To the Editors of ATC: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.)
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
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.
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