Strangling North Dakota with no mercy
Did you by chance read Russell Shorto's "Going Dutch" in The NY Times Sunday Magazine this weekend?
He describes the mixture of socialism and capitalism that is the Netherlands tax and social structure and how well it works.
Then there's this stark contrast with that system as described by a white, U.S. ex-patriot working in Amsterdam, with what a Dutch Corporation does elsewhere in the world, specifically here, Dutch Shell, in Nigeria. This weekend was PEN's "World Voices Festival of International Literature." (This is why Madison Smartt Bell was here, re Haiti, and our participation in all this, as well as the parallel French Cultural Institute's month of "World Nomads" cultural series, which this year features Haiti.
One of the most interesting segments of the PEN weekend was the observance of the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria. Saro_Wiwa was a powerful voice and activist protesting the evil devastation Dutch Shell has and continues to wreak in the Nigerian wetlands with its drilling and pipe lines. Dutch Shell is implicated in his death, though it insists not.
Here's that story.
Love, C.
I haven't seen that. I'll check it out. Thanks!
It's really funny I read this article right before I read yours:
http://www.adbusters.org/
magazin...pelessness.html
Hey Adam. That was a really good, hopeful piece. I think too often we simply write our fellow citizens off and forget they have the same instincts we do. The movements Graeber mentions (i've got a few of his books) are important, but I would add it's also important to go where the majority of the workers are, so to speak. This means we have to take part in bureaucratic unions like the AFL-CIO (I'm a member) and other working class organizations (including political parties) workers generally turn to (while continuing to argue for reasonable demands that are only unreasonable because of the profit motive). Just because the leadership are reformist bastards doesn't mean we should abandon the vast majority of workers. I've sort of switched my opinion on this, as I used to be less than sold on political action. anyway, thanks the for the link!
Like Lenin said, look for the person who will benefit. And you will, uh, you know, you'll, uh, you know what I'm trying to say--
Like that? That was my big lebowski reference. Finally someone catches it!! 
The chief editor of SA is a huge Big Lebowski fan and I was thinking he'd catch it.
Another good link y'all:
http://www.marxist.com/conscious...s-of-
masses.htm
Concise and true, nicely put. I agree about meeting workers/ people where they are, sowing seeds as Pete Seeger puts it. Need to brush up on my Lebowski.
Here's a link about Portugual and her economy that also may be of interest in connection to what you'd written.
As for Pete Seeger's birthday concert, I've just put up a letter describing how the state department kept a premiere, invited guest from participating in this event.
I also notified Ron Kuby, host of Air America's "Doing Time" about this. He'd raved about the show, to which he'd taken his wife as her birthday gift. For all that RC is supposedly a leftist, he's ignorant of so much. He didn't know about this sort of thing -- it wasn't mentioned at the show. He had no idea that Cuban artists and intellectuals are forbidden to come here. So he talked about this yesterday, after I sent him the information.
Love, C.
Good article! Sums it up nicely. Esp. liked the bit about workers knowing they could run the show better than their bosses. This is exactly what I found when I was working. The other workers thought the bosses were incompetent and lazy.
Hey Graeme,
I agree that the Left should meet people where they are at. I also think work in the context of capitalism is a nasty form of domination that should be challenged. Yet I don't necessarily think that political parties and bureaucratic union is the place to meet these people. The problem being that the worst exploited workers in this country are not unionized. Bureaucratic unions have ignored and/or been unable to organize service workers, the people making lattes and burgers where many young people work, or farm workers who are not even covered by normal labor law. These workers don't have a lot of access to these flawed institutions in the first place.
All classical Left approaches took place in a very different world than now. So I think the more creative and experimental Left projects are, all the better.
Hey Adam,
it is certainly true that the traditional unions have not been able to break into many service industry sectors. But this doesn't change the fact that even in today's United States workers still turn to their traditional organizations. The AFL-CIO represents 10 million workers, and Change to win 6 million. While historically low, that's still a fairly high number compared to any other worker organization. That doesn't mean that John Sweeny, Andy Stern, and whoever else are anything but reformist douche bags (labor leaders are the most conservative people in society), but it does mean writing those groups off is writing off literally millions of workers. Don't get me wrong, I wish those workers were organized by the IWW, but consciousness just isn't there yet.
Of course I'm not suggesting we ignore the vast majority of workers who are not organized, if we can organize them with a better organization I'm all for it. I just think it is more likely they'll turn to the the traditional labor unions. And I think it's more likely we get the unions to break with the Dems and develop a class independent political party (something that has happened in pretty much all other industrialized countries) than it is some relatively unknown organization organizes millions of wage earners. Sure, we'd still be fighting reformist leaders in a labor party, but at least we'd have a mass party of wage earners to build on. Believe me though, if I'm wrong, I'll be the first to admit. I've got no fetish for the traditional unions.
Bottom line is we have a lot of work to do here in the US. Right now wage earners are so unorganized and propagandized (I like how these fast food and coffee shop jobs are just for "kids" when every time I'm there I see workers in their 40 and above) it seems like we're scaling a mountain with flip flops on.
It will make the summit all the sweeter.
Adam: The Great Depression started in 1929, and the radialization manifesting itself in great strike waves took place starting about 1934. Consciousness follows events.
This period is the quiet before the storm.
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