#SocialDemocracy – RUPTURE.CAPITAL

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As President Joe Biden signed into law an agreement Saturday that would shield wealthy tax cheats from stronger IRS enforcement while at the same time enacting cuts to key anti-poverty programs, Senator Bernie Sanders and other progressive allies were busy denouncing the immoral, low-wage economic system in the United States in which just a small handful of mega-billionaires have accumulated more wealth than tens of millions of hard-working but low-paid workers and their families.

At a “Rally to Raise the Wage” in Charleston, South Carolina on Saturday, the independent politician and two-time presidential candidate railed against the inequality that remains so pervasive in the country and the political forces that seek to divide the working class.

“The reason we are here today is not complicated,” Sanders said. “In the richest country in the world, we demand an economy that works for all, not just the few.”

“In every age, moral people have had to rise up and decide to make the moral case that things have to change and injustice has to move.” —Bishop William J. Barber II

“It is not moral that three people on top own more wealth than the bottom half of American society, 165 million Americans,” Sanders declared during his speech. “That’s not moral. That’s not right. That’s not what should exist in a democratic society.”

u201c”It is not moral that 3 people on top own more wealth than the bottom half of American society, 165 million Americans. nnThat’s not moral.nnThat’s not right.nnThat’s not what should exist in a democratic society.”nn@BernieSanders in South Carolina rallying to #RaiseTheWageu201d

— Union of Southern Service Workers (@Union of Southern Service Workers)
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Sanders was joined on the tour through the south—which also included stops in Durham, North Carolina and Nashville, Tennessee—by Bishop William J. Barber II, founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School, who said Sanders had asked him to attend specifically to discuss the moral case for combating poverty and raising wages.

“When Jesus started his ministry,” said Barber, surrounded by members of the audience he had called up to gather around him on stage, “he said I’m coming to preach good news to the poor[…] meaning those who had been made poor by the economic exploitation of Rome.”

Barber told the crowd that “there are over 2,000 scriptures in the Bible” detailing the worth of the poor and the value of laborers.

“So what our movement is about, is precisely the opposite of what the big-money interests want. They want to divide us up and we are determined to bring working people together.” —Sen. Bernie Sanders

“The Bible does not talk about taking a women’s right from her body,” Barber said. “The Bible does not talk about hating people because of their sexuality. The Bible does not talk about prayer in the school. The Bible does not talk about putting up the Ten Commandments. But more than 2,000 times—more than any other subject other than self-worship idolatry—the Bible says the way to please God is how we treat the least of these and those in the margins.”

“In every age,” he continued, “moral people have had to rise up and decide to make the moral case that things have to change and injustice has to move.”

In contrast to a living wage of $17 an hour at the heart of the rally, Bishop Barber said the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 should be seen as a “death wage,” given the rate at which poverty kills in the country.

u201c”Poverty is the 4th leading cause of death in America. It’s higher than homicide. $7.25 is a poverty wage which means $7.25 is a death wage. nnWe’ve got to fight against people dying.” @RevDrBarber with @BernieSanders in South Carolina rallying to #RaiseTheWageu201d

— Union of Southern Service Workers (@Union of Southern Service Workers)
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Barber told the diverse South Carolina audience in attendance—including those standing beside him who were older people and younger people of different racial, religious, and sexual identities—that their unity and solidarity in the face of economic inequality and social injustice remains their greatest asset.

The people in power, said Barber, “They are afraid of this room.”

Invoking Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Barber explained how in 1965, Dr. King stood on the steps of the Alabama state house “and said that the greatest fear of the southern aristocracy and the oligarchy was for the masses of poor Negroes and poor white folk to get together and form a powerful new voting bloc that would shift the economic architecture of the nation.”

“If they are cynical enough to be together, we oughta be smart enough to come together around the moral agenda.”

“And I want to suggest,” he continued, “if that’s what they’re afraid of: Let’s build it! Let’s built it and maybe in the process some of them will even be redeemed and stop hurting people. Who gets up in the morning and all you can think about is how you can take somebody’s healthcare? Who gets up in the morning and asks, ‘How I can use my power to hurt somebody?'”

He made a final point about those in power and how the forces at work denying freedom and dignity to certain people in society are also the same forces attacking democracy and economic equality.

“The same people who are attacking gay people, are attacking our voting rights,” Barber said. “The same people who are attacking trans people, are attacking our healthcare. The same people trying to take away a woman’s right are also against living wages. If they are cynical enough to be together, we oughta be smart enough to come together around the moral agenda.”

Barber said the southern states are “key” and must not be ignored by federal politicians, arguing that the Carolinas, Tennessee, and others are not necessarily red states, but just states that have been “intentionally divided” and where workers have been disempowered.

“We need a living wage and we need it now,” Barber declared. “It’s time for change and justice has got to move. You’ve got to make them hear you. You’ve got to make them see you. You’ve got to make them feel your power.”

He added: “This is a moral fight. We can’t allow corporate greed to sell out and tear the souls and substance of this nation apart. This is a nation-saving fight.”

Prior to Barber, local hairdresser Lydia Stewart spoke about working conditions at the salon business that employs her, Great Clips, and the organizing effort she and her colleagues have undertaken with the Union of Southern Service Workers to increase workplace safety and win higher wages.

u201c”At my job we’re organizing [with @RaiseUpTheSouth] because change has to be brought. My store is mostly Black women and they have no respect for us, they treat us like a pair of hands.” @GreatClips worker Lydia Steward with @BernieSanders and @RevDrBarber #RaiseTheWageu201d

— Union of Southern Service Workers (@Union of Southern Service Workers)
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During the rally, State Rep. Wendell Gilliard (D-111) also spoke and talked about the need for a true living wage in the state that should be no less than $17 an hour.

“We have come a long way,” Gilliard said during his remarks, “fighting for the rights of ‘We the People.’ This is not about party, it’s always been about the people. Charlestonians work hard and deserve more for what they do to keep this region running. They deserve more than a minimum wage—they deserve a living wage!”

“With rising costs of living,” Gilliard continued, “more and more of our neighbors, our friends, and our family members will slip into poverty unless they see an increase… $17 an hour is a living wage. It will help poverty from swallowing up more victims and help increase the standard of living here in Charleston.”

u201cLIVE from CHARLESTON: No one in America should be forced to work for starvation wages. Join us as we rally in South Carolina for an increase in the minimum wage. https://t.co/5aQjgGGlnwu201d

— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders)
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In closing his speech for the rally, Gilliard said the event with Sanders and Barber could not simply be a moment in time, but must signify the existence of a movement ready to fight for the long haul.

“It cannot be a moment in time,” the state lawmaker said. “It has to be a movement that will live until we get it done.”

In his headliner address, Sanders echoed what Bishop Barber argued, that the ruling elite and monied oligarchy “wins” when they divide up the working class and those living in poverty.

“In every way that you can think,” said Sanders, “there are really smart people—out there polling today—saying: How do I get you to vote against your own self-interest? How do I get black and white and Latino and Native American, Asian American, gay, and straight against each other so that the big-money interest laugh all the way to the bank.”

“So what our movement is about, is precisely the opposite of what the big-money interests want,” he continued. “They want to divide us up and we are determined to bring working people together—black and white and Latino—all of us together around an agenda that works for us not just the billionaire class!”

King Charles III is a committed environmentalist — so much so that he's reportedly sacrificing his servants' body temps for his cause. Brave!

Brrrrrrr

If you haven’t heard, Great Britain’s newly-anointed monarch, King Charles III, is a committed environmentalist — so committed, in fact, that he’s sacrificing his servants’ body temperatures for his cause. Brave!

As sources recently told The Times, King Charles has kicked off his reign with an effort to conserve energy by turning the heat on the palace pool way down. As a result, the servants who once enjoyed the water feature — a notable-sounding perk of working at the palace — have been left shivering.

“A few people using the pool have noticed that the temperature of the water has dropped, and it is quite a bit cooler than it used to be,” an anonymous palace source told the Times. “They have been told the King has had the heating turned down.”

A sacrifice indeed, but rest assured, it’s one that Charles is willing to make. After all, someone’s gotta save the planet — and skimping on the heated pool ought to offset those private jet emissions, right?

Climate King

According to the Times report, Charles is also seeking a private chef who, one day a week, can cook vegan meals for the Sustainability King.

“Charles follows a vegan diet one day a week where he avoids eating meat, fish, and dairy products for environmental reasons,” a source told the Times. “And he has also been keen to reduce the royal household’s energy use, which has been a priority of his in recent years.”

To be fair, Buckingham Palace is absolutely massive, so watching its energy use is a good idea. And there’s a solid environmental argument for going without animal products from time to time.

That said, though, as The Washington Post pointed out last year, Charles’ relationship to the climate and sustainability isn’t that simple. While he’s spent decades decrying industrial farming and telling world leaders at 2021’s COP26 Climate Conference to take a “warlike footing” against climate change, he and the rest of the royal family, due to their sheer wealth and lavish lifestyles, have a massively outsized carbon footprint compared to the average bloke. And among some wind turbine-related flip-flopping, he’s also said some questionable things about population growth.

But, hey, it’s something. God save the King!

More on climate change: Climate Change Linked to Increased Pirate Attacks

The post King Charles Fights Climate Change by Freezing His Servants appeared first on Futurism.

Franck Robichon/Reuters

The US government doesn’t have to pay off its $31 trillion debt, Paul Krugman said.
The government debt can’t be compared to something like a household’s finances, Krugman said.
“When governments for one reason or another run up large debts, it is, as far as I can tell, unusual to pay those debts off.”

The US doesn’t actually have to pay off its $31 trillion mountain of debt, according to top economist Paul Krugman, hitting back at the idea that government finances can be compared to household balance sheets in an op-ed weeks before the US possibly defaults on some obligations.

Though individual borrowers are expected to pay off debts, the same isn’t true for governments, Krugman argued in a column for the New York Times on Friday. That’s because unlike people, governments don’t die, and they gain more revenue with each passing generation.

“Governments, then, must service their debts – pay interest and repay principal when bonds come due – but they don’t necessarily have to pay them off; they can issue new bonds to pay principal on old bonds and even borrow to pay interest as long as overall debt doesn’t rise too much faster than revenue,” he added.

Though the debt-to-GDP ratio hovered around 97% last year, interest payments on that debt is only around $395 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget, or around 1% of last year’s GDP.

Historically, it’s also unusual for governments to pay off large debts, Krugman said. Such was the case for Great Britain, which has largely held onto the debt it incurred as far back as the Napoleonic wars.

Krugman’s argument comes amid growing contention over the US debt level, with policymakers still sparring over the conditions they want to raise the country’s borrowing limit. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has said he would reject a short-term debt ceiling increase unless spending cuts are negotiated, having proposed a bill that would slash around $4.5 trillion on spending.

Congress now has less than two weeks to raise the borrowing limit before the government could potentially run out of cash, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned. A default on the country’s obligations could result in catastrophe for financial markets, experts have warned. Krugman has called for the debt ceiling to be abolished, as the risk of a financial crisis offers Republicans a “choke point” on fiscal policy.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Franck Robichon/Reuters

The US government doesn’t have to pay off its $31 trillion debt, Paul Krugman said.
The government debt can’t be compared to something like a household’s finances, Krugman said.
“When governments for one reason or another run up large debts, it is, as far as I can tell, unusual to pay those debts off.”

The US doesn’t actually have to pay off its $31 trillion mountain of debt, according to top economist Paul Krugman, hitting back at the idea that government finances can be compared to household balance sheets in an op-ed weeks before the US possibly defaults on some obligations.

Though individual borrowers are expected to pay off debts, the same isn’t true for governments, Krugman argued in a column for the New York Times on Friday. That’s because unlike people, governments don’t die, and they gain more revenue with each passing generation.

“Governments, then, must service their debts – pay interest and repay principal when bonds come due – but they don’t necessarily have to pay them off; they can issue new bonds to pay principal on old bonds and even borrow to pay interest as long as overall debt doesn’t rise too much faster than revenue,” he added.

Though the debt-to-GDP ratio hovered around 97% last year, interest payments on that debt is only around $395 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget, or around 1% of last year’s GDP.

Historically, it’s also unusual for governments to pay off large debts, Krugman said. Such was the case for Great Britain, which has largely held onto the debt it incurred as far back as the Napoleonic wars.

Krugman’s argument comes amid growing contention over the US debt level, with policymakers still sparring over the conditions they want to raise the country’s borrowing limit. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has said he would reject a short-term debt ceiling increase unless spending cuts are negotiated, having proposed a bill that would slash around $4.5 trillion on spending.

Congress now has less than two weeks to raise the borrowing limit before the government could potentially run out of cash, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned. A default on the country’s obligations could result in catastrophe for financial markets, experts have warned. Krugman has called for the debt ceiling to be abolished, as the risk of a financial crisis offers Republicans a “choke point” on fiscal policy.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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In another defeat for Chilean President Gabriel Boric and his fellow leftists, the country’s right-wing parties on Sunday won a majority of seats on a 50-member commission tasked with rewriting the constitution imposed more than 40 years ago by Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

Chile’s Republican Party—led by Jose Antonio Kast, the far-right presidential candidate Boric defeated in a December 2021 runoff election—garnered just over 35% of the vote, according to the Chilean Electoral Service. A separate coalition of right-wing parties secured roughly 21%. Boric’s left-wing coalition, meanwhile, captured nearly 29%, and centrist parties combined to take the remaining 14%.

The special election determined the makeup of the Constitutional Council that will soon write a new charter for the nation. Kast’s far-right party won 23 seats, the other right-wing coalition picked up 11, and Boric’s left-wing alliance gained 16. This means the Chilean right amassed the three-fifths majority needed to approve articles over the opposition of progressives.

As Reuters reported Monday: “The constitutional advisers elected on Sunday will start drawing up a new constitution in June based on a draft compiled by 24 constitutional experts appointed by Congress in March. Voters will then approve or reject the new proposal in December.”

Sunday’s outcome marked a continued reversal of recent political developments. As recently as October 2020, Chileans voted by a 4-to-1 margin to replace the neoliberal constitution that was implemented in 1980 under anti-democratic conditions.

In the wake of that historic plebiscite, voters in May 2021 elected a progressive slate of delegates to the constituent assembly originally put in charge of rewriting Pinochet’s constitution, raising hopes that the citizen-led body would produce an emancipatory charter.

Following months of debate at 103 plenary sessions, Chile’s gender-equal 154-member constituent assembly finalized a draft constitution in May 2022. The 178-page document aimed to empower workers with guaranteed labor rights and an expanded social welfare state, enshrine gender equality and Indigenous rights, and prioritize environmental protection.

However, the first rewrite was rejected last September by nearly 62% of voters. The defeat of what progressive scholars around the world hailed as a “visionary product” from which other countries have “much to learn” happened thanks in no small part to the right-wing forces that flooded the country with misinformation ahead of the vote.

The spread of misinformation by reactionary elements within Chile was mirrored by a global smear campaign led by corporate media outlets.

For example, The Economist—which actively helped foment the 1973 coup that overthrew democratically elected socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende and brought Pinochet to power—criticized the first rewrite as a “left-wing wish list,” while The Financial Times denounced it as a threat to Chile’s “business climate.”

Delegates to the original convention sought to guarantee universal access to health, housing, education, and a livable planet as human rights in an effort to combat the inequality that has been so thoroughly entrenched by the existing neoliberal policy blueprint that remains in place more than three decades after Pinochet’s ouster.

Now that Kast, a vocal Pinochet supporter, and his right-wing allies are playing a decisive role in the second rewrite, it is more likely than not that Chileans will be asked at the end of this year to vote for a new constitution that does not differ fundamentally from the old one.

Speaking in Santiago on Sunday, Kast declared that “today is the first day of a better future… Chile has defeated a failed government.”

While Boric took office last March amid “a wave of optimism surrounding reform,” Reuters noted, “his approval ratings have since plummeted as a struggling economy and rising crime have become the main concerns for voters.”

“Boric also suffered a political defeat after throwing his weight behind the first rewrite,” the news outlet noted. “The president has since distanced himself from the process but vowed to support it.”

After he voted Sunday morning, Boric told reporters that “the government won’t meddle with the process and will respect the entity’s autonomy in its deliberation.”

Following Kast’s victory speech, Boric spoke from the presidential palace in Santiago, calling for unity and encouraging his right-wing opponents to learn from the failure of the initial rewrite.

“I want to invite the Republican Party, that’s won an unquestionable majority, to not make the same mistakes we made,” Boric said. “This process can’t be about vendettas, but putting Chile first.”

The black population in the United States is roughly the size of the population of Spain. Yet too many ignore class differences and political complexities among millions of African Americans.

People participate in a march in Brooklyn for Black Lives Matter and to commemorate the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth on June 19, 2020 in New York City. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

At forty-seven million, the African American population in the United States is roughly equivalent to that of Spain. Despite the size of one of America’s largest minorities, discussions of black politics tend to be reductive and ahistorical. In cavalier fashion, critics of racism chart a long line of oppression that has its origin in the United States’ earliest days. Similarly, the forces that have, according to the dominant view of American racism, sought to oppose this monolithic racial tyranny have all fought under the single banner of “the black liberation struggle.”

Admittedly, these attempts to examine the history of discrimination offer correctives to right-wing defenses of forms of ascriptive hierarchy. However, they do so at the cost of flattening the complexities of actually existing black politics. This approach ignores, the political theorist Adolph Reed Jr tells Jacobin, that black politics is not immune from the economic and class forces which have and continue to shape American politics more broadly.

Jennifer C. Pan

You’ve been a longtime critic of the notion of a cohesive or transhistorical “black freedom movement,” or the idea that one can trace an unbroken line from the fight to abolish slavery to the civil rights movement to Black Lives Matter. Why isn’t this framework helpful for understanding black politics either now or in the past?

Adolph Reed

When people talk about something called the “black freedom movement” or the “black liberation struggle” or the “long civil rights movement,” they’re rehashing an old trope that goes back to the beginnings of the study of black American political history and black American political thought. At that time, that construct was called something like the “Negro’s struggle for freedom” or “Negro’s quest for equality.” Both then and now, the construct presumes, first of all, that black people are a singular collective entity. It also presumes an overarching struggle where black people have always unanimously wanted the same thing, and that whatever disagreements you might encounter if you go through the archives of black politics are just disagreements within a fundamentally shared commitment.

Any interpretation of black politics that doesn’t account for political conflict among black people — as opposed to politics between black people and everyone else — is intrinsically a class politics because it obscures class differentiation among black Americans.

So the main problem with the idea of a timeless black freedom movement is that it’s a single-thread narrative and a reduction of a much more complex reality. The narrative posits racial unity as the essential foundation for understanding black people and constructs and imposes an anti-historical understanding of black people’s experiences in American political life. It defines black people as being somehow outside of history and collapses differences in historical moments by presuming that people are fighting for the same things in 2020 that they were fighting for in 1860 — or 1619, for God’s sake — which is absurd.

Jennifer C. Pan

Why do you think people find this idea of a singular and cohesive black freedom movement so compelling?

Adolph Reed

I think there are several reasons. One is simply that people have heard it over and over, so it seems to comport with commonsense knowledge. It’s a framework that gives you the familiar dyads of Booker T. Washington versus W. E. B. Du Bois, Du Bois versus Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X versus Martin Luther King Jr. That’s convenient for people who don’t think there’s anything complex that goes on among black people.

Then there are people who have an interest in propagating the narrative. The black freedom movement construct has always functioned to obscure real distinctions among black people. Fundamentally, the most aggressive and insistent proponents of this view have been people who are pushing a class program: any interpretation of black politics that doesn’t account for political conflict among black people — as opposed to politics between black people and everyone else — is intrinsically a class politics because it’s part of a discourse of what Barbara Fields and Karen Fields call racecraft, which obscures class differentiation among black Americans, with or without conscious intent. If the black freedom movement narrative were even a reasonably accurate account of black American political history, then you could say, okay, well, it doesn’t hurt to talk about it. But it’s not. It’s false and it works for the other side.

The alternative to this kind of simplistic approach is to recognize that black people, like all people, live within historical circumstances. They’re diverse and have different interests and perceptions, not only at different points in time, but also at the same point. That was true in the nineteenth century and even true to some extent in the eighteenth century. It’s certainly true after Emancipation and once black people were able to claim some kind of civic participation, however badly the deck may have been stacked against them. Eric Foner has compiled a list of black people who held elected office in the South by the end of Reconstruction, and there were hundreds of people who had been elected to all kinds of offices. And that suggests that there was a lively culture of political debate and struggle, and that blacks engaged with nonblacks, as they always have and continue to do today.

It really comes down to following an injunction from Ralph Ellison: he cautioned observers of American life against the tendency to believe things about black people that they would not believe about any other human beings.

Jennifer C. Pan

How, then, should we think about black politics now, particularly after the 2020 racial reckoning?

Adolph Reed

I’m probably getting more crotchety by the day, but I would almost argue at this point that the most crucial racial reckoning in US history was at Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in 1864.

Anyway, to answer your question, at the beginning of the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign, Touré [Reed] was talking to a mutual friend and colleague who was part of the campaign’s inner circle and encouraged the campaign not to concentrate on pursuing something called the “black vote” as much as they could possibly avoid it. His argument was that what we think of as “black politics” today is a class-specific interest-group politics that’s rooted entirely in the black professional and managerial strata, whose approach to political life is race reductionist. It’s an elite-driven activity that really has no base at all. And the reality is that once you start catering to the idea of a coherent “black vote” or “black community,” it’s going to drag you down and lead to demise.

Once you start catering to the idea of a coherent ‘black vote’ or ‘black community,’ it’s going to drag you down and lead to demise.

And then there’s the Potemkin thing that happens whenever there’s a police atrocity or some other outrage: people respond to the outrage with protest actions, and then somebody who’s articulate and MSNBC-ready jumps out in front of the protest and talks to the media and is declared the new voice of the black youth or the rising wave of the future.

The dynamic of outrage and protests as a response is at least a half-century old. In fact, when Touré was an infant and we lived in Atlanta, I got to see that role acted out firsthand in the local political scene by Hosea Williams, a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr whose political persona was all about being true to the activist roots of the [Southern Christian Leadership Conference]. Whenever there was something like a police shooting, Hosea would march it off — he’d jump out and lead a protest march someplace. And then he’d go inside and essentially negotiate payoffs with the people who were in charge. And I’d already seen the same thing happen when I lived in North Carolina before I went to graduate school. So it’s not anything new, but it’s hegemonic at this point.

There’s another tendency in this type of politics that I trace back to the buildup to the anti-WTO demos in Seattle in 1999. There were activists during that moment who complained that the movement was too white and wasn’t doing enough to reach out to affected “communities.” And I’d say to people, look, if there’s some constituency that isn’t involved that you think ought to be — and you purport to have connections to that constituency — then the thing to do is for you to go out and organize them and bring them into the movement.

Well, of course nobody who was complaining actually wanted that; what they wanted was just the opposite. They wanted to represent or embody the amorphous, voiceless masses. And that’s really the only context — that and nineteenth-century race theory — within which it makes sense to assume that the black American population, which is bigger than the entire population of Canada, can be spoken for in the first person plural.

Jennifer C. Pan

You and Walter Benn Michaels have a new book out, No Politics But Class Politics. Over the years you’ve both been sharply critical of the tendency to focus on racial disparities. While there do exist plenty of liberals whose idea of justice is a diverse ruling class, what would you tell leftists who oppose the capitalist order but also want to take racism seriously? What does it mean to fight racism today?

Adolph Reed

Of course we should do what we can to protect and buttress the antidiscrimination apparatus, which includes an affirmative dimension. But this might also be of interest to readers:

In 1945, when the Full Employment Bill was still in play in Congress, the civil rights activist and legal scholar Pauli Murray wrote an article in the California Law Review on employment discrimination. In the article, she addresses the argument that you have to fight racism or discrimination before you can win social democracy. She points out that the reality is that racism becomes most politically viable in conditions of scarcity: when jobs are scarce, that’s when people get anxious, and that’s when employers and right-wingers can mobilize the anxiety. And so Murray argues that because of that, the only way to move forward as black workers is to win the social democratic reforms — in particular, at that moment, the struggle for a real political commitment to ground national economic policy on the pursuit and maintenance of a full employment economy — and that those are ultimately even more important than the antidiscrimination measures themselves.

Most people in this country who work for a living need the same things, right? And we don’t necessarily need to have a fight over what happened in 1860, or a fight over what happened in 1890, or even 1920, or even 1960 to recognize that we all need economic security, health care, jobs, and education. And the way for us to get to those things is to articulate our needs and to come together around the things we have in common.

When the anti-racist sensibility now is that making a reference to the working class is somehow conceding to white racism, it’s pretty clear what the class character of this politics is. And this is even before you start counting up all the billions of corporate and investor-class dollars that have gone to Black Lives Matter and other nominal antiracist activist groups since the murder of George Floyd.

So it’s time for us to stop playing around and to be serious and hardheaded about this. Especially for those of us who are professors, part of our job is trying to get the story straight, to demystify the mystifications. That’s what we do for a living, right? Otherwise, we should all just go to church.

There are few minerals that play as pivotal a role in the global energy transition as lithium. The silvery white, soft, reactive metal is particularly good at storing energy, which is why it is used in all commercial electric vehicle batteries today and is unlikely to be replaced by another material anytime soon. The demand for lithium batteries is expected to grow more than five times by 2030.

Recognizing its strategic importance, economic potential, and its environmental consequences, President Gabriel Boric of Chile, the world’s second largest producer of the metal, announced plans in late April to increase state participation in the country’s lithium industry.

“The main aim of this policy,” said Pedro Glatz, who was a senior advisor to the Chilean Ministry of the Environment until two months ago and was not involved in crafting the policy, “is to provide more wealth, well-being, and welfare to the Chilean people.”

But Indigenous communities and environmental defenders who live near Chile’s lithium resources question whether this wealth-building and the growth of the global electric car industry should come at the expense of their water, homes, and a critical ecosystem.

Chile's President Gabriel Boric speaking at a podium with the Chilean flag in the background

Chilean President Gabriel Boric speaks during an event to present the National Lithium Strategy in Antofagasta, Chile, on April 21, 2023. Photo by GLENN ARCOS/AFP via Getty Images

Over half of the world’s known lithium deposits are located where Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina border one another. Situated within the Andes, parts of the area are drier than anywhere in the world outside of Antarctica. The region is often referred to as the Lithium Triangle because of its mineral-rich salt flats, which form when large pools or shallow lakes of water accumulate on plateaus or between mountain ridges and evaporate. Lithium revenue accounted for nearly 2 percent of Chile’s annual gross domestic product last year.

In announcing his intention to grow the government’s oversight of the lithium industry, Boric delivered on a campaign promise he made in 2021. Under the new framework, the state will capture more revenue by mandating that private companies partner with public agencies for all future mining contracts. Subject to congressional approval, Boric also hopes to create a publicly owned national lithium company.

Notably, the policy also takes a more ambitious approach to environmental standards across the lifecycle of the industry. The government will create a public research institute to develop new refining technologies, and institute lithium waste and battery recycling.

But critics question whether the plan will do enough to protect the Lithium Triangle from the high costs of extraction.

Currently, lithium in Chile is extracted by drilling holes in the salt flats and pumping brine to the surface, which is then left to evaporate in large artificial ponds for months at a time. The method has depleted water levels in a region already suffering from a climate change-induced megadrought, affecting local farmers, pastoralists, and a critical wetland ecosystem that supports three iconic flamingo species.

Pink, white and black colored Andean flamingo feeding in a lake, with other flamingos reflected in the water

Andean flamingo (Phoenicoparrus andinus), one of the rarest flamingos in the world, feeding in a high plateau lake in the Siloli Desert, near the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Falt) and the border with Chile, in southwestern Bolivia.
Getty images

In response to Boric’s announcement, a coalition of Indigenous peoples, environmental activists, and researchers called the Plurinational Observatory of Andean Salt Flats, or OPSAL, released a statement titled “Salt flats are not mines, salt flats are wetlands.”

OPSAL is worried that lithium extracted from Chile and other South American countries will be primarily used for private electric vehicles in the European Union, the United States, and China, which they call “a false solution to climate change that benefits the most polluting economies of the planet.” They argue that such a solution wouldn’t meet the mobility needs of the majority of the world’s inhabitants, and that attempting to replace all internal combustion engine cars with electric vehicles would create unnecessary sacrifice zones along lithium mining corridors.

Earlier this year, a report from the Climate and Community Project found that expanding public transportation infrastructure and reducing car battery sizes could reduce lithium demand by up to 90 percent in the U.S., suggesting that it’s possible to address the climate crisis while simultaneously protecting Indigenous rights and biodiversity.

Glatz, the former environmental ministry adviser, said that the Chilean government’s active participation in the lithium industry could give it more leverage in international discussions about lithium demand. “If countries want to use these resources, we could be negotiating concessions, both in terms of climate debt, but also in the ways lithium is being used,” he told Grist. “It might be a better use of that lithium to provide batteries for public transportation in the global south, rather than to support an unsustainable lifestyle in the global north, and it’s a shame that these ideas are not in the discussion today.”

OPSAL welcomes increased state participation and hopes that the government will center the Andean salt flats and wetlands in its management of the lithium industry. Boric’s lithium strategy explicitly acknowledges territorial and environmental concerns, and includes a plan to conserve 30 percent of the salt flat region. But OPSAL wants the government to go further by adopting an international convention that guarantees Indigenous people’s right to free, prior, and informed consent — a bedrock of Indigenous rights. Such a guarantee would respect Indigenous communities’ “right to say no to a project that threatens their way of life and the ecosystems where they live,” the coalition said in its statement.

Glatz admits that mining lithium in a sustainable way is perhaps the most challenging part of Boric’s strategy. “I don’t think the Chilean state, or anybody for that matter, knows how to do this in a good way. It is perhaps one of the questions of the 21st century,” he told Grist. “How do we deal with the demand for specific types of resources that are needed for the energy transition, and at the same time not destroy ecosystems or nations that have developed over centuries?”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Chile’s national lithium strategy raises questions about the environmental and social costs of EVs on May 3, 2023.

By

Walter Russell Mead

May 1, 2023 5:46 pm ET

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke to reporters at the White House on April 24.

Photo: Tom Williams/Zuma Press

The Biden administration plans a fundamental transformation of American economic policy at home and abroad. That’s the takeaway from national security adviser

Jake Sullivan’s
speech at the Brookings Institution last week. Initial press coverage focused on the nuances of China policy—“derisking” is in, “decoupling” is out—but to stop there is to miss the point. This was a big speech about major policy changes, and those who want to understand the direction of American policy in a second Biden term would be unwise to overlook it.

The break with post-Cold War Democratic trade and economic policy is radical. Gone are the emphases on trade liberalization, growth and market-oriented reform. Those misguided policies, in the administration’s view, are responsible for many of the ills afflicting humanity today. China’s ascent, the erosion of the American middle class, the rise of populism, climate change and financial instability are the consequences of the flawed economic policies promoted by, among others, President

Bill Clinton
and his Treasury secretaries,

Robert Rubin
and

Larry Summers.

So much for the old Washington consensus, as this policy mix was called in its heyday. What Mr. Sullivan proposes to take its place focuses on shaping industrial policy, protecting against China, defending American labor from foreign low-wage competition, and using tools ranging from tariffs to international financial institutions to push countries in the Global South to meet climate-change goals. Governments would do much more to direct capital toward the industries and outcomes bureaucrats and elected officials prefer.

Politically, Mr. Sullivan’s new Washington consensus reflects the convergence of three elements of Democratic politics. Labor unions hated Clinton-era trade policy, opposing the North American Free Trade Agreement, the formation of the World Trade Organization and China’s admission into it. In their view, allowing developing countries to compete in American markets with low-wage labor constitutes a “race to the bottom”—something Mr. Sullivan explicitly says the new policy is designed to avoid.

Also worried about races to the bottom are climate activists and renewables lobbyists. Poor countries typically impose less-onerous environmental regulations on industry to maximize their cost advantages. Banning or penalizing products made with fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive methods would force low- and middle-income countries toward climate policies they might otherwise avoid.

For lobbyists, the administration’s approach means literally trillions of dollars in business opportunities as international trade policy drives low-income countries to adopt products and technologies the renewables lobby hawks.

Finally, many so-called progressives and democratic socialists yearn to return to the system of relatively closed and highly regulated national economies that characterized the immediate post-World War II era. The rise of integrated global financial markets and trade liberalization undermined national governments’ ability to control economic conditions inside their frontiers. Mr. Sullivan’s new consensus seeks to establish global financial rules and tax policies that would support national governments’ ability to return to the strong regulatory policies of the 1950s.

The Biden approach is politically shrewd, appealing to blue-collar Democrats as well as greens and progressives. Many CEOs, however dubious they are about the long-term consequences of growing government influence over the economy, will see opportunity in the subsidies Biden-style economic activism offers.

Greenwashing of Norwegian Colonialism

Internationally, very little is known about Norway’s role as an imperialist and colonialist power. Thanks to the reformist Left, many American socialists view Scandinavia as the model for socialism today. While it is true that Norway has a high standard of living, a welfare net, and some nationalized industries, this does not mean that capitalism has been abolished. The “Nordic model” is simply capitalism with a welfare state, which has largely been gutted since the 90s. This romanticization of Norwegian capitalism also provides left cover for the historic colonization of Sápmi, a tragic historical event that this movement has brought to international attention.

Sápmi is the traditional territory of the Sami people, an Indigenous peoples whose occupied territory lies between Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The colonization of Sápmi by Norway, Sweden, and Denmark began in the 16th century. While the Scandinavians had traditionally occupied the South and the coast, the Sami traditionally occupied the North, center, and inland areas. As capitalist relations began to emerge, the ruling classes became more and more interested in exploiting the “untapped” North. Sami people were forcibly pushed off their traditional lands to make way for settler communities to open up mines, mills, and fisheries. The Sami people were forced into hard unpaid labor in mines, as well as guiding settlers in hunting, cutting trees, and any other difficult jobs settlers did not want to do. A process of forced assimilation ensued with the goal of eliminating Sami culture, the traditional values and economy of which stood in the way of the primitive accumulation of capital.

The government hides behind concessions made to the Sami community throughout the twentieth century to present modern Norway as a “post-colonial” state. Despite certain legal, social, and political concessions, the same fundamental colonial relationship exists. In the past decade, massive industrial expansion on Sápmi has been cynically sold as environmentalism. It is this “green colonialism,” as Sami activists have called it, that is at the heart of this conflict.

The main focus of the protests is over the construction of over 270 wind turbines in Fosen, of which 150 are currently in use. Fosen is a coastal area in Trøndelag, a municipality consisting of most of central Norway, overlapping with the furthest southern territory of Sápmi. When it is finished, it will be the second largest wind turbine project in the whole of Europe. As ruled by the Supreme Court in October of 2021, these windmills were illegally constructed on traditional reindeer herding territory. Not only is reindeer herding the main source of income for many families, it is also a traditional cultural practice for even more. That the Norwegian state can continue this development against the ruling of the Supreme Court shows that, no matter what symbolic gestures or reforms they make, they will always override the self-determination of Sami people in favor of profits.

Despite the paper-thin excuse of environmentalism, that is what this turbine park is about: profits. The European market is in desperate need of energy. The market for oil and gas has been volatile throughout the pandemic, and especially now, due to the war. The cost of production of wind energy is now cheaper than that of oil and gas. Not only do the turbines themselves come at great environmental cost, destroying the landscape and disrupting ecosystems, but the markets they are sold into are far from clean. The government has discussed the energy shortage in Europe, as well as the need for energy for industrial development in northern Norway, predominantly on Sami land, as a justification for the turbines. These industries include gas and oil refineries, mines, battery and hydrogen factories, and many other fossil fuel intensive industries.

For several years, the greenwashing of capitalism and colonialism had divided the Norwegian environmentalist movement. The Norwegian Left has also been divided on whether to support the construction of turbines. While the Sami people in Fosen and elsewhere have always been clear, the mainstream environmental movement and, with some exceptions, “socialists” have ignored them. Even among those who opposed the turbines, declarations of solidarity rarely extended beyond the local level. But this latest movement, organized entirely independently of the established parties, shows a massive layer of youth not only breaking with the arguments of green capitalism, but also embracing a much more militant strategy in opposing it.

Eight Days that Shook Norway

On February 23, the occupation began. To mark 500 days since the Supreme Court’s ruling, 16 Sami activists planned a one day symbolic occupation of the Oil and Energy Department’s (OED) offices in Oslo. The key organizers were three leading Sami members of Natur og Ungdom (Nature and Youth, NU), Norway’s largest environmentalist organization, which also represents the Left wing of the environmentalist movement. The goal was to direct media attention to the issue itself and their demands: a stop to further construction and the removal of all existing turbines.

The expectation was that the occupiers would be forcibly removed by the police within the day, which would spur the media to get involved. But the police did not come, and the occupiers stayed overnight. However, they did not have food, medicine, bedding, or anything else. A recent report from a Norwegian paper shows how the police and the OED weaponized this. For over 48 hours, the occupiers were denied the possibility of accessing food, medicine, water, or anything from the outside. The OED officially stated that this was for “security reasons,” but the activists described it as an “involuntary hunger strike,” with one occupier saying, “We felt like they were trying to smoke us out by denying us food.”

The next day, the police and OED allowed the activists one hour in which they could receive food, so long as everything going in was inspected by the police first. Most likely, this was to avoid the potential scandal of having forced the activists, who were steadily getting more media attention, into a hunger strike. Scandalously, the police finally decided to physically remove the occupiers at 1:30 A. on February 27, nearly four days after the occupation began. This was clearly done to avoid having the media take pictures of officers arresting the occupiers and tearing down their flags.

After being released from the police station in the middle of the night, the occupiers headed to the NU offices in Oslo to mobilize and escalate the action. Mobilizing their base, the movement quickly escalated: in the course of a few days, sixteen occupiers turned to one hundred, one occupied department turned to ten, and hundreds of sympathizers began to join in and rally in solidarity. Images and videos of Greta Thunberg being physically removed from the blockade alongside other occupiers brought, for the first time, international attention and discussion about the situation in Fosen.

After a week of struggle, the protesters had effectively blocked the government out of their departments. They forced the government to apologize for continuing the construction of wind turbines in Fosen, as well as publicly acknowledge that they are committing a human rights violation. Any government meetings had to be shifted outside their department offices due to the occupation. This forced Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre to meet with the lead organizers. In this meeting, the demonstrators put forward their demands:

Tear down the turbines (Riv turbinene)
At the very least: Stop the turbines (I det minste: stans turbinene)
Change the ministry that is handling this case (Bytt departement som håndterer saken)

Since this meeting, the Norwegian Prime Minister has promised to take action quickly, but without any concrete measures. In a week after the meeting, when he was asked about the demonstrators demands, he stated contemptuously:

“It is not they who decide how this should be done. We must follow what we believe to be the correct procedure.:

This is empty politician-speak: the Labour Party will do everything they can to rhetorically agree with the activists to cover their betrayal.

At the end of the week, on Friday March 3, the demonstration came to an end. This decision coincided with a regularly scheduled dinner hosted at the Royal Palace between the Norwegian king and leading politicians. The organizers had discussed blockading the castle to prevent the meeting from happening, but decided against this in favor of a “symbolic blockade,” in front of the castle as opposed to physically blocking the Palace’s doors. An estimated 1500-2000 people showed up on the final day, marking the second largest civil disobedience action in Norwegian history. The demonstrators covered the street between Parliament and the castle with Sami flags and colors and gathered to hear the last speeches.

Although the action ended, the leaders of the action made it clear that the struggle was not yet over. Hætta Isaksen, one of the leading Sami activists, stated in her speech:

“It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to smile. Because what we have done, we should be immensely proud of. The government will never forget what happened here. They will remember the power we have in us, and we will keep an eye on them going forward. It’s decisive that they don’t betray us again. And we are ready to take action.”

Since the end of the action, the government has done nothing to follow up on its promises. In subsequent parliamentary sessions, Labour Party candidates have all but said that they will do nothing to stop the turbines. With a strong likelihood of further demonstrations, this movement will prove to be a school of struggle for this generation of Norwegian youth.

The Significance of this Movement

Unfortunately, the movement ended before any gains were won. The head organizers were scared of escalating the conflict, thus facing the full repression of the state, potentially isolating the movement and scaring off supporters. Especially without further efforts to consolidate and organize the thousands of people who joined in, this overreliance on spontaneity is a mistake. The willingness of people to struggle is not something organizers can turn on and off like a faucet just by calling further demonstrations.

While spontaneity is, overall, an ineffective strategy, it is a near inevitable stage in the birth of a new movement. It also has a healthy, progressive side. In Norway, there are two major socialist parties and one environmentalist party: The Socialist Left Party, the Red Party, and the Green Party. Apart from some statements and local participation in demonstrations, these parties have done next to nothing for the struggle in Fosen. The spontaneity of the demonstrations allowed for a necessary break from the bureaucratic-reformist leadership and strategy of these parties. The independence from these reformist parties allowed for the use of much more effective and militant tactics which would not have been permitted by these “socialists.”

This, in turn, allowed for the rise of a leadership which was not only more representative of the youth in terms of age and militancy, but also composed of Indigenous activists. All over the world, Indigenous land defenders are at the forefront of the struggle against climate change. It has been estimated that Indigenous land defenders are responsible for protecting up to 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity. The reformism and, at times, chauvinism of the labor leadership, as well as the consumerist individualism of the environmental movement, has historically prevented an alliance between these struggles.

This movement shows that the unity of these struggles is possible, and can mobilize masses of people. But it is not possible without a break from strategies which do not confront the capitalist system directly. By studying the experience of these international struggles, socialists can learn how to make such a strategic break a reality here at home.

The post Norway: Thousands of Youth Demonstrated against “Green Colonialism” appeared first on Left Voice.

Bernie Sanders of Vermont sent a strong message to lukewarm progressives yesterday that he would not run for president and instead endorsed Joe Biden’s reelection. Via the Associated Press:

The leading progressive, who was Biden’s chief rival in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, told The Associated Press that he would “do everything I can to see the president is reelected.”

“The last thing this country needs is a Donald Trump or some other right-wing demagogue who is going to try to undermine American democracy or take away a woman’s right to choose, or not address the crisis of gun violence, or racism, sexism or homophobia,” Sanders said in an interview. “So, I’m in to do what I can to make sure that the president is reelected.”

Biden on Tuesday announced his decision to seek a second term, even as polls suggest that voters in both parties don’t want him to run again. The Democratic president will face the winner of the crowded Republican primary, which features former President Donald Trump and a half dozen lower-profile conservatives.

#UNITEDWESTAND
Bernie Sanders, thank you for your endorsement! The People owe you! pic.twitter.com/sdcT95x0fo

read more

Archive for category: #SocialDemocracy

Brrrrrrr

Climate King

The black population in the United States is roughly the size of the population of Spain. Yet too many ignore class differences and political complexities among millions of African Americans.

Read More Global View

Greenwashing of Norwegian Colonialism

Eight Days that Shook Norway

The Significance of this Movement

Archive for category: #SocialDemocracy

Brrrrrrr

Climate King

The black population in the United States is roughly the size of the population of Spain. Yet too many ignore class differences and political complexities among millions of African Americans.

Read More Global View

Greenwashing of Norwegian Colonialism

Eight Days that Shook Norway

The Significance of this Movement

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