"An angry army to give the government back to those who have always been the champions of special privilege" (Brian) by Winston

The contemporary recruitment of which could have been started at the "tea parties"??

J'Accuse! (Aug. 19, 1939) Sen. Claude Pepper (who himself later became a Cold Warrior), from The Progressive:

Reverse Robin Hood (Posted by Keith) by Keith

Thi

This piece by Jeffrey Sachs is good explaination of  the latest bank plan.  

Obama’s bank plan could rob the taxpayer

By Jeffrey Sachs

Published: March 25 2009 23:14 | Last updated: March 25 2009 23:14

The Geithner-Summers plan, officially called the public/private investment programme, is a thinly veiled attempt to transfer up to hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds to the commercial banks, by buying toxic assets from the banks at far above their market value. It is dressed up as a market transaction but that is a fig-leaf, since the government will put in 90 per cent or more of the funds and the “price discovery” process is not genuine. It is no surprise that stock market capitalisation of the banks has risen about 50 per cent from the lows of two weeks ago. Taxpayers are the losers, even as they stand on the sidelines cheering the rise of the stock market. It is their money fuelling the rally, yet the banks are the beneficiaries.

The plan’s essence is to use government off-budget money to overpay for banks’ toxic assets, perhaps by a factor of two or more. This is done by creating a one-way bet for private-sector bidders for the toxic assets, then cynically calling it “private sector price discovery”. Consider a simple example: a toxic asset with face value of $1m pays off fully with probability of 20 per cent and pays off $200,000 with probability of 80 per cent. A risk-neutral investor would pay $360,000 for this asset.

Along comes the government and says it will finance 90 per cent of the investor’s purchase and, moreover, do so as a non-recourse loan. Non-recourse means the government’s loan is backed only by the collateral value of the toxic asset itself. If the pay-out is low, the loan is defaulted and the government ends up with the low pay-out rather than full repayment of the loan.

Now the investor is prepared to bid $714,000 (with rounding) for the same asset. The investor uses $71,000 of his/her own money and $643,000 of the government loan. If the asset pays off in full, the investor repays the loan, with a profit of $357,000. This happens 20 per cent of the time, so brings an expected profit of $71,000. The other 80 per cent of the time the investor defaults on the loan, and the government ends up with $200,000. The investor just breaks even by bidding $714,000, as we would expect in a competitive auction.

Of course, the investor has systematically overpaid by $354,000 (the bid price of $714,000 minus the market value of $360,000), reflecting the investor’s right to default on the loan in the event of a poor pay-out of the toxic asset. The overpayment equals the expected loss of the government loan. After all, 80 per cent of the time (in this example) the government loses $443,000 (the $643,000 loan minus the $200,000 repayment). The expected loss is 80 per cent of $443,000, equal to $354,000.

The idea of “private sector price discovery” is therefore flim-flam. There would be price discovery if the government’s loan had to be repaid whether or not the asset paid off in full. In that case, the investor would bid $360,000. But under the Geithner-Summers plan the loan is precisely designed to be a one-way bet, for the purpose of overpricing the toxic asset in order to bail out the bank’s shareholders at hidden cost to the taxpayers.

The banks could be saved without saving their shareholders – a better deal for taxpayers and without the moral hazard of rescuing shareholders from the banks’ bad bets. Most simply, the government could provide loans to buy the toxic assets on a recourse basis,therefore without the hidden subsidy. Alternatively, the plan could give the taxpayers an equity stake in the banks in return for cleaning their balance sheets. In cases of insolvency, the government could take over the bank, the much dreaded nationalisation, albeit temporary. At the end of the Bush administration, Congress voted for the $700bn (€517bn, £479bn) troubled asset relief programme (Tarp) on the assurance the taxpayer would get fair value for money (for example, by taking equity stakes in the rescued banks). The new plan does not offer that.

Tim Geithner, Treasury secretary, and Lawrence Summers, director of the White House national economic council, suspect that they cannot go back to Congress to fund their plan and so are raiding the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the remaining Tarp funds, hoping that there will be little public understanding and little or no congressional scrutiny. This is an inappropriate institutional use of the Fed, the FDIC and the Tarp. Mr Geithner and Mr Summers should at the very least explain the true risks of large losses by the government under their plan. Then, a properly informed Congress and public could decide whether to adopt this plan or some better alternative.

Jeffrey Sachs is director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Galbraith: "No Return to Normal" - Forget the Banks, Bring on the New Deal (X.) by X.

The prominent liberal economist James K Galbraith just published an essay titled No Return to Normal in the Washington Monthly in which he unambiguously argues that the scale of the current financial crisis will radically transform the capitalist economic system for the foreseeable future. Galbraith argues that the banking system, no matter how much cash it is handed over by the Feds, cannot and will not provide consumer credit since consumers are already mired in debt that they cannot repay with their current level of income.

Galbraith, a Keynesian capitalist (i.e. he believes that capitalism is the best available economic system but that it requires strong government intervention to remain "stable") of course does not consider either of the two principal revolutionary democratic proposals to address that fundamental problem: 1) Forgive the debt (which revolutionaries can help bring about by building a nationwide debtors' union) and increase workers' share of the wealth they produce at the expense of the capitalists (which revolutionaries can help bring about by encouraging workers to struggle for democratic governance and a share of the profits at their companies, or even better, developing cooperative businesses jointly-owned and operated by the workers). Like the conservative economists crying "let them eat bread", Galbraith only considers the possibility of people massively reducing their consumption and increasing their savings. As a liberal Keynesian economist, he worries about people's welfare however and thus recommends a fairly radical New Deal plan that should give us a sense of how far we can push the Obama administration to provide resources that could be channeled to build dual power. Check out this excerpt:

"That being so, what must now be done? The first thing we need, in the wake of the recovery bill, is more recovery bills. The next efforts should be larger, reflecting the true scale of the emergency. There should be open-ended support for state and local governments, public utilities, transit authorities, public hospitals, schools, and universities for the duration, and generous support for public capital investment in the short and long term. To the extent possible, all the resources being released from the private residential and commercial construction industries should be absorbed into public building projects. There should be comprehensive foreclosure relief, through a moratorium followed by restructuring or by conversion-to-rental, except in cases of speculative investment and borrower fraud. The president’s foreclosure-prevention plan is a useful step to relieve mortgage burdens on at-risk households, but it will not stop the downward spiral of home prices and correct the chronic oversupply of housing that is the cause of that.

Second, we should offset the violent drop in the wealth of the elderly population as a whole. The squeeze on the elderly has been little noted so far, but it hits in three separate ways: through the fall in the stock market; through the collapse of home values; and through the drop in interest rates, which reduces interest income on accumulated cash. For an increasing number of the elderly, Social Security and Medicare wealth are all they have.

That means that the entitlement reformers have it backward: instead of cutting Social Security benefits, we should increase them, especially for those at the bottom of the benefit scale. Indeed, in this crisis, precisely because it is universal and efficient, Social Security is an economic recovery ace in the hole. Increasing benefits is a simple, direct, progressive, and highly efficient way to prevent poverty and sustain purchasing power for this vulnerable population. I would also argue for lowering the age of eligibility for Medicare to (say) fifty-five, to permit workers to retire earlier and to free firms from the burden of managing health plans for older workers.

This suggestion is meant, in part, to call attention to the madness of talk about Social Security and Medicare cuts. The prospect of future cuts in this modest but vital source of retirement security can only prompt worried prime-age workers to spend less and save more today. And that will make the present economic crisis deeper. In reality, there is no Social Security "financing problem" at all. There is a health care problem, but that can be dealt with only by deciding what health services to provide, and how to pay for them, for the whole population. It cannot be dealt with, responsibly or ethically, by cutting care for the old.

Third, we will soon need a jobs program to put the unemployed to work quickly. Infrastructure spending can help, but major building projects can take years to gear up, and they can, for the most part, provide jobs only for those who have the requisite skills. So the federal government should sponsor projects that employ people to do what they do best, including art, letters, drama, dance, music, scientific research, teaching, conservation, and the nonprofit sector, including community organizing—why not?

Finally, a payroll tax holiday would help restore the purchasing power of working families, as well as make it easier for employers to keep them on the payroll. This is a particularly potent suggestion, because it is large and immediate. And if growth resumes rapidly, it can also be scaled back. There is no error in doing too much that cannot easily be repaired, by doing a bit less."

The whole article is worth reading, find it here.

Class Struggle and AIG (Posted by Keith) by Keith

Eliot Spitzer, the “disgraced” former Governor of New York  (he was caught with an expensive prostitute but he was “caught” as a part of the class struggle—he had been going after financial capitalist before it became a congressional past time, and they brought him down in a scandal) published this essay in Slate.com this week.  Although he speaks about “insiders” rather than the financial capitalist he points out the relationship between AIG and Goldman Sachs.   Goldman Sachs is basically merged with the U.S. state and have their tentacles all over Obama’s administration.  An immediate task is to defeat the financial class within the Obama administration.  Jim wrote a nice essay about some of the class struggles within the Obama administration. 

Here is the Spitzer article:

The Real AIG Scandal

It's not the bonuses. It's that AIG's counterparties are getting paid back in full.

By Eliot Spitzer

---

Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

For the answer to this question, we need to go back to the very first decision to bail out AIG, made, we are told, by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last fall. Post-Lehman's collapse, they feared a systemic failure could be triggered by AIG's inability to pay the counterparties to all the sophisticated instruments AIG had sold. And who were AIG's trading partners? No shock here: Goldman, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and on it goes. So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.

It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad adventure. The payments to AIG's counterparties are justified with an appeal to the sanctity of contract. If AIG's contracts turned out to be shaky, the theory goes, then the whole edifice of the financial system would collapse.

But wait a moment, aren't we in the midst of reopening contracts all over the place to share the burden of this crisis? From raising taxes—income taxes to sales taxes—to properly reopening labor contracts, we are all being asked to pitch in and carry our share of the burden. Workers around the country are being asked to take pay cuts and accept shorter work weeks so that colleagues won't be laid off. Why can't Wall Street royalty shoulder some of the burden? Why did Goldman have to get back 100 cents on the dollar? Didn't we already give Goldman a $25 billion capital infusion, and aren't they sitting on more than $100 billion in cash? Haven't we been told recently that they are beginning to come back to fiscal stability? If that is so, couldn't they have accepted a discount, and couldn't they have agreed to certain conditions before the AIG dollars—that is, our dollars—flowed?

The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation.

So here are several questions that should be answered, in public, under oath, to clear the air:

What was the precise conversation among Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, and Blankfein that preceded the initial $80 billion grant?

Was it already known who the counterparties were and what the exposure was for each of the counterparties?

What did Goldman, and all the other counterparties, know about AIG's financial condition at the time they executed the swaps or other contracts? Had they done adequate due diligence to see whether they were buying real protection? And why shouldn't they bear a percentage of the risk of failure of their own counterparty?

What is the deeper relationship between Goldman and AIG? Didn't they almost merge a few years ago but did not because Goldman couldn't get its arms around the black box that is AIG? If that is true, why should Goldman get bailed out? After all, they should have known as well as anybody that a big part of AIG's business model was not to pay on insurance it had issued.

Why weren't the counterparties immediately and fully disclosed?

Failure to answer these questions will feed the populist rage that is metastasizing very quickly. And it will raise basic questions about the competence of those who are supposedly guiding this economic policy.

More From the Credit Card Front (Brian) by Winston

I know - it seems like I'm obsessed with their chicanery, tomfoolery, and shenanigans...well, at least the tomfoolery - so I'll make this a quickie (I'm doing lesson planning on the Lowell mills anyway)

This piece describes what represents a new low...figuratively and perhaps literally...

Basically, you could wake up tomorrow with your credit limit very close to or below your actual current balance... yikes!

The future of human beings is what matters (by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) by Keith

This essay by the Brazilian presidnet was published today in the Financial Times. 

For me, capitalism has never been an abstract concept. It is a real, concrete part of everyday life. When I was a boy, my family left the rural misery of Brazil’s north-east and set off for São Paulo. My mother, an extraordinary woman of great courage, uprooted herself and her children and moved to the industrial centre of Brazil in search of a better life. My childhood was no different from that of many boys from poor families: informal jobs; very little formal education. My only diploma was as a machine lathe operator, from a course at the National Service for Industry.

I began to experience the reality of factory life, which awoke in me my vocation as a union leader. I became a member of the Metalworkers’ Union of São Bernardo, in the outskirts of São Paulo. I became the union’s president and, as such, led the strikes of 1978-1980 that changed the face of the Brazilian labour movement and played a big role in returning democracy to the country, then under military dictatorship.

The impact of the union movement on Brazilian society led us to create the Workers’ party, which brought together urban and rural workers, intellectuals and militants from civil society. Brazilian capitalism, at that time, was not only a matter of low salaries, insalubrious working conditions and repression of the union movement. It was also expressed in economic policy and in the whole set of the government’s public policies, as well as in the restrictions it placed on civil liberties. Together with millions of other workers, I discovered it was not enough merely to demand better salaries and working conditions. It was fundamental that we should fight for citizenship and for a profound reorganisation of economic and social life.

I fought and lost four elections before being elected president of the republic in 2002. In opposition, I came to know my country intimately. In discussions with intellectuals I thrashed out the alternatives for our society, living out on the periphery of the world a drama of stagnation and profound social inequality. But my greatest understanding of Brazil came from direct contact with its people through the “caravans of citizenship” that took me across tens of thousands of kilometres.

When I arrived in the presidency, I found myself faced not only by serious structural problems but, above all, by an inheritance of ingrained inequalities. Most of our governors, even those that enacted reforms in the past, had governed for the few. They concerned themselves with a Brazil in which only a third of the population mattered.

The situation I inherited was one not only of material difficulties but also of deep-rooted prejudices that threatened to paralyse our government and lead us into stagnation. We could not grow, it was said, without threatening economic stability – much less grow and distribute wealth. We would have to choose between the internal market and the external. Either we accepted the unforgiving imperatives of the globalised economy or we would be condemned to fatal isolation.

Over the past six years, we have destroyed those myths. We have grown and enjoyed economic stability. Our growth has been accompanied by the inclusion of tens of millions of Brazilian people in the consumer market. We have distributed wealth to more than 40m who lived below the poverty line. We have ensured that the national minimum wage has risen always above the rate of inflation. We have democratised access to credit. We have created more than 10m jobs. We have pushed forward with land reform. The expansion of our domestic market has not happened at the expense of exports – they have tripled in six years. We have attracted enormous volumes of foreign investment with no loss of sovereignty.

All this has enabled us to accumulate $207bn (€164bn, £150bn) in foreign reserves and thereby protect ourselves from the worst effects of a financial crisis that, born at the centre of capitalism, threatens the entire structure of the global economy.

Nobody dares to predict today what will be the future of capitalism.

As the governor of a great economy described as “emerging”, what I can say is what sort of society I hope will emerge from this crisis. It will reward production and not speculation. The function of the financial sector will be to stimulate productive activity – and it will be the object of rigorous controls, both national and international, by means of serious and representative organisations. International trade will be free of the protectionism that shows dangerous signs of intensifying. The reformed multilateral organisations will operate programmes to support poor and emerging economies with the aim of reducing the imbalances that scar the world today. There will be a new and democratic system of global governance. New energy policies, reform of systems of production and of patterns of consumption will ensure the survival of a planet threatened today by global warming.

But, above all, I hope for a world free of the economic dogmas that invaded the thinking of many and were presented as absolute truths. Anti-cyclical policies must not be adopted only when a crisis is under way. Applied in advance – as they have been in Brazil – they can be the guarantors of a more just and democratic society.

As I said at the outset, I do not give much importance to abstract concepts.

I am not worried about the name to be given to the economic and social order that will come after the crisis, so long as its central concern is with human beings.

The writer is president of Brazil. Join the debate at www.ft.com/capitalismblog

China, and What to Do With All Those Factories (Rob) by Rob L

In an effort to review the underling conditions and causes of the present crisis, it seems that the following converging factors are true:

Real wages have been stagnant or declining vs. inflation for three decades and have reached a critical point of stress.

Neoliberal foreign policy has deteriorated domestic industry, transferring instead to developing nations.

Excessive military spending has starved the U.S. budget from maintaining domestic necessities like healthcare and education.

Like in 1991, oil interests, responding to aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East, drove up oil prices, causing domestic strife and a slowdown in global trade.

Deregulation of financial markets allowed and caused the market collapse that tipped the hand on the diseased domestic and global economy.

The world financial system was so heavily invested in the SP Mortgage schemes that no country will escape this depression.

The above points have been expounded upon by various interests and spatter a significant portion of even the lauded pages distributed by the New York Post. Here on these pages, views have come from unexpected sources, traffic has increased dramatically, and new perspectives come from brothers and sisters far away, working on their own causes. This brings us to a certain level of understanding, an even footing from which new conclusions may be approached.

A good deal of attention has been paid to the role of information technology in this crisis and the future of democracy. This is important work, since a more informed understanding of the next few years forms a structure upon which achievable plans can be erected and sculpted into reality. Is it possible, however, that technology is not yet the most powerful force in society?

There has been much said about debtor resistance to financial capital. Again, a truly massive democratic movement can not sustain itself without achievable, universal goals to rally the people. Here, there is a good deal of work left to do, especially at the ground level. Can those strategies ever mean anything more than temporary solutions to a transitory economic state?

Stand on those questions for a time. Be assured they will remain while something else takes the stage. What has been said above all comes from an informed conception of the present world. Unreality has always been a much more attractive way to look at this world, however. It might even prove elucidating to take an unwarranted perspective on weighty issues. Science Fiction has served a role in this type of analysis since its first development under the weight of a rapidly nationalizing, ceaselessly industrializing community of intellectuals. Through their visions of electric life, and mechanical wonders, these first futurists were expanding upon the ethics of their own time. The steam powered future was a safe place to explore human values, politics, and dangers without upsetting a paranoid ruling class.

With that in mind, the trends in contemporary science fiction prove useful in highlighting the present situation that is not simple enough to understand as a whole. Is it any wonder that cyberpunk enthralled readers and speculators alike in the midst of the neoliberal revolution? From Blade Runner, to 5th Element, to Firefly, deeply sensitive humanists extrapolated a world where corporate power could not be restrained from its inexorable rise to primacy. The Star Trek crew battled Russians in space, where The Next Generation brought down the wall. Enterprise instead related how the small minded creatures with a never quit attitude learned to walk the stars as humans aught to.

Cyberpunk heralded a world where humanity was lost somewhere between the net, machine implants, and corporate greed. This period of fiction predated the mystical optimism of the singularists, so machine parts on a human frame meant a sort of death of the soul and the internet was just one more tool of global control. One more consistent trait to the genre was that it was universally a Japanese world. Decades of stellar growth and a conversely floundering American business community prompted an undeniable pattern forming around a preeminent Japan, or rather, her corporation’s eventual dissolution of state power. When Japan’s economy collapsed, however, the prophecies of a world that lived under its dominance ceased to be published or even thought about.

Futurist fiction drifted to other things for a time, without quite finding a center. In fact, despite several market fads, a new school of science fiction can’t truly be pinned down just yet. It seems Vernor Vinge’s singularity is an insurmountable wall past which authors feel unqualified to climb. In the absence of a discernable future to extrapolate, steampunk and fantasy literature has experienced a remarkable rise.

A few die hard writers haven’t given up their rockets and hyper drives just yet. While no new themes have emerged, one striking consistency has emerged, the primacy of China. Joss Whedon's Firefly universe stands as the most popular image of this as a network series where all the characters regularly blurt un-translated mandarin and are surrounded by Chinese culture and writing. If China has replaced Japan as the default post-American power of choice, what does that say about what is happening now?

China is expected to post 8% growth to GDP for 2008 - once again, the largest gain out of all countries. In the wake of Neoliberal trade agreements, western heavy industry has coalesced there and in other Asian countries. The jobless recovery of the previous recession is slated to repeat on a wider scale during this depression due to the continued emigration of industry and service jobs. If it is true that domestic recovery will depend upon a return to manufacturing and infrastructure, and we folded that hand long ago, which player is going to win the pot?

Watching the Asian markets will be essential to understanding the world on the other side of this depression. China is presently investing their $600 billion stimulus package into retooling and modernizing their factories on a massive scale. While they can’t help but be carried along in the wake of the crisis, they stand a good chance of staying afloat in general. Since they presently hold $2 trillion in US currency, they also find themselves well funded to outlast the deeply indebted western nations.

There are some trials to overcome, however. The region’s inflation driven economy survives on a significant trade surplus which is drying up. China’s present plan is to readjust their target markets to developing nations, for instance, by producing low cost clothing lines that could supply African and South American states’ rapidly growing urban populations. More peripheral, but not insignificant countries like Brazil are already recovering from the crisis and this play could be a winner.

The Asian markets are holding the cards, the developed, maintained, and growing infrastructure to produce their way out of recession. The West, however, will be forced to rebuild and radically modernize what they have ignored or sold off. It is difficult to pierce the veil over Chinese politics, but with their recent adoption of the 3G wireless standard, internet access will continue to expand, a process that will result in more connection and communication. Coupled with a consistently rising standard of living and real wages, it is time to watch China for a return to democratization and inclusive reform.

Now, place this along current discussions surrounding technology and debtor resistance. Are we prepared to enter the world of tomorrow, when we lack the tools today? Resisting oppressive debt will free potential revolutionaries from burdens no person should bear, forced on the people by powers that have less and less basis in material reality. Technology and the careful adoption of new practices will ensure that these oppressed today are active and connected tomorrow, because networking is a better lever to pull on society's hinges. Put all this in context with a world balance of power that may just be shifting to another sphere. In a world past capitalism, there shouldn't be spheres of power, and we'll get there if we live long enough to get anywhere at all. A refocus of power to the Asian markets, however, could radically change to path to change.

Timeline for Accelerating Political/Social Change (Jim) by der Augenblick

It's a lot of fun reading timelines for things like the technological singularity or even just the implementation of robots in our economy. But have you ever wondered what a political/economic/social timeline would look like? I decided to put a short one together, just for fun.

2010 - We show signs of emerging from the recession we're currently in, but the rate of job growth is less than what it was at the beginning of the recession, i.e., another "jobless recovery".

2013 - We begin to enter another recession, deeper and longer than the one we're currently in. Tremendous job loss forces the federal government to take larger role in ensuring people have necessities, though relative weakness of the government compared with social democracies makes this difficult and somewhat inefficient. Still, we get by.

2017 - Again we recover from the recession, but recovery is again less than it was last time. This is owing to the vast number of jobs that have been automated. New jobs in the information technology sector are not sufficient to make up for it.

2019 - The economy enters recession again. Unprecedented job losses seizing the entire world. Unprecedented interventions from world governments manage to keep the economy going, though they are incredibly inefficient compared with the market forces they are attempting to replace.

2020 - Period of perpetual economic crisis begins. Permanent recession. Internet 3.0, the "internet of things", is ubiquitous. Production processes increasingly automated but also democratized through the next generation of social/material networking technologies.

Mid 20s - Capitalism is in severe crisis. It can't prop itself up anymore by means of market forces alone. The state can no longer prop it up in a way that is profitable. This is not localized either but is global. Growing demand for the basic necessities of life, but a smaller and smaller role left for the state. Needs are increasingly met through an organized though decentralized process which takes place over the "internet".

2025-2030 - Drastic fall in the cost of means of subsistence. Large portions of the means of subsistence are removed from the value-form all together. By the 30s food, housing, and medicine are free due to the ease with which they're produced by automated labor. Due to exponential increases in information technology and robot design, work becomes obsolete. "Unemployment" nearing 85% of the global population makes the category almost meaningless.

2030 - Though there are perhaps isolated markets, capitalism as a world system no longer exists. Neither markets nor state control of production even approached the efficiency with which the fully automated, open source economy operates. The state still exists, though it is more and more restricted to policing information, protecting against identity theft, etc.

2040 and beyond - There is no longer any state or economy as we understand them now. Society is fully "online", though the distinction between the internet and the world (and indeed machine and person) no longer exists. Flow of information and personal identity completely impossible to protect or regulate from the outside. World intelligence system totally self-regulating and communistic.

Obviously I'm just making this up—even Marshall Brain doesn't think we'd have that much automation that early. But I really haven't seen a lot of timelines like this alongside the technological ones. People seem to assume that capitalism will coexist indefinitely with this kind of explosion, and that just seems preposterous to me. But I think this is something we need to start thinking about. We need to extrapolate political, social, and economic change into the future just like we do with technology.

What's your timeline look like? Post it here.

Automation and the End of Capitalism (Jim) by der Augenblick

I wanted to write a quick addendum to Rob's post on Marshall Brain's talk about robotics and employment.

At the end of his talk Brain says the only logical plan of action given the inevitability of the massive unemployment (50 million people) and concentration of wealth that will result from full automation of labor in the next decade is to "restructure the economy" or "redesign society". Brain summarizes the way we should redesign society in four points:

• Spread the benefits of productivity increases to everyone



• Break the concentration of wealth



• Increase pay



• Reduce the work week

Brain doesn't provide a lot of details for what these actions would involve, though of the last one, reducing the work week, he says we should reduce it from 40 hrs to 30 hrs to three days to two days—until we are all "perpetually on vacation".

To put the point bluntly, Brain describes communism. Notwithstanding some of the particularities given by various thinkers—Marx even remarks at one point that we will enjoy work under communism—communism has always involved two things: (1) the distribution of labor and the distribution of the product of labor is planned and not determined by the market, and (2) we are freed of the compulsory aspect of labor. The struggle against capitalism is a struggle against the imposition of labor. It is in most cases a struggle to get more use-values for less exchange-value or to get use-values without any exchange-value attached to them.

Same thing without the jargon: communism means everyone gets as much as possible by working as little as possible.

Clearly this was impossible under conditions of scarcity. Yet technologists, engineers, scientists, and inventors all seem to agree that we are fast approaching the point where scarcity will end—if we're not there already. The question is whether the scarcity we experience now and will experience in the future is the result of nature or whether it is the result of the unplanned system we live in. Brain argues that if we continue down the current path—letting market forces stand in for conscious decisions—this technology will hurt humanity, not benefit it. But if we make conscious, rational choices about how society as a whole ought to proceed with the implementation of this technology, it can benefit everyone. In fact, it is the only way it can benefit everyone and not hurt them. That is the first way in which Brain's solution negates the fundamentals of capitalism: he says we ought to bypass the market and make conscious, direct choices about the distribution of labor and the distribution of the fruits of labor in our society.

What he does not mention—and what I would emphasize—is that the ubiquity and growth of social networking technologies lays the foundation for total, conscious, decentralized, and democratic planning of the production process and the democratic distribution of the surplus-product. Communist planning in a technologically advanced world will neither resemble "administered", Soviet-style economies, nor will it reflect market forces. The current trajectory of the development of the productive forces makes this both possible and necessary.

The second way in which he bypasses capitalism is by raising the demand that we be "perpetually on vacation". He claims the only solution to the looming crisis—a crisis which we see now only in miniature—is to demand an end to the condition of forced labor. While it may appear as though capitalism is a system in which workers individually and voluntarily contract out their labor in exchange for a wage, the fact of the matter is that the working class as a whole is enslaved by the capitalist class as a whole. Every product of labor takes the commodity form. Unlike past civilizations, we do not even keep the means of subsistence. Therefore, in order to acquire access to the means of subsistence, we must work in exchange for a wage, and we exchange that wage for the means of subsistence. Money stands as the barrier between us and what we create. It is an indirect, abstract form of slavery, but it is a form of slavery nevertheless. We are not enslaved to any one particular individual; however, we are enslaved to the value-form itself. We cannot live except by working for another person, and our share of the product of labor is determined by unconscious, unplanned market forces.

But the demand for communism is the demand that we workers as a whole, rather than having to access the product of our labor only to the extent that the non-workers want us to, instead collectively have direct control over the product of our labor. This means that, as a society, we give of ourselves what we consent to give, and we take what it is reasonable to take. Given the inevitable conditions of superabundance of products approaching, the extent to which we can take approaches infinity. Given the inevitable, exponential rise in the productivity of labor, the amount of our labor we can consent to give approaches a value of zero.

We are fast approaching the point where if we do not meet anti-capitalist demands, the vast part of humanity will sink into misery. Brain demonstrates this in his talk. Yet we are approaching a point—just behind the first point—where the conditions that make capitalism possible will no longer exist. Moreover, we are creating the point where access to social wealth is necessarily decoupled from exertion. We are making necessary a transition from a liberal democratic society to a revolutionary democratic one.

Banks to Card Debtors: Pay up now!!...Please??? (Brian) by Winston

The credit card biz used to love people with "a taste for credit" -- folks who kept high balances and more often than not paid barely above the minimum. But alas, the party is over. As the economy circles the toilet, credit card banks are reversing course -- offering incentives to pay off balances quickly so your debt balance is off their books like so many other "toxic assets." It's an interesting reversal of a long-standing policy that your balance was a good thing (I wrote about that policy a bit more indirectly here on this blog).

So why do we care? Well, they're in a panic. The banks don't know which way is up. A few weeks ago, the message was, "Buy stuff!!" Now it's, "OK - How can we make you go away?" It is times like these that a re-orientation of our relationship to debt and banks, like a debtors' union or a "bank strike," becomes more viable. The "cultural space" for (the popularization of) resistance is growing, if you will.

PS - By the way, as you might have figured out, "You are not your credit score!" rings truer because you can't even trust the accuracy of that score to begin with.

Thanks, capitalism - enjoy retirement.

Technological Change and the Revolutionary Process (Keith) by Keith

The work of the inventor and futurist Ray Kurweil was a part of our discussion in a study group in New Brunswick. (We hope to stream our study groups on line soon so that comrades outside of town can particpate too).   Here is a talk that Kurweil gave on "technology's acceralating power."

On this blog and in our practical work we have been developing the theory of revolutionary democray in a way we think is unusual among the left, we eagerly look to the future,  instead of the past. We are not critics of counsmer culture and consumption so much as we are fighting for better as well as more opportunities for consumption. We are more interetsed in productive process that have a future rather than preserving the past. 

In previos posts I argued that What is revolutionay about the working class is that workers are best able to bring down the system and today these workers are in high tech sectors of the economy.  We have also argued that the most advanced communications technology provides the scaffolding of revolutionary democratic orgainzation and enhanbces its possibilities.  Understanding technological change and its social effects is crucial for develping revolutionary democratic stratgey and tactics. 

This talk by Kurzweil raises a number of questions which it would be worth investigating further. Here are the ones that jumped out at me:

Kurzweil early in the talk says "humanity is a technology creating animal" and throughout the talk he erradicates the distinction between natural history and social history.  

Is there no difference between political/social/cultural history and natural history (evolution)? 

Kurzweil says: "price performance” improve continuously. In other words the price of technology continously declines. This is pretty easily explained by Marx's value theory. But it is impossible to explain with modern bouregois economic theory which argues prices are determined by individual subjective preferences. 

How does bourgeosie or neoclassical economics (the less deragatory term), and Kurzweil understand improved "price performance"? (Also what he calls the 40-50% defaltion rate-- which is price deflation. He also inadvertently mentions teh radical increase in teh rate of exploitation. Worker productivity in the U.S.rose from $30 per/hour to $150 per/hour) 

Is Kurweil aware of the incapablity of his theory with theories of price formation in neoclassical economics? How are the conradictions resolved ideologically? Are there openings to create division between the technocratic classes and neocalssical economics here?

Kurzweil speaks about the laws of technological evolution. What are these laws? How are they enforced? Kurzweil mentions competition (it is not clear if the laws are enforced by competition in this talk. If so, that would be Marx's basic view, but it is only under capitalist social relations that competition is orgianzed and universalized). Kurzweil seems to argue that technologival change is a given rather than a social product. 

Kurzweil use the trem "research pressure." Where does this pressure come from?

In our study group we also discussed some of the questions raised by rapid technological change in the context of Marx's theory of tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Simply stated: the amount of human labor in each commodity is reduced by technological innovations which develop labors productivity. This causes the price of the commodity to fall and th3 rate of profit to decline. Here is a paragraph from the Grundrisse where Max talks about technological changed and the end of capitalism. 

"To the degree that labour time -- the mere quantity of labour -- is posited by capital as the sole determinant element, to that degree does direct labour and its quantity disappear as the determinant principle of production -- of the creation of use values -- and is reduced both quantitatively, to a smaller proportion, and qualitatively, as an, of course, indispensable but subordinate moment, compared to general scientific labour, technological application of natural sciences, on one side, and to the general productive force arising from social combination [Gliederung] in total production on the other side -- a combination which appears as a natural fruit of social labour (although it is a historic product). Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production."

So I would also ask what are the barriers that capitalist social relationships pose to the development technology and labors' productive power and how can we find ways to explain the obstacles posed by capitalism?

It would be great if we can begin a discussion here, and do further research, discuss it at study group, write it up notes from the discussion as a blog post for those who can't make it to study cirle. 

This goes out to all the Individual Responsibility trolls (Sam) by Dick Strongball

Here's a decent article from a HuffPo blogger and ex-financial regulator breaking down in general terms who bears the brunt of the ahem "responsibility" for defrauding the entire lending system. And...SURPRISE, any financial analyst with half-a-brain knew all this mortgage fraud and wholesale robbery of the banks by their owners was taking place, but were either knocked on the head by their greedy superiors or had their red flags ignored by, double-surprise, people in the Bush administration whose job was to police the industry.

In place of any common-sense regulation and denial of credit to people with bad credit histories, the banks were essentially given free-license to gouge non-prime lendees with higher fees and interest rates and package those nuggets of toxic fantasy wealth into resellable debt. Turnover was apparently so quick that even the loan files for these transactions seem to have been lost in the shuffle.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/the-two-documents-everyon_b_169813.html

The time is past due. These banks and institutions require a stake through the heart. Our incremental overdependence on indebtedness to these vampires just for the right to live has to come to an end. I don't give a fuck if the gov grows; our new administration has to stop handing out welfare to the demon-gods of banking and start using that money to hire people to advance our infrastructure, science, health, education, and culture. It's time to start building REAL wealth in this country again, and for the first time in our history, give everyone a real shot at living quality lives.

Robots for Hire (Rob) by Rob L

While running through some research, this short talk jumped out from the Singularity Summit in 2008 on robotics and the coming economic shift pre-singularity. Marshall Brain (what a name for an AI researcher, just wow) relies mostly on labor statistics that are all fairly common knowledge to us. Using this data, however, he makes some interesting points about the 2000 - 04 recession, maintaining that IT replaced many jobs such as grocery clerks (a personal threat to yours truly), call desks, and travel agents. The resulting productive obsolescence of simple service jobs is a reduced exponential growth in global jobs contained within the economy. That trend continued ended up hobbling the uncharacteristically short recovery after 2004. In just a few years we hit another recession, where we sit now at the tip of the downswing.

Based on this, I feel it is important to consider that our present problems, while largely caused by debt, are concurrent with a deconstruction of our industrial economy and its transition into an information economy. This deconstruction has been long to build, itself an exponential process, but we are now past the knee of the curve. Is it possible then that the declining rate of profit is itself an exponential phenomenon?

The service sector which was touted to replace manufacturing and heavy industry is itself disappearing. This isn't all terrible, since these jobs are mostly held at below subsistence wages anyway. That is about as positive a spin you can wrap this in once it is also accepted just how broad sweeping these job losses will be.

The convergence of these forces, debt and obsolescence, among other factors, will result in a deep and long depression while the world economy adapts to the next paradigm. Brain's panic scenario hinges around the likelihood that nearly all service, transportation, and education jobs will be replaced by sufficiently functional robotics, resulting in 50 million jobs lost over the next 15 years. These people, Wallmart workers up to Fed-Ex drivers, are already at or just above poverty. They have little access and even less support for the education and loans necessary to enter the creative class. While 50 million may be excessive, even a significantly smaller percentage would be catastrophic to existing economic structures.

At the same time, the rest of the world is catching up to our productivity, i. e., "the world is flat/spiky". IT is transforming Africa, South America, and the rest of the world at an amazing yet welcomed rate. The potential here is the realization of our dream. Massive efficiency in production can allow for a fractional work week, material equality, etc. But without major preparation and the incentive, political or otherwise, to assist the poor in their own transition, this dream seems improbable.

However the transition is navigated, exponential learning continues. We run smack into the singularity just as we recover our footing, if we do at all. I postulate that we must be standing as equals in at that moment, or we will fail to singularize as a species. The dynamic between rich and poor will mutate into a new dynamic between smart and left behind.

Paul Volcker: Capitalism will survive, but not all of it (Jim) by der Augenblick

They're Here to Help (Brian) by Winston

Really. Just ask. They're here for you.

On that possible "reproducibility of hip hop" (Brian) by Winston

Yes. Michael Steele is keepin' it real. Well, trying to get real? Ugh...

More here.

"Busted" Approach? (Brian) by Winston

So I used to read a lot of Adbusters back in the day. It got kind of stale and repetetive. It still has some very informative and interesting pieces (and I learned the word "meme" from them before pundits now used it), but I mentally associate it more with an anarchist/black block kind of vibe or a subversive-art vibe (I don't have an artisitic bone in my body, so there's only so much accessibility there, ya know??). I still get email updates from their "culture jammer" communiques.

Issue #82 is out - Endgame Strategies. In the email highlighting the issue's features, I noticed this:

Revolutionary Potential: Editor-in-Chief, Kalle Lasn, probes the latent potential for a replay of 60s-style insurrection in the streets of North America. Will Generation O rise to the challenge of the times?

They just don't get it, do they? Why do we need to look backwards? (I don't want to start a thread of comments about the 60s - I think this blog and the movement have done a good job parsing out what to take from the 60s and what to leave behind or make anew) Why do we need some "insurrection"? I mean, my rage mojo is trigger-happy these days - some days I wanna take to the streets and throw Molotov cocktails all over...but does that create one more shred of democracy?? And I love a good march, but they need to be productive, not just polemical. Not to mention, street actions and many other 60s products were made for photojournalism and, to a greater degree, television. We now live in, for lack of a less-hackneyed phrase, the "digital age." No offense to Mr. Lasn, whom I respect, but I think "rising to the challenge" encompasses a lot more useful activities than getting turned back at the Pentagon or bustin' up some more Starbucks...

However, in the one piece released online thus far, David Graeber takes a less Adbusters-as-usual approach. It's a decent read. He plays with some terms more loosely than some pirates here might, and the stroke is broad -- but I'd like to hear what you guys think about his column. The intro paragraph, to whet your appetities:

We have reached an impasse. Capitalism as we know it is coming apart at the seams. But as financial institutions stagger and crumble, there is no obvious alternative. Organized resistance is scattered and incoherent. The global justice movement is a shadow of its former self. For the simple reason that it’s impossible to maintain perpetual growth on a finite planet, it’s possible that in a generation or so capitalism will no longer exist. Faced with this prospect, people’s knee-jerk reaction is often fear. They cling to capitalism because they can’t imagine a better alternative.

the banks are made of marble/with a guard at every door...(Brian) by Winston

...and their vaults are stuffed with silver/that the [teachers] sweated for...

upon Keith's suggestion, and in the spirit of collecting these stories as we build toward more analysis and the debtors' union, below is the text of an email I sent some fellow-travelling victims of profit motive:

So I needed to open up a "summer savings" account. Watchung did it for me at a bank that had no minimum balance (I guess they had a deal w/the bank). Montclair is so big, ya gotta do it yourself - they can't run accounts for all the employees who'd want one. Problem is, I need an account w/a low mandatory minimum balance - I clear the sucker out pretty much by late August and can't do penalties. So me and Jones go to Chase today - they were open on Presidents' Day and are in walking distance, so they got our buisness. Basically, all we wanted was a "tuck my money away so I don't spend it" account for when the summer comes. As we discussed not being able to handle the $300 minimum balance - honestly, I can't see that happening by late August - and having no need for another checking account (they like to "package" accounts), you could smell the poverty, and the conversation had this awkward, talk-in-circles, stunted kind of vibe....I thought we'd leave in search of a better po' folks' bank...

So the guy says in passing that if I had an existing relationship with Chase, he might have other things I could do. I have a credit card with Chase - I could go on for hours about cards and debt, but suffice it to say I did some dumb things in my desperate youth and I rarely use the thing now and make payments barely above the minimum - just what they love - the business calls it "a taste for credit" - they call people who pay balances "deadbeats"... Well, this guy takes one look at my roughly $17,000 card balance and says, in unison with his partner , "That changes everything." Yeah, you're telling me - it's been changing things for me for a long time....So basically, I can bundle accounts together that have an average total daily balance of $5000 (we held off on the $15,000 in case I get some windfall and pay off two grand of debt)...that's right - for those of us with little cash flow, we can keep basically nothing in both the checking and savings account, as long as we keep the card balance above $5000 - it's a disincentive to get out of debt. I wasn't shocked, but I have to admit there are few days that debt can ever be spun into something positive. Incidentally, the checking-savings connection is good to have because the feds have electronic transaction limits on savings accounts - a deterrant to using savings like a checking account - i.e. an incentive to keep your damn money in the banks and open up more accounts.

And one more - picture this: Chase Bank, the only bank in town open on a holiday, with a sign out front giving away $100 if you open a checking account w/$100 (that goes untouched for 30 days) today only...how long until these guys are working Sundays with carnival barkers outside???

I feel good - I did my part to help save capitalism today... B

PS - not to seem overly simplistic in one's analysis, but it seems to me the ____s that caused this mess need to be giving us the keys to the place, not some $100 bait...

PPS - from a race/gender/class perspective: as I watched the execs get ummm... "grilled" (ha!) by Congress, I thought to myself I'm lucky (i.e. I have the privilege) no one judges the conduct of all white males based on these guys' actions...could you imagine if a small group of say, black women, were responsible for this crisis??

PPPS - I have a relative in financial - he says these guys are DESPERATE and at least partial nationalization is pretty much a done deal before the end of 2009 (he also says he'd get his own branch from Chase if they used HIS card balance as the guide, but that's another story...)

Hip Hop is Dead, Long Live Hip Hop (Keith) by Keith

Humor can be a excellent source of critical power. The Saturday Night Live/ T-Pain sketch "I'm on a Boat" reveals a number of developments. A certain form of hip hop has been completely exhausted so that it is now just an easily reproduced shell that can carry any content... that is why the SNL video is so funny, it takes what was once a very advanced and difficult to reproduce cultural form and uses it to deliver absurd content. The video also reveals new developments in US racial constructs-- the video intensely mocks standard mainstream hip hop tropes without being racist. 

The shell of the hip hop form exploited in the snl/t-pain sketch also reveals something about how the capitalist production process develops in general and around the arts and culture in particular. Marx explains that the capitalist production process has two major phases of development. The first he calls the "formal subsumption of labor to capital" and the second he calls "the real subsumption of labor to capital." 

Take the example of shoe making. Shoe making begins as an artisan craft. Individuals make shoes-- there is no division of labor: a shoe maker produces the whole shoe by themselves.  Under the formal subsumption the capitalist gathers all the shoe makers together and puts them under one roof. The shoe makers continue working as before, each worker makes the shoe from beginning to end, only now the capitalist takes the completed shoes and sells them. Sometimes this is called "commodification."  Commosification is not really the problem in terms of art. The real problem is the real subsumption of labor to capital.

The real subsumption of labor comes next, in this phase the capitalist takes control of the production process itself.  The capitalist watches how the shoes are made and then institutes a division of labor. The division of labor de-skills the workers, so that each one is only responsible for a limited aspect of the overall process. The division of labor is the first step in mechanization and this allows the capitalist to start to replace workers with machines.

The same thing happens with cultural production. Most cultural production begins with individual artists creating their work. Capital may then commodify the product and sell it. Take an extreme example. Bob Dylan developed his craft for years playing coffee houses and practicing. Capital only sells his music but they do not control the way it is produced. Sometime this is called "artistic control." But take someone like Tiffany or Britney Spears, they are not individually talented they are not even artists they are just a cog in the machine. They labor under the real subsumption of labor to capital and the capitalist controls the production process. Their music is not artistic production it is capitalist production. 

You can usually tell when an artist has been really subsumed because their music sucks and odd things happen like orchestras appearing on country records.  Duke Elington famously commmented that there are only two kinds of music: good and bad. The difference is often in how that music is created and produced.

The SNL sketch shows that mainstream hip hop has been subsumed by capital. The song "I'm on a boat" just takes a song template for the capitalist production process and exposes it by inserting absurd lyrics. SNL has done serious artists a favor by striking a blow against the legitimacy of that template and they have opened a door for serious hip-hop artists to enter.

Settling the Debt: Who's fighting Over What and What We Can Do About It (X.) by X.

Picture yourself sitting at a huge table of diners in a restaurant. A small group of bankers, big stockholders and corporate execs feasted on champaign and caviar all night. The rest of us got anything from half a sandwich to a couple of peas. Now here comes the check and it's a huge one. The bankers and their stock-holding buddies owe most of the bill. But they don't want to pay up. And since they know the owner, they're trying to work out a deal under which they go home while the rest of us go wash dishes in the kitchen... for the next 10 years.

As Keith points out in his bold proposal to build a debtors' union, the resolution of the current global economic crisis requires that someone take a big loss. And since no one wants to take a big loss, all the economic players in the game (classes) are doing all they can to avoid paying up. The frenzied speculation that set off the financial collapse created fictitious value for years (e.g. houses that were worth $300,000 were valued and sold at $500,000 because speculators counted on house prices to keep going up forever). Now banks, hedge funds, mutual funds, etc. are sitting on a lot of IOUs that will never be paid back (e.g. impossibly high mortgages that broke homeowners cannot repay).

The rest of big business can't get loans from the collapsing banking system to finance their upcoming projects (big business always finances future projects with borrowed money since sitting on huge sums of money is not profitable). As the crisis deepens these businesses can't get new orders for whatever they're producing (whether goods like machinery, cars, etc. or services like entertainment, health care, etc.) and start to cut down production to remain profitable, which means laying off masses of workers. The workers -the rest of us- are on average buried in personal debt that we accumulated when we borrowed from the banks (credit cards, loans) to make up for our declining real wages which the big stockholders slashed over the past decades in their desperate attempt to maintain huge profit margins (see the instructive posts by Keith and Jim for their take on Marx's explanation of the declining rate of profit).

As the economic crisis continues to deepen, the following questions become more urgent every day:

-Who will get stuck with how much of the bill?
-How much worse will the ongoing depression get before the debt question is settled?

What the traditional media pundits won't discuss is that the answers to these two questions depend on two other questions:

-Who are the economic players (classes) in the 21st century economy and how are they being impacted by the current crisis?
-Which of these economic players (classes) will successfully unite to safeguard their interests at the expense of the others?

For Revolutionary Democracy, the key is to figure out how to unite as many of the progressive economic players (classes) around a concrete plan of action to force the banking and corporate players to assume responsibility for the debt caused by the capitalist system (of which they are the greatest beneficiaries and defenders).

Keith's proposal to build a debtors' union provides us with much-needed dual power strategic direction. A united front of the working classes (from the factory to the office) and small business allies capable of launching a general debt strike could force the financial and corporate powers-that-be to renegotiate consumer debt on a mass scale (a modern Jubilee as Keith points out, which we need to evangelize among progressive Christians!). A massive consumer debt settlement in turn would jump-start the economy by returning to the workers the buying power they are due (e.g. when you get your check, you can actually spend some of it and save some of it, rather than giving a huge chunk of it to the banks for your credit card bills, mortgage, etc.)

The task at hand is to flesh out the debtors' union strategic proposal (which classes would unite most readily and why) and to develop a tactical project plan (how do we go about uniting these classes in a debtors' union). Specifically, we need to:

-Analyze the current economic situation more thoroughly with the express purpose of identifying each economic player, its relationship to the 21st century economy production process and how it is currently being impacted by the crisis. For example, what is the difference between struggling old economy capitalists (auto, steel, textiles, etc.) and new economy capitalists (internet, green energy, etc.). Which ones will come out of the current crisis stronger, which ones weaker? Also, who owes how much? What is the debt burden of the average student? blue-collar family? white-collar family? Etc.

-Develop concrete action proposals with achievable short-term goals that can help people grasp the revolutionary potential of a debtors' union. While we must broadcast the debtors' union and general debt strike idea in its full boldness, we must recognize it as a long-term goal (which could become relevant sooner than later should the economic situation deteriorate quickly). In the meantime, we could start researching and broadcasting all tactics available to people to resist the banks when facing foreclosure, rising interest rates, etc. We could also document and promote all instances of collective, organized resistance such as the recent Chicago sit-down strike, reviving the old Unemployment Committees of the 30's that prevented evictions in their neighborhoods, etc. A website fully dedicated to this task -updated frequently and radically open to mass participation- could serve as an early organizing hub that progressively demonstrates what a debtors' union could do in the real world.

Sounds like a good project for an ambitious Rev Dem study circle to take up at this point in time...