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Competition is surging in China, where local rivals are chipping away at (Apple iphone) market share.

While still a total police state, 35 years of somewhat free markets with their attendant innovation have lifted literally hundreds of millions out of millennia of poverty. While material lives remain modest by our standards, 88 percent of households have television and seemingly everyone is yakking on a phone of some sort.

By contrast, shortly after the death of Fidel Castro, our neighbor Cuba - which has the talent to have the highest Latin living standard - remains in the pit. There are no cell phones; about 5,000 have internet access (which does not even rise to 0.1 percent). Not that there is anything to watch, but the number of households with television is a state secret.

To rub it in a bit, a large part of that Cuban talent is here working hard and paying taxes. Castro is one of history's bad guys, although praised here as one of the most charismatic figures of the second half of the 20th century. He gets no points from me on that. Think of who might get the prize for the first half?

I would give some leeway for idealism of his revolution in the 1950s, but when everyone in the world outside North Korea realized it didnt work, he stuck to the failed model and his people continue to suffer.

Communism is cool, read the headline. A generation has been born and entered young adulthood since what Germans call Die Wende, or the turn. That wall and the Soviet Union are gone. Surprising numbers of millennials hold favorable impressions of Marx, Lenin and even Mao. It is time for a look back.

My experience started with a glorious college year in England. I met this girl, now wife, at the foreign student club from Dresden, then communist East Germany. She had been able to leave, but left close family behind. Then there was that spring break student trip overland by train across Europe and into Russia. It was Moscow, Leningrad and a stop in Warsaw, Poland, on the way back.

Of things the Russians did right, trains were up there, as well as city subway systems. Their good impression was well planned. The student guide was always with us. At each stop, there were always friends to talk with us. They did not pretend it was a workers paradise but things were going fairly well and they supported the system. We felt free and would occasionally meet people on the street who were less content with things. No one in our group spoke other than English except me and my German. Russians are good at languages and if one spoke German we could talk. I recall three times the guide came up and interrogated in Russian as to what we were up to. They seemed a little suspicious. No one of us wanted to trade for their system but the show they put on was well choreographed. Poland, though, was an easier-going place.

Planning a trip to Cuba? You will get the same show. Fairly content people living a simple life and while not in paradise letting you know things are better than in 1959. Same line in Russia: 1967 was better than 1917. Wow! What an accomplishment!

Three years after the Russia trip, it became the real thing, visiting the sister left behind. We grew quickly close. They laughed, they loved and there was enough to eat but somehow in a black and white film with a heavy hand on our shoulder. Everyone knew, as Cuba today, that slight criticism of communism or the leadership meant jail. In 1980, we wound up on the not wanted list but were able to make a one-day visit in East Berlin. Our goodbye was a wave from opposite sides of the Wall. Happy ending when our State Department helped bring them to freedom in 1984.

Then there was Renata, the communist cousin in Berlin. We could only see her when she was with her parents near Dresden and later, as she rose in the party, not at all. In 17 years, one letter signed as though it was from someone else. It was 1980 and she and her daughter were watching a hockey game from the U.S. (you know which one) and she said it made them feel close to us. Those few words had to go a long way.

When we reunited after the Wall went down, her first words were the people choose freedom." I didnt say but sure thought that people have a funny way of doing that.

Recently, I had a student from Cuba. He had been on the Cuban junior tennis team. They went to Mexico, he bolted and headed north, probably making an illegal crossing of our soon-to-be-walled border, and on to an uncle in Florida. He planned the escape when he was 12. Keep that in mind when people down there tell you how happy they are.

How to help? We believe in face to face. Forget delegations and orchestrated cultural exchanges. Tourists are the answer and by the millions. American can be loud and disrespectful of certain local norms. With cell phones and laptops, it wont long before the communist masters will feel that they are very uncool.

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Carson Varner is a professor of finance, insurance and law at Illinois State University.

Originally posted here:
Varner: Communism is cool 2/26/17 - Bloomington Pantagraph

If Bernie Sanders showed us anything in 2016, its that the next generation is no longer afraid of the word socialism. Bernies ascent from political obscurity to nearly winning the Democratic primary vote is astounding, especially when using the word socialist has been political suicide for generations. The mainstream narrative is that Sanders used his brash Brooklyn accent to charm millennials into nearly giving him the Democratic presidential nomination, but that he was ultimately unelectable because he called himself a socialist. But Ill argue that Sanders popularity was not in spite of his socialist label, but because of his socialist label, and that democratic socialism is the only way we can successfully resist Trumpism.

Lets leave our baggage surrounding the word socialism at the door and start with a clean slate. Socialism does not equal government control. Let me say this again. Socialism does not equal government control. Socialism does not entail a tyrannical federal government taking control of businesses, but rather its inverse. Socialism means deepening democracy.

Under American capitalism, we have political democracy. We vote for our mayors, congressmen, and senators to represent us and make laws that we feel are in our best interest. Political democracy allows us to have a hand in creating the society we want to live in, and if our representatives arent doing a good job, we can vote them out.

Calling American capitalism democratic is only half-true, however. Despite having political democracy, we do not have economic democracy. Think about a horrible boss youve had. Were you able to speak up and change their behavior? In the vast majority of cases, no, of course not. Youre beholden to your boss, and at the end of the day, their word is law.

Many employees have little to no control over a companys decisions, even if they do have fair bosses, because of the traditional top-down system. In essence, companies are little tyrannies where shareholders have all of the control and the workers are at the mercy of their judgment. If shareholders want to liquidate a company to make a couple million dollars and throw thousands of people out of work, hire a corrupt CEO, or pollute the environmentthe employees have no power to say no. Make no mistake about itthis is economic tyranny.

Democratic socialisms solution to economic tyranny is deepening democracy by democratizing the workplace. This means extending the American democratic ideal of one citizen, one vote to the workplace and creating a one worker, one vote workplace democracy. Rejecting the state-run models of Soviet-style socialism, economic democracy is a fundamentally different system than the socialist experiments of the 20th century. Under economic democracy, workers arent at the mercy of their bosses, because the workers are the ones electing their bosses in a bottom-up system. This way, every boss will have a mandate to run the company with everyones interests in mind, including the workers. If the bosses dont do a good job, they get voted out. The ownership switches from shareholders to workers, from tyranny to democracy.

Many democratic companies already exist. Companies run democratically are called cooperatives, and you can find them all over America and the world. You dont even need to look far. Bostons very own Harpoon Brewery is employee owned.

One of the most successful cases of economic democracy is found in Spain. The 10th-largest corporation in Spain, the Mondragon Corporation, is democratically run as a cooperative and has nearly 75,000 employees working in sectors such as manufacturing, retail, and finance. If any sector of the Mondragon conglomerate goes under, the company re-trains its employees and hires them in a different sector that needs their labor. Each year, a portion of the profits is given to every employee, making everyone accountable for their actions and creating a culture of participation, because every worker benefits when the company does better.

Mondragon values both ethical business practices and efficiency, creating true sustainability that is extremely rare under the current system of economic tyranny. In fact, it has been shown that cooperatives last longer than top-down corporations and avoid creating market bubbles that lead to market failure like we saw in the Great Recession.

At the heart of economic tyrannys failure is the incentive structure. As any Econ student will tell you, economics is all about incentives. Companies today are incentivized to create value for their owners, the shareholders, which is often a detriment to everyone else in the company. This creates the insane amount of economic inequality that plagues America today, because companies are incentivized to push for higher profits over higher wages. With economic democracy, companies are still incentivized to create value for their owners, but since the workers are the owners, the company operates in the interests of everyone. Economic democracy creates more ethical and stable companies, which in turn creates a more equal and stable society.

Economic democracy attacks poverty and inequality at the root, removing the need for the government to come in and redistribute the wealth, because wealth will be distributed fairly naturally. Government programs like welfare and food stamps arent needed because companies are incentivized to pay their owners (i.e. the employees) a living wage. The economy is run from the bottom-up, creating a more prosperous and more equal society without government intervention.

Economic democracy is democratic socialism, and it is the only way forward because everything else had failed. American capitalism has run its course. We tried laissez-faire capitalism in the 19th and early 20th century, and it caused the worst economic crash in world history. We tried Keynesian reforms in the 20th century that ended in stagflation, and our Keynesian reforms after the Great Recession have failed to bring about a recovery for the majority of Americans (95 percent of jobs added under Obama were temporary). The average American wage is the same as it was in 1979 while expenses such as medical bills and college debt continue to push Americans to the brink of bankruptcy. Both Democrats and Republicans have been complicit in this rigged system, and this economic malaise is the very thing that fuels Trumpism and the alt-right. If we are to stop Trump, we need a new approach. It is time to deepen democracy. It is time for socialism.

Featured Image by Zoe Fanning / Heights Editor

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Socialism Is the Solution - The Heights

Bombay, November 26: After his week-long tour, the World Bank President, Mr Robert McNamara, gave the assurance that the World Bank "intends to play its part" in seeing that India's needs are met fully", even as India plays its part by seeing that "domestic resources are fully mobilized". He ended the tour with a hectic day of discussions in Bombay with Reserve Bank and industrial finance officials, industrialists, bankers, economists, officers concerned with the development of the Bombay-Poona metropolitan area, and the Deputy Prime Minister.

From all these and his meetings in Delhi, Calcutta, and Madras, the World Bank chief must have had a fair idea of the developmental and social tasks that the country faces as it slowly emerges from three years of industrial recession. His final statement, however, indicates that rather than helping industry as hitherto, World -Bank aid will concentrate on agriculture and agro-industries, family planning and some other overheads.

In Mr McNamara's statement there is only one line which refers to industry-- that the break-through in agriculture should support a jump in industrial production. Thus the World Bank favours first things first, a home truth that the Planners themselves have come to accept after the wrong direction taken by the three Plans.

"I have great hopes for India's future," said Mr McNamara. Underlying this was his highly optimistic assessment of the progress made in agriculture already, and the further growth in productivity that can be achieved by using high-yielding seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, tractors, and irrigation. He was impressed by the "successful agricultural revolution which is taking place, with some stops and starts, all over your subcontinent", and noted that this will give a stimulus which should move industry out of its recession. But this, brief reference carries with it a recognition of the need for continued non-project assistance to finance imports of raw materials and the maintenance needs of industry.

The point was emphasizedand acknowledged by Mr McNamaraby the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation, the main industrial financing agency in the private sector. The ICICI has already, taken from the World Bank seven lines of credit aggregating $165 million. The ICICI stated that it expects in the near future a 50 per cent expansion in its lending activities, and will seek an eighth line of credit from the World Bank next year.

The World Bank is interested in helping to finance the development of the metropolitan areas. Mr McNamara met civic and Government officials in Calcutta and Madras. In Bombay he was given an idea of the worsening problems of the highly industrialized Bombay-Poona area. Drinking water, road and rail arteries, slum clearance, satellite towns, etc., are estimated to cost Rs 1,000 crores in the next two decades. A Regional Metropolitan Board is at work, and its plans were submitted to the World Bank President for foreign exchange assistance.

There was some publicity from Delhi that the Commerce Minister, Mr Dinesh Singh, would fly to Bombay at the week-end to tackle the crisis in the cotton industry. More than 80 mills have closed, and over 80,000 men are out of work. The Minister did come, but the talks lasted hardly an hour and ended in a "damp squib", as an industry source put it. This disappointment is reflected in a further fall of mill shares.

Official spokesmen have lately shown some recognition that the crisis is not all due to mismanagement and frittering away of profits, but to high cost of cotton, wages, etc., and waning purchasing power due to inflation. On top of this, excise levies have risen to Rs 117 crores per year, from almost nil when planning began. As Mr Naval Tata, head of the Tata mills, has said, "It is a classic example of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs".

None of these problems has moved an inch towards amelioration. The Commerce Minister did not propose any short-term remedy, and he rejected the industrys demand for decontrol or an increase in controlled prices. That costs of production have gone up by 15 per cent since the last price revision was ignored. The only sign of hope is that there is a slight upward trend in the wholesale offtake of cloth. If this continues, sales will provide some funds. A consumer survey by the official Textile Committee hopes that demand will rise on account of the increase in farm incomes.

The Minister indicated that some long-term remedies are under consideration, but they will form part of the fourth plan. They will help the industry to modernize itself over a period, and will promote exports. Since incentive schemes have been re-introduced, textile exports have risen for the first time since devaluation. They are likely to reach Rs 106 crores this year and may go up to Rs 120 crores in 1969-70. The Minister said that being the oldest and largest industry in India, it is vital to the economy, and therefore the Government and the industry should work together for its progress. Well, this noble sentiment coming from Mr Dinesh Singh is welcome.

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From The Archives: What Is Socialism? - Swarajya

Posted: Feb. 27, 2017 12:01 am

One day, President Donald Trump is at a prayer meeting talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger being lousy on TV, and on another, he is naming the brilliant Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser. I will hereby be an unsolicited national hope adviser. Do the second kind of thing much more and wholly eradicate the first kind of thing, Mr. President, and save us from a grave public enemy.

That would be the kind of socialistically inspired future represented by Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate. She wanted more freebies but less freedom, more spending, more regulations, a marketplace coerced into failures, identity-group divisiveness, contemptuous elitist supremacy and judicial power usurping democracy along with constitutionalism.

President Barack Obama was also a champ at all of this, and while the public mostly liked him, many did not like what was doing. Thus, after his eight years in office, Democrats had lost a net of 62 seats in the House, nine seats in the Senate, 12 governorships, more than 900 state legislature seats and the presidency, according to a Fox News report. Republicans took charge, and there is now an extraordinary opportunity to reverse a big-government trend threatening to encapsulate us for eons.

The thing is, we may be cheated out of that chance if Trump does not give up on his stupidities and instead provides his enemies the wherewithal to stymie the best in him and turn the country back over to their contrary dreams. If he loves America, therefore, he should please, please quit obnoxious tweeting for starters. It is absurd and makes him look like a misbehaving child with a misused toy.

Then he should quit holding zany press conferences in which he overstates everything, insults everyone and further institutes enmity. He should in fact avoid adlibbing as much as possible. He is a non-linear, now-you-see-it, now-you-don't speaker who treats us to unconnected, unexplained phrases that can mean just about anything and are advantageously interpreted by critics as saying he favors hell over heaven.

Still more advice. He should quit substituting glances at a TV set for actual study. He should quit having reckless phone calls with heads of state. He should quit putting together policy plots with minimal trustworthy advice. He should quit the small-mindedness that puts claims of crowd size above real issues.

Yes, it is absolutely the case that his critics are often far worse than he is. Sen. Elizabeth Warren? Sen. Chuck Schumer? There is nothing polite to say. The reputable press is not so reputable when its commentators, for instance, issue baseless growls about anti-Semitism.

It is also despicable that protesters carry signs referring to Trump as anti-gay when there is absolutely nothing to back them up. It is simple-minded and worse for anyone to insist Trump's criticism of someone who is black is ipso facto racism, and yet we have seen it. In terms of evidence at this point, the Russian collusion theory is right up there with the birther theory. Vandalizing college students should be required to clean up after themselves before packing their bags and going home, and the leakers in the intelligence community should be worried about criminal prosecution.

There is lots of good in Trump, as seen in his executive orders on pipelines and absolutely smothering regulations, his choice for the Supreme Court, most of his Cabinet picks and, as mentioned earlier, his choice of McMaster as a top adviser.

He may very well do something about a crime rise the left uncaringly dismisses as nothing much. Watch for an improved world order. Some of his tax ideas are excellent, if not the one on imports, and we should replace Obamacare with something better, although prudence is needed. The wonders already happening in the economy are signs of how he actually could do splendid things.

But if Trump does not cut out the bad, there are those waiting in the bushes with a ruinous future in mind.

(Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Readers may email him at speaktojay@aol.com.)

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How Trump could lead us to socialism yet - New Jersey Herald - - New Jersey Herald

WAMU 88.5

In A Virginia Swing District, Liberals Look To The Tea Party For Lessons In Activism WAMU 88.5 She began by reading the Indivisible Guide, a handbook written by former congressional staffers that spells out how to build a grassroots movement. The guide borrows from the conservative Tea Party, an effort credited with shifting Republican politics ...

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In A Virginia Swing District, Liberals Look To The Tea Party For Lessons In Activism - WAMU 88.5