communism

Mayo, Mustard, or Communism? Radical Union Tries to Organize Minneapolis Sandwich Shop

by Vincent Vernuccio on October 22, 2010 · 1 comment

in Labor

This morning voting started at nine Jimmy John’s restaurants in the Minneapolis area. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is attempting to unionize several Jimmy John’s sandwich stores.

As I reported in the American Spectator earlier this week, the vote is significant for two reasons. First, only 1.3 percent of workers in the fast food industry union members. A Jimmy John’s union could be a forerunner to several other fast food unions. Second, the IWW is an avowed communist organization that doesn’t mince words about its goals.

The preamble to its constitution states that “between [the working class and the employing class] a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the earth…. It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism.”

Wednesday The New York Times noted:

Most unions have shied away from trying to organize fast-food workers because the employees tend to be young, with high turnover. But that has not dissuaded the Industrial Workers of the World, which tried to organize workers at Starbucks coffee shops without success.

A century ago, the I.W.W. — better known as the Wobblies — was a swaggering, radical union with 100,000 members and legendary leaders like Mary Harris Jones (known as Mother Jones) and Big Bill Haywood. The union often clashed with police officers and Pinkerton security guards as it organized lumberjacks, dockworkers and miners.

These days, the Wobblies have just 1,600 members in the United States, and have union contracts with a handful of employers. But if they can flex their muscles anywhere, it may be in organizing the Jimmy John’s workers of Minneapolis. Union supporters say more than 60 percent of the workers signed cards asking for a unionization election.

“A union in fast food is an idea whose time has come,” said Emily Przybylski, a bike delivery worker at Jimmy John’s who is also a social work student at the University of Minnesota. “There are millions of workers in this industry living in poverty, with no consistent scheduling, no job security and no respect. It’s time for change.”

Mike Mulligan, the franchisee who owns the Jimmy John’s shops here, is pressing employees to vote against joining the I.W.W., which he says is a dangerous “socialist-anarchist organization” that “proudly preaches the overthrow of capitalism.”

“This is a group hellbent on bringing down someone, anyone, in the fast-food industry, and we just happened to be the next on the list,” said Mr. Mulligan, a retired senior vice president with Supervalu, a national grocery company.

Fast food unions would be expensive for consumers. If labor costs go up, so will prices on the menu. If those chains are also forced to pay higher wages and benefits based not on what the market will bear but on how hard a bargain union negotiators can derive, they will not be able to offer the low food prices consumers enjoy.

The IWW is targeting students for their unionization effort. The union is correct that youth unemployment is a serious problem. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, “July 2010 marks the first time in the history of the series that less than half of all youth 16 to 24 years old were employed in that month.” However, raising the cost of employment will not help low-skilled workers. If employers are reluctant to hire young people now, they will be even more so if young people become more expensive.

Here is an economics 101 lesson for the students trying to organize: When the price of a product or service goes up, demand for that product or service decreases. Yet students are cheaper to hire than other workers, but that’s because they do not have the experience, skills, and knowledge of veteran workers. Indeed, by raising the cost of employing workers at Jimmy John’s, some workers may  organize themselves out of a job.

From The New York Times:

Steven Smith, a 42-year-old meat cutter who earns $8.35 an hour after three years, also opposes the union. He said it would be difficult for Mr. Mulligan to pay much more than minimum wage because his competitors generally pay the same amount. “How much do you expect to get paid for making a baloney sandwich or cutting a pickle in half?” Mr. Smith said. “This is not rocket science.”

LibertyWeek 102: Collective Insanity

by Richard Morrison on July 19, 2010

in CEI Projects, Features, Podcast, Zeitgeist

Richard Morrison and Marc Scribner welcome guest co-host Alex Nowrasteh to Episode 102 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We take on the healthcare tax, obscenity and the First Amendment, the prognosis for the Gulf of Mexico, and the collective insanity coming out of Venezuela.

New Trotsky Biography

by Ryan Young on November 19, 2009

in Culture, Personal Liberty, Zeitgeist

Robert Service’s new biography of Trotsky is reviewed in today’s Wall Street Journal. Having read Service’s excellent biography of Lenin a few years ago, this seems like a book worth reading. Joshua Rubenstein’s thoughtful review touches on some thoughts about socialism and socialists.

Socialism had three major failings. The first is what economists study most closely. It is the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism, because of the rejection of prices and money as a medium of exchange. Whether you support socialist ideals or not, it is literally impossible to achieve. Do away with prices and currency, and they will emerge in a different form. They are part of human society.

The second aspect of socialism intrigues philosophers: socialism genuinely sought to change human nature itself. People as they currently are are in no shape to realize Marx’s vision of communist society. So part of the communist program was to actively mold and change people so that vision could one day become a reality.

Before Marx came along, Plato’s Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia were also written about societies with a fundamentally changed human nature. More, knowing his ideal to be impossible, coined the word “utopia,” which literally means “no place.” His book is a pleasant dream (for a collectivist at least), but More knew it was one that could ever come true. We are they way we are. And we’re stuck that way, for better or worse.

This leads us to the third aspect of socialism, which most concerns Trotsky. This is, for me, the most remarkable part, and the most chilling. It is the sheer violence that accompanied Marxism-Leninism everywhere it was tried. And I mean everywhere. Every single country to adopt communism had a checkered human rights record. No exceptions. Not one had anything resembling freedom of speech or press, or due process, or property rights.

Most historians now estimate that communist governments killed around 100,000,000 people. Mostly their own citizens. At no other point in human history have governments been so murderous of their own people. No other ideology has had consequences so bloody as Marxism and its variants.

One reason for the violence is that it allowed the governments to maintain power; resistance is less likely when the prevailing climate is of fear. Another is that human nature is stubborn. If it is to be changed, force is required. But, of course, the basic tenets of humanity are immutable. We are who we are.

Communist leaders, including Trotsky, were simply chilling. Many of them come off as sadists. They seemed to actually enjoy bloodshed. Revel in it. Yet Trotsky still has his admirers today. They need to answer for why they look up to someone who would even have thoughts like the following, let alone give voice to such brutish impulses in public speeches:

“The strength of the French Revolution,” he shouted to a group of revolutionary sailors, “was in the machine that made the enemies of the people shorter by a head. This is a fine device. We must have it in every city.” And have it they did. Once in power, Trotsky advocated show trials and the execution of political prisoners; he suppressed other socialist parties and independent trade unions; he pushed for the censorship of art that did not support the revolution; and he created the institutions of repression that were later turned against him and his followers.

20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

by Richard Morrison on November 9, 2009

in Video, Zeitgeist

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bw5pFiTeb0 285 234]

Twenty Years have Passed: The Fall of the Berlin Wall

by Fred Smith on November 9, 2009 · 3 comments

in Culture, Features, International, Zeitgeist

On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came crashing down. Today marks the twentieth anniversary of that great day – one of the greatest in the history of human freedom. Communism in Germany finally collapsed, setting off a domino effect that would reach Moscow within two years. Families torn apart for nearly three decades came together in tearful, happy reunions as the world watched. The Cold War was finally, mercifully, ending.

Many historians cite World War I as the twentieth century’s opening act. Sixteen million souls died in that war over nothing. Two of the nations it toppled became the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Communist and fascist governments would combine to kill more than one hundred million people over the next seven decades. Those needless deaths are the twentieth century’s legacy, every bit as much as the transistor or rock ‘n roll.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was that short, bloody century’s coda.

November 9, 1989 was also the start of something better. It was a nation’s way of saying that it was ready to move on to better times. To a new world defined not by oppression, ideology, and servitude, but by freedom. Sweet, precious, fragile freedom. Seeing the footage on the news was like witnessing something being born. The hope and potential that surround every birth were glimmering in people’s eyes. It was beautiful.

What Berlin’s people did on that day also inspired half a continent to send the same message to their leaders. What a noble achievement. How worthy of commemoration, now that twenty years have passed.

What a shame, then, that this milestone has been treated more like a millstone by the media. Reporters more concerned with today’s news cycle are giving at best perfunctory attention to a day that showed us all that is good about humanity.

To partially right that wrong, CEI has produced a short video commemorating what the Berlin Wall’s fall symbolizes. I hope you will watch it and enjoy it. Of course, it is hard to convey in a few short minutes what the people living in that Wall’s shadow went through for 29 long years.

So put yourself in their shoes. Think what they thought. Look right in the eyes of those separated families as they try to catch glimpses of each other over that wall. And the people who risked their lives escaping. And the soldier carrying back the body of someone who didn’t make it. What was going through his mind as he carried out his grisly task? That might give you an idea of what the Berlin Wall meant.

We all need to remember the Berlin Wall. We need to say to each other, “Never again.” And we have to mean it.

Student Loan Socialism

by Richard Morrison on September 29, 2009

in Video, Zeitgeist

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJReAunlOw0 285 234]

Racist, Communist, America-Bashing Obama Adviser Resigns, Over Wacky 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

by Hans Bader on September 7, 2009 · 1 comment

in Energy, Environment, International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

Obama’s racist, communist, America-bashing Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, has resigned after revelations that he was a 9/11 “Truther,” who believed that George Bush may have been behind the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

But Obama has long been aware of Jones’ extremism, wacky statements, and arrest record, which would have come to light months ago during the White House vetting process, as former White House staffer Jeffrey Lord and National Review‘s Andrew McCarthy note. The Secret Service would have investigated Jones’ past and Marxist views and informed Obama about them.

As the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York noted, most of the media systematically ignored revelations about Jones’ disturbing past and extremist views, seeking to prevent damage to the Obama Administration. Despite weeks of controversy over Jones’ extreme views on talk radio, blogs, and Fox News, newspapers like the New York Times, and TV networks like ABC and NBC, refused to cover the controversy until after Jones resigned, while the Washington Post and CBS covered the story only when his resignation was imminent.

Slate journalist Mickey Kaus, who voted for Obama but has been critical of the Administration, ridicules newspapers like the New York Times for deliberately concealing the Van Jones controversy in order to protect the Obama Administration. “‘Readers of the print edition will never have heard of the presidential appointee so controversial the President had to dump him. Is this a milestone in the decline of the NYT?’ . . .It seems this may be just another installment of the NYT’s running feature, ‘You Know That Guy You’ve Never Heard About? Well, He’s Gone.’”

Jones is a race-baiter, “self-avowed communist” and Truther who believed that George Bush may have been behind the 9/11 attacks.

Why even a Democratic White House would hire Jones is beyond understanding. In 1998, Jones defended Al Qaeda and bashed Bill Clinton. Why would Obama even think of hiring someone who said a few years ago that he was part of a “global struggle against the U.S.”?

Jones has also glorified convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, in a campaign that likened supporters of the murdered police officer to the KKK.

Jones, who set up a group that is orchestrating advertiser boycotts of Obama’s media critics, was until recently a “member of a radical communist group that was dedicated to ‘organizing a revolutionary movement in America.’”

Jones also claimed that mass murder is a white characteristic, saying that the Columbine killers would not have committed their crimes had they not been white. “‘You’ve never seen a Columbine done by a black child,’ Jones, who’s African-American, said in the 2005 video. ‘Never. They always say, “We can’t believe it happened here. We can’t believe these suburban white kids.” It’s only them.’”

Many officials in the Obama Administration are sympathetic to Marxist regimes. For example, Obama’s appointee to be the FCC’s “diversity officer” is Mark Lloyd, a big fan of Venezuela’s socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez. Although Chavez has shot unarmed demonstrators, Lloyd has called socialist Venezuela a model, praised its authoritarian leader’s “incredible revolution” and defended his attacks on independent media.

Obama’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State, Arturo Valenzuela, has a reputation as a loud defender of Venezuelan dictator Chavez’s terrible record on freedom of the press. Valenzuela is a big supporter of imposing sanctions on Honduras, which ousted its left-wing would-be dictator. Americans for Limited Government says that “Arturo Valenzuela has never met a Marxist dictator that he didn’t embrace.” ALG’s assessment of Valenzuela is echoed by liberal Latin America expert Martin Edwin Andersen.

The Obama Administration is extremely hostile to non-communist Honduras and its democratically-elected legislature, demanding that they allow the return to power of Honduras’s bullying ex-president and would-be dictator. The ex-president’s removal was perfectly constitutional, say many experts, such as attorneys Octavio Sanchez, Miguel Estrada, and Dan Miller, former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, Stanford’s William Ratliff, and “even left-liberal analysts.”

The Obama Administration cites the UN’s support for the bullying ex-president to justify demanding that Honduras allow him to return. But the UN is openly biased in favor of left-wing dictators.

The UN has just declared Fidel Castro, the longtime Communist dictator of Cuba, the “World Hero of Solidarity.” Castro killed thousands and thousands of people during his rule, torturing some to death (including a few American citizens), and Cuba remains an oppressive dictatorship even today.

So it’s not surprising that the UN backs Honduras’s bullying ex-president Manuel Zelaya, given his fondness for left-wing rhetoric. (Two months ago, soldiers acting on orders of Honduras’s Supreme Court arrested Zelaya after he systematically abused his powers. After the Court quite legally declared that Zelaya was no longer president, he was duly replaced by Honduras’s Congress with a civilian, the Congressional Speaker).

The Obama Administration recently decided to impose sanctions on Honduras, and indicated it will not recognize future democratic elections in Honduras unless Honduras first lets ex-president Zelaya return to power.

“Green jobs” is a scam and excuse for vast amounts of corporate welfare, as is the cap-and-trade “global warming” scheme backed by Obama, which would rip off the public and do nothing to protect the environment, while enriching politically-connected companies like General Electric and destroying millions of jobs.

UN Declares Dictator Fidel Castro a “World Hero”

by Hans Bader on September 4, 2009 · 14 comments

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

The UN has declared Fidel Castro, the longtime Communist dictator of Cuba, the “World Hero of Solidarity.” Castro killed thousands and thousands of people during his rule, torturing some to death (including a few American citizens), and Cuba remains an oppressive dictatorship even today.

The award was presented to Castro by the President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann. D’Escoto Brockmann also successfully lobbied the Obama Administration to demand that Honduras allow the return to power of its ex-president and would-be dictator, Manuel Zelaya. (Two months ago, soldiers acting on orders of Honduras’s Supreme Court arrested Zelaya after he systematically abused his powers. After the Court quite legally declared that Zelaya was no longer president, he was duly replaced by Honduras’s Congress with a civilian, the Congressional Speaker). The Obama Administration recently decided to impose sanctions on Honduras, and indicated it will not recognize future democratic elections in Honduras unless Honduras first lets ex-president Zelaya return to power.

Marxism seems to be back in fashion in Washington these days. Obama’s green jobs czar is the race-baiter Van Jones, a “a self-avowed communist” and Truther who believed that George Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks. Jones, who is busy orchestrating advertiser boycotts of Obama’s media critics, was until recently a “member of a radical communist group that was dedicated to ‘organizing a revolutionary movement in America.’”

The race-baiting liberal Congresswoman Diane Watson (D-CA) recently praised Fidel Castro as a genius who “kicked out the wealthy” from Cuba.

Many officials in the Obama Administration are sympathetic to Marxist regimes. For example, Obama’s appointee to be the FCC’s “diversity officer” is Mark Lloyd, a big fan of Venezuela’s socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez. Although Chavez has shot unarmed demonstrators, Lloyd has called socialist Venezuela a model, praised its authoritarian leader’s “incredible revolution” and defended his attacks on independent media. Obama’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State, Arturo Valenzuela, has a reputation as a loud defender of Venezuelan dictator Chavez’s terrible record on freedom of the press.

By contrast, the Obama Administration is extremely hostile to non-communist Honduras and its democratically-elected legislature, demanding that they allow the return to power of Honduras’s bullying ex-president and would-be dictator. The ex-president’s removal was perfectly constitutional, say many experts, such as attorneys Octavio Sanchez, Miguel Estrada, and Dan Miller, former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, and Stanford’s William Ratliff.

Between the Headlines: “Russian Voting Tinged with Green”

by Fred Smith on April 20, 2009

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, International

“Russian Voting Tinged with Green”

This Washington Post headline from earlier this month illustrates one of worrisome side-effects of authoritarian rule.  Political freedom is denied the citizenry but the pressures to allow some form of dissent remain.  Religious dissent often is treated more liberally – and the eco-theocratic values of today are the dominant religion of our secular society.  The risk the Russians face is that in their effort to escape Red tyranny they may rush into the hands of the Greens.  That would be tragic — Virginia Postrel noted long ago that she preferred the old Reds to the new Greens.  Both restricted economic and individual freedom but, at least, the Reds aimed at helping humanity.  That goal is rarely given much priority by green zealots.

Soderbergh: Historically Illiterate or Willfully Ignorant?

by Ivan Osorio on January 8, 2009 · 1 comment

in Culture, International

In a new interview, Steven Soderbergh, the incredibly overrated Hollywood director whose new paean to the disgusting Che Guevara is getting a lot of attention these days, claims an ignorance of history that, if willful, smacks of seeking to avoid ugly facts — and if not, is just plain dumb.

When I started, though, I had a blank slate, which was either a perfect way to start, or a terrible way to start. I really didn’t know anything, and I’m not Latino, so I was truly a kind of agnostic about Che.

Agnostic? Now imagine if someone described himself as “agnostic” toward, say, Joseph Stalin. Moreover, whatever else he was, Che Guevara was a major historical figure, so not knowing anything about him should be a source of embarrassment to any allegedly educated adult.

Soderbergh portrays the making of his film as a process of discovery on its subject, for which he should be congratulated. Yet his description of this “process” seems selective and confused. Soderbergh’s explanation of his treatment of the most infamous episode in Che’s life — his directing of firing squads at the La Cabaña prison– meanders between meaningless contortions, antiseptic amorality, and self-congratulation at his talking to detractors.

I’m going to Miami tomorrow, and you know, there’s a lot of discussion about what happened after the revolution at La Cabaña, and why isn’t there more of that. It’s interesting to talk about. I like to talk about it. There are obviously people who are very anti-Che and for whom there’s just no amount of atrocity you could show that would satisfy them.

He is a murderer to them. He is irredeemable, and it’s hard. And sometimes you can have a reasonable conversation about it, and I can talk to them about context. And I can talk to them about balance and my reasons for showing the two periods that I show, and addressing the issues of the executions in the way we do. But some people literally can’t… Like I was having a discussion with this journalist in Europe, and he said, “I don’t know how you can make this film and not address the executions.” And I said, “What are you talking about?” And he said, “Well, you know, those things happened.” And I said, “It’s in the film. It’s in the UN. He says in a close-up, ‘We execute people. We’ve never denied it, and we’re going to keep executing people because this is a fight to the death.’” I go, “Did you not see that?” And he was like, “I don’t remember that.” And I thought, “Wow. Wow. How do you not remember that?” The point being that Che knew that killing is part of this, and he was willing to kill and willing to be killed. So now it just becomes a matter of balance.

Balance? Again, imagine the reaction if someone sought to bring “balance” to a cinematic treatment of the Gulag.

In the end, Soderbergh comes across as the kind of self-styled intellectual who would minimize atrocities by depicting their authors as “complicated” figures — as if the notion that murdering your political opponents is wrong weren’t in fact simple.

For a dose of sanity, see Alvaro Vargas Llosa’s book. The Che Guevara Myth. As Vargas Llosa noted in a Wall Street Journal letter to the editor last summer:

While it is true that he executed hundreds “from the Batista regime,” he also executed people not connected to the regime. Javier Arzuaga, the Basque chaplain who served at “La Cabaña” at the time, told me that among the 800 prisoners there were some journalists, businessmen and merchants.

Guevara sent many young Latin Americans to their deaths thinking they were martyrs for a secular religion. With the exception of Cuba, every revolution he set up was crushed, including guerrilla efforts in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Haiti, and his homeland, Argentina, where Guevara’s followers brought about a military reaction that cost tens of thousands of lives. He also meddled in the Congo in 1965, where he allied himself with two butchers—Pierre Mulele and Laurent Kabila. Eventually, he had to flee the country. His fatal incursion in Bolivia failed to ignite a peasant revolution and caused the deaths of many companions, as well as his own.

Guevara’s other feats include setting up forced labor camps (Guanahacabibes, 1961). He helped turn Cuba into a Soviet puppet, and he ruined the island’s economy, first as head of the Central Bank, and then as minister of industry by diverting resources to industries that collapsed soon after they were created. He also reduced the sugar harvest (Cuba’s mainstay) by half, thereby creating the need for severe food rationing.

In the end, Che’s global revolution-making cost him his own life at an early age. In this regard, his admirers have a point that he left this world with much unfulfilled potential: Imagine how many more people he could have killed.

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