Communist Party USA

Out of the Crisis: Building a new era of justice & peace

by Sam Webb, National Chair
Communist Party, USA

(Based on a speech delivered March 21, 2009, New York City.)

Video version of the speech
Audio version of the speech
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An excerpt for the speech published in the People's Weekly World


Introduction

Welcome to everyone in Winston Unity Center and to everybody on line.

We are living in very turbulent times. The world is in transition. An old era an era of neoliberalism, financialization and rightwing extremism is fading away and a new era is being born.

But no one is quite sure what the new era will look like. It resists easy prediction. It is safe to say that the future of both our country and the world is still to be written.

As bad as things have been over the last three decades, few thought they could get much worse. But they have. Depression economics has entered our vocabulary not simply as a historical event, but as a lived experience for millions.

Only a short time ago most economists said the economic cycle had been tamed. In 2004, in a speech titled The Great Moderation, Federal Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke said we live in an era in which macroeconomic instability has been eliminated.

Fast forward five years and the Great Moderation has turned into the Great Crisis. That which few thought would ever happen again has happened again, and without much warning.

The social fabric is rupturing. The terrain on which billions of people earn a living and raise their families feels foreign, even unrecognizable. Havent you heard more than one person say, Is this the country I grew up in?

Much the same is happening across the planet as billions try to adapt and give meaning to gut-wrenching shocks.

And yet while old certainties and markers are melting away and while no one really knows what tomorrow will bring, hundreds of millions of people havent given up on the future. As ominous as this moment feels, it is also a time when the parameters of the possible have expanded geometrically.

I hear warnings about a future of rightwing authoritarian regimes and even fascism. No one should rule out such scenarios, but in my view the arc of history is bending more towards justice and peace, towards respect for each other and the earth.

A future worthy of humankind is possible. Is there any reason to think that millions in motion cant transform this country and world into the just, green, sustainable and peaceful Promised Land that Martin Luther King dreamed of? It would be a profound mistake to underestimate the progressive and socialist potential of this era. The American people have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity within their reach.

It will take, of course, new ideas and energy, practical activity, and arms that reach across the divides of race, gender, sexual preference, income, border, oceans, religions and generations.

And, above all, it will take united action. Broad objective forces and challenges will shape our future, but human actions and choices will decide humankinds fate.

Had the elections turned out differently, I might be less hopeful and enthusiastic. But because of the outcome, a friend of labor and its allies sits in the White House and enjoys high approval ratings. Larger Democratic majorities control Congress. A feeling of renewal and hope is in the air. And after a short holiday pause, the labor and peoples movement that was so instrumental to the elections outcome is getting in gear albeit not yet at full throttle, but more about this later.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is on the defensive, its grassroots constituency is dispirited, and its governing philosophy is discredited.

But more about this later too.

Current economic crisis

Of the challenges facing the American people and our new president, none looms larger than the slumping economy. I dont propose in this report to go into the economic processes that brought the country and world to their knees.

Suffice it to say that the present economic crisis has its roots in the interweaving and interaction of a short-term cyclical crisis, especially in housing and the longer-term triad of financialization, neoliberalism and globalization.

Moreover, both are the offspring of a crisis of overproduction (too many commodities and too little purchasing power) and overaccumulation (too much surplus value and too few ways to absorb it profitably) that are at the core of capitalisms dynamics and contradictions.

Or to put the matter another (more abstract) way, this is a crisis of capitalism in which its production relations became a parasitic fetter on the development of its productive forces so much so that when financial markets collapsed in the center of world imperialism, the world was thrown into an unprecedented system-wide economic crisis.

The Marxist practice of reducing every crisis to overproduction and overaccumulation is correct, but if left there makes it difficult to understand this crisis. To gain such an understanding it is necessary to fold into our explanation financialization as well as neoliberalism and capitalist globalization. This triad largely determined the specific dynamics and specific path of the economy over the past three decades and the specific scope and specific character of the current crisis.

With this in the background, what is the current status, dynamics, and growth pattern of the U.S. and global economy?

Unemployment is growing to staggering levels. Nearly 700,000 workers lost their jobs in January. To make matters worse, this trend is accelerating with no end in sight. Since December 2007, 4 million workers have been pink-slipped.

One of 10 homeowners is in foreclosure; many more are under water with the probability of foreclosure in their future. President Obamas measures are helpful to be sure, but dont go far enough to address the full scope of the crisis.

The financial system is on life support. Nearly every major financial institution that anchors it is insolvent. So far roughly $9 trillion has been thrown into the financial system in various ways. And yet credit lines are still blocked and the system is still filled with toxic assets.

Moreover, the same banks and institutions that are receiving government largesse are attempting to foist the cost of the crisis onto taxpayers. If as is claimed, these banks are too big to fail, then they are too big to be left in private hands.

Business investment is going rapidly south, manufacturing is in a free fall, retail chains are going belly up and construction sites are empty.

Consumer spending has fallen steeply and will continue its slide, as the economy worsens and debt obligations take a bigger bite from paychecks.

Deflationary pressures are growing as well. Now, falling prices might seem to be a good thing, except that deflation leads consumers to postpone spending, businesses to hold back on investment in new plant and equipment, and borrowers to cut back on borrowing. During the Great Depression, deflation became a powerful contractionary pressure, deepening the crisis and slowing the recovery.

States and municipalities are cutting back on jobs and services. And theyre doing it at exactly the wrong time.

Corporate profits, not surprisingly, are down, although not every corporate player is a loser. In fact, some sections of capital, including big mortgage-lending companies, hedge funds, and even auto corporations, are exploiting the crisis to extract more surplus value from the working people, capture market share from their competitors, and centralize class power, especially in banking.

While the crisis is wide in scope, its impact is uneven both geographically (Michigan and California, for example) and demographically. While nearly every section of the working class feels its impact, Black, Latino, Asian and Native American workers and people experience the consequences especially intensely. African American unemployment, for example, stands officially at 16.4%.

Poverty, which was rising during the Bush years, is getting worse, although the stimulus will help. It too invades the communities of the racially oppressed disproportionately.

Not since the Great Depression has the economy been in such bad shape. Downward pressures are powerful and I want to underline this mutually reinforcing. That is, spending cuts cause other spending cuts which in turn cause still other spending cuts, turning into a vicious circle.

Forecasts that economic activity will resume at the end of this year or early next year have less and less currency. No one quite knows where this is all headed or when a recovery will occur. But it is safe to say that more and more economists predict the downturn will be L-shaped that is, deep and prolonged.

What adds to the depth, duration and difficulty of resolution of this crisis is its worldwide and synchronized character. No buyer or investor of last resort in the world community has the resources or capacity to reverse the current downward slide. In the 1990s, the U.S. economy did exactly that.

But that option is no longer available. It was thought that China could be a growth engine to pull up the global economy, but that hope has disappeared as Chinas export markets crumple and layoffs mount. Every state and region in the world is experiencing economic pain.

Some states such as Iceland and Latvia are on life support; others are a heartbeat away. Asia, Europe, and Russia find themselves in economic quicksand. Developing countries dependent on export-led growth are reeling from sudden drops in export demand, throwing into question the wisdom of an export-led developmental model.

In many emerging market countries, prices for primary commodities are falling rapidly.

Structural imbalances in commodity, currency, and capital flows are growing.

Dollar reserves of developing countries are dwindling as investors migrate to safe investment havens in the U.S.

According to official figures that dont include millions of workers in the informal economy, 55 million new unemployed workers joined the army of 230 million in recent months.

No country, ours included, can hope to make a full recovery without global coordination and cooperation. In an integrated global economy, we either swim together or sink together.

New Model

Just as the era of finance-led globalization and rightwing ascendency stretching from 1979-2008 reconfigured the economic patterns of growth and capital accumulation not to mention the role of the state the current crisis and its eventual resolution will do much the same.

What their contours and content will be is unknowable at this time. What we do know is that protracted struggle involving diverse class and social forces and striking for its shifting alliances and coalitions will determine the outcome.

Implied in the above is a challenge to the notion that capitalism is a self-correcting system and that ruptures and breaks are not in its resume.

This notion has its roots in the so-called golden age of U.S. capitalism from 1945-1973, during which economic growth rates, investment levels and living standards steadily increased for broad sections of the American people.

But there are two problems. First, capitalism is a global system and to judge its performance by that of one state or a group of states is methodologically flawed. It has to be judged on a global level and take into account the experience of economies on the semi-periphery and periphery of world development as well as economies in the core.

Second, an era of stable and continuous growth is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future. Indeed, the conditions for U.S. capitalisms golden age no longer exist. They were specific to a historical moment not universal and timeless features of U.S capitalism.

To remind everyone, we emerged from the Great Depression and World War II a creditor nation. The economy was at near-full employment and strength. Because of war rationing, consumer demand was pent up. New industries auto, aviation, communications and others were taking off. Public infrastructure expansion was massive. Raw materials and oil were cheap and easily available. Political and economic competitors from other centers of capitalism were nearly nonexistent. The dollar was supreme and new international arrangements (Bretton Woods) gave stability and coherence to the world capitalist economy and system of states.

None of those conditions exist today; indeed just the opposite is the case. The economy is not poised either in the short or medium term to take off as it did in 1945; long-term stagnation is more likely.

All things being equal, the traditional Marxist method marks the different stages of capitalist development as follows: competitive capitalism, monopoly capitalism and state monopoly capitalism.

I have no quarrel with this. But depending on what questions you want to answer, there may be other ways to mark phases of capitalist development that are more concrete and thus more useful conceptually and politically.

In this report, for example, I mark phases of development in a temporal (time) sense according to the beginning and end of a model of governance and capital accumulation at the government and corporate level. Which probably causes you to say to yourself what is he talking about? Let me try to illustrate my point.

In the course of the Great Depression and World War II, the New Deal model, or New Deal-Keynesian model of political governance and capital accumulation took root, resting on an enlarged role of the state, integrated production units employing thousands of workers on a single site, a measure of class compromise, the welfare state, and macro-economic policies favoring broad prosperity. It remained in place until the late 1970s. At that time it ran up against economic and political contradictions that it couldnt resolve and gave way over time (although not entirely; government obligations and social rights were never completely eliminated even during the Bush years) to a new model in the course of a bitter political struggle.  

This model usually called neoliberalism or the neoliberal model rested on flexible production networks on a global scale, union busting, deregulation, low-wage labor and inflation, the hollowing out of the welfare state, massive income inequality, and the rise to dominance of finance all clothed in a right-wing political skin. Last year the combination of Obamas victory and the financial collapse signaled the long-awaited death knell of this model of governance and accumulation of capital.

No new model has yet taken its place, thus leaving a vacuum. The model that eventually fills the vacuum and one will will be the result of the political contest between two contending political and social bloc/coalitions of a very complicated political struggle.

A new New Deal

Because of the election of Barack Obama, the American people in their great majority have a leg up, but there is still a long way to go. To his credit, the new president is off to a quick start. In less than three months in office he has:

• Issued an order to close Guantanamo prison and end torture a practice that stains our image, violates our Constitution and endangers our troops in the field.
• Signed the Lilly Ledbetter bill that gives much greater scope to workers discrimination claims as well as a bill that would extend health care to millions of children.
• Released funds to clinics that serve womens health care needs in developing countries.
• Expressed support for higher fuel efficiency standards for motor vehicles something the United Autoworkers Union (UAW) also supports.
• Opened up a greatly needed dialogue with the Muslim and Arab world, including overtures to Syria and Iran.
• Dispatched George Mitchell to the Middle East in hopes of mediating the Palestinian-Israeli conflict a conflict that cannot be solved by military means, but only by negotiation between the Israeli government and the representatives of the Palestinian people with the aim of establishing an independent and viable Palestinian state and the right of both states to live peacefully and within secure borders.
• Ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq no later than 2011.
• Rolled out a new framework for diplomacy and conflict resolution, notwithstanding an escalation of troops to Afghanistan, which we oppose.
• Reinstated Davis Bacon, which establishes prevailing (union) wage at public works sites.
• Changed the framework for nuclear nonproliferation and dismantlement in a very positive way.
• Reversed many of the Bush administrations rulings that have been so harmful to the environment.
• Taken some steps to reverse the draconian policies toward Cuba.
• Placed health care at the top of the administrations agenda.
• Supported new Labor Secretary Hilda Solis recent rulings overturning many of the anti-labor directives of the Bush years.

I could go on, but I think it is obvious that the Obama administration represents a qualitative break with rightwing extremism and free market fundamentalism.

Not to see this, not to acknowledge this, not to welcome this, no matter whether you live in or outside U.S. borders, is to act like the ostrich that sticks its head in the sand and misses what is happening on the ground.

Immediate challenge

As important as the initiatives are, the immediate challenge of the White House is to revive and then sustain economic activity. So far, the Obama administration has correctly ruled out some standard answers for addressing this economic crisis.

To begin with, no one in the administration thinks the economy on its own will return to near-full capacity and full employment.

Nor does anyone think the Republican Party prescription to freeze spending is worth a moments consideration.

Nor can you find anyone in the White House who believes that the debt overhang can be reduced except in the long term. In fact, the paradox of debt is that the long-term reduction of indebtedness in all of its forms compels the administration to increase governmental indebtedness in the short and medium term.

Nor can you find a taker in the administration or among progressive Democrats in Congress who subscribes to the notion that fine-tuning with standard monetary and fiscal tools is enough.

Finally, no one in the Oval office is persuaded that punishing homebuyers is an anti-crisis measure. The fact is that homeowners and especially sub-prime borrowers are neither the cause nor share responsibility for the housing market collapse.

To say so is pure malarkey. The housing bubble originates from the top tiers of the economic and political system. Household and homeowner debt is not the result of high living, but rather of stagnant wages going back to the 1970s and a Wal-Mart low-wage economy. We have to be careful not to mistake a consequence of this crisis, exploding household debt, for its causes.

Moreover, as our own blogger Joe Sims has laid bare, this Wall Street-Washington nurtured crisis is steeped in cynical and virulent racism.

Lagging demand

Obama understands that the near and medium term problem is lagging demand for goods and services, or insufficient purchasing power in the hands of working people high income, low income, and no income.

The president's stimulus bill goes in this direction. Despite what Republicans say, it is a good bill that will ease the pain of this crisis, create jobs, and begin to re-inflate the economy.

The president also understands that the economy has to be restructured if it has any possibility of rebounding in a sustained way. The stimulus bill combined elements of stimulus and restructuring, as does his budget which accents tax shifts and public sector-led investment in health care, education and energy efficiency.

His plans to institute a new set of regulations on financial markets and his commitment to green jobs, energy and technology is also meant to fuse stimulus and restructuring objectives together.

Given the depth and scope of this crisis, in my view, the administration will inevitably have to consider some more far-reaching measures.

At the top of my list are:

• Counter-crisis spending of a bigger size and scope to invigorate and sustain a full recovery and meet human needs something the New Deal never accomplished.
• Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) in order to rebalance the power between labor and capital in the economic and political arenas.
• Renegotiation of trade treaties to include core labor and environmental standards as well as opposition to the Colombia, FTAA, S. Korea, and other unfair trade agreements. In a world of mobile capital, international trade union unity and action is imperative against trade agreements that promote (in the name of free trade) a vicious 'race to the bottom' that pits workers in developing countries against workers in developed countries.
• Equality in conditions of life for racial minorities and women.
• Turning education, childcare and health care into no profit zones.
• Amnesty, an easy path to citizenship, and full democratic rights for undocumented immigrant workers.
• Rerouting investment capital from unproductive investment (military, finance and so forth) to productive investment in a green economy and public infrastructure.
• Changing the direction of our nations foreign policy toward cooperation, disarmament and diplomacy.
• A full-scale assault on global warming.
• A serious and sustained commitment to assisting the developing countries, which are locked in poverty and misery.
• Global cooperation on a new level and with a new content. The era of U.S. imperialism dictating to the world is over; in fact, no state has the political, economic, ideological, and moral capital to exercise a dominant influence on world developments. Unlike at the end of World War II when U.S. imperialism gave stability, coherence and rules to a new global capitalist order, no state today has that capacity, resources or legitimacy. The world is multi-polar and that isnt going to change any time soon, especially as new states emerge China, in the first place and new configurations of regional power become new global realities. In fact, the unfolding economic crisis could easily accelerate the closing of the gap between China on the one hand and the U.S. and other traditional centers of capitalist power on the other. In any event, new (more egalitarian) forms of global economic cooperation and governance are necessary in order to surmount this crisis, not to mention other global problems.
• Democratization of all aspects of economic life, beginning with finance, energy and other industries whose future is problematic if left in private hands.

The financial system

As I mentioned earlier, the banks and other financial institutions are insolvent because of their speculative activities. Simple capitalist justice would say that financial managers, stockowners and bondholders should eat their losses. Why should taxpayers pick up the tab for their high-stakes gambling in a financial casino? If American taxpayers didnt share in the financial successes when the bubble was inflating, why should they pay for Wall Streets wrong bets when the bubble is bursting?

Some say that financial institutions are too big to fail. But havent they failed and failed spectacularly already? Some will say yes to this question, but go on to insist that if banks to go belly up, the results will be catastrophic. They will remind us of the panic and credit freeze that followed the meltdown of Lehman Brothers.

The danger of panic, capital flight, and market turmoil cant be dismissed out of hand. Financial markets are deeply and broadly, vertically and horizontally, and intensively and extensively integrated on a global scale, probably more so than any other market in the global economy. As a consequence, they are quick to meltdown steeply and spread, ricochet-like, contagion to other countries, regions, and worldwide.

Despite this, the radical reform of the financial system and I would include here the Federal Reserve bank makes good sense in the short and long term. We need an efficient, flexible, and democratically controlled financial system that assists in the allocation of money to productive uses domestically and internationally. What makes working people angry is that their tax dollars are going to bail out robbers and they get nothing in return except more debt to pay off in the future.

To allow this situation to go on can badly hurt the new administration and its recovery plans.

It appears the president, following the advice of his Treasury secretary and main economic advisor, favors what I call a bank/investment house/hedge fund fix to revive our dysfunctional finance markets. Whether or not it does is still to be seen. In any event, we shouldnt consider the fight for public ownership closed. The pressure of economic events and the performance of financial markets going forward not to mention the public anger could bring this issue to the surface again.  

Which leads me to say that in general things are very fluid. What is the conventional wisdom today could easily be overtaken by events tomorrow.

Era of reforms

Labor and its allies now have a friend, a peoples advocate and the first African American in the White House. And because of this, he should be supported and defended against partisan and racist attack, both open and coded.

In electing Barack Obama, a historic advance in eradicating the color line and in charting a new direction for the country was achieved. But how great an advance will be determined by what happens in the years ahead. If successful, the Obama presidency will make an enormous impact on class and race relations; it will open up the wellsprings of democracy.

Obama is a reformer and we could well be entering an era of reforms, possibly radical reforms. And yet some mockingly say his main mission is to save capitalism.

Even if that is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, what does it tell us? I guess it tells us that he is not going to lead a socialist revolution. But who thought that he was?

To me this is idle chatter that should be dismissed by anyone hoping to push our country toward greener (intended in a double sense) pastures. The main questions that people who desire a better life for themselves and their families are asking is not whether the president wants to save capitalism, but what is he prepared to do to make our society more just, humane, democratic and peaceful? What is he prepared to do to lead the country out of this awful economic mess? What is he ready to do to stretch the boundaries of democracy in our society? To what degree will he listen and respond to the movement from below? And what is his capacity to grow and change under the weight of a world economic crisis and popular pressure?

Roosevelt, too, had no aspirations to change the foundations of capitalist society. But he realized that in order to preserve capitalism it had to be modified and he had to respond to pressure from below.

Setting aside some obvious differences, Obama shares a similar mindset. His model of governance isnt socialist, but it favors the interests of working people and their allies and challenges corporate power, profits and prerogatives.

But like the New Deal, it isnt encoded into the historical process rising like the phoenix from the ashes on a particular day and year. It will be the result of a contested and fluid political process in which a labor-led peoples movement will grow in unity and gain in understanding not to mention take advantage of divisions within ruling circles, resist simplified notions of the Democratic Party and leave its distinct anti-corporate imprint on the reform process.

Socialism may be an objective necessity, but it isnt yet on the agenda given the balance of forces and the disposition of millions. While this is not a socialist moment from an action point of view (what is obsolete to us isnt necessarily obsolete to the American people) it is a ripe moment to enter into a dialogue with millions about socialism and its meaning for our country. Recently, The Nation magazine launched a conversation titled, Imagining Socialism. Whether we agree or disagree with the submissions of a range of people published in this series is beside the point in many ways.

What is important is that the editors of this influential magazine decided to have such a discussion. It wasnt that long ago that socialism didnt have much currency among broad sections of the American people. It was, it was said, a failed model and bankrupt idea. Obviously, its burial was premature.

Why? Not because of anything the left has done or said. Rather the answer lies in the crisis conditions buffeting the world economy. It is not economic determinism to say that force of economic circumstance is powerful at this moment in shaping and shaking up mass thinking.

Communists welcome the rebirth of this dialogue and will participate in it. If we have differences with others, lets express them in a friendly way. In our view, socialism is both an end of one phase of struggle and the start of a new one. There is no universal path nor will each country enter on its high road at the same time or in the same way.

Indeed, the path and timing will vary greatly from country to country and region to region and go through various phases. We should accent variety as much as universality. The cloth of socialist experience will be a beautiful mosaic, not a drab fabric of monotonous gray.

In Latin America, new paths to socialism are developing. We should support and study them, albeit with an eye to what is new and novel. The recent victory in El Salvador continues this stunning process.

At the same time, it is imperative that we avoid dogmatic, mechanical, and ahistorical schemes of socialist development. Life never corresponds exactly with even our best concepts and theory, let alone rigid and lifeless schemes.

Seizing power, irreconcilable struggle, no to compromise, socialism is the only alternative are titillating and intoxicating slogans, but none of them gets us one flea hop closer to a socialist society in this country, given the concrete relationship of forces and level of political consciousness of millions of American people.

Finally, we should make our case for socialism in a way that doesnt counterpose the current tasks and stage of struggle to longer-term tasks and the socialist stage. After all, there is no direct path to socialism. The road is complex and contested, involving advances, retreats, compromises, and fresh starts.

Reassemble forces

The overriding challenge is to reassemble the forces that joined together to elect Barack Obama to support his program of change.

So far I dont think the level of mobilization of the diverse coalition that elected Obama matches what is necessary to win the administrations program of change, not to mention other more far-reaching changes.

If we had any doubt about that, the fight over the stimulus bill was, or should have been, a wakeup call to the millions who voted for President Obama. Nearly everybody was caught off-guard by the ferocity of the Republican opposition; too many of us thought the bill would glide through Congress and land on the presidents desk for signing a day or two after the inauguration.

How wrong we were; a lesson was learned: Intensified class and democratic struggle will mark the ground going forward. There will be no easy victories. No one should think that the president or the Congress alone has the muscle to enact these changes.

The impending struggles over the federal budget and Employee Free Choice Act will offer further proof of this fact. But with this difference: the peoples movement can win, but I would offer this cautionary note.

The alignment of forces is favorable to be sure, but political majorities are consequential only to the degree that they are organized, united, and an active element in the political process.

Now I dont want to give the impression that everyone, including our members, is sitting on their hands. If I did that, I would be wrong.

Actually, class and democratic struggles have picked up in frequency and intensity. And this comes as no surprise. Obamas victory gave people a green light. They embraced seriously the idea that change comes from the ground up.

Isnt that evident in the workers occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors plant an action that captured the imagination of workers across the country?

Isnt it evident in the people fighting foreclosures and evictions in courts and legislatures, and those who have even resisted eviction by refusing to leave their homes?

Isnt it evident in a million and a half signatures supporting EFCA, collected by the AFL-CIO and delivered to Congress last month?

Isnt it evident in the scores of labor organizations endorsing single-payer HR 676?

Isnt it evident in the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference, sponsored by the Blue-Green Alliance of the Steelworkers, Sierra Club and other labor and environmental organizations?

Isnt it evident in the internet mobilization supporting Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary?

Isnt it evident in the aggressive organizing of the NAACP and ACORN against foreclosures and evictions?

Isnt it evident in the thousands of New York City workers who protested the projected cuts in the state budget?

Isnt it evident in the march and civil disobedience in our nations capital to support energetic measures against global warming?

Isnt it evident in the preparations for the upcoming negotiations, involving over 200,000 public sector workers?

As good as these actions are, and we have been a part of them, I would still say that to move the country decisively in a progressive direction requires the further extension and consolidation of the all-peoples movement, with labor playing an increasingly leading role.

One of the most underestimated, even unacknowledged, developments in recent years is labors growing role in the broad political arena.

No other section of the broad movement has so consistently fought rightwing extremism and corporate power; no other section has demonstrated the same organizational capacity; no other section has grown so much ideologically and politically.

This isnt to take away from the experience, understanding and contributions of other sections of this powerful movement, but only to bring into bold relief labors growing role in the peoples struggles.

Not since the 1930s has the organized section of the working class been in the front lines of the progressive movement.

How important is this? Its of extraordinary importance. Politics is about power who has it, who doesnt. To think that this developing movement and the administration it supports can win far-reaching reforms in this period without labor assuming a larger and larger role is poppycock.

Under any circumstances the ride will be bumpy and victory is not assured; the opponents of progress to whom I will now turn are formidable.

The opposition

Rightwing Republicans experienced a crushing defeat, but we shouldnt write them off; in some ways they consolidated their grip on the Republican Party.

While they appear bankrupt as to vision, compelling narrative and program, they can still cause enormous mischief.

So far they have tried to obstruct Obamas legislative agenda. Their refrain is that Obama is an enormous spender. They try to cut him down to size; they attempt to exploit the anger and impatience of millions suffering under the weight of an economic crisis. In a not-so-veiled display of racism, Republicans also claim Obama is not up to the task and relentlessly belittle him.

According to their spin, the economic crisis began on Inauguration Day.

None of this comes as a surprise. But again it is a mistake to think they are a paper tiger.

Sections of the corporate media are also becoming increasingly critical of the administration, spreading doubts and alarm.

Finance capital, too, will attempt to minimize losses to its balance sheet, rob the public till where it can, and in the longer term restructure the economy and the regulatory environment along lines that favor capital accumulation through financial channels.  

No less unhappy with President Obama and the movement that he inspired are other powerful sections of big capital (energy, military, health care, pharmaceutical and others), who will resist going over to a new and robust growth path based on green industry, jobs and technology, on military conversion to peacetime production, on rising living standards and rights for working people, and on racial and gender equality.

Capital, by the way, is seldom fully in anybodys camp; it prefers to maneuver, to strike deals, to parlay its bets; it seldom ties its horse completely to any administration or party. It adjusts and adapts to changing conditions; it exercises its rule indirectly as well as directly at the national, state, and local level; it takes measure of the balance of political forces and the changing requirements of capital accumulation; it may prefer representative government, but it isnt irrevocably locked into any particular political superstructure.

Finally, there are forces of considerable influence in the Obama administration and Democratic Party who, while supporting Obama, will attempt to cut down on the sweep and anti-corporate character of his legislative and political initiatives.

Thus, the struggle of the working class and its core allies is two-sided. On the one hand, it has to battle rightwing extremism and its corporate supporters who are intent on defeating Obama and the peoples coalition that supports him. And, on the other hand, it has to struggle within the multi-class coalition that Obama leads to engrave its distinct that is, class and democratic imprint on the political direction of the country.

Of course, the outcome of this two-sided struggle will be settled on the ground in the course of practical actions.

It is fair to say that the economic struggles are at the center of peoples concerns. This is where the movement that elected President Obama will grow and gain in strength. It is where we must be as well, not by ourselves, but in the middle of the main struggles and main organizations of the working class and people. No one should go it alone. As our own Frank Lumpkin would say, Always bring a crowd. Or if you cant do that, then Join a crowd.

As the jobs crisis grows, unemployed committees organized out of the union hall, community center, churches, and over the internet are necessary.

Committees against home foreclosures and evictions, state and city budget cuts and workers concessions in upcoming negotiations are also needed.

Forming peoples committees to oversee and monitor the stimulus packages public infrastructure projects is the next phase of the stimulus bill struggle. Many projects are shovel ready, but it should not be left to city and state government to decide hiring, wage levels, benefits, and enforcement.

Moreover, new proposals should be submitted to the proper governmental authority. Why not build community health care clinics and weatherize homes in cities and rural communities? It would create jobs, assist people in need, and save energy.

The rapid response team model of the USWA should be considered in other unions as well as the equivalent at the neighborhood or city level.

The green-labor alliance should become a project of labor activists and environmentalists.

Neighborhood groups and unions should join forces to address the crisis situation in which many families will find themselves because of the broken safety net that is a legacy of the Bush and Clinton administrations. We will now see the real inadequacies of the Clinton administrations welfare reform bill.

The Organizing for America committees should address local issues as well as lobbying for national legislation.

It is in the course of these and other struggles that the balance of power will shift and new openings will appear for more far-reaching reforms of an anti-corporate, even socialist nature.

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