Time/Date - 10:00 AM, Saturday August 3, 2012
Place - Coffee Beanery, 28557 Woodward Ave., Berkley, MI
Attending - Art M, Pat S, Kimmie S. and Susie S
The MI Emergency Manager Law Referendum will be on the ballot this November. Proponents of the EM law say it is necessary to rescue struggling communities but critics maintain that it is a power grab by Lansing that crushes the democratic process. A good summary of the powers the EM law has can be found at standup4democracy.com
The Future of Food is a video that will be shown at the Hazel Park Library, on Wed. August 8, from 6 - 8 p.m. The library is located at 123 East Nine Mile Rd. in Hazel Park. The video is free and open to the public.
The Future of Food looks at the impacts of GE food on our health and on society. We can learn where GE foods are to be found in our supermarkets, something that corporations like Monsanto do not want us to know. You can find more information at: foodandwaterwatch.org
Transition Ferndale meets next on Wed. August 15 at 7 p.m. The meeting is held at the Ferndale Public Library, located at 222 E. Nine Mile Rd. in Ferndale MI. A video entitled We’re Not Broke will be shown, with a discussion following. Admission is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
The movie tells the story of US corporations dodging billions of dollars in income tax, and how seven fed-up Americans take their frustrations to the streets, vowing to make the corporations pay their fair share. Learn more at the website: werenotbrokemovie.com
Occupy the Midwest Conference will take place in Detroit from August 23-26, 2012. It will be hosted by Occupy Detroit. Most of the Conference will be located in the 5900 Activist Center at 5900 Michigan Ave. in Detroit.
The Conference will be an opportunity for Occupy Movements in the Midwest to network, share information and skills and participate in workshops.
To volunteer or host a workshop, please call Hans at (313) 333-7104. You can also visit the following site: occupythemidwest.org
On July 3, 2012, Gov. Rick Snyder vetoed the voter ID bills that fellow Republicans maintained were necessary to crack down on voter fraud. Critics viewed the laws as a means to disenfranchise minority groups. Snyder said he believed that the bills would have created confusion among absentee voters and in ongoing registration efforts.
Next scheduled meeting for ORO is: Saturday, August 25, 2012.at the Coffee Beanery,
28557 Woodward Ave, Berkley MI from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Susie Schindler
= = =
Time/Date - 10:00 AM, Saturday August 25, 2012
Place - Coffee Beanery, 28557 Woodward Ave., Berkley, MI
Attending - Art M, Pat S, Kimmie S., Greg S and Susie S
Pat
brought up the issue of fair elections and had found two excellent
articles on voter suppression by Brentin Mock. The articles are: “How
the Right is Building a ‘Poll Watcher’ Network for November” and “Voter
Suppression Groups Plot a Million Person Army to Swarm Polls” They may
be found on an excellent website called www.colorlines.com Thanks Pat for bringing this to our attention.
We
agreed that we would like to see a class or some instruction given, on
how to be a poll watcher. The rules on this can be found at: www.Michigan.gov/sos.
In the search line, you can type in: election challenger and poll
watcher. One of the articles you will find is: “ The Appointment,
Rights and Duties of Election Challengers and Poll Watchers.”
Art
thought that it would be best to first line up a person to instruct us
in the necessary protocol, then line up a place for the meeting, perhaps
a community center. After getting a date and time, we could get the
word out to the public.
Art brought another excellent website to our attention, called www.EnergyBulletin.net
. This site is a “clearinghouse for information regarding the peak in
global energy supply.” They publish news and research concerning energy
production, the implications of peak oil in all areas of our lives, and
information on how to help people prepare for peak energy, such as
“renewable energy information, alternative financial systems, low energy
agriculture, and relocalization.”
On the www.EnergyBulletin.net
homepage, articles are listed by category: Resources, Regions,
Authors, etc. Two authors brought to our attention by Art are Gene
Logsdon and Kurt Cobb. Logsdon wrote an article on Tire Eating
Cornstalks, in which he describes how corn stalks were developed to be
strong enough to withstand high winds, but the tough stalks are
destroying tractor tires, which ends up being very costly to farmers.
Kurt
Cobb has written an article on “How Changing the Definition of Oil Has
Deceived Both Policy Makers and the Public.” He shows how government,
industry and media sources have been inflating the world oil production
figures (!!), by including substances that are not oil and are not
interchangeable with oil.
This
site contains a wealth of information, from many authors and sources,
as well as excellent book and film reviews. Thanks Art, for letting us
know about this one!
Art
also brought up the Enbridge oil spill, into the Kalamazoo River in MI,
in July 2010. Two excellent articles can be found, one at www.huffingtonpost.com
, entitled: “Michigan Pipeline Spill: Enbridge’s Neglect, Inaction to
Blame, NTSB Finds.” One quote from this article: “Enbridge didn’t
realize the pipeline was gushing oil into the Kalamazoo River and an
enjoining creek for more than 17 hours, when a gas company employee
worker pointed it out, and during that time Enbridge control center
personnel pumped more oil into the ruptured line, investigators found.”
Another article may be found at www.dailykos.com
and is entitled: “Enbridge Bullies Michigan Residents while More Tar
Sands Oil Spills onto Michigan Soil” by Lance Enderle. It was posted
VERY RECENTLY, on August 21, 2012.
Pat has been researching the changing nature of the Occupy movement and has found some excellent websites to check out, one is: www.occupycafe.org (“an open space for global conversation”) and the other is: www.interoccupy.net
The mission of www.occupycafe.org
is to expand the Occupy movement and to support the conversations it
has ignited into the wider world. It states that “conversations that
matter are one of the highest forms of ACTION.” To that end, it exists
to “connect people to people, to share and listen. The more we share and
hear our individual and collective needs, wants and visions, the more
powerful our initiatives to create real change become.” This website is a
rich source of news about Occupy, groups involved and forums that can
be joined to discuss the issues.
www.interoccupy.net
is “an interactive space for activists looking to organize for global
and local social change.” IO Newswire gathers and posts information
about “local, regional, national, global and project based organizing.”
IO Hubs allow anyone to use “a set of organizing tools for coordinating
large scale projects easily for greatest impact and reach.”
One
item from IO that Pat brought to our attention is called “Stop TPP.”
TPP stands for TransPacific Partnership. It is a “Free Trade Agreement
that is currently being pushed by the US to 10 nations of the Pacific
Rim” which would create a super-treaty that “would jeopardize the
sovereignty of the nations involved by giving that power to large
corporations like Wal-Mart, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer,
Halliburton, Philip Morris, GE, GM, Apple.”
For more information, check out this site: www.stoptpp.org
Thanks Pat, for letting us know about these excellent websites.
Our next meeting is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 8, 2012 at 10 a.m. at the Coffee Beanery (see address above).
Respectfully submitted,
Susie Schindler
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
It's the Stupid Economy
Local, state and national governments should respect and protect our human rights. According to the Declaration of Independence, "... to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men ..."
Human rights are inseparable from democracy. That is, only a democratic government thrives with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and the like. Only a democratic government will encourage and support the individual's exercise of those rights. All men and women are equal only in a society that is democratic from top to bottom.
The preamble to the Constitution says, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." That's also a pretty clear definition of the purposes of government.
As I read it, the Blessings of Liberty referred to in the Preamble are about the same as inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. The term that covers both today is human rights.
Speaking of the general welfare: In part this means providing essential services: police, fire, courts, roads, public schools, social security, access to health care, protection of the commons from pollution and misuse, and so on. What services are legitimately on this list, in a democratic society, must be determined democratically. So far, all the above mentioned services are on our society's list.
At least since James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid," Democratic and Republican politicians have acted as though guaranteeing growth in the private economy is a principal purpose of government. Sometimes they act as though it is the main function of government. How strange that the authors of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution forgot to mention it.
Economic growth is not the same thing as the general welfare, and it is certainly not the same as human rights. Too often, advocates of growth are willing and eager to trample human rights if exercise of those rights gets in their way.
All the essential functions of government need to carry on whether the private economy is expanding or contracting. It's certainly easier to provide for the general welfare if the private economy is prospering. Facilitating prosperity is generally a good thing, but ensuring growth for the private economy is not the primary function of government.
Our history includes long and short episodes of panic, crisis, depression and recession. During these periods, we the people need services like public schools, unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. During those times, we may well need them more than during periods of prosperity.
That brings us to today (summer 2012), with its issues of jobless "recovery" (AKA supposed "job creators" who have been unable to create jobs over decades of tax breaks), declining real wages, imminent financial defaults throughout the Eurozone and the threat of austerity programs everywhere. There are issues of environmental degradation, both acute and long-term. There are also long-term issues of resource depletion. Together these make it clear we cannot forever use more and more resources, so we cannot always have a growing economy.
It's far from clear where the natural limits to a growing economy are. Unfortunately, we are finding out about some of those limits by overshooting them, with results similar to a car running over a cliff.
Chernobyl and Fukushima are examples of one type of overshoot. There are many others: the Dead Zone that was the worst feature of the Gulf of Mexico until BP's Macondo oil platform disaster; droughts and fires that can't be denied although their connection to global warming can be denied; and a depressingly long list of smaller and larger disasters.
From the peculiar viewpoint of economists, these disasters can be seen as adding to GDP. For the real economy, they are a dead loss. Corporations may shed workers to improve their profits and their stock prices, while in the real economy, workplaces are closed and jobs disappear. Keep doing this for decades, as the United States has done, and we'll get an economic crisis - which we have had since at least 2008.
Today's economic crisis is not the same as the Great Depression of the 1930's. Today's Greater Depression will not be fixed by the same policies that fixed the first Great Depression.
There are similarities, to be sure. To start the Great Depression, a big financial bubble originating in the stock markets was popped. To start our 21st Century version, a big financial bubble originating in mortgage financing was popped. In both cases, the crisis was used as an excuse to extend corporate control of government and society by those parties - Democrats and Republicans in the United States today; Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany then - who were in favor of corporate control in any case.
There are certainly similarities to the two eras, but there are huge differences as well. Then, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment, in spite of a Dust Bowl caused by a combination of unsustainable farming and drought, was not nearly as degraded as it is today.
Then, the crisis was primarily financial and political. Once the economy of the 1930s was sufficiently stimulated, prosperity returned and lasted for many decades. Now, in spite of a huge stimulus program, the recovery has not brought back prosperity. The mortgage crisis, instead of being resolved by letting bankrupt institutions go bankrupt, has been turned into a sovereign debt crisis that promises a continued recession.
In terms of resources, the world has changed a lot since 1930. Now, the world has roughly three times the population it did at the onset of the Great Depression. Peak oil is driving a frantic search for alternative fuels and an equally frantic search for oil in absurdly inaccessible and difficult regions of the earth. Global warming is bringing both flooding and drought, with more of each to come. Many ocean fish stocks have already collapsed and the ocean is becoming more acidic, meaning recovery is at best unlikely. There are lots of ways in which economic growth has already overshot natural limits.
The short story is, resources needed to grow the economy have largely been used up and are now in short supply. If and when the financial part of today's economic failures is fixed, we still cannot expect a peacefully growing economy. The industrial economy which always wants more is too stupid to work with declining resources. We can expect a declining economy for the foreseeable future.
What we do not want is a government that devalues human rights and disregards democracy in a series of desperate and possibly futile attempts to revive failed and failing economic institutions. Unfortunately, that is exactly what we have now. It is exactly what we are going to get, regardless of whether Obama or Romney is our next president, unless a strong mass movement of opposition can develop.
How can we resist disregard for our rights and dismantling of democracy? Any ideas, Occupiers? Comments are invited.
Art Myatt
Human rights are inseparable from democracy. That is, only a democratic government thrives with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and the like. Only a democratic government will encourage and support the individual's exercise of those rights. All men and women are equal only in a society that is democratic from top to bottom.
The preamble to the Constitution says, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." That's also a pretty clear definition of the purposes of government.
As I read it, the Blessings of Liberty referred to in the Preamble are about the same as inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. The term that covers both today is human rights.
Speaking of the general welfare: In part this means providing essential services: police, fire, courts, roads, public schools, social security, access to health care, protection of the commons from pollution and misuse, and so on. What services are legitimately on this list, in a democratic society, must be determined democratically. So far, all the above mentioned services are on our society's list.
At least since James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid," Democratic and Republican politicians have acted as though guaranteeing growth in the private economy is a principal purpose of government. Sometimes they act as though it is the main function of government. How strange that the authors of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution forgot to mention it.
Economic growth is not the same thing as the general welfare, and it is certainly not the same as human rights. Too often, advocates of growth are willing and eager to trample human rights if exercise of those rights gets in their way.
All the essential functions of government need to carry on whether the private economy is expanding or contracting. It's certainly easier to provide for the general welfare if the private economy is prospering. Facilitating prosperity is generally a good thing, but ensuring growth for the private economy is not the primary function of government.
Our history includes long and short episodes of panic, crisis, depression and recession. During these periods, we the people need services like public schools, unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. During those times, we may well need them more than during periods of prosperity.
That brings us to today (summer 2012), with its issues of jobless "recovery" (AKA supposed "job creators" who have been unable to create jobs over decades of tax breaks), declining real wages, imminent financial defaults throughout the Eurozone and the threat of austerity programs everywhere. There are issues of environmental degradation, both acute and long-term. There are also long-term issues of resource depletion. Together these make it clear we cannot forever use more and more resources, so we cannot always have a growing economy.
It's far from clear where the natural limits to a growing economy are. Unfortunately, we are finding out about some of those limits by overshooting them, with results similar to a car running over a cliff.
Chernobyl and Fukushima are examples of one type of overshoot. There are many others: the Dead Zone that was the worst feature of the Gulf of Mexico until BP's Macondo oil platform disaster; droughts and fires that can't be denied although their connection to global warming can be denied; and a depressingly long list of smaller and larger disasters.
From the peculiar viewpoint of economists, these disasters can be seen as adding to GDP. For the real economy, they are a dead loss. Corporations may shed workers to improve their profits and their stock prices, while in the real economy, workplaces are closed and jobs disappear. Keep doing this for decades, as the United States has done, and we'll get an economic crisis - which we have had since at least 2008.
Today's economic crisis is not the same as the Great Depression of the 1930's. Today's Greater Depression will not be fixed by the same policies that fixed the first Great Depression.
There are similarities, to be sure. To start the Great Depression, a big financial bubble originating in the stock markets was popped. To start our 21st Century version, a big financial bubble originating in mortgage financing was popped. In both cases, the crisis was used as an excuse to extend corporate control of government and society by those parties - Democrats and Republicans in the United States today; Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany then - who were in favor of corporate control in any case.
There are certainly similarities to the two eras, but there are huge differences as well. Then, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment, in spite of a Dust Bowl caused by a combination of unsustainable farming and drought, was not nearly as degraded as it is today.
Then, the crisis was primarily financial and political. Once the economy of the 1930s was sufficiently stimulated, prosperity returned and lasted for many decades. Now, in spite of a huge stimulus program, the recovery has not brought back prosperity. The mortgage crisis, instead of being resolved by letting bankrupt institutions go bankrupt, has been turned into a sovereign debt crisis that promises a continued recession.
In terms of resources, the world has changed a lot since 1930. Now, the world has roughly three times the population it did at the onset of the Great Depression. Peak oil is driving a frantic search for alternative fuels and an equally frantic search for oil in absurdly inaccessible and difficult regions of the earth. Global warming is bringing both flooding and drought, with more of each to come. Many ocean fish stocks have already collapsed and the ocean is becoming more acidic, meaning recovery is at best unlikely. There are lots of ways in which economic growth has already overshot natural limits.
The short story is, resources needed to grow the economy have largely been used up and are now in short supply. If and when the financial part of today's economic failures is fixed, we still cannot expect a peacefully growing economy. The industrial economy which always wants more is too stupid to work with declining resources. We can expect a declining economy for the foreseeable future.
What we do not want is a government that devalues human rights and disregards democracy in a series of desperate and possibly futile attempts to revive failed and failing economic institutions. Unfortunately, that is exactly what we have now. It is exactly what we are going to get, regardless of whether Obama or Romney is our next president, unless a strong mass movement of opposition can develop.
How can we resist disregard for our rights and dismantling of democracy? Any ideas, Occupiers? Comments are invited.
Art Myatt
Thursday, August 9, 2012
The Future for Progressives
yes! magazine published an article by James Gustave Speth entitled "Building the New Economy: Ten Steps We Can Take Now." (No, that's not a typo. The magazine title comes in all lower-case, so in the interests of accuracy, it appears here in lower case.) You can read the article at http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/building-the-new-economy-ten-steps-we-can-take-now
With Speth's step 1, I have no argument. Our current political economy is indeed failing us socially, economically, environmentally, and politically. Speth's step 2 (progressive fusion) does not follow from step 1. There's an assumption that a set of progressive policies would correct the failure. If these policies would correct the failure, then progressive fusion makes a great deal of sense. If they would not, then progressive fusion is irrelevant, and so are steps 3-10.
What is lacking between step 1 and step 2 is an analysis of why the system is failing. Step 1 says only that the system of political economy needs to change. If we are all "progressives," then saying it needs to change in the direction of becoming more progressive is an idea we might like to believe. That does not make it right, or even close to right.
Let's step back and be explicit about what it means to be a progressive. The movement originated about a century ago. The Center for American Progress (CAP) says it "is known primarily for two major developments in American politics:
"One, political reforms crafted to break up the power of privileged interests, such as expanded suffrage, direct primaries, direct election of senators, and the initiative and referendum process
"Two, economic reforms structured to counterbalance the excessive power of business and to fight inequality measures such as the graduated income and inheritance taxes, the right to organize and other labor protections, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, old age and disability provisions, food and drug safety laws, and conservation measures"
[end quote from CAP]
These reforms were largely implemented by the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In combination with the outcome of WW II, they were successful in ending the Great Depression and initiating a period of prosperity that lasted for a number of decades.
One could argue that the oil shocks of the 1970s marked the beginnings of the failure of progressive policies. We might believe the financial crisis that interrupted the 2008 Presidential campaigns was the decisive turning point. We might look at the "free trade" mania of the 1990 that resulted in the North American Free Trade Agreement, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and other implementation of "globalization" as critical mistakes.
Regardless of when we identify the beginnings of American economic and political decline, the first impulse of today's progressives is to think, "This is just like the Great Depression. We should fix it the same way we fixed the Great Depression."
That's just wrong. It's a natural thought, but it is wrong. Today's economic crisis is not the same as the Great Depression of the 1930's. This is the Greater Depression. This will last longer and be more severe than the last Great Depression, and it cannot be solved in the same way.
There are similarities, to be sure. To start the Great Depression, a big financial bubble originating in the stock markets was popped. To start our 21st Century version, a big financial bubble originating in mortgage financing was popped. In both cases, the crisis was used as an excuse to extend corporate control of government and society by those parties - Democrats and Republicans in the United States today; Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany then - who were in favor of corporate control in any case.
The similarities are overwhelmed by huge differences. In the 1930s, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment, in spite of the Dust Bowl caused by a combination of unsustainable farming and drought, was not nearly as degraded as it is today.
Then, the crisis was primarily financial and political. Once the economy of the 1930s was sufficiently stimulated, prosperity returned and lasted for many decades.
Now, in spite of a huge stimulus program, prosperity has not returned. Median real wages have continued declining. The mortgage crisis, instead of being resolved by letting bankrupt institutions go bankrupt, has been turned into a sovereign debt crisis. European countries are the first to admit contracting economies, but they won't be the last.
In terms of resources, the world has changed a lot since 1930. Now, the world has roughly three times the population it did at the onset of the Great Depression. Even if natural resources were not themselves depleted, this means that we now would have 1/3 of the resources per capita. In fact, we have much less than 1/3 of the resources per capita.
Peak oil is driving a frantic search for alternative fuels and for oil in absurdly inaccessible and difficult regions of the earth. Global warming is bringing both more flooding and more drought, with even more to come. Most ocean fish stocks have already collapsed and the ocean is becoming more acidic, meaning recovery is at best unlikely. There are lots of ways in which economic growth since the Great Depression has overshot natural limits.
The short story is, the resources needed to grow the economy have largely been used up and are now in short supply. Then, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment then was not threatened by the accumulation of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere driving both global warming and ocean acidification. It was not threatened by fallout from Chernobyl and Fukushima and all the potential meltdowns we still might experience. If and when the financial part of today's economic failures is fixed, we still cannot expect a peacefully growing economy.
Progressive solutions have been tried. They worked, to allow an expanding global economy to benefit both ordinary people as well as corporations. They won't work again, because the real economy is not capable of continued growth. For the foreseeable future, we are going to have a contracting global economy and, with the winding down of the American Empire, an American economy that contracts more rapidly than others.
It should be clear that corporations are now mostly opposed to the welfare of the general population. Wal-Mart has displaced local businesses (both retail and manufacturing) by promoting cheap labor in manufacturing overseas and less than living wages for the ordinary workers in its outlets. So many corporations have restored profits by laying off workers and closing plants that it is an accepted management strategy, and has been for decades in the former industrial heartland of America. It's commonplace to note that banks got bailed out while the rest of us did not, and the rest of us are supposed to pay for the bailout.
If we want to have a society that operates on principles of democracy, social justice and protecting the natural environment, we're going to have to figure out how we can do this in a contracting economy, and without making the false promise that our policies can restore the old kind of economic growth, or any economic growth at all.
We need to use democratic means to advance our values under conditions of economic contraction. To do that, we either have to break the corporate control of politics or hope for the self-destruction of that corporate control; or both. We need to overcome the military response to protest and dissent. We need to create an economy that works within boundaries set by the natural environment. That does not mean unlimited energy for everyone, or even comfort for everyone, but we need the large majority of the population to support long-term sustainability.
If and when we have worked all that out, I'm pretty sure we'll be so different from the progressives of 1890-1920 that we will no more be progressives than we will be abolitionists or suffragists or environmentalists. Whatever we will call ourselves, we will be living in a much warmer world with limited resources, diminished population and much less per capita energy consumption than we are now used to. I doubt we'll want to call it progress, though I hope it will be better than the numerous dystopias imagined in "Mad Max," "The Hunger Games" and so on.
Progressive fusion is a dead end. The progressive approach of the last century is no match for the issues of this century. We need realistic ways of responding to the issues of today. To repeat the main point: These issues will not be solved by a resumption of economic growth, because the global economy has already grown past its natural limits.
Art Myatt
With Speth's step 1, I have no argument. Our current political economy is indeed failing us socially, economically, environmentally, and politically. Speth's step 2 (progressive fusion) does not follow from step 1. There's an assumption that a set of progressive policies would correct the failure. If these policies would correct the failure, then progressive fusion makes a great deal of sense. If they would not, then progressive fusion is irrelevant, and so are steps 3-10.
What is lacking between step 1 and step 2 is an analysis of why the system is failing. Step 1 says only that the system of political economy needs to change. If we are all "progressives," then saying it needs to change in the direction of becoming more progressive is an idea we might like to believe. That does not make it right, or even close to right.
Let's step back and be explicit about what it means to be a progressive. The movement originated about a century ago. The Center for American Progress (CAP) says it "is known primarily for two major developments in American politics:
"One, political reforms crafted to break up the power of privileged interests, such as expanded suffrage, direct primaries, direct election of senators, and the initiative and referendum process
"Two, economic reforms structured to counterbalance the excessive power of business and to fight inequality measures such as the graduated income and inheritance taxes, the right to organize and other labor protections, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, old age and disability provisions, food and drug safety laws, and conservation measures"
[end quote from CAP]
These reforms were largely implemented by the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In combination with the outcome of WW II, they were successful in ending the Great Depression and initiating a period of prosperity that lasted for a number of decades.
One could argue that the oil shocks of the 1970s marked the beginnings of the failure of progressive policies. We might believe the financial crisis that interrupted the 2008 Presidential campaigns was the decisive turning point. We might look at the "free trade" mania of the 1990 that resulted in the North American Free Trade Agreement, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and other implementation of "globalization" as critical mistakes.
Regardless of when we identify the beginnings of American economic and political decline, the first impulse of today's progressives is to think, "This is just like the Great Depression. We should fix it the same way we fixed the Great Depression."
That's just wrong. It's a natural thought, but it is wrong. Today's economic crisis is not the same as the Great Depression of the 1930's. This is the Greater Depression. This will last longer and be more severe than the last Great Depression, and it cannot be solved in the same way.
There are similarities, to be sure. To start the Great Depression, a big financial bubble originating in the stock markets was popped. To start our 21st Century version, a big financial bubble originating in mortgage financing was popped. In both cases, the crisis was used as an excuse to extend corporate control of government and society by those parties - Democrats and Republicans in the United States today; Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany then - who were in favor of corporate control in any case.
The similarities are overwhelmed by huge differences. In the 1930s, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment, in spite of the Dust Bowl caused by a combination of unsustainable farming and drought, was not nearly as degraded as it is today.
Then, the crisis was primarily financial and political. Once the economy of the 1930s was sufficiently stimulated, prosperity returned and lasted for many decades.
Now, in spite of a huge stimulus program, prosperity has not returned. Median real wages have continued declining. The mortgage crisis, instead of being resolved by letting bankrupt institutions go bankrupt, has been turned into a sovereign debt crisis. European countries are the first to admit contracting economies, but they won't be the last.
In terms of resources, the world has changed a lot since 1930. Now, the world has roughly three times the population it did at the onset of the Great Depression. Even if natural resources were not themselves depleted, this means that we now would have 1/3 of the resources per capita. In fact, we have much less than 1/3 of the resources per capita.
Peak oil is driving a frantic search for alternative fuels and for oil in absurdly inaccessible and difficult regions of the earth. Global warming is bringing both more flooding and more drought, with even more to come. Most ocean fish stocks have already collapsed and the ocean is becoming more acidic, meaning recovery is at best unlikely. There are lots of ways in which economic growth since the Great Depression has overshot natural limits.
The short story is, the resources needed to grow the economy have largely been used up and are now in short supply. Then, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment then was not threatened by the accumulation of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere driving both global warming and ocean acidification. It was not threatened by fallout from Chernobyl and Fukushima and all the potential meltdowns we still might experience. If and when the financial part of today's economic failures is fixed, we still cannot expect a peacefully growing economy.
Progressive solutions have been tried. They worked, to allow an expanding global economy to benefit both ordinary people as well as corporations. They won't work again, because the real economy is not capable of continued growth. For the foreseeable future, we are going to have a contracting global economy and, with the winding down of the American Empire, an American economy that contracts more rapidly than others.
It should be clear that corporations are now mostly opposed to the welfare of the general population. Wal-Mart has displaced local businesses (both retail and manufacturing) by promoting cheap labor in manufacturing overseas and less than living wages for the ordinary workers in its outlets. So many corporations have restored profits by laying off workers and closing plants that it is an accepted management strategy, and has been for decades in the former industrial heartland of America. It's commonplace to note that banks got bailed out while the rest of us did not, and the rest of us are supposed to pay for the bailout.
If we want to have a society that operates on principles of democracy, social justice and protecting the natural environment, we're going to have to figure out how we can do this in a contracting economy, and without making the false promise that our policies can restore the old kind of economic growth, or any economic growth at all.
We need to use democratic means to advance our values under conditions of economic contraction. To do that, we either have to break the corporate control of politics or hope for the self-destruction of that corporate control; or both. We need to overcome the military response to protest and dissent. We need to create an economy that works within boundaries set by the natural environment. That does not mean unlimited energy for everyone, or even comfort for everyone, but we need the large majority of the population to support long-term sustainability.
If and when we have worked all that out, I'm pretty sure we'll be so different from the progressives of 1890-1920 that we will no more be progressives than we will be abolitionists or suffragists or environmentalists. Whatever we will call ourselves, we will be living in a much warmer world with limited resources, diminished population and much less per capita energy consumption than we are now used to. I doubt we'll want to call it progress, though I hope it will be better than the numerous dystopias imagined in "Mad Max," "The Hunger Games" and so on.
Progressive fusion is a dead end. The progressive approach of the last century is no match for the issues of this century. We need realistic ways of responding to the issues of today. To repeat the main point: These issues will not be solved by a resumption of economic growth, because the global economy has already grown past its natural limits.
Art Myatt
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