OK, for starters, I'm not saying in anyway that the Philippine government should takeover Philippine Airlines. What I'm saying is the entire workforce of PAL should takeover the airline. That includes all senior management staff down to the contractual employee. It might sound as a crazy idea. At best it's a quixotic attempt at empowering the workers; and at worst, it's a recipe for disaster (if you ask the business community).
However, we should ask ourselves, are the current business models potent solutions to the problems of wealth distribution, massive unemployment, and contractualization in the sector? We could even frame the question this way, how effective are Corporations and other enterprises such as State enterprises in pushing for development?
Undoubtedly there is this consensus, at least with most middle class and business leaders, that the solution to poverty is to start your own country and be your own boss. No one can really deny that most employees who're sulking in their own jobs right now think of the day they can be bosses too and raise their income so they can buy an new house, send their kids to good schools (if they have kids), get married, travel around the world, etc. I'm not saying I'm against that. I think people should strive for that and plan for the future. What I am skeptical and usually cynical about is that these kind of dreams of being bosses one day usually come from business people who ought to have been good bosses in the first place. Let's take for example Henry Sy of SM, we know for a fact most if not all of his employees are contractual. No way could they even have the chance of owning their own companies one day unless you had the DBP and other Government Financial institutions launch a massive program of lending to small entrepreneurs. So what kind of business are we really talking about? The kind maybe we call the underground economy employing millions of Filipinos but too small (even when taken in together) in capital to even make a dent in wealth distribution.
I agree with many who say that SMEs have contributed a lot in getting people out of poverty. They have done a lot in spurring the domestic market to offset our dead manufacturing industry. However, people who place their trust in it to solve our deficit and maybe create an economic miracle, have to wake up and concede that not everyone has an idea for a business, sufficient capital, and to compound that even more, some industries would require a business model which would be larger than most SMEs. Maybe the size of corporations. But then we'd have to go back to the scenario of the corporate employee sulking about his/her fate.
So I think I should make a proposition. One that is rooted in pragmatism, common sense, and one which we tend to neglect as a form of enterprise. I'm talking about the cooperative. When I first shared this idea to a friend, he simply laughed it off and said that most cooperatives are multi-purpose cooperatives of employees who just use it to augment their salararies, get a loan, or even buy goods and foodstuffs at lower prices. There wasn't just big coops that can have thousands of employees, imagine one vote per employee, he said. Of course that would be true, if only it were not true. Let's take the example of the 7th largest enterprise in Spain. The Mondragon Cooperative Corporation (Don't mind the word "corporation), employing 85,000 employees. All of them are owners. All of them are employees. Even the CEO is an employee who is elected by the workers. But this might be a badly managed company you might ask. No way can employees run a good company. They're 7th largest probably because they get state subsidies. Well, they're actually a very efficiently run company with no government help, even in the 2008 great recession some of their employees in a few affiliated coops within MCC voted for a pay cut just to save the company. Yes, their employees voted for a pay cut. There wasn't any CEO to lie about it for them to do that. They're aware of the financial health of the company. They have to, they're all owners. Oh, and they also run a university, manufacture high-tech machinery that even Germany imports, run retail stores, and other businesses. They do have some companies which aren't cooperativized yet since they have to adjust their business models to other countries with existing operations. But they are planning to cooperativise soon and turn their ordinary employees to part-owners.
And it isn't just in Spain, India has the Indian Coffee House, Ltd. the largest cooperative in the world and one of the oldest coffee chains in the world. There's Granot Central Cooperative in Israel which produces agricultural products and employs about 8,000-9,000 employee-owners (maybe we can turn Hacienda Luisita into something like this, this ought to shut those landlords up whenever they say parceling the estate is a threat to food security), then there's Fonterra, you know that company that produces anchor butter and anmum milk for your gerriatric grandparents. Then there's Florida Natural Growers, a known American brand and competitor of Tropicana, they even have a marketing strategy which goes something like, "We own the land, We own the trees, We own the Company."
Closer to home, even the port services in the Cebu International Port is run by a cooperative of at least 2,000 employee owners.
I'm just trying to point out that the prospect of having a democratically-run enterprise in the country can be a success.
(To be continued)
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
The collapse of the American facade
The 2010 American midterm elections speaks for itself. The inmates have kicked out the jailguards and now they're running the asylum.
The good thing about this is the reality of American politics has already been laid bare. No more illusions. No more mirrors and lights to confuse us. We can now see American politics for what it really is: Corporate control.
The US Supreme Court ruling granting corporations and other juridical persons the right to donate to political campaigns practically gave legal trappings to what was already common practice. Now lobbyists working for huge multinational corporations need not go through backroom deals to secure the votes of politicians, they can now practically buy them via campaign donations running in the billions. The recently concluded elections spent more than 4 billion dollars in campaign dollars mostly coming from corporate donors. It's no wonder Tea Part militants running for office could easily beat their more experienced, albeit more traditional opponents, since they've benefited the most from the war chest provided by USA, Inc.
What is even more startling is the fact that with a ration of 7:1, the Republican party which is the party of big business, has outgunned their Democratic rivals in campaign donations.
Sure, one can argue that the Democrats are also recipients of corporate funding. But this doesn't bode well for independent candidates or third party candidates that now have to surmount this huge wall of dollars in order to get votes on top of the already impossibly hard access to ballots in ever state that they have to worked on.
But most of all, this is definitely bad news for the voters. This election alone had one of the lowest voter turnout with little more than 40% turnout of all eligible voters. The voters are literally abstaining from voting due to the electoral exercise being hijacked by corporate interest.
Well, there's always been low voter turnout for the US with usually 50% on average.
At least now, we have solid evidence to prove that the US is indeed the Corporate States of America.
The good thing about this is the reality of American politics has already been laid bare. No more illusions. No more mirrors and lights to confuse us. We can now see American politics for what it really is: Corporate control.
The US Supreme Court ruling granting corporations and other juridical persons the right to donate to political campaigns practically gave legal trappings to what was already common practice. Now lobbyists working for huge multinational corporations need not go through backroom deals to secure the votes of politicians, they can now practically buy them via campaign donations running in the billions. The recently concluded elections spent more than 4 billion dollars in campaign dollars mostly coming from corporate donors. It's no wonder Tea Part militants running for office could easily beat their more experienced, albeit more traditional opponents, since they've benefited the most from the war chest provided by USA, Inc.
What is even more startling is the fact that with a ration of 7:1, the Republican party which is the party of big business, has outgunned their Democratic rivals in campaign donations.
Sure, one can argue that the Democrats are also recipients of corporate funding. But this doesn't bode well for independent candidates or third party candidates that now have to surmount this huge wall of dollars in order to get votes on top of the already impossibly hard access to ballots in ever state that they have to worked on.
But most of all, this is definitely bad news for the voters. This election alone had one of the lowest voter turnout with little more than 40% turnout of all eligible voters. The voters are literally abstaining from voting due to the electoral exercise being hijacked by corporate interest.
Well, there's always been low voter turnout for the US with usually 50% on average.
At least now, we have solid evidence to prove that the US is indeed the Corporate States of America.
Friday, January 22, 2010
2010 issues and more
With the approach of the 2010 elections many Filipinos are preparing for their list of candidates to vote. Many are already doing their homework on the background, experiences, and program of government of the candidates. As for those who already done their research months before, the next step is to look at the basic issues that they would want to be tackled and how their favorites will tackle them (or how they hope they will tackle them). As expected, the two main issues of poverty and corruption will remain the issue most urgent. Poverty will be a concern largely of the poor, obviously; while corruption will be the concern of those better off or at least not wealthy enough to benefit from anomalous deals. As for those who aren't poor and have largely accepted corruption is a systemic and not a personality based problem, other issues come to mind.
First important issue would be the Reproductive Health Care Bill. Although 70% of the population support it, it seems most politicians don't understand statistics. The numbers that they do understand is the one that written across a candidate's name when votes are being counted. So, they still fear some backlash from the Catholic Church if they do support the RH bill (although there are others who hold the same view as the Catholic Church with the same devotion). This election will be a testcase of the "Catholic vote", the vote that has never existed since 1986. Well, 1986 was the election that Cory would almost never lose. I mean, even if the Church endorsed Marcos, Cory would still win. In the event that the Catholic vote is disproved, and it will be, the flood gates would be open for the public debate of other pertinent issues such as LGBT rights.
The second important issue is economic reform. No not the "reform" free market fundamentalists like to claim. I'm talking about regulation of unfettered capitalism. With the two main candidates having Leftists (well at least one of them claims the other is counterrevolutionary) as key allies, expect that many of the current administration's economic policies, including those dating back to Ramos, to be discussed. One important issue would be regulation of the banking industry and possible government intervention in micro-credit for MSMEs. Another is the obvious reassesment of the Oil Deregulation law and asset reform. there might even be a potential review of current plans to sell off GOCCs (I would sure like to see some GOCCs kept under public ownership and run efficiently, after all privatization or private enterprise doesn't always mean efficiency. Look at MRT.)
First important issue would be the Reproductive Health Care Bill. Although 70% of the population support it, it seems most politicians don't understand statistics. The numbers that they do understand is the one that written across a candidate's name when votes are being counted. So, they still fear some backlash from the Catholic Church if they do support the RH bill (although there are others who hold the same view as the Catholic Church with the same devotion). This election will be a testcase of the "Catholic vote", the vote that has never existed since 1986. Well, 1986 was the election that Cory would almost never lose. I mean, even if the Church endorsed Marcos, Cory would still win. In the event that the Catholic vote is disproved, and it will be, the flood gates would be open for the public debate of other pertinent issues such as LGBT rights.
The second important issue is economic reform. No not the "reform" free market fundamentalists like to claim. I'm talking about regulation of unfettered capitalism. With the two main candidates having Leftists (well at least one of them claims the other is counterrevolutionary) as key allies, expect that many of the current administration's economic policies, including those dating back to Ramos, to be discussed. One important issue would be regulation of the banking industry and possible government intervention in micro-credit for MSMEs. Another is the obvious reassesment of the Oil Deregulation law and asset reform. there might even be a potential review of current plans to sell off GOCCs (I would sure like to see some GOCCs kept under public ownership and run efficiently, after all privatization or private enterprise doesn't always mean efficiency. Look at MRT.)
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
A Filipino Progressive consensus
Reading the history of American liberalism, one gets the impression that Americans have ideas up-side-down or down-side-up. For one, what we know today as the American Democratic Party (yes, the party of Barrack Obama) was once the party of racists, conservatives, and free-market proponents. This seems to be a shock to the uninitiated in American politics, most especially Filipinos. We Filipinos tend to view all American presidents (actually, American politics as well) as benevolent and noble. The jury is still in on the "benevolent" and "noble" part but what is certain is the fact that American politics has undergone shifts and realignments that we in the Philippines can learn a lesson from. There are three main eras in American political history that shifted American political sensibilites into which would result in what we know today as modern America albeit with drastic results for the underclass in American society.
The first major shift was the time of the progressive era from 1880s until the later part 0f the 1910s. During this time, an upsurge in progressive thinking accompanied by an upsurge in immigration contributed the reshaping of american thinking from being passive and largely conservative to more active and progressive. This was the time of the womens' suffrage movement and the prohibition of alcohol as well as the increase in labor unrest and and a sudden awakening of poor and exploited classes in the society. People began to question the inherent wealth accumulation of capitalists in contrast to the worsening condition in the urban areas of for immigrants and the labor flight and underdevelopment in the rural areas especially in the South.
The second major shift occured during the great depression right after the roaring twenties and the first wave of red-scare. It was by this time that the old doctrine of limited government intervention in the economic sphere was put into question. Prior to this questioning, the "mainstream" (what we really mean by mainstream is really the position taken by those in power) viewed a free market approach with little government intervention. This doctrine largely aided the rise of big corporations during the late 1890s until the beginning of the 20th century from being negligible government regulated enterprises. Because of this, financial activities and the expanding power of corporations were largely unchecked by government until this era of unregulation ended with the stock market crash of 1929 which obliterated ordinary americans' savings due to the the unchecked practices in the financial sector. At first, the free marketeers proposed that in order to correct the mistake, government should simply do nothing and allow the inefficient businesses to die out and let the market correct itself naturally. That was the main policy of Calvin Coolidge, the predecessor of Herbert Hoover. Of course, the problem was clear that it was not only big business which was affected by the crash and the ensuing depression. The most affected were really ordinary workers (by this time already helpless with the dismantling of the militant labor movements in the 1920s) and farmers. Franlkin Roosevelt saw the need the realign the economic thinking of the establishment (and his Democratic party) from supporting little government intervention to government programs of development. The child of this realignment was of course the New Deal: a massive government program of subsidies of industries and manufacturing as well as job creation. This ultimately changed american liberalism from being fiscally or economically liberal or free market to progressive or government interventionist.
The third realignment that contributed to the complete makeover of the Democratic Party occuring from the 1950s until the 1970s was the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. Although the emancipation proclamation of President Lincoln destroyed the institution of slavery and finally recognized all african americans as citizens, practice was very different from theory. The Negroe was still treated as a third class citizen and the Southern state governments passed laws to disenfranchise them based on property and ethnicity. The idea of separate but equal an idea of different but parallel institutions and services for whites and blacks was instituted to prevent the increasing black populations in the south from fully integrating into american society. This idea already looked terrible on paper and was far worse in practice. The blacks were guaranteed schools but the worst schools; hospitals but the worst hospitals; housing but the worst housing. It was not any better in the North of the country which was the center of industry at that time. Migrant blacks from the South working in the factories were paid lower wages compared to the already low wages of white workers.
People could no longer justify the concluded war in Europe against Hitler while also tolerating the racist regime in the South. Things had to change. The change was initiated by ordinary people through the organizing of black communities to improve their lot. Slowly but surely, opposition to segregation in the South began to make inroads in public opinion as the sight of police brutality against peaceful civil disobedience brought the sufferings of blacks into the consciousness of the pacified whites in the country. Soon, segregation was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional and ordered integration ofwhites and blacks in the South. A major part of the Democratic party, the Southern Democrats, were soon alienated and ultimately expurged from the party. These southern democrats were largely supportive of the segregation and opposed the civil rights movement which was participated by democratic party leaders. With the exit of the southern democrats, a new political base entered into the party, the black voters.
The anti-war movement can be seen as largely an extension of the civil-rights movement as Rev. Martin Luther King poignantly connected the disenfranchisement of african americans with the siphoning of much needed funds from anti-poverty programs to the Vietnam war. Whites and Blacks saw common cause in their opposition to the war. Most affected were the poor , black and white, who were bore the brunt in the war effort. Sadly, the rich declared the war, but the poor fought it. Mainstream media tried to alienate the anti-war effort by depicting it as simply rabble-rousing by elite academicians and students. It was true that most in the academe did not support the war but media left out the fact that study after study indicated opposition from the lower classes to the anti-war effort. This movement had the effect of rallying the left-wing in the liberal movement and isolating the pro-war liberals especially in the democratic party. This eventually led to Lyndon B. Johnson to drop his plans of reelection. Instead, the left liberals chose as their candidate in the democratic party, Eugene McCarthy (not to be confused with Joseph McCarthy of McCarthyism) an opponent of the war and largely portrayed as an intellectual. He would eventually lose the party nomination to Johnson's vice president Hubert Humphrey. Nonetheless, left-liberals or what we know today as social liberals still opposed the war well into the Nixon Administration.
What we see from these realignments in American Liberalism is the possibility of realigning society politically through the exposition of hypocricies in government policies and mobilization of popular opinion. Putting the idea political realignment in the Philippine context and by viewing the journey of American liberalism I can say that there seems to be an impending realignment in political consensus. Surveys after surveys show that the population are now supporting progressive policies from reproductive health care, government intervention particularly in education and health, and dismantling of political dynasties. It seems though that there is a disjunct between what the populace thinks and their voting patterns. It seems that the population thinks and believes in progressive politics but vote conservative and traditional politicians.
I propose that in order to consolidate and to give voice to this growing progressive consensus, three things must be made by progressives to translate progressive attitudes into progressive votes.
First, there has to be a definition of Filipino Progressivism. For me, political spectrum-wise Filipino Progressivism has to encompass Social Liberals or Left Liberals largely from the left-wing elements in the Liberal Party and other mainstream political parties, the burgeoning Green political movement, the LGBT movement, Social Democrats from moderate Left parties, and lastly the Left or National Democrats with the exception of those who still advocate armed struggle. Hence, I believe Progressivism in our times and in our country has to fight on crucial issues of environment, education, health, jobs, industrialization, gender equality, and increased power for social movements and non-government and/or corporate institutions through mass mobilization and electoral mobilization both of which have to be peaceful and completely legal.
Second, there has to be an establishment of a unified movement of think-tanks and NGOs to project that progressive consensus from the ordinary people into the halls of power. This means two things, we have to abandon sectarianism that has divided progressives and we have to hammer on our message. We have to practice what we preach. When we say pluralism we also have to do it. Also, we have to hammer our message and policies by calling out conservative and traditional politicians and challenge their bases or power (i.e. local government units) while threatening them with the possibility of electoral defeat or being outcast completely from policy debate.
Third, there has to be an effort to reclaim three important words: "left", "progressive", and "socialist". Much damage has already been done to discredit people by connecting people falling into these three characterization as being communist. Its as if being branded a progressive ergo a communist ends the debate completely. We have to aggresively reclaim these words and highlight the positive meanings of these ideas and show that the rest of the population shares our views and show that out attackers are really on the fringes. By reclaiming these words we inevitably have to give the proper meaning to "center". The center of politics should not be confused with the right-wing. The center stays with the consensus of the people in a democracy and we have to show we are the center. Those claiming the center are therefore really conservative or rightwing politicians who have been utterly incompetent.
The first major shift was the time of the progressive era from 1880s until the later part 0f the 1910s. During this time, an upsurge in progressive thinking accompanied by an upsurge in immigration contributed the reshaping of american thinking from being passive and largely conservative to more active and progressive. This was the time of the womens' suffrage movement and the prohibition of alcohol as well as the increase in labor unrest and and a sudden awakening of poor and exploited classes in the society. People began to question the inherent wealth accumulation of capitalists in contrast to the worsening condition in the urban areas of for immigrants and the labor flight and underdevelopment in the rural areas especially in the South.
The second major shift occured during the great depression right after the roaring twenties and the first wave of red-scare. It was by this time that the old doctrine of limited government intervention in the economic sphere was put into question. Prior to this questioning, the "mainstream" (what we really mean by mainstream is really the position taken by those in power) viewed a free market approach with little government intervention. This doctrine largely aided the rise of big corporations during the late 1890s until the beginning of the 20th century from being negligible government regulated enterprises. Because of this, financial activities and the expanding power of corporations were largely unchecked by government until this era of unregulation ended with the stock market crash of 1929 which obliterated ordinary americans' savings due to the the unchecked practices in the financial sector. At first, the free marketeers proposed that in order to correct the mistake, government should simply do nothing and allow the inefficient businesses to die out and let the market correct itself naturally. That was the main policy of Calvin Coolidge, the predecessor of Herbert Hoover. Of course, the problem was clear that it was not only big business which was affected by the crash and the ensuing depression. The most affected were really ordinary workers (by this time already helpless with the dismantling of the militant labor movements in the 1920s) and farmers. Franlkin Roosevelt saw the need the realign the economic thinking of the establishment (and his Democratic party) from supporting little government intervention to government programs of development. The child of this realignment was of course the New Deal: a massive government program of subsidies of industries and manufacturing as well as job creation. This ultimately changed american liberalism from being fiscally or economically liberal or free market to progressive or government interventionist.
The third realignment that contributed to the complete makeover of the Democratic Party occuring from the 1950s until the 1970s was the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. Although the emancipation proclamation of President Lincoln destroyed the institution of slavery and finally recognized all african americans as citizens, practice was very different from theory. The Negroe was still treated as a third class citizen and the Southern state governments passed laws to disenfranchise them based on property and ethnicity. The idea of separate but equal an idea of different but parallel institutions and services for whites and blacks was instituted to prevent the increasing black populations in the south from fully integrating into american society. This idea already looked terrible on paper and was far worse in practice. The blacks were guaranteed schools but the worst schools; hospitals but the worst hospitals; housing but the worst housing. It was not any better in the North of the country which was the center of industry at that time. Migrant blacks from the South working in the factories were paid lower wages compared to the already low wages of white workers.
People could no longer justify the concluded war in Europe against Hitler while also tolerating the racist regime in the South. Things had to change. The change was initiated by ordinary people through the organizing of black communities to improve their lot. Slowly but surely, opposition to segregation in the South began to make inroads in public opinion as the sight of police brutality against peaceful civil disobedience brought the sufferings of blacks into the consciousness of the pacified whites in the country. Soon, segregation was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional and ordered integration ofwhites and blacks in the South. A major part of the Democratic party, the Southern Democrats, were soon alienated and ultimately expurged from the party. These southern democrats were largely supportive of the segregation and opposed the civil rights movement which was participated by democratic party leaders. With the exit of the southern democrats, a new political base entered into the party, the black voters.
The anti-war movement can be seen as largely an extension of the civil-rights movement as Rev. Martin Luther King poignantly connected the disenfranchisement of african americans with the siphoning of much needed funds from anti-poverty programs to the Vietnam war. Whites and Blacks saw common cause in their opposition to the war. Most affected were the poor , black and white, who were bore the brunt in the war effort. Sadly, the rich declared the war, but the poor fought it. Mainstream media tried to alienate the anti-war effort by depicting it as simply rabble-rousing by elite academicians and students. It was true that most in the academe did not support the war but media left out the fact that study after study indicated opposition from the lower classes to the anti-war effort. This movement had the effect of rallying the left-wing in the liberal movement and isolating the pro-war liberals especially in the democratic party. This eventually led to Lyndon B. Johnson to drop his plans of reelection. Instead, the left liberals chose as their candidate in the democratic party, Eugene McCarthy (not to be confused with Joseph McCarthy of McCarthyism) an opponent of the war and largely portrayed as an intellectual. He would eventually lose the party nomination to Johnson's vice president Hubert Humphrey. Nonetheless, left-liberals or what we know today as social liberals still opposed the war well into the Nixon Administration.
What we see from these realignments in American Liberalism is the possibility of realigning society politically through the exposition of hypocricies in government policies and mobilization of popular opinion. Putting the idea political realignment in the Philippine context and by viewing the journey of American liberalism I can say that there seems to be an impending realignment in political consensus. Surveys after surveys show that the population are now supporting progressive policies from reproductive health care, government intervention particularly in education and health, and dismantling of political dynasties. It seems though that there is a disjunct between what the populace thinks and their voting patterns. It seems that the population thinks and believes in progressive politics but vote conservative and traditional politicians.
I propose that in order to consolidate and to give voice to this growing progressive consensus, three things must be made by progressives to translate progressive attitudes into progressive votes.
First, there has to be a definition of Filipino Progressivism. For me, political spectrum-wise Filipino Progressivism has to encompass Social Liberals or Left Liberals largely from the left-wing elements in the Liberal Party and other mainstream political parties, the burgeoning Green political movement, the LGBT movement, Social Democrats from moderate Left parties, and lastly the Left or National Democrats with the exception of those who still advocate armed struggle. Hence, I believe Progressivism in our times and in our country has to fight on crucial issues of environment, education, health, jobs, industrialization, gender equality, and increased power for social movements and non-government and/or corporate institutions through mass mobilization and electoral mobilization both of which have to be peaceful and completely legal.
Second, there has to be an establishment of a unified movement of think-tanks and NGOs to project that progressive consensus from the ordinary people into the halls of power. This means two things, we have to abandon sectarianism that has divided progressives and we have to hammer on our message. We have to practice what we preach. When we say pluralism we also have to do it. Also, we have to hammer our message and policies by calling out conservative and traditional politicians and challenge their bases or power (i.e. local government units) while threatening them with the possibility of electoral defeat or being outcast completely from policy debate.
Third, there has to be an effort to reclaim three important words: "left", "progressive", and "socialist". Much damage has already been done to discredit people by connecting people falling into these three characterization as being communist. Its as if being branded a progressive ergo a communist ends the debate completely. We have to aggresively reclaim these words and highlight the positive meanings of these ideas and show that the rest of the population shares our views and show that out attackers are really on the fringes. By reclaiming these words we inevitably have to give the proper meaning to "center". The center of politics should not be confused with the right-wing. The center stays with the consensus of the people in a democracy and we have to show we are the center. Those claiming the center are therefore really conservative or rightwing politicians who have been utterly incompetent.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)