Where are the jobs?

After the debt ceiling debacle, focus has now shifted on how to grow the economy. More specifically, the issue is job creation. What can be done to create jobs? Why aren’t businesses investing in new employees? Both the Democrats and the Republicans seem to be on opposite sides of this debate. Much is made out of this partisan divide. Republicans want less bureaucratic regulations so businesses can feel confident in the economy and start hiring people. They also want to ease the tax burden, primarily on the wealthy, because the more money people have the more they will spend. Democrats agree, but want to boost the economy with some limited government spending and tax millionaires at a higher rate. This mild difference has been highlighted in near hysteria.

The debt debate is also never far away, as Republicans are quick to scream “bloody murder!” at any increase in government spending proposed by Democrats. For their part, Democrats usually cave in three fourths of the wave and hold their ground on one fourth of their argument. But this is all, of course, relative.

Fundamentally, despite the tone of the debate, Republicans and Democrats are in complete agreement. We have a huge amount of debt we must pay off; we are in this together; we must protect our interests at home and across the world; we need to stimulate the economy. Undoubtedly this means a bipartisan attack on the everyday person’s standard of living. Within their narrow constraints, within the rules of their economic system, they are, at least to a degree, correct. Right now, under Capitalism, as poverty in the United States rises to record levels, we are living too well for our own good.


Tax the rich!

In order to fund his latest jobs bill, President Barack Obama is attempting to rally many of the people who supported him initially but are now quite disenchanted with his performance. Dubbed the “Buffett rule” after billionaire investor and somewhat eccentric personality Warren Buffett, Obama is proposing a tax on millionaires (even though they, scared of the right-wing pundits it would seem, call it a “rule” instead ). This tax is to be focused on the income they receive off of dividends and capital gains, that is the money they get for having money stored in a place deemed profitable by the whispers, snickers, and electronic data coming from Wall Street. Although we agree the rich should be taxed more, this move by Obama shows the limitations of this demand. Right now, believe it or not, we have a progressive income tax in this country. Sure, there are a ton of loopholes, but it’s our country’s policy, like most others, to tax the rich. We end up doing it at a lower rate because people who make seven figures, and well over, typically don’t make that money by set salaries and certainly not by hourly wages. They’re often offered compensation in the form of stock options and/or similar securities based payments. In other words, the rich obtain their wealth off of the work of others. This creates undue influence and privilege.

We see privilege best represented by the Republican Party. While the Democrats love to tug on the heartstrings of liberals with short-term memories, Republicans push the boundaries of sanity from questioning the tenants of basic science to flat out rejecting years of hard economic data. Congressional Republicans will publicly throw a tamper tantrum over any social program spending at the same time the Bush tax cuts for the rich they championed, which were extended by President Obama, are adding some 36 billion dollars to the deficit this year alone. While economists generally acknowledge the failure of “trickle down” economics to produce anything other than a few good jokes, Republicans would be more likely to sacrifice their first born to the God of Abraham than raise a single dime of new revenue through increased taxation of their beloved “job creators.”

So yes, of course, there is plenty of room to tax the rich.

But the underlying question is much more interesting. Instead of talking about “taxing the rich” (which they can, have, and will do), we should ask, quite simply, who creates the wealth? Is wealth created during exchange or production? While pundits and analysts spend hours and hours trying to figure out what will please the god of market exchange, not much thought is given to production. A human’s labor power is seen as just another commodity. But every so often, every time our labor power is strategically withheld for example, production catches a few headlines. Then it becomes clear, when the store shelf is as empty as your stomach, who really creates wealth and what really has value. There is little need for a subjective analysis. Wealth is created by human labor interacting with nature. The rich have been, in effect, stealing the profit created by hired labor.


Government spending or government interference?

It is often said we are in the midst of a “financial crisis.” Or, better yet, the “economic crisis,” as if economics itself was in crisis. Really, we have a crisis of one specific way to produce and exchange goods. That is, we have a crisis of Capitalism. What was a bank default crisis is now a nation state default crisis. Public money bailed out the banks in 2008, but there simply isn’t enough left to bail out all the countries that now need it. (Of course, a large chunk of this debt is owned by banks, who again are looking to get bailed out by the public.) But what is more important regarding job creation--paying down debt and securing confidence, or spending money and growing the economy?

At first we heard stories of us spoiled people and our “entitlement culture.” Big government had sustained this hedonistic lifestyle far too long, and it was time to cut it down to size. It was time for some “efficiency.” Us slackers, particularly the Greeks, were dead set on spending our golden years at home with our families instead of wiping down fast food restaurant tables and greeting strangers at ridiculously huge department stores. The nerve! At this time it was open season to attack all the gains the working class had made at crafting somewhat of a decent existence over the years. The word “austerity” was the plunged into our everyday vocabulary. But it wasn’t so easy. Believe or not, people like spending time with their families, not to mention being able to eat, and fought back hard against austerity measures. In the Arab world, despite the on-paper economic growth of many of the countries, we saw, and are seeing, a revolutionary sweeping away of the old guard only a few of us imagined. Many of the intelligent bourgeoisie, from the Financial Times to the Economist, were caught in a dark room with their pants down. They had no clue what to do or say. Their plans didn’t quite go as planned.

Others have been advocating growth promotion through government spending. While certainly the government can spend money and create jobs, there are a few problems with this. First off, where does this money come from? Right now there is a huge Federal deficit, and while bailing out banks is “act first and think about it later,“ coming up with money for jobs is a much bigger Congressional fight. All of the sudden politicians become extremely concerned with our collective pocketbook. Many economists have argued for more spending by pointing out more jobs will create more tax revenue through economic growth. This is true, but we simply haven’t seen that sort of growth, and it is unlikely we will for the foreseeable future. The United States looks more like Japan than China in that we will be saddled with high debt and confined to low growth for a long period of time. This is the nature of most advanced economies. 

The other major worry about more spending is inflation. The more dollars out there, the less they are worth, limiting our purchasing power and disrupting the entire dollar-based global economy. Except for recently, the Federal Reserve had basically limited its economic role to fighting inflation.

They’re both right and they’re both wrong. We can’t simply cut our way out of a crisis, as growth will slow until we are back in the negative side again. We also can’t spend our way out of this, as our massive debt creates market uncertainty (as the S&P downgrade reflected) and inflation. They have no solution. In the end, our living standard is attacked. We can’t get a decent education. We can’t find a job.


The audacity of planning

Objectively speaking, there is a whole bunch of work to be done. It isn’t as if we woke up one day and there just wasn’t anything for a chunk of our society to keep busy on. There are basic needs, as well as wants, that still need to be taken care of. Right now corporations are sitting on more profit than they ever have. Productively is through the roof.  They still aren’t hiring. While they mumble about “uncertainty,“ we have to realize WE ARE THE JOB CREATORS. Those who own industry are unnecessary. They’re leeches, sucking the economy dry. There are too many cars so we don’t need any more people employed in that industry. This has often been said. But there aren’t too many cars because people no longer need transportation. There’s too many cars because someone can’t make a large enough profit selling them. With a rationally democratically planned economy, this wouldn’t be an issue.

While having a plan is usually the sign for someone who is well prepared, when it comes to the economy the idea of coordinated national, and world, economic planning is met with fierce resistance. Really, if we stop and think about it, businesses all have a plan. They all have a strategy. The problem is their planning and strategies are geared towards competing against each other in order to generate the most profits. This might garner large profits for some, but it stifles the abilities of others. This competition eventually creates its opposite, a monopoly. A relatively small amount of companies effectively control the economy. As a result, today we see very little innovation from the private sector. As Apple and Microsoft fight for market share, they rely on a publicly created internet. Imagine if the intelligent people working for these companies, as well as other blue chip corporations, were working together for a common goal. The potential is nearly unlimited.

Capitalism has played its part. Just like Feudalism, Capitalism had a historical role to play but that role is now exhausted. This current crisis shows that more than anything. Capitalism is failing us, we aren‘t failing Capitalism. Now it is up to us to end it. Unless we inject democracy into the decisions we now leave up to the market, we risk nothing less than our existence.

"The Class, the Party, and the Leadership"

The Spanish Revolution is in many ways a how-to-guide for how not to take power and implement a revolutionary workers’ democracy. Actually, it is studying the Spanish Revolution that convinced me personally that revolutionary Marxism was correct and revolutionary Anarchism, at least in practice, didn’t exist.

As we know, the Spanish Revolution failed and we saw Fascist reaction not only gain control of Spain, but ultimately most of Europe. So why did the Spanish Revolution fail? Was this a failure of leadership, or were the workers simply not mature enough to carry through a revolution?

In this document [The Class, the Party, and the Leadership] Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky answers that question by verbally body-slamming the editors of Que Faire (What To Do), which was a left-leaning bourgeois intellectual paper published in Paris. It is interesting that Trotsky made sure to write that the paper itself was of no importance, i.e, it wasn’t going to do much other than give a few left liberal types a venue to write their muddle to share amongst themselves (which I think we can draw numerous parallels with today). He was of the opinion that it was of “symptomatic interest.” In other words, it was characteristic of much of the reasons given by those who Trotsky called “puesdo-Marxists” on why the Spanish Revolution failed.

The beginning of the document starts with a quote from Que Faire’s review of a pamphlet entitled Spain Betrayed by Casanova (which was the pen name of a Polish Marxist named Bernstein who was in Spain during the Revolution). At first glance they might seem to be offering an interesting criticism of Casanova’s argument that the leadership of the Communist Party in Spain followed the wrong policy. Instead, Que Faire argues the workers simply weren’t ready for a Revolution and those like Casanova had to blame boogeymen like Stalin and inept Anarchist leaders to cover for the workers’ failure. The following is taken from Que Faire's criticism of Casanova's analysis (via Trotsky's piece):

Why was the revolution crushed? Because, replies the author (Casanova), the Communist Party conducted a false policy which was unfortunately followed by the revolutionary masses. But why, in the devil’s name, did the revolutionary masses who left their former leaders rally to the banner of the Communist Party? ‘Because there was no genuinely revolutionary party.’ We are presented with a pure tautology. A false policy of the masses; an immature party either manifests a certain condition of social forces (immaturity of the working class, lack of independence of the peasantry) which must be explained by proceeding from facts, presented among others by Casanova himself; or it is the product of the actions of certain malicious individuals or groups of individuals, actions which do not correspond to the efforts of ‘sincere individuals’ alone capable of saving the revolution. After groping for the first and Marxist road, Casanova takes the second. We are ushered into the domain of pure demonology; the criminal responsible for the defeat is the chief Devil, Stalin, abetted by the anarchists and all the other little devils; the God of revolutionists unfortunately did not send a Lenin or a Trotsky to Spain as He did in Russia in 1917.

Under closer examination, however, we see that Que Faire’s criticism is nothing but empty rhetoric. (It is quite ironic they refer to Casanova's central argument as a "tautology.") Why were the workers not ready for Revolution? Because the Revolution failed. Why did the revolution fail? Because the workers were not ready for the Revolution. In the end, we are left no closer to understanding what happened in Spain than when we started.

Trotsky goes on to give concrete examples of the “immature” workers being correct and their leadership being wrong. Trotsky writes:

In July 1936, the Spanish workers repelled the assault of the officers who had prepared their conspiracy under the protection of the People’s Front. The masses improvised militias and created workers’ committees, the strongholds of their future dictatorship. The leading organizations of the proletariat on the other hand helped the bourgeoisie to destroy these committees, to liquidate the assaults of the workers on private property and to subordinate the workers’ militias to the command of the bourgeoisie, with the POUM moreover participating in the government and assuming direct responsibility for this work.

Trotsky points out, which I think is extremely important and interesting given this is still a belief held by many Anarchists, that the beginning logic of the “the workers aren’t ready” argument is that there will come a point when the workers will be so ready that they won’t need any sort of leadership. They will simply wake up one day and all decide to take power. When and how this develops under capitalism is left unsaid. I suppose we can assume it is done mainly been reading periodicals such as Que Faire?

Trotsky anticipates the question of “why would the workers subordinate themselves to poor leadership?” and answers it with more concrete examples of the workers not at all being subordinate to their leadership, and in some cases actively fighting against it. He brings up the well known fact that the CNT leadership actually refused to take power, and then bragged about it in several publications. This most certainly wasn’t the wish of the masses who fought, and often times died, for such power. Unfortunately the Spanish workers were unable, in the middle of a war, to produce new leadership that corresponded to the demands of the Revolution. Not just the Stalinists and Anarchists, but also the POUM.

To fully answer the subordination question, we also need to take on the old myth that “people get the government they deserve.” To the social evolutionist liberal, society moves in a straight line from despotism to freedom. Trotsky takes this on quite well and I think it is worth quoting at length. He says:

The secret is this, that a people is comprised of hostile classes, and the classes themselves are comprised of different and in part antagonistic layers which fall under different leadership; furthermore every people falls under the influence of other peoples who are likewise comprised of classes. Governments do not express the systematically growing ‘maturity’ of a ‘people’ but are the product of the struggle between different classes and the different layers within one and the same class, and, finally, the action of external forces – alliances, conflicts, wars and so on. To this should be added that a government, once it has established itself, may endure much longer than the relationship of forces which produced it. It is precisely out of this historical contradiction that revolutions, coup d’etats, counterrevolutions, etc. arise.

This same dialectic approach is needed when dealing with leadership. Again from the text:

A leadership is shaped in the process of clashes between the different classes or the friction between the different layers within a given class. Having once arisen, the leadership invariably arises above its class and thereby becomes predisposed to the pressure and influence of other classes. The proletariat may ‘tolerate’ for a long time a leadership that has already suffered a complete inner degeneration but has not as yet had the opportunity to express this degeneration amid great events. A great historic shock is necessary to reveal sharply the contradiction between the leadership and the class. The mightiest historical shocks are wars and revolutions. Precisely for this reason the working class is often caught unaware by war and revolution. But even in cases where the old leadership has revealed its internal corruption, the class cannot improvise immediately a new leadership, especially if it has not inherited from the previous period strong revolutionary cadres capable of utilizing the collapse of the old leading party.

In Spain, as mentioned, the working class was able to move far beyond their leadership, yet they were not able to actually replace them.

As we can see by the example of the Russian working class, workers’ maturity is not unchanging. At the beginning of 1917, it was basically just Lenin who had a revolutionary understanding of the moment. Many of the other Bolsheviks were scattered around and not sure what move to take next. This highlights exactly how important it is to have revolutionary leadership during revolutionary times. The maturity of workers is relative to the situation and can change rapidly. The same Russian working class who overthrew the Tsar also allowed a bureaucracy to rise from within its ranks and betray the Revolution.

Que Faire goes on to ask why the revolutionary masses, who left their former leaders, now decided to follow the Communist party. Trotsky points out this is a false question. They didn’t leave their former leaders, but they did rally around the Communist Party and its popular front strategy largely because of the authority the Comintern had gained by carrying out the only successful workers’ revolution. It isn’t as simple as the working class going window-shopping for new leadership. Tradition and loyalty play a large role in the decision. It is only through their experiences that workers move to new leadership, and new revolutionary parties can grow very rapidly given the right circumstance mixed with the right policies.

The POUM, while being the left party not linked to Anarchism, refused to reveal the bourgeois nature of the other parties. This was the only way to move the POUM forward, but they refused to do it. Trotsky noted of the POUM, “It participated in the ‘People’s’ election bloc; entered the government which liquidated workers’ committees; engaged in a struggle to reconstitute this governmental coalition; capitulated time and again to the anarchist leadership; conducted a false trade union policy; took a vacillating and non-revolutionary attitude toward the May 1937 uprising.” This, however, isn’t simply a reflection of the Spanish working class; it is a reflection of concrete events. The working class was more revolutionary than the POUM, who in turn was more revolutionary than the bourgeois leadership they subordinated themselves to. Why did the POUM leadership subordinate themselves to the leadership of the bourgeois state? As we can see using a dialectic approach, the leadership had risen above its class and subject to pressures of other classes. When the degeneration of the POUM leadership became known, the working class, in the middle of a revolutionary struggle, was unable to replace them.

It is clear the central point the folks at Que Faire were trying to make is that the workers simply weren’t ready for a revolution. We can see similar arguments today in places like Venezuela, where despite the people being far more revolutionary than their leaders, many academics have blamed the slow pace of the revolution on the maturity level of the workers. We also see shades of this in the United States as cynical liberals berate workers for being stupid and backwards. The left sects abandon mainstream unions because of their poor leadership with some questioning whether developed economies even have workers. This is why we study things like the Spanish Revolution, as events today take such a similar course. The folks at Que Faire liked to think they were Marxists, and they did that by throwing in phrases like “condition of class forces” and “condition of social forces.” This, they thought, gave them a material basis for claiming the workers simply weren’t ready for a revolution. The same goes for countless organizations today (all more or less ignored by your average person). Trotsky takes this on with extreme clarity by saying, “Naturally, the ‘condition of class forces’ supplies the foundation for all other political factors; but just as the foundation of a building does not reduce the importance of walls, windows, doors, roofs, so the ‘condition of classes’ does not invalidate the importance of parties, their strategy, their leadership.”

Que Faire and their present day equivalents won’t tell us how we will know when the working class will be ready for revolution. Someday, off in the distant future, we will all just wake up and spontaneously decide to take power; a divine rapture of sorts. That has been proven to be absolutely ridiculous. We must work to build a political structure that can directly confront the bourgeois state. Working within state structures in order to destroy them is a contradiction, no doubt, but understanding contradictions is central to achieving, and wielding, power. And that is what this is all about- growing and crafting correct, democratically accountable, leadership of the world's working class.

Another day, another crisis

The following is the best analysis of the current crisis of capitalism I have read so far:

http://www.marxist.com/another-day-another-crisis.htm

Putting North Dakota's Economy in Context...

"Revenge of the Squares"?

Brandishing the values of "yesteryears," some Mayberryish place that exists only in conservatives' minds, North Dakota is the nation's economic hot spot. Although it ironically has become hip to write little fluff pieces on how refreshing it is North Dakota, being so neglected by America's elite, has managed to stave off Capitalism's latest crisis, a few contextual points are in order.

First off, the oil. North Dakota has oil. Now this point is almost certainly mentioned by the glorymongerers, as it is in the above piece, but this key fact has little to do with culture and lots to do with luck and new technology that allows access to oil that was once unprofitable to be refined. A quick look through history tells us oil is, at most, a finite mixed blessing. Oil, unlike the infamous North Dakota weather, tends to keep the "riff-raff" in.

The State bank. North Dakota is the only state in the country with its own bank. A relic from the WWI era Socialist wave that swept the Midwest (brought by German and Scandinavian immigrants), North Dakota was able to withstand the worst of the credit crunch because they often provided their own credit. Although it's unfortunately ran like a for-profit private bank, it really is an island of economic sovereignty in an ocean of consolidation. There is little doubt the bank kept many North Dakotan small businesses open. This point is never mentioned by the rosy-eyed revisionists.

North Dakota has an extremely small population. To be exact, North Dakota, while the 19th biggest state in area, has only 672,591 inhabitants. Only Vermont and Wyoming have less. Jordan, the neighborhood in Hong Kong my brother and his wife live in, has 150,000 people. (All .4 square mile of it.) This small number is huge. To put it simply, it's much easier to govern less people. Less people equals less problems, at least from a social services point of view, and services for humans is where states spend the vast majority of their money. It's for this reason you know who the mayor of New York City is and not the mayor of Minot.

Federal money. Like many red states, North Dakota takes in more money than it pays out. A lot more. For every $1 a North Dakotan is taxed, they get $1.62 back. That's a pretty good deal! So these big blue states, like New York and California, who routinely catch the ire of small state politicians for having no "common sense," end up subsidizing states like Mississippi, North Dakota, and Alaska. Moreover, despite the oil boom, North Dakota still has an economy based on agriculture. Every five years politicians, both Democrat and Republican, hammer out a Farm Bill that costs the Federal government hundreds of billions of dollars. North Dakota, despite a ban on corporate farming, is carved up by a small number of plantation-like enterprises masquerading as "family farms." Many of the same people who decry Federal money being spent on after-school programs in the Twin Cities happily collect their Farm Bill check year after year after year.

North Dakota is a low wage state, with little opportunity for quality long-term work. This has to do with having no significant metro areas, but it also has to do with its anti-worker laws. It's a "right to work" state. This means that if your coworkers negotiate a contract with your employer, and you don't wish to join the union, you get to reap the rewards of that process without any of the sacrifice. While they paid their union dues, you didn't, and still get the benefits. That's, of course, assuming your workplace has a union, which is a pretty big assumption. It's virtually impossible to unionize in "right to work" states. In North Dakota you will get paid less than non "right to work" states and the "cheap" cost of living (which isn't always that cheap in the bigger towns) doesn't make up for it. That's not a real good incentive to even stay there, let alone permanently back up and move to the state. They are now only now starting to stop the brain drain of the previous several years, and this is largely due to the economy being so bad everywhere else. People graduate and move. This is so common most young people don't even give it a second thought. Politicians, even in the midst of this boom, are forced to acknowledge the scope of this massive problem. The reason for this is obvious, there are more opportunities elsewhere.

North Dakota is beautiful. I was born there and lived there for the vast majority of my life. I am proud of that. But the idea that it has somehow been immune to the underlying contradictions during this current crisis of Capitalism is absurd. North Dakota is in a better situation right now than many other states. This is primarily because of luck, and frankly, its limited economic output. It's in spite of, not because of, the often bizarre, and backwards, politicians that run the state. It's dangerous to think otherwise.

I would like to respectfully offer some kind words of caution to North Dakota voters: Minnesota, where I live now, had a 4 billion dollar budget surplus in the late nineties. (That's larger than the entire budget of ND today.) Now we have an estimated 6 billion dollar budget deficit (when adjusted for inflation). This is the direct result of Republican tax cuts (which are really subsidies for businesses and individuals), both at the state and federal level. Jesse Ventura handed out famous sales tax rebates (your "Jesse check"); Tim Pawlenty is infamous within the state for gimmicky budgeting, which shifted costs to local governments and basically kicked the deficit can down the road to be bigger and badder when we catch up with it. (We did and it is.) The Democrats, for their part, continue to ramble nonsensically about the much fetishized "middle ground," which essentially means a bit less cuts than the Republicans. Their "resistance" to Republican social engineering via budgeting is them highlighting their fundamental agreements with Republican proposals in certain crowds and slightly disagreeing just enough to seem opposed in front of others. Despite what both parties say, this is hardly a spending issue. If Minnesota taxed its citizen at the same rate they did in 1998, there would still be a surplus. Now Minnesota is on its way to becoming Mississippi.

North Dakota would do well to rekindle its past political independence from the two parties of business, particularly now when things are relatively good. I know there was talk, at least at one time, of using part of the budget surplus to create a state oil refinery. This would be a good first step in ensuring resources are used collectively for the benefit of all North Dakotans. Unfortunately, the state is controlled by Republicans and Democrats alike who are intent on selling the state to the highest bidder, ensuring a select few receive obscene profits. North Dakota of 1919 decided to buck the system and do what was in the interest of their citizens, let's hope North Dakota of 2011 does too.

A Brief History of Minnesota's Farmer-Labor Party

The following was written for issue number 60 of Socialist Appeal.

Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party was the most successful labor party in United States history. Starting in 1918, it was a labor party in the true sense, not just a “pro-labor“ party. It was a political federation of labor unions. The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Association, a grouping of associated unions and farmers, provided the organic connection between labor and the party. Before the party merged with the Democrats in 1944, they had elected three governors, four U.S. Senators, and eight members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

1918 was a tumultuous year. The Bolshevik Revolution was being consolidated in Russia. The German Revolution had sprung across Deutschland. In November World War I formally ended. Here at home Woodrow Wilson had signed into law the Sedition Act and used it to throw Eugene Debs in jail. Across the Midwest, as well as the nation, the Socialist Party had influence. The weekly publication “Appeal to Reason” had a circulation of one million. During this era Wisconsin sent Socialist Party founding member Victor Berger to Congress. In Minneapolis a Socialist Party candidate was elected mayor. The Non-Partisan League, a political organization started by Socialists, had gained the governor’s office in North Dakota.

This was also a time of great industrial expansion.  America was becoming an industrial superpower. The way of life many had grown accustomed to was changing. Small businesses were getting destroyed by big monopolies. Workers were being sent back to the lands they left to fight a war they had no interest in. Farmers were constantly fighting for a decent price for their crop. While State repression and internal conflict marginalized the influence of the Socialist Party, other class independent political formations arose. It is within this context we see the rise of Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party.

As the name would  suggest, the party was a merger of rural farmers and urban workers. Many small business owners found a home within the party as well. Nationally this was a time of many populist movements aimed at small business. There was Teddy Roosevelt and his independent run for President, the Populist Democrats, as well as various others. Due to their social existence, many of these farmers and small business owners had a different consciousness level than many of the workers. This created conflict from the beginning until the end of the party.  The Republicans, the main bourgeois party in Minnesota, attempted to exploit this division. At this time the party who claimed to be a “friend of labor” was the Republicans. Many of the early supporters, from the Non-Partisan League to the Farmer-Labor party, were at one time Republicans. The Democrats would often come in a distant third in the polls. With no fundamental ties to any organized group other than the wealthy, the two parties of capital can, and often do, switch  blocs of voters they lean on for support. Now, as we well know, Republicans court the far right and Democrats masquerade as being pro-labor.

In 1918, during the Minnesota State Federation of Labor convention, Socialists called for a state labor political convention. This was indeed a bold move as the Russian and German revolutions had left many within the American ruling class shaken to their foundation and not at all tolerant of political dissent. Nevertheless, the resolution passed. The formation was called  the “Working People’s Political Non-Partisan League.” This was an obvious acknowledgement of the Non-Partisan league and their widening success, culminating in neighboring North Dakota. The name was later changed to the “Farmer-Labor Association” and each group, both farmer and labor, paid yearly dues.

In a wonderful analysis written in 1946, former Secretary of the Educational Bureau in the Farmer-Labor Association, Warren Creel, outlines the Association’s “Declaration of Principals:”

The Farmer-Labor movement seeks to unite into a political organization all persons engaged in agriculture and other useful industry, and those in sympathy with their interests, for the purpose of securing legislation that will protect and promote the economic welfare of the wealth producers.

He went on to say:

It aims to rescue the government from the control of the privileged few and make it function for the use and benefit of all by abolishing monopoly in every form, and to establish in place thereof a system of public ownership and operation of monopolized industries, which will afford every able and willing worker an opportunity to work and will guarantee the enjoyment of the proceeds thereof, thus increasing the amount of available wealth, eradicating unemployment and destitution, and abolishing industrial autocracy.

It became a proper political party when it started running independent candidates against the two parties of capital. The Farmer-Labor Party was not alone. There were several other similar political movements across the nation. But what separated Minnesota was the fact that they had official backing of the labor movement. The unions had, and have, the resources and structure to maintain an independent political presence. This is a huge lesson for us today and a main reason the current Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor calls for the unions to break their fickle ties with the Democrats.

It wasn’t long before the Farmer-Labor Party started gaining seats in the state legislature. With this brought all sorts of contradictions. Petty bourgeois politicians who came running to Farmer-Labor when they smelled a possible career boost constantly attempted to water down the program and, most of all, break the organic tie with labor and turn it into a typical bourgeois political party. Despite these internal battles, Farmer-Labor came in second in governor’s race every election cycle from 1918 until 1930. In 1930, in the context of the Great Depression, the first Farmer-Labor Administration was elected.

While the farmer and labor contingencies of the party worked well on immediate issues, there proved to be disagreements on the overall strategy of the party. Creel gives a first hand view of the problems:

…the genuine farmers as well as pseudo-farmers--small town bankers and lawyers--were an influence for retreat from a working class orientation. When the movement was taking shape there were sharp battles over opportunist steps, such as the nomination of Henrik Shipstead for U.S. Senator in 1922. The farmers, of course, considered themselves as holding the party on the correct middle of the road.

These “middle of the road” tactics ultimately lead to the demise of party. It was on the strength of the “Declaration of Principals” that Farmer-Labor candidates were elected and straying from that turned out to be a death blow. The main problem was the farmer section of the Association had far too much power. While it was founded with an equal farmer-labor alliance, many rural clubs had stopped paying dues and did not at all participate in the internal political process. Unfortunately, due to a poor provision in the Association’s constitution, so long as farmers would show up on election day and vote, they kept their regional delegates. This made the farmers’ influence far greater than their day to day participation.

As far as the labor section, Creel had this to say:

The labor section was basically a political federation of labor unions, a, genuine labor party organization. It had in operation the elementary machinery that is necessary for real working class politics. Political activity started in the affiliated labor union locals, where political discussion, reports of political delegates, and political campaign activity were part of the regular business of each meeting, and payment of per-capita to the labor political organization was a constant part of the budget. Delegates from the unions of each city met in monthly meetings or oftener, as the Farmer-Labor Association city central committee. This went on month after month and year after year.

This is another lesson to be learned. While today farmers don’t have the numbers they once did, they, in the same vein as small business owners, still hold formidable political power. Labor, from the bottom, must have the ultimate say in how their political presence is orchestrated. There must be measures to protect the party platform from being hijacked by coalitions or careerist bureaucrats from within.

The biggest challenge for the integrity of the Farmer-Labor Party came from Floyd B. Olsen. Olsen was a popular man across Minnesota. He was also controversial. From cries that he was a “socialist,” to alleged mob ties, to a well known muckraker nemesis being shot down in the streets of Minneapolis, Olsen captivated Minnesota and gained national attention. He was a wonderful showman and a shrewd politician. In exchange for him running on a Farmer-Labor ticket, he demanded complete control over appointees. With the possibility of a victory in 1930 humming in their ears, the Farmer-Labor Association gave him that power.

In 1930 Olsen was indeed elected. He immediately set up committees outside of the Association consisting of careerist politicians that were loyal to him. His strategy was “vote for me, I’m a good guy.” The program of the party be damned. For years Olsen's main goal was to limit labor’s influence within the party. As many state jobs as he could possibly give out, he gave out to supporters. Despite his attempted undermining of labor’s direct influence, he was forced to recognize its power. I suspect this was the reason Olsen went after the reforms he is known for, much more so than any sort of burning desire “to help the working man” he may have felt within.

Given Olsen’s maneuverings, it’s not at all surprising contradictions were everywhere. For example, it was Olsen who ordered the National Guard to Minneapolis during the famous 1934 Teamster Strike. Some unions, particularly and understandably in the Twin Cities, openly opposed him. The downward spiral of the party was heightened by Olsen’s unexpected death from stomach cancer in 1936.

From then on the party was in ruins. Despite still having a tremendous support based on their earlier program, the party was ousted from the Governor’s mansion by a great margin in 1938. By 1944 the party had officially merged into the Democratic Party. The Stalinists, who had been instrumental in bureaucratically shutting down any disagreeing voice from the unions, had now successfully merged the workers’ party into a bourgeois party. Stalin was on good terms with Roosevelt. Moscow, despite the rhetoric, had absolutely no interest in a true workers’ party, neither here nor there.

There are many lessons we can learn from the experience of Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party. Most of all, it shatters the myth that workers in the United States have no interest in political independence. In the final analysis, workers in the United States have the same needs, wants, and aspirations as workers in Venezuela, Egypt, Russia or Germany. This is why we are involved in the Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor. We, the Marxists, know it would prove a costly mistake not to be part of that process. We must help build our political presence. When the mighty working class in the United States moves, the world will tremble.