"Relief for the Greedy, Not for the Needy"

by Norman Markowitz

Mass media is talking about Wall Street "greed. "McCain and Palin, the candidates of the party that Wall Street has supported in virtually every election at least since 1884 are also denouncing "greed." Rightwing economists are 'accusing" the Bush administration of violating the sacred principles of free market policy, going "further" than any Democratic administration, and sending bad signals to the rest of the developed world, which in the past it has led toward a "return" to the holy land of "laissez-faire" capitalism, away from the captivity of government regulation.

What is really happening. Barack Obama's comment that this far-reaching crisis is the final verdict on an economic philosophy which has completely failed is a good starting point to understand the present moment. The U.S. government and European governments are pouring hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars or their Euro equivalents into deregulated banks and brokerage houses and the insurers of those institutions. While this may be necessary to prevent a rapid global depression (since the "free market" is not now nor has it ever been "self-correcting." Only, I would say, a lunatic or a "neo-liberal" ideologue would contend that leaders should let the market take its course, "ride out the storm."

But, the sort of state intervention that we are seeing today is intervention from the top in order to save the top, the sort of intervention that even Herbert Hoover accepted in 1932 when the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was created to loan money to banks and other institutions faced with collapse. It is, as Franklin Roosevelt said about a different issue during WWII, the attempt by the conservative coalition in Congress to oppose a program of progressive taxation to pay for the war, a policy of "relief for the greedy, not for the needy." It is also a continuation of the sort of policies that the Reagan administration was compelled to enact when they "bailed out" the Savings and Loan industry from the disastrous speculative collapse that their deregulation policies brought about.

As Marxists we must say over and over again that capitalism as it develops is about the creation of monopoly for private profit, about the use of the state to subsidize the activities of the capitalist class as completely as possible, subsidizing speculation and bailout out failure. According to mass media, the Bush administration has already pumped in nearly half a trillion into the system (near about one year of military industrial complex budget expenditures) and few are talking about comprehensive "re regulation," action to deal with the unregulated global hedge funds, reviving long buried concepts like "excess profits" as part of a policy that would connect progressive taxation to a general regulatory policy that would punish rather than reward predatory speculation.

As Marxists we see the crisis as structural, long-term, and not resolvable ultimately under capitalism, which was the position that Marxists took in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But that does not mean that we are the left equivalents of the free marketeers, waiting for the collapse and the revolution as they wait for the revival if the "free market" remains "free." We understand that state fiscal policy, taxation and regulation are necessary to protect the interests of the working class. The policies we have advocated in the past are very different from those which the representatives of the capitalist class have advocated and continue to advocate. When they were implemented they were generally successful. In an updated form, they remain vital today, although of course they are not necessarily the only short and medium term solutions.

We support what in the depression was called a "tax on wealth," meaning a serious program of taxing corporate capital and wealthy individuals and families through taxes on high incomes, investments, business transactions, for the purpose of subsidizing the working class in the form of employment and social welfare. We also as in the past, see public ownership and control of sections of the economy, including partial or complete nationalization of banking as a serious option. We reject the "trickle down" theory in all of its expressions and start with the principle that state intervention in the economy is necessary to save the working class and that state policies and subsidies should be centered on the working class and on those sections of capital whose policies expand working class employment and purchasing power.

On that basis we can begin to work with liberals and progressives and influence them to move in that direction. On that basis we can provide masses of frightened and "hungry" working class people with serious nourishment for their understanding, not the junk food that mass media is providing, the choice between "free markets" and capitalist bailouts, which is like a choice between Big Macs and Whoppers.

CPUSA, Nat'l Cmte., March 30th – Report on the Environment

Marc Brodine, a member of the national board of the CPUSA and the chair of the Communist Party in Washington State, delivered a report on the impact of global warming, its causes and consequences.

"Global warming," he said, "is not just an inconvenient truth." Global warming has to be examined within a larger context of capitalism and other environmental problems.

"We can't have a healthy humanity without a healthy natural world," he said.

He tied environmental degradation to capitalism. Increased capitalist exploitation of nature will result in serious crisis, he said. "We can either work with nature or nature will work against us," he argued. "Capitalism is playing with the survival of humanity for short-term profit," he noted.

Climate crisis is not the only severe environmental problem facing us. Depletion of fishing, soil, and fresh water supplies, animal extinctions, the spread of disease-causing pollutants, desertification, and growing air and water pollution are among the most severe.

"Even in the best case scenario, global warming requires immediate and dramatic action," Brodine said.

Brodine insisted that political changes are required, including democratization of the political process, public policy, and economic decision-making. These changes need to happen in order to move in the right direction and to mitigate the destructive policies of the Bush administration and the worst actions off the big transnational polluters.

Immediate action is needed because global warming threatens to transform the earth's climate systems in a very short period of time and create environments that are hostile to human survival never before experienced by developed humanity.

The earth is getting hotter, but global climate change has other features: in some places more rain and more flooding; in others less rain and more drought; in some places more snowfall next to glacier melt; flooding; and so on.

It is caused by the accumulation of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere trapping the sun's heat, warming the air and the land.

This is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

"It is caused by human activity and can be slowed by human activity," Brodine said.

Social consequences include food and fresh water shortages leading to political competition for these dwindling resources.

"We can't profit our way to a solution," Brodine said. "But neither can we wait for socialism. Economic development that doesn't destroy the environment is required."

Some basic solutions are readily available but need political struggle to implement: green construction, production of hybrid vehicles, mass transit, alternative energy products like solar and wind, reduce mechanized industrial food production and increase labor-intense small agriculture, and major conservation efforts.

Brodine addressed current environmental action. "The biggest problem is not caused by individuals but by a system that privileges profit over people and nature," he said.

Capitalists are to blame for the crisis, but tend to try to shift the blame to ordinary folk, workers and the poor. They seek solutions that put the burden on us rather than on the policies and actions they take that cause the problem.

Some solutions that are being put forward by big industry are either partial solutions or untested or are very problematic steps. Biofuels, for example, drive up the cost of food or cause food shortages. "It means solving an energy problem by creating a food problem," Brodine stated.

Cap and trade schemes aren't enough.

Promotion of nuclear and "clean coal" are untested and present their own significant problems.

Brodine urged the formation of multi-issue broad-based coalitions that link environmental issues to public policy and other political struggles.

The working class, nationally and internationally, is the only force that can win and implement the changes needed.

Globally, people who contribute least global warming are paying the highest price as a result of climate change.

International reforms should include transforming international financial institutions and ending exploitative debt policies imposed on developing countries; transfer of green technology to developing countries; and implementing binding global agreements that enforce reduction of greenhouse emissions and fossil fuel usage.

Brodine pointed out that the Communist Party has a special role in winning the international communist movement to this agenda.

He urged that the environmental question be injected into all of the struggles people are involved in. The labor, youth, peace and equality movements have a significant contribution to make on the issue.

Individual actions are necessary but not sufficient to bring the change needed, he said.

Brodine proposed the expansion of the party's education on the question and the reconstitution of the party's environmental commission.