The Following is  an edited report on Sam Webb’s Report to the National Committee of the CPUSA on the present crisis that I was asked to prepare for the introduction to a discussion in the New Jersey District.  The discussion was held last evening and was very good. I have added a few sentences that were not presented yesterday to more fully explain my positions.  I am posting the report for those who failed to participate and also for our general readers.

Sam’s article points us in the right directions.  The question though is how to get there

First, what we see internationally and among rightwing Republicans in the U.S. is a return to pre depression, pre New Deal policies of “austerity.”  What such polices led to in the past was to either the start of a depression or the deepening a depression.

What they are today are attempts by the capitalist class to cut its losses and increase its direct control over wealth by making the working class pay for its failures.

First, we should the federal deficit itself.  It is now 14 trillion.  It was around 1 trillion in 1981 and 10 trillion when George W, Bush left office.  Its increase was the direct result of the huge increase in military spending, the huge tax cuts, and the anti-labor and export of capital policies associated with Reagan and Bush I and essentially continued in a more moderate way by Clinton, whose “fiscal conservative” policies moderate tax increases and continued spending cuts, did stabilize the budget, but with no restoration of what the people had lost in the 1980s. The Bush II policies of doubling the military budget and a new round of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy then more than doubled the deficit as of 2000

 The 4 trillion added in the two and a half years of the Obama administration are the result as I see it of these factors.   First the vast amount spent to save the banking system, which was necessary but not sufficient to deal with the economic crisis.  Second, the failure of the administration so far to reduce substantially the military budget.  Third, the failure of the administration to restore a tax system that would significantly raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations.  Fourth the failure so far of administration policies to significantly reduce unemployment, which undermines general purchasing power for the masses.

But the Republicans at the state level where they have gotten power largely because of these failures, as Sam shows. Have pursued policies that have nothing to do with reducing deficits, policies where spending and tax cuts have made state deficits objectively worse.   Republican state governments by rejecting federal stimulus money for public works and infrastructure projects have also undermined some of the positive policies that the administration has advanced,

Does it matter which party wins.  Sam asks.  It certainly does, as Sam contends, given what the Republicans have become and the dangers they represent.   But I would suggest that must begin to look at the Democrats in a more strategic way, using one of our old principles of industrial concentration to focus on those progressive Democrats who are trustworthy to advance the general programs that we support and strengthening them against the party bosses, power brokers, etc. 

First, we must wage the ideological battle. Here we can contribute a good deal, rooted in our understanding of monopoly capitalism and also of the politics of movement and unity.

Sam mentions the rightwing attack on “Big Government,” which it is important for us to in the U.S. goes back to the 19^th century, when it was as false as it is today. 

First, we should make tell people the truth, that is, in terms of the living standards of the people and the regulation of business and banking, the U.S. even by the standards of other advanced capitalist countries has a weak central government, although that government has enormous military power and power to restrict the civil rights and liberties of citizens.   In the U.S. progressive students of politics in the past distinguished between a “positive state” which acts to regulate business and advance the social welfare of the people in the interests of the general welfare, and a “negative state” which seeks to protect business from both regulation and social legislation while it often uses legislation and  military and police power to restrict civil rights and civil liberties  We should contend that we have a government which is today very weak when it comes to protecting and advancing the peoples interests and strong when it comes to protecting and advancing those who oppose and exploit the people

Reactionaries as they have for generations distort the question of taxation and the federal income tax most of all

We can and must explain to working people that since they pay the bulk of their income taxes to the federal government, it makes no sense that education, much of infrastructure and social services are funded at the state and local level, by regressive property taxes and other regressive taxes. Then in reality they are paying double and triple if federal income taxes were raised along with corporation taxes the great majority would be paying less.

Reactionaries blame unions for high prices and public employee unions for high local taxes.   We can and must explain to working people that  if unions were strengthened rather than weakened, workers would be able to negotiate higher money wages and better benefits or social income which would both increase their purchasing power, produce jobs, and also greater revenue to reduce deficits seriously.

Sam deals well with both the U.S. and global economic crises, which are interdependent.

Let me briefly look at what he puts forward as an immediate program,

First Sam presents specific concerning immediate relief.  All of this deserves support.   I would add something else though.  That is begin to absorb the debt of the states, perhaps compelling the banks which got trillions of bailout funds to act as middle man to do that, that is to bailout the states.

The second point a peacetime Green economy.  Again we should endorse all of these programs, but here I would put a later proposal, to cut the military budget in half, in this section, because it belongs here.

Restore civil rights and civil liberties.  Here I am in general agreement with everything, but I don’t understand the restoration of the separation of powers, especially given the present composition of the federal judiciary

I would also place general analysis which is powerful, at the very end.

I have some issue with Sam’s quote from Michael Harrington, whom he refers to as a “socialist” which of course is true, although Communists did and would call him a Social Democrat.   I say that not because Harrington was an anti-Communist social Democrat who never really supported as other socialists did united front actions with Communists, but because I disagree with the quote which Sam presents positively, that is, that long with the struggle of workers and the left, the development of a Welfare State “was a function of the capitalist socialization process…”

Besides the point that there was no welfare state in the U.S. on the level of the one that existed in Western Europe and Britain, Harrington’s statement goes against all relevant historical evidence, that is, that capitalists everywhere fought against welfare state social policies, “accepted them when they are were forced to on an ad hoc basis, and saw them along with the powers of trade unions as the first targets for attack when it became politically possible to attack them successfully.  The fact that welfare states helped stabilize capital and in the post WWII era facilitated its growth was something that capitalists no more accepted than they did in the U.S. that the New Deal government’s labor and social welfare policies saved capitalism.  I would conclude by saying that there has been no “change of heart,” but a more open class struggle with capital on the offensive after a long period of relative stability. Harrington’s quote reminds me of the arguments made by Karl Kautsky, Rudolph Hilferding and other prominent theorists of the Second Social Democratic International, that is that the concentration and organization of capital at higher levels serves as the basis for both capitalist acceptance and even support for reforms in the name of a more efficient labor force and also cooperative international policy to advance economic development.  It became historically a slippery slope for destructive class collaboration, although let me make it clear that I am in no way accusing Sam for this one small quote of that, the way a few out of touch dogmatists are today—dogmatists who are more interested in condemning the CPUSA’s present positions than they are in fighting the right and the forces of monopoly capital and who like all dogmatists confuse words and actions and provide ammunition for anti-Communists.  

Sam’s report is geared for  an ideological counter-attack that will mature with the 2012 elections    Let me conclude by saying that  for the elections , we should mobilize on the issues, against the Republicans everywhere, and concentrate on progressive Democrats, Democrats with whom we can build genuine united fronts.