Dan Little's Blog: Marx's ideas about government [feedly]

Interesting review of the concept of CLASS and politics. I find discussions of Marx  quoting him directly, and in context, rather than via interpreters, instructive with respect to his actual strengths and weaknesses.

Marx's ideas about government
http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2019/02/marxs-ideas-about-government.html

Marx had something of a theory of politics and somewhat less of a theory of government. The slogan "the capitalist state serves as the managing committee of the bourgeoisie" represents the simplest version of his view of the state. He generally regarded government and law as an expression of class interests.

That said, Marx was not much of an organizational thinker. He had literally nothing to say about the workings of real governments — the British state or the French state, for example, and nothing to say about the ministries and bureaus through which the affairs of government worked. When he mentioned politicians in any European country it was as particular individuals rather than as functionaries. And yet it is crucial to understand government — including nineteenth century European governments — as bureaucracies organizing the flows of revenue, regulations, information, and coercion. Marx added essentially nothing to this task.

What Marx most likely would have asserted is that the existence of bureaucracy in government is a second-order factor, and that the main event is the existence and use of political power through the tools of state action. How precisely this is implemented was not of scientific interest to Marx, and he believed he had a more fundamental understanding of the orientation and workings of government. This is his view that political power derives from class privilege and state organs act in support of class interests.

Most of Marx's ideas about the state and government were formulated during the years surrounding the revolutions of 1848. Here are a few important passages from Marx's writings in the 1840s and 1950s. This is the full passage about the "managing committee of the bourgeoisie" from the Communist Manifesto:

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune: here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto

And here is his account of the establishment of the French "bourgeois republic" following the Revolution of 1848:

Upon the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe, only the bourgeois republic could follow; that is to say, a limited portion of the bourgeoisie, having ruled under the name of the king, now the whole bourgeoisie was to rule under the name of the people. The demands of the Parisian proletariat are Utopian tom-fooleries that have to be done away with. To this declaration of the constitutional national assembly, the Paris proletariat answers with the June insurrection, the most colossal event in the history of European civil wars. The bourgeois republic won. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the industrial bourgeoisie; the middle class; the small traders' class; the army; the slums, organized as Guarde Mobile; the intellectual celebrities, the parsons' class, and the rural population…. 

The defeat of the June insurgents prepared, leveled the ground, upon which the bourgeois republic could be founded and erected; but it, at the same time showed that there are in Europe other issues besides that of "Republic or Monarchy." It revealed the fact that here the BOURGEOIS REPUBLIC meant the unbridled despotism of one class over another. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p. 10, 11

The view here is perfectly clear — Marx describes the Republic of 1848 as the naked expression of the economic interests of the bourgeoisie, imposed on the whole of society through control of the state.

The epoch between December 20, 1848, and the dissolution of the constitutional assembly in May, 1849, embraces the history of the downfall of the bourgeois republicans. After they had founded a republic for the bourgeoisie, had driven the revolutionary proletariat from the field, and had meanwhile silenced the democratic middle class, they are themselves shoved aside by the mass of the bourgeoisie, who justly appropriate this republic as their property. This bourgeois mass was ROYALIST, however. A part thereof, the large landed proprietors, had ruled under the restoration, hence, was LEGITIMIST; the other part, the aristocrats of finance and the large industrial capitalists, had ruled under the July monarchy, hence, was ORLEANIST. The high functionaries of the Army, of the University, of the Church, in the civil service, of the Academy and of the press, divided them selves on both sides, although in unequal parts. Here, in the bourgeois republic, that bore neither the name of BOURBON, nor of ORLEANS, but the name of CAPITAL, they had found the form of government under which they could all rule in common. Already the June insurrection had united them all into a "Party of Order." Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 18

Significantly, Marx's analysis of the few crucial years of French political history between 1848 and 1851 focuses entirely on segments of the propertied classes who vied for power in the National Assembly. Landowners want X, small owners want Y, large industrial owners want W, financiers want Z; and the individuals and parties representing these segments compete for power. And the actions of government reflect the goals and strategies of the strongest parties. Here is Marx's description of the crucial manipulation of the Constitution's election rules for the election of a president:

The law of May 31, 1850, was the "coup d'etat" of the bourgeoisie. All its previous conquests over the revolution had only a temporary character: They became uncertain the moment the National Assembly stepped off the stage; they depended upon the accident of general elections, and the history of the elections since 1848 proved irrefutably that, in the same measure as the actual reign of the bourgeoisie gathered strength, its moral reign over the masses wore off. Universal suffrage pronounced itself on.May 10 pointedly against the reign bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie answered with the banishment of universal suffrage. The law of May 31 was, accordingly, one of the necessities of the class struggle. On the other hand, the constitution required a minimum of two million votes for the valid election of the President of the republic. If none of the Presidential candidates polled this minimum, then the National Assembly was to elect the President out of the three candidates polling the highest votes. At the time that the constitutive body made this law, ten million voters were registered on the election rolls. Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 39

And, significantly, Marx describes this period of government as representing a coalition of two major groups of property owners, landed property and manufacture:

The parliamentary republic was more than a neutral ground on which the two factions of the French bourgeoisie— Legitimists and Orleanists, large landed property and manufacture— could lodge together with equal rights. It was the indispensable condition for their common reign, the only form of government in which their common class interest could dominate both the claims of their separate factions and all the other classes of society. As royalists, they relapsed into their old antagonism: into the struggle for the overlordship of either landed property or of money; and the highest expression of this antagonism, its personification, were the two kings themselves, their dynasties. Hence the resistance of the party of Order to the recall of the Bourbons. Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 54

But the INDUSTRIAL BOURGEOISIE also, in its fanaticism for order, was annoyed at the quarrels of the Parliamentary party of Order with the Executive. Thiers, Anglas, Sainte Beuve, etc., received, after their vote of January 18, on the occasion of the discharge of Changarnier, public reprimands from their constituencies, located in the industrial districts, branding their coalition with the Mountain as an act of high treason to the cause of order. Although, true enough, the boastful, vexatious and petty intrigues, through which the struggle of the party of Order with the President manifested it self, deserved no better reception, yet notwithstanding, this bourgeois party, that expects of its representatives to allow the military power to pass without resistance out of the hands of their own Parliament into those of an adventurous Pretender, is not worth even the intrigues that were wasted in its behalf. It showed that the struggle for the maintenance of their public interests, of their class interests, of their political power only incommoded and displeased them, as a disturbance of their private business…. Business being brisk, as still at the beginning of 1851, the commercial bourgeoisie stormed against every Parliamentary" strife, lest business be put out of temper. Business being dull, as from the end of February, 1851, on, the bourgeoisie accused thee Parliamentary strifes as the cause of the stand-still, and clamored for quiet in order that business may revive.  Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 58-59

Again, we find the same idea of the managing committee of (dominant factions of) the propertied classes.

This is a particularly reductionist interpretation of politics. It suggests a thoroughly mechanistic relationship between class interests and the actions of the state. Politicians are the creatures of various propertied interests, and their actions are dictated by their patrons. But towards the end of the Eighteenth Brumaire Marx gives a nod to the complexity and size of government:

This Executive power, with its tremendous bureaucratic and military organization; with its wide-spreading and artificial machinery of government — an army of office-holders, half a million strong, together with a military force of another million men— ; this fearful body of parasites, that coils itself like a snake around French society, stopping all its pores, originated at the time of the absolute monarchy, along with the decline of feudalism, which it helped to hasten. The princely privileges of the landed proprietors and cities were transformed into so many attributes of the Executive power; the feudal dignitaries into paid office-holders; and the confusing design of conflicting medieval seigniories, into the well regulated plan of a government, whose work is subdivided and centralized as in the factory…. Napoleon completed this governmental machinery. Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 69

This clearly presents a topic for study: how does this "machinery of government" work? What is the social ontology of the ministries, offices, and agencies of government? Further, Marx raises a point that Nicos Poulantzas eventually characterizes as the "relative autonomy of the capitalist state":

Nevertheless, under the absolute monarchy, during the first revolution, and under Napoleon, the bureaucracy was only the means whereby to prepare the class rule of the bourgeoisie; under the restoration, under Louis Philippe, and under the parliamentary republic, it was the instrument of the ruling class, however eagerly this class strained after autocracy. Not before the advent of the second Bonaparte does the government seem to have made itself fully independent. The machinery of government has by this time so thoroughly fortified itself against society, that the chief of the "Society of December 10" is thought good enough to be at its head a fortune-hunter, run in from abroad, is raised on its shield by a drunken soldiery, bought by himself with liquor and sausages, and whom he is forced ever again to throw sops to. Hence the timid despair, the sense of crushing humiliation and degradation that oppresses the breast of France and makes her to choke. She feels dishonored. Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 70

According to this passage, the government of Napoleon III has a degree of autonomy from the propertied interests of his period. "The machinery of government has by this time … thoroughly fortified itself against society." This idea too points to a more sophisticated understanding of the "machinery of government." This opens the door to a more nuanced theory of politics, including the possibility that other groups in society (environmentalists, workers, right-wing nationalists) may position themselves in ways that have substantial effect on the actions of government.

Here is Robert Paul Resch's description of Poulantzas's theory of relative autonomy in Althusser and the Renewal of Marxist Social Theory (329-330):

Poulantzas also seeks to explain how the capitalist state directly serves the interests of the capitalist class while being formally separated from the economy and from the direct control of the capitalists. Poulantzas's concept of the capitalist state is premised on its relative autonomy with respect to the economy and the fact that "it is this autonomy which, as a constant invariant, regulates the variations of intervention and non-intervention of the political in the economic, and of the economic in the political" (Poulantzas 1973, 143). The general concept of a class state, Poulantzas reminds us, does not require that the state be the direct instrument of the dominant class but only that it legitimize and reproduce the conditions and relations of domination and exploitation by which the ruling class is constituted. In capitalist social formations these conditions are defined by the existence of surplus value and the irresistible impetus to accumulate it that occurs when private property exists and labor power is completely commodified. Furthermore, in capitalist social formations, the members of the dominant class are in economic competition with each other, and their competing interests render them incapable of governing directly or with unanimity. Their only common interests, Poulantzas concludes, are that the exploited class be politically fragmented and that the existence of propertyless laborers "free" to sell their labor power be perpetuated.

Poulantzas argues that the peculiar characteristics of the capitalist mode of production do not require a state that directly represents the economic interests of the ruling classes; rather, they require a state that represents their political interest. However democratic a capitalist state may appear to be, Poulantzas maintains that it always functions as "the dominant class's political power center, the organizing agent of their political struggles" (Poulantzas 1973, 190). The state accomplishes this function by redefining agents of production, distributed in classes, as political subjects, distributed as individuals. The result is an effect of "individual isolation" that is then projected back, via the legal system, from the political realm into the economy to mask the existence of class relationships. The capitalist state is both the source and guarantor of the "rights" of isolated political subjects and thus of its own function of representing the unity of these isolated relations, that is, the body politic of "the people" and "the nation." In other words, "the state represents the unity of an isolation which because of the role played by the ideological, is largely its own effect. This double function of isolating [individuals] and representing [their] unity is reflected in the internal contradictions in the structure of the state" (Poulantzas 1973, 134).

(Rereading The Eighteenth Brumaire creates a little bit of a sense of what Marx was getting at when he wrote in the first sentence of the essay that "Hegel says somewhere that all great historic facts and personages recur twice. He forgot to add: 'Once as tragedy, and again as farce.'" The lawlessness and recklessness of the current US president resonates with Marx's narrative of Napoléon le petit, in Victor Hugo's phrase.)

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Democrats for Family Values [feedly]

Democrats for Family Values
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/opinion/warren-child-care.html

For millions of Americans with children, life is a constant, desperate balancing act. They must work during the day, either because they're single parents or because decades of wage stagnation mean that both parents must take jobs to make ends meet. Yet quality child care is unavailable or unaffordable.

And the thing is, it doesn't have to be this way. Other wealthy countries either have national child care systems or subsidize care to put it in everyone's reach. It doesn't even cost all that much. While other advanced countries spend, on average, about three times as much as we do helping families — so much for our vaunted "family values" — it's still a relatively small part of their budgets. In particular, taking care of children is much cheaper than providing health care and retirement income to seniors, which even America does.

Furthermore, caring for children doesn't just help them grow up to be productive adults. It also has immediate economic benefits, making it easier for parents to stay in the work force.

Over the past 20 years, women's prime-age employment in the U.S. has lagged ever further behind the rest of the advanced world — at this point we're well below even Japan. And lack of child care is probably one main reason.



So child care really should be an important part of the progressive agenda. Hillary Clinton had a serious plan back in 2016, but the news media was too busy obsessing over emails to pay attention. And if you ask me, Elizabeth Warren's new proposal isn't getting as much attention as it should.

For the Warren proposal is the kind of initiative that, if enacted, would change millions of lives for the better, yet could actually happen in the near future.

Among other things, unlike purist visions of replacing private health insurance with "Medicare for all," providing child care wouldn't require imposing big new taxes on the middle class. The sums of money involved are small enough that new taxes on great wealth and high incomes, which are desirable on other grounds, could easily raise sufficient revenue.

The logic of the Warren plan is fairly simple (although some commentators are trying to make it sound complex). Child care would be regulated to ensure that basic quality was maintained and subsidized to make it affordable. The size of the subsidy would depend on parents' incomes: lower-income parents would get free care, higher-income parents would have to pay something, but nobody would have to pay more than 7 percent of income.

Warren's advisers put the budget cost at $70 billion a year, or around one-third of one percent of G.D.P. That's not chicken feed, but it's not that much for something that could transform so many lives.


It is, for example, well under half the revenue lost due to the Trump tax cut, which seems to have been used mainly for share buybacks. And it's a tiny fraction of what it would cost to replace all private health insurance with a public program.

So what are the objections to this plan?

I'm hearing from a few people on the left who complain that the plan doesn't go far enough — that it should involve free, direct public provision of child care, not subsidies to private provision. There's certainly a case for a more expansive policy. There's also no chance that it will happen anytime soon.

The perfect here is the enemy of the good.

Meanwhile, on the right there are the usual cries of "socialism," which these days means anything to the left of eating poor people's babies.

More interestingly, I'm seeing at least some commentary on the right that doesn't just push back against the whole idea of making it easier for mothers to work, it wants us to go back to the days when families could "live on one income."

Realistically, of course, that's not going to happen, and not just because 30 percent of U.S. children live in single-parent households. And bear in mind that even as conservatives bemoan the decline of the traditional male breadwinner, they're pushing policies like Medicaid work requirements that basically force mothers out of the home.

The bottom line is that Warren's proposal is impressive: It's workable, affordable, and would do a huge amount of good.

And while this isn't a horse-race column — I'm not arguing that Warren necessarily will or even should be the Democratic presidential nominee — the field needs more policy ideas like this: medium-size, medium-priced proposals that could deliver major benefits without requiring a political miracle.


Right now, all of the real contenders for the Democratic nomination are solidly progressive, but so far some seem either underbriefed on policy issues — there's been far too much fumbling over Medicare for all — or too committed to sweeping, maximalist policy visions to think seriously about what they might truly be able to do if their party takes the White House and Senate next year.

Visions and values are great, but Democrats also need to be ready to hit the ground running with plans that might actually turn into legislation. And so far, Warren is setting the pace.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography. @PaulKrugman -- via my feedly newsfeed

Opioid Crisis Shows How Economic Inequality Kills [feedly]

Opioid Crisis Shows How Economic Inequality Kills
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/02/opioid-crisis-shows-economic-inequality-kills.html

Opioid Crisis Shows How Economic Inequality Kills

Posted on February 20, 2019 by Yves Smith

By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website

Pharmaceutical pushers like Purdue Pharma "couldn't have done their dirty work" without America's increasingly unbalanced economy

America's growing rate of economic inequality is more than a numerical ratio that worries economists or a trendy political talking point. The phenomenon has been linked to human tragedies ranging from higher murder rates to growing gaps in life expectancy.

Add death by opioids to the list.

In recent years, social scientists have been debating why more people have been dying from drug overdoses. Does the increased availability of highly addictive opioids fully explain the rise? Not entirely, it turns out.

Sociologist Shannon Monnat is author of a new study with the Institute for New Economic Thinking that examines county-level drug deaths in the U.S. Her research reveals that while overprescribing doctors, pharmaceutical pushers and illegal dealers are highly significant, a big part of what makes a community susceptible to the opioid scourge is recent patterns of economic distress — the kind inflicted by decades of bad policy.

A recent flurry of headlines about the billionaire Sackler family, whose members own Purdue Pharma, the company that created the powerful opioid painkiller OxyContin, highlights the ugliness of drug sales representatives promoting dangerously high doses to boost profits. "Supply is certainly important," says Monnat, "but Big Pharma couldn't do its dirty work without America's increasing economic inequality."

Monnat's research examines U.S. drug fatalities from 2000-02 and 2014-16, two-thirds of which were caused by heroin, fentanyl, and prescription opiates. She concentrates on non-Hispanic whites because other than American Indians, that group has suffered the highest drug mortality rates of anybody over the last two decades.

Several of her findings complicate the common media narratives. Despite the characterization of opioids as "hillbilly heroin," most deaths and the biggest increase in fatalities among whites since 2000 were actually in urban counties. Rural areas saw fewer deaths overall, but the rates varied widely from one region to another. Some rural counties have the highest opioid mortality rates in the country, while others enjoy the lowest.

Why would opioids be raging through some predominately rural states, like Maine and Kentucky, but not others, like Idaho and Iowa?

Among non-urban counties, drug mortality rates appear to spike in two types of places: economically beaten-down communities centered on mining and distressed areas where people increasingly depend on service jobs. In these corners of America, economic anxiety matters more in terms of how many will die from opioid overdoses than supply factors, which tend to drive death rates more around big cities.

Monnat explains how despair builds in areas like Appalachia, where residents have seen mining jobs disappear and there are fewer ways for people without a college degree to make a living. In regions where manufacturing jobs were once abundant, like Pennsylvania, people have to rely on badly paid service jobs that offer few benefits.

Communities facing these challenges begin to implode. The best and brightest young people tend to leave to find jobs elsewhere. Families break apart. The tax base shrinks and social services disappear. Economic policies that support disinvestment in the public sphere, along with those that disfavor workers and allow corporations — like greedy pharmaceutical companies — to run roughshod over communities make everything worse. Distress spreads across generations.

On the other hand, rural areas where people are more reliant on farming or where there are a wider variety of jobs tend have a lower rate of death from opioids. The quality of labor markets matters, it turns out. Monnat also thinks that that greater social cohesion in these communities may help people stay more resilient when economic strains develop. Having a more robust social safety net helps, too. Elsewhere, she has shown that places where religion and sports are more of a focus also tend to have lower rates of drug fatalities. Maybe going to church or rooting for the local team gives people meaning and a sense identity, which helps them cope better when other sources of these human needs disappear.

The opioid crisis is really a "tale of two rural Americas," says Monnat. In places where economic inequality has thrown more lives into chaos, a greater number of lives will be snuffed out by this deadly strain of drugs. (Methamphetamines, she notes, cause slower deaths, so we may not have the full story of their impact on drug fatalities yet).

Her findings suggest that no matter how well intentioned the efforts to limit supply or provide treatment to the addicted, places where the economy isn't working for most people may continue to see high opioid fatalities.

Research like hers underscores the reality that policymakers in both political parties are going to have to move beyond the neoliberal framework popularized in the Reagan era that promotes corporate deregulation, shrunken social safety nets, and trade and labor policies that hurt ordinary workers. Such policies were meant to spark growth, but instead they have only made a thin slice of people wealthy and socked America with inequality that has disproportionately hit certain regions of the country.

Pro-worker policies, investments in public services like health and education, fairer tax systems, and re-establishing sensible rules for how companies do business are all part of a much-needed prescription for a healthier society.

This entry was posted in Economic fundamentals, Free markets and their discontents, Guest Post, Health care, Income disparity, The destruction of the middle class on February 20, 2019 by Yves Smith.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

The Existential Politics of Climate Change [feedly]

Note the central role of Pay The Losers, under the labor section

The Existential Politics of Climate Change
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/21/02/2019/existential-politics-climate-change

limate politics are changing.  Beyond "politics as usual," climate politics are becoming existential: climate-forcing and climate-vulnerable interests are both fighting for the survival of their way of life. We offer recommendations for how the Paris process and domestic coalition-building can be mutually reinforcing, emphasizing the role of labor.

Climate politics are changing.  After years of gridlock, the 2015 Paris Agreement puts domestic politics front and center – shifting from a "global deal" approach to a more flexible "catalytic" system in which countries (and other actors) set their own goals and ratchet them up over time.

At the domestic level, there is new momentum – and conflict.  Beyond "politics as usual," climate politics are becoming existential: varying interests are fighting for the survival of their way of life. This is forcing governments to confront the enormous economic implications of a changing climate and altering the nature of climate politics.  For example, after years of denialism and obstruction, the US is considering two bills on climate change: one an expansive "Green New Deal" focused on massive government investments; the other a narrower plan to price carbon. And following the emergence of the Gilets Jaunes movement, France is engaged in a national conversation about climate change and inequality.  Similar debates are emerging throughout the developed world.  

Time is short. The next round of national pledges under the Paris Agreement is due in 2020. The shift to existential politics will up-end much of the conventional wisdom around climate policy.  Fault lines will sharpen, but this will provide opportunities for progress. Seeding and supporting winning coalitions at the domestic level is critical for the post-Paris regime.

The Existential Politics of Climate Change

Distributional politics is about who gets what, and climate politics are no different: Who should pay more for energy through a modest carbon tax? How much money should the developed world provide to help vulnerable nations adapt to climate change? 

Existential politics is like distributional politics on steroids: the stakes are whose way of life gets to survive. In a world of existential politics, different interests fight for their jobs, homes, and preservation of other assets. Owners of assets that cause climate change – and critically, those who work for them – face increasing threats of being put out of business or losing their jobs as coal plants are shuttered, manufacturing moves elsewhere, and renewables increasingly compete with fossil fuel-based energy.  Other climate-forcing industries – from agriculture to cement manufacturing – will also have to decarbonize, or face the prospect of going out of business.  Even if the net benefits are positive, some workers in those industries will lose their livelihoods, and for many, future employment will be difficult.  Despite definitive evidence of climate change, climate-forcing asset owners continue to pour vast resources into preserving the value of their assets and preventing more aggressive climate politics.1

At the other end of the spectrum, owners of climate-vulnerable assets, such as residents of small island states and coastal areas, farmers and insurance companies, or the tourism industry, face the prospect of losing everything as the effects of climate change intensify.  Scientists have attributed the intensity of recent natural disasters to climate change, including Hurricanes Maria and Harvey and the California forest fires.2  One study estimates that the direct damages from climate change will reduce GDP in the Southeast US by almost 30%.3  These climate-losers, at least some of the wealthy ones, are beginning to organize to forestall greater losses.  In Miami, a new political coalition has formed to protect further devaluation of real estate (find cite).  And the elite ski resort in Whistler, British Columbia, is demanding compensation from the oil sector in Alberta. 

As climate-losers become more numerous and diverse, we can expect entrenched interests like fossil fuel owners to respond with more short-termism and obstructionism on climate policy.  Fossil fuel companies spent more than $30 million to defeat a carbon tax proposal in a 2018 Washington state referendum. And a renewable energy initiative in Arizona lost in the midterms, when the state utility spending upwards of $20 million to defeat it. These changes will provoke a fundamentally different sort of political contestation. Policy and strategy will need to adapt to the new reality of existential politics.

Turn losers into winners: the critical role of labor

But existential politics need not be cause for despair; it can be an opportunity to create a broad base for support on climate action. First and foremost, this requires recognizing those who will lose from pro-climate policies, and neutralizing their opposition.  The existential politics of climate change are as much about workers as about an energy transition. 

The political magic of marrying job creation with decarbonization efforts has attracted policy entrepreneurs since at least the early 2000s. For example, the Obama Administration's post-crisis stimulus package included numerous "green jobs" initiatives, and the 2016 Clinton campaign's climate platform promised a rapid expansion of clean energy jobs across America. Figures like Ban Ki-moon, Michael Bloomberg, and Thomas Friedman have endorsed more ambitious packages along these lines framed as a Green New Deal.

The Sunrise Movement, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and a growing group of Democrats and Democratic Socialists, are beginning to understand how the technocratic, "win-win" version of these ideas could be used as tools for political mobilization. The supporters of the 'new' Green New Deal have wisely understood that merely showing the possibility of upfront, tangible benefits is not enough; real progress requires building a coalition to demand them. Ocasio-Cortez proposes total decarbonization while employing anyone who needs a job. This reframing of the climate issue is an obvious focus in the US and other OECD nations is to win over labor as a key constituent by providing them with employment. 

The political effect is palpable. The Green New Deal has generated more political salience in a few months than policies like carbon taxes or a cap-and-trade systems have generated in years. Such redistributive measures, the preferred tools of economists, have dominated policy debates for decades, but rarely are they implemented at a price that can actually drive deep decarbonization. Pigovian redistribution may be elegant, but in a world of existential politics no one gets out on the streets to demand it.

Other examples show how existential politics can turn losers into winners in the OECD.  After committing to shutting its most of its coal mines by the end of next year, Spain has pledged to invest €250M in those regions affected by the policy.  Some will receive compensation for early retirement, while others are re-skilled.  Most will receive additional social aid. Germany's coal phaseout commission has proposed an even costlier package, some €40 billion over the next decades.

In short, building broad coalitions requires a focus on labor: compensating workers in climate-forcing sectors in creative ways, like buying out pension plans from failing coal companies. If done correctly, this will galvanize greater support for pro-climate policies without acting as more corporate welfare.  Nationalizing pensions will be a considerable expense, but one targeted at a large swath of the population, rather than the wealthy few climate-forcing asset owners. It could be financed, at least partly, by other pro-climate policies, like a carbon tax. When workers know that losing their job will not mean losing their homes, they are much more likely to support climate policy. 

There is some evidence that a similar approach would resonate elsewhere.  The Gilets Jaunes movement in France demonstrates that regressive climate policies will not be acceptable to the vast majority of democratic electorates. 

At the same time, we must realize that owners of climate-forcing assets will also lose from decarbonization policies. Investors in oil companies and other fossil firms may demand compensation for giving up their assets—as Saudi Arabia has always demanded in international climate negotiations. With billions of dollars at stake, they will continue to obstruct progress on climate policy. Broad-based domestic coalitions are one strategy to counter their structural power.

Implications for international climate policy

Building domestic winning coalitions under increasingly existential political conditions will be critical for decarbonization. Yet countries do not operate in a vacuum. Rather, international drivers will be a vital part of determining whether pro-decarbonization coalitions wield power domestically and create momentum transnationally. Three steps can help.

First, the "nationally determined" nature of the Paris pledges should be strengthened to focus on politically powerful domestic priorities. Many of the 2015 pledges do this already: India trumpets the value of solar energy, China includes industrial policy goals, and Peru emphasizes forestry. The Paris Agreement requires national pledges to be comparable and measurable, and represent "progression" over time. But within these constraints, we should encourage the widest possible range of policy measures so that future political leaders see in the Paris system a vessel into which they can project their own ambitions.

Second, transnational networks of cities, states/regions, businesses, and other actors can help strengthen pro-climate interests at the national level. In the United States, cities, states, and businesses representing over half of US GDP have declared that they will adhere to the Paris Agreement despite the Trump Administration's intention to withdraw. In other countries, like Japan and Mexico, similar coalitions are pushing their governments to higher ambition. While these interests act locally, they are networked globally, and after the Paris conference have been institutionalized in the UNFCCC process. This access to international attention, expertise, and resources can give pro-climate actors an advantage in national political fights.

Finally, international climate finance will need to catch up with the shift from distributional to existential politics. While climate-related foreign aid from rich to poor countries can help (as promised under the Paris Agreement), the next step is ending fossil fuel subsidies worldwide – particularly those for coal. Rich countries need to get their own house in order. Although there are many different ways to construe what constitutes a subsidy, conservative estimates suggest that OECD nations spent roughly $150 billion on fossil fuel subsidies.4 Further, under the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese policy banks and other public funds have supported billions more in fossil fuel infrastructure. The G20 agreed in 2009 that these subsidies should end. Phasing out subsidies should be billed as more than a technocratic fix to inefficient markets, but rather a rightful redistribution of wealth to workers.

 

 

Jessica Green is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

Thomas Hale is Associate Professor of Global Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

Jeff D. Colgan is the Richard Holbrooke Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Watson Institute for Public and International Affairs at Brown University. 

Image credit: Takver via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

 

 References

 

1. Supran, G. & Oreskes, N. Assessing ExxonMobil's climate change communications (1977–2014). Environ. Res. Lett. 12, 084019 (2017).

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On Paying for a Progressive Agenda [feedly]

On Paying for a Progressive Agenda
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/opinion/on-paying-for-a-progressive-agenda.html

By Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist

Feb. 19, 2019


Whoever gets the Democratic nomination, she or he will run in part on proposals to increase government spending. And you know what that will mean: There will be demands that the candidate explain how all this will be paid for. Many of those demands will be made in bad faith, from people who never ask the same questions about tax cuts. But there are some real questions about the fiscal side of a progressive agenda.

Well, I have some thoughts about that, inspired in part by looking at Elizabeth Warren's proposals on both the tax and spending side. By the way, I don't know whether Warren will or even should get the nomination. But she's a major intellectual figure, and is pushing her party toward serious policy discussion in a way that will have huge influence whatever her personal trajectory.

In particular, Warren's latest proposal on child care – and the instant pushback from the usual suspects – has me thinking that we could use a rough typology of spending proposals, classified by how they might be paid for. Specifically, let me suggest that there are three broad categories of progressive expenditure: investment, benefits enhancement, and major system overhaul, which need to be thought about differently from a fiscal point of view.

So, first off, investment – typically spending on infrastructure or research, but there may be some room at the margin for including spending on things like childhood development in the same category. The defining characteristic here is that it's spending that will enhance society's future productivity. How should we pay for that kind of outlay?

The answer is, we shouldn't. Think of all the people who say that the government should be run like a business. Actually it shouldn't, but the two kinds of institution do have this in common: if you can raise funds cheaply and apply them to high-return projects, you should go ahead and borrow. And Federal borrowing costs are very low – less than 1 percent, adjusted for inflation – while we are desperately in need of public investment, i.e., it has a high social return. So we should just do it, without looking for pay-fors.

Much of what seems to be in the Green New Deal falls into that category. To the extent that it's a public investment program, demands that its supporters show how they'll pay for it show more about the critics' bad economics than about the GND's logic.

My second category is a bit harder to define, but what I'm thinking of are initiatives that either expand an existing public program or use subsidies to create incentives for expanding some kind of socially desirable private activity – in each case involving sums that are significant but not huge, say a fraction of a percent of GDP.

The Affordable Care Act falls into that category. It expanded Medicaid while using a combination of regulation and subsidies to make private insurance more available to families above the new Medicaid line. Warren's childcare proposal, which reportedly will come in at around 1/3 of a percent of GDP, also fits. So would a "Medicare for All" proposal that involves allowing people to buy in to government insurance, rather than offering that insurance free of charge.

It's harder to justify borrowing for this kind of initiative than borrowing for investment. True, with interest rates low and demand weak it makes some sense to run persistent deficits, but there are surely enough investment needs to use up that allowance. So you want some kind of pay-for. But the sums are small enough that the revenue involved could be raised by fairly narrow-gauge taxes – in particular, taxes that hit only high-income Americans.  

That is, in fact, how Obamacare was financed: the revenue component came almost entirely from taxes on high incomes (there were some small items like the tax on tanning parlors.) And Warren has in fact proposed additional taxes on the wealthy – her proposed tax on fortunes over $50 million would yield something like four times the cost of her child care proposal.

So benefit enhancement can, I'd argue, be paid for with taxes on high incomes and large fortunes. It doesn't have to impose on the middle class.

Finally, my third category is major system overhaul, of which the archetype would be replacing employer-based private health insurance with a tax-financed public program – the purist version of Medicare for all. A really major expansion of Social Security might fall into that category too, although smaller enhancements might not.

Proposals in this category are literally an order of magnitude more expensive than benefit enhancements: private health insurance currently amounts to 6 percent of GDP. To implement these proposals, then, we'd need a lot more revenue, which would have to come from things like payroll taxes and/or a value-added tax that hit the middle class.

You can argue that most middle-class families would be better off in the end, that the extra benefits would more than compensate for the higher taxes. And you'd probably be right. But this would be a much heavier political lift. You don't have to be a neoliberal tool to wonder whether major system overhaul should be part of the Democratic platform right now, even if it's something many progressives aspire to.

My main point now, however, is that when people ridicule progressive proposals as silly and unaffordable, they're basically revealing their own biases and ignorance. Investment can and should be debt-financed; benefit enhancements can be largely paid for with high-end taxes. Howard Schultz won't like it, but that's his problem
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Black women’s labor market history reveals deep-seated race and gender discrimination [feedly]

Black women's labor market history reveals deep-seated race and gender discrimination
https://www.epi.org/blog/black-womens-labor-market-history-reveals-deep-seated-race-and-gender-discrimination/

The black woman's experience in America provides arguably the most overwhelming evidence of the persistent and ongoing drag from gender and race discrimination on the economic fate of workers and families.

Black women's labor market position is the result of employer practices and government policies that disadvantaged black women relative to white women and men. Negative representations of black womanhood have reinforced these discriminatory practices and policies. Since the era of slavery, the dominant view of black women has been that they should be workers, a view that contributed to their devaluation as mothers with caregiving needs at home. African-American women's unique labor market history and current occupational status reflects these beliefs and practices.

Compared to other women in the United States, black women have always had the highest levels of labor market participation regardless of age, marital status, or presence of children at home. In 1880, 35.4 percent of married black women and 73.3 percent of single black women were in the labor force compared to only 7.3 percent of married white women and 23.8 percent of single white women. Black women's higher participation rates extended over their lifetimes, even after marriage, while white women typically left the labor force after marriage.

Differences in black and white women's labor participation were due not only to the societal expectation of black women's gainful employment but also to labor market discrimination against black men which resulted in lower wages and less stable employment compared to white men. Consequently, married black women have a long history of being financial contributors—even co-breadwinners—to two-parent households because of black men's precarious labor market position.

Black women's main jobs historically have been in low-wage agriculture and domestic service.1 Even after migration to the north during the 20^th century, most employers would only hire black women in domestic service work.2Revealingly, although whites have devalued black women as mothers to their own children, black women have been the most likely of all women to be employed in the low-wage women's jobs that involve cooking, cleaning, and caregiving even though this work is associated with mothering more broadly.

Until the 1970s, employers' exclusion of black women from better paying, higher status jobs with mobility meant that they had little choice but to perform private domestic service work for white families. The 1970s was also the era when large numbers of married white women began to enter into the labor force and this led to a marketization of services previously performed within the household, including care and food services. Black women continue to be overrepresented in service jobs. Nearly a third (28 percent) of black women are employed in service jobs compared to just one-fifth of white women.

Discriminatory public policies have reinforced the view of black women as workers rather than as mothers and contributed to black women's economic precarity. This has been most evident with protective welfare policies that enabled poor lone white mothers to stay at home and provide care for their children since the early 20^th century. These policies were first implemented at the state level with Mother's Pensions and then at the national level with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. Up until the 1960s, caseworkers excluded most poor black women from receiving cash assistance because they expected black women to be employed moms and not stay at home moms like white women.3

This exclusion meant that for most of the history of welfare, the state actively undermined the well-being of black families by ensuring that black women would be in the labor force as low-wage caregivers for white families. This helped to secure the well-being of white families and alleviated white women of having to do this work. The state simultaneously undermined the well-being of black families by denying black mothers the cash assistance that they needed to support their children and leaving black women with no other option but to work for very low wages. Indeed, the backlash against poor black moms receiving cash assistance eventually culminated in the dismantling of the AFDC program and the enactment of TANF—a program with strict work requirements.4

Because of discriminatory employer and government policies against black men and women, black mothers with school age children have always been more likely to be in the labor force compared to other moms. Today, 78 percent of black moms with children are employed compared to an average of just 66 percent of white, Asian American, and Latinx moms.5

Although black women have a longer history of sustained employment compared to other women, in 2017, the median annual earnings for full-time year round black women workers was just over $36,000—an amount 21 percent lower than that of white women, reflecting black women's disproportionate employment in low-wage service and minimum and sub-minimum wage jobs. Black families, however, are more reliant on women's incomes than other families are since 80 percent of black mothers are breadwinners in their families.

Despite black women's importance as breadwinners, the state has compounded the lack of protections afforded black mothers by failing to protect black women as workers.6 In fact, state policies have often left black women vulnerable to workplace exploitation by excluding them from various worker protections. New Deal minimum wage, overtime pay, and collective bargaining legislation excluded the main sectors where black women worked–domestic service and farming. Although there have been inclusions since then, these sectors still lack full access to worker protections.

The legacy of black women's employment in industries that lack worker protections has continued today since black women are concentrated in low paying, inflexible service occupations that lack employer-provided retirement plans, health insurance, paid sick and maternity leave, and paid vacations. Over a third (36 percent) of black women workers lack paid sick leave.

All workers—especially the most vulnerable–need workplace protections, including minimum wages that are livable wages. Universally available family-friendly workplace policies would be especially beneficial to women given their care responsibilities: paid sick and parental leave, subsidized child and elder care, and flexible work options.

This analysis is based on the author's working paper, "Black Women on the Verge: Missing Black Men and Its Impact on Black Women"

1. Teresa Amott and Julie Matthaei. Race, Gender, and Work: A Multicultural Economic History of Women in the U.S. Boston: South End Press, 1996.

2. Jones, Jacqueline. 1985. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present. New York: Basic Books, Inc.

3. White, Deborah Gray, "Making a Way Out of No Way", in Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994", W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.

4. Edelman, Peter. So Rich, So Poor: Why it's So Hard to End Poverty in America. The New Press. 2012.

5. Author's calculation from BLS data.

6. Mutari, Ellen, Power, Marilyn, and Deborah M. Figart (2002). "Neither Mothers Nor Breadwinners: African-American Women's Exclusion From US Minimum Wage Policies," 1912-1938, Feminist Economics, 8:2, 37-61.

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