Our Stagflation

We've hit (again) a period of stagflation and reached the limits of a certain kind of economic growth. I, as much as anybody, would like to see the economy "back on track". But I'm also a realist, and I think we need to take a realistic look at what we mean by "back on track". Really, what we are all pining for are the pre-recession years, when we lived in an atmosphere of ever increasing value and wealth, with jobs aplenty. It became a norm, as it lasted for about a generation (say, roughly 1985-2005).

My thesis rests on the belief that this generation of economic boom was based on the rise of the computer (aka - technology). Sure, actual economists will point to the recession in the early 2000s and the housing bubble in the mids, before the bust we find ourselves in now, but I tend to look at the longer historical trend and I think the housing bubble can be explained by the increase in expendable wealth that we saw happen in the 90s. Now, that money has either been lost to bankruptcy or otherwise been accumulated in the hands of the financiers and there is no engine of wealth development as the computer revolution has run its course.

Both the Republicans and the Democrats have drunk the free market kool-aid, to use a really annoying phrase of contemporary (particularly, rightist) rhetoric. It seemed that with the end of the Cold War and the latest economic boom that capitalism was the answer to society's ills. However, what capitalism depends on is innovation: the boom-bust cycle is endemic to the system, the booms are dependent on technological innovation that then transforms society (steel, electricity, etc.).

But my contention has always been - there's an ultimate limit somewhere: eventually we run out of transformative ideas. There are only so many elements in the universe and they can be arranged in only so many ways. Of course, I'm sure there have been prognosticators in the past that have declared the end of transformation at whichever point and been proven wrong. And I'm not willing to declare that we've reached that point yet (because I'm never wrong - I'm only opinionated on stuff I'm pretty damn sure of), but the logical conclusion is that we are now at a historical point which may at least turn out to be a lull. There's not much the government can really do to spur the economy (though Obama's investment in green technology may prove to be the catalyst he hopes it to be). Really, we as a society should be thinking about how to make the most of what we have, economically, rather than seeing the wealth accumulated in the hands of the few and hoping that innovation will solve the unemployment problem (and meanwhile blaming the government for not "fixing the economy").

A Problem with American Education

One of the many problems with American education is that we've split policy decisions from what actually happens in the classroom. I just finished reading Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System, and while I found much of the discussion interesting and even aspects illuminating, what really got to me was that there were no classrooms in the book. Teachers and students were almost completely absent - referred to, at times quoted, but never manifested. This is tragic for me, because it means that ultimately the book is still part of the top down model that has frustrated so many teachers in the last round of education reform. Maybe the book is a necessary corrective to the muckity-mucks who seem to have a life mission to destroy education in the name of saving it, but it left me feeling hollow.

The books about education that I like are based on describing schools, children and adults. They peek into the lives of the people and their schools and examine what's working and what's not working. This is why I like Jonathan Kozol, who writes stories about children with policy implications, never policy books with child implications (which is putting the cart way before the horse, don't you think?). I even liked the Thernstroms' book No Excuses though I thought it was limited in certain ways. Although it seemed heavy-handed in the policy lessons they drew, at least there were children and schools and a sober look at what was working and not working.

I can't understand why so much in education seems to be drawn from non-educators from both the right and the left. In the 1960s, the sorts of education reform programs that were instituted (instead of experimented with) were top down affairs that forced teachers to, for instance, create "open classrooms," which any experienced teacher is likely to see off the bat is a bad idea from a purely logistical perspective. Or, these days, we have the right-wing business model people who insist that we can test our way out of the problem.

I've been in three urban schools now, and they've all had their problems, but they've also all had a large number of committed, even passionate, competent teachers. Yes, there are teachers out there that need to get out of the classroom (and please, dear God, keep them out of administration as well - why does it seem that the most incompetent people get the promotions?). But there are way more good teachers and great teachers out there. Why isn't the nation identifying these people and asking them what the school districts/school administrations can do to make things better/easier? After all, good and great teachers are teaching because they love children - they want the system to work for children, they don't have the ulterior motives (promotions, political power, fame) that administrators have.

My two-cents on the policy front: Everything that happens outside of the classroom should be designed to make the job of a teacher easier. Principals should be creating systems that support teachers: school discipline, culture, tone, supplies, books, etc.; Districts should be figuring out how to support principals in making these things happen. Teachers serve the students, principals serve the teachers, superintendents serve the principals. The power and the money make it feel like the students should serve the teachers, the teachers serve the principals, the principals serve the superintendents and so because of the way power works (corrupting, and so forth) the flow of service gets all mucked up.

(Caveat: serving students best needs means that teachers have to be demanding, and it might in the short term feel like an inverse power relationship, but if teachers start from the perspective of "I'm doing this because it is in your (student's) best interest because you are immature", then the power is limited to some extent and not abused - the other relationships are between adults and thus cannot be subject to the same rationale).

Ultimately, what education policy books lack, even Ravitch's, which claims to understand and make a case for a liberal education (as in: more than just reading, writing and arithmetic) on humanistic grounds, is an understanding that what takes place in the classroom is really about relationships. Education happens in that space between an adult and 30 or so young people. It is about human beings and communities and any policy that discounts and ignores that fact is a policy that is bound to fail.

The Revolution is in the Labor Movement

Perhaps I'm biased in that I come to revolutionary politics through Marxist theory, but I've believed for a while now that what hope there is for our society is to be found in the labor movement. MLK realized this (and some conspiracy theorists claim this is the reason for his assassination) - he was killed while in Memphis working in support of a sanitation workers' strike, part of a developing Poor People's Campaign.

For various and sundry reasons, I've largely been disconnected from the labor movement since my move to Boston from Los Angeles in 2004. Today, I dipped my toe back in the waters and it proved to be a cool and refreshing experience.

According to the Hotel Workers Rising website, "On August 31, 2009, Hyatt fired its longtime housekeeping staff at its three Boston-area hotels. Many of the fired housekeepers worked for their hotels for over 20 years. Many were required to train their replacements before being fired. Their replacements are being paid minimum wage." UNITE-HERE has been trying to establish itself as the hotel workers' union and to get the jobs back for the "Hyatt 100" and for over a year, the Hyatt has refused. It's downright shameful.

Today, UNITE-HERE and allies targeted 15 cities for demonstrations, Boston was one of those cities and I was one of the marchers. It was an hour of carrying signs, marching a picket line, and shouting slogans (No Justice, No Peace; Bring back - the Hyatt 100; Shame on the Hyatt - Boycott the Hyatt; etc.). One of the things that struck me, was that here, on the picket line, was the real America - a diverse group of some 200 people, young and old, of many ethnicities, of various political persuasions, united behind one cause: justice for hardworking, poorly paid workers who got the shaft by rich people because the bottom line was more important than the livelihoods of their fellow human beings.

The experience for me was also somewhat transformative, in the sense that I began to feel connected to the whole. I've been thinking a lot about the individual and the group, and it is this sort of experience in which one's individuality becomes swirled together into the collective, and one has the experience of being part of the collective - united together in common, righteous purpose. It is a heady experience - though one that can be difficult to achieve if the individual is not ready to surrender a bit of his/her individuality to become part of the whole.

Anyway, it gave me a little bit of hope - if we can grow that movement, without getting divisive, perhaps we'll get back on the path. In the meantime - boycott Hyatt, and get involved!

I took some pictures:

My Wife Rocks My World . . . and other thoughts

I've been a huge fan of the poem, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron for as long as I can remember; certainly at some point around my revolutionary epiphany in high school I heard this poem on the radio (God bless WZBC). Somehow or another my wife found this CD of Scott-Heron's work called Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, which includes the afore-mentioned poem. Fucking brilliant.

It's much in keeping with a conversation I had with Somebody's Daughter about the lamentable state of today's youth and the forestalling of the revolution. My hypothesis has recently been that the end of the Cold War seems to have made communism disappear as a theoretical objective on the basis of the failed experiment that was the Soviet Union. This seems crazy to me, since the US has been a failed (though improving) democracy for the last 200 years. I don't really understand how the philosophical ideal gets completely rejected because the practical applications didn't meet the ideal, but that's not the point. The real point is that without the ideal of communism (people should be equal and our human relationships should be based on the recognition of that equality) people have nothing to turn to, no belief structure that provides hope, other than a disturbing, conservative, selfish, inward looking, me-first (or, perhaps worse, "my group" first) mentality. The belief in a greater humanity is seriously lacking.

The poem reminds me of another facet of the problem, which is that to a large extent it would seem that we've replaced revolutionary action with revolutionary posturing - being a revolutionary on television and making public pronouncements is somehow more important than the quiet, private work of taking care of the people around us, in our communities, and the people we encounter in our private lives, even when they are strangers. The revolutionary potential of our personal lives are way more important (which is why I have more respect for SNCC than for MLK or Malcolm), if less celebrated.

Among Scott-Heron's other poems is one called "Brother", which in a similar vein, takes the posturing revolutionaries of the 1960s (this album was released in 1970) to task for the tropes - afro, dashiki, standing on the street-corner proclaiming the revolution, while ignoring the actual needs of the people and moreover, berating those who attempt to get their needs met by "working for the man".

I was talking with another friend, who unfortunately does not blog - or I would send you to her, who was discussing a co-worker. My friend works at a progressive childcare center and her coworker is a two-year teacher who has just recently been turned on to the progressive philosophy of the center and thinks therefore, she knows more than my friend who has 9 years of experience and has been a self-taught progressive educator for 9 years. The coworker makes comments that are rooted in her understanding of the philosophy, but her application of the philosophy to the real world only exposes her ignorance. But the frustrating thing, of course, is that the coworker believes that she is being smart because she knows the lingo. It's the worst brand of political-correctness all over again.

Finally, I should probably warn my fearless readers of a rather controversial poem among this collection called "The Subject was Faggots". On face value it is as bad as it sounds. I did a google search and found some attempts to defend the poem as anti-homophobic based on the single line "Digging what I was digging, as I did" which is actually a misquote (it's really, "sitting on the corner digging all that I did as I did"). The defenses are pretty weak, in total. Perhaps a better defense (because it deals with something more problematic and essential to the poem's core structure) is that the repetition of the word "faggot" is an attempt to de-fang the term, somehow, but contextually that doesn't make a lot of sense. For what it's worth, Scott-Heron appears to have matured and his later work places him squarely in the anti-homophobic camp.

The New New Left is . . . Pathetic.

I supposed it could be called the New New Left, though I don't know if it really should be called that. It's more like the New Center That Pretends It's Left But Is Really a Bunch of Bourgeois ex-Hippies that Like to Pretend They Were Leftists in College and Are Now Comfortably Ensconced In Their Suburban and/or Trendy (Expensive) Urban Communities Where They Can Pretend that Democracy is the Answer to All Life's Problems and Now Believe There is Just Something Wrong or Off about the Working-Class and Disenfranchised Americans Who Just Won't Get with the Program.

Seriously, what is it with the latest attack on Communist ideology that seems overwhelmingly to be the perspective that I've noticed in intellectual circles? It's not like Communism is a threat to entrenched bourgeois interests anymore, and yet the attacks seem to only have gotten more intense. Apparently the New New Left (to use the shorter euphemism rather than the more accurate, but way-too-long title that I've bestowed on them) feels the need to distance themselves from Stalinism in order to get taken seriously by the other anti-communists: the Right.

Now, I'm no Stalinist and I will readily point out the failures/frustrations/and downright evil that was done in the name of Communism, but I don't think this is reason enough to discount the whole philosophy. A couple of counter-points and then a final, conclusive point:

Counterpoint 1: Plenty of nasty and evil things have been done in the name of all sorts of ideologies (by extremists and moderates, alike). I've been reading a British-written history of Iran, which lauds Reza Shah for modernizing his nation (which happened at the expense of the nomads of Iran). And what about the Native Americans? Sure the anti-communist left might admit that this is an evil, but will they condemn America, or democracy, or modern culture in the same terms that they condemn communism? Not at all. What about slavery? (With the same response from the anti-communist left.)

Counterpoint 2: Some of the most intelligent, compassionate, interesting people I've met have been Communists - Old School (which these days means, just plain old). This counts a lot in my book. Stalin was a thug (literally), but he hardly represents all Communists. The problem was that once he became the figurehead of international Communism, the rest of the movement felt compelled to go along with him for the same reason that plenty of people respected Nixon, GW Bush, or any President because he is the President. You don't have to necessarily agree with the leader to understand that internecine squabbles are more likely to hurt the long-term future. Whether Communism had a long-term future after Stalin is a whole other question, but is ultimately beside the point. The issue isn't so much with Communism as an ideology, but more the nature of groups.

Concluding Point: I am a communist (small "c") and a democrat (small "d"). As I see it, democracy is ultimately about the individual, while communism values the group (or community). We need both. The New Left strayed from the underpinnings of true communism and fought for the rights of the individual in a society that culturally demanded conformity. This was a noble fight that was ultimately won. Unfortunately, the parallel fight - for the economic rights of the people as a whole were never realized: either because the enemy was successful at defending their power, or because the college-student activists didn't have the same commitment to the economic rights of the dispossessed communities that they had for their right to "be themselves" culturally. As long as the left continues to play the anti-communist game of the Right we will never achieve the world we claim to hope to achieve. Equality is not something that can happen through an appeal to individual rights, it must be seen as a good in its own right and something that is separate.

In the end, I think we need to find a way to be self-critical and avoid the mistakes of Communism's past, while at the same time still holding on to the basic tenets of the ideology: true equality, valuing of all members of the community, and an end to exploitation.

On a separate, though related track: I was buying CDs the other night and looking in the Hip-Hop section and was struck by the overwhelming vibe of capitalist accumulation. I know there are conscious rappers out there, but I wondered why there is just so much shit that buys into the system. I'm going to go ahead and postulate that it's because of the relative youth of the art form. Older forms of music had a period where it was cool to be conscious. It seems to me that early rap was more conscious (ie-Public Enemy, KRS-One), but the bulk has been written in the last 10 years (ie-end of the Cold War, distancing from Communism of the Left, etc.) and looking at all forms of music it mostly seems that there's a lot of stupid, egotistical, masturbatory crap.

Waiting for the world to get its collective, revolutionary-self together,

DJO