Consider:

Must read: If MLK were alive today, his words would threaten most of those who now sing his praises

A radical man deeply hated and held in contempt is recast as if he was a universally loved moderate.

"The major threat of Martin Luther King Jr to us is a spiritual and moral one. King’s courageous and compassionate example shatters the dominant neoliberal soul-craft of smartness, money and bombs.

His grand fight against poverty, militarism, materialism and racism undercuts the superficial lip service and pretentious posturing of so-called progressives as well as the candid contempt and proud prejudices of genuine reactionaries. King was neither perfect nor pure in his prophetic witness – but he was the real thing in sharp contrast to the market-driven semblances and simulacra of our day.

"In this brief celebratory moment of King’s life and death we should be highly suspicious of those who sing his praises yet refuse to pay the cost of embodying King’s strong indictment of the US empire, capitalism and racism in their own lives."

Martin Luther King Jr was a radical. We must not sterilize his legacy by Cornel West (Guardian).

Saturday Catchup 2018-03-03

After a long absence, Saturday Catchup is back!

Social democracy is all the rage in the U.S. (and neoliberalism under assault) since Sen. Bernie Sanders' late run for president. In this video, radical journalist, author and film-maker Paul Mason; Dr. Faiza Shaheen, economist, writer, activist and director of the Centre for Labour and Social Studies; writer Anthony Barnett, co-founder of openDemocracy; economist Dr. Johnna Montgomerie; and Laurie Macfarlane, senior economist at the New Economics Foundation discuss whether radical social democracy offers a way out of the crisis of neoliberalism, and what this means for economic policy over the next decade. The debate is part of a new series of essays by Paul Mason exploring what radical social democracy means during the next decade:
Extra credit:
The word has become a rhetorical weapon, but neoliberal properly names the reigning ideology of our era -- one that venerates the logic of the market and strips away the things that make us human: Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world by Stephen Metcalf (Guardian).
The mission of radical social democracy must be to rekindle hope in a simple idea -- that life in your community will get better: Neoliberalism has destroyed social mobility. Together we must rebuild it by Paul Mason.
I’m not a neoliberal. Maybe you aren’t either. by Laurie Macfarlane (Medium).

Eljeer Hawkins is a community, labor and antiwar organizer, and for 23 years has been a member of Socialist Alternative, the US affiliate of the Committee for a Workers' International, a global Trotskyist

organization fighting economic exploitation and oppression based on race, gender, sexual orientation and national identity. Hawkins writes regularly on race, the criminal legal system, Black Lives Matter and the historic Black freedom movement, and lectures widely, including at Harvard, Hunter College, Oberlin and University of Toronto. In this interview, Hawkins discusses how he came to believe in the socialist cause and how a socialist society can be realized in the US: Inspiring a Socialist Alternative: An Interview With Eljeer Hawkins with Bryant William Sculos (Truthout).

A palate cleanser from the New York Times: Reporter Carla Correa travels to the lair of "The Bachelor" so you won't have to. "There are two ways to watch 'The Bachelor.' The first is, in 'Bachelor' parlance, to be swept away on the 'journey' and suspend any disbelief that suitors are 'here for the right reasons.' For most viewers, though, the only way to sit through a two-hour episode is to accept the polyamorous spectacle as one big social experiment. 24 Hours in Bachelor Nation by Carla Correa (New York Times)

Aestheticist Adolph Hitler doesn't care for gentrification:

---

"The right to be heard is crucially important. But I want to think more generally about how we have learned to look at women who exercise power, or try to; I want to explore the cultural underpinnings of misogyny in politics or the workplace, and its forms (what kind of misogyny, aimed at what or whom, using what words or images, and with what effects); and I want to think harder about how and why the conventional definitions of ‘power’ (or for that matter of ‘knowledge’, ‘expertise’ and ‘authority’) that we carry round in our heads have tended to exclude women." -- Mary Beard, Women in Power.
 
For the text of this talk, go to Women in Power by Mary Beard (London Review of Books).

The resemblance of zoos to prisons aside: At the Stock Island Detention Center, a jail in Florida, prisoners care for a zoo of their own. Curator Jeanne Selander  runs the prison zoo with the inmates, who benefit not only from the responsibility, but also from experiencing reciprocal love and care --often for the first time. Operations like this one shouldn't be news, they should be standard.

Sign up for a weekly email from 60 Second Docs, for videos that are uplifting without recourse to freak accidents or weird animal friendships.

A song-story from country singer-songwriter Paul Overstreet

Finally, in a spirit of resistance not nostalgia, here is the last installment of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, never broadcast at the time. The brothers, Tommy and Dick Smothers, waged a war against network censorship for a couple of years in the late 1960s, a fight they lost when they were fired for inviting comedian David Steinberg back on the show, despite complaints from some viewers over a previous booking. Nancy Wilson and Dan Rowan were also guests.

On Us

The problems we face as a nation are much bigger than, as most Democrats see it, "this horrible Republican President and Congress."

Distorted spending decisions, selective application of free market economic policies and militarized foreign policy pursued by both parties over the last 30+ years are what fueled the anger that permitted "this horrible Republican President" to ascend, but it is the permanent conservative majority in Congress, made up of both Republicans and Democrats, that has sent this country into its long, slow decline.

The one positive of the Donald Trump presidency is that it has ripped the happy face off the deadly fiction of American exceptionalism.

Electing in 2020 another personable and integrous but unimpassioned abettor of the best and the brightest, such as Barack Obama, won't be nearly up to the job of bringing about the fundamental changes needed (we mustn't allow ourselves to forget that the number of poor and the number of wars increased under the last president). It will require a radicalized congress and an aggressively pro-change executive to fix what ails us, to get us back on the difficult path toward economic and social justice. We must either accomplish a radical course correction or resign ourselves to further decline.

“Well, Doctor," Ben Franklin was asked outside Independence Hall on the final day of deliberations, "what have we got -- a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic," he replied, "if you can keep it.”

It's on us to keep it.

Extra credit:
>>Thirty years ago, the old deal that held US society together started to unwind, with social cohesion sacrificed to greed. Was it an inevitable process – or was it engineered by self-interested elites?: Decline and fall: how American society unravelled by George Packer (The Guardian)
>>Domestic and global trends suggest that in 2025, now just 8 years from now, the American century could all be over except for the shouting: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire by Alfred W. McCoy (Tom Dispatch)
>>Austerity is riskier than stimulus. The Big Question on the Economy: Is This Really Full Employment? by J.W. Mason (Roosevelt Institute)
>>What went wrong and what comes next?: Capitalism in Crisis by Mark Blyth (Foreign Affairs) >>Putting community needs at the center of society rather than those of the individual: An Economic Alternative to Exploitative Free Market Capitalism by Thomas Hedges (Truthdig)

quote unquote: Teddy Roosevelt

As conservatives and neoliberals continue their subversion of progressive taxation, it's worth remembering words on the subject

by the well-known socialist, Teddy Roosevelt:

"We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.... The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and … a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate." -- Theodore Roosevelt, the "New Nationalism" speech, delivered 1910/08/31 at the dedication of the John Brown Memorial Park in Osawatomie, Kansas.

Are the Democratic Socialists of America For Real?

In the last year, the biggest American socialist organization has experienced a surge in membership. "As it builds on this momentum, there are several big questions facing DSA. What is its relationship to the Democratic Party? Should central leadership serve as administrators or ideological tone-setters? And how can its membership -- which skews white and male -- come to represent an increasingly diverse country?" In other words, can it can transform enthusiasm into real and effective political power?

Are the Democratic Socialists of America For Real? by Kate Aronoff (The New Republic, 2017-08-07)

That Time Allen Ginsberg Wrote a Socialist Poem -- About Bernie Sanders

"Last June, while digging through 50 boxes of archival material about Bernie Sanders’s four terms as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, a reporter for the British newspaper the Guardian found a poem

(Illustration: Anya Ulinich/Forward)

by Allen Ginsberg. Written by hand on a 1986 visit to the city, 'Burlington Snow' didn’t name Sanders, but he was clearly the populist muse that inspired it.

"Ginsberg wrote, 'Socialist snow on the streets / Socialist talk in the Maverick Bookstore / Socialist kids sucking socialist lollipops.' Then he turned outward, questioning with almost Elizabethan wit: '--aren’t the birds frozen socialists? / Aren’t the snowclouds blocking the airfield Social Democratic appearances?'

"After Ginsberg shares the city’s governing idea, the poem itself is shared: 'Isn’t this poem socialist? It doesn’t belong to me anymore.'”

That Time Allen Ginsberg Wrote a Socialist Poem -- About Bernie Sanders by Allan M. Jalon (Forward)

The leaders of both parties are underestimating Bernie Sanders

Now that the worried Clinton campaign has turned its guns on a surging Bernie Sanders, Clinton's supporters have begun to express concern that the Vermont senator will be especially vulnerable to attacks from the right (so vulnerable, in fact, that the Clinton campaign itself is using them).

What the Republicans will do, of course, is try to slime the Democratic nominee, whoever he or she is.

Barack Obama, who gave his enemies nothing to work with beyond the color of his skin, was vilified as an alien, Muslim, Socialist Pawn of Wall Street, and tyrant -- a weak one at that, but they rarely bothered to question his ethics, because no one would believe that he was personally corrupt. In Sanders' case, too, they have little to work with, now that it has become apparent that "socialism" is no longer frightening the horses, although the GOP will probably attempt to have the voters take notice of his age, as one Clinton surrogate is already trying to do, and his ethnicity.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is the best Democratic opponent you could wish for, if your only hope of winning is a smear campaign.

Reading list:
Democrats can't hold the White House forever. Losing in 2016 might make more strategic sense than losing in 2020. Fine, give the GOP four years: The liberal case for either Bernie Sanders, or electing a Republican president by Walker Bragman (Salon).

What kind of experience does Bernie Sanders have? Let's take a look. Bernie Gets It Done: Sanders' Record of Pushing Through Major Reforms Will Surprise You by Zaid Jilani (AlterNet).

Want specifics?: Bernie Sanders Releases Details on Health Plan That Would Raise Taxes but, He Argues, Save on Costs by Yamiche Alcindor and Alan Rappeport (The New York Times).

The Clinton camp is lambasting Bernie Sanders' health care plan, but its critique is blatantly dishonest. Clinton's Health Care Attack Makes No Sense by Pat Garofalo (U.S.News).

Extra credit:
Rant o' the Day: How the Democratic Establishment Manipulates Us by JosephK74 (Daily Kos).

Political "best practices"

"A combination of the best features of capitalism and socialism has seemed to work well for the United States." -- online comment

That was true through the early 1970s; at least, up until then, we were headed in the right direction. But Richard Nixon was the last president to accept the goals and parameters of the New Deal.

Since then, the country has been in decline, with political power ceded to the corporate sector; infrastructure in decay; social services atrophying, including, appallingly, those provided by public institutions like libraries and schools; income stagnation for poor and working people and an ever smaller middle class; the creation of a prison-industrial matrix and the militarization of law enforcement; a kleptocratic transfer of public wealth into private hands (socialism -- but for the rich); a directionless militarization of foreign policy; the emplacement of a rigid, secret security state.

If there are models for societies that combine the best features of capitalism and socialism they reside in the social democratic areas of Western Europe and Scandinavia, not here.

Further reading:
Wealth and Power: The Bias of the System -- summary by Russ Long (Del Mar College) -- "Problems of U.S. Society result from the distribution of power and the form of the economy."
The Class-Domination Theory of Power by G. William Domhoff, extracted by the author from his book, first published in 1967 and now available in its 7th edition, is presented as a summary of some of the main ideas in that book (WhoRulesAmerica.net).
What is the Prison Industrial Complex? by Rachel Herzing. "'Prison Industrial Complex' is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to what are, in actuality, economic, social, and political 'problems.'" (Political Research Associates).

Extra credit: Double Standard: Social Policy in Europe and the United States by James W. Russell analyzes how and why social policy and welfare states evolved differently in Western Europe and the United States. Exploring common social problems -- from poverty to family support to ethnic and racial conflict -- the book shows the disparate consequences of these different approaches. Frances Fox Piven calls it "a sober, well-informed, and temperate overview of the divergent development of social welfare programs" in the two regions.

A rose by any other name...

Sen. Bernie Sanders' taking control of the word socialist -- saying: if affordable, universal health care is socialist, then I'm a socialist; if taxing the rich is socialist, then I'm a socialist; if tuition-free education is socialist, then I'm a socialist; if campaign finance reform is socialist, then I'm a socialist; if same-sex marriage is socialist, then I'm a socialist -- is working out just fine. He's making clear the distinction between his policies and programs and those of the neoliberals that have controlled the Democratic Party since the Reagan-Clinton era. "Socialism," as Sen. Sanders uses it, is the new New Deal. It's a rebranding in the political marketplace of tried and true ideas that have been neglected for a generation by the political class.

Draft of an Eight-Point Platform for Making a Major Breakthrough on 'Left Unity'

By Carl Davidson, Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Pat Fry

Introduction: The following eight-point proposal is designed to initiate both a discussion and a process. The points can be further refined, and subtracted from or added to. Given the scope of the challenges ahead of us, there is a certain degree of urgency, but it is also wise to take to time to start off on a sound footing, uniting all who can be united. The main things it wants to bring into being at all levels—local, regional, national or in sectors—are common projects.

Some of these already exist, such as the Left Labor Project in New York City, a good example of what we are advocating here. It brought together organizers from CCDS, CPUSA, DSA, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and other independent left trade unionists and activists. Over a few years work, it was able to build a far wider alliance bringing together the city’s labor organizations and allied social movements to bring out tens of thousands on May Day.

We know that many of us are already involved in a wide variety of projects. But is there any compelling reason we have to do this separately, behaving like a wheelbarrow full of frogs trying to win a common goal? A good case in point is Chuy Garcia’s mayoral campaign in Chicago. Wouldn’t this campaign be better served if we worked together in a planned way to draw in and skillfully deploy even more forces? Or take the labor-community alliance projects building solidarity for labor strikes or the campaign for an increase in the minimum wage? We can all make a long list here, but the core idea should be apparent, at least for starters, and we invite your responses and queries.

1. We need something new The left is not likely to find critical mass through mergers of existing groups, although any such events would be positive. But a new formation to which all would be equally cooperative in a larger project -- call it a Left Front or Left Alliance -- would have a greater impact. Groups participating in it could retain whatever degree of autonomy they desire, such as keeping their own newspapers, national committees, local clubs meeting separately, and so on. Every group involved can exercise its own independence and initiative, to the degree it finds necessary. But all would be striving in common to help the overall project succeed. While the US situation is not strictly comparable, the Front de Gauche in France, Die Linke in Germany, PODEMOS in Spain and Syriza in Greece serve as examples.

2. We need a ‘project based’ common front. At the grassroots level, it would be comprised of joint projects—electoral, union organizing, campaigns against the far right, for a living wage or reducing student debt, for opposing war, racism, sexism and police violence, and many others. The existing left groups in a factory, a neighborhood, a city or a campus, would be encouraged to advance the joint projects.

3. We need a ‘critical mass’ at the core that is both young, working class and diverse. While people from all demographics are welcome, the initial core has to be largely drawn from the Millennials, those born after 1980 or so. And the core also has to be a rainbow of nationalities with gender equity, and well-connected to union and working class insurgencies. If the initial core at the beginning is too ‘white’ or too ‘1968ers’, it will not be a pole with the best attractive power for a growing new generation of socialist and radical minded activists.

4. We need a common aspiration for socialism. That’s what makes us a ‘Left Front or Left Alliance’ rather than a broader popular front or people’s coalition. We are strongly supportive of these wider coalitions and building the left is not done in isolation from them. But we also see the wisdom in the concept: the stronger the core, the broader the front. Moreover we do not require a unified definition on what socialism is; only that a larger socialist pole makes for an even wider, deeper and more sustainable common front of struggle.

5. We do not need full agreement on strategy. A few key concepts—the centrality of fighting white supremacy, the intersection of race, class and gender, the alliance and merger of the overall workers movement and the movements of the communities of the oppressed—will do. We can also agree on cross-class alliances focused on critical targets: new wars, the far right and the austerity schemes imposed by finance capital. Additional elements, perspectives, nuances and ‘shades of difference’ can be debated, discussed and adjusted in the context of ongoing struggle.

6. We need a flexible but limited approach to elections. We can affirm that supporting our own or other candidates is a matter of tactics to be debated case-by-case, and not a matter of ‘principle’ that would exclude ever voting for any particular Democrat, Green or Socialist. We see the importance for social movements to have an electoral arm that presses and fights for their agenda within government bodies.

7. We need to be well embedded in grassroots organizations. Especially important are the organizations of the working class and in the communities of the oppressed—unions and worker centers, civil rights and women’s rights, youth and students, peace and justice, churches and communities of faith, cooperatives and other groups tied to the solidarity economy, and other community-based NGOs and nonprofits.

8. We need to be internationalists. But we do not have to require support for any particular countries or bloc of countries and national liberation movements, past or present. But we do oppose the wars of aggression, occupations and other illicit interventions of ‘our own’ ruling class, along with the hegemonism, ‘superpower mentality’ and Great Power chauvinism it promotes. That is the best way we can promote world peace and practice solidarity and assistance to forces beyond our borders.

Posted originally on February 3, 2015.

[Carl Davidson and Pat Fry are national co-chairs of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Bill Fletcher Jr. is a member of several socialist organizations and author of ‘They're Bankrupting Us! And 20 Other Myths about Unions.’ Comments can be sent to carld717@gmail.com ]

Sen. Sanders and the Democrats

Centrist Democrats would like nothing better than to have independent socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries.

But the effect of drafting the Vermont senator into the Democratic competition would be to neutralize him.

If he runs, Sen. Sanders will be forced to pledge allegiance to the party's eventual nominee and we will enter the fall of 2016 with the strongest voice on the left either silenced or looking like a hypocrite by shilling for Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo or some other servant of the corporate elite.

The way to maximize Sander's influence is to give all-out support for a run as an independent so that in the fall of 2016 in the debates and in the media he can continue to educate the public on alternatives to the status quo and to reveal that the emperor's surrogates have no clothes.

Bernie Sanders will never be the Democratic nominee.

But he can play an important and honorable role in building support for progressive policies in state and local elections, in congressional contests, and for a serious try for the White House from the left in the future by someone else. All a Democratic primary challenge by Sen. Sanders will achieve this round is to help the presidential Democrats maintain the illusion that they are an instrument of change.

Give 'em hell, Harry!

The Republicans … will try to make people believe that everything the Government has done for the country is socialism. They will go to the people and say: "Did you see that social security check

you received the other day—you thought that was good for you, didn't you? That's just too bad! That's nothing in the world but socialism. Did you see that new flood control dam the Government is building over there for the protection of your property? Sorry—that's awful socialism! That new hospital that they are building is socialism. Price supports, more socialism for the farmers! Minimum wage laws? Socialism for labor! Socialism is bad for you, my friend. Everybody knows that." And here you are, with your new car, and your home, and better opportunities for the kids, and a television set -- you are just surrounded by socialism! Now the Republicans say, "That's a terrible thing, my friend, and the only way out of this sinkhole of socialism is to vote for the Republican ticket." -- Harry S Truman, 1948

Danish Exceptionalism

We spend our lives swimming in a sea of propaganda about American exceptionalism, bullshit that gets in the way of our demanding benefits of citizenship that are rightfully ours.

quote unquote: Eugene V. Debs

Where is Horatio Alger when you need him?

The Economist ranks US 16th best place to be be born: above us on the list are nothing but socialist hellholes with confiscatory taxes.

Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Independent in Politics

Bill Moyers interviews Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who’s been an independent in Congress for 21 years — longer than anyone in American history. Sanders talks about jobs, the state of our economy, health care, and the unprecedented impact of big money on the major political parties.

“What you are looking at is a nation with a grotesquely unequal distribution of wealth and income, tremendous economic power on Wall Street, and now added to all of that is big money interests, the billionaires and corporations now buying elections,” Sanders tells Bill. “I fear very much that if we don’t turn this around, we’re heading toward an oligarchic form of society.”
From Moyers and Company 2012-09-10

Alternatives: Beyond Capitalism

The Alternative Economy Cultures (alt.econ.cult) program last spring brought together leading international and Finnish thinkers, cultural practitioners and activists to present alternative economic visions. The aim was to tackle not just financial, but social, cultural, institutional, human, material, emotional and intellectual forms of capital; not just individual gain, boosting, balancing or bail-outs, but common good, peer-to-peer, shared wealth and appropriate reward-for-effort.

"Parecon" stands for Participatory Economics, a vision for an alternative way to operate an economy, neither capitalism nor twentieth century socialism. Here, activist and economist Michael Albert introduces Parecon to the gathering in Finland.

Creeping Socialism

[This is from an email making the rounds. Anonymous scores again. - J.]

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by my Municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the Federal Communications Commission-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and Federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door, I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the Congressionally-regulated US Postal Service and drop my kids off at our local government-owned and Department of Education mandated public school.

After work, I drive my NHTSA-approved car back home on the DOT-maintained roads, to the house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshall's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the Internet, which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, and post on FreeRepublic and Fox News Forums about how our GOVERNMENT is a horrible SOCIALIST TYRANT who can't do anything right and needs to stay out of my life.

Economy: In the middle of the worst economic decline in over 80 years, we need fiscal stimuli, not fiscal austerity

In the political current climate, mainstream Keynesianism, as espoused by economists such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, has come to seem almost left-wing. Is the Keynesian critique of austerity correct, and is a return to Keynesianism what we need?

Keynesianism only seems left-wing because the center has caved rightward. First, even a Nobel Prize does not protect one from ostracism by the mainstream of the economics profession today if you persist in dispensing Keynesian wisdom and challenge the assumption that unfettered markets always know best. As hard as this may be for non-economists to believe, Stiglitiz and Krugman are now persona non grata within the economics profession. Second, in the 1950s and 60s even Tories and Republicans had to begrudgingly accede to the wisdom of financial regulation and Keynesian fiscal and monetary policies. But that day is long past. Now even Labour and Democrats buy into the myth that markets, including financial markets, can be relied on to self-regulate, and governments must engage in fiscal austerity when recessions create temporary budget deficits. When the center caves right, center left appears to be left.

There are two important lessons to be drawn. (1) While socialists should not have to lead the charge for Keynesian policies to ameliorate capitalist crises, unfortunately that is the position we find ourselves in. Right now we must not only do our own work – explaining why all versions of capitalism are far less desirable than participatory, democratic socialism – but do the work of Keynesian reformers as well who have lost influence in all major political parties. (2) There is no point in trying to explain to Tories and Republicans why their policies are flawed. They have chosen to embrace ill-advised, discredited, nineteenth century economic policies because these policies serve their most important purpose – further pressing the class war they have been winning for more than three decades. Their first instinct when a crisis hits is not to search for policies that would actually solve the crisis. Instead they search their “wish list” for ways to take advantage of the crisis to press for changes that serve their class interests – further cuts in social spending, further concessions regarding wages, benefits, and working conditions, more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, and of course more corporate welfare like the bailouts doled out to the financial industry. The fact that every one of these policies will only deepen the current crisis is of no concern to them.

When capitalism proves completely incapable of putting our productive potential to good use what is called for is replacing capitalism with socialism. A return to Keynesianism would be to settle for only part of a loaf, and leave us vulnerable to another counter revolutionary roll back of hard won gains, like the one we have been living through. However, unless I am pleasantly surprised, and leftists can win the loyalty and support of a majority of the population for replacing capitalism with socialism much sooner than I foresee, there is no road to participatory, democratic socialism that does not run through many successful reform campaigns to bring Keynesian policies back in vogue.

The rest of the story: Digging In A Hole -- Robin Hahnel, economics professor at American University and author of Economic Justice and Democracy: From Competition to Cooperation and, with Michael Albert, of The Political Economy of Participatory Economics, discusses the continuing mismanagement of the economic crisis in the UK, Ireland and the US with Alex Doherty of New Left Project.

Must read: Freezing Out Hope by Paul Krugman -- After the pummeling in the midterm elections, has President Obama suffered a moral collapse?