The Dynamism of American Islam

Jonathan Curiel discusses The Dynamism of American Islam.

Islam’s diversity in the United States offers an inspiring vision of the religion. When Malcolm X went on the hajj to Saudi Arabia in 1964, he was shocked to witness a similar diversity, and it prompted him to abandon his beliefs in the Nation of Islam for traditional Sunni Islam. He said he’d encountered Muslims “of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans” who were “all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood.”

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Malcolm X was forced to confront his hatred of white people through the hajj. He had to throw away many of his prejudices. And in doing so, he matured considerably.

But in doing so, he incurred the fatal wrath of his former comrades in the Nation of Islam. He knew it was dangerous, but he persist because he was true to himself. Integrity can be fatal.

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Be Calm, Robots Aren’t About to Take Your Job

Mark Thoma comments on Be Calm, Robots Aren’t About to Take Your Job, MIT Economist Says..

I've been arguing for a long time that in coming decades the major question will be about distribution, not production. I'm not very worried about stagnation, etc. — we'll have plenty of stuff to go around. I'm worried about, to quote the title of a political science textbook I used many, many, many years ago as an undergraduate, "who gets the cookies?" not how many cookies we're able to produce So I agree with Autor on this point:

Mr. Autor … added, “If we automate all the jobs, we’ll be rich—which means we’ll have a distribution problem, not an income problem.”

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Karl Marx made the same point in discussing Capitalism. The main problem has always been one of distribution.

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ALBA after ten years

John Riddell looks at ALBA after ten years.

During a visit to the Penobscot indigenous nation in Maine a few years ago, I found they were receiving material aid from Venezuela, in a program that also assisted Black communities in the United States. The Bolivarians thus confirmed the vision of Malcolm X, murdered 50 years ago today, who saw the freedom struggle in the global South as a beacon of hope for his people. ALBA has set an example for such mutual assistance, in a spirit of solidarity, among its members and also with non-member countries in the region.

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Nothing marks the moral poverty of the USA than this: poor countries are assisting the poor in the USA.

This is building the solidarity among the international proletariat. Workers, by helping each other, develop their political consciousness about the operations and morality of the Capitalist system.

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No, SYRIZA has not surrendered

Tom Walker writes that No, SYRIZA has not surrendered.

Insofar as the Syriza government is having to compromise — and clearly it is making compromises short of surrender — that represents not so much their failure as our own. Syriza has always been clear that we cannot expect Greece to defeat austerity alone.

The various European ministers on the other end of the continuing negotiation with the Greek government need to be feeling the pressure. We need a huge movement across Europe in solidarity with Greece, and we need to be throwing ourselves into building that movement, not reclining in our armchairs ready to say "I told you so".

We must put everything we can muster into shifting the political balance of forces across Europe. We now have four months of space in which to do so: we need to make them count.

There is clearly a division among the elite now over the issue of austerity, with the US government, the Adam Smith Institute and various prominent economists not usually associated with the left backing Greece's proposals. That crack is waiting to be forced open.

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SYRIZA has the difficult task of keeping the Greek economy functioning in a Capitalist world. Its political support is deeply dependent on its ability to deliver key election promises—some of which it has done so already.

That SYRIZA has survived a month in government, in itself, is a miracle.

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Farmers Walk Away From Leases Due to Plunging Grain Prices

Mike Shedlock writes that Farmers Walk Away From Leases Due to Plunging Grain Prices.

The price of corn is at a price seen in late 2006, wheat late 2005, and soybeans 2004. Land prices, lease prices, equipment prices, and fertilizer are much higher.

This has put the squeeze on many farmers, especially those who lease land. The result is best described as "walking away farmer style".

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This is a clash between the farmer and the rentiers. By refusing to reduce the rents, the landlords are committing economic suicide as farmers decamp.

This is an example of how class interests override class survival.

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Wal-Mart's Minimum Wage Breakdown

Barry Ritholtz writes that Wal-Mart's Minimum Wage Breakdown is a self-inflicted wound.

There is also the issue of the negative PR generated by Wal-Mart’s low, low wages. As we discussed back in 2013, many of its full-time employees receive a full array of federal and state welfare. Wal-Mart has become the nation’s largest private-sector beneficiary of taxpayer-supported public assistance (see "How McDonald's and Wal-Mart Became Welfare Queens"). Indeed, the U.S. taxpayer has been subsidizing the wages of this publicly traded, private-sector company to the tune of $2.66 billion in government largess a year.

Although many factors contributed to the move, the simple reason for the increase is because Wal-Mart has stopped growing. Same-store sales have been little changed or declining for some time now. When we look at the underlying causes, the company’s workforce, and how it is managed, are the prime suspects.

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Cutting welfare means cutting Wal-Mart's profits!

If you treat your employees like shit, they will treat your customers like shit. Then you wonder why no-one shops here anymore.

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Knowledge Isn't Power

Mark Thoma excerpts from Paul Krugman's commentary that Knowledge Isn't Power.

So what is really going on? Corporate profits have soared as a share of national income, but there is no sign of a rise in the rate of return on investment…, it’s what you would expect if rising profits reflect monopoly power rather than returns to capital… — all the big gains are going to a tiny group of individuals holding strategic positions in corporate suites or astride the crossroads of finance. Rising inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has the power.

Now, there’s a lot we could do to redress this inequality of power. We could levy higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and invest the proceeds in programs that help working families. We could raise the minimum wage and make it easier for workers to organize. It’s not hard to imagine a truly serious effort to make America less unequal.

But given the determination of one major party to move policy in exactly the opposite direction, advocating such an effort makes you sound partisan. Hence the desire to see the whole thing as an education problem instead. But we should recognize that popular evasion for what it is: a deeply unserious fantasy.

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Krugman is wrong to think that only one party is thrall of Wall Street: it is both parties.

As Michael Moore once said:

The Capitalists have two (2) political parties. It is time for the rest of us to get own political party.

Maybe after the success of SYRIZA in Greece, this could be a possibility.

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Free Palestinian political prisoner Lina Khattab!

Free Palestinian political prisoner Lina Khattab!.

Khattab’s mother, Samira Shaladeh told the Electronic Intifada: “Lina was brought into court, surrounded by a large troop of soldiers, her hands and feet cuffed. The court would not allow me to touch her and talk to her. I said that I am Lina’s mother, and it is my right to touch her and hug her, but the judge refused and told me that it is forbidden.

“I am a mother, my daughter was in front of me and I was forbidden from expressing my feelings. My baby was shackled hand and foot and I can do nothing. This occupation and the silence of the world are killing our children.

“Lina represents an entire people uprooted from their land by force of arms. Every day the occupation strikes and kills and demolishes, arrests, desecrates holy places, takes away farmers’ land and builds settlements. It forces Palestinians out while seeking to bring Jews from around the world to support its claims to a fake democracy.

“The truth is that the Palestinian people want to recover their homeland and achieve freedom for their people, and Lina is a part of this truth, rejecting steadfastly all of this violence against our people.

“Lina is still holding strong in the prison and her morale is high. Imprisonment does not worry her. Lina rejects the fabricated charges against her.

“I urge the solidarity organizations, those around the world who defend the rights of the Palestinian people, to raise the slogan of freedom for the student Lina Khattab and all imprisoned Palestinian students. She has the right to study media, like every other student at Birzeit University. We are struggling for Lina’s right to her freedom, to re-enter school and live her life like youth around the world.

“Lina dreams of a free Palestine, free from all forms of violence and oppression. She is a voice of truth and dignity in this unjust world.”

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People Aren’t Androids

Paul Krugman writes that People Aren’t Androids.

Branko says that the essential difference between skills and physical capital is that the former aren’t worth anything unless you work, and that is certainly an essential difference. I would, however, also emphasize the flip side: if you think of capital as something that rentiers can own, which is surely one of the important things we connote when we use the c-word, then labor force skills are not capital in that sense. Children of the wealthy can inherit or buy factories and buildings; absent indentured servitude or the coming of androids, they can’t buy worker skills.

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I agree with Krugman in that Human Capital is a bogus concept by Capitalist economists that tries to fit human development into the Capitalist economic and political model.

The development of workers has seen productivity attached to labour power, instead of Capital. The worker is more productive because of their skills and experience rather than by applying unskilled labour to Capital investments in machines.

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Cranking Up for 2016

Mark Thoma excerpts from Paul Krugman's article about Cranking Up for 2016.

The … modern American right seems to have abandoned the idea that there is an objective reality out there… What are you going to believe, right-wing doctrine or your own lying eyes? These days, the doctrine wins.

Look at another issue, health reform. … Then there’s foreign policy. … And don’t get me started on climate change.

Along with this denial of reality comes an absence of personal accountability. If anything, alleged experts seem to get points by showing that they’re willing to keep saying the same things no matter how embarrassingly wrong they’ve been in the past.

But let’s go back to those economic charlatans and cranks: Clearly, failure has only made them stronger, and now they are political kingmakers. Be very, very afraid.

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A decadent political and economic system, such as American Capitalism, is clearly more concerned with retaining power than with dealing with reality. These sychophants from the think tanks are simply telling the decaying elite fairy tales in order to make the alleged reality more palatable.

Facing reality means admitting the failure of Capitalism. Lies are so more comfortable.

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Muffed Answer Leads to Rethink

Tom Peters writes that a Muffed Answer Leads to Rethink.

So the idea, then, in an oversimplified nutshell, is to avoid organizational and professional extinction—and in fact pursue growth—by vaulting up the value added chain. In my shorthand: Become a remarkable "brand you" performing 100% value-added "wow projects" in an organizational unit transformed into an innovative "professional service firm"—e.g., devoted to applying intellectual capital to the organization's products and services. (The overall "home" organization, per my model, seeks differentiation by becoming a de facto "collection of integrated professional service firms.")

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Peters seems to saying that workers are being forced to develop themselves as active determiners of their own destiny by the forces of Capitalism. Workers have to become more than passive followers of the firm's management, if they are to survive in the emerging business environment.

Firms that cede power to the workers will have a greater rate of survival than those where the managers reatin control.

Capitalism is forcing socialist development upon the workers by having differential rates of survival. In other words, firms with greater Socialist consciousness will survive better in Capitalist business because greater profits are generated through greater worker productivity and lower cost of managerial supervision.

We may be seeing the synthesis being generated through the dialectical materialism of worker development and desire for profit growth.

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Thoughts on reform, revolution, social change and elections in light of SYRIZA's win

Mike Treen writes about his Thoughts on reform, revolution, social change and elections in light of SYRIZA's win.

Tens of thousands of working people in the barrios of Caracas and Laz Pas and other modern urban cities are actually small business people by definition but have been enthusiastic supporters of the revolutionary process. Industrial workers in large factories and farms are only a small percentage of the working population and while they can play a leading role through their unions and communities, they need allies among the “petty-bourgois” layers, especially among the small farmers. The desire of the revolutionary governments to minimise economic disruption and protect the jobs and living standards of their supporters is a smart tactic. It is also necessary to train a whole new layer of revolutionary minded professionals to provide some of the technical expertise needed.

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A modern state needs the petite-bourgeoise and labour aristocracy. In order for a state to make the transition to Socialism. these layers need to be radicalised, and drawn into the revolutionary process.

The officer corps in Venezuela had been somewhat unique in that it hadn't sent its people to the US military schools but instead to local universities where many were affected by the deep-seated radicalisation of youth that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. Chavez himself was an instructor at the national military academy. This allowed revolutionary-minded young officers to get significant influence early in the revolutionary process and use that to defend the government and people.

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The revolutionary orientation of the Venezuelan Military Forces has been a vital feature of the survival of the Bolivarian Revolution.

As Maurice Bishop, the assassinated leader of revolutionary Grenada, commented, it is wrong to think that “a revolution is like instant coffee; you just throw it in a cup and it comes out presto”. Bishop himself was overthrown by a secret faction strongly influenced by Stalinist administrative and bureaucratic methods. This faction claimed to want to push the revolution forward but had no understanding of the need to patiently organise and educate working people to take on tasks that matched the level of consciousness and the objective class relations and material conditions and level of development. The end result of their seizure of power was to disarm and demoralise the workers and farmers of Grenada and open the door to invasion by the US under President Reagan in 1983.

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A revolutionary movement can not advance too far ahead of the workers. It must not despise the workers for their ignorance and lack of vision. These things take time. The movement must work with the people in order to gain their respect and trust.

Often it is true that organs of popular power have emerged in revolutionary situations and were not able to develop because the parties of the parliamentary left were opposed to that happening. That was certainly true for Spain from 1936-39 and at least partly true for Chile in 1970-73. But it could have been radically different if the party that had a parliamentary majority supported the growth of organs of popular power while pursuing a program of social measures that was able to win majority support in the country.

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It is foolish to expect soviets to appear out of thin air. The process of developing direct democracy is fraught with danger from subversion by the careerist and the secret policeman. Yet, we must continually seek opportunities to develop and nuture such flowerings of direct democracy.

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