By Greg Colvin
October 8th, 2008 - 6:44pm ET
At Tuesday night’s debate, the presidential candidates were asked a question that I believe deserves much more attention.
"BROKAW: Sen. McCain, for you, we have our first question from the Internet tonight. A child of the Depression, 78-year-old Fiora from Chicago.
Since World War II, we have never been asked to sacrifice anything to help our country, except the blood of our heroic men and women. As president, what sacrifices -- sacrifices will you ask every American to make to help restore the American dream and to get out of the economic morass that we're now in?"
In my 2006 essay The Progressive Trinity http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0606.colvin.html, I wrote:
"Because Public Service is fundamentally based upon unselfish efforts for the benefit of all of us, that quality must be embodied in the public leader. Especially so for political leaders because we have no choice but to be ruled by them until they leave office.
We have seen people become leaders because they are master manipulators, or sheer opportunists, or charismatic salesmen, or anointed by the oligarchy of wealth and influence that works behind the scenes. We try, as best we can, to project our desires for statesmanship and compassion and wisdom onto the presidents and governors we elect, but we are too often severely disappointed by their behavior.
The paramount criterion for candidates to the highest offices in Public Service should be: is this person able, by their own example, to inspire sacrifices for the common good? "
How did Senators McCain and Obama answer?
John McCain fumbled around with a riff on eliminating government programs, earmarks, an across-the-board freeze on spending except for defense, veterans, and “other vital programs.” He didn’t say exactly which programs would be cut, but I suppose bailing out Wall Street is a vital program now, and so is continuing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, because he didn’t offer to give them up.
Disappointing for a man who brought his acceptance speech to a climax by saying:
"My friends, if you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you're disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. Enlist in our armed forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed. Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier. Because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself."
Barack Obama gave a better answer, but it seemed like he still does not recognize the tremendous potential that a fully honest and prophetic answer could have. He said:
"I think the American people are hungry for the kind of leadership that is going to tackle these problems not just in government, but outside of government. … There is going to be the need for each and every one of us to start thinking about how we use energy. … [E]ach and every one of us can start thinking about how can we save energy in our homes, in our buildings….
I think the young people of America are especially interested in how they can serve, and that's one of the reasons why I'm interested in doubling the Peace Corps, making sure that we are creating a volunteer corps all across this country that can be involved in their community, involved in military service, so that military families and our troops are not the only ones bearing the burden of renewing America."
A truly great leader, with the leadership character of a Lincoln or a Kennedy, would have to look into the next decade and call out those challenges that can only be met by inspiring Americans to set aside their personal comforts and make deep sacrifices for the common good.
This is the essence of progressive political philosophy: We are all in this together. “Every man for himself” and “do what you can get away with” has led us into this mess. We can only pull together to solve the enormous problems that face our country if we can trust and respect each other. And we can only do that if we have an unselfish leader who deserves our trust and respect.
Is there any doubt that universal health care, for those who need it most, will need to be paid for by the young and healthy?
Is there any doubt that we will not stop the polar ice caps from melting and the oceans from rising unless we can stop burning fossil fuels at the rate we have been?
The 78-year-old caller from Chicago no doubt remembers, as fewer and fewer of us alive today do, that World War Two required incredible sacrifices. Detroit was ordered to stop making cars and build only tanks and airplanes. Gasoline was rationed. You couldn’t buy sliced bread because steel was needed for the war effort. Does any conscientious person truly doubt that the same level of sacrifice will be needed to stop global warming? Perhaps the Greatest Generation is yet to come.
So, let’s start a list of the sacrifices that the candidates should share with us:
1. Energy conservation. By every reasonable voluntary and mandatory means, we will need to curtail our wasteful use of fossil fuels and conserve our oil resources. Now. Not after we have converted to electric cars and hydrogen fuel cells and the other technological breakthroughs we hope for. We need to keep our remaining offshore oil and Alaskan oil in the ground if our grandchildren will be able to fly on airplanes and have an Air Force to protect them. Come to think of it, climate change also means conserving other resources, too, like water and fisheries.
2. Paying for the war in real time. We cannot keep fighting the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere without paying for it now. To pay for the war in Vietnam at the time it was happening, the rich in America paid an income tax surcharge and Lyndon Johnson sold off Fannie Mae. George Bush, incredibly, has reduced taxes for the wealthy and paid for the war with deficit spending.
3. The rich will be called upon to sacrifice. Obama should highlight that he is asking those who make over $250,000 a year to pay more in taxes. They can afford it, and should be contributing more to the common good, especially in hard times. If the tax burden paid by the wealthy during the Reagan years can be restored, that will go a long way toward paying for the war on terror, the Wall Street bailout, the cost of taking care of our veterans, health care and educational reform, and the cost of new green technology.
4. We all will need to keep supporting our government with our taxes. Bill Clinton, when he was running for president in 1992, promised middle-class tax relief. He couldn’t deliver, because economic realities required him to reduce the federal deficit. After Obama proposed a tax reduction for 95% of households, the government committed us to a $700 billion expenditure to rescue the financial system. Hello? It should surprise no one if Obama’s middle-class tax cut were to be reduced or delayed.
5. Delaying retirement. All signs point to the fact that my generation, born after 1945, will have to keep working longer and retire later, due to the drop in value of our 401(k) and other retirement plans. There are too many of us to stop being productive and live off of Social Security, diminishing home equity and investments. Things will get worse before they get better, and it may take another 10 years for the country to pull out of this financial crisis.
6. No more easy money. Wealth did not trickle down during the years of Republican administration, but lots of credit did—subprime mortgages, credit cards, companies issuing junk bonds, states and counties borrowing, bizarre unregulated derivatives and hedge funds. A house of cards, collapsing on us now. We will have to spend less and save more, and the financial self-discipline will be a painful adjustment.
7. Yes, there will be more government regulation. Isn’t that the lesson of the financial meltdown? There won’t be as many ways to get rich quick on Wall Street. If Obama is elected, unions may have more rights to organize, companies may be forced to pay women equally, fuel efficiency standards for automobiles may be raised. Maybe even price controls on prescription drugs. The business world will be called upon to sacrifice for the common good. About time.
8. Social Security and Medicare reforms. Of course, the rich should pay a greater share of the payroll taxes. As Obama has proposed, those making over $250,000, who don’t pay a dime more right now, can afford it. That’s progressive taxation, long overdue. If that were done as a first step, then it might be reasonable to ask others to sacrifice by making other small adjustments, to the eligible retirement age, for example.
9. Civil preparedness. After September 11th, the most visible change in our daily lives was the increase in airport security measures. In the seven years since then, many other steps that could protect us have been neglected. A suitcase nuclear device could be driven or walked into almost any office building in America. As a society, we don’t practice emergency procedures for earthquakes, floods, fires, or terrorist attacks. And at no level of government do we have well-organized, practical ways to enlist ordinary citizens in rescue, recovery, and cleanup operations. A flotilla of small boats could have saved many lives in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina, but we just left those poor people on their rooftops.
10. The Ugly American, revisited. In 1960, John F. Kennedy inspired a new generation of Americans to care about our relationship with the rest of the world by joining the Peace Corps. He spoke German in Berlin and Jackie spoke French in Paris. Senator Obama wants to double the Peace Corps and has lamented Americans’ lack of fluency in foreign languages. Recently, a group of former Secretaries of State convened and agreed that our most serious international problem is the low level of respect for America in the rest of the world. We could set aside a bit of our arrogance about being “the best country in the world,” take the time and trouble to understand other people’s cultures, religions, and problem, and win back our allies and friends.
Our presidential candidates have sought to win this election by telling their personal stories, by trying to relate to the average person’s needs, by attacking the failures and lies of their adversaries, by mobilizing thousands of grassroots supporters, and by offering new policies and benefits. They have tried to outdo each other with the promise of better government service at no additional cost.
When JFK, in his inaugural speech, said “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” he prepared an entire nation, the G.I. Generation and the Baby Boomers alike, to do amazing things for the benefit of all humanity, from sending a man to the moon to overcoming racial inequalities at home.
There is no other appeal to the voter that is more powerful, more courageous, more uplifting, than the bare-headed image of an American president who is able, by his or her own example, to inspire sacrifices for the common good.
The Wall St. Bailout: A Socialist Perspective
A Statement of the National Executive Committee of the
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
Oct. 3
Under extreme pressure The House of Representatives has just passed a revised more than $700 billion bailout bill that contains tax cuts for businesses and individuals, an increase in coverage of insurance on deposits, a few provisions of social value, and a bevy of “sweeteners” for politicians running for reelection. The bill makes a vague promise that the Treasury Secretary now has the “authority” to use some funds to “help homeowners” But for the million who have already been foreclosed or millions more facing loss of their homes, prospects remain very grim. The legislation also does nothing to cap outrageous CEO salaries and guarantees nothing for besieged taxpayers.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich continues to ask the right questions: “Why have we not considered any alternatives other than to give $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren’t we asking Wall Street to clean up its own mess? Why aren’t we passing new laws to stop speculation, which triggered this? Why aren’t we putting up new regulatory structures to protect investors? How do we even value the $700 billion in toxic assets? Why aren’t we helping homeowners directly with their debt burden? Why aren’t we helping American families faced with bankruptcy? Why aren’t we reducing debt for Main Street instead of Wall Street?”
On the same day when the loss in September of an additional 159,000 jobs was announced (added to 605,000 already lost this year) Democratic leaders tacitly admitted the legislation’s failures, promising to come back next year with presumably larger Democratic majorities and a Democratic White House to enact a major stimulus package to restart the economy. The Democrats also promised to investigate Wall Street with the aim of enacting punitive measures. The Democrats, and all elected officials, must be urgently held to that promise.
A comment in a Boston Globe report on September 30 remains valid: “Even after the federal government starts buying mortgage-related assets…the fundamental weakness of the US economy will remain, including distressed housing markets, deteriorating labor markets, and faltering consumer spending as families struggle under heavy debt, high prices for food and energy and uncertainty about their jobs.” Emergent homeless tent cities across the country underscore the tragedy and urgency of the growing crisis.
The crisis for working people is real. The need for action requires the united voices of opposition across social, political and geographical lines that brought down the original bailout bill. The urgent need now is for action to stop the hemorrhaging of jobs, to complete the extension of unemployment insurance just voted by the House, to deal forcefully to stop home foreclosures and to address the needs of the public with the same vigor that was exercised to address the finance industry’s credit crisis.
Capitalism is the Root Cause of the Crisis
John McCain and right wing members of Congress have uncharacteristically launched an assault on Wall Street venality and corporate greed. They ignore their own duplicity in deregulation that led to victimizing millions and their own demands for more tax breaks on capital gains and overseas profits. Their new pseudo-populism among other things is aimed at papering over their fears of “creeping socialism.” Glen Beck, CNN’s right wing talking head declared that “Greed, not capitalism, is the cause” of the crisis, declaring the system out of bounds for dissection and challenge.
Greed and mindless criminal behavior on Wall Street merit the condemnation of an outraged public. While greed is crucial, blaming it for the current crisis is like blaming a lighted match for blowing up a gas-filled room while ignoring the gas that been accumulating for a long time. The root cause is capitalism itself and not since the Great Depression have so many begun to turn a critical eye towards “free market fundamentalism” and towards capitalism.
The lifeblood of value from which profit is derived is labor. But labor under capitalism is never compensated at its full value. While the price of labor is determined by what is required for its survival and by its own struggles for a greater share of the value it creates, capital seeks through exploitation to appropriate the value that remains which becomes the source of profit in commodity exchange. The wealth created by production must inevitably overproduce, because the vast majority that labors is unable to recoup the full production that it generated. The result is cyclical crises that last until overproduction is expended or until new productive needs emerge.
In recent decades, capitalism has staved off crisis by government spending (from taxes taken significantly from workers) and by extending credit (from which additional profits are gained from interest payments). This works for a while, but the underlying contradictions inevitably surface and periods of recession and depression commence. Cyclical crises are driven also by competition that forces capitalists to buy new equipment to reduce costs of production and maintain or raise profits. A fundamental aim is to reduce wage costs and benefits, further deepening the cyclical crisis and wreaking havoc on workers and small businesses that serve them.
Labor, the source of wealth is allowed only a fraction of what it creates. That remains the core contradiction at the heart of capitalism – and at the heart of the present calamity.
In the long run, costly military production aggravates the crisis. It fails to generate new value and drags down the overarching civilian economy that increasingly needs new investment to sustain its vigor. Adding to capitalism’s growing profit problems are looming environmental catastrophe and the shrinkage of existing energy sources, especially oil and its escalating price.
In the late sixties and early seventies, the end of an extended post World War II expansion loomed. Facing serious debt and balance of international payments problems due to enormous outlays for the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon took the United States off the gold standard, letting the dollar float on world markets, opening the door to intensified global economic competition and currency speculation. Nixon’s action upset the mechanisms put in place at the Bretton Woods conference during World War II to assure stability in global economic relations and assure the dominance of the victorious industrial powers.
During that period, the problems and contradictions of capitalism deepened. Major industrial sectors virtually shut down as capitalists sought to minimize falling rates of profit by shifting production to low wage countries with tax policies strongly favorable to business and hostile to labor unions. For large numbers of workers, well-paying industrial jobs were replaced by low wage, non-union service employment.
For the industrial production that remained, labor was subjected to a major assault on unionization by industry and government underscored by Ronald Reagan’s destruction of the air traffic controllers’ union in 1981. With a sharp decline in union protections and the freezing of union growth, wages stagnated and declined while labor was pressed to greater productivity often under the threat of shutdowns and removal to low wage countries.
With globalized production, major corporations and government turned their backs on domestic support for education, health care and social services for working people, contributing to a decline of schools, to deteriorating cities and to serious neglect of the nation’s infrastructure. At the same time, those with economic and political power exalted individual greed for the rich while preaching a doctrine of “personal responsibility” for the working class, capping welfare benefits, marginalizing the poor and the unemployed and creating a growing prison-industrial complex embedded in racism.
With the weakening of the industrial structure, the financial system became capitalism’s cash cow. Traditionally, credit has functioned as an engine to start and sustain enterprise and compensate for the inability of labor to buy back all it creates. Capitalists paid interest on credit by turning over a portion of value created by labor to financial institutions. Today, a “financial industry” has overshadowed the real production of goods. Riding a tide of “free market” deregulation, exchanges of speculative paper have become the sources of dizzying fortunes – fortunes that created no new wealth but are the fruit of cynical ponzi schemes that ultimately squeeze out of the working and middle classes whatever is left of their resources.
The sub-prime mortgage crisis is a searing example of the crude exploitation that characterizes the “finance industry.” Millions of people, many who qualified for “prime” mortgages, were steered to mortgages designed to trigger impossibly high interest, while making huge fees for brokers and lenders.
Those mortgages were packaged into “mortgage-backed securities,” sold repeatedly worldwide at ersatz profit, spreading the poison through he global financial structure. That has added to the already oppressive nature of globalized capitalism whose “race to the bottom” in search of maximal profits has burdened much of the developing world with intractable debt, forced reduction of social spending at the behest of the International Monetary Fund, and acquiescence in the intense exploitation of their own national labor. All that has accelerated disease, hunger and grinding poverty – widening the massive disparity between rich and poor on a world scale.
Ultimately, the growing impoverishment of millions of working people combined with the crooked nature of the sub-prime market, caught up with Wall Street’s speculative binge, causing the present crisis. The credit system again proved ultimately incapable of cushioning the inherent contradictions of capitalism – an exploited labor force without the resources to sustain the system.
Without incessant protest and demand from an aroused public, the interests of the finance industry will continue to be aggrandized. And the crisis will only deepen. The mortgage crisis actually pales in comparison to credit card debt that runs into trillions of dollars. The political moment demands action.
The Immediate Need: Fund the People, not Wall Street
CCDS joins with a range of progressive organizations and movements that have made proposals to effectively deal with the immediate crisis – beyond the deeply flawed legislation just passed by Congress and signed by the President.
Forecloses must be halted. Bankruptcy courts must be allowed to restructure mortgages and lenders must be required to refinance mortgages as lower, fixed rates.
Wall Street and the super rich must pay for their own bailout. CEO salaries and golden parachutes must be sharply reined in. A wealth surcharge on incomes over ten million dollars would add 300 billion dollars to the treasury. A sales tax on Wall Street trade in stocks of one penny for every four dollars invested would yield one hundred billion dollars a year.
Those funds should jump start a massive program to repair the nation’s infrastructure and launch a green alternative energy program that will create millions of new jobs. Unemployment benefits must be increased and retraining programs launched. Nothing less than a "New New Deal" is required to address the financial stress facing working people.
Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan must end; military spending must be reduced; the billions saved should be plowed into jobs, and social services green energy development and infrastructure improvements.
The costs of health care constitute the greatest single source of financial strain on working people. Universal single payer health insurance must be enacted.
We urge that the principal contours of this program be advanced and forcefully enunciated in the crucial election campaign by Barack Obama and progressive candidates at all levels.
CCDS takes special note of the impact of the crisis on the country’s African American population and other oppressed nationalities. The historic patterns of segregated housing through “red lining” and other practices have left many African Americans with few alternatives than to accept sub-prime mortgages to escape forced sub-standard housing. That factor, combined with the growing depressed economic circumstances of African Americans and replicated in other communities of color has contributed to extensive stripping of the financial resources of those communities. An end to targeted racist policies should be a central demand for relief from the ravages of the present crisis.
Socialism: The Ultimate Answer
CCDS believes that the ultimate solution to the crisis requires the elimination of capitalism and the institution of a political and economic system founded on democratic principles of service to the needs and interests of the working majority for good of society as a whole.
The starting point for the democratic socialist reconstruction of society can begin with the nationalization of banking and all financial services. That demand is embedded in the nation’s political tradition. The Populists advanced it in the late 1890s and the early 20th century Socialist Party advocated it. They were motivated by a profound belief that the nation’s credit and finances, created by labor, should be democratically owned and controlled by working people to build and sustain material production, education, health care, housing and food for the good of all. That essential principle is more valid than ever.
Nationalization of energy, oil in particular, should also be a foundation for the democratic and socialist revitalization of society. The earth’s natural resources rightfully belong to all. The corporate owners of energy have demonstrated their inability by nature of their class interest to utilize the massive wealth created by those industries to confront the environmental crisis and to curb their super profits to benefit society. Basic social and economic problems at this juncture cannot be solved without nationalization of energy.
With those foundations of social ownership established, working people can explore other forms of ownership that can end capitalism’s insoluble contradictions and chart a course for national and global security, peace and justice.
CCDS is committed to explore, educate and organize for a socialist vision and socialist reality as the historically mandated road to a better life for all humanity.
A Final Word: The Coming Elections
The combined impact of financial crisis, threatened environmental catastrophe, growing unemployment, rising inflation of food costs and health care is a tsunami of storms that will confront a new administration in 2009.
That gathering crisis also engenders an historic opportunity to advance major change – to prioritize the needs of the working majority, to forge a master plan to rebuild the country, create millions of green jobs, advance education and health care, end the wars and launch a new constructive multilateral foreign policy. That requires both the immediate need to defeat the far right and John McCain. It also requires the broadest unity of all forces for progress, left and center to build a powerful bottom-up consensus for progressive change without which a new administration could not advance major change against the power of entrenched corporate interests.
In the midst of darkness, the light of progress can shine through. It is up to all working people and their allies to make that progress possible and everlasting.
National Executive Committee
CCDS
Charlene Mitchell
Mark Solomon
Mildred Williamson
Renee Carter
Marian Gordon
Michael Kaufman
Duncan McFarland
Ted Pearson
Harry Targ
Steve Willett
Advisory Committee
Timuel D. Black
Professor (emeritus) City College of Chicago
Noam Chomsky
Professor, MIT
Angela Davis
Author, Professor, Activist
Ruby Dee
Actress, poet, playwright
Donna DeWitt
President, South Carolina State AFL-CIO
Elaine Hagopian
Professor of Sociology, Simmons College
Connie Hogarth
Cofounder, former Executive Director of WESPAC C. Hogarth Center for Social Action, Manhattanville College
Manning Marable
Director Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University
Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez
Director, Institute for MultiRacial Justice
Eugene "Gus" Newport
Former Mayor of Berkeley
Jack O'Dell
Movement organizer, journalist, foreign policy specialist
Pete Seeger
Musician, writer, environmentalist
Toshi Seeger
Environmentalist, grandmother
Don White
CISPES - L.A.
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