Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 07.15.05

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R     07.15.05

1. AIM/Iraq         7.15 6pm

2. Haiti justice    7.16 9am
3. Landscape/water  7.16 10am
4. Rondo Days       7.16 10am
5. Shop for Farheen 7.16 11am
6. NLG picnic       7.16 4pm
7. Grace Poore/film 7.16 7pm
8. Choice action    7.16

9. Sensible vigil   7.17 12noon
10. AI              7.17 3pm
11. Radical cheers  7.17 4pm
12. Indian uprising 7.17 4pm
13. Dag days        7.17 5pm

14. John Bellamy Foster - The renewing of socialism: an introduction. p1
15. Ogden Nash          - Song of the open road (poem)

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Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 19:18:15 -0700 (PDT)
From: alan dale <ajdale98 [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: AIM/Iraq 7.15 6pm

AIM sponsored panel discussion on Iraq

Come and be part of the live audience for the American Indian Movement
media project Birchbark Chronicles, a web based radio and TV program.

Friday, July 15
6pm
Wolves Den Coffeehouse
1201 East Franklin Ave. (In the Ancient Traders Market) Minneapolis

Panel discussion topic:
The U.S. war in Iraq
Panel members will include:

Sami Rasouli
Iraqi-American who lived for many years in the Twin Cities area. He is
back from Iraq on a visit to report on conditions in Iraq today.

Marie Braun
Member, Women Against Military Madness and Twin Cities Peace Campaign. She
went to Iraq in 1998 to see the conditions in Iraq under the U.S./UN
imposed sanctions.

Additional panel members to be announced.
Discussion will follow presentations.


--------2 of 15--------

From: biego001 <biego001 [at] umn.edu>
Subject: Haiti justice 7.16 9am

The Haiti Justice Committee of Minnesota meets the third Sat of every
month. Join us at 9am this Sat July 16 in the Ben Linder room at the
Resource Ctr of the Americas, located at 27 Av S and Lake St.

HJC works in solidarity with the people of Haiti who are struggling
valiantly for the return of Constitutional law and democracy to Haiti in
the face of the illegal removal of President Aristide in 2003. Everyone is
welcome. For more information, call Rebecca Cramer, 612-724-8864.


--------3 of 15--------

From: Cesia Kearns <cesia.kearns [at] sierraclub.org>
Subject: Landscape/water 7.16 10am

Sierra Neighborhoods presents: Landscaping For Water Quality Want to learn
more about improving water quality in your own backyard?

Sierra Neighborhoods can help you learn about gardening tips and
techniques that both beautify your yard, and make the Mississippi a
healthier place to swim, fish, and get our drinking water.

Join us for the event Landscaping for Water Quality on Saturday, July 16th
from 10am-1pm at the Matthews Park Recreation Center in Seward
Neighborhood at 2318 28th Ave S in Seward Neighborhood.

We'll be showing gardening ideas and techniques that are better for water
quality like using native plants or creating rain gardens in a
presentation on these tips by some local gardeners.  We'll then
demonstrate them by beautifying Matthews Park with native plants.  There
will be refreshments, and we encourage folks to dress for sun and
gardening.

To RSVP, or for more information, please contact Cesia (saysha) Kearns at
612-659-9124 or email cesia.kearns [at] sierraclub.org

Cesia G. Kearns Conservation Organizer Sierra Club, North Star Chapter
2327 E. Franklin Ave, #1 Minneapolis, MN 55406 office: 612.659.9124
mobile: 612.310.2649


--------4 of 15--------

From: wamm <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Rondo Days 7.16 10am

Saturday, July 16, 10am StPeter Church, 375 N Oxford Street StPaul.

Come celebrate neighborhood revitalization and remember the old Rondo
neighborhood, which was demolished to build I-94.  March with WAMM in the
parade, which begins at 10am.  After there will be fun, food, music, and
of course flyering at Dunning Field which is right beside Central High
School.  Sponsered by WAMM.  FFI: Call the WAMM office at 612-827-5364.

---
Rondo Days parade 7.16 9:40am
Saturday, July 16 (this Saturday!!)
Please line up by 9:40am at Oxford St & Aurora Av (near StPeter Claver
Church). We are #17 in the parade lineup.

Look for the same Elizabeth Dickinson signs, and also Rhoda & Elizabeth's
Prius', which we will have in this parade. Again, riding your bike would
also be a great idea!!

For more info., call or e-mail Andy (see above)

---
Rondo Days festival 7.16 11:30am-6pm

Saturday, July 16 (this Saturday, right after the parade)
11:30am-6pm
Dunning Park & Field (1221 Marshall Av in StPaul, right by Concordia U.).

The Greens have a table. Elizabeth will be hanging out. As will many other
dedicated Greens. Come check out the excellent food and atmosphere and
support your party and candidate for mayor!

Again, contact Andy (see above) if you're interested in helping out.


--------5 of 15--------

From: Farheen <hijabicycle [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Shop for Farheen 7.16 11am

This is Farheen.  As some of you know, I am running for Mayor of
Minneapolis.  You all have a wonderful opportunity to support the campaign
by shopping!

On Saturday July 16th, from 11am-10pm, 20% of Smitten Kitten sales will go
to the Hakeem for Mayor Campaign. They are located at 2223 35th Street,
MPLS 55407.  Check them out at www.smittenkittenonline.com.

So this is a great time to shop and support a good cause.
Questions?  contact 612-395-5559 or info [at] hakeemformayor.org


--------6 of 15--------

From: Michelle Gross <mgresist [at] minn.net>
Subject: NLG picnic 7.16 4pm

SALUTE TO LOCAL DEFENDERS OF FREEDOM
The Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild will host the annual
Salute to Local Defenders of Freedom wingding on Saturday, July 16th from
4 to 9pm at the Minnehaha Park bandstand.  This event, a picnic with music
and dancing, proves that lefties know how to have fun while recognizing
good work done throughout the year and those who are doing it.

The NLG is providing picnic basics but folks are encouraged to bring a
potluck item (enough to feed a lot of hungry folks, please).  Groups and
individuals are also encouraged to contribute a song, poem or other
performance piece.  If you're interested in performing or want more
information, contact Peter Brown at peterb3121 [at] hotmail.com

The Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild
Salute to Local Defenders of Freedom
Saturday July 16
4-9pm
Minnehaha Park Bandstand
4801 Minnehaha Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN


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From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Grace Poore/film 7.16 7pm

Conversation with Grace Poore
Potluck Fundraiser
for Grace Poore's new film
Enemy on the Inside: Who Holds You Accountable?

Come for: food, drinks, film screening, conversation and networking

Saturday July 16
7pm
3401 Bloomington Ave. S, Minneapolis.

Grace Poore (aka Aruna), our national APLB sister, will be in Minneapolis
from July 16 to July 19.  She still has fond memories of her last visit to
Minneapolis over 10 years ago!

Grace Poore is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, activist and
world-traveler.  Her films, produced by her all-women's company SHaKTI
Productions, have received several awards and screened globally.

Grace has worked for the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence in
the United States and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence
Against Women in Sri Lanka.

Come for a conversation with her on July 16th.  She will share her
experiences and talk about her new film.


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From: Rachel Grubb <celia_cyanide [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Choice action 7.16

Pro Choice Visibility and Petition Party

My name is Rachel Grubb, and I am a NARAL Pro Choice America Rapid
Responder for the Supreme Court.  This weekend is Outreach Weekend for
Rapid Responders.  I am organizing a visibility event on Saturday, July
16th, to raise awareness about the ramifications of the vacancy on the
Supreme Court left by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

We will be holding signs in a high visibility area of Uptown, and allowing
passers by to sign a petition for the appointment of a moderate justice.

Afterward, over 21's will be going on a petition pub crawl.  This will be
a fun and easy way to help protect Roe Vs. Wade.  If you would like to
come with us, or if you would like more information about what else you
can do to help, email Rachel at celia_cyanide [at] yahoo.com


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From: skarx001 <skarx001 [at] umn.edu>
Subject: Sensible vigil 7.17 12noon

The sensible people for peace hold weekly peace vigils at the intersection
of Snelling and Summit in St. Paul,  Sunday between noon and 1pm. (This is
across from the Mac campus.)  We provide signs protesting current gov.
foreign and domestic policy.  We would appreciate others joining our
vigil/protest.


--------10 of 15--------

From: Gabe Ormsby <gabeo [at] bitstream.net>
Subject: AI 7.17 3pm

Join Amnesty International Group 37 for our regular meeting on Sunday,
July 17th, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Our featured speaker for the first half
of the meeting will be Group 37 member Mike Levy, who will update us on
the current situation in Haiti, including the ongoing human rights
concerns there.

Mike writes, "Haiti gets more interesting (and tragic) every day because
it is a fascinating test case for the UN - both as it is now and under the
proposed reforms. Human rights groups are pressuring the UN to release its
report of the investigation of a prison massacre last year, so far with no
success. And last weekend a young couple (she was 4 months pregnant) were
reportedly arrested by the police and their bodies turned up at the State
morgue 3 days later.  This is the police force that the UN has been
required to assist.

"Suddenly, the UN has decided to take over all policing oversight in Haiti
in anticipation of elections in an atmosphere of disappearances,
kidnappings, extra-judicial executions and mass incarceration of political
prisoners. Do I hear any volunteers to observe the elections scheduled for
this fall?"

After Mike's presentation, we will hear from each of our sub-groups, get
news on Amnesty campaigns, share actions and discuss ongoing human rights
issues worldwide.

All are welcome at the meeting, and refreshments will be provided.

Location: Center for Victims of Torture, 717 E. River Rd. SE, Minneapolis
(corner of E. River Rd. and Oak St.). Park on street or in the small lot
behind the center (the center is a house set back on a large lawn).

A map and directions are available on-line:
http://www.twincitiesamnesty.org/meetings.html.


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From: Emily Stinnett <emily.stinnett [at] ppl-inc.org>
Subject: Radical cheers 7.17 4pm

We are starting a radical cheerleading squad in the Twin Cities. We don't
have a name yet but you can refer to us as Twin Cities Radical
Cheerleading Squad. Our next meeting will be Sunday July 17th, 4pm Loring
Park by the water fountain. Radical Cheerleading is a creative form of
protest and a fun way to get our message across. We will be cheering
everywhere and anywhere. We will have cheers that span a variety of topics
such as feminism, queer issues, anti-war, anti-sweatshops,
anti-capitalism, body image, etc... If you can yell you can be on the
squad!  Contact Emily at (612)578-0858 if you have any questions.

Emily Stinnett, Services Coordinator Self Sufficiency Program Project for
Pride in Living 1035 E. Franklin Ave. Mpls, MN 55404 (office)612.455.5163
(cell)651.329.8216 (main)612.455.5100 www.ppl-inc.org


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From: Chris Spotted Eagle <chris [at] SPOTTEDEAGLE.ORG>
Subject: Indian uprising 7.17 4pm

KFAI's Indian Uprising for July 17th

GOVERNMENT ARGUES IT NEVER VICTIMIZED INDIANS by Elouise Cobell, Indian
Trust ListServ, Tuesday, 12 Jul 2005.  A stark difference over the plight
of Individual Indian Trust Account beneficiaries was on display before a
national cable TV audience July 6 on CSPAN.  Be warned that you will be
shocked by James Cason, the acting director of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs.  He says he knows of no Indians who have been victimized by the
government's management of their trust accounts. Never mind that the
government has been unable to give any Indian an accurate accounting of
their account in the 118 years since the accounts were created.
 www.c-span.org/.  <listadmin [at] list.indiantrust.com>

FEDERAL JUDGE EXCORIATES GOVERNMENT'S CONTINUED ABUSIVE TREATMENT OF
INDIANS, Indian Trust ListServ, July 12, 2005, Cobell v. Norton. U.S.
District Judge Royce C. Lamberth has sharply criticized the Interior
Department for continuing to mistreat Native Americans.  In some of the
sharpest language the judge has used in his nearly 10 years overseeing a
class action lawsuit over the government's acknowledged problems in
handling individual Indian Trust accounts, Lamberth accused the department
of forgetting what the case is all about and praised the Indians who
brought the lawsuit. To view the latest information concerning this case,
go to www.indiantrust.com.

MINORITY STUDENTS NATIONWIDE ARE CAUGHT IN "SCHOOL-TO-PRISON" PIPELINE,
ACLU Says, press release, June 23, 2005.  In a complaint filed today with
the U.S. Department of Education on behalf of 14 Native American families,
the American Civil Liberties Union and the Attorney General of the Rosebud
Sioux Tribe charge that the public school district in Winner, South Dakota
discriminates against Native American children in its disciplinary
practices and denies these students their right to equal educational
opportunities.  www.aclu.org

* * * *
Indian Uprising is a one-half hour Public & Cultural Affairs radio program
for, by, and about Indigenous people & all their relations, broadcast each
Sunday at 4:00 p.m. over KFAI 90.3 FM Minneapolis and 106.7 FM St. Paul.
Current programs are archived online after broadcast at www.kfai.org, for
two weeks.  Click Program Archives and scroll to Indian Uprising.


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From: Joe Schwartzberg <schwa004 [at] umn.edu>
Subject: Dag days 7.17 5pm

Our Hammarskjoeld Commemorative Year opens soon with an exhibit on
Hammarskjoeld's life (Markings and Milestones) at the American Swedish
Institute.  The opening reception will be Sunday, July 17th, from 5 to 7
pm, in the Institute's Great Hall.  The honored guest will be Mr. Olle
Nordberg, executive director of the Dag Hammarskjoeld Foundation in
Uppsala, Sweden.  He will speak at 7 pm on the life experience of working
"in the spirit of Dag Hammarskjoeld".  He notes that the Foundation is not
intended to be a mausoleum for Hammarskjoeld's memory, but a catalyst for
progress as Hammarskjoeld would have wished.  

The Reception and talk are free, but the ASI would appreciate it if you
would make a reservation by calling 612/871-4907.  

Below you'll find some words from our speaker Olle Nordberg about himself,
his work, and the Hammarskjoeld Foundation.   

If you have an opportunity to pass this information on to others who would
be interested, we would appreciate that assistance in making the event
known.  You can find more about the Hammarskjoeld Commemorative Year
events at the ASI's web site: http://www.americanswedishinst.org , under
Special Events.  (Events are listed chronologically, not in a grouped
listing.)  

Katie Fournier
912 18th Avenue SE
Minneapolis, Minnesota  55414
612/331-5615
kfournier1 [at] mn.rr.com


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The Renewing of Socialism: An Introduction     part 1 of 2
by John Bellamy Foster
Monthly Review

Articles in Monthly Review often end by invoking the socialist alternative
to capitalism. Readers in recent years have frequently asked us what this
means. Didn't socialism die in the twentieth century? Wasn't it defeated
by capitalism? More practically: if socialism is still being advocated
what kind of socialism is it? Are we being utopian in the sense of
advancing a pleasant but impossible dream?

Such questions deserve answers, however tentative. That we have largely
neglected to provide them up until now has been due more to our sense of
history than anything else. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and
the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later it was difficult to
address the question of socialism for at least two reasons: (1) its almost
complete identification in the popular mind with the fallen Soviet system;
and (2) the triumphalist vision of capitalism that was paraded at the
time. Since these beliefs were more a product of prevailing ideology than
reality, we concluded that history would soon begin to dissolve them and
the question of socialism would again come to the fore. A wide and open
dialogue on the future of socialism could then begin anew. That time we
are convinced is now upon us. Moreover, the danger to the world of not
countering the mantra that "there is no alternative" to capitalism is now
too great, given persistent problems of economic stagnation, the growth of
empire and war, and the threat of ecological collapse.

"The legacy of socialism," Paul Sweezy wrote in Monthly Review in January
1993, "consists in its being the real-life alternative to capitalism. On
the world-historical stage it plays the role of the significant other.
This is not to deny that the leading ideas of socialism - equality and
cooperation as against hierarchy and competition - are part of socialism's
legacy. But they are not unique to socialism, and historically, they long
antedate socialism. In one way or another, they figure in all of
humanity's great religious traditions."

Socialism as a socio-political movement grew out of the attempt to
overcome capitalism that has been part of world history ever since
capitalism's emergence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was
prefigured by the Peasants' War of the Anabaptists and Thomas Mnzer during
the German Reformation of the sixteenth century. It appeared again in the
movement of Winstanley and the Diggers in the English Revolution of the
seventeenth century. It raised its head once more with Gracchus Babeuf and
the Equals in the French Revolution of the eighteenth century. It was
Babeuf and his Equals who argued in 1795-96 that "equality must be
measured by the capacity of the worker and the need of the consumer, not
by the intensity of the labor and the quantity of things consumed."1 Karl
Marx was later to say this even more succinctly in his famous slogan in
the Critique of the Gotha Programme - "from each according to his abilities,
to each according to his needs!" - offered as the ultimate criterion of
socialist or communist society. What all of these early movements of
revolt called for was substantive equality, abolishing class and other
social distinctions, and going beyond the mere formal political equality
offered by bourgeois society. In opposition to the growth of private
property they advocated common ownership of the means of production.

The term "socialism" first made its appearance in France following the
French Revolution in relation to the ideas of the great utopian
socialists, Charles Fourier and Comte Henri de Saint-Simon, and was soon
embraced by the Owenite movement in Britain led by industrialist Robert
Owen. The utopian socialists saw capitalism as historically transitory,
destined to perish just as feudalism had before it, and believed that it
would be replaced by a society of true equality and the full flowering of
human reason. Writing at the moment that industrial capitalism and an
industrial working class were emerging in Britain (where a full-scale
industrial revolution was underway) and in France, the criticisms of
capitalism's evils by the utopian socialists were often trenchant. Fourier
wrote that "under civilization [i.e., capitalism] poverty is borne of
super-abundance itself." In industrial capitalism's place they advocated
far-reaching reform in factory conditions, education, the situation of
women, the relation between town and country, etc.

The visions offered by the utopian socialists, however, lacked a
systematic conception of the causes of the material conditions that they
described or the real class obstacles to social change. Although
sympathizing with the working class, they did not yet see the workers as
the main agents of socialist transformation. Owen ended his Book of the
New Moral World with an appeal to King William IV of Britain in which he
said: "under your reign, Sire, the change from this system, with all its
evil consequences, to another founded on self-evident truths, ensuring
happiness to all, will, in all probability, be achieved." Fourier
announced that he would be home at noon every day to await a wealthy
benefactor who would provide the money for a colony that would implement
the principles of his new society. He waited twelve years in vain.
Followers of Saint-Simon declared in their organ, The Globe, on November
28, 1831: "The working classes cannot rise unless the upper classes reach
out their hand. It is from these latter that the initiative must come."2

While the utopian socialists ultimately reached out to the ruling classes
to support their ideas, more revolutionary movements arose from the
practical struggles of industrial workers themselves, who not infrequently
saw their own class action as the means of overturning the new system of
exploitation. It fell to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, born in the
relatively developed Rhineland in 1818 and 1820, respectively, and
equipped with the dialectical tools of analysis offered by Hegelian
philosophy, to provide this burgeoning working-class movement with a
systematic critique of capitalism, identifying its driving force in
capital accumulation as well as the obstacles that faced any attempt to
move beyond it. So superior was their analysis to that of the utopian
visions that had preceded it that it quickly became the leading
theoretical basis for socialism. With this as its intellectual basis
socialism took on the character of a historically-based movement for
revolutionary change and a real threat to the existing capitalist order.

The socialist movement spread throughout the nineteenth century, following
in capitalism's footsteps across the globe. Workers' revolts occurred on
occasion, most notably in the Paris Commune of 1870-71, while huge
socialist parties developed - officially dedicated to overturning
capitalism - with the Social Democratic Party in Germany the most prominent.
By the beginning of the twentieth century it was already clear, to quote
from the same article by Sweezy, that "the future of humanity would be
shaped by the outcome of a bitter and most likely protracted struggle
between capitalism and its internally generated opposition."

This conflict between capitalism and its internally-generated antagonist
was, however, enormously complicated by imperialism. From the beginning
capitalism was a global system, expanding into the Americas, Asia, and
Africa through a relentless process of colonization that also involved
slavery and genocide. Capitalism had arisen in a small corner of the globe
in Europe and immediately took the form of a hierarchy of states, in which
there was a definite center and periphery with intermediate states in
between. At its center the system was structured according to its own
internal requirements of production and consumption. In the colonized
areas of the periphery economies were geared almost exclusively to the
needs of the "mother country." This structural relationship was
accompanied by conditions of outright pillage - with the whole system
maintained ultimately by the superior force that the imperialist countries
were able to bring to bear to protect their interests. The natural
resources of the periphery were plundered and the economic surplus that
these nations produced was frequently siphoned away. Colonial or
neocolonial satellites were placed in conditions of debt peonage with the
capitalist metropoles acting as creditors. In this way the countries that
first industrialized retained an advantageous position at the center of
the world economy, while the barriers facing other nations seeking to
develop and to escape a peripheral position within the world-economic
system were enormous and for most countries grew worse over time. Indeed
for almost all of these nations the barriers separating center from
periphery have proven insurmountable over the centuries of capitalist
development.

As a result of the growth of capitalist empire and the resulting flow of
tribute from periphery to center, the internationalism so important to
socialist struggles frequently broke down. Considerable segments of the
working classes of Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Italy,
etc. supported the expansion of their respective empires under the belief
that it improved the positions of their nations and themselves.
Eventually, as imperialist wars for control of world territory led to the
First World War, the working classes of the advanced capitalist countries
subordinated themselves en masse to the imperial goals of their states and
corporations. The leading socialist parties, such as the German Social
Democratic Party, capitulated overnight to nationalistic war fever,
thereby abandoning socialist internationalism and giving way to what was
to be a major fratricidal conflict.

This capitulation to nationalism by the major social democratic parties,
driven in part by the self-interest of their leaders, created a deep and
unbridgeable split within the socialist movement. Rosa Luxemburg and
Lenin, standing for the most radical and defiant sections of German Social
Democracy and Russian Social Democracy, respectively, opposed the First
World War, arguing instead for socialist internationalism. The Russian
Revolution of 1917, erupting in the midst of the First World War, was
spurred forward by the socialist leadership of Lenin and the Bolshevik
Party. The rise of the Soviet Union constituted a turning point in world
history: the first attempt on the part of a major state to overthrow
capitalism and create a socialist society.

The First World War marked the beginning of a great crisis of the
capitalist system, dominating the first half of the twentieth century,
including two global conflagrations and a full decade of economic
depression. While the center capitalist nations were at war with each
other or experiencing depression, their hold on the peoples in their
empires broke down. This made it possible for many of the populations of
the periphery to break away. Within just a few years after the Second
World War, the Chinese Revolution of 1949 occurred. Altogether a third of
humanity occupying roughly the same portion of the world's land mass
separated from the capitalist system in the twentieth century. Hundreds of
millions of people including large numbers within the capitalist world
itself came to identify with socialism in some form or another. The result
of these developments was that the struggle between capitalism and
socialism was to take on new and more intense forms.

Already at the time of the Russian Revolution the warring European powers
had sent troops to support the White Army against the Red Army in the
Russian Civil War. The Red Army triumphed but at enormous cost: the small
industrial proletariat that was the main force behind the revolution and
that provided the crack troops for the Red Army was decimated, thereby
depriving the revolution of its main class force. Meanwhile revolutionary
working-class outbreaks had been bloodily suppressed in Germany and
Central Europe in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. The
failure of revolution in the West meant that the Soviet Union was
effectively isolated.

The defeat of the White Army and their Western allies in the Civil War,
coupled with the preoccupation of the capitalist powers in rebuilding
their own economies following the First World War, bought the new
revolutionary society in the Soviet Union some breathing space. But the
realities of a socialist revolution occurring in extremely unfavorable
conditions in an underdeveloped country set the stage for a tragedy of
vast proportions that was to develop over decades. Under pressure to
develop rapidly, if only to be able to defend itself, the Soviet Union set
out on a path of rapid industrialization that involved the forced
expropriation of the kulaks and middle peasantry and enormous human
hardship, cruelty, and suffering. The intention was to achieve in decades
through what was called "socialist primitive accumulation" what capitalist
societies had taken centuries to achieve. This strategy of building
"socialism in one country" in an underdeveloped nation recovering from
civil war led to a military-style cleavage between the leaders and the
population, which was to harden over the years into a new class division.

Lenin in the early years of the revolution fought the growth of
bureaucracy and Great Russian chauvinism. But his death and the rise of
Stalin to the top of the party bureaucracy marked the triumph of
bureaucratic control and the removal of power from the masses. This was
followed by the purging of the old Bolshevik leadership and the end of any
attempt to build socialism in the sense of a society controlled by the
direct producers. Revolutionary ardor from below was replaced with an iron
fist from above - although workers were given important social welfare
benefits and securities in areas such as employment and housing that were
lacking in capitalist society, bolstering support for the
post-revolutionary system. The Soviet Union early on adopted what
economists call a "war economy" characterized by a forced drafting of
population and resources in successive five year plans.

Although brought into being by a revolutionary movement determined to
construct a socialist society, the Soviet Union had ceased by the 1930s to
be socialist in the sense of a society moving toward a more egalitarian
economic and social structure. Yet, it remained a post-revolutionary
society distinguished in many ways from capitalism. Competition between
enterprises played almost no role in the economic workings of Soviet
society. Private ownership of the means of production had been abolished.
Unemployment was virtually non-existent. Many basic social amenities were
guaranteed.

Despite its veering away from socialist goals, the Russian Revolution's
expropriation of capitalist private property, followed by the creation of
a distinct post-revolutionary society, constituted a grave threat to
capitalism, especially if other peoples were thereby encouraged to follow
the same path. Hence the survival and economic development of the Soviet
Union was looked upon with growing dismay by the ruling classes in the
West. The need to recover from the damage inflicted by the First World
War, however, prevented any further military action against the Soviets in
the aftermath of the war. During the Great Depression of the 1930s
capitalism was preoccupied with its own immediate survival, while the
Soviet Union was experiencing record growth. The first capitalist nation
to find a way out of the depression was Hitler's Germany, which revived
its economy through a process of rapid rearmament. The magnitude of the
Nazi threat led to an unlikely alliance between Britain, the United
States, and the Soviet Union in the Second World War.

Still, no sooner was the outcome of the war certain than the demonization
of the Soviet Union by the ruling classes of the West began in earnest.
The anticommunist scare represented by McCarthyism in the United States
was used to split and crush the labor movement along with the larger New
Deal alliance between labor, farmers, and civil rights activists.
Preparations were made and battle lines drawn for what had all the
appearance of a developing Third World War. Coming out of the Second World
War with an atomic bomb monopoly, the United States initiated a strategy
of rollback aimed at reducing Soviet influence in Europe. But this
strategy was arrested by the Soviet Union's rapid development of the bomb.

A prolonged stalemate was thus established that became known as the Cold
War. The threat of war continued with both of the main protagonists arming
themselves with thousands of nuclear weapons, and was doubtless only
prevented by the certainty of mutual assured destruction. Unable to
continue its strategy of rollback, the United States chose to concentrate
on maintaining the two-thirds of the world that remained firmly in
capitalist hands. It thus sought to prevent any further revolutions
against the system. In practice this meant keeping the imperialist system
intact. This was coupled with another and even more important part of the
U.S. strategy: to make sure that those nations that had managed to exit
the system would be unable to achieve success at building a socialist
society. The greatest argument against socialism had always been its
impracticality. If this objection could be erased capitalism's days would
be numbered.

Thus arose the three components of the Cold War strategy of the capitalist
world: (1) a massive arms race against the Soviet Union in which the
United States and its allies were always a few steps ahead, despite the
emergence in the end of what was called nuclear parity; (2) active
military intervention by the United States throughout the third world,
eventually adding up to the loss of millions of lives, coupled with
economic and political pressure on the periphery, designed to keep these
nations in line while maintaining a constant net flow of wealth to the
countries at the center of the system - in accord with the whole history of
U.S imperialism; and (3) unrelenting hostility, including economic
blockades and political and military pressure, aimed at those states that
had exited the system.

A minimal set of economic and political reforms were introduced in the
Soviet Union in the mid-1960s, but these modest reforms were resisted by
already entrenched interests at the top of society. A new class or
priviligentsia (consisting of apparatchiks, managers, and privileged
intellectuals) had emerged and consolidated its rule over the decades.3
Although not able to own the means of production and to pass on such
wealth through inheritance as in the case of capitalism, the new Soviet
ruling class was nonetheless able to secure a highly favored treatment for
its progeny by ensuring privileged access to education and other means of
advance. In the 1960s, '70s, and '80s the Soviet Union sank into economic
stagnation, resulting from bureaucratic ossification, misplaced economic
priorities (e.g., investment in heavy industry and military expenditures
at the expense of necessary consumption), and the long-term effects of the
continual forced drafting of labor and resources, which undermined the
conditions of production and the environmental basis for growth.

Stagnation also characterized the other countries in the Soviet bloc,
which were forced to replicate the bureaucratic rigidities of the Soviet
Union-blocking any attempts to generate free socialist development. When,
in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, attempts were made to chart
separate courses that threatened the stability of the Soviet bloc, Soviet
tanks were sent in and these experiments were brought to an end.

What crippled the whole development of the Soviet Union from the start and
contributed to its final demise (well after the actual struggle for
socialism there had been lost) was the enormous and continuing military
burden imposed from the outside, starting with the invasion by the
advanced capitalist nations in support of the White forces and culminating
in the Cold War. For a rich capitalist nation, such as the United States,
which normally operates below capacity production with large amounts of
unemployment, high levels of publicly-financed military spending can boost
the economy. Just as such spending boosted Hitler's Germany in the 1930s,
it also ended the Great Depression in the United States. The Depression
simply merged into the Second World War when the flood of orders for war
goods started arriving from Europe. After the war, recognizing the fact
that military spending served to bolster the economy and with a great
empire (Pax Americana as it was called) to defend, the United States
continued high-level Pentagon spending.

One of the main strengths of a centrally-planned economy, however, is that
it normally operates at full employment with full utilization of
productive capacity. In economic terms, it operates on its production
possibilities curve rather than below it. Hence, any expansion of military
output must come at the expense of something else - the classic trade-off of
guns and butter. Forced to compete in an arms race with the United States
and other rich capitalist countries, the smaller Soviet economy was
compelled to divert its resources away from consumption goods and
ultimately from the necessary investment in the means of production
themselves, which require continual maintenance and eventual replacement
with better, more productive plant and equipment. For the Soviet Union the
necessity of the state diverting its resources to military production - and
on a level required to maintain parity with the United States - was a
perpetual disaster. In the Cold War, the capitalist world proved far more
able to afford massively wasteful military spending than its
post-revolutionary rival.

Similar problems faced other post-revolutionary states. Burdened with the
difficulty of developing the economy under conditions of economic
underdevelopment and unrelenting hostility from the capitalist powers most
of these states saw the rise of regimes that sooner or later succumbed to
capitalism either directly or indirectly. In China the Cultural Revolution
unleashed by Mao attempted unsuccessfully to combat the rise of a new
ruling class out of the Communist bureaucracy itself, which he feared
would take the society back to capitalism. The Cultural Revolution failed
and Mao's worst fears were to be realized.

The rise of Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in 1985 seemed at first to offer
hope of a major overhaul of the system. The social, economic, and
ecological decline of Soviet society by that time was so severe, however,
that the state was no longer in a position to carry out the necessary
reforms to restore its economy and society, even if it had the will to do
so, while also keeping the capitalist world economy at bay. The option of
mobilizing the population in an attempt to revive genuine revolutionary
change was never contemplated, since it was opposed to the ruling
interests. By the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 it was clear
that capitalism had won the Cold War, and two years later the Soviet Union
itself collapsed. Writing for the New Yorker (January 23, 1989) economist
Robert Heilbroner captured the prevailing view in the United States: "Less
than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between
capitalism and socialism is over, capitalism has won."

Nevertheless, many, Heilbroner included, still believed that socialism in
another sense, not as an outright alternative to capitalism but as a
humanization and rationalization of it, might somehow persist. With the
split of the socialist movement at the time of the First World War the
original social democratic parties of Europe had evolved in two
directions. One was the revolutionary current associated with Luxemburg
and Lenin. The other had supported the First World War and had turned into
a largely reformist movement, geared to promoting trade union interests,
the welfare state, and (at its most radical) the nationalization of the
commanding heights of the economy. For this movement, now often designated
as "social democrat" to distinguish it from a more thoroughgoing
socialism, the object was to create a more rational capitalism, one more
amenable to socialist values, rather than break with the economic
structure of the system. It relied on building up political parties aimed
at obtaining electoral victories as opposed to encouraging popular revolt.
In practice, European Communist Parties moved toward a similar position in
what was called Eurocommunism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union many
professed to believe that parliamentary socialism of a social democratic
variety would come to the fore, representing the common bond between
Eastern and Western Europe.

Social democracy, however, had waned considerably even before the fall of
the Soviet bloc. Its main achievement, the development of the welfare
state, was a product of the brief "golden age" of economic growth in the
advanced capitalist countries in the quarter-century following the Second
World War. With the economic slowdown that began in the 1970s the powers
that be regarded the welfare state as a luxury to be discarded as part of
a general economic restructuring. The rise of neoliberal globalization
undercut all dreams of a rational, social-democratic society within a
capitalist environment. Social democracy suffered its most dramatic defeat
following the 1981 election of Francois Mitterrand as the first Socialist
president of France. Mitterrand began his term of office with a program of
nationalization and Keynesian-style promotion of effective demand. But
after two years of pursuing this program and facing the opposition of
finance capital Mitterrand, in an attempt to cling to power, reversed
himself and committed his Socialist government to a neoliberal strategy.
By the time the Berlin wall fell social democracy had already shown itself
to be bankrupt.

In the periphery of the world economy the disappearance of the Soviet
Union was to have a devastating effect, further closing off avenues for
socialist-oriented change. Although it had long been a conservative and
stagnant society with a hardening class structure, the Soviet Union had
nonetheless, as part of its own Cold War foreign policy, provided some
support to revolutionary movements and governments in the periphery, as a
way of weakening the rival capitalist system. With the Soviets gone these
movements and societies in the third world found themselves increasingly
deprived of crucial outside support and the prospects for national
liberation struggles were everywhere lessened.

By the 1990s the victory of capitalism in the Cold War had therefore
virtually eliminated any possibility that the revolutions of the twentieth
century would or could lead to working models of alternative societies.
Not only had the Soviet Union been defeated in the Cold War, but socialism
as the real-life alternative to capitalism was pronounced eternally dead
by the victors since it had been tried and had failed. From now on, the
prevailing ideology incessantly proclaimed, capitalism was the only game
in town: there was no alternative. It was "the end of history."

But was this right? Had socialism really been tried and failed? And was
capitalism truly the culmination, the final end-point, of world history?

First, Cuba remained as a standing reproach to all those who had abandoned
hope for socialism and a beacon to the oppressed - above all to the rest of
Latin America. Although a small, poor nation that after the destruction of
the Soviet Union was left to rely on its own meager resources while facing
the crazed hostility of the sole global superpower, Cuba nonetheless
pulled through. It is emerging from its "special period" with a society in
which socialist planning and a commitment to equality have generated
levels of education and health equal to those of the richest nations of
the world. The greening of Cuba and its achievement of agricultural
sustainability, despite the economic blockade against it by the United
States, are inspiring poor countries throughout the world. The
demonstration effect of Cuban socialism is only now beginning to be felt
in a socialist resurgence that is taking hold everywhere in Latin America.

Second, crucial to the foregoing argument has been recognition of the fact
that the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 was not the end, as often said,
of actually existing socialism but simply the termination of a historical
process that had commenced three quarters of a century before with the
first significant attempt to break away from capitalism and to build a
working socialist society. The Russian Revolution and subsequent
revolutionary breaks had occurred under extremely unfavorable conditions
in economically underdeveloped countries. Internal struggles and external
interventions brought most of these revolutions down not long after they
emerged. In the Soviet case the society had ceased to pursue a socialist
path toward equality and cooperation, in which the direction of the
society would be determined by its own working class, as early as the
Stalinist takeover in the 1930s. After that it became a stagnant
post-revolutionary (but no longer in any meaningful sense socialist)
society, which still managed to maintain itself in existence and to
provide a modicum of benefits to its population. Yet, its very stagnation
guaranteed that it must at some point in the future either move decisively
toward socialism by turning back to the masses, or toward capitalism by
allowing the ruling stratum to turn itself into a true ruling class, which
would inevitably choose capitalism over socialism. In the end the latter
transpired. Hence, the real defeat of socialism in the Soviet Union, as
opposed to the demise of the Soviet Union as a separate nation state,
occurred not with the end of the Cold War, but had taken place decades
prior in the 1930s.

The capitalist victors in this struggle naturally wish to believe and to
convince all others that the fall of the Soviet Union proved that
socialism is in all cases doomed to failure. Such an interpretation is,
however, neither logically nor historically sound. The struggle to
generate a capitalist society out of a feudal one in the waning Middle
Ages was itself a long and protracted process, with many false starts and
defeats. Early struggles for a bourgeois society, though often promising,
were engulfed by feudal social relations and lacked the stamina to
survive. It required several centuries and a new historical conjuncture
before capitalism was able to establish a significant beachhead and ward
off its enemies enabling it to grow into a global force. Whether history
will "repeat" itself in this respect is something no one knows. But that
such a possibility exists cannot logically or historically be disproved.

Moreover, it is obvious today, in ways that it was not a decade and a half
ago, that capitalism's triumph was to be extremely short-lived, since the
global economic slowdown and increasing class polarization that have
haunted its steps since the 1970s continue to develop.

Capitalism is a system devoted not to the satisfaction of human needs but
to the accumulation of capital. During the first century and a half
following the industrial revolution the conditions of capital accumulation
at the center of the capitalist world were extremely favorable. Industry
had to be built up from scratch and there was a seemingly unlimited scope
for investment. Hence, there was a vast demand for capital, which was
always in short supply. Once industry had been built up, however, so that
it was possible to supply capital for investment out of existing
depreciation funds with little net investment, the economic dynamism of
the system broke down and a long-run tendency toward economic stagnation
set in. The severity of this problem became evident at the time of the
Great Depression.

What is now referred to as a "golden age" of economic growth in the 1950s
and '60s was made possible by exceptional circumstances following the
Second World War that provided the conditions for rapid growth. These
included such factors as: a backlog of consumer liquidity built up during
the war; the rebuilding of the war-devastated economies of Europe; a
second great wave of automobilization; American economic hegemony; Cold
War military spending (including two regional wars in Asia); the growth of
the sales effort; financial expansion, etc. Once these special historical
circumstances began to fade the period of relatively high growth vanished
and the underlying general tendency toward economic stagnation began to
reassert itself.*

A slowdown in economic growth, all other things being equal, threatens
profits. As stagnation reappeared (first as "stagflation," i.e.,
stagnation plus inflation) in the 1970s and then persisted in the
following decades every means were utilized to ensure that all other
things were not equal and that profits would be increased by any means
possible. Beginning in the 1980s a more naked capitalism, known as
neoliberalism, came into being. The goal was to remove all barriers to the
increase of capitalist profits and savings and to the free flow of capital
across the globe. Hence, neoliberal restructuring has come to mean:
cutbacks in wages; high unemployment and underemployment; the breaking of
trade unions; reduction of state welfare spending; tax reform designed to
redistribute income and wealth from the poor to the rich; removal of all
limits on foreign investment and repatriation of profits; privatization of
state firms; increased subsidies to capital; elimination of food programs
for the poor; the forced removal of subsistence farmers from the land;
more stringent controls on indebted third world countries; repeated
devaluation of currencies in peripheral states; reduction of environmental
restrictions, etc. With the demise of the rival system represented by the
Soviet bloc this process of neoliberal restructuring, which had been
taking place throughout the 1980s, became if anything more intense and
came to be known as economic globalization. It was given new institutional
bases through the creation of free trade agreements, such as the North
American Free Trade Agreement, and through the formation of the World
Trade Organization, which joined the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank as institutional machinery for enforcing the capitalist rules
of the game at the international level.

The result has been a growing polarization between rich and poor in every
country of the capitalist world and between rich and poor countries
generally. None of this has served to increase the rate of economic growth
within the world system as a whole, which has continued to stagnate. Yet
wealth and profits at the top of capitalist society have skyrocketed, with
a few hundred individuals at the apex of the world system now enjoying a
combined wealth that exceeds the aggregate annual income of billions of
people at the bottom.

-- end part 1 of 2 ---

* Sweezy's article "Socialism: Legacy and Renewal" can be regarded as a
classic refutation of the notion that the end of the Cold War spelled the
end of socialism. Much of the present argument is inspired by his article.

* The special developmental factors that induced the rapid growth of the
first quarter century following the Second World War have been detailed in
these pages many times. See for example: John Bellamy Foster, "The End of
Rational Capitalism," Monthly Review, March 2005.

Notes

1. Quoted in Daniel Singer, Whose Millennium?: Theirs or Ours? (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1999), 234.

2. Fourier, Owen, and Saint-Simon's followers quoted in Frederick Engels,
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (New York: International Publishers,
1978), 39 and Leo Huberman, The Truth About Socialism (New York: Lear
Publishers, 1950), 157-58.

3. See Singer, Whose Millennium?, 24-26.

k4. See Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett, "China and Socialism:
Market Reforms and Class Struggle," Monthly Review 56, no. 3 (July-August
2004).

5. Rosa Luxemburg, The Rosa Luxemburg Reader (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 2004), 302-10.


--------15 of 15--------

 Song of the open road
 Ogden Nash

 I think that I shall never see
 A billboard lovely as a tree.
 Indeed, unless the billboards fall
 I'll never see a tree at all.


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