FIGHTING BACK,
LOOKING FORWARD
AN ALTERNATIVE VISION OF ECONOMIC JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY
Organization for a Free Society, www.afreesociety.org
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Budget Cuts: Robbing Us To Fatten
the Rich
Around the country, the rich are exploiting the state fiscal
crises in order to reduce funding for social services and to
undermine workers’ rights. Governor Cuomo and the New
York State legislature recently agreed on billions of
dollars in cuts to public education, Medicaid, the MTA,
and other essential services, while at the same time
granting a huge tax cut to the richest 5 percent of New
Yorkers. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg wants to
get rid of 6,000 teachers and slash funding for libraries,
parks, and youth programs; rewarding Wall Street with
lavish tax breaks. The federal budget proposals of both
President Obama and the Republicans obey the same
logic—for instance, both parties want to cut home
heating assistance and the EPA, while giving more tax
breaks to corporations and expanding the Pentagon
budget. The latest budget proposals follow a pattern
initiated in the 1970s, the results of which have been
unmistakable: a dramatic increase in inequality both
domestically and globally, fewer good jobs, and an
accelerating cycle of imperialist wars and environmental
destruction. Society’s most vulnerable groups are the ones
who suffer most: women from cuts to reproductive
healthcare; queer people and communities of color from
the defunding of healthcare, education, environmental
oversight, and poor people of all races from cuts to public
housing, food stamps, and unemployment benefits.
What are the alternatives to budget cuts?
Politicians, elites, and media pundits often tell us that
“there is no alternative” or that “there’s no money.” In
reality, both New York and the nation at large are awash
in money, but the wealth is very highly concentrated. In
New York State, the richest 1 percent receives 35
percent of all income and yet pays a lower proportion
of their income in taxes than all other New Yorkers.
The NY State legislature and the NY City Council should
force the rich to pay their fair share of taxes, invest in the
public sector to create jobs, demand Washington stop
funding imperialist wars that ruin millions of innocent
lives and drain our economy, and push for bold federal
stimulus funding. Specific alternatives are not hard to
find: New York State could renew the Millionaire’s Tax
on the richest 5 percent, which would raise $6 billion over
two years, or reinstitute a modest tax on stock market
transactions; the latter measure alone would wipe out
the entire state deficit in one year. The money that our
nation spends on the military in just one day could
provide all youth in New York State with free college
tuition for a year. Instead, politicians seem committed to
increasing taxes on the general population in the form of
cuts to social services.
“The money that our nation spends
on the military in just one day could
provide all youth in New York State
with free college tuition for a year.”
Even if we weren’t in the midst of an economic crisis,
increasing taxes on the rich would make sense as a mode
to create jobs and expand services for the general
population. As recent decades have proven, cutting taxes
for the rich leads to fewer jobs and greater inequality than
the alternative route of public investment in education,
health care, mass transit, and other public infrastructure.
The basic reason is that the rich tend to hoard much of
their wealth rather than reinvesting it in the economy. But
as Nobel laureate economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul
Krugman have emphasized, taxing the rich to fund public
spending is especially necessary right now in order to
facilitate economic recovery. Taxing the rich is also more
just. After all, the greed and irresponsibility of Wall
Street and big business were the immediate causes of the
current economic crisis, and those sectors have reaped
record profits while the general population has suffered—
so why shouldn’t they bear the costs of recovery?
Right: New Yorkers
recently filled the
Albany, NY, Capitol
building to protest the
state government’s cuts
to education, health
care, mass transit, and
other services.
We also need to fight for the big picture.
What would a participatory economy
look like?
There is something fundamentally wrong with a system
that impoverishes and oppresses billions of people around
the world. Yet when we question capitalism itself, the
rich respond with their favorite slogan: “there is no
alternative,” or at least no alternative except for the
authoritarian centrally-planned “socialism” of the former
Soviet Union. Those who profit most from capitalism—
corporations, wealthy investors, and big banks—would
love for us to resign ourselves to ever-increasing poverty,
inequality, war, and environmental degradation, but we
believe that a genuine alternative is both possible and
necessary for long-term human survival. To obtain true
freedom, we must work for a participatory socialist
economy that reflects the following values:
1. Self-management. Instead of a few capitalists
making decisions based on the profit motive, people
should have a say proportionate to the degree that
they are affected by decisions.
2. Participatory planning. Self-managed workers’ and
consumers’ councils should work together to plan the
economy, coordinating production and allocation to
maximize efficiency, reduce waste, and ensure
sustainability. Workers’ and consumers’ councils
should be democratic and non-hierarchical.
3. Balanced work. People should have the opportunity
to develop their talents and capacities as creative
human beings. All workers must have the chance to
perform an average set of empowering and desirable
tasks, with everyone sharing the more tedious ones.
4. Equity. Workers should receive compensation based
on the amount of effort and sacrifice they endure
while performing their labor—not based on luck,
genetics, race, gender, or nationality. Compensation
should also be based on the needs of those who
cannot work.
5. Unity and solidarity, yet diversity. Rather than
promoting greed and inhumanity, our economic
institutions should actively cultivate solidarity and
cooperation among human beings. Rather than
reinforcing exclusion, economic institutions should
promote inclusion and understanding, while also
allowing for diversity and individual expression.
May 2011
How do we get there?
Ultimately, if we want a participatory, self-managed,
solidaristic, equitable, and diverse socialist economy, we
need to build a movement composed of millions of
increasingly committed and militant people, constantly
fighting, growing, reflecting on and refining their work,
that can win power and carry out meaningful change.
“If we want a participatory, selfmanaged, solidaristic, equitable, and
diverse socialist economy, we need to
build a movement composed of millions
of committed and militant people.”
Economic liberation is only part of our goal. As we fight
for a participatory economy, we must simultaneously
wage war on other forms of oppression like sexism,
racism, homophobia, and chauvinistic nationalism. All
these forms of oppression are intertwined and reinforce
one another, and won’t just disappear on their own as we
fight capitalism. We need to actively combat them, not
only to dismantle capitalism, but to achieve liberation in
all realms of society.
“Different forms of oppression are
intertwined and reinforce one another,
and won’t just disappear on their own
as we fight capitalism.”
Today is just the beginning
We must fight back—in our schools and workplaces, in
our city and state, and across the country, alongside our
partners all over the world, from Mexico to Egypt. And as
we fight back, we must think forward. Today is just the
start of a long struggle. We will continue to fight, not
only to defend past gains, but to win something new—a
society that is democratic and participatory at its core,
egalitarian and solidaristic at its roots, liberating and
fulfilling in all aspects of social life—a free society. Join
us on May 17th at a mass assembly meeting hosted by
the New Yorkers Against the Budget Cuts coalition. Then
on Sunday, June 26th, for a mass protest in City Hall
Park to coincide with NYC budget hearings. Visit
http://nocutsny.wordpress.com,
or
email
us
at
info@afreesociety.org for more details.
We will struggle to win the world we all deserve. We will
do it until we are truly free.
www.afreesociety.org