– from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

When significant US economic markets went haywire in the summer and fall of 2008, a fear, even panic, struck those charged with developing and implementing economic policy. The prevailing thinking– unbridled capitalism with near-religious confidence in market mechanisms– appeared to be in irreversible retreat.

The housing market cooled, home values shrank, and the financial structure built around home ownership began to collapse. As the stock market fell freely from previous highs, led by the implosion of bank stocks, investors withdrew dramatically from the market. Credit froze and consumption slowed. Thus began a downward spiral of employee layoffs, reduced consumption, capital hoarding, and retarded growth, followed by more layoffs, etc. etc.
As fear set in, policy makers scrambled to find an answer to a crisis that threatened to deepen and spread to the far reaches of the global economy. With interest rates near zero, they recognized that the monetarist toolbox, in use since the Carter administration, offered no answer.

At the end of the Bush administration, bi-partisan leaders approved the injection of hundreds of billions of public dollars into the financial system with the hope of stabilizing the collapsing market value of banks, a move popularly dubbed a “bailout.”

Early in the Obama administration, Democratic Party administrators crafted another recovery program totaling about three-quarters of a trillion dollars, a program involving a mix of tax cuts, public-private infrastructure projects, and expanded direct relief. Economists generally viewed this effort as a “stimulus” program designed to trigger a burst of economic activity to jump-start a stalled economic engine. Dollar estimates of aggregate US Federal bailouts and stimuli meant to overcome the crisis rose as high as the value of one year’s Gross Domestic Product in the early years after the initial free fall. The Federal Reserve continues to offer a $75 billion transfusion every month into the veins of the yet ailing US economy.

Bad Faith

The last three decades of the twentieth century brought forth a new economic consensus of not merely market primacy, but total market governance of economic life. Regulation of markets was believed to destabilize markets and not correct them. Public ownership and public services were seen as inefficient and untenable holdouts from market forces. Public and private life beyond the economic universe were subjected to markets, measured by market mechanisms, and analyzed through the lens of market-thought. Indeed, market-speak became the lingua franca unifying all of the social sciences and humanities in this era. With the fall of the Soviet Union, capital and its profit-driven processes penetrated every corner of the world. Only independent, anti-imperialist, market-wary movements like those led by Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and a few others gained some political success against the unprecedented global dominance of private ownership and market mechanisms.

While capitalism in its most unadorned, aggressive form enjoyed the moments of triumph, forces were at play undermining that celebration. Those forces crashed the party in 2000 in the form of a serious economic downturn, the so-called “Dot-com Recession” featuring a $5 trillion stock market value loss and the disappearance of millions of jobs. Economists marveled at how slowly the jobs were returning before the US and global economy were hit with another, more powerful blow in 2008. Clearly, the first decade of the twenty-first century will be remembered as one of economic crisis and uncertainty, a turmoil that continues to this day.

Apart from the human toll– millions of lost jobs, poverty, homelessness, lost opportunities, destruction of personal wealth– the crisis-ridden twenty-first century challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of unfettered markets and private ownership. Even such solid and fervent advocates of that orthodoxy as the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and The Times were rocked by the crisis, questioning the soundness of classical economic principles. No principle is more dear and essential for the free marketeers than the idea that markets are self-correcting. While there may be short-term economic imbalances or downturns, free-market advocates believe that market movement always tends towards balance and expansion in the long run. Thus, a persistent, long term stagnation or decline is thought to be virtually impossible (with the caveat that there are no restrictions imposed on the market mechanism).
So when perhaps the greatest era of extensive global open-market economy experienced the most catastrophic economic collapse since the Great Depression, serious doubts arose about the fundamental tenets of market ideology. And during the darkest days of 2008 and 2009, a veritable ideological panic swept over pundits and experts of the Right and the “respectable” Left. Some rehabilitated an out-of-fashion economist and spoke of a “Minsky moment.” Liberals proclaimed the death of neo-liberalism (the popular term for the return to respectability of classical economics that began in the late 1970s). And still others foresaw a restoration of the interventionist economics represented by John Maynard Keynes, the economic theories that guided the capitalist economy through most of the post-war period. Even the most conservative economists conceded that market oversight, if not regulation, was both necessary and forthcoming.

Yet, change has not come forth. Despite over five years of decline and stagnation, despite a continued failure of markets to self-correct, free-market ideology continues to dominate both thinking and policy, clearly more faith-based than reality-based. In part, the resilience of open-market philosophy emanates from the shrewd manufacture of debt-fear by politicians and debt-mongering by financial institutions. By raising the shrill cry of exploding debt and impending doom, attention was diverted from the failings of the unfettered market and towards government austerity and massive debt reduction.

Diagnosis?

Clearly all the Nobel Prize-winning mathematical economic models thought to capture economic activity failed to predict and explain the 2008 crash. No amount of faith could disguise the monumental failure of raw, unregulated markets and the policies that promoted them. Two competing, sharply contrasting, and simplistic explanations came forward.

Defenders of free markets shamelessly, brazenly argue that government meddling thwarted the full and free operation of market mechanisms, thus, exacerbating what would have been a painful, but quickly resolved correction. Following the metaphor alluded to in this article’s title, heartburn was misdiagnosed, treated with radical surgery, only to create a life-threatening condition.

Of course this is self-serving nonsense.

Whatever else we may know about markets, we know this: since the process of deregulating markets began in earnest in the late 1970s, crises have only occurred more frequently, with greater amplitude, and harsher human consequences. Before that, and throughout the earlier post-war period, government intervention and regulation tended to forestall downturns, moderate their nadir, and soften the human toll. And a glimpse at an earlier period of market-friendly policy– the early years of the Great Depression– demonstrates the folly of simply waiting for the promised correction: matters only grew worse. Then, as now, life proved to be a hard taskmaster; when market mechanisms really go awry, no one can afford to wait for self-correction.
Liberal and soft-Left opponents of an unfettered market offer a different argument. They saw the crisis as, not the absence of free markets, but the failure to oversee and regulate markets adequately. On this view, shared by nearly all liberals and most of the non-Communist Left, markets are fundamental economic mechanisms– essential, if you will– but best shepherded by government controls that steer markets back when they threaten to run amok.

Thus, the 2008 crisis would have been averted, they believe, if rules and regulations remained in place that were previously designed and implemented to protect the economy from market excesses; if we had not loosened the rules and regulations, we would never have experienced the disaster of 2008.
This view is bad history and even worse economics.

While liberals would like to believe that regulations and institutions spawned by the New Deal of the 1930s stabilized capitalism and tamed markets, the truth is otherwise. The massive war spending initiated sometime before the US entry into World War II solved the problems of growth and excess manpower associated with the long decade of stagnation, hesitant recovery, retreat, and further stagnation that befell the economy beginning in 1929.
Capitalism gained new momentum with post-war reconstruction. Productive forces were restored where they had been destroyed, refreshed where they were worn, and improved in the face of new challenges. This broad restructuring of capitalism produced new opportunities for both profit and growth. At the same time, the lesson of massive socialized, public, and planned military spending were not lost. New threats were conjured, new fears constructed. The hot war in Korea and the ever-expanding Cold War fueled an unprecedented US expansion. It is not inappropriate to characterize this post-war expansion as a period of “military-Keynesianism.” That is, it was an era of Keynesian policies of planned, extensive government spending married to military orders outside of the market. Insofar as it transferred a significant share of the capitalist economy to a command, extra-market sector, it marked a new stage of state-monopoly capitalism, a stage embracing some of the features of socialism.

But by the mid-1960s this “adjustment” began to lose its vitality. Profit growth, the driving force of capitalist expansion, started a persistent decline (for a graphic depiction of this trend, see the chart on page 103 of Robert Brenner’s The Economics of Global Turbulence (New Left Review, May/June 1998).
The falling rate of profit coupled with raging inflation by the middle of the 1970s. The military-Keynesian solutions to capitalist crisis were spent, exhausted, proving inadequate to address a new expression of the instability of capitalism. Perhaps nothing signaled the bankruptcy of the prevailing (Keynesian) orthodoxy more than the desperate WIN campaign– Whip Inflation Now of the Gerald Ford presidency, an impotent attempt to stem the crisis with mass will-power where intervention failed.

Contrary to the claims of liberals, social democrats and other reform-minded saviors of capitalism, the resultant shift in orthodoxy was not merely a political coup, a victory of retrograde ideology, but instead it was an unwinding of the failed Keynesian policies of the moment. Thus, the Thatcher/Reagan “revolution” was only the vehicle for a dramatic adjustment of the course of capitalism away from a spent, ineffective paradigm.
With Paul Volker assuming the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve and the beginnings of systematic deregulation, the Carter administration planted the seeds of the retreat from the old prescriptions. Volker, with his growth-choking interest rates, ensured a recession that would sweep away any will to resist belt-tightening. But it took the election of the dogma-driven Ronald Reagan to emulate the UK’s Margaret Thatcher and use the occasion to eviscerate wages and benefits in order to pave the way for profit growth.

The cost of restoring life to the moribund capitalist economy was borne by the working class. Foolishly, the stolid, complacent labor leadership had banked on the continuation of the tacit Cold War contract: Labor supports the anti-Communist campaign and the corporations honor labor peace with consistent wage and benefit growth. Instead, profit growth was restored by suppressing the living standards of labor– cutting “costs.” A vicious anti-labor offensive ensued.

While the loyal opposition insists on portraying the break with Keynesian economics as something new (commonly dubbed “neo-liberalism”), it was, in fact, a surrender to the old. The bankruptcy of bourgeois economics could offer no new, creative answer to capitalist crisis; it could only cast off a failed approach and restore profits by relentlessly squeezing the labor market.

This response could and only did succeed because of the extraordinary weakness of the labor movement. As the profit rate began to rebound, labor lacked the leadership and will to not only secure a share of productivity increases, but to even defend its previous gains.

Thus, capitalism caught a second wind by retreating from the post-war economic consensus and reneging on the implicit labor peace treaty. Profit growth returned and the system sailed on.

But the continuing advance of deregulation and privatization brought with it a return to the unbuffered anarchy of markets. The Savings and Loan crises of the 1980s and 1990s and the stock market crash of October 1987 were all harbingers of things to come and reflections of deeper instability.
With the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialism, a huge new market was delivered to the global capitalist system, a market that further energized the opportunities for capital accumulation and expanded profits. Millions of educated, newly “free” (free of security, safe working conditions, legal protection, and organization) workers joined reduced-wage and low-wage workers from the rest of the world to form a vast pool of cheap labor. From the point of view of the owners of capital, paradise had truly arrived. Thus, an immense, one-sided class war and the wage-depressing integration of millions of new workers set capitalism on a profit-restoring path to health, putting the now impotent Keynesian orthodoxy in the rear-view mirror. Few would guess that this trip would endure for less than two decades before capitalism would again encounter serious crises.

Significant economic growth in a period of weak labor necessarily produces galloping inequality. With corporate and wealthy-friendly tax policies, many government redistribution mechanisms are starved or dismantled. The flow of wealth accelerates to corporations and the super-rich and away from those who work for a living. The coffers of the investor class swell with money anxious for a meaningful, significant return on investment. As the process of capital accumulation intensifies, fewer and fewer safe, high-yield productive investment opportunities arise to absorb the vast pool of ever-expanding wealth concentrated in the hands of a small minority.

In a mature capitalism, new, riskier avenues– typically removed from the productive sector– emerge to offer a home for capital and promise a return. Bankers and other financial “wizards” compete ferociously to construct profit-generating devices that promise more and more. These instruments grow further and further from productive activity. Moreover, their resultant “profits” are ever further removed from real, tangible, material value. Instead, they virtually exist as “hypothetical” capital, or “counter-factual” capital, or “future-directed” capital, or “contingent” capital. Some Marxists rush to label this product of speculation as “fictitious,” but that obscures its ultimate origin in exploitative acts in the commodity-production process. It is this expansion of promissory capital that fuels round after round of speculative investment lubricated with greater and greater debt.

Metaphors abound for the end game of this process: “bubbles,” “house of cards,” etc. But the ultimate cause of crisis is the failure to satisfy the never ending search for return. That is, the cause of crisis resides in the process of accumulation intrinsic to capitalism and the inability to sustain a viable return on an ever enlarging pool of capital and promissory capital. Capitalists measure their success by how their resources are fully and effectively put to use to generate new surpluses. That is the deepest, most telling sense of “rate of profit.” It is the gauge guiding the capitalist– an effective rate of profit based on accumulated assets. Apart from official and contrived measures of profit rates, the growth of accumulated capital, weighed against the available investment opportunities, drives future investment and determines the course of economic activity.

In 1999, the profitability of the technology sector dropped precipitously as a result of the unrealizable investment of billions of yield-seeking dollars in marginal Dot.com companies and internet services. As an answer to the problem of over-accumulation, investing in the fantasies of 20-year-old whiz kids proved to be as irrational as sane observers thought it to be. The crash followed.

And again in the heady days of 2005, buying bizarre securities packed with the flotsam and jetsam of mortgage shenanigans seemed a way of finding a home for vast sums of “unproductive” capital. After all, capital cannot remain idle; it must find a way to reproduce itself. But what to do with the earnings from reselling the demand-driven securities? More of the same? More risk? More debt? And repeat?

The portion of US corporate profits “earned” by the financial sector grew dramatically from 1990 until the 2008 crash, touching nearly 40% in the mid-2000s and demonstrating the explosion of alternative investment vehicles occupying idle capital. It is crucial to see a link, an evolutionary necessity, between the restoration of profitability, intense capital accumulation, and the tendency for profitability to be challenged by the lack of promising investment opportunities. It is not the whim of bankers or the cleverness of entrepreneurs that drives this process, but the logical imperative of capital to produce and reproduce.

Some Comments and Observations

There are other theories of crisis offered by the left. One theory, embraced by many Communist Parties, maintains that crisis emerges from over-production. Of course, in one sense, over-accumulation is a kind of overproduction, an overproduction of capital that lacks a productive investment destination. But many on the left mean something different. They argue that capitalism produces more commodities in the market place than impoverished, poorly paid workers can purchase. There are two objections to this: one theoretical, one ideological.

First, evidence shows that a slump in consumption or a spike in production does not, in fact, precede economic decline in our era. If overproduction or its cousin, under-consumption, were the cause of the 2008 downturn, data would necessarily show some prior deviation from production/consumption patterns. But there are none. Instead, the reverse was the case: the crisis itself caused a massive gap between production and consumption, exacerbating the crisis. The threat of oversupply lingers in the enormous deflationary pressure churning in the global economy. Despite the fact that consumer spending is such a large component of the US economy, the effects of its secular stagnation or decline has been largely muted by the expansion of consumer credit and the existence, though tenuous, of social welfare programs like unemployment insurance.

Second, if retarded or inadequate consumption were the cause of crises, then redistributive policies or tax policies would offer a simple solution to downturns, both to prevent them and reverse them. Thus, capitalism could go on its merry way with little fear of crisis. Certainly this is the ideological attraction of overproduction explanations of crises: they allow liberals and social democrats to tout their ability to manage capitalism through government policies.

However they cannot manage capitalism because crises are located, not in the arena of circulation (matching production and consumption), but in the profit-generating mechanism of capitalism, its veritable soul.

Because of the centrality of profit, the over-accumulation explanation has an affinity with another theory of crisis: Marx’s argument for the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. In fact, it can be viewed as a contemporary version of the argument without nineteenth-century assumptions.

Happily, many commentators today have revisited the theory outlined in Volume III of Capital, finding a relevance ignored throughout most of the twentieth century. Only a handful of admirers of Marx’s work kept the theory alive in that era, writers like Henryk Grossman, John Strachey, and Paul Mattick. Unfortunately, today’s admirers, like the aforementioned predecessors, share the flaw of uncritically taking Marx’s schema to be Holy Grail. For the most part, Marx used very occasional formalism as an expository tool and not as the axioms of a formal system. Those trained in modern economics are prone to leap on these formulae with an undergraduate zeal. They debate the tenability of a model that depicts the global economy as a collection of enterprises devouring constant capital at a greater rate than employment of labor and mechanically depressing the rate of profit. This is to confuse simplified exposition with robust explanation. Much can be learned from Marx’s exposition without turning it into a scholastic exercise.

Among our left friends, it has become popular to speak of the crisis and era as one of “financialization.” This is most unhelpful. Indeed, the crisis had much to do with the financial sector; indeed, the financial sector played and is playing a greater role in the global economy, especially in the US and UK; but conjuring a new name does nothing to expose or explain the role of finance. Like “globalization” in an earlier time, the word “financialization” may be gripping, fashionable, and handy, but it otherwise hides the mechanisms at work; it’s a lazy word.

*****

There is a point to this somewhat lengthy, but sketchy journey through the history of post-war capitalism. Hopefully, the journey demonstrates or suggests strongly that past economic events were neither random nor simply politically driven. Instead, they were the product of capitalism’s internal logic; they sprang from roadblocks to and adjustments of capitalism’s trajectory. As directions proved barren, new directions were taken. While it is not possible to rule out further maneuvers addressing the inherent problem of over-accumulation, the problem will not go away. It will return to haunt any attempt that presumes to conquer it once and for all. And if capitalism carries this gene, then it would be wise to look to a better economic system that promises both greater stability and greater social justice. Of course, finding that alternative begins with revisiting the two-hundred-year-old idea long favored by the working class movement: socialism. Affixed to that project is the task of rebuilding the movement, the political organization needed to achieve socialism.

As things stand in today’s world, there are most often only two meager options on the regular menu: one, to save and maintain capitalism with the sacrifices of working people and the other, to save and maintain capitalism with the sacrifices of working people and a token “fair share” sacrifice on the part of corporations and the rich. Neither is very nourishing.

The first option is based on the thin gruel of “trickle down” economics and the nursery-rhyme wisdom of “a rising tide raises all boats.” It is the prescription of both of the major US political parties, Japan’s Abe, the European center parties, and UK Labour.

The second option promises to save capitalism as well, but through a bogus fair distribution of hardship across all classes. This is the course offered by most European left parties and even some Communist Parties.

But a system– capitalism– that is genetically disposed to extreme wealth distribution and persistent crisis does not make for an appetizing meal. Instead, we need to dispense with programs that promise to better manage capitalism, as Greek Communists (KKE) like to say. That is for others who are at peace with capitalism or underestimate its inevitable failings.

The only answer to the heart failure of capitalism is to change the diet and put socialism on the menu.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

By Liliany Obando – political prisoner, now “subjudice” (under court jurisdiction)

Colombia, December 6, 2013

“No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.” (1)

– Nelson Mandela, July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013

Translator’s Note: The original version of Liliany Obado’s article in Spanish appears at: http://www.inspp.org/news/political-prisoners/nelson-mandela-y-su-legado-a-las-prisioneras-y-prisioneros-politicos .

At the time of her arrest on August 8, 2008, Liliany Obando was the human rights director for Fensuagro, Colombia’s largest agricultural workers’ union. She’s a sociologist, documentary film maker, and single mother of two children. Prosecutors accused her of terrorism and belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). A week before her arrest she had issued a report documenting the murders of 1500 Fensuagro union members over 32 years. Colombia has 10,000 political prisoners.

Obando left prison after 43 months on March 1st 2012. Because she had yet to be convicted or sentenced, she remained under court jurisdiction. The following year, almost five years after her arrest, a judge convicted her of “rebellion” on a charge of serving on the FARC’s International Commission. She received a sentence of five years, eight months of house arrest and must pay a fine of 707 million pesos, equivalent to $368,347 (USD). The judge acquitted Obando on the charge of handling “resources relating to terrorist activities.” She is currently under court jurisdiction waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on her appeal. The government’s case against Obando and other prisoners rests on discredited material taken from the computers of FARC leader Raul Reyes, seized after his murder. Since her release from prison, Obando and her family have had to endure police surveillance, harassments, and media slander.

Introducing her article, Liliany Obando writes: “We regard as political prisoners all those who are deprived of the liberty because of political reasons, more particularly because of their opposition to and/or criticism of the status quo. They may be unionists or not, convicted prisoners or not, either prisoners of conscience or prisoners of war. Many face charges of rebellion and such like.”

Obando makes use of Nelson Mandela’s commentary on his own imprisonment appearing in Spanish as: Nelson Mandela, “Conversaciones Conmigo Mismo,” Editorial Planeta S.A., Colombia, 2010. Mandela’s reflections appearing below are taken from an English language edition of that book: “Conversations with Myself,” Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2010

— W. T. Whitney Jr.

Mandela, Symbol of Dignity

Nelson Mandela, one more of those indispensible individuals giving up his physical existence, leaves his legacy to those of us who dream of and struggle for a world in peace, one with social justice and without discrimination and exclusion.

His life was notable for his struggle against apartheid, for civil and human rights, and for national liberation for his people. Activism led to persecution and prison. His first detention occurred in 1956 on a charge of conspiracy against the regime. He went free shortly thereafter.

His tireless resistance and the political circumstances of his country during the 1960’s put him on the path of armed struggle and underground existence. He was commander in chief of the armed wing of the African National Congress, known as “Umkhonto we Sizwe,” or “spear of the nation.” The government viewed it as a terrorist group.

“The means which are used by the oppressed to advance their struggle are determined by the oppressor himself. Where the oppressor uses peaceful methods, the oppressed will also use peaceful methods, but if the oppressor uses forces, the oppressed will also retaliate with forces.” (2)

He was arrested again in 1964 and accused of sabotage and conspiracy against the South African government. Mandela was sentenced to life in prison and locked up on Robben Island. Carrying identification number 466/64, he spent the first 18 years of his incarceration there, his most difficult time, Mandela himself says. He was forced to break rocks and most of the time could only look out at the bars of his cell windows. Visitors were not allowed. Reacting to strong pressure, the government transferred him and six other political prisoners to Pollsmoor Prison. To counter heavy criticism of his government, South African President Pieter Willem Botha in 1985 offered to free him in exchange for Mandela’s giving up what Botha called his violent struggle. Mandela rejected the offer, saying, “What freedom am I offered while the organisation of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into a contract.”

Stricken with tuberculosis, Mandela was transferred to the Victor Verster prison in 1988. From there he would continue the now ongoing process of talks with the South African government. On February 11, 1990, at 72 years of age and having by then spent 27 years of his life in prison – more than 13,000 days – Nelson Mandela was finally free. After negotiations, President Willem de Klerk subsequently lifted all charges against him and against other members of the liberation movements.

In 1993, Nelson Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize for having contributed to the end of apartheid and building democracy in South Africa. He became his country’s first Black president as the result of multi-racial elections held on April 27, 1994, a first time for South Africa. Announcing his victory, he proclaimed South Africa was “free at last.”

His resolution, example, persistence, and consistency were what made him a figure of moral stature for the world.

Mandela’s teachings as a political prisoner

After a long passage through prison, Nelson Mandela left an indelible mark. In his own flesh he lived the desolation, anxiety, impotence, and indignation and rage at humiliations that are part of being locked up. But he also did everything possible to try to overcome the horrors and to grow as a revolutionary during his time in prison. Rather than represent the individual man, he embodies all those fighters in the world who are deprived of liberty because they hold up banners of justice. In prison Mandela wrote of his experiences in notebooks that he tried to preserve afterwards by relying on other people. What with frequent confiscations by the guards – “those remorseless fates”, he used to call them – he was never certain they would end up where they were supposed to go. The writings that survived constitute today’s memory, the disgraceful record, but also the strength and faithfulness of those who resist without breaking.

“Until I was jailed I never fully appreciated the capacity of memory, the endless string of information the head can carry.” (3)

Like all of us who have been in prison, Mandela felt pain due to separation from loved ones and to uncertainty about his fate. Writing helped him be able to express these feelings. His biographers says that the writings that most reflect his prison suffering are those he wrote while at Robben Island prison between 1964 and 1971, perhaps his most painful time of being a prisoner.

“1968 and 1969 have been difficult and trying years for me. I lost my mother only 10 months ago. On May 12 my wife was detained indefinitely under the Terrorist Act [sic], leaving behind small children as virtual orphans, and now my eldest son is gone never to return…. Then came Sept[ember] 26 (my wife’s birthday) when I was advised of my mother’s death… I was again quite unprepared and for a few days I spent moments in my cell which I never want to remember. But nothing I experienced in the late Forties and in Sept[ember] last year can be likened to what I went through on July 16…. Suddenly my heart seemed to have stopped beating and the warm blood that had freely flown in my veins for the last 51 years froze into ice. For sometime I could neither think nor talk and my strength appeared to be draining out. Eventually, I found my way back to my cell with a heavy load on my shoulders and the last place where a man stricken with sorrow should be.” (4)

He reflected also about the importance of solidarity by social and revolutionary organizations – a moral obligation – for their militants and members who are in prison. He also thought about the relevance of solidarity campaigns, not only as an effective way to give political prisoners visibility and try to secure their freedom, but also as a voice of encouragement helping them to endure hard prison conditions.

“I am also aware that massive efforts have been made here and abroad for my release and that of other political prisoners, a campaign which has given us much inspiration and shown us that we have hundreds of thousands of friends… Few things have inspired me more that the knowledge that in spite of all the enemy is doing to isolate and discredit us, people everywhere never forget us… In my lifetime I shall step out into the sunshine and walk with firm feet because that event will be brought about by the strength of my organization and the sheer determination of our people.” (5)

And he spoke of the importance of personal friends or comrades visiting prisoners who are locked up and of the strength they gain.

“You cannot unlock the gates of this prison so that I can walk out as a free man, not can you improve the conditions under which I have to live. But your visit has certainly made it easy for me to bear all the grimness that has surrounded me over the past 22 years” (6)

Mandela converted prison into that other battleground and platform where one must study, be in solidarity with fellow human beings, provide testimony, resist, and reflect about the very existence of so many of us who do make mistakes but have good ideas. Prison becomes a testing ground for every revolutionary and that’s why each day, each experience, every space in the lock-up must be taken advantage of. That way prisoners become better persons and better men and women who, on leaving prison, go on with their lives in struggle so that people might be able to dream about real justice, dream of peace and freedom.

“The cell is an ideal place to learn to know yourself, to search realistically and regularly the process of your own mind and feelings. … Honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, pure generosity, absence of vanity, and readiness to serve others…are the foundation of one’s spiritual life… At least, if for nothing else, the cell gives you the opportunity to look daily into your entire conduct, to overcome the bad and develop whatever is good in you. Regular meditation, say about 15 minutes a day before you turn in, can be very fruitful in this regard. You may find it difficult at first to pinpoint the negative features in your life, but the 10th attempt may yield rich rewards.” (7)

Through his moral stature as a political prisoner, Mandela is the essential reference point for those of us who were in prison. His experience, his resistance, his example, his loyalty to his ideas and his cause must inevitably nourish our own moral sense so we can understand that our course through prison will never end up as an empty sacrifice.

“A new world will be won not by those who stand at a distance with their arms folded, but by those who are in the arena, whose garments are torn by storms and whose bodies are maimed in the course of the contest. Honor belongs to those who never forsake the truth even when things seem dark and grim, who try over and over again, who are never discouraged by insults, humiliation and even defeat.” (8)

Our unrelenting resolve is to secure peace with social justice for our peoples. So we say with Mandela: “It is so easy to break down and destroy. The heroes are those who make peace and build.” (9) We political prisoners pay tribute to your example. You fulfilled the obligation to duty set by your conscience. Rest in peace Tata Madiba!

Notes

1. “Long Walk to Freedom, Autobiography of Nelson Mandela,” Abacus, London, 1995, p. 233

2. From conversation with Richard Stengel about negotiations in the 1980’s. Nelson Mandela, “Conversations with Myself” (CWM), p.249

3. Letter to Hilda Bernstein, July 8, 1985, CWM, p. 115

4. Letter to Irene Buthelezi, August 3, 1949, CWM, pp.171-172

5. From the manuscript of Mandela’s unpublished autobiography written in prison, CWM,

6. Letter to Professor Samuel Dash, May 12, 1981, CWM, p. 243.

7. Letter to Winnie Mandela, February 1, 1975, CWM, p. 211.

8. Letter to Winnie Mandela, June 23, 1969, CWM, p. 175.

9. http://db.nelsonmandela.org/speeches/pub_view.asp?pg=item&ItemID=NMS985&txtstr

Art by Antonio Guerrero, one of the Cuban 5

by W. T. Whitney Jr.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/20/much-ado-about-a-handshake/
Attending a memorial event for former South African President Nelson Mandela, President Barack Obama shook hands with Cuban President Raul Castro. Secretary of State John Kerry excused Obama; “He didn’t choose who’s there.” Yet the encounter told much about the past and maybe about the future also.

Organizers of the memorial honored President Castro by asking him to give the culminating speech of the international homage to Mandela. He, President Obama, and four other foreign dignitaries were together on the dais. One observer suggests planners situated Castro “in such a way that an encounter [with Obama] was inevitable,”

Castro’s preeminent role in the proceedings stemmed from a history largely unknown in the United States, or downplayed. Speaking in Cuba in 1991, Nelson Mandela testified to Cuban contributions to South Africa’s freedom struggle.

“What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations with Africa?” Mandela asked. “Your presence and the reinforcement of your forces in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale were of truly historic significance,” he told Cuban listeners. “The crushing defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale was a victory for the whole of Africa. [It] broke the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressors [and] inspired struggling people inside South Africa… Cuito Cuanavale has been a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid!”

Cuito Cuanavale is the Angola location where Cuban and Angolan troops defeated South African invaders on March 23, 1988. The Cubans had repelled earlier invasions likewise directed at undoing Angolan independence. Between 1975 and 1990, 300,000 Cuban volunteers fought in Southern Africa; 2000 of them died.

Media coverage of the ceremonies overlooked other inconvenient truths. The United States and its NATO allies “were the most firm economic, military, and political supporters of the apartheid regime in South Africa.” Mandela remained on the U.S. terrorism watch list until 2008. A CIA agent probably supplied the tip leading to Mandela’s arrest in 1962. U.S. adulation of Mandela is thus on shaky ground, notwithstanding four U.S. presidents on hand at the observances.

Reacting to the handshake, Florida Republican Congressperson Ileana Ros-Lehtinen interrupted Secretary of State Kerry’s testimony on Iran. “[W]hen the leader of the free world shakes the bloody hand of a ruthless dictator like Raul Castro, it becomes a propaganda coup for the tyrant,” she observed; “Raul Castro uses that hand to sign the orders to repress and jail democracy advocates.” Senator John McCain found a precedent: “Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Hitler.”

Silence had greeted President Clinton’s handshake with President Fidel Castro at the United Nations in 2000. This time anxiety over Obama administration inclinations to ease hostilities against Cuba may explain the responses. Their extreme venom even suggests such speculation may be on target. If so, the handshake may, after the fact, become a signpost to the future. “What happened in Soweto [at the memorial],” opines Cuban analyst Iroel Sánchez, “is one drop in a glass that is more and more full and is pushing in the direction of change.”

At a Miami fundraiser on November 8, President Obama told wealthy Cuban Americans that, “[We] have to continue to update our policies … So the notion that the same policies that we put in place in 1961 would somehow still be as effective as they are today in the age of the Internet and Google and world travel doesn’t make sense.

And pressure mounts for his administration to negotiate with Cuba on a crucial issue. Four years ago Cuba arrested and jailed USAID contractor Alan Gross because he illegally provided opposition groups with sophisticated communication equipment. Gross’ wife and her allies want the Obama administration to negotiate his release. That would surely involve discussion of exchanging Gross for the four remaining Cuban Five anti-terrorists lodged in U.S. jails.

Interviewed about the Gross affair on December 15 by CNN, Secretary of State Kerry spoke of “back-door negotiations” in which “I have personally been involved” along with “my undersecretary of political affairs.” “The White House has been involved.”

In any event, “most foreign orators at Nelson Mandela’s funeral represented big powers,” according to Sánchez. Cuba, as “the moral power the United States has been unable to break,” was different. “Its foreign policy founded on principles is one reason why Washington has undertaken to defeat the revolution of Fidel and Raul Castro.”

I have decided to do my own New Year’s Message.

2014 will be the last full year of this obnoxious government and it looks as if it is going to continue attacking the most vulnerable. WE can tell this from the Morning Star’s final two front pages of 2013. A & E departments being told to vet patients according to their citizenship status on Monday 30th December and a man dying after waiting two hours for an ambulance in the final issue of the year.

There are so many things to fight against and the pace of destruction of social cohesion gives those of progressive opinions little chance of being effective. If we had a larger Communist party that would help. There are too few of our members who are young, women or from non-British backgrounds. Despite that I believe the Communist Party of Britain is by far the best political organisation in Britain. Its policies are just the ones that would see Britain out of the slump and on the road to socialism. It works in a generously non sectarian way. It helps to sustain the only daily paper which concentrates on the significant rather than the sensational. Its role in the trade union, peace, and solidarity movements is second to none. However if it were a lot bigger it could be a lot more effective. So clearly building the party both locally and nationally is a priority and I look forward to the coming year’s recruitment drive.

Combating anti-communism is the duty of all progressives, not just communists. We must combat name-calling. The words ‘Stalinist’, ‘tankie’ and ‘commie’ should not be accepted as OK. Language is important. We accept that it is from the experience of the women’s movement, the anti-racist movement and the gay movement. Anti-communist language should be challenged in the same way and as vigorously as we would combat sexist, racist and homophobic language. Let’s get started on this! It is important because anti-communism is the basic ingredient of fascism. It is a violation of human rights and should be seen by communist and non-communist alike as such. What a job for 2014!

Forty years ago our party played a magnificent role in ridding the country of a Tory government. Man, didn’t our pickets fly! 1974 saw the best ever labour Government. The one between February and October of that year. Stupidly, our trade union leadership – not all of it by any means, abdicated its responsibility to the membership by signing up to the Social Contract. On being re-elected the Labour Government reneged on its promises and bowed down to the IMF. However we should celebrate the solidarity which many of us experienced forty years ago.

2014 is also the 180th anniversary of the Tolpuddle Martyrs and we will be honouring the solidarity of those early trade unionists whose actions worked to free and bring home the Tolpuddle Six.

Of course, a lot will be said about the 100th anniversary of the Great War. We will be remembering those who refused to fight for pacifist reasons. We will also recall people like Bob Stewart and Willie Gallcher who refused to partake in the war because it was Imperialist. Many of those jailed for that reason formed the core of what was to become the Communist Party.

Communists support the affiliation of trade unions to the Labour Party. The trade union movement is the parent of the Labour Party. Unfortunately the Labour Party has always behaved like a spoilt brat. It has demanded presents and keeps scrounging money from its parent without doing its chores when it got into office. It should have abolished prescription charges and got rid of all anti-trade union legislation. It should not have got into scraps on the side of the other bullies. It should have got rid of all its dangerous toys like Trident missiles. We need to make the Labour Party a part of the Labour Movement and that will require a change in its constitution and a purge of the right starting with Blair.

I hate the National Anthem. It makes me squirm with embarrassment. Our queen is not gracious. She has never once in her inglorious reign declared an amnesty for prisoners. Scotland has her anthem as does Wales. We English have to use the Great Britain one. It’s not right. The ANC had its own anthem before it got rid of Apartheid. Why don’t we have something that can be sung with gusto on picket lines and in peace camps?

I also think the Union Flag is inappropriate. It comprises the flags or crosses of St. George, St. Andrew and St. Patrick. The Welsh are not represented on the flag. I am an atheist. I do not want to be represented by a Christian saint with or without his cross. Let’s have a flag ready for our People’s Republic of Britain! I would like the CPB to initiate a competition for both an anthem and a flag. how about it?

Let us remember that we are internationalists! We have a responsibility to victims of Imperialism everywhere. I call on our party members to make sure that we do what we can whether it be in CND or for the cause of Palestine, or the Miami 5 or for peace in the Middle East. A system which allows the majority of the world’s population to have lives shortened by poverty is a system which needs to be killed. I do not believe in capital punishment for people but it is correct for capitalism.

Have a wonderful new year.

A talk by A. Shaw, a member of the Houston Communist Party, on 12/29/2013