As Long As We're Talking About Socialism

By Mark Harris

...Unfortunately, the Obama Administration proceeds as if the crisis is a serious temporary problem that money and some regulatory tinkering to the economic engine can repair. Meanwhile, the Republican right-wing sinks further into ludicrous irrelevancy, their jabs at Obama's "socialist" policies appearing increasingly grotesque and out of touch.

But since they've brought up the topic of socialism, why not talk about the real thing?

The essence of the socialist idea is that the economy can and should be planned, both to make best use of resources and to serve not private profit but the majority's human needs. In other words, socialism represents the extension of democracy into the economy. In its absence we instead witness the current havoc wreaked on our economy by a relatively small number of super-rich, who use their economic and political power to twist the levers of the economy to serve their own narrow interests.

Some liberal economists such as Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman have recently begun to sound the alarm on Obama's recovery plan. Expecting those who caused the crisis to solve the crisis just won't work, says Krugman, even if you reward them beyond their wildest dreams. Krugman favors more extensive measures such as nationalizing the largest banks. Still, his perspective is limited. In the long run he'd like to keep the banks in private hands. Bank nationalization should be just a temporary solution.

Why? Why, indeed, should private ownership of major economic institutions be considered sacrosanct, especially when those who've had their chance to run things have instead run things into the ground?

In a rational society the banking system would exist as an arm of the public good, a regulated system subject to democratic management. It might be even easier to grasp the capitalist folly in health care. We need private health insurance companies as much we need private fire departments that serve only their own paid-up enrollees.

Is this just inflated left-wing rhetoric?

Then ask yourself how democratic it is for the richest 1 percent of Americans to own 43 percent of all stock? Or for this same 1 percent to account for 33 percent of total household wealth, according to the Federal Reserve Bulletin? Is it far-fetched to suggest that class inequality and economic insecurity are permanent hallmarks of life under capitalism?

If the economic crisis is the result of bipartisan policy, it's solution now lies in mass partisan action by an organized public.

All the hopeful chatter from the Wall Street types in the Treasury Department who now command the President's ear will only go so far. A mobilized, grass-roots labor movement fighting for the right to organize the unorganized and for more jobs and better working conditions and economic relief for distressed homeowners would do far more to move the country forward to the better future we all deserve.

Mark Harris has written cover stories and other features for Chicago’s Conscious Choice, Utne magazine, and other publications He is a featured contributor to "The Flexible Writer," fourth edition, by Susanna Rich (Allyn & Bacon/Longman, 2003).

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Why the US still hates Cuba

By Federico Fuentes

“Defeating the U.S. Bay of Pigs invasion [in 1961] while remaining fiercely independent in a region dominated by U.S. corporations and past government interventions has made Cuba an inspiration to millions of Latin Americans. This profound break from U.S. dominance — in its ‘own backyard’ no less — is not so easily forgiven.

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