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Readers' ViewsU.S. STRUGGLE FOR HEALTHCARE REFORM The Mad as Hell Doctors' national tour in support of healthcare reform stopped here Sept. 25 to support striking workers at SK Hand Tools (see SK Hand Tools strike over healthcare). Doctors, nurses and other supporters walked the picket line and held up banners supporting a single-payer plan for healthcare reform. Barbara Matthews, of the Mad as Hell Doctors, said, "We're supporting the workers who have lost their healthcare without warning. We support a single-payer plan where this kind of injustice wouldn't happen. It would redirect the money that goes to insurers into a single agency to pay healthcare providers directly. There would be no restrictions on free choice because all providers would be covered. There also wouldn't be the huge overhead we have now with the insurance companies, no huge staffs being paid to deny claims. Healthcare should be a human right, not something for a company to make profits." The Mad Docs' support of our picket line was appreciated. As one striking SK worker put it, "We've been out 30 days but it feels like yesterday. When the boss comes by and sees us smiling, he doesn't like that!" --Strike Supporter, Chicago A group of us healthcare and labor activists handed out informational leaflets at several Whole Foods stores in San Francisco in August, as part of an on-going action organized by members of the United Food and Commercial Workers. It was to protest an article by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, who has vigorously crusaded against healthcare reform, and who even said in a Wall Street Journal article that if people get sick, it's their own fault. He also has a long history of union-busting. Our leaflet, calling for ousting him as CEO, was generally well received by a widely varied crowd. After a manager came to sniff us out and left, a young Hispanic worker came out laughing. He said, "The people working here love your campaign, even if they're scared to talk. The health plan he gives us is disgusting. Since you started doing this, sales have dropped down to half. We're glad." This was music to our ears out on the sidewalk. Underneath the glitter of San Francisco, there is a lot going on. Heads up. --D. Cheneville, Oakland, Cal. In "When Unions Think Like Capitalists" (June-July N&L), Htun Lin makes the core point that a union can be a worker's best friend, or worst back-stabbing enemy. As a former union member I know he is right. He is also right about the "highfalutin' rhetoric over universal healthcare," which is socialized medicine by another name. The great socialist thinkers of the 20th century--Albert Einstein, George Orwell, Raya Dunayevskaya, George Bernard Shaw and their like--did not mince words or engage in semantic games. They spoke to reality. Lin also accurately implies that anyone who believes this administration is going to deliver bona fide socialized medicine by any name needs to realize it ain't gonna happen. As one writer in Time recently put it, "The only guy who really called this right was Karl Marx." --R. Zani, Tennessee Colony, Texas Paul Krugman's indictment of President Obama's reform efforts, in the Aug. 21 New York Times, seemed to me an important criticism precisely because he doesn't come at it just from an "economic" point of view, like Obama's technocratic "experts" on healthcare. The "wonks" have taken over the Obama administration. He is increasingly looking like Clinton redux, trying to satisfy everybody. It's why even his progressive supporters are starting to abandon Obamacare. Krugman characterized it as a "trust problem." I would call it an "ideological" problem. --Healthcare worker, California The articles "Specter of revolution stalks Iran's theocratic rulers" and "The irrepressible spirit of revolutionary Iran" in the June/July issue were refreshing. It was good to read reports on the disputed election from a leftist perspective. None of the coverage I have read mentions the widespread support Ahmadinejad enjoys among Iranians in the nation's countryside. They are overwhelmingly religious and conservative and view Ahmadinejad as a regular "fella" as opposed to the clerics that have dominated the executive since the 1979 Revolution. To many people in the countryside, Ahmadinejad is treating the urban elitist population centers with the same neglect and disregard that, in their eyes, characterized the regimes of Rafsanjani and Khatami. Thank you for providing a view from the Left. --R. Holbrook, Waynesburg, Pa. There are many ominous tendencies being reflected in the reports of the demonstrations against healthcare and other administration policies. While some of this is legitimate anger against the unemployment and bailouts in Wall Street, there are also undertones of racism and rabid right-wing demagoguery that are alarmingly reminiscent of the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy. It must be remembered that fascism emerged from the legitimate concerns of the German people that grew out of the Great Depression, and Hitler and his Brown Shirts, financed by German capitalists, succeeded in channeling that discontent into anti-Semitism and the horrors of a fascist regime. Fascism does not come from abroad. It comes from home, and we must all be aware of that. --World War II Veteran, Detroit I see a pattern in the way businesses are using the crisis in today's economy to have workers compete for jobs and barely make a living wage, which they hope will result in workers not making any waves about the treatment they get or the corruption they see. I see a pattern also in the rise in hate groups that is reported by Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center. --Sue, Chicago ENVIRONMENTALISM AND ECOSOCIALISM Franklin Dmitryev's essay on ecosocialism in the August-September issue shows that ecosocialism has an objective of abolishing capitalism and a theory of how to achieve new social relations that, however, don't have human beings at its center. It is at this crucial point that the objective and the theory are not in sync. Marx's philosophy of revolution spells out specifically what is unique to capitalist relations that needs to be overcome if a new set of social relations is to be created. Capital's integument is value production and its inverted relationship of subject and object. It is thereby human alienation. Only in uprooting value production in its alienated form can humanity regain itself. It can then become human activity in all its moments, as in labor, man/woman relations and which also includes human beings' relationship with nature. --Faruq, Crescent City, Cal. For Marx, capital's technological force and scale of social production were flawed because of humans being dominated by their own production. Ecosocialism is based on an analysis of self-alienation but often forgets the struggle side--the human side. It returns to nature as something external. --Healthcare worker, California Three hundred demonstrators trekked from downtown Richmond to the Chevron oil refinery in Point Richmond here on Aug. 15 to protest Chevron's plan to process a heavier, dirtier crude oil. The fact is that doing so will only add to the 1,000 tons of pollution and greenhouse gases the plant already emits annually. Chevron insists it isn't what goes into the refinery that matters, but what comes out. Protestors counter "dirt in = dirt out" since it is not likely Chevron would take in an obviously cheaper raw material only to spend inordinate amounts of time and money cleaning it up. --David M'Oto, California I want to send this Open Letter to Ron Huberman, the new CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. I need to know when does he plan to change the name of Bartolome de las Casas Therapeutic Occupational High School? It needs to be changed, since Bartolome de las Casas was one of the main advocates for using individuals from the continent of Africa as slaves. In his own writings de las Casas says Africans were not completely human beings. I'm waiting for his reply. I have a replacement for the current school name: it should be Toussaint L'Ouverture School. Here are three reasons for that choice:
Sincerely, --George W. Smith, Jr., Chicago Baldemar Velasquez, president of FLOC (Farm Labor Organizing Committee), spoke at a Central United Methodist Church's Peace and Justice service about the need to help change working conditions of FLOC field laborers harvesting tobacco, vegetables and fruit in North and South Carolina, Florida and the Midwest, including Michigan. The work is done under deplorable, dehumanizing conditions, now mostly by Latin American immigrants. Back in the 1970s I had relatives who worked as tenant farmers. Everybody didn't "go north." What got my attention was that African Americans working the same fields were kept separated from the Latin Americans. Their stories are about the same sub-level wages and mistreatment by employers and contractors but it's the old "divide and conquer" that's being played. Velasquez sees the need to continue the fight for Civil Rights. Although it's an uphill battle with few successes, FLOC is ongoing in the struggle. --Ray Robeson, Detroit German Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democrats may have won the recent election, but the good news about the election results was that the small third parties made significant strides in gaining popularity, which may mean that the two main parties (Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee) are being abandoned by the populace. Perhaps Germany will lead the way for America to experience a future fall of the bi-partisan parties of Wall Street, and the emergence of grassroots popular parties, who are now ill-funded, ill-organized and ill-recognized. That is mainly by design of the establishment, and the electorate's sheepish following of the donkey and the elephant. Then again, perhaps Germany is not a good example to follow. The most memorable time a "third party" made headway there, wasn't it the beginning of the Third Reich and the emergence of a little-known "Congressman" named Hitler, campaigning for his version of "Socialism" for Germany? --Observer, California Kevin Michaels' excellent piece on "Kolakowski's legacy" (Aug.-Sept. N&L) shows the positivism of his earlier work. He wrote in Main Currents of Marxism, "Marxism had been the greatest fantasy of our century. It was a dream offering the prospect of a society of perfect unity, in which all human aspirations would be fulfilled and all values reconciled." Then he continued, "Marxism has been frozen and immobilized for decades as the ideological superstructure of a totalitarian political movement, and in consequence has lost touch with intellectual developments and social realities. The hope that it could be revived and made fruitful once again proved to be an illusion. As an explanatory system it is dead, nor does it offer any method that can be effectively used to interpret modern life, foresee the future, or cultivate utopian projection." Kolakowski further argues that Stalinism was not a perversion of Marxist thought, but rather its natural conclusion. Obviously, our Marxist-Humanist vision is different. The lines I've just quoted remind me of living under capitalism. --Jerry, Chicago I have a critique of the Left: many use academic language to impress others, and things are not explained to the masses. In fact, they are confused by leftists trying to impress one another. We need to debate terms, because people want to grasp ideas. Language is very important. --Studying Marx, New York MANY FIGHTING HONORABLY TO END ILLEGAL WAR Lt. Ehren Watada's three-year fight with the Army is over. His resignation has been accepted and he will be discharged, although not honorably. He is "glad to bring the chapter to a close and move on." He is 31 and may want a life. As for the Army, it is probably relieved Watada let it off the hook. He was not "answering a higher call" as one well-meaning Congressman claimed. He was following the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), according to which it is one's duty to disobey an unlawful order. The lieutenant has consistently maintained that the U.S. prosecution of its war in Iraq is illegal. The Army has dodged a bullet in not having to defend in a court of law its attacks on the Iraqi people. I hope Ehren Watada returns someday to finish the fight if only to clear his name and that of many others who also had the courage to do what they believed was right. --Sansei, Oakland, Cal. This is an update on new programs initiated by the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (CCCO): "Cover Me" will empower military service members through education of their rights under the UCMJ and through the military regulations that will protect them. We are making contact with members of the chaplain corps, on-base social workers, mental health professionals and patient representatives to encourage their strong support. In just the three months since June, "Cover Me" volunteers have assisted with 17 CO applications and provided advocacy on discharges for 59 Marines, 26 Navy, 90 Army, 5 Air Force and 45 Reservists. We are now launching a new program to assist LGBTQ active duty service members. CCCO cannot, however, survive without the continued help of generous supporters. --Wendy Carson, Executive Director, CCCO Many veterans returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are finding conditions at home so intolerable that they are becoming increasingly desperate. This often results in broken families and rising suicides when the jobs they had are no longer available because of the economic meldown and their frustrations spin out of control. We know the right-wing militia groups have stepped up their recruiting efforts among the returning veterans who are disciplined and have many military skills. Desperate people can make desperate decisions, and I see more desperation in the U.S. today than ever before in my lifetime. --Old Veteran, Detroit DEBATING THE LGBT MARCH -- FOR EQUALITY OR LIBERATION? There's a debate going on about whether or not to support the upcoming Oct. 10-11 March in Washington for gay rights. Before Obama was elected, many of us felt we were going to get some rights. But there has been a lot of disappointment so it's understandable why the march was called. For it to be a success there have to be a lot of us there. And for it to work we have to make specific demands. How do we defend equality--which is what the March was declared to be calling for. Will the March do that? The leaders are talking about non-violent civil disobedience, marches, lobbying. We can do all of that, but what we are working for is important to be clear about. Ultimately, how do we defend equality? Part of my way of seeing what is involved is through the philosophy of Marxism. What is important to me is being able to live your life meaningfully. A quote from Rosa Luxemburg that Raya Dunayevskaya discussed in her book Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution speaks to that. It was from one of Luxemburg's letters from prison to a woman comrade in which she wrote:
That--being human--is where we want to go. --Elise, Chicago I don't support the March for a number of reasons. The one demand on equal protection is narrow and simplistic and gives power to the politicians rather than the people. It is unrealistic to pressure politicians to reverse bad legislation. The history of the Civil Rights Movement shows that once the pressure is lifted, the impact of the laws gets chipped away. You see it with the right to abortion. I'm against Prop. 8, but the institution of marriage is very sexist and I feel it should be abolished. The patriarchal institution sets up a power dynamic on queer couples, especially regarding property and child custody. I think we should fight for universal healthcare so all could benefit, not just those in relationships. In my view we need to create a movement that demands our liberation, not just equality. I think we should fight for universal healthcare, and against having poor youth slaughtered in our society. We have to oppose queer bashing and fight for the rights of queer seniors, as well. We also need to fight the violence against transgendered people. --Darrell, Chicago I am with the Gay Liberation Network and what makes us unique is that we're based on the politics of solidarity, which means that if we expect other oppressed groups to support us, we have to make it clear that we support their demands. So we get involved with issues like immigration rights, universal healthcare, and we've been to a number of demonstrations in support of youth who were gunned down by police, without asking what their attitude was on gay rights. We've been involved in the campaign to free Mumia as well as anti-war marches. One of the things that led to the passage of Prop. 8 was not reaching out to these other communities. Some of us are organizing a picket line around the White House. We'll call for Obama and the Democrats to be held accountable and make it clear we don't depend on them to hand us our rights on a silver platter. Marriage rights are important to a lot of people, so I say yes, fight for that democratic right and also fight for the overthrow of capitalism. Democratic rights are indivisible. We have to fight for all of them. --Member GLN, Chicago We appreciate your continued efforts in making visible the issues that concern us and affect women, as well as the need for key partners to take action. Your publication is a very useful resource and a good addition to our documentation center, where it will be utilized by various researchers, activists, and students who visit the center. We look forward to continued collaboration. --Juliet Were Oguttu, Isis-WICCE, Plot 23 Bukoto Street, Kampala, Uganda Your labor reporting always covers strikes and labor news not covered anywhere else. Thank you. --Stanley Rosebud Rosen, professor emeritus of University of Illinois, Santa Fe, NM N&L remains unique and an inspiration. The Perspectives for this year were excellent and well-developed and I agree with mostly everything. --Richard Greeman, co-founder of Praxis Research and Education Center, France Editor's note: The Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2009-2010 are available upon request. |
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