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What is the public interest in unionizing government employees as they now are unionized in Connecticut?

The public interest in allowing private-sector workers to unionize is obvious. Without organized labor's countervailing force, big private business interests can gain control over communities, states, and sometimes the whole country.

But the government is not a private interest. It represents everybody, so organizing against it -- rather than organizing against a particular administration -- is against the public interest.

Liberals used to agree. Even during the Great Depression years President Franklin D. Roosevelt opposed government employee unionism. So did New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. They understood that coercion of the government by its own employees would subvert democracy itself.

But now liberals make common cause with government employee unions against the government. Even as Connecticut Democrats keep carping about the January "insurrection" in Washington by the crowd summoned by President Trump to protest the election results, Democratic state legislators are advancing a bill in the General Assembly to subvert state and municipal government. Their legislation would compel government agencies to stop being merely neutral about employee unionization and instead to coerce employees to join.

The legislation would direct state and municipal government agencies to sic unions on their new hires, notifying the unions of new hires, giving the unions the home contact information of new hires, inviting union representatives to orientation meetings, and providing work time for unions to propagandize new hires. All this would undermine a new employee's loyalty to his employer from the start.

There is no public interest in this. There is only a political interest -- the interest of Connecticut's Democratic Party in mobilizing government workers in support of the party's candidates.

There is already little management in government in Connecticut. Performance standards are low and the little discipline that is imposed is often weakened or nullified by the state Board of Mediation and Arbitration. This is not government of, by, and for the people, but government of, by, and for the unions -- and unlike the insurrection in Washington, this one, infinitely more subversive, is likely to be enacted while hardly being noticed.

* * *

Complaints of socialism are being hurled at the Biden administration by Republicans who think the label itself is enough, just as Republicans did back in the 1930s, '40s, and early '50s. But the label isnotenough, and President Harry Truman, a Democrat, answered the Republicans well in October 1952 not long before he left office.

"'Socialism,'" Truman said, "is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years. Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called Social Security.

"Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

But socialism isn't always progress, for Truman's list was incomplete.

Socialism is also perpetual stupid imperial wars. Socialism is government bailouts for crooked investment banks. Socialism is excessive salaries and unaccountability for government employees. Socialism is government's award of privilege to racial and ethnic groups.

Socialism is government's pretense that men can be women and its requiring women's sports to admit men. Socialism is the government's paying people not to grow crops and now even paying them not to work.

That is, socialism isanythingthe government does in the name of progress, and since some of it is good and some isn't, the word is meaningless as an epithet.

The serious issue here is something else. According to the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, government now is the direct source of more than a third of the country's personal income.

So does the country still want a free-market economy with a dominant private sector, or does it want government to control more than it already does?

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer.

Read more:
Connecticut Democrats try subversion as well; and 'socialism' epithet says nothing - Journal Inquirer

Seven years before the French presidential election of 1981 that brought Franois Mitterrand to power, Jean-Pierre Chevnement, a member of the left wing of the Socialist Party (PS), published a book titled Le vieux, la crise, le neuf(The Old, the Crisis, the New). According to Chevnement, the project of the PS should not be to loyally manage the affairs of the bourgeoisie. He made the following prediction:

If the Left found itself lifted into government, not to carry out its own program, but merely to grapple with the economic crisis, it would probably stay there for a shorter period of time than the social democrats of Northern Europe managed to do under more favorable conditions. It would come out of the experience profoundly discredited and removed from power once again for a generation.

Chevnement insisted that the conquest of the state machine should enable the PS to become a link between the popular government and the mass movement, and warned that the French left will only avoid the pitfalls of embourgeoisement and institutionalization if it recognizes that the mass movement has an essential role to play as a source of pressure and criticism.

This part of the warning from Chevnement and his CERES (Center for Socialist Studies, Research, and Education) faction proved to be accurate. The absence of powerful social mobilizations did play a part in the shift of the PS government toward more conservative economic policies between 1981 and 1983, after its initial attempts at sweeping reform. As a divided government came under pressure from institutional actors like the Treasury and the Bank of France, there was hardly any force pressing back in defense of popular interests.

Although the French Socialists embraced the neoliberal turn that swept through the Western economies in this period, they didnt suffer the electoral fate that Chevnement had feared. They managed to occupy the summits of political power from which they had been excluded since 1958, when Charles de Gaulle became the president of France. From 1981 to 2017, when the PS really did collapse, the party was in government for twenty years in total, or four legislative terms out of eight. In France and countries in Southern Europe like Greece and Spain, social democracy recovered a dynamism that it had lost further north.

This remarkable performance, which came at a heavy social and ideological price, was possible in large part because of the leadership of Franois Mitterrand. Mitterrand was not content merely to rally the forces of French socialism: he offered them a path to the very top of the political system. This had major consequences for the regime of the Fifth Republic in France as well as for the PS.

By studying Mitterrands political trajectory, we can better understand the conditions that produced his victory in 1981, and why that victory did not result in a new sociopolitical order. In what follows, we will look at the means with which he sought to conquer power, and the ends that he promoted among the citizens of France.

Franois Mitterrand was born on October 26, 1916, in the commune of Jarnac in southwestern France. Mitterrands social background did not make him a likely candidate to become the first left-wing head of state in the Fifth Republic. He grew up in a family that was bourgeois, Catholic and conservative, and attended a private religious school. He had a passion for literature and history, and decided to study law in university.

During these formative years, between 1934 and the outbreak of the Second World War, Mitterrand shared the ideas of the nationalist right in France. We can find evidence of this in the time he spent as a militant for the National Volunteers, a youth movement of the ultranationalist Croix-de-Feu organization, and his contributions to the daily newspaper Lcho de Paris, which was very hostile to the left-wing Popular Front government led by Lon Blum. But the most disturbing episode in his political career came during the war.

After being taken prisoner by the German Army in June 1940, Mitterrand escaped from a POW camp and began working for the collaborationist Vichy regime from January 1942 onward. He gave the Vichy leader Marshal Philippe Ptain his confidence and support, which did not stop him from establishing links with the resistance, to the point of going underground at the end of 1943. According to the historian Michel Winock in his 2015 biography: Mitterrand was a Ptainiste until a certain date, about which it is difficult to be precise, but also incontestably a member of the resistance.

Some other figures of the time shared this ambivalence, which has led some researchers to coin the term vichysto-rsistants. While there was never any resistance from the Vichy regime as such, some of its supporters did undergo a transformation during the conflict. Without necessarily abandoning their values or their ideas, they drew on those values and ideas selectively in a way that led them to fight in the resistance.

In the aftermath of the war, Mitterrand had still not become a socialist, and he was overtly anti-communist. He was elected as the parliamentary deputy for Nivre in 1946 on this political basis. The same year, he joined a small centrist party called the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance (UDSR), later becoming its president in 1953.

Mitterrand shifted the UDSRs political orientation in a more left-wing direction, but its great advantage was the pivotal position it occupied in the partisan system. Its support proved very useful in the formation of centrist coalitions that excluded both the French Communist Party (PCF) on the left and the Gaullist Rally of the French People (RPF) on the right. Mitterrand himself held no fewer than eleven ministerial posts during the postwar Fourth Republic.

While serving in government, he developed some expertise in colonial matters. Although the most ardent supporters of the French Empire hated Mitterrand, he did not actually support its dissolution. His position could in fact be described as a liberal, reformist one. As summed up by the historian Georges Saunier, what he envisaged was the end of colonial violence and the creation of a kind of French Commonwealth, preserving the links between the metropolis and the [colonial] territories with renewed treaties.

However, as the justice minister in the government of Socialist politician Guy Mollet, Mitterrand remained silent when he launched a harsh policy of repression in Algeria in 1956, responding to the uprising for national independence led by the National Liberation Front (FLN). He agreed to the dispatch of a military force, the transfer of policing and judicial powers to the army, and the execution of forty-five people sentenced to death in the context of the conflict.

In 1958, Charles de Gaulle took power in response to the Algerian crisis and established the Fifth Republic. This meant there was a new political regime for France and, above all, a new electoral order, with a directly elected president rather than a parliamentary form of government. It was a crucial turning point in the postwar era. From then on, two phenomena characterized French political life: presidentialization, with a focus on strong, charismatic individuals, and polarization into two partisan camps.

Instead of being trapped by his background in the Fourth Republic, Mitterrand quickly adapted to the new dispensation. The French Socialists, on the other hand, were in decline, and found themselves torn between various strategies. Their party still bore the name French Section of the Workers International (SFIO) from its moment of foundation in 1905.

There were two principal lines of cleavage in the SFIO. The first separated those who had come to terms with presidentialization from those who still clung on to parliamentary-style politics. The second division was between those who favored a Union of the Left that would embrace the Communists, and those who preferred to occupy the center ground.

Like Mitterrand, the Socialist politician Gaston Defferre, who served for three decades as the mayor of Marseille, wanted to adapt to the presidential regime. However, Defferre rejected Mitterrands call for a left-wing alliance with the PCF. He wanted the SFIO to follow a democratic-reformist line oriented toward the center, calculating that Communist voters would have no choice but to vote for its candidate in the second round of the presidential election. Defferre first attempted to run for the presidency in 1965, and eventually became the SFIO candidate in 1969, when he achieved a pitiful score: just 5 percent.

The SFIO leader, Guy Mollet, was closer to Mitterrands view on relations with the PCF and promoted an ideological dialogue with the Communists. But Mollet did not have the same focus as Mitterrand on the conquest of power. He was mainly preoccupied with preserving the party and did not recognize that the shift to a presidential system had changed the whole dynamic of political competition in France.

Mitterrand saw himself as a unifying figure for the non-Communist left. He considered it vital to build up the latter as a substantial force so that it could unite with the Communists in the election without scaring off the moderate voters whose support would be needed in the second round. Throughout the twists and turns of his political career in the 1960s and 70s, Mitterrand continued to follow this strategy until it brought him to the highest office.

In the meantime, he built up a stock of political credit. He was an early opponent of the new Gaullist regime, and above all the personal power of de Gaulle. Mitterrands own party was divided over how to respond to de Gaulle, and he founded a new organization in 1964, the Convention of Republican Institutions (CIR).

This group brought together dozens of clubs from the center and the left that had flourished at the intersection of political and intellectual life since 1958. The CIRs goals were to establish a federal Europe, a modern democratic republic, and an economic democracy. At the time it was established, the CIR did not claim to be socialist, but its members explicitly sought unity of the Left, including the Socialists.

In the same year, Mitterrand published a pamphlet titled The Permanent Coup Dtat, which denounced the excessive concentration of power in the hands of one man. He accused de Gaulle of governing in an arbitrary manner, but also of being regressive and fundamentally bourgeois in his outlook. Mitterrand thus combined his critique of Caesarism, a specter that haunted French republicans, with a form of social criticism that spoke to all sections of the Left.

In 1965, Mitterrand saw off the challenge of Gaston Defferre to become the sole candidate of the Left. He forced de Gaulle into a second round by denying him an outright majority in the first presidential vote. De Gaulle won the second-round contest by 55 to 45 percent. This put Mitterrand in a strong position to rally the socialist and republican left as a powerful force that could stand alongside the Communists.

Mitterrand tried to achieve this goal with a political vehicle that proved to be ephemeral, the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left (FGDS), which brought together the parliamentary groups of the moderate left, including the SFIO and the Radical Party. But Mitterrands clumsy interventions during the events of May and June 1968 in France temporarily blocked his political project. When the SFIO was reconstituted as the Socialist Party in 1969, the CIR did not take part.

This did not stop Mitterrand from declaring his support for the socialist ideal and setting out the credo for a Union of the Left in his 1969 book, Ma part de verit (My Portion of Truth). The ecumenical spirt of this work effectively reduced socialism to an aspiration for justice and a desire to improve economic efficiency. It did not offer any deep analysis of capitalism as a structure of impersonal domination that subordinates both workers and employers to the imperatives of capital accumulation. Whereas earlier left-wing politicians such as Jean Jaurs and Lon Blum had combined materialism with idealism, Mitterrands critique of the established economic order was essentially a moral one.

However, the program of the CIR had shifted toward the Left. In 1970, the movement discussed the idea of a Socialist contract for the country whose principal goals would be to bring about greater participation by workers in economic decision-making and a more equal distribution of income. Its stated ambition was to build an economic system that would be unique in Europe neither a softened version of capitalism nor a collectivist model that would destroy personal freedom. But the CIR combined this radical objective with a gradualist strategy for achieving it over an indefinite period of time.

In a broader sense, Mitterrand laid the foundations of a political approach through the CIR that he would implement a few years later with the Socialist Party as his vehicle. The PS gave Mitterrand the local support bases and activist cadres that the CIR had lacked. In 1971, he achieved his masterstroke by capturing the leadership of the PS at the same time as he joined it. At the pinay congress that year, he formed alliances with the old chieftains of the SFIO on his right wing and the young Marxist troops of the CERES faction on his left to take control of the party.

Three years later, the dynamism of the party attracted a fresh cohort from the Christian left associated with the CFDT trade-union federation, which supported the goal of autogestion (self-management). Mitterrand brought these elements into the fold through a debate in October 1974 known as the Assises du socialisme. This completed the process of unifying the forces of French socialism into a single organization.

In the 1974 presidential election, Mitterrand ran for the second time after concluding an alliance with the PCF and the Left Radicals. His platform called for the nationalization of key industrial and financial corporations and a reduction of working hours. Mitterrand lost out in the runoff to the conservative candidate Valry Giscard dEstaing by a tiny margin less than 2 percent, or just over 400,000 votes.

Over the course of the 1970s, Mitterrand and his allies transformed the PS into an effective modern party that was attractive to new activists and social layers. With Mitterrand as its leader, the PS promised a rupture with the established order, opening the way for an alternative, socialist path that that would be much more ambitious than anything on offer from social democracy elsewhere in Europe.

The Union of the Left defined its strategy as a project to go beyond capitalism, based on the construction of a bloc of classes between exploited workers and social groups that were denied access to the means of production. When it came to economic questions, the program consisted of three key points: nationalization, democratic planning, and self-management. It also took heed of the demands put forward by new social movements after 1968 feminist, regionalist, or ecological.

Before the French left had even come to power, there were already several strains on the coherence of its vision. The historian Mathieu Fulla argues that Mitterrand was pursuing a strategy on a knifes edge. His party needed to display its radicalism in order to overtake its Communist competitor but without losing its credibility in the eyes of the wider electorate. As Mitterrand once put it when addressing the left wing of the PS: Collectivization is all very well for a party congress, but not so good for an election campaign.

This led to an eclectic mixture of economic paradigms, across the spectrum from Marxism to Keynesianism, that were not always blended together well. It also gave rise to many blind spots in the economic project of the Left, which helps explain the comparative failure of the Marxo-Keynesian policy carried out in 198182. The PS conceived its project of social transformation in essentially national terms, at a time when the French economy was already strongly internationalized.

Production and employment would continue for the most part to depend on private capital, while French firms would have to confront foreign competition, if only within the framework of the European common market. In the short term, the project of boosting employment and reducing inequality watchwords for Mitterrands presidential campaign relied on typical Keynesian methods, at a time when that economic paradigm seemed increasingly fallible in both practice and theory.

There were also widely divergent views about the programmatic vision of the PS among the various factions that structured the partys internal life. Personal rivalries and tactical considerations then overlaid these doctrinal debates. For example, the followers of Michel Rocard, who went on to serve as prime minister under Mitterrand, did not understand the concept of autogestion in the same way as the CERES faction. The latter accused the former of using it as an excuse for reformist capitulation, downplaying the need to overturn capitalist economic structures by using state power.

In ideological terms, Mitterrand was unquestionably closer to the Rocardians than he was to CERES. However, Rocard himself had presidential ambitions, and thus had no hesitation in denouncing Mitterrands alleged archaism on such questions. It was an exaggerated charge, but it encouraged Mitterrand to bring CERES back into his camp in 1979, after excluding it for the previous four years.

By doing so, he isolated his rival Rocard at the price of hardening his ideological stance albeit in a way that was merely tactical. When Mitterrand ran in the presidential election of 1981, his platform of 110 proposals was less radical than the party program Jean-Pierre Chevnement had drafted.

He defeated the incumbent, Valry Giscard dEstaing, in a runoff by 52 to 48 percent. The Socialists also won a majority of seats in the subsequent legislative election and formed a government with Pierre Mauroy as prime minister. They opted to bring the PCF into their cabinet with four posts, although backing from the Communist deputies was not essential for the PS. Supporters of the Left greeted the results with euphoria, harking back to the golden days of the Popular Front victory in 1936.

There was a certain originality behind the economic policy that the new government carried out in 1981. It combined a boost to consumption, with the sharpest reduction in income inequalities since the general strike of 1968, with a substantial enlargement of the productive state. The French public sector became one of the biggest among the advanced capitalist economies. But there was no question of giving power to the workers or detaching the French economy from international competition.

It was not a propitious time for a left-wing economic experiment. Between 1979 and 1982, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Helmut Kohl came to power in London, Washington, and Bonn, respectively. France soon faced a counterattack from the forces of capital, with a balance-of-payments crisis, speculative attacks on the franc, inflation, and a decline of corporate profitability. Eventually, the Socialist government began implementing austerity measures, which it made definitive with the so-called austerity turn of 1983. This brought the reduction of inequality to an end. It also produced a lasting hike in unemployment while boosting the wealth share of those who held capital.

As was the case elsewhere in Europe at the time, the shrinking economic space for a social-democratic policy by parties like the PS led to the adoption of neoliberalism rather than socialist radicalization. By 1983, Mitterrand had been so successful in his project of surpassing and marginalizing the PCF that the Communists no longer had the resources or the credibility to offer an alternative.

The CERES faction in the Socialist Party itself did not support economic deflation, but it did not advocate a truly socialist policy, either. After resigning from the government, Chevnement called for a civic awakening that would build a nation based on solidarity and entrepreneurship, capable of producing more and better. He wanted France to leave the European Monetary System (EMS) so it could devalue the franc and give industry a boost.

Mitterrand opted to stay in the EMS and carry out a strategy of competitive deflation. The French social state was not expanded in an anti-capitalist direction. Instead, it became a kind of social anesthetic, compensating for the ills produced by a neoliberal order.

Lacking a strong economic doctrine of his own, Mitterrand preferred to maintain the link with Germany and tie France to the construction of the European Community. Having failed to invest a third way between Soviet-style collectivism and classical social democracy, he made European integration the great project of his presidency. This became a new field for the exercise of Mitterrands leadership and gave him a positive horizon.

He helped bring about the appointment of Jacques Delors, his governments finance minister between 1981 and 1984, as head of the European Commission in 1985. Delors, a product of the Christian trade-union movement in France, was an early defender of austerity, and expressed his delight that the Left had finally decided to rehabilitate companies and their directors. Over the course of a decade, he used the idea of a European market to promote the unification of the old continent.

Under his leadership, three major treaties were pushed through: the Schengen Agreement in 1985, allowing for the free movement of European citizens; the Single European Act in 1986, which led to the creation of the single market; and, finally, the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which paved the way for a common European currency. Mitterrand himself campaigned for Maastricht in the French referendum campaign. These became the pillars of a pan-European structure. That structure established the priority of economic competition over whatever interventionist tendencies social-democratic leaders still harbored, and permanently blocked the fantasies of Euro-Keynesianism.

The conversion of French socialism to a tempered variety of neoliberalism, mixed with social concerns to set it apart from the post-Gaullist right, is not the only legacy of Mitterrand. After 1981, France became a country where the death penalty was abolished, and where there was real progress for the rights of women and sexual minorities. His government also did away with special courts and released local authorities from supervision by the central government.

Above all, the Mitterrand strategy normalized the idea of the Left and Right alternating in power under the Fifth Republic, after a right-wing monopoly of power that had lasted for twenty-three years. This also meant that the PS itself was won over to the system of the Fifth Republic and became a pillar of that system for almost four decades.

Of course, Mitterrand reveled in his role as a republican monarch. He used all the privileges of his office and even abused them for example, when he ordered the wiretapping of prominent figures. The most terrible consequence of Mitterrands preeminence in foreign and military affairs stemmed from his insistence on backing the Rwandan government that was ultimately responsible for the genocide of the Tutsis in 1994.

He also cultivated an air of secrecy around his health and the double life that he led, with a secret family whose existence was not revealed to the French public until much later. He enjoyed the courtly atmosphere that surrounded his person.

However, Mitterrand did keep his promise to reform the majoritarian electoral system for the French legislature and make it more proportional. As soon as the French right returned to power in 1986, it rolled back this reform, and the post-Mitterrand political class has never restored it despite having multiple opportunities to do so. To this day, the system of national representation gives a highly distorted picture of what people have actually voted for.

Mitterrands successors have made the Caesarian features of the French political regime even worse. While he was president, Mitterrand had to coexist with a right-wing parliamentary majority, because the presidential and legislative elections were not held on the same timetable. Lionel Jospin, the Socialist prime minister from 1997 to 2002, synchronized the presidential term with that of the National Assembly, with the election for president taking place before the legislative poll.

This has considerably strengthened the dominant role of the presidency in a system that already gave Frances head of state exorbitant powers. Since 2002, the party of the winning presidential candidate has always romped home in the parliamentary election that followed.

Franois Hollande became the first Socialist president since Mitterrand in 2012, but proceeded to alienate the left-wing electorate, however moderate, over the next five years. The PS went down to a spectacular defeat in 2017, when its candidate placed fifth with just over 6 percent of the vote.

The collapse certainly fit into a broader pattern of crisis for Europes social-democratic parties. But the scale of that collapse symbolized the failure of a generation of PS politicians whose careers were hatched during the Mitterrand years. Instead of critically examining the limits and ambiguities of Mitterrands career, they channeled all their energy into the social, political, and European order of the Fifth Republic, losing any trace of originality along the way and ultimately losing any appeal to voters, too.

But that was their responsibility more than it was Mitterrands. He did not bequeath any notable ideas to the French left. Nor did his government change life, here and now, as the title of a Socialist anthem from 1977 put it. Instead, Mitterrand offered the Left a flawed but lasting experience of power, setting it on a path that his successors went on to follow, wrongly and stubbornly, until the final collapse.

Read more here:
Franois Mitterrand Gave French Socialists Power at the Price of Their Soul - Jacobin magazine

A very close friend of mine shared some thoughts with me that I believe are worth sharing with the readership of this weekly column.

Some folks may find differences with a few of them but then that is what writing is all about, tweaking the thought processes of readers.

If you allow yourself the time and read through them, with an open mind, it is my belief you will find some common ground with my friend's thinking.

So here goes:

A gun is like a parachute, if you need one, and don't have one, you'll probably never need one again."

"The definition of the word conundrum is: something that is puzzling or confusing.

Here are six conundrums of socialism in the United States of America:

1. America is capitalist and greedy - yet around half of the population is subsidized.

2. Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.

3. They think they are victims - yet their own representatives run the government.

4. Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.

5. The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in so many other countries only dream about.

6. While they have things that people in other countries only dream about - they want America to be more like those other countries."

Why do people allow themselves to be duped into such thinking?

These three, short sentences tell you a lot about the direction of our current national - and possibly local - government and cultural environment:

1. We are advised to not judge all Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge all gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics.

Funny how that works. And here's another one worth considering:

2. It seems we constantly hear about how Social Security is going to run out of money. But we never hear about welfare or food stamps running out of money! What's interesting is the first group 'worked for' their money, but the second did not.

Think about that - and last but certainly not least:

3. Why do we discuss cutting benefits for our veterans, pay raises for our military and cutting our military to a level lower than before World War II, but we are not stopping the payments or benefits to illegal aliens who are flowing through our borders.

Am I the only one missing something?

There is something terribly wrong with the direction our current government is heading and if we do not regain balance and control of its operations we are headed for some seriously difficult times.

"If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools." Plato

Esta.

Lee P. Webber is a former president and publisher of media organizations on Guam and Hawaii, former director of operations for USA Today International/Asia, and a longtime business and civic leader on Guam.

Original post:
Conundrums of socialism in the US | Featured Columnists | postguam.com - The Guam Daily Post

May 18 marked the 12th anniversary of the end of 26-year bloody communal war in Sri Lanka waged by successive Colombo governments against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and more broadly the islands Tamil minority.

Speaking in parliament on the day, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse glorified the armed forces for the liberation of the country from terrorism. He added: We ended the [war] era, displaced refugees were settled into their villages and public representatives from the North and East today are living with dignity, freedom and enjoys the democracy.

This turns history upside down, hiding the brutal truth of the end of the war. The relentlessly military offensives in the early months of 2009 drove the LTTE along with hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians into a small pocket of land near Mullaitivu on the northwest coast of the island.

The Sri Lankan military mercilessly pounded the area with artillery shells, and from the air, deliberately targeting hospitals, aid centres and designated civilian areas. According to UN estimates, at least 40,000 civilians were slaughtered. When the LTTE defences finally collapsed, the military murdered surrendering LTTE leaders and herded some 300,000 civilians into army-controlled detention camps. Hundreds of young people were hauled off for re-education to unknown locations.

Mahinda Rajapakse, who was Sri Lankan president at the time, was directly responsible for these war crimes and gross abuses of democratic rights. His younger brother, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who is now the countrys president, oversaw these criminal military operations as defence secretary. He is directly implicated in the murder of LTTE leaders, who giving themselves up and carrying white flags of surrender.

As for the situation facing Tamil people today, those incarcerated in camps were resettled and many still living in abject poverty in huts with elementary facilities. Around 90,000 war widows in the islands North and East are struggling to survive. The two war-torn provinces remain under heavy military occupation, with the Tamil population, particularly young people, constantly harassed and intimidated. Protests are taking place to demand information about the disappeared and the release of political prisoners.

While it was celebrating its victory over the LTTE in the South, the government unleashed a military-police crackdown in the North and East, arresting dozens for paying their respects to their loved ones who were killed in the massacre at Mullaitivu.

The government was forced to hold low-key victory celebrations this month because the COVID-19 pandemic is surging in the country. The Colombo regime is nervous about the developing mass opposition among workers and the poor who are facing wage and job cuts and rising prices for essential foods and other basic items.

The governments response to growing social unrest is to strengthen the armed forces in preparation for class war. As part of the victory celebrations, thousands of soldiers were promoted to higher ranks. In response to the defeat of the LTTE, the military has been expanded, not contracted, with its budget allocations increasing again this year to a massive 440 billion rupees ($US2.2 billion).

In opposition to the jubilation in ruling circles in 2009, the World Socialist Web Site wrote: The military defeat of the LTTE has done nothing to resolve the issues underlying the civil war. It has merely proved that the unity of the Sri Lankan state on a bourgeois basis could only be maintained through bloody repression and atrocities. (WSWS perspective on May 21, 2009).

Eruption of the war in 1983 was the result of the communal politics pursued by the Sri Lankan capitalist class and successive governments since the formal independence in 1948 from the British imperialism.

Unable address any of the democratic or social questions facing working people and the oppressed masses, Colombo governments resorted to Sinhala-Buddhist supremacism and anti-Tamil chauvinism in every political crisis to divide and weaken the working class.

Shortly after independence, the government of the day abolished the citizenship rights of around a million Tamil plantation workers brought from India as cheap labour by the British colonial rulers. In 1956, following a profound crisis of rule that led to an uprising by workers and the rural masses in 1953, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party won the election on the basis of a Sinhala-only policy that made Sinhala the only official language and relegated Tamils to second-class citizens.

The Lanka Sama Samaja Party, which claimed to be Trotskyist, had initially acted as a brake on communalism, promoting the unity of the working classSinhala and Tamil. But its degeneration and betrayal in 1964, when it entered the capitalist government of Sirima Bandaranaike and embraced Sinhala populism, led to the formation of petty bourgeois radical organisations based on the armed struggle and communal politicsin particular, the LTTE among Tamil youth in the North and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) among rural Sinhala youth in the South.

The right-wing United National Party (UNP) government of J. R. Jayawardene, which came to power in 1977, responded to the countrys economic crisis by implementing pro-market restructuring and encouraging foreign investors to take advantage of its cheap labour. As the working-class opposition erupted, Jayawardene rewrote the constitution to establish an autocratic executive presidency and engaged in one anti-Tamil provocation after another culminating in the devastating anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983 that led to outbreak of open warfare.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP)and its forerunner Revolutionary Communist League (RCL)is the only party that consistently opposed the communal war on the basis of the fight to unite the working class. We demanded unconditional withdrawal of the military from the North and East and defended democratic rights of Tamil minority. At the same time, the RCL/SEP opposed LTTE separatism which promoted the communal division of the working class.

In 1987, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and the RCL advanced the perspective of Sri Lanka-Eelam Socialist Republic as part of fighting for a Union of Socialist States in South Asia. This program was based on the Trotskys theory of Permanent Revolution, which emphasised that only the working class can provide the leadership to the rural poor and oppressed masses in solving the democratic tasks as part of the struggle for socialism.

The protracted and devastating war demonstrated the inability of any section of the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie, all deeply mired in communal politics, to meet the democratic aspirations and social needs of working people. While Colombo governments sacrificed the lives of Sinhala youth to maintain the power and privileges of the majority Sinhala establishment, the bourgeois Tamil parties were seeking greater autonomy or a separate Tamil capitalist state to exploit the Tamil working class.

The SEP explained that the defeat of the LTTE in 2009 was not primarily a military question but was the result of its bourgeois-nationalist perspective. The LTTE was organically incapable to make class appeal to Tamil workers let alone in the working class elsewhere in Sri Lanka and internationally. As the devastating final army offensives were underway, it issued pathetic appeals to the international communitythat is, to the very powers including the US and India that were backing Colombos war and turning a blind eye to its atrocities.

The twelve years since the end of the war have only led to a deepening political crisis as Sri Lanka has been swept up in sharpening geo-political tensions, particularly the US confrontation with China, and worsening global economic situation, all of which has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. The military and its brutal methods used during the war are now being prepared for use against the working class as unrest grows over the worsening social conditions facing working people.

The end of the war coincided with the 200809 global financial crisis. The Sri Lankan economy already burdened with the heavy costs of the war and its devastation was hit hard. The government of President Mahinda Rajapakse turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for financial assistance, implemented its austerity dictates and resorted to military and police repression against opposition from workers and the poor.

At the same time, the US was deeply hostile to Rajapakses ties with China which had supplied arms and finance for the war. In a regime-change operation orchestrated from Washington, he was ignominiously defeated in the 2015 presidential election that brought Maithripala Sirisena to power with the support of the UNP, the bourgeois Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and also the pseudo-left groups.

The national unity government led by President Sirisena and UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister rapidly jettisoned its promises of good governance and to improve living standards. Deeply implicated in war and its atrocities themselves, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe ensured there was no genuine investigation into the crimes of the Rajapakse regime. As the economic crisis deepened, the government again turned to the IMF, imposed new burdens on the working class and poor, and used police state methods to suppress social unrest.

The pseudo left groups and trade unions that had promoted and helped Sirisena and Wickremesinghe into power, defended the national unity government to the hilt and assisted in suppressing a growing wave of strikes and protests. The TNA, the chief representative of the Tamil bourgeoisie, was a de facto partner in the government.

The national unity government also led to a further fragmentation of the political establishmentwith the two major parties of the ruling class, the UNP and SLFP reduced to shells. In this highly unstable situation, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, backed by the military and significant sections of big business, exploited the mass disaffection to win the 2019 presidential election which was deeply divided along communal lines. While Tamils did not vote for Rajapaksethe man responsible for war crimes, Sinhala working people did not vote for the United National Front candidate Sajith Premadasa who has imposed new social burdens as part of the national unity government.

Rajapakse and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) that backed him was also able to exploit the 2019 Easter Sunday terrorist attacks by a local Islamist extremist group that killed 270 people and injured many more to promise a strong and stable government that would be tough on national security.

The fact that Sri Lanka is now governed by the Rajapakse brothersthe two figures that bear the greatest responsibility for the militarys crimes and atrocities in the final months of the warmust serve as the sharpest warning to the working class. In the midst of a profound and social crisis, the bourgeoisie is relying on Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his promise of strong government to suppress mounting opposition from working class.

President Rajapakse has installed retired and in-service generals to key positions of the government, including retired Major General Kamal Gunaratne as defense secretary and Army Commander Major General Shavendra Silva as head off the national COVID-19 operation centre. At the same time, he rests heavily on Sinhala extremist groups and has helped whip up anti-Tamil and anti-Muslim chauvinism.

Workers need to draw the necessary political lessons from the disasters resulting from communal politics. Gotabhaya and Mahinda Rajapakse who presided over the slaughter of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians will not hesitate to use the same brutal methods against the working class and the urban and rural poor.

The working class cannot defend any of its democratic and social rights without rejecting all forms of nationalism and chauvinismboth Sinhala-Buddhist supremacism and Tamil separatismthat were responsible for the war. Only through a unified struggle against the capitalist classtheir joint oppressorsprofit system on which it rests can workers win to their side the rural toilers and fight for a workers and peasants government. Such a government would implement socialist policies to meet the pressing needs of the majority not the profit requirements of the wealthy few, as part of the fight for socialism throughout South Asia and internationally.

We urge the workers and youth to join the SEP which alone fights for this program.

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Twelve years since the end of Sri Lanka's communal war - WSWS

Theory May 18, 2021 Hidayat Greenfield

Today I was asked to speak about reimagining socialism. I would like to do so by rephrasing the topic. Its not a matter of reimagining socialism, but rather, of reimagining ourselves as socialists. This makes the task simpler and more difficult.

Simpler because we do not need to construct a complete vision of a post-capitalist society or even how the capitalist system will be dismantled and replaced. We only need to focus on a socialist approach to explaining how capitalism creates the problems we face (exploitation, injustice, inequality, poverty, unemployment, violence, discrimination, pandemics, and the climate crisis), and why solutions cannot be found as long as the capitalist system prevails.

But it is also more difficult because we must reflect on our socialist commitment and our ability to communicate a socialist agenda through organizing, education, and agitation.

As socialists, how do we understand the problems created by the capitalist system? How do we locate the root cause(s) of a problem in capitalism as a system? We must ask this whether its brutal working conditions, poverty, jobs destruction, massive inequality, gender discrimination, violence against women, the lack of decent housing, or the failure to pay a living wage. Take any one of the thousands of problems that were trying to address in organizing workers for collective action and systemic change.

Both the causes and the solutions (in terms strategies for struggle and the demands and policies that are articulated in that struggle) must expose and challenge capitalism and the capitalist dynamic.

Blaming capitalism is easy. Explaining why a particular problem is integral to the capitalist system is more difficult. But if we do not locate the cause within capitalism, how do we arrive at a solution that is anti-, non-, post-capitalist?

The fact is that much of our response to the crises created by capitalism produces social democratic demands for state intervention and partial or temporary state control that just help to fix capitalism. Nationalizing banks, nationalizing industry, promoting food sovereignty, government subsidies and public spending, public sector job creation, minimum wages, etc. are presented as radical solutions. In the context of crisis, these are radical. But ultimately, they serve to promote the realignment of the capitalist system revitalizing, not replacing, capitalism. (Nationalization usually involves nationalizing private corporate debt and shifting the burden to workers. In the 2008 financial crisis, Newsweek magazine declared on its cover: We are all socialists now).

The incredible propensity of capitalism to absorb whatever you throw at it, to utilize it to restore itself, is something that we should not underestimate. Consider how the very real problem of gender discrimination and gender inequality has been reconstructed as advertising, branding, and reputation as something that now generates private profit. The problem of gender discrimination and gender inequality is tackled without exposing the convergence of patriarchy and capitalist authority, or subordination and capitalist property relations. In other words, gender discrimination and gender inequality are manageable problems within capitalism (and actually a source of profit accumulation) if de-linked from patriarchy, class, class relations, and class struggle.

The problem with class is that the predominant understanding of class today is liberal, not socialist. Class is understood as a hierarchy of wealth and inequality, of comparative incomes and living standards, and even occupations. This is a liberal notion of class that supports our moral outrage (unfair, unjust, outrageous inequality and extreme wealth). But it is not the socialist understanding of the class relations that are integral to capitalism and the class struggle essential to challenging it.

With a liberal understanding of class (occupation, income, wealth), any demand to rectify inequality and poverty is described as class struggle. This then gives the impression of a socialist agenda, while, in fact, accepting, if not revitalizing, the capitalist system. Using the terms class and capitalism does not make us socialists. We need a socialist understanding of class, capitalism, and the capitalist dynamic.

Im not suggesting we abandon our moral outrage and be dispassionate many socialist intellectuals appear dispassionate, often with a detached and smug, I told you so. We must retain our moral outrage and sense of urgency. But we must ensure that its not simply a moral judgment (good vs. evil). We must respond by tackling the fundamental capitalist logic thats causing these problems.

More than anything, this dilemma is reflected in political parties that claim a socialist platform. These parties tend to use moral outrage to demonstrate that they are speaking and acting on behalf of the people that they represent the oppressed, the exploited, and the mildly annoyed. This is a source of political legitimacy. This moral outrage at injustice tends to produce short-term responses in terms of new policies or legal reform. The problem is always blamed on the incumbent government and rarely blamed on the capitalist system itself.

Like the absence of any real class analysis (where class is understood as social relations and property, not wealth disparity and income), there is a lack of understanding of the capitalist state. The focus is on government, which is the institutional representation of only one aspect of state power. More often it is a narrow focus on the people who run the government bad people we dont like. Again, moral outrage.

I think, at its worst, this moral outrage is driven by a desire to seek popular approval through social media, rather than a desire to prevent the systemic causes of whatever outrage were responding to. The fact that due to the digital divide those who respond to social media are a tiny minority doesnt seem to matter. Those who Like, Heart, re-post and re-Tweet are the people. Our populist response is trending! For populist political leaders the task of reimagining themselves as socialists is much easier. They only need to be as socialist as social media needs them to be.

To reimagine ourselves as socialists we must restore our socialist analysis. The COVID pandemic, rising unemployment, poverty wages, wage theft insecurity, and all of the vulnerability that weve been discussing should be understood in terms of the capitalist dynamic. No doubt private property and the drive for profit is already well understood. (Although we need to understand profit not in terms of how much money is made, but in terms of exploitation and the extraction of surplus value.)

We probably need to pay more attention to commodification, which is essential to the capitalist system. Commodification is a social process that transforms every aspect of human life into a commodity that can be bought and sold for profit. We must understand the intersection of property relations (as a source of power) and the compulsion of capitalism through market forces that transforms everything into a commodity. We then need to understand the exploitation through which surplus value is extracted and the redistribution of that value.

Im sure it is well understood that the most fundamental aspect of capitalist social relations and the capitalist system is that labour power is a commodity. Workers sell their labour-power to capitalists (the owners of the means of production) and capitalists extract profit (surplus value), which constitutes exploitation.

Yet everything about labour organizing reinforces the politico-legal framework that regulates the commodification of labour-power and how workers sell their labour-power. Registration of trade unions and legal recognition and a collective agreement are necessary goals of a labour movement. But it is not a socialist movement because it does nothing to challenge the commodification of labour-power. It could be argued that the institutional fetishism of a legalistic approach to organizing diminishes workers capacity for class struggle.

Its worth considering that social movement unionism simply obscures this contradiction. Coming as it does from a social democratic tradition, the very purpose is to compromise.

To understand the distinction between a socialist understanding and a social democratic or libertarian understanding, consider that the founding declaration of the International Labour Organization (ILO) states that labour is not a commodity. What is the difference between labour-power as a commodity and labour as a commodity? Second, distinguish between the libertarian notion of worker rights in ILO conventions as individual human rights and our need for collective rights.

Understanding commodification is vital. Sexual exploitation involves commodification. Gender discrimination involves commodification. Indeed, the current solutions to gender discrimination without disrupting patriarchy or property relations is also a form of commodification. The current crisis and pandemic (and the next pandemic) are rooted in commodification. If we can understand the disease drivers that created this pandemic (through human-mediated action), we can see how commodification plays such a vital role. For example, the issue of vaccines and access is not just a government failure, but the failure of a system in which human health is commodified.

Commodification is not just about everything becoming a product (for sale). Its inextricably bound up in competitiveness and the relentless drive to increase productivity. Its the capitalist imperative or the compulsion of capitalism.

As I argued somewhat hopelessly in a recent debate over the need to restore public healthcare, a genuinely public service that serves society, such as free, universal healthcare for all, can fulfill neither its obligations nor guarantee the rights of people if it is subordinated to the imperative of capitalist productivity. The compulsion that drives productivity, efficiency, competitiveness regardless of the absence of an overt aim of generating profit turns a service to society, a public need, into a commodity. As a commodity, it is inherently unable to satisfy human needs because people as individuals competing for access must seek out that commodity in the market. More than anything, this prevents us from protecting public health in this and the next pandemic.

The other aspect of reimagining ourselves as socialists concerns the complex interaction of individual material interests and collective interests. Its complex because when were organizing, we have to consider how much time and energy we put into trying to convince workers that whatever were proposing is in their individual personal, material interests. If you join us and do this, you will benefit. If you dont do this, there will there will be terrible consequences! If we dont take action now, you could be next!

Fear of bad things happening to them as individuals drives much of what we do when we attempt to convince people to join our organizations or to join our struggle. But what kind of struggle is it if its just a collection of individual, personal, and material interests? Progress on a day-to-day basis will be measured against our ability to deliver on that promise: What do I get from this? Why havent I gained anything yet? Even if phrased as we (What do we get from this? Why havent we gained anything yet?), it still means me.

Very rarely do we suggest that workers join struggles simply on the basis that it is for the greater good, in the public interest, or social interests. (Notice we refer to social problems but no longer speak of social interests.) There is not much traction in arguing that there will be a collective benefit. When we talk about climate change and the struggle for climate justice, its still very much a libertarian approach to a capitalist problem. Its very clear to us that the capitalist system created this climate crisis. Its equally clear that capitalism cannot deliver or allow a solution to this crisis. That capitalism will destroy the planet is pretty much a foregone conclusion. But our collective ability to prevent that from happening is diminishing. Day by day.

Yet how much education, awareness, campaigning, and organizing for climate justice involves an appeal to individual material interests? The impact on individuals is the most predominant part of the discussion. Even if we refer to community, we do so because thats the collection of people around us, all the people we know or identify with, so its still about me. Look at the entire response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the way in which personal inconvenience (wearing masks, staying home, distancing) trumped our collective need to protect public health.

When we are organizing, the need to bring in the personal is seen as a very practical way to reach people and convince people in everything we do. Its practical. But from the outset, it undermines our socialist commitment because we avoid the very difficult task of building a collective set of values that gives real meaning to solidarity. We sidestep the need to build a collective set of values to drive collective action, and a genuine commitment to something greater than ourselves. Whether you want to say its societal or the public good, or the greater good, it doesnt matter at this stage. We can barely have a conversation about this thing that is beyond the individual. What we do is pretend were talking about social interests or societal interests, and the greater good, by talking about the collection of individual personal interests affected by this. Theres always that promise of what it means for me. All subsequent collective action around this is premised on that promise.

The final point Id like to make in reimagining ourselves as socialists is the dilemma of the imagination itself. Our collective imagination is fundamentally inhibited by how we communicate, educate, and agitate.

Its inhibited because we communicate within a system where human attention has been commodified. Our attention has been commodified and is bought and sold for profit.

The business of Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and other corporations that produce and control social media is the business of capturing and selling peoples attention. As critics of the attention economy have shown, the product is you.

The commodification of attention transforms our ability to communicate, perceive, learn, and ultimately, to think. One of the effects of the commodification of attention is distraction, and the level of distraction or inability to pay attention is massive. This perpetual distraction or continuous partial attention syndrome is the result of both new technologies and the commodification of attention.

So even if we develop our socialist analysis, what do we do with it? We have a socialist commitment based on genuine collective interests that rise above personal individual material interests, yet we cant communicate, educate, and agitate effectively because we dont have peoples attention. Their attention has already been captured or bought.

This is probably what leads me to be so pessimistic about our future. Whatever we try to communicate, people are listening for phrases and sound bytes to post or share. Already thinking of how it will look on Instagram, TickTock, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and what reaction it will get likes, comments, re-posts so we dont really have their attention, just their time. And all the while, they are thinking about getting other peoples attention.

This constant inattention preempts any deeper thought or analysis or reflection or internalization because its all completely externalized at that point. Its all for an imaginary audience. This is part of the commodification of attention its now what peoples brains are re-wired to do. This perpetual distraction or continuous partial attention syndrome also has significant consequences for mental health and well-being. It runs up against how our brains are hardwired and we may have to consider how this damages, inhibits, or redefines our ability to understand or imagine anything.

How do we reimagine ourselves as socialists if we are constantly competing for the attention (not understanding) of others? How can the reimagining of socialism take place if we are so distracted? Is it possible that the depth of understanding needed to fight capitalism and replace it with socialism no longer exists because understanding no longer has depth? In fact, I wonder whether weve lost our ability to imagine.

Recapturing that attention and rebuilding our collective imagination is a massive task. We must regain peoples attention sufficiently to understand the causes of the crisis and problems we face and the collective action thats needed for the collective good. If we believe we can still do that, then I think theres hope.

Hidayat Greenfield is currently the elected Regional Secretary for the Asia-Pacific section of the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF).

The rest is here:
Reimagining Socialism: A Conversation - The Bullet - Socialist Project