchess County's Homeless
4. The Two Souls of Socialism: Chapter 9 (Part 2)
5. Read On... and Take Action
Jobs, Not Jails!
The movement in our area to stop the New Jim Crow faces its first major fightLast week, a report was published by the Dutchess County Criminal Justice Council entitled, "Criminal Justice System Needs Assessment." On page 24 of the text, under the heading, "Long Term Recommendation," the document states the following:
 |
| Demonstrators from the ANSWER Coalition march against mass incarceration January 14, 2012 in Washington, D.C. |
"The vast majority of the inmate population in the Dutchess County jail falls into one or another special population category. Recent surveys indicate that more than 80% of inmates had a history of treatment for a substance abuse disorder, a mental health disorder, or both prior to incarceration. At any given time, more than 20% of the inmates at the jail are receiving psychiatric care. The under 21 year old population at the jail can be as high as 15% of the total inmate population. Women, on average, represent 10% of the inmate population. Taken in the aggregate, nearly all inmates who fall into the category of having a history of mental illness or substance abuse are young or female."
Here, this "Criminal Justice Needs Assessment" essentially endorses the use of alternative housing for "special needs populations" such as those receiving psychiatric care (more than 20% of the total prison population), youth (up to 15% of the population), and women (10% of the population).
Furthermore, the report identifies the large part of the prison population that have been identified as having a substance abuse disorder. Many of those individuals are in jail solely because of drug offenses.
Nationally, a quarter of all inmates, either in jail or prison, are incarcerated because of a drug offense(Justice Policy Institute). Around half of those convicted of a drug offense are black. The reason for this racial discrepancy in drug offenses goes back to the Nixon Administration. Afraid of the advances made by blacks in the Civil Rights movement, Nixon struck back with what he called the "War on Drugs." This War on Drugs has led to the mass incarceration of blacks for drug offenses.
We believe that those incarcerated due to drug charges should constitute a fourth special needs group that should be transferred to a rehab center rather than a jail. Should national averages for jails and prisons hold true for the Dutchess County Jail, this group would represent around 25% of the prison population.
In August, the prison population in Dutchess County reached a record 502 people, whereas the current jail has only 252 beds. A rational assessment of the situation shows, by the Criminal Justice Committee's own logic, that alternative housing, mental health centers, and rehab facilities are the answer to prison overpopulation.
Incredibly, the very same report that endorsed "alternative housing options for special populations" and claimed that "the vast majority of the inmate population at the Dutchess County Jail falls into one or another special population category" went on to recommend the construction of a new, massive 500-bed prison. All of their long-term recommendations about "alternative housing," a "24 hour mental health crisis center," etc. is shoved onto the backburner and into the distant future. In the report's "Conclusion," on page 46, it claims that "the massive savings realized by the county will allow funds to be diverted into the programs discussed in this report concerning special populations."
So, there you have it, folks. We could have build alternative housing, mental health centers, and rehab facilities immediately, thereby making the construction of a new jail unnecessary. Instead, we have to wait until the construction of this new $78-$184 million jail to reap the "massive savings" that will of course result from it before we can build these facilities that we so desperately need right now.
If building a new jail to finance alternative housing sounds crazy, it's because the politicians don't really care about "special needs groups" and they sure as hell don't care about ending the war on drugs. In fact, they would rather see our black and brown brothers and sisters behind bars than see them as human beings fully realizing their potential as politically engaged members of society. They would rather see workers behind bars than see workers getting an education and thinking critically about our capitalist society. They would rather see us behind bars than in the streets, wondering why we have no jobs, no money, and no future. They would rather see mass incarceration than see mass resistance.
Yet, if the politicians don't care about the incarcerated, we, the members of our community, must care.
Join the End the New Jim Crow Action Network (ENJAN) this Wednesday (and every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month) @6:00 PM at the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library, Family Partnership Center, 29 North Hamilton Street, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601.
NO To Jail Expansion! YES to Alternative Housing, Mental Health Centers, and Rehabilitation Facilities!
NO to Austerity! YES to Social Services!
NO to Our Racist Criminal Justice System! YES to Systemic Change!
Winning the Struggle for Public Education Today
This post was originally published at uniteleft.com on September 14. Since then, the Chicago Teachers Union has ended their strike and is in the process of debating a contract. This contract would NOT introduce merit pay based on standardized test scores and would NOT end pay raises based on seniority. The contract also raised the teachers' salaries by "3% in the first year and 2% in the next two... but these increases are counterbalanced by uncompensated additional days in a longer school year." (socialistworker.org) What will happen to workers who are laid off is another concern, so the contract is far from perfect.In Chicago, striking teachers have been systematically villainized for the past week by the capitalist media for putting their demands ahead of the interests of students. However, teachers have never been attacked without students suffering because of it. The education program being pushed by the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) will be devastating for students and teachers alike if the union does not hold out and teachers don't win their demands.
Still, the teachers in Chicago have won a powerful victory that will give them strength in the fights to come.
Historically, public education has been one of the great accomplishments of the United States. Early democratic ideals manifested itself into the establishment of a system of public education to be made available to all children. This was, and still should be seen, as essential for all citizens of a democratic society. However, the United States never has been a truly democratic society and free, quality education has never been truly accessible to all. Yet it has been through fighting for this ideal that many of America''s great social struggles have grown. The fight for school desegregation and its place in the civil rights movement is a prime example. Today, access to quality public education is being attacked and defended most visibly in the city of Chicago.
The city has not, of course, openly directed their attack at public education. They have instead aimed their fire solely at teachers, the workers who, along with the janitors, bus drivers, cooks, and secretaries, make public education possible. The attacks on teachers are very real: Longer hours and more days of work with little raise in pay; larger class sizes; the possibility of being fired based on standardized test scores. Yet all of these attacks on teachers will hurt students equally. It will mean that students will have to face overworked teachers in huge classes, with their success hinging upon their ability to take a standardized tests (which measure not creativity, ingenuity, or any other useful skill but instead largely determine a student's test-taking ability alone). These changes are designed to break the teachers union, discourage critical thinking by students, and impose a corporate model for public education.
Yet corporate influence on public education can only go so far. After all, these schools will remain public. That is, unless they are underfunded so badly, as they often are, that city authorities transform the public institution into a charter school. Charter schools are managed by organizations, sometimes even corporations, accountable only for maintaining high standardized test scores. The push towards charter schools is central to the education "reform" movement currently being championed by America's capitalist elite. When asked about the difference between public and charter schools, the principle of one Chicago area charter said that his school encouraged an "environment of competition." This represents the intrusion of capitalism into one of the only areas that has so far largely resisted its domination: Education.
This competitive education omelet promises to break more than a few eggs. While tax dollars are sucked into charter schools, only a select few students will receive their benefits, as admission is based on a lottery system. If a child falls behind or runs into trouble while enrolled at a charter school, they are simply expelled from the institution. Those who are not accepted or are expelled from charter schools are sent to languish in the public school system. Should the current trend persist, these public schools will be so badly underfunded that the children will have not even experience a taste of the free, quality education we are promised. These educational disparities will necessarily give way to economic disparities, widening the already unconscionable inequality in the United States. Already at the bottom of America's social and economic hierarchy, Blacks and Hispanics will be hit the hardest by this widening inequality.
Yet, although this nightmarish future has already been set in motion by capitalists and politicians across the country, it is not too late to stop it from being fully realized. In fact, the capitalists would like nothing more than for us to throw our hands in the air and resign from struggle. Used to their dictates being followed without challenge, capitalists and the capitalist press has gotten increasingly angry at the resistance being staged by the Chicago Teachers Union. In a recent Chicago Tribune editorial, this anger at the failure of teachers to submit to their God-given plans was articulated: "Chicago Teachers Union officials aren't merely fighting City Hall. They're fighting the inevitability of education reform. They are denying the arc of history." This logic mirrors the capitalists' proclamations about the inevitability of globalization and the backwardness of all opposing voices. Yet if it is inevitable that the capitalists will try to institute education reform, the fight-back is equally unavoidable. Let us rally in solidarity with the teachers in Chicago and stage a real challenge to the politics and polices of neo-liberalism and education "reform."
The outcome of the Chicago teachers strike is of critical importance to the future of public education in America. The struggle is for benefits, a fair contract, and job security not jeopardized by the results of standardized tests. It is this same struggle that represents our best hope of saving public education and realizing the dream of free, quality public education for all.
ENOUGH: Shelter Dutchess County's Homeless!
Speak up for the homeless in Dutchess County Thursday, October 4th after 4 P.M. on the 6th floor of the Dutchess County Office Building at 22 Market Street in Poughkeepsie during our County Legislature's Committee Day for this new resolution (co-sponsored by County Legislators Joel Tyner and Steve White ) to be passed. Also be sure to e-mail countylegislators@dutchessny.gov and let them know what you think about throwing the homeless out onto the streets.WHEREAS, on July 5th, Hudson River Housing, the operator of Dutchess County's only emergency shelter, announced new policies that limit homeless persons' stay at the Dutchess County Coalition for the Homeless overnight shelter to 120 days and charge a $10 nightly fee after 60 days, and
WHEREAS, as a result many of Dutchess County's homeless spent most of their summer nights hidden away in abandoned buildings, fearing the potential of becoming a victim of crime, saving their days at the shelter for the winter by sleeping in abandoned housing, and
WHEREAS, many fear that residents who are unable to find work or shelter may resort to crime, drugs, or alcohol themselves, costing Dutchess County taxpayers more; it is clear that our homeless need more resources to receive job training and education to become independent for our community to be a safer place, and
WHEREAS, according to recent U.S. Census Data. at least 400 homeless are wandering Poughkeepsie's alleys, doorways and abandoned buildings during any given night, and an average of fifteen people are turned away from shelter every night as it is right now according to a MidHudsonNews.com report September 5th, and
WHEREAS, Community Voices Heard and many others have called on Hudson River Housing to suspend the rules while local agencies work to find a better alternative, and therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the Dutchess County Legislature strongly urges that Hudson River Housing suspend these new rules and limits for the homeless until local agencies work to find a better alternative, with the help and support of the Dutchess County Department of Social Services, Dutchess County Coalition of Nonprofits, and the United Way of Dutchess-Orange Region, and be it further
RESOLVED. that a copy of this resolution be sent to the Dutchess County Department of Social Services, Hudson River Housing, Dutchess County Coalition of Nonprofits, and the United Way of Dutchess-Orange Region
The Two Souls of Socialism: Chapter 9 (Part 2)
Here, we re-print the second half of Chapter 9 in Hal Draper's classic socialist pamphlet "The Two Souls of Socialism." You can read the entire text online here4. “Communionism.” – In his 1930 article Max Eastman called this “the united-brotherhood pattern,” of “the gregarian or human-solidarity socialists” – “those yearning with a mixture of religious mysticism and animal gregariousness for human solidarity.” It should not be confused with the notion of solidarity in strikes, etc., and not necessarily identified with what is commonly called comradeship in the socialist movement or a “sense of community” elsewhere. Its specific content, as Eastman says, is a “seeking for submersion in a Totality, seeking to lose himself in the bosom of a substitute for God.”
Eastman is here pointing to the Communist Party writer Mike Gold; another excellent case is Harry F. Ward, the CP’s hardy clerical fellow-traveler, whose books theorize this kind of “oceanic” yearning for the shucking-off of one’s individuality. Bellamy’s notebooks reveal him as a classic case: he writes about the longing “for absorption into the grand omnipotency of the universe;” his “Religion of Solidarity” reflects his mistrust of the individualism of the personality, his craving to dissolve the Self into communion with Something Greater.
This strain is very prominent in some of the most authoritarian of the Socialisms-from-Above and is not seldom met in milder cases like the philanthropic elitists with Christian Socialist views. Naturally, this kind of “communionist” socialism is always hailed as an “ethical socialism” and praised for holding class struggle in horror; for there must be no conflict inside a beehive. It tends to flatly counterpose “collectivism” to “individualism” (a false opposition from a humanist standpoint), but what it really impugns is individuality.
5. Permeationism. – Socialism-from-Above appears in many varieties for the simple reason that there are always many alternatives to the self-mobilization of masses from below; but the cases discussed tend to divide into two families.
One has the perspective of overthrowing the present, capitalist hierarchical society in order to replace it with a new, non-capitalist type of hierarchical society based on a new kind of elite ruling class. (These varieties are usually ticketed “revolutionary” in histories of socialism.) The other has the perspective of permeating the centers of power in the existing society in order to metamorphose it – gradually, inevitably – into a statified collectivism, perhaps molecule by molecule the way wood petrifies into agate. This is the characteristic stigmatum of the reformist, social-democratic varieties of Socialism-from-Above.
The very term permeationism was invented for self-description by what we have already called the “purest” variety of reformism ever seen, Sidney Webb’s Fabianism. All social-democratic permeationism is based on a theory of mechanical inevitability: the inevitable self-collectivization of capitalism from above, which is equated with socialism. Pressure from below (where considered permissible) can hasten and straighten the process, provided it is kept under control to avoid frightening the self-collectivizers. Hence the social-democratic permeationists are not only willing but anxious to “join the Establishment” rather than to fight it, in whatever capacity they are allowed to join it, whether as cabin boys or cabinet ministers. Typically the function of their movement-from-below is primarily to blackmail the ruling powers into buying them off with such opportunities for permeation.
The tendency toward the collectivization of capitalism is indeed a reality: as we have seen, it means the bureaucratic collectivization of capitalism. As this process has advanced, the contemporary social-democracy has itself gone through a metamorphosis. Today, the leading theoretician of this neo-reformism, C.A.R. Crosland, denounces as “extremist” the mild statement favoring nationalization which was originally written for the British Labor program by none other than Sidney Webb (with Arthur Henderson)! The number of continental social democracies that have now purged their programs of all specifically anti-capitalist content – a brand new phenomenon in socialist history – reflects the degree to which the ongoing process of bureaucratic collectivization is accepted as an installment of petrified “socialism.”
This is permeationism as grand strategy. It leads, of course, to permeationism as political tactic, a subject we cannot here pursue beyond mentioning its presently most prominent U.S. form: the policy of supporting the Democratic Party and the lib-lab coalition around the “Johnson Consensus,” its predecessors and successors.
The distinction between these two “families” of Socialism-from-Above holds for home-grown socialism, from Babeuf to Harold Wilson; that is, cases where the social base of the given socialist current is inside the national system, be it the labor aristocracy or declassé elements or any other. The case is somewhat different for those “socialisms-from-outside” represented by the contemporary Communist Parties, whose strategy and tactics depend in the last analysis on a power base outside any of the domestic social strata; that is, on the bureaucratic collectivist ruling classes in the East.
The Communist Parties have shown themselves uniquely different from any kind of home-grown movement in their capacity to alternate or combine both the “revolutionary”-oppositionist and the permeationist tactics to suit their convenience. Thus the American Communist Party could swing from its ultra-left-adventurist “Third Period” of 1928-34 into the ultra-permeationist tactic of the Popular Front period, then back into fire-breathing “revolutionism” during the Hitler-Stalin Pact period, and again, during the ups-and-downs of the Cold War, into various degrees of combination of the two. With the current Communist split along Moscow-Peking line, the “Krushchevites” and the Maoists tend each to embody one of the two tactics which formerly alternated.
Frequently, therefore, in domestic policy the official Communist Party and the social-democrats tend
to converge on the policy of permeationism, though from the angle of a different Socialism-from-Above.
6. Socialism-from-Outside. – The preceding varieties of Socialism-from-Above look to power at the tops of society: now we come to the expectation of succor from the outside.
The flying-saucer cult is a pathological form, messianism a more traditional form, when “outside” means out of this world; but for the present purposes, “outside” means outside the social struggle at home. For the Communists of East Europe after World War II, the New Order had to be imported on Russian bayonets; for the German Social-Democrats in exile, liberation of their own people could finally be imagined only by grace of foreign military victory.
The peacetime variety is socialism-by-model-example. This, of course, was the method of the old utopians, who built their model colonies in the American backwoods in order to demonstrate the superiority of their system and convert the unbelievers. Today, it is this substitute for social struggle at home which is increasingly the essential hope of the Communist movement in the West.
The model-example is provided by Russia (or China, for the Maoists); and while it is difficult to make the lot of the Russian proletarians half-attractive to Western workers even with a generous dose of lies, there is more success to be expected from two other approaches:
a. The relatively privileged position of managerial, bureaucratic and intellectual-flunky elements in the Russian collectivist system can be pointedly contrasted with the situation in the West, where these same elements are subordinated to the owners of capital and manipulators of wealth. At this point the appeal of the Soviet system of statified economy coincides with the historic appeal of middle-class socialisms, to disgruntled class-elements of intellectuals, technologists, scientists and scientific employees, administrative bureaucrats and organization men of various types, who can most easily identify themselves with a new ruling class based on state power rather than on money power and ownership, and therefore visualize themselves as the new men of power in a non-capitalist but elitist setup.
b. While the official Communist Parties are required to maintain the facade of orthodoxy in something called “Marxism-Leninism,” it is more common that serious theoreticians of neo-Stalinism who are not tied to the party do free themselves from the pretense. One development is the open abandonment of any perspective of victory through social struggle inside the capitalist countries. The “world revolution” is equated simply with the demonstration by the Communist states that their system is superior. This has now been put into thesis-form by the two leading theoreticians of neo-Stalinism, Paul Sweezy and Isaac Deutscher.
Baran and Sweezy’s Monopoly Capitalism (1966) flatly rejects “the answer of traditional Marxist orthodoxy – that the industrial proletariat must eventually rise in revolution against its capitalist oppressors.” Same for all the other “outsider” groups of society – unemployed, farm workers, ghetto masses, etc.; they cannot constitute a coherent force in society.” This leaves no one; capitalism cannot be effectively challenged from within. What then? Some day, the authors explain on their last page, “perhaps not in the present century,” the people will be disillusioned with capitalism “as the world revolution spreads and as the socialist countries show by their example that it is possible” to build a rational society. That is all. Thus the Marxist phrases filling the other 366 pages of this essay become simply an incantation like the reading of the Sermon on the Mount at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The same perspective is presented less bluntly by a more circumlocuitous writer in Deutscher’s The Great Contest. Deutscher transmits the new Soviet theory “that Western capitalism will succumb not so much – or not directly – because of its own crises and contradictions as because of its inability to match the achievements of socialism [i.e. the Communist states]”; and later on: “It may be said that this has to some extent replaced the Marxist prospect of a permanent social revolution.” Here we have a theoretical rationale for what has long been the function of the Communist movement in the West: to act as border guard and shill for the competing, rival establishment in the East. Above all, the perspective of Socialism-from-Below becomes as alien to these professors of bureaucratic collectivism as to the apologists for capitalism in the American academies.
This type of neo-Stalinist ideologist is often critical of the actual Soviet regime – a good example is Deutscher, who remains as far as possible from being an uncritical apologist for Moscow like the official Communists. They must be understood as being permeationists with respect to bureaucratic-collectivism. What appears as a “socialism-from-outside” when seen from the capitalist world, becomes a sort of Fabianism when viewed from within the framework of the Communist system. Within this context, change-from-above-only is as firm a principle for these theoreticians as it was for Sidney Webb. This was demonstrated inter alia by Deutscher’s hostile reaction to the East German revolt of 1953 and to the Hungarian revolution of 1956, on the classical ground that such upheavals from below would scare the Soviet establishment away from its course of “liberalization” by the Inevitability of Gradualness.
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