Economists just don't look very ideological

Noah Smith asserts that Economists just don't look very ideological.

So political ideology, as far as we can tell, just doesn't explain much of the variance in academic economists' policy recommendations. Keep in mind that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence - the authors simply might not have measured ideology accurately.

But given the fact that economists deal every day with topics that are inherently political, I'm surprised we don't find more bias in paper-writing.

And there's also the possibility that the sample is heavily influenced by a few outliers. There are a couple of departments out there that may be influenced by big donations from political activists. That might inject a few politicized folks into the academic mix,

So overall, I think my thesis that most of econ doesn't line up along left-right political lines seems like it's borne out by the data. Still, that leaves the possibility that a few policy issues, or a few top economists, might be strongly motivated by political ideology. I'm sure we can all think of one or two anecdotes.

Emphasis Mine

Or, the ideological differences allowed Capitalism are really not measurable.

For instance, the idea of Capitalism cannot be challenged. An analysis of alternative economic systems cannot be treated sympathetically.

There is an academic bias that is due to the nature of the Capitalist society. Academia is part of the ideological superstructure that exists to mould the minds of workers into supporting the system that exploits and crushes them.

Read more!

Against competition

Chris Dillow examines the case Against competition.

The point of all this is not necessarily to argue for state direction of the economy. If bosses can't know much, nor perhaps can governments: Orgel's second rule says that "Evolution is cleverer than you are."

Instead, it is perhaps to defend the real world in which market forces don't select very strongly. As Nick Bloom and colleagues have shown, there is a large variation in corporate efficiency around the world. From a conventional point of view, this is sub-optimal. But from a Darwinian point of view, it might not be. As Andrew Lo says, what look like suboptimal strategies might in fact be second-best adaptations which permit survival in a changing environment. And the same lack of selection that allows inefficient firms to survive also supports a diversity of firms which stabilizes the economy in the face of shocks.

We know that cognitive and cultural diversity are good things. So too is ecological diversity.

Emphasis Mine

Dillow implicitly assumes that firms within a future Communist society will not be open to change.

In a historical sense, we have only seen Communist societies built upon economically and politically backward ones. These societies were playing catch-up to the rest of the industrialised work. They had a clear goal of what they wanted to achieve, and how to achieve it. In these cases, state direction was essential and successful.

In a Communist society built upon an advanced ecomonic and political base will be completely different in character. This society will have different goals to a Capitalist one, but will not know the correct path to take. In this case, the workers will have to have the confidence to make mistakes and to correct them as needed.

The setting of direction will have to be done through intense democratic discussion at all levels of society. So the society is then built with the consent of all, instead of haphazard ideas that flourish and die with great rapidity.

Read more!

Goals, strategy and tactics for change

Seth Godin outlines Goals, strategy and tactics for change.

The Goal: Who are you trying to change? What observable actions will let you know you've succeeded?

The Strategy: What are the emotions you can amplify, the connections you can make that will cause someone to do something they've hesitated to do in the past (change)? The strategy isn't the point, it's the lever that helps you cause the change you seek.

The Tactics: What are the actions you take that cause the strategy to work? What are the events and interactions that, when taken together, comprise your strategy?

Emphasis in Original

Our goal is to create a Communist society. We are trying to change workers of all nations. Workers will achieve this when they are self-confidently managing their places of work and building a society that satisfies human need.

Our strategy is to build a mass movement of workers. The emotions we want to amplify are that of solidarity, compassion, duty, self-sacrifice. We want to show that we are all human and that we can work together to build a better world. The connection is to realise the humanity of other people despite what I am told about the colour of their skin, their gender, their sexuality, their culture, or their intellect.

Our tactics is a mixture of agitation and propaganda in and around mass actions. This includes self-study, interactions with other, publishing, meetings, being out on the streets. The two main events are mass actions (marches, rallies, speeches, film showings, forums, conferences, etc) and party meeting to evaluate and plan mass actions.

Above all, there must be a deep theoretical understanding of how Capitalism. This means a study of Marx and Engels and their commentators.

And there is the study of revolution for which we turn to Lenin and Trotsky along with their commentators.

Read more!

Social democracy and neoliberalism: victim or vanguard?

Damien Cahill muses on Social democracy and neoliberalism: victim or vanguard?.

First, neoliberalism wasn’t simply the product of conservative governments imposing an ideological agenda on labour. While neoliberalism has been an attack upon working class living standards and working-class forms of political and industrial organisation, and while some of the most radical forms of these attacks have come from conservative governments, Labour governments and sections of the labour movement were also active agents of neoliberalism either before, or contemporaneously with, the better-known neoliberal governments led by Thatcher and Reagan.

Second, this suggests that the neoliberal transformation of states and economies should not be seen primarily as an ideological phenomenon. Most accounts of neoliberalism view it as a result of politicians coming under the influence of fundamentalist neoliberal intellectuals like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Yet, if Labour parties and labour movements that had little if any contact or sympathy with such intellectuals were actually in the vanguard the neoliberal revolution, this suggests that such ideational explanations have little to recommend them. Rather, we are better advised to look to the prevailing political-economic conditions of the 1970s, and the ways that these emerged out of the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production and its historical evolution as providing the particular problems to which capitalist states viewed neoliberalism as the preferred solution.

Finally, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the making of neoliberalism was also an active confrontation with and against socialism. Just as Thatcher sought, quite strategically, not only to use socialism as a spectre against which to discursively frame her own policies, but also to attack the social and institutional support bases of socialism in Britain and elsewhere, so was the embrace of neoliberalism by sections of the labour movement part of a reaction against socialism from within the working class and its representative organisations.

Labour’s embrace of neoliberalism was thus a reaction against socialism, against working-class democracy and against economic and political democratisation more generally, none of which have yet recovered from the devastation wrought by four decades of neoliberalisation.

Emphasis Mine

As Humphrey McQueen writes in A New Britannica, this has always been the case with the ALP. Its members preferring parlimentarism over mass action. The ALP believed that there was no class distinction in Australia.

The concept of a workers' struggle is an alien concept. The ALP was always loyal to the nation however the Capitalists defined it.

In a way, aspirationalism has always been the collar around our necks. This very idea that we could become part of respectible society only if we behaved ourselves. This carrot dangling in our faces as we hauled the cart along.

So when Capitalism was threatened by its own contradictions, the workers' organisation decided to make noble sacrifices in order to save the system. Of course, there has never been a reciporal response from our masters. Over the past 150 years, the workers have bourne the burden in order to save the system in order that we might enter into its upper ranks.

All of this talk of exploitation of the workers is drowned out by the distant soft clinking of gold coins. No one wants to question where the wealth comes form if one hopes to acquire some of that wealth some day.

Read more!

Why Victoria dumped the Coalition

Nick Fredman explains Why Victoria dumped the Coalition.

The Napthine government had lost support due to brutal public sector cuts, vindictive attacks on nurses, paramedics and teachers, the unpopular East West Link project, and corruption scandals that led to the removal of Ted Baillieu as premier last year and the sacking of several Liberal candidates before the poll.

Meanwhile in NSW, the Liberals are so scared that today, (a Saturday), there are Liberal canvassners infesting the neighbourhood. And the same things that the Liberals did in Victoria, they have done in NSW.

Labor had made a tack to the left, with slogans of “with the Liberals, you’re on your own”, and “Labor: Putting people first”, presenting at least a rhetorical alternative to the rampant neoliberalism of the Coalition. Labor also promised to increase spending on health, education and public transport although the amounts pledged do not replace the recent cuts. In the case of TAFE, the ALP promised to replace only $320 million out of $1.2 billion taken from the gutted public vocational education system.

Emphasis Mine

However the political vacuity of the Labour Party can be seen with its preference deals with the right-wing parties.

This is a minor setback to the neo-liberal agenda in general. Let's not forget that it was a Labour government back in the 1980's that started deregulation that led to the excesses of Alan Bond, Christopher Skase, etc.

The workers should never forget that Capitalism is all about the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor. This is a very hard thing for workers to understand when they are continually told that they are just one magic break away from being rich by winning Lotto, getting a brilliant idea, getting chosen by nice rich person to advance up the corporate ladder.

This is a sensible thing to do. Why risk this one chance by promoting Communism? Especially when one is unlikely to see it in one's lifetime.

My answer is that a just and equitable society is more than worth the risk.

Read more!

White Progress

Cathy O'Neill explores White Progress.

In my Occupy group, which meets weekly on Sunday afternoons, we’ve been talking a lot about white privilege, and whether that phrase is appropriate, and whether we can come up with a better one. Because for the most part, “white privilege” really refers to the rights white people have, which everyone should have, but which not everyone has.

For example, it is my white privilege not to worry about my three sons getting shot by the police. But that’s not a privilege, it’s a right. I’m entitled to that security. Everyone is, but not everyone gets to have it. Maybe we should call it “white entitlement.”

Emphasis Mine

The oppression of Capitalism relies on having racial tension. As Malcolm X said, “You cannot have Capitalism without Racism.” The only way to completely racism is to remove Capitalism.

Read more!

Top 5 ways US treatment of African-Americans resembles Apartheid South Africa

Juan Cole describes the Top 5 ways US treatment of African-Americans resembles Apartheid South Africa.

From 1949 though the early 1990s, South Africa was ruled by an Afrikaner Apartheid regime that made race the basis for law and politics, and which systematically excluded black Africans from their civil and national rights, empowering white Afrikaners alone. The social statistics produced by that regime, however, are not so different from those produced by ordinary every day legal and social practices in today’s United States. Impunity for white policemen who kill Blacks is one commonality between the two societies. …

Emphasis Mine

The primary difference between South Africa and the US (and Australia) is that the blacks were the majority in South Africa. In the USA, whites will soon become a minority among others: Chinese; Indian; Hispanic; African; Native. Whites in Australia are safe for a while longer.

Such racism can only exist when the whites succumb to the relentless racist propaganda everyday in the hope of some small material benefit. It is up to us white people to educate ourselves about what is really happening to non-whites all over the world. We cannot continue to blind ourselves with racist propaganda.

The only way to restore our own humanity is to see and realise the humanity in everyone else. There is no white, black, Asian: there are only human beings.

Again, this overcoming of racism is one of the biggest hurdles to the realisation of a Communist society. We cannot have people excluded from such a society unless they exclude themselves.

Read more!

The World's Dumbest Idea

Barry Ritholtz has John Maudlin's comments on The World's Dumbest Idea by James Montier.

SVM is Shareholder Value Maximisation.

Our intrepid author then explains how in the 1970s the Gospel According to Milton translated into the challenge of how to get corporate executives to focus on maximizing the wealth of shareholders. The solution: pay them a s***load of money (but not just cash — stock and options now constitute about two-thirds of total CEO compensation).

But, alas, there is pretty good research to suggest that larger incentives actually translate to lower performance, for reasons that James runs down for us. To make matters worse, both the average tenure of a corporate CEO and the average lifetime of an S&P 500 company have plummeted since the 1970s.

Bottom line: SVM has pretty well laid the kingdom to waste. James focuses on three areas of damage: (1) declining and low rates of business investment, (2) rising inequality, and (3) a low labor share of GDP. James takes these outcomes on one at a time, in his usual convincing manner. …

Emphasis Mine

But the question Maudlin and Montier do not ask: whom does the kingdom benefit? If they were to ask the question, I suggest their answer would be, based on their criticism, everyone.

One example Montier gives of the alleged distortion of Capitalism by this SVM paradigm is that of business investment. Here, funds that should have been used for investment are given to the shareholders instead:

This diversion of cash flows to shareholders has played a role in reducing investment. A little known fact is that almost all investment carried out by firms is financed by internal sources (i.e., retained earnings).

Emphasis Mine

Isn't the right of the owners to determine how their capital is used? If it is the short-term interest of the Capitalists to have their capital in money rather than machinery or such like, then why shouldn't it be so?

As Karl Marx wrote, one of the laws of motion in Capitalism is the reproduction of Capital. Capital is reproduced through investment. However, if the rate of return on investment is too low (subjective view of the individual Capitalist), then Capital is manifested as money.

This is what is happening here. The rate of return on investment has dropped below a certain threshold, and individual Capitalists are realising their Capital as money through the running-down of the firm's retained earnings (aka past profits).

Montier's conclusions are:

Shareholder’s Lesson

Firstly, SVM has failed its namesakes: it has not delivered increased returns to shareholders in any meaningful way, and may actually have led to poorer corporate performance!

Corporate’s Lesson

Secondly, it suggests that management guru Peter Drucker was right back in 1973 when he suggested “The only valid purpose of a firm is to create a customer.” Only by focusing on being a good business are you likely to end up delivering decent returns to shareholders. Focusing on the latter as an objective can easily undermine the former. Concentrate on the former, and the latter will take care of itself. As Keynes once put it, “Achieve immortality by accident, if at all.”

Everyone’s Lesson

Thirdly, we need to think about the broader impact of policies like SVM on the economy overall. Shareholders are but one very narrow group of our broader economic landscape. Yet by allowing companies to focus on them alone, we have potentially unleashed a number of ills upon ourselves. A broader perspective is called for. Customers, employees, and taxpayers should all be considered. Raising any one group to the exclusion of others is likely a path to disaster. Anyone for stakeholder capitalism?

Emphasis Mine

Is stakeholder capitalism really another way of saying that the means of production should be in the hands of the public? In other words, is Montier calling for Socialism? I do not think Montier and Maudlin have really thought this through.

Anyway, in any class society, the rulers are one very narrow group of our broader economic landscape. That is the nature of class society. And the rulers rule in their own interests.

Only if their survival is threatened and blatant oppression is not an option, then do they consider the minimum possible to quieten down the masses. Reform is is inly the placebo of oppression.

The workers must realise that only when the means of production are in their own hands, then they can start building a most just and humane society.

Read more!

War to the Horizon

Tom Engelhardt writes about how there is War to the Horizon.

To summarize: 13 years later, the War Party is ascendant. It controls Congress. The president is visibly, if with his usual reluctance, placing his bets on war. The military is riding high. The end of all calls for serious Pentagon budget cuts is clearly in sight. And more of the same is undoubtedly in the works, no matter who wins the 2016 election.

That’s the “new” Washington. Peacetime? A fantasy creation of lefties, libertarians, and noodle heads. Peace? A dirty word that no self-respecting politician would be caught using.

Meanwhile, the war hawks are crying out for more. At the moment, all the pressure in Washington is focused on the ramping up of its various wars and crises. Iraq War 3.0 and Syria War 1.0 are to expand. Afghanistan seems again to be a war on the rise. The pressure is increasing to make Cold War 2.0 ever hotter and to ensure that negotiations with Iran over a nuclear deal will prove less than fruitful. Drone wars are ongoing. Special forces ops are raiding away. Thirteen years later, we are yet again floating on what seems to be a rising, not ebbing, tide of war and the one qualification for a new secretary of defense is that he or she be a hot, not a cold, warrior.

Emphasis Mine

Engelhardt considers war to be an option under Capitalism. Instead, it is a neccessity to protect and take-over markets. The invisible hand is really that of the drone pilot or the bommer pilot.

However, the intensity of war is an indication of the troubles Capitalism is currently going through. But it is troubled enough to risk open war with either Russia or China yet.

Read more!

Incredible Populist Positions in Podemos' "Economic Manifesto"; Populism Explained

Mike Shedlock is aghast at the Incredible Populist Positions in Podemos' "Economic Manifesto"; Populism Explained.

If Spain abandons the euro and adopts anything close to this platform, expect a complete collapse in the Spanish economy.

These populist ideas are taking hold for the simple reason the burden of the euro crisis is falling on the average worker, while the banks, the bankers, and the political classes were bailed out.

It should be no wonder that with each passing day, radical left and radical right parties attract voters.

Eventually, there is going to be a revolt in Spain, Greece, or Italy. Podemos is a strong candidate to lead the opening salvo.

Emphasis Mine

That radicalisation is occurring is undisputed. Even Shedlock argues for the burden to fall upon the well-to-do.

But this will not happen without a strong movement based in the working class. A right-wing radicalisation would only serve to secure the status quo.

Read more!

The re-emergence of debtors' prison

Cathy O'Neill comments on The re-emergence of debtors' prisons.

This sense that "everyone is screwed" creates solidarity among poor whites and poor blacks, and especially young people. The Ferguson protests have been multi-racial, for example. And if you’ve read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, you'll recognize a historical pattern whereby political change happens when poor whites and poor blacks start working together.

Emphasis Mine

This is why racism is so vitally important to the Capitalists: it keeps the oppressed fighting among themselves. You have to remember who the real enemy is.

Read more!

In Hebron, Palestinian women face down daily settler home invasions

Juan Cole writes that In Hebron, Palestinian women face down daily settler home invasions.

While a Ma'an reporter was sitting in her home, two Jewish settlers with New York accents carrying automatic assault rifles accompanied by armed Israeli soldiers walked across the roof and climbed into the family courtyard. They entered the room where the interview was taking place and gesticulated at different parts of the home, discussing how to re-arrange the dwelling after they forced the al-Atrash family out.

None of the four intruders seemed at all perturbed by the presence of the family matriarch, her three children, or even the Ma'an journalists on the scene.

Emphasis Mine

This is racism at its most causal. The sensitivities, propriety, and privacy of the oppressed are no concern to the oppressors. They can just walk into any home without invitation and hesitation to invade the privacy and propriety of the women's and children's quarters.

Read more!

United States: Feeding the homeless banned in 'war on giving'

Jessica Hansen-Weaver writes United States: Feeding the homeless banned in 'war on giving'.

An October report from the National Coalition for the Homeless, Share No More: The Criminalization of Efforts to Feed People in Need, has documented a dramatic rise in city ordinances aimed at restricting individuals and groups from feeding people who are experiencing homelessness.

Capitalism cannot solve the problem of homelessness. It can only try to suppress it.

And in suppressing homelessness, Capitalism wants turn everyone into self-centred individuals for Capitalism despises solidarity among the lower classes. Solidarity is the beginning of resistance.

Back in 2009, I commented on Food Not Bombs Battles City Government - and Wins. This has been an ongoing war.

Read more!

Geddes on methods

Dan Little reviews Geddes on methods.

It emerges that what Geddes has in mind for testing mid-level causal hypotheses is largely quantitative: isolate a set of cases in which the outcome is present and examine whether the hypothesized causal factor varies appropriately across the cases.…

Emphasis Mine

One hypothesis that could be tested is whether a Bolshevik Party is necessary for a successful Communist Revolution:

Country	Year	Party?	Success?
Russia	1905	No	No
Russia	Feb 1917	Yes	No
Russia	Nov 1917	Yes	Yes
Germany	1919	No	No
Hungary	1919	No	No
Italy	1920	No	No
China	1949	No	Yes
Vietnam	1954	No	Yes
Cuba	1959	No	Yes

As Little noted, the problem with a quantitative approach to comparative politics is the small number of cases that one has access to. In this case, I came up with nine (9) cases. Even these are dubious because I have not rigourously defined what a Bolshevik Party is, and how one can classify a revolutionary leadership as such.

Even the success factor is somewhat vague as a revolution goes through several phases:

1. Dual power (as is the case in Venezuela)
2. Insurrection
3. Civil War
4. Intervention
5. Reconstruction

At what point is a revolution successful? And not all revolutions go through these stages.

Read more!

A glut of oil?

A glut of oil?.

So here’s the basic picture. The current surplus of oil was brought about primarily by the success of unconventional oil production in North America, most new investments in which are not sustainable at current prices. Without that production, the price of oil could not remain at current levels. It’s just a matter of how long it takes for the high-cost North American producers to cut back in response to current incentives. And when they do, the price has to go back up.

Emphasis Mine

So much for the invisible hand of the market. The economic incentives for new oil production from more ecological environments (oil sand; oil shale; tight oil; deep water oil) are not currently there at the present moment. And this production cost does not include the environmental costs.

Most of the recent glut appears to be due to some geo-political stability. However, the excess production can be gone once instability returns in such places as Libya, Nigeria, and Iraq. And, of course, the elephant in the room is Saudi Arabia where an oppressive government is sitting on a very big time bomb.

The the predictions of peak oil back in 2004/2005 were pre-mature. As the price of oil goes up, the more difficult oil can be extracted economically (if one ignores environmental costs).

In our industrial civilization that heavily relies on motor vehicles, such a rise in costs affects economic growth which is the golden calf of the Abbott Government.

On the negative side, the lower prices are affecting the Bolivaran Revolution in Venezuela. Lower national income is beginning to affect the social programs of the government. So, it is not all bad from the Capitalist's point of view. Temporary economic pain in order to destroy an alternative to Capitalism.

Read more!

American Drones KIll 28 Innocent People for Every "Bad Guy"

Ted Rall writes that American Drones KIll 28 Innocent People for Every “Bad Guy”.

As a frequent critic of U.S. government policies, I’ve sometimes worried that Obama might sic one of his killer air robots on me. Thanks to Reprieve, I feel relieved. Even if Obama targets me, after all, it’s likely I’ll be reported killed multiple times while remaining alive and well…while hundreds of random people walking the streets get blown up willy-nilly.

Obama’s remote-control drone murderers are the embodiment of evil in the 21st century: careless, alienated, remote, bloodless. They also symbolize contemporary political culture: arrogant, corrupt and stupid.

Emphasis Mine

The US military kills 28 innocent people for every terrorism suspect! If that is not a war-crime, I do not what is.

No wonder the US government does not want to subscribe to the International Criminal Court: most of the high officials in the US government and military would awaiting trial.

Yet as Malcolm X said, the media has made us hate the oppressed and love the oppressor. Most of the reporting is about how these drone strikes are keeping us safe. Legality is reserved for those in control. Indeed, there is a means and residency test on legality: you have to have sufficient income and reside in the right place to be able afford the nicety of legality.

So much for the Capitalist promise of equality before the law.

Read more!

100K Homeless in Gaza face severe Flooding, Cold as UN Declares State of Emergency

Juan Cole reports on 100K Homeless in Gaza face severe Flooding, Cold as UN Declares State of Emergency.

“The flooding is exacerbating the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza caused by blockade and the unprecedented destruction from the latest Israeli offensive,” the UN agency said in a post on its Facebook.

The agency, which is already massively stretched due to the summer’s conflict, said that it was “providing emergency fuel to supply back-up generators for pumping stations, portable pumps, municipalities, water, sanitation and health facilities.”

The brutality of the illegal Israeli blockade is adding to the misery of the Palestinians as it is meant to. The whole Israeli policy is make Palestinian so miserable so that they flee Greater Israel forever and never come back, thereby making Greater Israel ‘Arab-Frei’.

Read more!

Economists vs Politicians

Mark Thoma posts excerpts from Chris Dillow's post on Economists vs Politicians.

Dillow posits three (3) reasons for the growing distance between economists and politicians:

1. Academic idealism and isolation
2. Public self-absorption
3. Media complicity

4. …Political journalists have been complicit in creating a hyperreal bubble of mediamacro which perpetuates witless ideas (such as conflating the economy with the deficit) to the exclusion of such good ones as might exist.

Or, the fourth reason could be that economics is currently not useful in maintaining the status quo. The economists are failing in their ideological duty in creating plausible reasons for the current economic and political regime.

Instead, they are looking at the facts and finding reasons to criticise neo-liberalism. How dare they? Next thing, you know, they will be quoting Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

Read more!

The fear of freedom

Seth Godin highlights The fear of freedom.

We live in an extraordinary moment, with countless degrees of freedom. The instant and effortless connection to a billion people changes everything, but instead, we're paralyzed with fear, a fear so widespread that you might not even notice it.

We have more choices, more options and more resources than any generation, ever.

At present, this subjective freedom is only available for those with the objective reality of sufficient cash.

But it does highlight the mental contraints that workers operate under. We have our freedom of action severely circumscribed at work through regulations, policies, fiats, decrees, etc. We cannot make a move without consulting our managers and they, in turn, consulting their managers, ad finitum.

As we enter a Communist society, we are going to face this fear of freedom. It was the same fear that slaves faced after emancipation. “How do we fend for ourselves?” Our minds have been crippled by this dependency on the bosses for making decisions that rightfully should have been ours.

It is the private ownership of the means of production that gives the bosses the legal and moral to make these decisions. Take these means of production into our own hands, and we take responsibility for our lives through making decisions and living with our mistakes.

It is only then that we can grow as human beings with full adult responsibility in our lives, instead of being cowering children asking for some more.

Read more!

Ferguson erupts -- anti-racist protesters demand justice

Barry Sheppard reports that Ferguson erupts -- anti-racist protesters demand justice.

Even the staid corporate New York Times editorialised: “Mr. McCulloch’s announcement sounded more like a defense of Officer Wilson than a neutral summary of the facts …

“For the Black community of Ferguson, the killing of Michael Brown was the last straw in a long train of abuses they have suffered daily at the hands of the local police …

“The police are justifiably seen as an alien, occupying force that is synonymous with state-sponsored abuse.

The case resonates across the country in New York City, Chicago and Oakland because the killing of young Black men by police is a common feature of African American life and a source of dread for Black parents from coast to coast.

Emphasis Mine

As usual, the mass media is distorting the truth and turning the rest of us into racists:

It defies common sense to believe that unarmed Brown, who was some distance away from Wilson, turned to run at a cop firing a hail of bullets at him. The fact that much of the media has given Wilson national TV time to spout this nonsense is nauseating.

It was an illustration of African American revolutionary Malcolm X's warning about the media in the most violent of all the “advanced” capitalist countries: “If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Emphasis Mine

Sheppard concludes that:

It is clear the protests are unlikely to quickly die down and the anger has the potential to spark a mass struggle against the racist violence that marks capitalist America.

Until the white people see themselves as human beings in common with black people, this struggle will eventually be extinguished by white fear of loss of entitlements under a racist society. Then another atrocity occurs, and the same cycle of violence and hand-wringing comes into play again and again.

Black people can present all of the arguments and facts they like, but racism is not to going to be seriously challenged until white workers seek a common cause with all workers against the Capitalists. And you can be bloody sure that the Capitalists are going to pull out all stops to make sure that never happens.

Remember we are neither black nor white, we are all human beings!

Read more!