THE “JOBS FOR ALL” LETTER AGAINST THE CURRENT NASTILY REFUSED TO PRINT

Recently, I tried to post the following Letter to the Editors of Against the Current on Occupy movements and the unemployment crisis:

To the Editors of ATC:

While I appreciate the coverage of left movements I get from Against the Current (ATC), including the extensive posts on the Occupy movements in the latest issue, #156, January/February 2012, as a very much "self-interested" unemployed worker I have to object to the consistent exclusion of articles in ATC that has been going on for the last couple of years (only one exception), the unemployment crisis, which is at the heart of the people's massive misery caused by the Great Recession. I can't help but personally feel that this exclusion flows from the fact that the left generally has no personal understanding or awareness of the severity of the crisis, and cannot seem to grasp its devastating impact on the unemployed themselves, who often feel psychologically as though trapped in the lowest rungs of Dante’s hell.

Noted socialist writer Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." That doesn't just apply to the business and managerial classes alone--I submit, it can also apply to those who are economically comfortable either as workers or as retirees--and thus have no inkling of what it's like to be one of the working poor, what it's like to be chronically unemployed and "living" on a mere $600/month in unemployment compensation, to live constantly desperate. Such as I do, even as a college graduate (but with the "wrong" degree for the job market!), along with my college graduate friends who also have the "wrong" degrees, who are also older (as I am), who have to try and subsist on only temp agency work that pays $10/hour or less (as I had to do for 10 years, before being cut loose even from this kind of employment!) And yes, Upton Sinclair's remark applies to many a putative socialist as well, and to numerous "activists" in Occupy movements and left groups who don't have to worry about the economic wolf at the door, at least for the time being.

It is literally shameful the way the U.S. left has ignored the unemployment crisis, either slighting it through silence altogether, or not proposing bold Keynesian measures such as a new WPA, which created 8.5 million jobs in the 1930s and provided paychecks to 9.7 workers then, according the UCubed, the "union of the unemployed" set up by the Machinists' union (but which is not conceived as an "unemployed council" such as were established in the 1930s, but merely as a voting bloc to pressure Obama and the Democratic Party to "do right."). The reformist socialists such as DSA and CCDS only advocate for Obama's tepid jobs program, which will create merely 1.2 million jobs in an economy with a far bigger workforce than existed in the 1930s. The "revolutionary" socialists are even worse, aiming their fire at the "inadequacy" and merely "reformist" measures that would result from implementing Keynesian measures such as were instituted during the New Deal. So afraid of "saving capitalism," our "revolutionaries" would rather sacrifice the unemployed upon the altar of ideological purity, thus presenting themselves through their inaction as tacitly “aligned” (though for much different reasons) with the obstructionist Republicans and Tea Partiers--who also don't want any Keynesian measures applied to help the unemployed by providing decent-paying, productive, valuable jobs that fulfill real economic needs such as repairing infrastructure, and can actually become Green jobs.

Fortunately, there is one honorable socialist exception, the semi-Trotskyist/Third Camp socialist journal and website New Politics, http://newpol.org, of which ATC Editor David Finkel is a Sponsor, and of which leading Solidarity member Dan La Botz is an Editor. I published on New Politics online on February 3, 2011 my "Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis" calling for a new WPA, http://newpol.org/node/425; in this I was ably seconded by Brian King's supportive article and history of the WPA, "Jobs for All," http://newpol.org/node/445. Radical historian Jesse Lemisch also contributed mightily to this discussion with two articles on New Politics online, "Occupy the American Historical Association: Demand a WPA Federal Writers' Project," http://newpol.org/node/555, and "A WPA for History: Occupy the American Historical Association," http://newpol.org/node/582. I also briefly discussed Occupy youth and their roles as probably unemployed workers once they leave the student confines in "Carl Davidson, Bill Ayers, and Zig Ziglar Moments," http://newpol.org/node/568, where I pointedly noted in a footnote that, according to the New York Times, only 56% of the graduates of the Class of 2010 had found jobs by 2011! But these are virtually unique in what is otherwise a blackout of articles and analyses on the unemployment crisis in "revolutionary" socialist publications!

Jack Rasmus’ article in ATC 135 (July/August 2008), “A New Phase of Economic Crisis,” http://solidarity-us.org/site/node/1608, which was touted to me by one of the Editors of ATC as an exception to my claim of silence on the unemployment crisis, is no exception, really, to this blackout. Much of the article is but a compendium of economic statistics that leads only to the weak, deterministic conclusion that essentially the unemployment and ancillary crises caused by the Great Recession can’t even be seriously ameliorated under capitalism. A “revolutionary” call to passivity in concrete action now while calling for the overthrow of capitalism in the indefinite future. Certainly not a call for a “Jobs for All” new WPA as we called for in New Politics, which, while possibly “saving capitalism from itself” (albeit with major restructuring of this “saved” capitalism), would directly benefit millions, galvanize and energize them, and draw them into more militant political action precisely because they would now feel a sense of real hope and empowerment—plus having the material means to live a decent life, not merely scrounge to survive! Same as the (admittedly) reformist and inadequate New Deal did in the 1930s—which aside from achieving real changes in the way capitalism worked, also radicalized millions and pushed the “limits of the possible” much further to the left. Good things, yes? One would really think so, especially on the part of the “revolutionary” left as represented by ATC and Solidarity, but—these “revolutionaries” tragically disappoint by only wanting to say “no” to this.

But as my comrade and fellow New Politics contributor Brain King put it in an e-mail comment to me that was shared with this ATC Editor, “Why don't ‘Socialist’ groups and journals want to support ‘Jobs for All’? That's a tough one, but it's gotta have something to do with how they see their own group interests and the maintenance of their institutions. They must figure that it's much cooler to promote some pie-in-the-sky version of an ethereal state of affairs called ‘socialism’ than to get jobs for all, gain a lot of control over labor markets, but leave capitalism still functioning. I also think a lot of these so-called ‘socialists’ don't much like the idea of being involved with a lot of politically incorrect schlubs, like me and you. If your gonna build a mass movement, you're gonna have to learn to get along with a lot of working people without left pedigrees.” [As originally written by King—GF]

Leaving socialists such as myself, Brian King and Jesse Lemisch who are aware of the horridness of the unemployment crisis and the sting of unemployment between the Scylla of reformist tailing after Obama's inadequate approach, or the Charybdis or the tacit “alignment” with the Republicans against Keynesian measures that would actually work by the "revolutionary" left (although, again, for entirely different reasons), as demonstrated by the deafening silence coming from the "revolutionaries”!

I write this letter out of my great respect and appreciation for ATC.

George Fish

This was a revised version of an earlier draft I’d sent to this socialist bimonthly—most notably revised from the original in that I’d excised some language that Against the Current Managing Editor and Editorial Board Member David Finkel had vehemently objected to. For in the original I’d talked of persons on the left not understanding what it was like to be unemployed because many of them were among the “smug employed” and the “smug retired.” Finkel also drew my attention to the article by Jack Rasmus, on which I commented in the revised letter. Those were the two notable changes made, and made specifically to answer Finkel’s objections; and so I sent off the revised letter to Against the Current for re-consideration. Despite Finkel’s nastily reproachful tone, I’d been professional enough to take his objections into consideration, and revise accordingly. I expected no problems with the revised letter, even though personal relations with him were strained, had been for some time, and in the fall of 2010 Finkel personally instigated proceedings that led to my expulsion from Solidarity, the socialist grouplet (only 200-some members nationally) that publishes Against the Current as a ‘broader” left magazine. In fact, many’s the time I’d previously published in Against the Current, frequently with Finkel’s previous encouragement and approval. (It should be mentioned here that David Finkel is also a listed Sponsor of the New Politics hard-copy journal.)

What I got instead from Against the Current was this below, directly from Finkel:

My final note to you, last week, very explicitly stated that “…you don’t need to send us any more ‘letters to the editor’ or proposals for articles, and in fact you can stop sending messages here on anything whatsoever. If there is any part of the above that is not clear, please re-read as many times as necessary.” There is no way to make the point clearer. We will not acknowledge or respond to any further communications from you.

There it is, ladies and gentlemen, friends and comrades! Just like Lucifer, I’ve now been cast into the pit of hell by Almighty God himself, in the form of a Managing Editor of a small, and to most people, highly obscure, magazine of the left with which I’d been associated with before; and had even been told by Finkel himself that I could submit proposed articles and letters to Against the Current even after I’d been expelled from Solidarity.

What’s particularly interesting, I think, in all this is not any objection to “offensive” language (which had been excised, anyway, in my revision) on the part of Against the Current, but the fact that, like much of the left today, it doesn’t really want to talk about “Jobs for All” new WPA-style programs. New Politics online has been the only notable (and to me, honorable) exception, having first published my awkwardly-titled "Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis" that called for such a new WPA, which was ably seconded on New Politics online by Brian King; further, also on New Politics online, radical historian Jesse Lemisch posted three articles in support of a WPA-like proposal for unemployed cultural and intellectual workers. (Two of Lemisch’s articles are linked above in the letter, as are King’s and my articles).

That “Jobs for All” programs and the left’s failure to adequately address the unemployment crisis because new-WPA proposals are seen as either inherently “reformist,” or conversely, other elements of the left don’t want to destroy “unity” by going beyond what Obama’s proposed, seems to me what’ at the ideological crux of Against the Current’s refusal, not language that had since been removed. That was seen to be the ideological issue involved by Brian King and three other friends and comrades of mine, who sent me the following remarks on my original draft, and whose words of support had been passed on to Finkel. They wrote, from a variety of political orientations, as seen below.

Greg King, member of CCDS, shop steward, SEIU Local 888, Boston city workers:

George, the Left hasn't been completely silent on the unemployment issue. They probably haven't devoted anywhere near as much time and energy to the crisis as it deserves. Discussing & pushing for solutions such as your WPA proposal would be a very good thing to do. Sometimes there is too much posturing and abstract theorizing, not enough attention to the real problems of real people.

Also, I didn't think your letter was that offensive. I thought it was well-argued and frank.

Harold Karabell, former left activist in Indianapolis, now living in St. Louis, Missouri:

In addition to infrastructure work, my own city could use a few thousand trees in various neighborhoods.

So perhaps it's time to revive the CCC as well!

Brian King, comrade from Seattle, long-time activist, contributor to New Politics:

I'm not surprised that ATC refused to publish your letter. For the record, I thought it was very good, and, for you, remarkably restrained. [I admit to sometimes getting carried away with harsh language—GF] My experience with all these guys (ATC, CCDS, DSA, Monthly Review, Nation) is that they are very uncomfortable with the idea of Jobs for All and the idea of building a movement for a new WPA. Actually, as far as I know, the only person of national prominence who supports us is Robert Reich, Clinton's old Secretary of Labor.

Why don't "Socialist" groups and journals want to support "Jobs for All"? That's a tough one, but it's gotta have something to do with how they see their own group interests and the maintenance of their institutions. They must figure that it's much cooler to promote some pie-in-the-sky version of an ethereal state of affairs called "socialism" than to get jobs for all, gain a lot of control over labor markets, but leave capitalism still functioning. I also think a lot of these so-called "socialists" don't much like the idea of being involved with a lot of politically incorrect schlubs, like me and you. If your gonna build a mass movement, you're gonna have to learn to get along with a lot of working people without left pedigrees.

and Phil Davis, former member of Solidarity, unemployed recent college graduate:

I think Dave should publish your letter regardless of whether or not he agrees with it. He could perhaps publish it and then write a rebuttal explaining why he disagrees with you. Instead, he chooses not to publish it at all. This is sad and unfortunate and yes it is censorship…you are correct.

Yes, I agree with you that "Jobs for All" is the slogan we should be fighting for. As someone who is unemployed, I believe that's a very, very important demand. I think Finkel should publish your letter regardless of whether or not he personally agrees with it. He could always write some type of rebuttal explaining why he disagrees with it, but I guess he won't even be doing that.

Refusal to even discuss “Jobs for All” programs compounded by censorship. Those are the political issues at the heart of Against the Current’s vehement refusal to print my Letter to the Editors, nor even allow the issue to be raised, even in a miniscule journal of the U.S. left where, given the mood of the U.S.’s also-miniscule left as a whole, both the letter itself and the issues it addresses would soon be forgotten. If anyone on the left ever wonders why, in this time of continuing deep economic recession, there exists this historical anomaly of the great bulk of the 99% not identifying with the left, nor wishing to get involved, even in amorphous Occupy movements, we need look no further than this incident for at least partial explanations.

Right-to-Work is not the only issue in Indiana

Despite its monopolizing politics in Indiana for the last few months, so-called Right-to Work is not the only issue in Indiana. Yes, believe it or not, there are other pressing issues for working people in the Hoosier state, and it’s only the organized sector of the workforce that has that much to lose from Right-to-Work—at least in the short run. Providing an economy to put the unemployed back to work is still an issue, for, despite some recent job growth, there still aren’t enough jobs available. And if my friends and I are any indication, among those unemployed left-outs are still going to be a large number of college graduates, “overqualified” denizens of the work force who, for a number of reasons, are still going to be excluded—allegedly underexperienced or lacking any proper experience, persons with the “wrong” degree, and older workers. I knew a lot of them when I was test-scoring, a job that, while requiring a college degree, provided only around four months’ work, and paid only $10 an hour. In fact, for many of us long-term test scorers (I was one for ten years, before being unceremoniously denied further employment), we had to take pay cuts just to keep the jobs! When, for example, I started the job in 2001, I was paid $10.50 an hour, with regular raises that, by the end of 2005, put me up to $11.50 an hour. (In those years we also had six-eight months of work per year.) Then the company that hired us through temp agencies for these jobs started demanding various pay cuts, with the temp agencies then providing these reduced-pay jobs to us on a take-it-or-leave it basis. But having nowhere else to go, we had to take it. Workers who had been making $15-16 an hour were now reduced to $10; all of us, veterans and novices alike, the same $10 an hour.

As for Indiana’s WorkOne state employment agency, we’re often classified there as “unskilled labor” despite our college educations. (Or is it because of our college educations in a state with abysmally low educational attainment, with most jobs at a low-skill level, which just makes us college graduates too “unmanageable” for such jobs as are available!) Needless to say, given the general unimaginativeness of Indiana’s state agencies, WorkOne simply considers many of us college graduates not as potential high-skilled workers, but simply lacking in the “relevant” skills supposedly needed now, and so comes to the conclusion that we’re just “unskilled labor.” As good examples of just what prevails here in this regard, see my article on Indiana’s Brain Drain for the online Examiner newspaper, www.examiner.com/x-19063-Indianapolis-Economic-Policy-Examiner, and my article on WorkOne in New Politics online, http://newpol.org/node/564. And Indiana wonders why the state faces a chronic Brain Drain!

And to top it off, unemployed workers in Indiana will face a cut in unemployment benefits starting July 1, 2012. During 2011’s fight against Right-to-Work, despite the Democrats’ absence that denied the Indiana General Assembly a quorum, the Republicans still managed to legally pass a bill authorizing such cuts without a quorum, and Republican Governor Mitch Daniels gleefully signed the bill into law in front of 250 protesting workers! Little good it does us unemployed to hear the refrain from those who’ve been constantly preoccupied with Right-to Work, “I lobbied against the cut in unemployment benefits.” Despite their lobbying, the bill passed, became law, and we, the unemployed, will pay the price, not the employed. And of course, despite all the lobbying, the importuning of state legislators, despite the massive show of bodies at the Statehouse both years, Right-to-Work still became law; the next step will now be to get enough legislators elected in 2012 to repeal the law in 2013. Hopefully, they will also repeal the cut in unemployment benefits, but maybe not. But for us unemployed with few prospects for employment—which, again, I emphasize, includes a lot of college graduates—that’s an issue far more important, with far more immediate effects, than Right-to-Work.

Indeed, considering that Indiana’s unionization rate is only 11.3% of the workforce (Bureau of Labor Statistics; that’s lower than the national rate of 11.8%), and only 8.2% in the private sector (Steven Greenhouse, “A Gathering Storm Over `Right to Work' in Indiana,” New York Times, January 2, 2012), many Indiana workers were victims of the “race to the bottom” that’s taking place across the country even before Right-to-Work. They’re already facing those wage cuts, cuts or elimination of benefits (when they exist in the first place, which is increasingly rare), uncertainty of employment, either too little work of massive forced overtime, that Right-to-Work opponents predict will come about. The dire effects boding ahead because of Right-to-Work are already there for many employed workers, and were there even before the passage of Right-to-Work. So, even if things could get theoretically worse in the future, they’re already bad enough now, and if they do get worse, couldn’t get much worse than they are now.

Then there’s Indiana’s disgrace of a social safety net, symbolized and enhanced in its horridness by the FSSA, the state’s Family and Social Service Administration umbrella “social service agency.” Consider that an unemployed worker with a family makes too much money even on unemployment benefits to qualify for needed financial assistance! Consider that TANF benefits in Indiana are only $290 a month! And consider the wretchedness of Medicaid coverage to begin with, compounded by the fact that I don’t know of a single health provider or pharmacist I’ve encountered who has a good word to say about FSSA. Or consider the horridness of Vocational Rehabilitation or the Department of Mental Health, which, in terms of my experience trying to find employment through both, are but conduits to the fast-food and other low-paying service industries. And both will regard a college degree as either a barrier to employment or an irrelevancy, because, if you need Vocational Rehabilitation or mental health services in the first place, you must be congenitally stupid! And of course, Indiana’s mental health system, never very good in the first place, has gotten even worse under the brunt of cutbacks in funding. Not to mention inept case workers who will deny one’s eligibility for welfare benefits for specious reasons and truly stupid mistakes, as happened to me twice in less than two years, first in October 2009 and again in June 2011. And even though I won my benefits back upon appeal, it took six months both times, and required additional intervention from my State Senator’s office, before the FSSA restored what was rightfully mine in the first place. Then there’s the denial I faced in 2004, finally winning back my benefits a year later, which wasn’t even, formally, for specious reasons—the rationale for denial being unfathomable even to the FSSA representatives, as my lawyer and I had presented an airtight case demonstrating that all relevant documents had been properly submitted to my then-case worker, who evidently ignored them, with this even approved of by her supervisor.

The upshot of all this being that it we are really concerned about the working class we must be concerned about the working class as a whole, and the whole comprises not only those who are organized and employed, but those unorganized and employed, underemployed, and unemployed, as well as those on welfare—all workers, or potential workers; for the unemployed and those on welfare are not a motley group of lumpens fit only to discard—they themselves are able people without the ability to demonstrate their worth and productive value. Given that, the overriding focus on Right-to-Work is to tacitly elevate above the rest of the working class those who are employed members of labor unions, for this is the sector most directly affected by Right-to-Work—indeed, in the short run, the sector within Indiana’s workforce that’s solely affected. Thus, the overriding focus on Right-to-Work is far too narrow. Which means it is a niche issue (nothing wrong with that!) belonging to one sector of the working class, which must then be combined with the niche issues of the other sectors of the working class to make a cluster of issues that encompass the needs of the working class as a whole.

Nor was passing Right-to-Work the only stupidity committed by the Indiana General Assembly. On the day after the Indiana Senate passed Right-to-Work, January 31, 2012, it passed the “education” bill requiring so-called “creation science” to be taught in all Indiana schools, although not necessarily in the science classes. Given past court decisions, that bill is likely to be ruled unconstitutional; although given the decisions made by the Roberts Supreme Court, it’s all too possible that the Supremes will ignore precedent and embrace “creationism” as also a valid subject to be taught in Indiana schools—and thus, in schools across the country. The only saving grace to the “creationism” bill mandating the teaching of the creation fables of the various religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism specifically mentioned—thanks to the pluck of Senate Minority Leader Vi Simpson (D-Bloomington), the creation story of Scientology must also be taught! And it passed, there being no way to keep teaching Scientology out of a bill specifically mandating the teaching of the various religious creation stories. As Tony Ortega put it in the February 1, 2012 Village Voice, “Indiana Senate Votes to Teach Scientology in Schools,” “That's right -- kids in Indiana may be learning about Xenu the galactic overlord, spaceships shaped like DC-8s, hydrogen bombs in volcanoes, and the disembodied souls of space aliens that attach themselves to us until one uses the exorcism techniques of Dianetics!” [Emphasis in original] Well, if you can’t do anything else, leave ‘em laughing when you go!

Of course, Indiana schools are bad enough already, a major contributor to the general low-skill level of the Indiana workforce overall, and a prime contributor to Indiana’s per capita income falling six years in a row, 2005-2010; and with the third slowest personal income growth in the nation from 2000 to 2010, just over 3%, and well below the national average of 3.95% (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis). According to STATS Indiana, prepared by the Indiana business Research Center at the Kelly School of Business, Indiana University, the Hoosier state ranked 42nd in per capita income in 2010, down from 33rd in 2000. Philip Powell, Associate Professor of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington stated to the Indianapolis Star in 2009: "We're stuck. We're stuck because we don't have the knowledge base we need in the labor force. A lot of that is because of our really mediocre primary and secondary educational system." A big reason so much of the Indiana economy is dependent on manufacturing is that Indiana's workforce is largely unskilled and uneducated. Only one-third of its workers have high school diplomas or GEDs, and only 28 percent have college degrees, compared to 39 percent nationally. (George Fish and Dave Fey, “Mediocrity—a Hoosier affliction,” Bloomington (IN) Alternative, July 11, 2009, http://bloomingtonalternative.com/articles/2009/07/12/10039)

So, while Right-to-Work is important, it’s not the only important issue for working people in Indiana. Yes, it’s a bad law; yes, it should be repealed; and repealing it should be a priority, but not the sole priority—there are still many issues besides Right-to-Work needing to be addressed for the benefit of all Indiana working people, employed and unemployed, union and non-union alike.