ET and the Boy

New songs!

Al — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:47:32 +0000

Five of them!

New stickers!

Al — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:41:54 +0000

Change.

Al — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:32:17 +0000

Mindy asked me to draw a picture of change. Is this clear?

UE workers occupy their factory in Chicago!

Al — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 18:18:05 +0000

United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America: UPDATED: UE Members Occupy Chicago Plant in Struggle for Justice

Chicago Tribune: Idled workers occupy factory in Chicago

Chicago Indymedia: Sit-In Continues at Chicago Window Plant

Fight Back News: Chicago: Workers Occupy Plant

Workers World: Workers occupy Chicago factory! Give your support!

Petition: In Solidarity with the Chicago Workers of Republic Windows and Doors

Jobs With Justice action: Hold Bank of America Accountable!

Send checks payable to the UE Local 1110 Solidarity Fund, to: UE, 37 S. Ashland, Chicago, IL 60607. Messages of support can be sent to leahfried@gmail.com. For more information, call the UE Chicago office at 312-829-8300.

Unfortunately, state intervention is not necessarily socialism.

Al — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:40:11 +0000

“[T]he free market, to the extent that it has ever existed for any serious period, is nothing but a favored instrument of capitalism, not the thing itself. Real capitalism is a particular process of material accumulation, an engine of growth and a regime of governance and institutions devoted to keeping that engine running. In a capitalist society this accumulation takes place primarily through the actions of private enterprises, underwritten by laws and customs that make accumulation the primary goal of society. That is only half the story, though. The other half is that a successful capitalist regime creates a surplus in the form of profit, and this surplus, though it is created by workers, is totally appropriated by owners and either saved or expended according to their desires. Some of that surplus is clawed back from them by the government in the form of taxes, but a good deal of those tax revenues further the activities of private enterprise and the owners in the form of necessary improvements to infrastructure, subsidies to troubled but valued enterprises, and funding for armies and police forces to protect their property. So capitalism goes about its business, creating a surplus that enriches the coffers of those who accumulate wealth while providing enough of a living to those who work for the accumulators to keep them from throwing sand in the engine’s gears. When either half of that bargain fails, state intervention is the inevitable result.

“But this is not socialism, and it is certainly not democratic socialism. Only if the great surplus of accumulated wealth were disposed of democratically for ‘the general welfare’–reinvested or distributed as income or services–would we be living in a socialist society.”

Philip Green: The Road to Socialism?

Communication is a human right.

Al — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:19:16 +0000

“We also nationalized Entel, which is the telecommunications company. It was in the hands of a transnational. This company invested only where there was more population and to be able to have a lot of clients. But this is a human right. Communication is a human right, as I was saying before. You have to go into the rural areas. It doesn’t matter if you lose money, because we have to give them telecommunications.”

Democracy Now!: An Hour with Bolivian President Evo Morales: “Neoliberalism Is No Solution for Humankind”

Privilege and safety

Al — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:39:27 +0000

Privilege implies unjust asymmetry. But when we speak of it, it is worth distinguishing between two kinds of privileges — those that, in a more just world, everyone ought to have (like health care, access to all the education one wants, or the benefit of the doubt) and those that no one ought to have (like social recognition of one’s race as superior, or the ability to displace other people from whatever housing one desires). When things fall into this latter, No One Should Have It category, it’s generally because it would be definitionally impossible for everyone to have it: the nature of the privilege is that it excludes others.

And I have a related notion about safety. Some strategies for making ourselves safer are exclusive in this way; they intrinsically make others less safe. Getting a gun, for instance, or a vicious dog. Calling the police is often this kind of safety strategy, also. And so is hoarding money. We should instead focus on strategies that make all of us safer, like knowing our neighbors, eliminating the causes of desperation, and building a social safety net to catch any of us in an emergency.

Means or end?

Al — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:04:32 +0000

Ask what your economy can do for you, not what you can do for your economy.

Jobs vs. a living

Al — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:58:42 +0000

This could be a good historical moment for the project of de-linking jobs from a living.

We lose track of the underlying values and start to think of jobs as a positive end in themselves.

I would argue that jobs — not the activity of work, of course, but the selling of our labor — are inherently exploitative and wrong.

What we need is enough things to meet people’s needs, and for the people to have access to the things. And a certain amount of work must be done to accomplish that. There is no need to link work and access to things together in the particular coercive and dysfunctional way we’ve chosen.

What if we could release our individual fears, breathe deep, and set about the project of meeting everyone’s needs in a collaborative way, with a sense of collective responsibility?

Jobs and minimum wage

Al — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:48:52 +0000

People who oppose minimum wage increases always claim that the number of jobs will decrease if the minimum wage is increased. I believe there is now strong economic research evidence refuting this.

But also, even if it were true: If the minimum wage goes up and we have fewer jobs, so what? With wages up, we don’t need as many jobs! Right now, plenty of people are working two or three minimum-wage jobs right now. If they were paid decent wages, maybe they wouldn’t have to.

If the same number of dollars go into payroll around the country or world, but fewer hours of labor are required to convey those dollars from the hands of the bosses into the hands of the workers: that’s great.

Conversely, policies that produce more jobs are not necessarily better for working people.