=======================Electronic Edition======================== . . . RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #458 . . September 7, 1995 . . HEADLINES: . . A HIGH-WAGE, LOW-WASTE FUTURE--PART 1 . . *** . . ========== . . Environmental Research Foundation . . P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403 . . Fax (410) 263-8944; . . Internet: http://www.monitor.net/rachel/ . . e-mail: erf@rachel.clark.net . . ========== . . Back issues available by E-mail; to get instructions, send . . E-mail to INFO@rachel.clark.net with the single word HELP . . in the message; back issues also available via ftp from . . ftp.std.com/periodicals/rachel, from gopher.std.com . . and from http://www.monitor.net/rachel/ . . Subscribe: send E-mail to rachel-weekly-request@world.std.com . . with the single word SUBSCRIBE in the message. It's free. . =================================================================
Central to all these problems is the deliberate restructuring of the economy that is under way, promoted chiefly by corporate policies with the acquiescence of government. Corporations are seeking to increase their profits and competitiveness by merging and downsizing (eradicating half a million well-paid jobs each year); replacing permanent full-time workers with temporary part-timers; deliberately destroying job security as a way of imposing discipline on working people; diminishing their power to demand decent wages and benefits such as health care and retirement packages; and degrading the environment (mining natural resources at unsustainable rates worldwide, and using nature as a toilet for unwanted, often toxic, byproducts). Government's most conspicuous role in all this has been to subsidize corporate restructuring; wink at massive white-collar crime (e.g., the $500-billion-plus S&L debacle) and ignore anti-trust laws; cut taxes on those most able to pay; and reduce social spending on public transit, affordable housing, parks, playgrounds, schools, hospitals, libraries, children's nutrition, job training, and so on. This deliberate restructuring of the economy (the low-wage, high-waste option) was well under way before the Republican electoral victory last November, which merely accelerated the process without fundamentally changing it.
As we have discussed previously (REHW #409 and #451), this low-wage, high-waste option is only benefitting the wealthiest 10% of the American people --with the vast bulk of benefits going to the wealthiest 2% --while the remaining 90% of Americans have seen their incomes stagnate or shrink, their opportunities diminish, their sense of security vanish. In the midst of the wealthiest economy the world has ever known, poverty is increasing steadily even among people who are working full-time; the number of working people with health-care benefits and retirement plans is dropping; children, particularly, are being devastated. Clearly we cannot simply "grow" our way out of these problems (as both the so-called "conservatives" and the liberals assure us we can) --we've had more-or-less-steady growth for 30 years, during which time these problems have only worsened.
The political system offers up a brand of so-called "conservatism" guided by the principle, "Winner take all, and let the devil take the hindmost." These "conservatives" insist that unregulated markets should make all important decisions, without control by, or accountability to, those whose needs the economy supposedly serves (the American people).
In contrast the political system offers up "liberals" who increasingly have no clear constituency and no clear program. History has shifted and they have not kept pace. Traditionally, their approach has been to fix problems by creating government programs. But such fixes cost money and increasingly the white middle class doesn't see the benefits of government programs, and so refuses to pay for them.
The old New Deal style of government promised to counteract the market's worst tendencies with an affirmative state committed to full employment; a fair distribution of income; and an efficient provision of essential public goods (schools, libraries, transit, etc.). In New Deal times, government policy, aided by unions, sought to stabilize mass demand which gave companies markets for sales and thus gave them reason to invest, which raised productivity and lowered the costs of mass consumption goods bought by ever-better-paid workers. The damage to the environment from such mass production-and-consumption was ignored, and so was the fact that women almost exclusively (and without pay) provided all the social glue by raising children, maintaining traditional families and stable communities, and thus conserving culture.
Specifically, we used to have a nation-state capable of managing the economic environment within its territory, a national economy sufficiently insulated from foreign competitors that the benefits of demand-stimulus could be reliably captured by firms within its borders.
Furthermore, the core of the economy used to be organized into a system of mass production dominated by lead stable firms (GM, GE and so on). The size and stability of these firms made them ready targets for worker organization and made them operate like levers, extending the benefits of organization throughout the economy. The organization of production within these firms tended to reinforce class solidarity --working on the assembly line, it wasn't too hard to figure out which side you were on.
During this period, class concerns (workers vs. owners) dominated the politics of equality. The effects of 400 years of racial exclusion were largely ignored. The fact that women bore the burden of unpaid labor in the home was largely ignored. The environmental effects of a mass consumption society were largely ignored.
** There are sharper limits on the capacity of the state to promote the general welfare. These limits stem partly from globalization, which allows quick foreign competitors to capture expanding domestic markets, and which makes it easier for firms with international operations to avoid unfavorable tax or regulatory regimes. But to an even larger degree, the new conditions stem from changed demands on the state --demands that the "all thumbs and no fingers" state is not well-equipped to handle: for example, demands to (a) ease labor market transitions as certain kinds of jobs disappear and others appear; or (b) help firms modernize; or (c) fill social gaps created when women leave the home to work, or when companies abandon communities; or (d) develop common standards which then must be applied in diverse contexts (for example, occupational safety and health); or (e) promote political deliberation when money and sound bites have so completely replaced people and argument that discussion itself seems a waste.
** Traditional mass production, with its core of large firms, has collapsed. As this collapse has occurred, the white male working class has been displaced as the main focus of struggles for equality. The class struggle (workers vs. owners) has shifted to new arenas --race, gender, environmental and economic justice, and so forth. Increased competition among firms has produced many responses (for example, simply paying workers less and demanding more; leaner, more efficient, production; high-skill strategies aimed at product distinctiveness) --but all of these responses disrupt the common experiences that formed the basis of traditional industrial unionism. Firms are now more decentralized and varied in the terms and conditions of work they offer. Career paths and rewards are more jumbled, and varying skill-requirements provide further divisions.
The male working class has fragmented at the same time that women have joined the work force in large numbers, complicating the task of workplace organizing, and bringing into focus the costs of raising children, maintaining traditional families and stable communities, and conserving culture --costs that used to be hidden in the home. Now that these costs are explicit, they put new demands on the state (which the state is not adept at handling), and they blur the boundaries between society and household because no one is any longer quite sure which institutions are responsible for what.
** Within the group of people who traditionally supported democratic ideals, many new concerns tug and pull, seeking dominance. Issues of gender, race, environment, income and income distribution --all compete for political space. Life used to be much simpler: the working class struggle for material improvement was the dominant theme in politics. But now there is no dominant theme --and consequently no theme that can unify all those who, in their own individual ways, support democratic ideals.
The trend is clear: left to its own devices, this society is headed for truly ruinous division, inequality, and squalor for much of the population. To prevent that, an alternative future needs to be described, its values declared, and sides taken for its advancement.
This will require a sharp break with liberal politics. While liberals often have reasonable views about political outcomes (some equality, some decent living standards, some personal freedom), they are elitist when it comes to making it happen. Liberals don't believe that people of ordinary means and ordinary intelligence are capable of running society themselves. (This is the key difference between the liberal environmentalists [represented by, for example, Environmental Defense Fund, the Environmental Working Group, and the Natural Resources Defense Council] and grass-roots environmental justice activists.) Liberals typically favor the kinder, gentler administration OF people (usually by the state), rather than BY people --people taking action themselves through popular organization. Liberals are also deeply accommodating of corporate power, preferring to mop up after the damage is done, rather than averting the damage in the first place.
Liberalism worked for a time because its key assumptions held true: that reasonable progress toward egalitarian ideals could be made without challenging corporate power; that the state sufficed as an agent of the people; that the 'natural' organization of people (into, say, classes, or neighborhoods) assured a multiplier on state efforts. But that world is now gone, and liberalism is defunct. Unless people get much better organized, democratic politics will fail for lack of troops (think of the health care debacle) or lack of administrative capacity (think of what's happening inside workplaces, inside schools, and at Superfund dumps), or for lack of ability to convene discussions that need to occur (about race, public safety, environmental protection, neighborhood revitalization, and so on).
A new democratic politics is needed, and it must do two things: (1) it must articulate a social alternative to the "business as usual" domination of public and everyday life; and (2) it must nurture the democratic practices and organizations required to give that alternative a fighting chance.
[To be continued next week.]
=============== [1] These ideas find their roots in the work of Joel Rogers at University of Wisconsin, and Joshua Cohen at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Rogers and Cohen deserve credit for these ideas, but not blame for our bastardized version of them. For example, this week we have filched at length, and without attribution, from Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, "After Liberalism," BOSTON REVIEW (April/May, 1995), pgs. 20-23.
Descriptor terms: wealth; income distribution; poverty; urban decay; growth; joel rogers; joshua cohen; females; race; gender; injustice; inequality; high-wage low-waste option; low-wage high- waste option; new deal; liberalism;
################################################################
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Environmental Research Foundation provides this electronic
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=======================Electronic Edition======================== . . . RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #459 . . September 14, 1995 . . HEADLINE: . . A HIGH-WAGE, LOW WASTE FUTURE--PART 2: . . HOW PROGRESSIVE PEOPLE MIGHT UNITE . . ========== . . Environmental Research Foundation . . P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403 . =================================================================
1. We are endlessly divided into thousands of groups and single-issue factions. Our organizations are seldom coordinated. When they are, the coordination is typically single-issue, on-again-off-again, and more on paper than real.
Our lack of coordination stems from weakness, not from our ability to go it alone and win. Most progressive activists and groups are stretched so thin and have so few resources that they can't take time to coordinate with others, or even to think about what such coordination might look like and do for them.
The failure to coordinate weakens us still further. Inside the progressive community, opportunities for mutual gain are routinely lost. Outside the progressive community, the image of a hodgepodge of single-issue groups does not inspire wider support. Among other unhappy effects: while people care about many different issues like racial justice and the environment and worker rights and a peaceable foreign policy, single-issue organizations appeal to very narrow constituencies, or, within individuals, to only parts of their identity--usually neglecting (often completely omitting) the spiritual, healing, and redemptive parts of life.
2. Progressives lack a comprehensive, inclusive, positive vision of how the country should be run. With some justice, we are perceived as having more grievances than ideas, and the ideas we do have are seen as a laundry list, not as elements of a common constructive vision, much less a vision accessible to ordinary people. Ask the average American, or even a self-identified progressive, what progressives stand for and you will get no answer or so many different answers that it amounts to the same thing. This lack of a common positive vision further weakens progressive appeals. (So-called "conservatives" are good at this. They have a vision --however fraudulent and mean-spirited --that gives their followers a way to think about the world: lower taxes, less regulation, hymns to a "simpler" America without so many dark-skinned people, punishment of the weaker groups in society, the God-given right to cut down every last tree and fill every wetland, and so forth. The need for a rival comprehensive view among those who value truth and reason and equality is URGENT even though a commitment to truth, reason and equality complicates the construction of such a vision).
Progressive organizations thrive when they put forth practical programs of action that benefit their members or potential members, AND solve problems in the broader society (even solving problems for capitalists, on whose well-being the rest of the society unfortunately depends). Practical programs that benefit members AND benefit the larger society earn the political respect and social prestige needed to promote their own interests as those of the general public and to secure support for their own organization.
Take the case of unions in the postwar period. For decades, unions were very popular institutions, and much more powerful than at present. Why? Most fundamentally because they delivered benefits (increased wages, grievance procedures, etc.) that were of immediate importance to members and which also helped stabilize demand and mass markets after the catastrophe of the Great Depression, a feat that the owners of capital couldn't accomplish on their own. With demand stabilized, investment in mass production industries followed. This investment raised productivity, which lowered the real costs of consumer goods for everyone. By doing something for their members that also clearly helped the broader society, unions gained respect.
Or take the great modern civil rights movements of African-Americans and women. At a time when American society was far more deeply racist and sexist than it is today, these movements ignited massive popular support for two reasons: because of the clarity of the injustices against which they spoke, and because remedying those injustices would bring enormous benefits to the society as a whole: the liberation of great productive energies that had been stifled by racist or sexist patterns in the economy and private life. These movements promised not only justice for their members but a better and more rewarding life for nearly everyone.
(Make no mistake. The labor movement and civil rights struggles were first and finally about simple justice and respect --demands that stood on their own. These movements were fiercely resisted and they succeeded by using an essential tactic --disruptive protest --to overcome such resistance. Nevertheless, political success requires that demands must be framed in ways that connect their satisfaction to the satisfaction of broader, and inevitably more mundane, social interests. However narrow their core issues may be, successful movements usually serve as agents of a broader and more universally appealing social goal.)
The big problem facing progressives today is that the old mass-mobilizing projects have run out of steam, but we can't agree on new ones.
Progressive organizations today don't often (if ever) mobilize their members to action. Let's face it. Members of progressive organizations don't DO much. (Grass-roots environmentalists are an exception to this because they are often fighting to maintain their neighborhoods, their health, and their children's future against some immediate, serious threat.) Progressives mail in their checks, but the programs of most progressive organizations don't inspire their membership to take action.
Two reasons: (1) recent conditions have made it difficult for progressives to reach agreement; and (2) most progressives have stopped looking for really good projects--they have given up on trying to achieve mass appeal.
They appear to spring up spontaneously, but this is deceptive. Mass movements are created by activists who lay the groundwork for years. Sometimes the long road of hard work can be reduced by an event that grabs the attention of a large number of people. The anti-war movement of the 1960s was an example.
An essential component of EVERY movement is solidarity among its members. Sometimes this solidarity is "organic" --created by common race or ethnic background, common neighborhood or friends, common conditions of work. Sometimes it is created by shared ideology --a shared view of the world and one's place in it, which allows people to bridge their differences and work together.
Most often solidarity is supplied by both "organic" forces and by some general theory, usually elevating the organic to a universal status. For example, for generations working-class solidarity was fueled by (a) the fact of a distinctly working-class life marked by people living near each other, common employment, inter-marriage, shared restrictions on mobility, and by (b) the view that workers had shared interests as a class which also happened to be the true universal interests of society.
Today, however, those "organic" solidarities have been weakened, and there is no agreement on what the "universal interests" of society might be. Until recently, where working-class solidarity didn't exist, there was at least a civic culture rooted in fairly stable face-to-face communities, relatively stable jobs (located near the home), and an array of local public goods (schools, libraries), civic associations (churches, trade unions, PTAs, Kiwanis Clubs), sources of information (many local newspapers, even a little labor press) and many semi-public meeting places (sports leagues, taverns).
Such institutions permitted people to practice the arts of democracy --to talk to neighbors about common concerns, promote and defend arguments, listen, learn, think, and, to some degree, develop the self-confidence and common perspectives of democratic citizens.
Local politics, rather than national, remained a key determinant of local well-being, so local political culture had real meaning and had direct influence on the quality of life.
But this world is now mostly gone. Today, most people commute several hours to work. They work in relatively small organizations that are far more mixed (if no more satisfying) than those of old, and that often blur the lines between managerial and non-supervisory personnel. When people get home from work, they don't talk much to their neighbors, and aren't much involved in local community life. Shopping and watching TV are their principal leisure activities, usually pursued alone. The quality of their local neighborhood life seems to be--largely is--decided somewhere else.
The physical basis of solidarity is gone, and so is the basis for a shared ideology. No one progressive concern --whether race or class or gender or the environment --can be elevated to the level of general interest. Progressives deal with this problem by making lists and assuring each other of their sincerity about believing in each of these concerns. But ideology is not about making lists. It is about giving enough people enough of a common view of things that they are willing to work with people different from themselves. In this sense, progressives sorely lack a common ideology.
So, with the physical basis of solidarity gone, and with no issues grabbing the attention of a mass audience, modern progressives find themselves in a unique position. There is no obvious basis for solidarity; no common view of what is universally important --no common ideology --and there is no external force (Great Depression, Vietnam War) creating popular mobilization. What to do?
To solve these problems, progressives will need to look squarely at their own fragmentation and CONSTRUCT ORGANIZATIONS AND PROJECTS DESIGNED TO OVERCOME IT.
What kinds of organizations? What sorts of projects? Those with some hope of appealing to a majority, or at least a large plurality. Progressives have nearly given up trying to appeal to a majority --they seem to have settled for a dignified life on the edges of society, or a life of elite "good works." They seem to have made a decision not to really reach for governance.
Instead, progressives have retreated into denouncing all exercises of public power ("government is hopeless") or into liberalism--the belief that power cannot be exercised by ordinary people ("leave it to the experts").
Despite this gloomy assessment, the present moment is bursting with opportunity for progressive programs --a subject to which we will turn next week.
===============
[1] These ideas originated with Joel Rogers at University of
Wisconsin, and Joshua Cohen at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT). This week we have lifted large sections from
an unpublished paper by Joel Rogers, titled "How Divided
Progressives Might Unite" but we have modified its language, so
don't blame Rogers for our debased version of his ideas.
Descriptor terms: strategies; environmental movement; vision;
mass movements; social change; civic culture; solidarity;
ideology;
################################################################
NOTICE
Environmental Research Foundation provides this electronic
version of RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY free of charge
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to produce it. We would like to continue to provide this service
free. You could help by making a tax-deductible contribution
(anything you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00). Please send
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not send credit card information via E-mail. For further
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by credit card please phone us toll free at 1-888-2RACHEL.
--Peter Montague, Editor
################################################################
=======================Electronic Edition========================
. .
. RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #460 .
. September 21, 1995 .
. HEADLINES: .
. A HIGH-WAGE, LOW-WASTE FUTURE, PART 3: A DEMOCRACY CAMPAIGN .
. ========== .
. Environmental Research Foundation .
. P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403 .
=================================================================
"We are ruled by Big Business and Big Government as its paid hireling, and we know it. Corporate money is wrecking popular government in the United States. The big corporations and the centimillionaires and billionaires have taken daily control of our work, our pay, our housing, our health, our pension funds, our bank and savings deposits, our public lands, our airwaves, our elections, and our very government. It's as if American democracy has been bombed. Will we be able to recover ourselves and overcome the bombers? Or will they continue to divide us and will we continue to divide ourselves according to our wounds and our alarms, until they have taken the country away from us for good?
"...The Northern Europeans who were our country's founders exterminated or confined millions of Native Americans whose ancestors had been living here for 30,000 years. African-Americans were enslaved until the Civil War; women were not allowed to vote for 131 years, until 1920. But after the abolitionist, women's suffrage, farmers', union, progressive, civil rights, environmentalist, feminist, and gay and lesbian liberation movements, and much more immigration, the question now is whether we can found the first genuinely international democracy. If we cannot, the corporations have us.
"...It's no coincidence that within the same historical moment we have lost both our self-governance and the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, on which many millions of ordinary people have relied to represent them since the 1930s, has been hollowed out and rebuilt from the inside by corporate money. What was once the party of the common man is now the second party of the corporate mannequin. In national politics ordinary people no longer exist. We simply aren't there. No wonder only 75 million of us eligible to vote in 1994 did so, while 108 million more of us, also eligible, did not...."
Dugger goes on: "What is government about?... Ernesto Cortes, Jr., the exceptionally important organizer who helps people in communities in the Southwest to act together in their own interests, once exclaimed: 'Power! Power comes in two forms: organized people and organized money.' To govern ourselves, power is what we need. To get it we must want it and organize for it.
"This is a call to hope and to action, a call to reclaim and reinvent democracy, a call to the hard work of reorganizing ourselves into a broad national coalition, a call to populists, workers, progressives, and liberals to reconstitute ourselves into a smashing new national force to end corporate rule."
Dugger goes on to urge that everyone should come to St. Louis in November to create this new coalition. We think this is not a good idea --only because it's too soon. The ground hasn't been properly plowed for such a meeting to bear sustainable fruit. Dugger himself reportedly does not want to build the new coalition; without some minimal infrastructure, seed money, and committed organizers, such a meeting seems likely to waste resources, frustrate people, and not accomplish its goal.[2] But the impulse is right --ordinary Americans have had their democracy taken from them, right before their eyes, chiefly by corporations and by government officials (of both parties) who are financed and owned by corporations. We desperately need to get organized. Ernesto Cortes is on target: to govern ourselves once again, power is what we need, and, since we don't have money, organized people is the only way to get power.
Stepping back, the question before us is: how best to plow the ground for seeding a new progressive national coalition? In our opinion, the deepest thinking on this question has been done by Joel Rogers at University of Wisconsin and by Joshua Cohen at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In dozens of articles during the past 5 years, Rogers alone, or Rogers and Cohen together, with help from many activists, have analyzed the conditions in the U.S. that have led us to our present decline (see REHW #458 and #459). And they have suggested how we might climb out of the deep hole we find ourselves in.[3]
As Rogers and Cohen see it, we need large organizing projects that (a) can bring already-in-motion progressives into coherent alignment for further movement TOGETHER; (b) can draw into the movement many sympathetic people who are presently standing on the sidelines; and (c) can provide real material benefits for movement adherents AND for the larger society. Rogers has outlined 3 such organizing projects, emphasizing that they are not the only ones possible: (1) the New Party (which we described briefly in REHW #445), which is now perking along in 12 states; (2) Sustainable America --a project to rebuild democracy and political strength by rebuilding cities and inner-ring suburbs (the heart of the high-wage, low-waste option); and (3) a Democracy Campaign, developed with Ralph Nader.
According to recent polls, an astonishing 75 percent of Americans think government is "run by a few interests that don't care about me." Given such broad awareness of the breakdown of representative government, why not put democracy itself on the table?
Rogers writes: Imagine a Democracy Campaign --initially targeted to states, eventually providing the basis for federal reform -- aiming to equip all citizens with the rights, remedies, and organizational resources they need to practice democracy in late- twentieth-century circumstances. An immediate focus for the Campaign might be reform of our corrupt system of campaign finance and voter and party rights to allow free and fair exercise of formal self-governing powers. [See REHW #426, #427 and #433.] But the new infrastructure would need also to support us in other important social roles --as workers, consumers, taxpayers, and shareholders in social and private wealth --allowing the effective exercise of power on which we know any working democracy depends.
How might the Campaign's reforms be framed? Perhaps as a new bill of rights for each of the roles mentioned above, with the explicit background expectation throughout that the state encourage the exercise of the rights elaborated. Thus:
** The right of voters to participate freely and equally in an electoral system where candidacy is not determined by money; party competition is open and fair; and referendum, recall, and initiative are fully available... to be enhanced by universal or same-day voter registration; an election-day holiday; voting systems accurately weighing minority electoral sentiment; a revival of the fusion option in party politics;[4] lowered barriers to third party qualification and maintenance requirements; universal referendum, recall, and initiative rights; and, of course, democratically-financed elections. (As a practical matter, until we get democratic funding of elections, no progressive electoral politics can flourish beyond the local level.)
** The right of workers to form associations in the workplace free from interference by employers... to be extended by simple "check-off" certification; severe penalties for employers who interfere with organizing; explicit supports for good employer practices; and protection of the rights of "minority union" members. In all likelihood, the organization thus enabled would take a variety of forms, extending beyond today's "exclusive bargaining representative" model. What is important within this variety is that the organizations be truly "worker-owned" --independent of employer domination --and that unions in this sense grow wildly again.
** The right of consumers of goods and services to monitor, bargain over, and lobby for the regulation of their quality and sale... to be implemented, for example, by an extension of the Nader-inspired Consumer Utilities Board model to agencies like the U.S. Post Office, Social Security and Veterans administrations, public housing authorities, insurance companies and banks, and other government agencies and private producers.
** The right of taxpayers to shape the priorities of the public purse and the management of public assets... to be established through such things as set-asides of public revenues from private use of public lands to fund citizen watchdogs on such use; the requirement that data collected by the government be made available, for free and in accessible form, to citizens; vastly increased taxpayer standing rights in administrative and judicial proceedings bearing on the disposition of public assets or monies; and a restoration of public regulation of the airwaves. The right of shareholders to effective control of their assets... to be asserted against the prevailing separation of ownership and control, which is responsible for much failure of corporate accountability --most urgently in the case of private pensions, whose $3 trillion in assets lie beyond the control of their worker-owners. Reforming current pension law to permit greater control and direction by those who want it would be a natural place to start, and a fine way to drive the bankers crazy.
If Americans had these rights and supports, what might result? The honest answer is that nobody knows for sure, since they have never had most of them in the past. But it seems likely that the results would include a much livelier and more engaged civic culture; almost infinitely higher rates of voter participation; a significant reduction in corporate and government fraud, abuse, and waste; a more disciplined and programmatic approach to problems affecting the public welfare; a stronger and more effective party system for the processing of citizen demand into effective governance; and better, less bureaucratic enforcement of statutory commands.
And the appeal to progressives of all kinds is obvious. We who
believe in democracy are most advantaged by the capacity to
exercise it. Whether our wish is to form unions, organize
communities, create new producer co-ops, launch feminist
solidarity councils, green the use of federal lands, limit
corporate abuses, hold politicians accountable to promises,
mobilize our own scattered resources in economic reconstruction,
get our views expressed in the media, or do almost anything else
that's worthwhile, some increase in our capacity to organize
would obviously be welcome. Given an opportunity to change the
rules, we should grab it.
[Next week: Sustainable America.]
===============
[1] Ronnie Dugger, "Real Populists Please Stand Up," THE NATION
Vol. 261, No. 5 (August 14/21, 1995), pg. 159.
[2] Communicate YOUR ideas directly to Ronnie Dugger via E-mail:
Rdugger[12]3@aol.com, or write him c/o THE NATION, 72 Fifth Ave.,
NYC, NY 10011; enclose SASE.
[3] For example, see: Joel Rogers and others, SUSTAINABLE
MILWAUKEE: REBUILDING MILWAUKEE FROM THE GROUND UP. (Madison,
Wisc.: Center on Wisconsin Strategy [phone: 608/263-3889], 1994).
And: Joel Rogers and Josh Cohen, "Solidarity, Democracy,
Association" forthcoming in revised form in SECONDARY
ASSOCIATIONS AND DEMOCRACY (London: Verso, 1995); and: Joel
Rogers, D. Luria, and others, METRO FUTURES: A HIGH-WAGE
DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY FOR AMERICA'S CITIES AND INNER
SUBURBS (Madison, Wisc.: Midwest Consortium on Economic
Development Alternatives [phone: 608/263-3889], 1995). And:
Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, "After Liberalism," BOSTON REVIEW
(April/May, 1995), pgs. 20-23.
[4] Fusion denotes the ability of more than one party to nominate
the same (consenting) candidate for the same office in the same
election. Such "fusion" of parties on candidates was widely
practiced in the U.S. in the 19th century, when it helped
underwrite all the major third party efforts of the day. Today,
it is widely banned. Fusion helps third parties by permitting
their members to cast a protest vote that's not wasted; where
they don't have power to run and win on their own, they can vote
for the more attractive alternative offered by the two major
parties, but on their own ballot line, with the votes cast on the
minor party counted in the candidate's total.
Descriptor terms: strategies; environmental movement; vision;
mass movements; social change; civic culture; solidarity;
ideology; ralph nader; democracy; new party; sustainable america;
democracy project; political parties; fusion; referendum; recall;
labor; consumer rights; taxpayer rights;
################################################################
NOTICE
Environmental Research Foundation provides this electronic
version of RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY free of charge
even though it costs our organization considerable time and money
to produce it. We would like to continue to provide this service
free. You could help by making a tax-deductible contribution
(anything you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00). Please send
your tax-deductible contribution to: Environmental Research
Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403-7036. Please do
not send credit card information via E-mail. For further
information about making tax-deductible contributions to E.R.F.
by credit card please phone us toll free at 1-888-2RACHEL.
--Peter Montague, Editor
################################################################
=======================Electronic Edition========================
. .
. RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #461 .
. September 28, 1995 .
. HEADLINES: .
. A HIGH-WAGE, LOW-WASTE FUTURE--PART 4: .
. SUSTAINABLE AMERICA--PART 1 .
. ========== .
. Environmental Research Foundation .
. P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403 .
=================================================================
So what should progressives do? Clearly the answer is NOT "more of what we've been doing." We are already killing ourselves working overtime and not getting very far.
We need to do something different --something big that has the potential to get most of us working together, and has the potential to excite and engage large numbers of people who are presently parked on the sidelines. Last week, we described a large "democracy project" aimed at making democracy itself an issue --an issue that all progressives could unite around, and which might motivate some liberals, who now seem paralyzed staring into their mirrors.
A major advantage of a "democracy" campaign is that it could address all the root problems of the present system --dominance of our society by corporations, which answer to no one; the fully-corrupting influence of private money in politics; the inability of ordinary people to have some say about their economic future. These are the fundamental issues of our democracy.
This last issue --giving people some say about the economy --is really THE crucial issue of our time: does the economy control us, or do we control it? Slowly over the last 50 years, we seem to have forgotten the purpose of the economy: to create prosperity with stability. In earlier times, Henry Ford said he wanted to pay his employees wages high enough so they could buy his cars, thus creating conditions that gave birth to the middle class. Today the corporados proudly point to the fact that they have broken the backs of many labor unions, and that wages are low and steadily falling while corporate profits are setting records. This is a trend that will produce neither prosperity nor stability. We seem to have forgotten that the economy is a tool to serve the needs of society, not the other way around.
Is this some utopian socialist dream, that people really want a say in the economy? Far from it. In the U.S. today, limits on the terms and conditions of production and exchange are more popular than ever. This is what underlies the almost universal belief that work should be adjusted to the realities of families (flex hours, family leave, etc.). This is what fuels the belief that employers have obligations to employees and communities beyond pay and taxes (job safety; factories that don't gas the neighborhood, etc.). If you think about it, having more say about production and exchange is what the environmental movement is about (reducing use of toxics, limiting dioxin discharges, etc.). Giving people more say about the economy would have ENORMOUS political appeal.
Although government and the general public are ill-prepared to instruct business on how best to achieve economic goals, the goals themselves CAN be specified by the general public: for example, full employment for the able-bodied; decent housing, education, and health care for all; an economy that is not obscenely unfair nor massively wasteful of natural resources.
What is most basically wrong with current economic policy is its failure to block the low-wage option of industrial restructuring --the option that seeks profit and increased competitiveness via downsizing, temporary workers, reduced benefits (or NO benefits) job insecurity, environmental degradation, and cutbacks in social spending, regulation, and training, combined with lowered taxes for corporations and the rich. This low-wage, high-waste option --the "low road" --is what we'll get IN SPADES if we don't intervene.
We need campaigns both to foreclose the low-wage option AND to harness the productive energies of workers and communities in a more satisfying restructuring path --a high-wage, low-waste option ("the high road"). We need a way to limit certain options for capital AND to simultaneously indicate an alternative, more democratic restructuring route that is viable under realistic competitive conditions.
One could imagine a series of projects to "have our say about the economy" --making economic goals the subject of big organizing campaigns. To give but one example:
** A livable wage campaign. Everyone who works should make a wage that allows him or her to raise a family. There shouldn't be any such thing as "the working poor." If you are able-bodied, you should have work, and if you have work you should make a livable wage. Is this some nut-ball utopian dream? It is not. It is a basic human right, affirmed by the United States alongside the other nations of the world. In 1948, the U.S. government voted affirmatively to approve the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which was approved by the United Nations General Assembly December 10, 1948). Article 23 of the Universal Declaration says, "Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment." The same Article goes on to say, "Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection."
Furthermore, Article 25 of the Universal Declaration says, "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control." A "livable wage campaign" would merely give substance in the U.S. to these basic human rights.
How to start? A livable wage campaign can begin at the local level. For example, in Baltimore, Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD), a church-based organization, joined with a labor union --the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) --and with the Solidarity Sponsoring Committee, an organization of Baltimore's low wage service workers. Together they successfully campaigned for the passage of a municipal Living Wage Bill. This ordinance, which was signed in December, 1994, requires city contractors to pay a living wage rather than the woefully inadequate federal minimum. As a result, employees of city contractors saw their hourly wages go up from $4.25 to $6.10 in the summer of 1995, and will see their wages rise incrementally to $7.70 an hour over a four year period. This reverses Baltimore's old poverty-wage policy, which gave lucrative contracts to employers who paid family wages below the poverty line --contracts which cost the city millions in food stamps and health care.
Or a living wage campaign can take the form of a statewide ballot initiative, as it has in Oregon where the More Livable Wage Coalition is aiming now to raise Oregon's minimum wage to $6.50 an hour by 1999. (For details, call 503-288-7932 in Portland.)
But a living wage campaign is merely one way to "have our say in the economy." We need to think larger.
** An "our money, our jobs" campaign targeted at "subsidy abuse" by government (the all-too-common use of taxpayer money to subsidize the low-road and make the high-road more difficult);
** A campaign for better rules on the use of monies earmarked for training dislocated workers (e.g., requiring that people actually get trained, not just taught how to type their resumes);
** A gigantic summer youth jobs effort (with a continuation in the fall!).
Less important than deciding on particular campaigns right now, however, is deciding TOGETHER that we will do that TOGETHER from here on out, and saying so. We should announce our collective intention to oppose what we see as this economically stupid and morally empty low-wage option --to make that itself an issue, and make it clear that we intend to move on it in a variety of forms. As a group, we need to say something like, "Diverse as we are, we stand together in declaring that ruinous low-wage restructuring must and can stop, and we hold our elected officials and ourselves account-able to stopping it and starting something better --a high-wage, low-waste, more democratically controlled economy. We oppose anything that furthers current destruction. We support policies aimed at raising social standards --on wages, production conditions, environmental sensitivity --and developing popular capacity to enforce them. We want public policy to support a new social contract, with public supports for firms complying with its terms and punishment of those defecting from it. We seek and accept responsibility and control in the administration of this contract. Its terms are..." and here we fill in the blanks.
Closing off the low-wage option for American firms and restoring some significant measure of popular control over our economic future will be a brutal political fight --fiercely resisted by well-heeled forces that benefit from the current lack of constraint. Who in America is most likely to lead this fight? Will it be the residents of declining rural regions? The rich white suburban enclaves? The low-wage and non-union ex-urban manufacturing zones? Surely, none of the above. The most likely agent will be urban, heavily "of color," and more unionized than the norm. In other words, this will be a metropolitan battle --a fight for the soul of our country, starting in the wreck of our cities and their hard-luck inner-ring suburbs. This is where a Sustainable America[1] can begin to be built.
This will require progressives to get serious about linking their issues (whatever they may be) to economic development, and about establishing a presence inside corporations. Some environmentalists are already doing this --establishing "good neighbor agreements" with polluters, promoting the redevelopment of "brown field" sites in cities, demanding that "covenants" be signed between local governments and corporations that get tax breaks, and so forth.
If we are to achieve prosperity and stability in a sustainable environment, we must do more of this. To create a Sustainable America,[1] we will need to gain some control over corporate behavior and the economy, starting at the local level. It will not be easy, but consider the low-road alternative and you'll most likely agree: plowing this ground is something we must do.
===============
[1] Once again, we have cribbed extensively from Joel Rogers at
University of Wisconsin, and his activist colleagues, though
neither he nor they are responsible for our corrupted version of
their ideas. Rogers and friends have started a large new project
called Sustainable America; for details, phone Elaine Gross at
(516) 692-2601 or send E-mail to egross@igc.apc.org.
Descriptor terms: joel rogers; sustainable america; economic
development; corporations; democracy; strategies; urban
redevelopment; wages; conditions of work; economy;
################################################################
NOTICE
Environmental Research Foundation provides this electronic
version of RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY free of charge
even though it costs our organization considerable time and money
to produce it. We would like to continue to provide this service
free. You could help by making a tax-deductible contribution
(anything you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00). Please send
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not send credit card information via E-mail. For further
information about making tax-deductible contributions to E.R.F.
by credit card please phone us toll free at 1-888-2RACHEL.
--Peter Montague, Editor
################################################################
=======================Electronic Edition========================
. .
. RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #465 .
. October 26, 1995 .
. HEADLINES: .
. A HIGH-WAGE, LOW-WASTE FUTURE--PART 5 .
. SUSTAINABLE AMERICA--PART 2 .
. ========== .
. Environmental Research Foundation .
. P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403 .
=================================================================
But the liberals deserve their share of blame as well. In this series, we have seen that the economy is being deliberately restructured along lines we call the "low road"[2] --the choice that seeks profit and increased competitiveness by laying off workers and replacing them with temporaries; by intentionally increasing job insecurity for almost everyone; by reducing the availability of health insurance; by speeding up environmental degradation; by cutting social spending; by reducing regulation; by cutting training; and by reducing taxes on corporations and on the wealthy, shifting the tax burden onto the middle class and the working poor. Both Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals alike, are promoting this low-road restructuring, which cannot lead to either prosperity or stability.
Corporations are selling us the low road, saying it is required by 2 factors: globalization of the economy, and increased competition. Globalization is being greatly exaggerated, to give the impression that the economy is now out of our hands. In actual fact, only about 20% of the American economy involves any foreign trade; roughly 80% of the economy is entirely domestic, and these numbers have not changed much since the early 1980s.[3] It is simply not true that globalization is preventing people from having a say in the economy.
The second factor that supposedly "requires" us to take the low road is increased competition. Competition HAS increased during the past 20 years as the huge mass-production monoliths (Ford, IBM) have been overtaken by a new industrial regime. The low road is one possible response to competition --to turn the U.S. into a country with wages so low that our workforce can compete head-to-head with workers in Malaysia and the Philippines. Goodbye middle class and goodbye stability.
The alternative choice --the "high road" --centers on high-quality competition and the inputs that make such competition possible: worker involvement in decisions; worker training; timely information about new technologies and about markets; economic cooperation between firms, and between firms and communities; moral standards on the treatment of people; environmental standards requiring clean production; high quality public goods (which glue urban society together: schools; hospitals; libraries; mass transit; recreation opportunities, etc.); and the use of state purchasing power, and other public mechanisms, to reward high-roaders and punish low-roaders.
We will describe the "high road" approach at another time. For now, let's continue examining the low road. Typical economic development leads to the low road because of six errors, commonly made by both conservatives and liberals:
Error 1: Typical economic development promotes job growth without regard for the kind of jobs generated. This does nothing to promote the general welfare, and often actually reduces it. Through competition, new low-wage jobs drag down wages elsewhere. This erodes the overall tax base, leading to cutbacks in needed public services (transportation, libraries, schools, hospitals, etc.), which in turn causes people to move to the suburbs, leading to metropolitan decline, absolute job loss, and all of the social problems linked to a chronically unemployed, uneducated inner-city population. All of which, in turn, confirms the typical view that jobs --any kind of jobs --are what is needed.
Error 2: Typical economic development focuses on attracting new businesses rather than retaining and renewing existing ones. Yet the best evidence from the U.S. and abroad shows that metropolitan economies thrive when their core businesses upgrade, or link to one another to realize new economies of "scope," or attract or spin off related businesses, which benefit from being near industry leaders. Upgrading, networking, and incubating local firms, however, requires support in the form of technical assistance, training, and the efficient supply of modern public goods (schools, libraries, etc.). And providing all of these is more difficult, although in the long run far more satisfying, than simply "doing a deal" to attract another Walmart.
Error 3: Typical economic development uses generic tax abatements and other fiscal giveaways, rather than targeted breaks and regulation, as magnets for development. Again, the best evidence is that traditional "enterprise zone"-type developments (i.e., tax abatements and other giveaways with no prior conditions on them except perhaps "best efforts" to create X jobs of any kind) simply do not work, and eventually erode a city's fiscal base.[4] The jobs created in a more-or-less fully deregulated economy are seldom high-paying or associated with significant capital investment. On the other hand, there is good evidence that the gradual tightening of control over production --e.g., requiring a livable minimum wage for labor, or curbing toxic emissions --can push business to innovate in ways that improve productivity and improve the quality of community life. The productivity increase is achieved by boosting the cost of factors of production (e.g., increasing wages), thereby creating incentives for their more efficient and productive use. Regulation can be oppressive and inefficient, or it can be the opposite, depending on the match to the problem regulated.[5] But this requires a willingness to impose, from a weak bargaining position, significant costs on business. And it requires a willingness (and the ability) to insulate those same businesses from ruinous competition from non-complying competitors. This is the crucial policy step that most city governments have been unwilling or unable to make --especially when faced with the loss of high-wage jobs caused by Errors 1 and 2, above.
Error 4: Typical economic development sees greater public control and accountability as bad for the economy. It proceeds from a largely correct idea that government and the general public (if not workers within the firm) are ill-prepared to tell business how best to achieve goals. However, this correct idea gets carried over into the false assumption that the public is incapable of specifying what our economic goals should be, such as full employment for the able-bodied; decent housing, education, and health care for all; an economy that is not obscenely unfair nor massively wasteful of natural resources. Again, however, all evidence shows that modern economies operate best when they can rely on a fair degree of public support for business goals. Public support for business goals is strongest when the public has significant say in setting those goals. And such public support is especially crucial for the modern production systems that cities should be trying to attract. Here we return to a characteristic weakness of liberalism.
Error 5: Typical economic development sees a necessary tradeoff between environmental improvement and jobs. Of course, taking the environment seriously will involve considerable dislocation, resulting from the disruption of many traditional habits of production. But environmental values, like others, can be incorporated into the economy itself. Environmental values should have no effect on the availability of employment at a family-supporting wage. Indeed, the experience of all sorts of metropolitan regions, which once relied on highly polluting industries, suggests that enormous job gains can be reaped by paying serious attention to the market for "green" goods and clean technology. Germany's Ruhr district and Sweden's Smaaland are good examples. And there is compelling evidence that environmental regulation has forced regulated industries to achieve enormous efficiency gains and a raft of profitable spinoff products. To realize any of these gains, however, government and the rest of society must be willing to impose some terms on economic deal-making, while at the same time investing in people's ability to monitor, enforce, and negotiate in the most efficient ways to achieve those values. People's ability to monitor, enforce and negotiate is pretty much taboo to a liberal government, especially one driven to passivity and fear by Errors 1 through 4, above.
Error 6: Typical economic development neglects the critical role played by public goods of all kinds --transportation, recreation, education, public safety. Here, local economic development efforts lag behind the learning of many businesses. Many businesses now recognize the importance of easy movement of labor, products, and information; a well-trained workforce; and a nice place to live. These things are important because they help attract highly skilled personnel. Of course, no individual firm wants to pay for these--even though all businesses benefit from them. (Economists call this the 'free rider' problem.) If economic development is seen largely as a firm-by-firm ignore-the-social-cost project, this free-rider problem cannot be solved. But if development is aimed specifically at solving these collective action problems, it can solve them --using state requirements and, even more, by greasing the wheels for private actors. However, to do this, government must be willing to invest directly in popular, cross-firm, coordinating institutions (such as training programs), which liberal governments are often not willing to do. As a result, even conventional investment becomes less likely, given the shrinking tax base of a city that has given up its good jobs through Errors 1 through 5.
If typical economic development seems to be a dead end, have we
got something better? Yes, and this is what Sustainable
America[6] is about.
[To be continued.]
===============
[1] All Rachel back issues, and hundreds of other documents, are
now available via E-mail; send a one-word E-mail message ("info")
to info@rachel.clark.net.
[2] Once again, we are relying heavily upon --a euphemism for
'stealing shamelessly from' --Joel Rogers, Joshua Cohen, Dan
Luria, Wolfgang Streeck and others.
[3] Joel Rogers, Dan Luria, and others, METRO FUTURES: A
HIGH-WAGE DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY FOR AMERICA'S CITIES
AND INNER SUBURBS; DRAFT OF APRIL, 1995 (Madison, Wisc.: Midwest
Consortium on Economic Development Alternatives [phone:
608/263-3889], 1995), pg. 34.
[4] Greg LeRoy, NO MORE CANDY STORE. Chicago and Washington
D.C.: Federation for Industrial Retention and Renewal (FIRR) and
Grassroots Policy Project (GPP), 1994. Available from the
Grassroots Policy Project [2040 S Street, N.W., Suite 203,
Washington, DC 20009; phone (202) 234-0980] for $24.00.
[5] For a review of the varieties of regulation, and a look at
more flexible and efficient forms, see Ian Ayres and John
Braithwaite, RESPONSIVE REGULATION (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992).
[6] To learn about the project, Sustainable America, phone Elaine
Gross at (212) 727-4407 or send E-mail to egross@igc.apc.org.
Descriptor terms: economic development; economy; wealth;
poverty; income distribution; republicans; democrats; global
economy; corporations; inner cities; suburbs; technology
transfer; taxation; regulation; enterprise zones; wages; minimum
wage;
################################################################
NOTICE
Environmental Research Foundation provides this electronic
version of RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY free of charge
even though it costs our organization considerable time and money
to produce it. We would like to continue to provide this service
free. You could help by making a tax-deductible contribution
(anything you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00). Please send
your tax-deductible contribution to: Environmental Research
Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403-7036. Please do
not send credit card information via E-mail. For further
information about making tax-deductible contributions to E.R.F.
by credit card please phone us toll free at 1-888-2RACHEL.
--Peter Montague, Editor
################################################################
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