Welcome to the July 1st edition of These Revolutionary Times. Today we start the second half of 2018; 6 months are gone, 6 months remain,
These Revolutionary Times is a project of The Political Revolution. Each Sunday, we focus on a small selection of papers, articles, and essays published in various publicly available sources that reflect political change already happening or that we think ought to happen or ought not to happen in 21st Century America. Our goal is to spur people to read these pieces with an open-minded but critical focus and engage here in an interchange of ideas about the issues raised in them.
Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim.
~ Mary Parker Follett
It’s interesting how much some things can change over time.
For instance: as everyone knows, in the 1940s Captain Marvel was a white boy who was able to change into a powerful white man; in the 1960s, Captain Marvel became a powerful alien who was able to pass as a powerful white man; and from the 1980s to the present Captain Marvel has generally been a powerful woman. For a while she was even a powerful black woman, although now she is back to being a powerful white woman
Slightly more obscure (but you can look him up at the Wikipedia link I’ve provided): back in the 1950s and 1960s Nixon was the name used by a dishonest and dishonorable white man who was involved in politics. Today, Nixon is the name used by an honest and honorable white woman who is involved in politics.
So I thought it might be interesting to start tonight’s TRT with a look back on a remarkable woman who was well ahead of her time: Mary Parker Follett.
I have long admired her work ever since stumbling across and reading her books The New State and Creative Experience (and, later, the posthumous collection of some of her papers, Dynamic Administration). When I realized in the 1990s that her books were becoming very hard to find even in university libraries, I made a complete photocopy of New State and Creative Experience for myself in order to be able to have a copy on hand.
I was able to do that reasonably cheaply by taking them to an Office Depot which had a self-serve photocopy section with a very low per-page rate if one were making a large number of copies, (I think it was just 2 or 3 cents per copy), putting two books onto the screen at a time, and setting the copier to reduce down the size so that I could 2 pages of each book fit onto the photocopy. New State is close to 400 pages so it meant making about 200 copies, but for about $5 (and a couple hours of my time) I could sleep well at night knowing I had my own copies of two books which were quickly becoming almost impossible to find. Money and time well spent!
Fortunately I was not the only person to discover and be impressed by her writing. I’ll say more about that some other time, rather than ramble on too much longer now, but her writings are again available both in print and online for those interested in finding and reading her works. The 1995 book Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management, edited by Pauline Graham, reprints close to a dozen of Follett’s papers (along with commentaries on each), is easy to find in libraries (or second-hand at a reasonable price), and it makes a good introduction to her work.
Here is an excerpt from a 2009 article about Mary Parker Follett posted on the openDemocracy website.
A conference on women redefining democracy can do no better than start with Mary Parker Follett, the unsung, unacknowledged 'mother' of modern organizational theory and management studies, and feminist political philosopher. In her book, The New State, she defined democracy in a particularly feminist way - a definition unlike that of any male philosopher, from the Greeks, to Rousseauvians, to Marxists and neo-liberals:
“Democracy is an infinitely including spirit. We have an instinct for democracy because we have an instinct for wholeness; we get wholeness only through reciprocal relations, through infinitely expanding reciprocal relations. Democracy is really neither [merely] extending nor including… but creating wholes.”
In another section of the book, she says:
“The vote in itself does not give us democracy -- we have yet to learn democracy's method. We still think too much of the solidarity of the vote; what we need is solidarity of purpose, solidarity of will. To make my vote a genuine part of the expression of the collective will is the first purpose of politics; it is only through group organization that the individual learns this lesson, that [s]he learns to be an effective political member.”
Women’s experience with and in formal politics -- meaning in political parties, elections, and legislatures and local councils -- would seem to bear testimony to this prophetic woman’s words. In more recent waves of feminist activism, we have focused on women’s access to power and decision-making authority in formal political institutions as critical to achieving gender equality in the long term.
Political empowerment of women became a clarion call by the mid-seventies, based on several assumptions about how this would change things for all women: that lasting gender equality could be achieved only through political change (enabling policies, legislation, enforcement and protection of rights); that women in politics would advance the cause of gender equality and women’s rights; that unless women themselves were represented in local, national and global political bodies, the momentum for such change could not be sustained; that a critical mass of women in political institutions would also initiate broader social justice and peace -- by fostering non-violent conflict resolution, sustainable and socially just development, access to and protection of the full body of human rights, and placing people above profits; and most of all, that this critical mass of women in political institutions would transform the very nature of power and the practice of politics through more transparent, accountable and consultative political behaviour -- in other words, that women would play politics differently and practise power accountably.
It’s certainly true that thousands of courageous women who entered politics have attempted to do all this and more -- undoubtedly, women have made a significant impact on politics and political institutions at multiple levels. But we must also confront the fact that increased representation of women in elected bodies has not transformed these institutions or engendered policies in the way we hoped -- not even in those handful of countries where women elected representatives have reached more than a critical mass. Women have not been able to advance this notion of democracy as wholeness, as something that enables every voice, perspective, and priority, to become part of the 'collective will' ...
In a future TRT I hope to include some excerpts from her writings, where she talks about the importance of power with rather than power over, about how compromise is harmful rather than helpful, and many other interesting and insightful points.
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One of the things Mary Parker Follett wrote and spoke about back in the early 20th century was how Democracy does and doesn’t work, and ways for people to be able to work together better than the competitive model people then (and now) are so much in the habit of using.
The majority voting systems used in the US back then worked rather poorly, and the majority voting systems used in the US a century later still works rather poorly. But the state of Maine has begun an interesting experiment with a much better voting system: Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), also known as Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). It’s a system which allows voters to vote for the candidate or option they truly prefer without having to worry that if they vote for a less-well-known or less-well-financed candidate they may be throwing their vote away.
IRV is not perfect; no voting system is. (It is impossible to construct any voting system which guarantees that the outcome of the vote will be what the majority prefers; it is always possible, regardless of which system one uses, that the result of voting will be an outcome which a majority of voters will dislike and would not have chosen if given a choice between than and a different option. But that outcome is very possible under voting systems commonly used in the various states (which is how Maine got stuck twice with Paul LePage for governor); it’s much, much rarer with IRV.
Here is a recent article from In These Times about Maine’s experiment with IRV
Maine Becomes the First State To Test Ranked-Choice Voting
Progressives vote for their favorite candidates without the fear of spoilers.
by Julia Conley
At a May 12 Democratic gubernatorial forum hosted by Indivisible, the crowd is treated to a reinterpretation of the 1940s novelty song, “I’m My Own Grandpa”…
The tone is jubilant. RCV, or ranked-choice voting, is a procedural solution to the problem of vote-splitting. After a three-year tussle between activists and legislators, Maine will become the first state to use RCV, in June.
The candidate forum doubles as a lesson in RCV. On election day, voters will rank up to seven favorite candidates. If no candidate wins a majority, the one with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated. Voters who ranked that person their top pick will have their second choice counted. The process repeats, with last-place candidates eliminated, until someone garners a majority.
Under RCV, a victor who is reviled by more than half of the voters will be a thing of the past. And progressives can express their support for likeminded candidates without fear of vote-splitting.
“I’m very excited,” says Lisa Miller, an attendee from Somerville who has supported RCV in its long journey to the primary ballot. “I am no longer hedging my bets. I am voting for the person that my values really resonate with. And voting for a second person who’s pretty close.” ...
RCV is not popular with the political establishment in Maine. Maine is one of the states which allows citizens the chance to have some power over what the state does through a referendum process; and in 2016 the voters approved by referendum that all future Maine elections would be done using RCV. The state legislature responded by passing a law postponing the use of RCV until 2020 (by which time they hope to have repealed it entirely). But a judge ruled this 2018 primary election would be done by RCV (although the November general election won’t be), and there is another referendum question on this year’s ballots asking whether the action taken by the legislature should be overturned.
Two of the candidates at the forum, Betsy Sweet and Diane Russell, talked to the crowd about the struggle to keep RCV:
“How many of you worked on the referendums last fall?” Sweet asks the audience, nodding as hands go up. “We heard things in the hallways [of the legislature] like, ‘The voters didn’t understand what they were voting for.’ Voters are stupid. … I don’t think that’s true.”
Another candidate on the stage, Russell, was instrumental in getting RCV on the ballot again. Russell and 1,800 volunteers gathered more than 80,000 signatures from voters to initiate the “people’s veto.”
“Those of us who have been fighting so hard and have been told we couldn’t do this—and every time we win, to be told we’re not allowed to do it,” Russell tells the crowd, her voice shaking with emotion. “I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for fighting for RCV...”
Progressives like Russell and Sweet hope that, with RCV, Mainers can gradually replace lawmakers who ignore the will of the people with representatives who know their job is to serve their constituents.
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Please go to the In These Times site to read the entire article.
Or you can read it in the copy you have at home if like me you’re a subscriber. It’s on pages 6 and 7 of the July issue. But if you visit the In These Times website there’s another article about Ranked Choice Voting which you can also read, Ranked-Choice Voting: What Happened When Some Mainers Took A Test Run, about a group of people getting together to see how well they understand how RCV works.
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We started off with an article about a remarkable woman from the early 20th century. Moving forward in time to the present, here’s another recent article from In These Times about a remarkable woman who’s been receiving a lot of notice in the early 21st century.
The Biggest Lesson from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Win?
Run on Democratic Socialism.
The 28-year-old Latina scored the biggest upset of 2018 by rejecting Democratic Party orthodoxy and running on a laser-focused message of economic justice. If other candidates want to win, they should follow her lead.
by Miles Kampf-Lassin
On Tuesday morning, just hours after unseating one of the most powerful Democrats in U.S. Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe in which she offered a succinct, yet compelling, rundown of her insurgent campaign’s “laser-focused” message:
“Economic, social and racial dignity for working-class Americans, especially those in Queens and the Bronx. We were very clear about our message, we were very clear about our priorities and very clear about the fact that, even if you’ve never voted before, we are talking to you.”
Clocking in just around 16 seconds, Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old democratic socialist, was able to articulate a clearer and more captivating message than the entirety of the Democratic Party establishment could come up with over the course of the 2016 election. Host Mika Brzezinski acknowledged how refreshing it was to hear a Democrat speak in such straightforward terms, yet warned other candidates not to “steal her message” and to come up with their own.
However, if Democrats want to win in 2018 and beyond, then cribbing from what Ocasio-Cortez ran on in New York’s 14th District is exactly what they should be doing...
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Well, surely no one could disagree with that! So, since a key purpose of these TRT diaries is to provide people with subjects worth pondering on and taking time to look at from different angles, maybe I should include another article more conducive to that.
Fortunately, the July issue of In These Times features another article which is ideal for that: a debate about whether a better economic policy would be to guarantee everyone a job or to guarantee everyone a basic income. (And the article is available free on the In These Times website, so I’m able to quote from it here and provide a link so that you can read the entire article for yourselves, rather than my having to type in the portion I want to quote and mail you all print copies of the full article. That’s much easier and much less expensive!)
First, Rohan Grey and Raul Carrillo present the case for a Guaranteed Jobs Program:
Most workers work too much and too hard, only to benefit the idle rich. Thus, we support reducing working hours and capital’s share of wealth. Yet evidence suggests exclusion from work causes problems beyond the absence of income, including higher mortality and suicide rates, social isolation and a permanent decline in well-being.
To address these evils, we echo Martin Luther King’s call for “a job to all ... who want to … and are able to work,” and “an income for [those] not able to work.” Specifically, we support a federally funded, locally driven job guarantee (JG), which, like programs envisioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) and economists at the Levy Economics Institute and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, commits the federal government to guarantee a living wage job with good benefits, including healthcare, to anyone who wants or needs it.
Among other benefits, a JG creates a space for work focused on dignity, self-actualization and public purpose, divorced from concerns of profiteers. There is no shortage of meaningful labor, from infrastructure repair to care work to artistic revitalization. Combating climate change alone requires massive public mobilization to transform energy and food production, restore ecosystems and defend frontline communities…
Matt Bruenig disagrees (and there’s a brief rebuttal from him, farther down the page at the same link, explaining why he thinks a Guaranteed Jobs Program is a bad idea).
Which leads to the second half of the debate, in which Matt Bruenig presents the case for a Universal Basic Income:
In America today, around two-thirds of the national income is paid out to workers in the form of labor compensation: wages, salaries, tips and benefits. The remaining one-third is paid out to capitalists in the form of passive income: dividends, interest, rents and capital gains. The capitalists do not work for their share of the national income. They simply own things and, by virtue of that ownership, passively extract income.
This arrangement would not be so disequalizing if the ownership of passive income-generating capital was evenly distributed, but it is not. Federal Reserve data show that millionaires own 80 percent of the country’s capital while the bottom 38 percent of Americans own none. This means that a small group of people receives the overwhelming majority of the nation’s passive income, which is one of the reasons inequality is so high.
For the last hundred years or so, market socialists … have argued that we should solve this problem by collectivizing the ownership of wealth into common pools. The Norwegian government made the idea work over the past few decades through nationalizing oil resources, creating dozens of state-owned enterprises, and just ordinary taxing and saving. Today, Norwegian citizens collectively own 59 percent of their wealth in these types of funds (and 76 percent if you exclude owner-occupied housing)….
Once the wealth is collectively owned, that raises an interesting question: What to do with the income it generates? In Norway, the money goes into public spending, mostly on robust social welfare programs. Another answer is to fund a universal basic income, or UBI (also called a “universal basic dividend” or “social dividend”) for everyone in society. Such a program exists in Alaska and helps to ensure everyone benefits from the state’s wealth, not just the super-rich. In part because of this, Alaska is the most equal state in America….
That’s followed by a brief rebuttal by Rohan Grey and Raul Carrillo explaining why they don’t like Matt’s proposal.
And then, Alyssa Battistoni presents the third half of the debate, the case for both Guaranteed Jobs and Universal Income. (Wait, do debates have three halves? I’d better check with the kitties whether I’ve got the math right on that...)
THE ARGUMENT ABOUT A UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME (UBI) VERSUS A JOB GUARANTEE (JG) has become one of the liveliest and most contentious debates on the Left. Each has been touted as a solution to all ills: the way to decrease depression, close the racial wealth gap, recognize historically undervalued forms of work, transform the economy, save the planet.
Though UBI and JG are typically counterposed, it’s entirely plausible they could coexist. If paid work is as important to well-being as JG advocates say, most people would want a job even with UBI. In particular, the black freedom movement, from civil rights leaders to Black Lives Matter, has called for both a basic income and guaranteed jobs.
Whether both can do all the things proponents promise—in particular, the essential work of transitioning quickly to a low-carbon economy—is a different, harder question. Whether it’s possible to achieve both is yet another.
A UBI program could actually be a danger to the climate if….
Oops, out of time! I’ll have to stop there. Please visit the In These Times site (or get out your print copy) and read the whole thing.
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And here’s a little music to enjoy while you’re reading and pondering the different sides of the debate.