Wall Street swine and the vaccine scandal

Published in Socialist Worker.

IT WAS adding insult and injury to injury.

With hospitals, doctor's offices, clinics and schools around the country waiting on scarce supplies of the swine flu vaccine, Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs and Citigroup ordered up more than 1,000 doses between them for company doctors to administer to their employees in New York City.

Distribution of the vaccine is a national scandal, but people's anger was compounded by the news that the banksters jumped to the head of the line. "Wall Street banks have already taken so much from us," John VanDeventer of the Service Employees International Union wrote on the union's Web site. "They've taken trillions of our tax dollars. They've taken away people's homes who are struggling to pay the bills. But they should not be allowed to take away our health and well-being."

But as disgusting as Wall Street's arrogant behavior is, the bigger picture is more serious and much scarier--thousands of people are dying preventable deaths, and millions are becoming seriously ill because the U.S. government's response to the swine flu pandemic relies on a for-profit pharmaceutical industry that prioritizes profits over people and a public health infrastructure that has been gutted by budget cuts.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 3,900 U.S. residents have died from swine flu--the strain of the flu virus officially known as H1N1--since April (540 of them children). That's almost four times higher than previous death toll announced by the CDC--and meanwhile, only 5 percent of Americans report having received the vaccine. Even before the Centers' dramatically higher death tolls were released, President Obama declared a national state of emergency because of the pandemic.

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HOW DID this happen? A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found [1] that "58 percent place a great deal or moderate amount of the blame for the lack of vaccine on the federal government...and 62 percent blame drug companies."

President Obama promised in July that 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine would be available by the end of October. The Department of Health and Human Services revised that estimate to 40 million and then to 28 million--enough doses for just 17.6 percent of the 159 million Americans considered to be at high risk for swine flu.

The government had plenty of time to prepare. Scientists have been predicting this crisis for years--a virulent strain of the flu virus among animals developing into a strain that affects humans, and spreading rapidly because no one has immunity to it. The specific form of H1N1 that made the jump to humans was discovered in pigs in 1998.

As Mike Davis, author of The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu [2], wrote in an article for SocialistWorker.org earlier this year [3], "[T]he central paradox of this swine flu panic is that while totally unexpected, it was accurately predicted." Researchers, Davis said, "urged the creation of an official surveillance system for swine flu. That admonition, of course, went unheeded in a Washington."

The federal government, which can find trillions of dollars for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and to bail out Wall Street, hasn't devoted enough resources to build the public health infrastructure necessary to develop and distribute vaccines to protect the population. Instead, it relies on the pharmaceutical industry.

The government awarded $2 billion in contracts for the production of 195 million doses of H1N1 vaccine to the for-profit pharmaceutical companies Norvartis, Sanofi-aventis, GlaxoSmithKline, CSL Limited and MedImmune--but these companies so far have delivered just 20 percent of the original order.

As Barbara Ehrenreich pointed out in an article on TomDispatch.com [4], the shortage is due to complications involving these companies' use of outdated technology from the 1950s, which involves growing vaccine in chicken eggs.

Rather than invest in developing more efficient, reliable and effective ways to manufacture vaccines, which "can be tricky and less than maximally profitable to manufacture...Big Pharma...[traditionally prefers] to manufacture drugs for such plagues as erectile dysfunction, social anxiety, and restless leg syndrome," Ehrenreich wrote.

Congress--which voted to cut federal funding to ACORN after a handful of its employees were caught on tape offering advice on how to evade taxes to a couple right-wingers--has so far remained silent about the federal government's contract with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which has a long history of wrongdoing.

In 2003, GSK paid an $88 million fine for overcharging the government's Medicaid health program for low-income people, and in 2007, it paid an Internal Revenue Service fine of $3.1 billion after allegedly using "transfer pricing" to dodge paying billions in taxes, the largest tax settlement in history. And in 2008, an FDA official accused GSK of attempting to "sugar-coat" the increased risk of suicide among children taking its anti-depressant Paxil.

Exacerbating the vaccine shortage is the inability of state and local health departments to effectively distribute what has been produced. According to Reuters [5], Dr. Anne Schuchat of the CDC told a Senate health subcommittee that her agency has had difficulties reaching state and local health officials who are on furlough because of budget cuts that have come as a result of state budget shortfalls--in a system already weakened by 15,000 job cuts over the past two years.

But there's one player in all this that isn't suffering--the pharmaceutical industry. The drug giants stand to make a hefty profit off of swine flu vaccines--estimates range from $7.6 billion to $18 billion in sales worldwide, depending on severity of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, people are waiting in long lines for hours for vaccines that haven't been produced or distributed. In late October, ABC News reported on a typical scene [6]: hundreds lined up starting at 9 a.m. at a makeshift clinic in a Chicago school, scheduled to open at 3 p.m., only to be turned away 30 minutes after the clinic opened because there weren't enough doses to go around.

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SOME PEOPLE have drawn comparisons between the government's botched handling of the pandemic and its failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Another parallel to Katrina is apparent when you see who is most impacted by swine flu. According to the New York Daily News [7], "[H]alf of the H1N1 children's deaths between April and August were among African Americans and Hispanics," though these groups account for only around one-third of children in the U.S.

Like the poor and mostly African American residents of New Orleans left behind to endure the Katrina disaster, poverty and racism are the main factors behind why Blacks and Latinos are at greater risk for complications arising from swine flu. According to USA Today, these groups are "four times more likely [than whites] to be hospitalized with the virus."

Not only are African Americans at greater risk, they are less likely to seek or receive the vaccine. According to the Los Angeles Times [8], "African Americans received 2.57 percent of the initial 60,773 vaccinations [in LA County], although they make up about 9 percent of the county population."

Loretta Jones of Healthy African American Families in South LA blames the low turnout on distrust of the health care system. One stark reason for that distrust, Jones said, was the "Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which lasted from 1932 to 1972, in which federal researchers withheld treatment from Black men." But, said Jones, "it's more than the legacy of Tuskegee--it's a whole lifetime of poor access to health care."

Like the uninsured patient who goes to the dentist with a toothache, only to discover a mouth full of decay, the swine flu pandemic has revealed the consequences of decades of privatization and cuts to public health and social services--with the effects hitting working-class people, and especially people of color, hardest.

Instead of vaccinating the swine on Wall Street, the government should tax them and use the revenues to produce vaccines and other drugs that are accessible and affordable for all.

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Material on this Web site is licensed by SocialistWorker.org, under a Creative Commons (by-nc-nd 3.0) [9] license, except for articles that are republished with permission. Readers are welcome to share and use material belonging to this site for non-commercial purposes, as long as they are attributed to the author and SocialistWorker.org.

1. [1] http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-11-10-swineflupoll10_ST_N.htm
2. [2] http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FMonster-Our-Door-Global-Threat%2Fdp%2F0805081917%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1240810647%26sr%3D8-2&tag=socialistwork-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325
3. [3] http://socialistworker.org/2009/04/27/capitalism-and-the-flu
4. [4] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175134/barbara_ehrenreich_why_your_child_may_not_get_a_swine_flu_shot_soon
5. [5] http://www.reuters.com/article/internal_ReutersNewsRoom_ExclusivesAndWins_MOLT/idUSTRE5A557920091110
6. [6] http://abcnews.go.com/WN/SwineFluNews/swine-flu-vaccine-lines-hours/story?id=8930589
7. [7] http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/10/07/2009-10-07_unspoken_minority_toll_swine_flus_bigger_impact_on_blacks_and_hispanics_is_not_b.html
8. [8] http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-me-minority-flu-vaccine11-2009nov11,0,6574467.story
9. [9] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0

DC March for Equality: A Success

Published in the Rainbow Times

by J.M. Sorrell and Gary Lapon

JM:

Early last summer, I heard that a grassroots national march was being considered for LGBT equality in DC. My immediate internal response was to feel we should have a bus from western Massachusetts. A woman I met at a rally suggested I contact Gary Lapon, an ally and a socialist, to help with organizing.

We met regularly and began spreading the word. Before I knew it, Gary reserved TWO buses and was convinced they would be filled. He met with Five College students, and helped inspire a third bus (Hampshire College).

My two jobs precluded me from going to DC, so I was happy to support the process and be with Gary in spirit. Gary did fill those buses, and I suspect there is no stopping him as the work continues. He is one of my heroes. I asked him these questions:

JM: Describe your interest in the march. How did you come to this place?

I was excited by the response to the passage of Proposition 8, which took away same-sex marriage in California. Tens of thousands of predominately young people took to the streets in anger in California, joined by similar numbers across the country. I take a principled stand against all forms of oppression and believe that real change requires the self-activity of regular people, so I was inspired by reports of a new, youthful, diverse, largely working class LGBT movement and wanted to help it take the next step: a national march for full civil equality.

The contradiction between growing support for LGBT equality and the discrimination still on the books at the federal, state, and local level is large enough to drive a movement through, and given the hopes and confidence of a young generation that just played a leading role in electing an African American President in a country based on slavery, I became convinced that the potential exists to build a new civil rights movement for LGBT equality.

I met a wonderful group of activists who came together to make this happen; the Rainbow Times, Pride & Joy, Out For Reel film festival, and Amherst Community Television all provided us with free publicity, which is greatly appreciated.

JM: What excited you the most about your experience at the DC march/rally? Any surprises?

I was surprised by the turnout of over 200,000 people. The march was organized in large part by new activists with limited resources, only 1 paid organizer, less than $250,000, no corporate sponsorship, and very little assistance or support from mainstream LGBT rights organizations.

Given these factors, I thought that 50,000 would be a success. That so many people came out is a testament to effectiveness of independent grassroots organizing, and the demand – full civil equality for LGBT people in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states, now – resonated with people who, as lead march organizer Sherry Wolf writes, are sick of “begging for crumbs.”

I was excited to collaborate with the Graduate Employees' Organization (UAW Local 2322) at UMass Amherst, whose financial support was essential. Christopher Sweetapple, a GEO organizer who played a leading role, explained the need for labor to support LGBT equality:

“Economic justice is crucial to fighting all other forms of oppression, and thus unions like ours support the struggles of many minorities--LGBT people against homo/transphobia, but also the struggles of non-whites against persistent racial oppression, women against...misogyny and people of differing physical abilities to find accommodation and respect in society...second, there are members within our unions--gay men, trans and bisexual people, lesbians-- who suffer from legalized discrimination right now...”

Also inspiring was the talent and enthusiasm of students from UMass and Hampshire College. Madeline Burrows, Hampshire class of 2013 and a leader in bringing a bus of over 50 Hampshire students, explained:

“This generation of students [faces] a looming contradiction: we’ve grown up in a society far more open to sexuality and gender variance than ever before, but LGBT Americans lack basic civil rights. With huge budget cuts less students are able to afford college...lacking job security due to discrimination takes on a whole new meaning in this economic crisis. Students played a leading role in the sit-ins that sparked the civil rights movement that overthrew Jim Crow in the 1960s, and students today are playing a leading role in initiating building a civil rights front on college campuses across the country.”

JM: What now?

The next step is to build a local chapter of Equality Across America (over 20 of us are already involved), composed of students and others, to continue to educate, agitate, and organize for LGBT civil rights.

We need your talent and energy, whether you're LGBT or an ally, a student or a worker, an experienced activist or someone getting involved for the first time. Join us and let's make history by making LGBT inequality history!

Check us out online at equalitywmass.blogspot.com and get involved in our era's civil rights movement!

Betting on our deaths

Originally published at Socialist Worker. Also published at Dissident Voice.

WITH THE home mortgage crisis dragging along, consumer borrowing still lagging, and crises looming in other sectors like commercial real estate, Wall Street is desperate for a new product to kick-start securities markets.

It appears as though the savior may be riding in on a pale horse.

According to a September 5 New York Times article, banks like Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs are exploring new investment schemes that involve buying up life insurance policies from sick and elderly people, bundling them into huge securities, and selling shares in the securities to investors.

Buying shares is essentially a bet--that the people whose insurance policies on which the securities are based will die "on time" or earlier than expected. According to the Times, "The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return--though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money."

Just when it seemed impossible for Wall Street--still counting the trillions in taxpayer dollars it received in a government bailout to save it from collapse--to sink any lower, greed came to the rescue with the development of a grim new market.

As Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere."
Now, the financial crisis has driven capitalists to the nursing and retirement homes, and to the bedsides of the sick and dying.

The credit rating agency DBRS--whose Senior Vice President Kathleen Tillwitz informed the Times that "our phones have been ringing off the hook with inquiries"--is studying how to rate pools of life insurance policies. The main challenge is figuring out how to pool people together. As the Times wrote:

The solution? A bond made up of life settlements would ideally have policies from people with a range of diseases--leukemia, lung cancer, heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's. That is because if too many people with leukemia are in the securitization portfolio, and a cure is developed, the value of the bond would plummet.

If the sub-prime mortgage market boom is any indication, an increased demand for existing life insurance policies spurred by increased securitization would lead to widespread abuse and fraud--with insurers faced with the same incentives that encouraged mortgage brokers to deceive borrowers with "teaser" interest rates that ballooned several years into repayment.
In this case, the victims would be the elderly, the sick, and those who depend on life insurance benefit payouts in the case of the death of a loved one.

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A FURTHER element of instability would be added if life insurance-backed securities take off--the likely proliferation of illegal "stranger-owned life insurance" or "STOLI" policies.

A STOLI is a policy created when a broker or investor convinces someone, usually a senior citizen, to take out a life insurance policy, with the promise to sell it quickly for a one-time payment. According to Reuters, "The death benefits are immediately transferred to investors, usually hedge funds."

The securitization of life insurance policies would likely lead to an increase in the number of illegal STOLIs, once the banks exhaust the possibilities of buying up existing, legitimate policies to package into securities. In turn, insurance companies would have an incentive to crack down on this practice to avoid paying death benefits to the investors, leaving the market prone to crisis.

Other challenges for a credit rating agency like DBRS include figuring out what "would happen if health reform passed, for example, and better care for a large number of Americans meant that people generally started living longer? Or if a magic-bullet cure for all types of cancer was developed?" These eventualities, while prolonging and improving the lives of millions, would be bad for investors' bottom line.

The "potential risk for investors," the Times continued, is that "some people could live far longer than expected. It is not just a hypothetical risk. That is what happened in the 1980s, when new treatments prolonged the life of AIDS patients. Investors who bought their policies on the expectation that the most victims would die within two years ended up losing money."
According to an ABC News story:

The industry for selling life insurance [policies to investors] first sprang up
during the AIDS epidemic of the late 1980s. "Companies loved AIDS because it was
a predictable death sentence," says Gloria Wolk, a life-settlement expert who
learned about the practice while volunteering at AIDS services clinics. "The
shorter and more certain the life expectancy, the higher the returns promised to
investors and the greater the lump sum offered to patients. It was a grim mix of
free-market capitalism and human mortality."

Wolk nevertheless said she "saw the industry make a huge difference in the lives of terminally ill patients and their families"--by providing victims with funds to pay for the exorbitant health care and other costs associated with dying from AIDS, while it was ignored a government run by Ronald Reagan.

The only conceivable defense of the practice of bundling life insurance policies into securities and selling them to investors to profit from the deaths of policyholders is that it enables those who sell their policies to get more than they would if they simply sold policies back to the insurance company.

But this option is only attractive because health care costs in the U.S. place quality care out of reach--for the nearly 50 million people without health insurance, and for tens of millions more who are insured, but can't afford the co-pays and deductibles that pile up when they get sick or injured.

Similarly, for the elderly whose retirement savings have been eroded by the current crisis, the inadequacy of Social Security, and by the long-term shift defined-benefit pension plans to 401(k)s based on the stock market, the main reason most would be tempted to sell their life insurance policies is that our government neglects to provide a decent standard of living for elderly workers who have outlived their usefulness to the exploiting class.

In other words, the market for securities backed by life insurance policies depends on the absence of universal single-payer health care for all and the lack of a sufficient social safety net for senior citizens.

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ALMOST AS disturbing as first-tier financial institutions betting on death is the matter-of-fact reporting of the New York Times.

The Times article, titled "Wall Street Pursues Profit in Bundles of Life Insurance," ignores completely the question of the morality of human beings gambling on the lives of others, indexing the sick based on the nature of their affliction and when it is likely to kill them, and crossing their fingers that no cure for cancer is discovered. This is a brilliant illustration of Marx's assertion that capitalism "has left no other bond between [people] than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment.""

It says a lot about capitalist society's brutality and indifference to human life that the newspaper of record could cover this story without pause, going no deeper than the pros and cons from the perspective of investors--while "Ads by Google" accompany the story, inviting readers to "sell your life insurance policy" and "find low cost life insurance."

Nor does the Times question the logic of devoting massive wealth to a market that creates no new value in the form of goods or services, and is of no use to anyone but the few who will profit from it.

According to the Times article, there are $26 trillion in life insurance policies in the U.S, and "some in the industry predict the market [for life-insurance-backed securities] could reach $500 billion." That sum is nearly three times the total of all the budget shortfalls of every state government for fiscal year 2010.

A just society based on human need would use that $500 billion to preserve and expand essential services that are on the chopping block as states balance their budgets.
A just society based on human need would devote those resources not to betting on death, but providing top quality care to the sick, researching new cures and treatments (and making them available to all), and ensuring that the elderly live the last years of their lives in dignity and security.

According to the economic "experts," the U.S. economy is beginning to "recover." But the very nature of the recovery--a return to big bonuses and salaries for Wall Street executives alongside deepening and sustained unemployment, cuts in social services and health care "reform" that amounts to a massive government handout to the health insurance industry--demolishes any idea that the U.S. is not a class society.

It is time to build the socialist alternative. Our lives and dignity depend on it.

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Material on this Web site is licensed by SocialistWorker.org, under a Creative Commons (by-nc-nd 3.0) [1] license, except for articles that are republished with permission. Readers are welcome to share and use material belonging to this site for non-commercial purposes, as long as they are attributed to the author and SocialistWorker.org.

[1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0

Time to march for LGBT rights

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

MARK SNYDER of QueerToday.com asks "Why the National Equality March?" pointing to the Human Rights Campaign's (HRC) recent endorsement of the march, the lack of a day dedicated to HIV/AIDS issues, and the fact that "the resources that support the infrastructure of" the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community are incredibly drained.

I appreciate that Snyder is raising these issues, because I believe they illustrate why it is so important to go all out to mobilize people to go to Washington, D.C., for the October 11 march.

The first point to make is that, in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8, there has been a significant resurgence of activism around LGBT rights--from protests to civil disobedience to the formation of new grassroots organizations, often organized by, and including, thousands of people who have never engaged in activism before.

As socialists and leftists, we should be supportive of this and get involved, which we have done and are doing by organizing for the National Equality March (NEM). The NEM, which is being built by many of the people and organizations drawn in by this resurgence, is a fantastic opportunity to bring these new forces together to demand civil equality, get a sense of our numbers and strength, draw new people in, and make new connections to strengthen already existing and build new grassroots organizations in our local communities to continue the struggle on October 12 and beyond.

We are not simply organizing to protest, but protesting to organize, using the march to get more people involved in the struggle for LGBT civil rights and LGBT liberation.

Snyder is right to point out, if I am correct in assuming that he means funds available for political organizing and social, health and community services, that the resources that form the infrastructure of the LGBT community are drained.

That's all the more reason to put what resources we can muster into getting more people and organizations together, and building a movement that can put significant pressure on Obama and Congress to force them to pass reforms granting not just civil equality but also demanding funding for services that would benefit the LGBT community (and beyond).

And if you look at the list of endorsements on the NEM Web site, you'll notice that it has brought together a diverse array of organizations that represent a broad range of oppressed and exploited people (labor, immigrants, LGBT, African Americans, etc.). This march is a positive step in the direction of the formation of the broad left that is necessary to build the infrastructure and develop the resources we need to win the changes our communities desperately need, changes qualitatively beyond those we can make by being conservative hoarding the few resources we have now.

Third, it's important to make a statement on the national level, to put pressure on Obama for his inaction on LGBT issues and to raise awareness of the true extent of civil inequality that LGBT people face in this country.

For example, many people I've been talking with about the march were not aware, and were outraged to find out, that employment discrimination against LGBT people is still legal in most states. Eighty-nine percent of U.S. residents oppose such discrimination, so the contradiction between that and the laws on the books in states across the country represents the potential for a mass movement. If even a fraction of these people become involved in the struggle for equality, that's still millions of people--a leap forward from where we are today.

Finally, the HRC has recently endorsed the march. I think that the HRC leadership realizes that this march has real potential, because it represents the desires (for uncompromising, full civil equality now) of millions of people, including HRC supporters. HRC has said that they want the marchers to go back to their communities and become citizen lobbyists.

I think that a better strategy for winning LGBT rights is to become grassroots activists, independent of the Democratic Party, and to link this struggle to those of all the oppressed and exploited. But I will still march with HRC to demand full civil equality for LGBT people, while maintaining my political independence and expressing my views. In fact, I think it's vital that I and other socialists be there, so that our politics get a hearing, not just those advocating support for and working with the Democratic Party.

Thousands of people, many of them new to activism and open to different ideas on how to achieve equality for LGBT people and beyond, will be marching on Washington, D.C., on October 11.

It is up to us to be there, to be vocal about what we think it will take to win the change we really need and, as Harvey Milk was fond of saying, to recruit them to our movement.

I hope to see you in D.C. this October!

When workers run the state

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

JUST BECAUSE, as Bones Hulsey argues in response to Paul D'Amato, "a state is required to create and enforce a capitalist mode of production" does not mean by extension that every state necessarily does so ("Vanguards and state power"). In fact, a kind of state is also required to abolish the capitalist mode of production.

Before going any further, I think that it's important to establish a clear definition of the state. In State and Revolution, Lenin offers this:

The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.

In other words, if you have a society that includes two classes of people whose interests are fundamentally and necessarily opposed, such as capitalist and wage worker, lord and serf, or master and slave--in general exploiter and exploited--a state is necessary to maintain this society with its relations of production, in these cases to establish and preserve the dominance of the exploiting class over the exploited.

The flip side is that if you have a society where there is a state, then that society must be split into classes with opposite interests. The state, then, is an instrument for the domination of one class over another, for the subordination of the interests of one class to those of an opposing class.

In the class societies mentioned above, the state has existed to enforce the rule of an exploiting minority over an exploited majority. So in these societies the state takes a form separate from the mass of people, as a "special body of armed men [and women]": police, intelligence agencies, the military, prison guards, etc.

But what happens in the wake of a revolution that brings the working class--the majority of people--to political power in a country when that class organizes and arms itself to protect against counterrevolution and help the revolution to spread, both to other countries and to the economic sphere?

History has shown that the world capitalist class will stop at nothing to prevent workers from taking or maintaining political power, as the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1871 and the brutality of the counterrevolutionary White armies and foreign invaders from several imperialist countries following the Russian Revolution of 1917 are testament to. The working class will need to defend itself.

It doesn't make much sense to argue that a revolution could, in a flash, abolish all capitalist economic relations of production in the world. The world is a big place, with billions of people in it, and the organization that is required to meet the daily needs of all of these people, especially in its anarchic and insufficient capitalist form, is immensely complex.
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CAPITALISTS ARE not going to simply hand over their factories and stores. So how does the working class take them over? How do they enforce their class interests to liberate themselves, opposite those of the capitalists who would continue to exploit them?

As Marx wrote, "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes," but first must "smash it." So the first thing to say is that the working class can't simply take over the state as it is.

What replaces this? Lenin continues, pointing to example of the Paris Commune:

The Commune, therefore, appears to have replaced the smashed state machine "only" by fuller democracy: abolition of the standing army; all officials to be elected and subject to recall. But as a matter of fact this "only" signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other institutions of a fundamentally different type...It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush their resistance...The organ of suppression, however, is here the majority of the population, and not a minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom and wage slavery. And since the majority of people itself suppresses its oppressors, a "special force" for suppression is no longer necessary!

In this sense, the state begins to wither away. Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officialdom, the chiefs of the standing army), the majority itself can directly fulfill all these functions, and the more the functions of state power are performed by the people as a whole, the less need there is for the existence of this power.

What Marx called "the dictatorship of the proletariat," the working class in power in a society that still has capitalists (whose interests are opposite those of the workers), requires a "state." But this is qualitatively different than any state that has come before it, so much so that Engels referred to it as a "semi-state."

Extensive measures are taken by the mass of workers to prevent the rise of a privileged, entrenched bureaucracy and to ensure that these institutions are truly accountable to the will of the majority: the replacement of the standing army and police, elected representatives subject to instant recall and paid average workers' wages, etc.

It's a tool for the dominance of one class over another, so it still fits Lenin's definition of the state, but in this case the dominant class is the majority of society. All previous states have existed primarily to preserve the rule of an exploiting minority, which relies on the labor of the majority to accumulate their wealth. These states seek to protect these social relations of exploitation, to preserve the relations of production which give rise to the need for these states.

The institutions of working class rule, the rule of the exploited majority, have a primary aim: the abolition of exploitation. This is really the opposite of the capitalist state (or that of any class society) in that rather than preserving the social relations on which it is based the working class "semi-state" seeks to overturn them, thereby doing away with its own usefulness by doing away with all classes, with the antagonism between exploiter and exploited, and with all of that the very need for a political state at all.

Once the expropriation of the capitalists is complete, there is no need for this "semi-state," so it "withers away." Political power is no longer necessary, which is what Engels was referring to as quoted by Hulsey at the end of his response.

I'm not sure exactly what Hulsey means by "revolutionary social institutions" or "societal involvement," but my guess is that he's referring to the institutions of the working class, the exploited, and their involvement in society, not that of the exploiters.

In that case, Hulsey is simply calling for a working class state by another name--the very answer to Paul D'Amato's question of how a new society can be built, which Hulsey claims Lenin was incapable of providing.

October 11: March on Washington for LGBT Equality

Originally published in the Rainbow Times. Also published at Equality Across America and Socialist Worker.

October 11: many LGBT people and their allies recognize it as National Coming Out Day– a day to raise awareness and pride over ignorance and fear. The day was first observed in 1988, to commemorate the second “National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.”

In 1987, half a million people marched on Washington, DC to demand civil rights for LGBT people, and to pressure President Ronald Reagan, who remained silent while thousands died of AIDS, to take action.

We’ve come a long way since then in terms of support for LGBT equality, but this seismic shift in visibility and thinking is out of sync with the law: It’s still legal in most states to discriminate against employees on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, same-sex marriage is still illegal in most states, and many still hold bigoted views that have violent and often deadly results.

Even in Massachusetts, transgender people are not yet explicitly protected from discrimination. And, just a few months ago, the suicide of 11-year old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, a Springfield boy who faced incessant anti-gay bullying at school, was a tragic reminder of the deadly consequences of hatred and inequality.

There is still a ways to go to reach true equality, but we can get there if we stand up together. I’d like to invite everyone to take the next step this October 11, 2009, by joining thousands of LGBT people and allies to march on Washington, DC as part of the National Equality March demanding “full equality for all LGBT people in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states. Now.”

This past November, when California’s Proposition 8 banned gay marriage, tens of thousands took to the streets in California and across the country. This setback became a step forward: the launch of a new grassroots movement for LGBT equality.

It was these protests, many of them called by regular people who’d never organized before but felt compelled by their outrage to take action, that inspired Cleve Jones to call a march on Washington. Jones, who got his start working with Harvey Milk and was the historical adviser for the recent film, had this to say in an interview with the Windy City Times: “A door has opened to us and if we push really hard we can win full, real equality. Not just marriage equality or visitation rights. Actual equality.”

It’s important to remember that equality has never been handed down from above, but won from below when regular people stand up and refuse to take “no” for an answer. Millions of people are on our side, and millions more will question their homophobia and transphobia if we build a movement to challenge them, just as the civil rights movement changed millions of minds about racism.

Now is the time for us to make history by making LGBT inequality history.

Activists from western Massachusetts have already begun organizing to bring busloads of people down to the National Equality March on October 11, 2009. To get a spot on the bus or to get involved in organizing, or to donate to ensure that low-income LGBT people and allies can attend, contact Gary Lapon at glapon@gmail.com or 617-851-5354.

Cutting budgets at our expense

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

Gary Lapon analyzes the failure of Massachusetts' health care system--and what could be done about it.

July 23, 2009

THIRTY THOUSAND documented immigrants in Massachusetts have just been hit with a one-two punch that leaves them paying more taxes for fewer benefits--the latest in a series of attempts to force poor, oppressed and working-class people to pay for the economic crisis.

The new state budget drops health insurance coverage for permanent residents who have had a green card for less than five years; previously, they were covered by Commonwealth Care as part of Massachusetts' 2006 "universal" health care reform.

And, according to the New York Times, "In addition to dropping the immigrant insurance program, Commonwealth Care will save an estimated $63 million by no longer automatically enrolling low-income residents who fail to enroll themselves," which essentially means that thousands of low-income people will go without health coverage they qualify for. This comes on top of significant cuts to services for the disabled, the elderly and the poor.

Massachusetts health care reform, which includes a mandate that residents purchase insurance (enforced by tax penalties) and subsidies for low-income residents, is similar in many ways to what is shaping up as the Obama administration's national health care proposal--which aims to expand insurance coverage while maintaining the role of the for-profit health insurance industry.

With leading health care policymakers like Democratic Sen. Max Baucus stating that any legislation won't cover undocumented workers (see "Look what made it on the table" [1]) nor provide full coverage for all, the move by Massachusetts to drop a section of the documented immigrant population is an indication of what we might see on the national level if the Democrats get what they're proposing.

As these 30,000 immigrants figure out whether they should skip needed care, attempt to pay for some of it out of pocket or cut back on other expenses like food and rent, they should be careful to adjust their calculations to account for the sales tax hike (from 5 percent to 6.5 percent) that will take effect on August 1.

The argument coming from Massachusetts politicians in favor of the cuts to health care, education and human services is that because of the economic crisis and recession, there simply isn't enough money to pay for everything, and that although they care deeply about the poor, sick and disabled, sacrifices must--regrettably, of course--be made.

But is there really not enough money to pay for needed services for immigrants? And are sales taxes--which are regressive, in that the poorest pay the largest share of their income and the richest pay the smallest--the only way, or the best way, to increase tax revenues?

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ACCORDING TO the National Priorities Project, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost Massachusetts over $24 billion, more than enough to make up for budget shortfalls without cutting services (the total state budget this year is $27 billion). But even conceding that state-level politicians have no direct control over foreign policy, there is plenty of money to prevent cuts and expand funding for those who need services the most.

The only problem, at least for Massachusetts politicians, is that the money is in the pockets of the rich, the last place they look when it comes to finding revenue to pay for services for the needy and other public programs. It seems they have a case of selective amnesia, because they know all too well that the money is there when it's time to raise cash for their campaigns.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Massachusetts ranks seventh in the country, with a median household income of $62,365, and according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Massachusetts ranks third in the U.S. with a per capita Gross State Product (like GDP, but for the state level) of $48,995 in 2007, a measure of value added by state industries.

Massachusetts is one of the wealthiest and most productive states in the wealthiest nation in the world. There is also great inequality, which has been on the rise. According to "Income Inequality in Massachusetts, 1980-2006" in the MassBenchmarks journal, while income for the top 20 percent of Massachusetts households increased 16 percent during the 1990s, "for the bottom 80 percent of families in the Commonwealth, income growth was modest to minimal...by the year 2000, the top 20 percent of families received almost eight times the income of the lowest 20 percent."

If Massachusetts politicians truly cared about the most vulnerable people in the state, they'd be taxing the rich instead of cutting insurance for immigrants and raising taxes that disproportionately impact the poor and working class.

Massachusetts currently has a flat tax (enshrined in the state constitution) of 5.3 percent on income. Although in the past Massachusetts voters rejected attempts to institute a progressive tax structure where those with larger incomes are taxed at higher rates, I'm confident that today's voters--who voted "no" by a two-to-one margin in 2008 to reject a right-wing attempt to eliminate the income tax--would be open to taxing the rich at a higher rate to pay for health care and social services.

In addition, there are ways around the flat tax. Because of exemptions and deductions, the state income tax is already somewhat progressive, with the bottom 20 percent paying at about a 0.2 percent rate, the middle 20 percent at 3.5 percent, and the top 20 percent at 4.3 percent, according to the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. So, lawmakers could raise the flat tax while simultaneously raising the threshold under which income is not subject to tax.

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ANOTHER WAY to tax the rich would be to raise taxes on income from dividends and interest, which would primarily impact the wealthy, since in Massachusetts those making over $200,000 per year averaged $23,897 in income from dividends and interest, as opposed to $375 for those making less than $50,000, and almost 10 times the average even for those making $100,000 to $200,000.

According to the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, the 1999 reduction of the tax rate on interest and dividends from 12 percent to 5.95 percent cost the state over $500 million in revenue in 2006 alone. Why not raise that rate back to 12 percent, or better yet to 30 percent or more? After all, the wealthy who collect money from this source are simply using the money they already have as leverage to get a larger share of the value produced by workers.

These investors produce nothing of value to society to "earn" their interest and dividends. Why not tax it and use the revenue to fund services for those who actually need them?

In fact, I would propose a retroactive tax on the wealthy, who in recent years profited from speculation linked to the housing bubble. Plenty of them made big money and got out of the game before the crash, leaving the bill for their reckless speculation to be picked up by the millions who lost their home, retirement savings and public services.

For example, in 2006, the 25 top-paid hedge fund managers averaged $540 million a year, a total of $14 billion for just 25 people, much of it from investing in the complicated financial instruments that triggered the current crisis. Those profits should be seized and used to prevent budget cuts, keep people in their homes and provide housing for the homeless.

And for those who protest that this would be unfair to the hedge fund managers, I say that is getting off easy after the destruction their greed has wrought for so many working people.

The story is the same across the country. The money is there--what is lacking is sufficient pressure from below to force the politicians to cut from the top.