Statement from CFL President Dennis Gannon on the passage of the Big Box Living Wage Ordinance

This afternoon, the Chicago City Council took the historic step of passing the Big Box Living Wage Ordinance requiring large, profitable retailers with stores larger than 90,000 and generating at least $1 billion in annual sales to pay a living wage of $10 per hour and $3 in benefits to their employees.

The passage of this ordinance is a victory for all the communities and working men and women in Chicago who deserve to earn a living wage and benefits in exchange for their hard work. It sets a national standard for making sure individuals earn a living wage with benefits in exchange for day’s work.

At the heart of this ordinance is equality and fairness. Today’s vote sends a message that our elected officials and community members alike are not interested in the creation of low paying jobs that fail to provide a living wage or adequate health care benefits for working families. The choice between no job and a low-paying job is a choice between bad and worse.

Only when families can afford to make ends meet and afford quality health care will we see real improvement in our communities. Corporations that can well afford to pay a living wage, should be held to a higher standard.

We have witnessed overwhelming dedication from grassroots community organizations, religious groups, the labor community, elected officials and a majority of Chicagoans who want to raise the standard of living in our communities through the creation of good jobs.

Thanks to the tireless work of our affiliated local unions—especially UFCW, SEIU, UNITE HERE and Teamsters—and countless community organizations—the Grassroots Collaborative, ACORN, Jobs with Justice, Citizen Action, the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues, Metro Seniors in Action, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, and many others—the rights of lower and middle class workers have ascended once again into the public discourse.

I also applaud the aldermen who acted on behalf of the interests of the people on this vote. These men and women took to heart the issue of equality and living wage and did the right thing by voting to pass the ordinance.

Madeline Haithcock (2nd)
Dorothy Tillman (3rd)
Leslie Hairston (5th)
William Beavers (7th)
James Balcer (11th)
Arenda TRoutman (20th)
Howard Brookins Jr. (21st)
Isaac Carothers (29th)
Carrie Austin (34th)
Emaa Mitts (37th)
Burton Natarus (42nd)
Vi Daley (43rd)
Thomas Tunney (44th)
Bernard Stone (50th)

or perhaps require that *all* employers pay *all* employees a living wage.

The problem is that these employers will simply move across the city boundaries. Such legislation has to be on a state wide basis to be effective. (Preferably nationwide, of course, but that is not possible right now).

Welcome to the goal of the living wage, not for one, not for two, not for 3 or 4; but for every single person around the fucking world.

...but the anti-big box law adopted by the City Council will eventually be overturned by the courts. ;)

Even with the living wage bill, Walmart and others can still make megabucks in Chicago. They'll squawk and fight in court, but don't expect them not to enter the market because of this victory.

The one thing, so far anyway, that has caused Walmart to close a site is when workers win a unionization drive, the only exception being their stores in China.

That's why some of us have been arguing against Walmart no matter what, since they're the poster child for 'low road' globalization. The strategic fight is against their whole business plan, not just their wage rates.

There are many positive alternatives to Walmart, from Costco and Publix in the U.S., to the best model of all, the 'high road' worker and consumer owned, eco-friendly chain in Spain and France, called 'Eroski.' Google them and you'll see what I mean.

Walmart started its growth and success by revolutionizing several means of how mass retail was organizing, using information technology. But not too long afterwards, they shifted to more brutal and unscupulous 'race to the bottom' means with an overall negative impact on everything except their quarterly bottom line.

I have a powerpoint on the topic if any group would like me to present it, or if you want some of the best analysis of them around, go to www.clcr.org That's the Center for Labor and Community Research headquartered here in Chicago. They have a long pdf you can download.

alot of the aldermen/women who were against it are from wards that are dirt poor. Thats right, lets all keep it that way.
What exactly have you won? and it is to be done by 2010, by which time it probably will be the normal minimum wage anyways.

You have a minor point, Kurt, but compared to what?

The problem with the minimum wage, in my view, is that you have to have a job to get it.

I favor a social wage and, combined with it, the abolition of a mimimum wage, other things being equal, since a minimum wage also encourages an 'underground' economy and hinders small businesses trying to operate openly.

The version of the 'social wage' I advocate, say 18K a year, is not a 'guaranteed income' but goes to anyone over 18 who 'creates value' -- a mom raising kids, students learning in school, teaching classes in the parks, caring for the elderly, cleaning up after disasters, etc. All this is valuable to society, but due to imperfect markets (yes, they are all imperfect) often do not result in employment at any wage.

A social wage would also be structured so that it was always in one's interest to find regular employment. It would also have the added benefit of doing away with most welfare, save for the impaired and infirm, and encouraging family formation among low-income young people.

But other things aren't favorable, and the minimum wage and increases in it are better than doing nothing but having us wait around for a perfect market, which doesn't exist, to solve our problems.

For more on the topic, go to: www.cyrev.net then to Issue 5 in the archives

Carl,

Your definition of "value" is way to irrational and subjective for my taste. The market is the most efficient (or the least imperfect) force to assign value (price) to products, services and wages. I understand that people need to have some sort of income or working capital in order to survive, but who or what is going to define and fund said “social wage”? Are your favoring more state intervention? And bear in mind that your proposed system will require a heavy bureaucracy: tax collection, distribution, etc. And I’m not even going into all those ideologues and economic ignorant that will be in charge of it. Well, I would like to debate you more on this forum, but my comments get deleted anyway.

I'll agree 'the devil is in the details' in the 'social wage' structural reform, but that's true of any proposal or situation, including what we have now or something you would prefer.

But still not insurmountable.

The value of raising children to the age where they can productively enter the work force can be averaged out without too much difficulty. Economists figure it out all the time.

The social value of many other types of effort can also be determined locally by, say, the nonprofit sector or the level of government closest to the ground.

Any new bureaucracy could be offset by getting rid of the truly cumbersome bureacracies of the current welfare system.

I like to think of it as a 'universal toolbox' that everyone has relatively equal access to. What they make of it depends on their own initiative.

By the way, it's not completely orginal with me in this 'left' form. Milton Friedman, from the other side of the divide, argued for something similar with his negative income tax proposal.

But if it's bureacracies you're after, let's go for single-payer health care. All sorts of insurance company bureaucracies would bite the dust, although private or corporate ones, rather than public.

I agree with Carl. Just keep Walmart out of Chicago. We don't need them. They are "threatening" to not open stores in Chicago because of this bill, but I doubt they'll keep their word.

That being said, the law is good in and of itself. Raising at mininium wages is constitent with demand side economics which seems to work better than supply side economics. (I favor socialism which is at least as successful as capitalism when fair comparisions are made.) Our country's fetish with free market economics is based on nothing and is completely idiotic.

Kurt, Only your trolling comments get edited. Here you're in a conscious debate, contributing something to the site even if you're wholly wrong. By all means continue.

Carl,

Somehow you don't convince. Maybe because your economic formulas are not based on empirical evidence but just on well-meant yet excessively fantastic concepts. Here's the real "social wage". It's called FLAT TAX as implemented by former prime mininster Laar in Estonia and proposed by Steven Forbes in the USA. The Flat Tax system works... just look at the Baltic States and many other former members of the infamous Warsaw Pact. See, in the realms of finance and economy you have to be result and NOT ideology-driven. With the Flat Tax you are going to assign the first $40,000 (that's an arbitrary number of course) of income for a family of four a tax rate of 0%. Every dollar earned above that will be taxed at a flat rate of, say, 17% (as proposed by Steve Forbes). And it won't matter if you make $50,000 of $50,000,000. Furthermore, it's time to eliminate the estate tax, excise taxes and above all: taxation on dividends, interests and capital gains. The goal is to include the poor a.k.a. working class in the generation of capital. You know, it all boils down to what the Founding Fathers proposed for this country.

Kurt, as you well know, no one's economic arguments are based completely on 'empirical evidence,' since economics combines science with values.

Which is why it used to be call 'political economy' in the old days.

Now that's no reason to ignore the spreadsheets. As a small businessman myself, I'd be quickly unemployed if I did. I'm a rather orthodox Marxist in this respect, that I take the numbers seriously, along with the values.

But I learned long ago economics wasn't a science in the usual sense of physics or chemistry. For instance, take any company's books and show us where the value of its accumulated knowledge is. You won't find it, since it's not considered a tangible asset. One of my old bosses told me, when selling a business, that's why they tossed in a fudge factor called 'good will' and took a guess at what it should be. It's to cover the values that fall outside their categories.

That's what 'externalities,' like pollution, do on the negative costs to society. The firm gets to dump them on everyone else and walk away. That's why I press for 'true cost' structural reforms within the context of the market. No more hidden 'free riders' who want to deny a 'free ride' of assistance to everyone else.

Interesting the you raise the 'flat tax.' When Forbes first put it forward, I actually argued for it with some of my buddies on the left, not because it was inherently progressive, but because it was more progressive, in terms of who would really pay most, since supposedly there would be no loopholes, than our present 'progressive' setup, rendered into its opposite by all the loopholes. (There's another anti-bureaucracy measure for you. Just imagine the mass unemployment of corporate tax lawyers if we had a true 'no loopholes' flat tax!)

But Forbes's tax, if I understand it properly, is actually more 'liberal' than my 'social wage.' In his proposal, when combined with Friedman's, means everyone under 40K a year gets a negative tax subsidy, whether they work or not, create value or not, or do anything at all or not. In mine, you have to do something positive to get it.

I've always been curious why libertarians are so bent on doing away with inheritance taxes. Doesn't it seem that their values would mean their kids should 'work their way up' in the world?

I'd go for letting people make as much as they can, then pass on, say, up to one million bucks per kid, then the rest goes to fund, say, public schools for the disadvantaged. What's libertarian about one kid starting off in life with a billion dollar trust fund, while many others start with little or nothing but their own 'sweat equity?' That's why I said there are plenty of markets, laced with successes and failures, but no such thing as a completely 'free' market nor a completely planned economy.

I don't know whether it's my Buddhism or my Marxism or both, but what I want to pass on to my kids was that I was a worker and seeker for peace and justice, more so than a big bank account.

Anonymous above, of course, is me, CarlD

"I've always been curious why libertarians are so bent on doing away with inheritance taxes."

The answer is: property rights. In other words, the owner has (should have) the right to dispense with the property in a manner he or she sees fit (within the legal bounds on a non-intrusive and classic liberal legal system). Do you want me to elaborate?

Yes, Kurt, 'the owner' has property rights and can depense it as he or she sees fit, within the law, of course. One can't pass out grenades and machine guns to the rebel youth of one's choice, at least in most circumstances.

But don't things change when 'the owner' ceases to exist as a person, at least in this world? That's the point I'm raising. Do property rights exist in perpetuity, long after the person has gone? If property rights have an eternal quality, then does someone have a case against those who seized the land worked by the natives who were here before them? Be careful with your answer here, because corportions are claiming these eternal 'personal rights', while the heirs of their past victims, are claiming their eternal right to sue for recovery, as in the reparations movement. You might not want to go there...

Moreover, all wealth is created in the context of social capital, to one degree or another, as well as individual capital and indiviual effort, along with the gifts of nature itself. That's why taxes, except, say, in the view of a few cranks, are not simply theft.

Why not, then, see the reasonableness of returning a portion, even a substantial one, of a no-longer-existing 'persons' propety to replenish the social capital, as in schools and knowlege, from which it sprang, in part at least, in the first place.

I know, as a youngster, whose family books and novels I could count on my fingers, I made great use of the 'BF Jones Memorial Library' in my milltown, main base of 'Jones & Laughlin Steel.' Old BF saw himself as having to live up to Carnegie in giving some of his megabucks away to libraries. But even he benefitted indirectly, by raising the literacy of the working class and their kids, including me, in the otherwise harshness of a milltown before there were unions to make in a little safer. A few of my folks perished there, however, before those union reforms were won. One reason, perhaps, why I appreciate them more than you might.

One can understand the desire of the heirs to get something for nothing, or even something for contributing to the general well-being of the deceased in his or lifetime, which indirectly may have contributed to the family fortune in some small way.

That's why I say give each kid up to a million bucks, to cover that point, even if it gives them a leg up on non-heirs in the 'free' market of life. The kids may squawk, but don't we want them to learn self-reliance as good libertarians?

You might argue that the person should get to choose where his or her wealth goes. Very well, do it while they're still alive, like Buffet and Gates. There one is only subject to a bit of social pressure to give to worthy causes, rather than one's favorite lazy offspring, hooker or pet, but, then, as your side is often fond of saying, life has it's little unfairnesses, doesn't it?

Carl,

Property rights do not exist on perpetuity per se. It's called inheritance or willful transfer of ownership. That's the least subjective and most reasonable explanation. And do not forget that the enforcement of property rights can't and shouldn't be retroactive. In other words, what happened in feudal times is a matter of the past.

Carl,

You also said that all wealth is created in the context of "social capital". Yet, what is social capital anyway? Again, a very subjective term. And what, if any, importance does the relationship between "pluralistic associational life and democracy" have in the creation and accumulation of wealth? Although many in the Left don't get it yet, when one person creates and accumulates wealth, then it doesn't many that another person is losing wealth.

What is social capital? Imagine yourself plunked down in the middle of wilderness, Kurt, alone, without tools or even the clothes on your back, and you'll discover what it means, very quickly, by its absense, save for some of the knowledge between your ears.

We are profoundly social creatures, despite the individual delusion of separate private selves. And social capital, in part, is the mutual aid we render to one another, often without even being conscious of it. And no economy can function without it.

Carl,

Nobody is debating the undisputable fact that mankind is a social species. But your definition of social capital and your justification for the corresponding monetary taxation and remuneration is very murky and subjective. Yes, wealth (the accumulation of valuable goods) can only be created in a social context. Why? Value is a function of demand and supply. In any case, I support a tax policy that is based on personal responsibility and individual rights. In other words, our tax money cannot be spend on wealth redistribution schemes (e.g. corporate subsidies, social programs, etc.) but only on services and infrastructure that objectively, feasibly, reasonably and equally benefit everybody (e.g. public schools, law enforcement, fire department, streets & sanitation, military, etc.). See, a low flat tax rate tied with free trade agreements and the enforcement of the rule of law (upholding property rights) inevitably results in strong economic growth (job creation, more consumption, reduction of poverty, etc.). And, believe it or not, there’s a goal both of us share: the reduction of poverty.

Our system of property ownership is conceptually feudal. It hasn't changed conceptually since the Norman invasion of England.

It has changed in terms of freedom of alienation, i.e., the right to dispose of propery as the holder sees fit. This has given Libertarian types the false impression that they have an absolute right to dispose of property as they see fit, even after death.

But you don't own property, at least not in the sense "own" is commonly understsood (the European system has something closer to real ownership.) You have an interest in it. And that interest is subject to the interests of others.

Good capitalists understand that capital works best when it circulates. Velocity of circulation ensures that capital moves to those uses which serve best the interests of all.

Dead hand control ensures only concentrations of capital, not necessarily into the hands of those best suited to use it. Typically, for instance, by the third generation of family wealth, the recipients are likely to just piss it away (the spoiled grand-kids are too coddled to know how to handle money.)

The estate tax preserves efficient use of capital, and precerses the capitalist system. Only wacky Libertarians, and selfish, misguided capitalists, oppose it.

King Lear is avery good object lesson for those who claim freedom of property alienation/ succession is the most efficient means of resource allocation.

Murky and subjective?

Perhaps, Kurt. But restrictive and arbitrary is what I'd call the notion that value is a function of supply and demand, so much so that distorts reality into subjectivity in an entirely different way.

For instance, to make a 'demand' for a 'supply,' rather than just have a need, one must have the means to pay or exchange. Many people in this world have a need for food or shelter or health care, but have no means to make a demand.

Even their labor power is at such a level that it's unwanted by those in the market for labor power. Essentially, they live outside the market, a point I make to some of my comrades when I say many people still suffer from the lack of capitalism, as well as those who suffer from it.

Now I'm of the opinion, along with Marx, that markets are an achievement of human civilization, but that doesn't mean they don't fail or that it's for all time, or that their dynamic side, unrestrained, doesn't wreak havoc in the world.

An economy based on taking all the carbon under the ground and putting it into the upper atmosphere is a case in point.

Markets will exist as long as there is scarcity, under any system. And their failure are precisely where human intelligence, in the form of good policy, tax and otherwise, comes into play.

Myself, I'd like to abolish most of the labor market by having workers run their factories and pay themselves from the profits the firm earns, rather than as wage-labor. Also abolish the capital markets, by having a capital assets tax redistributed downward to community-controlled inventment banks for funding new and innovative startups. But keep the market in consumer goods and services as the most efficient--Hayek is right on that one.

In the distant future, the market withers away as scarcity withers away, and the amount of labor time in any given commodity approaches zero, ie, full cybernation.

But a point often missed by libertarians is that markets are at least three-way relationships--buyer, seller and cop (someone has to enforce standard and measures, at least)--and they only thrive in a context of sustainable sociality and the gifts of nature.

All this is a bit visionary and utopian, but so was Adam Smith in his day. Your desire for a questionable objectivity, however, separates value from its moral dimension, which, in the end, is at its very root.

Carl,

The idea of defining value (or price) as function of demand and supply (notice the correct order: first demand, then supply) is as scientific and tangible as it gets. What’s more feasible than establishing a dollar value for a good or service? I understand your proclivity to add ideology and metaphysics to the definition of value. In any case, I will not debate the fact that there is a marginal group of people that have “no means to make a demand”. Yet I will highlight the fact that they are (and let’s put it bluntly) irrelevant for an economic analysis.

Now, I am not surprised that you propose eliminating capital markets and enforcing labor restrictions and compulsions by collectivizing businesses. Yet, do you really think that these Soviet-style measures actually work? From Ultra-Maoist Cambodia to Tito’s relative tolerance for markets, controlled economies always lead to disastrous productivity, extremely high unemployment, hyperinflation and overall poverty. Sadly, controlled economies can linger for years in dictatorships with a populist and nationalistic agenda (such as Chavez’s Venezuela) or in extremely repressive totalitarian regimes (such as the Third Reich, the Taliban and Castro’s Cuba).

You stated that libertarians often fail to understand that markets are a three-way relationship: buyer, seller and cop. Since when do you hang out with anarcho-capitalists? Libertarianism or Classic Liberalism doesn’t propose the elimination of law enforcement or the rule law. The mere presence of aw enforcement guarantees the upholding of contracts binding consenting parties.

Last but not least, I am puzzled that you consider yourself a visionary when you propose obviously flawed and failed economic formulas.

Well it seems that the future of capital is in good hands with people like Carl who do not want to destroy it as such(along with the entire modern/civilized complex) but want to reshape it.

I have somethng of a question for him however. I've read Vs 1&2 of Kapital and one point I remember in V2 is that Capitalism and its crisis points are in Marx's view predicated on falling profit rates as apposed to consumption. It seems the postulate and few others realized this. If you accept this fully you accept the fact that the wellfare state is pretty much not coming back as capitalism does not give a shit about healthy consumers but profit profit profit. This means that if profit can come from sqeezing migrating agrarians into tiny cottages as Marx tragically described in the mid 19th century then so be it. You appear to call for fair consumption, something that capitalism cares not for.

Oh and I would hardly call the markets an acheivment in any linear sense as I suspect you are. It is a contingent phenomena of discourse no more no less. There are no progressions and regressions, only potentialities. I happen to think that the civilized totality of the past 10 K years should be destroyed.

As for Kurt his views on property are of course laughable. The only thinker who came up with a truly amoral, non-utopian conception of property was Max Stirner who rightfully pointed out that property is and should be defined by agency and might. Those precious Lockean laws of yours do not stop me or anyone from entering your property, blowing your head off with a shotgun, and taking it for myself. If you end up dead, I am in the right, if I by you you are in the right. That is how property developed after all. Property if it should be anything should be a non-fixed/spooky extention of your agency. I would no longer call such a thing property, I would call it what it really is to many living things, territory. Something more transient, contingent and most importantly not fixed.

'Marginal Group'?

Well, the other day, Kurt, I found a cool web site where you entered your income and it showed where you stood in the world. I plunked in $25K for me and, lo and behold, I'm in the top nine percent of the world!

Seems we're the 'marginal group' here.

My approach to abolish the market in labor is opposite the Soviet model. If mine, factories are mostly publically owned, but leased to the workers to do with what they will, sink or swim, by satisfifying their customers in the marketplace. No 'Gosplan,' please!

You could look at it as a local capitalist collective, if you like, one worker, one vote, and they divide the profits among themselves as they see fit. That's why labor is not a cost or commodity here. For their lease, they make a fixed payment to a capital fund, a good part of which is decentralized to comunity banks to disperse and loans and grants, as they see fit locally. Naturally, some infrastructure is national and global in scope.

The conumer goods and services market remains, subject to the usual regulation--no polluting, etc. And a worker run coop of firm can thrive if they do well in the market, satisfying their customers, or sink if they're a bunch of slackers.

The main thing is that they don't have to 'grow or die,' just maintain market share.

Read David Schweickart's 'After Capitalism' for the full account. Or even google to find my review of it. His main point is 'There is an alternative', a critique of the 'TINA' crowd.

As for 'Wolverine,' yes, Marx talked about the 'tendency of the rate of profit to fall,' but as a tendency where there are also coutervailing factors. Some doctrinaire folks read this as predicting there's alway a collapse just around the next bend, but Marx himself never went that far.

Marx was also, understandably, somewhat hampered by the degree of progress of the science of his day, which tended to think in closed systems, more than the open systems of complexity and chaos we know now.

But I still see the market as an advance. I had the Norwegian Reds take me once to the museums in Oslo with the Viking ships, which as a kid always fascinated me. Exchange then was primarily through plunder, theft and pillage when they could, and barter when they were constrained militarily. Of course, some of this still goes on today, but gradually the market as we know it gained ascendency, and brought forth the revolution in the productive forces Marx describes so eloquently in the Manifesto.

You may want to take another look at it, from the perspective of globalization. Many of the capitalist busineess mags have, and found it still insightful today, even more so in some ways.

I'm admitedly not very brushed up on crisis theory though I believe its an ultraleft thing, and I tend to find a bit more curry with that marxian discourse then the vanguard type though they have their problems. It seems to me that you are part of that unfortunate tendency that wants to celebrate capitalist production. Your no different then the Negri types who've become fairly idiotic in that last few years. Ultimately this is hardly something to celebrate. To properly understand why you would probably have to leave the marxian centered field and look into some of the techno critics such as Mumford and Ellul.

I'm also quite aware of Marx's idea of the productive forces. I see it as one of the most tragic and contradictory aspecs of the discourse that spawned him. He fetishizes that so much that he excuses imperialism in India(albeit reluctantly)for this 'force' to grow. There's a point where he cuts strait to it and says "without the slavery of antiquity, no modern socialism". This type of teleology plagued the older Marx more then the yougn(who was less rigid and seemingly more libertarian). The Leninists took this tragic theory to an even more tragic practice. Lenin was convinced that Russia and all of Eastern Europe had to go from "wood to iron" no matter what. Never mind the fact that the largely peasant based society of that region tended toward more a more locally luddic, libertarian agency. Lenin only got as popular as he did because he lied before he took power(as many vanguards such as Castro do).

Interestingly the one thing I remember from Kapital v2 is when Marx makes the point that feudal relations were actually less harmfull to communal relationships then capitalist relations were, the accumulations not being the same of course. The recent example of the South Central farmers shows what your lovely productive forces does in practice. Feudalism would tends to be far less bitchy for that type of agency(not that I care for it of course).

Well, Wolverine, I'd celebrate capitalist production, with all its horrors, over feudal serfdom any day, which I'd hardly romanticize as 'luddic,' even with carnivals and religious holidays. Feudal life was brutal and short, and most folks never went more than 10 miles from the land they belonged too.

But today I'd like to transform capitalist production through cybernation, high design and economic democracy until its something quite diferent. and I appreciate Mumford and a good many eco-thinkers along the way. But no one's put me in charge yet!

Marx, of course, was bound by his time, and Eurocentric, though less so than many of his contemporaries. But his point about ancient slavery creating the first surplus, and a class of proto-scientists who could live and work on it, to make for greater advances in knowledge, though blunt, is still true. Even ancient slavery was an advance in one way. If the earlier period, captives in war were simply slaughtered, except, perhaps, the women.

Now I'm not a straight-line, 'always onwards and upwards' historical progressivist. Some systems fail utterly, with we see in Jared Diamond's work, and even our own may come to a deadly end. But I do appreciate the gains in knowledge over the years, and the reducing of life-destroying toil and disease.

I won't bother with you comments on Lenin and Fidel, which are way off base. Ending the remnants of serfdom and Tzarist rule in Russia, however, were certainly not among Lenin's fault. With the NEP, he and Bukharin were on the right track, until it was destroyed by Stalin's reversal of it, from which the Russians are still trying to recover to this day.

As for 'lying,' name a politician who hasn't? I think Lenin and Fidel are rather low-ranking on the totem pole on that accusation.

Anonymous, of course, is me, CD

Carl,

I said that there is, in deed, a marginal group of people that have 'no means to make a demand'. In other words, they have no purchasing power whatsoever. Nevertheless, people with a very low disposable income (below your alleged income) have purchasing power... and their demand pattern mostly but not necessarily follows monetary criteria.

In any case, I don't have a problem with the concept of "mostly publically owned companies that are leased to the workers" as long as a) it is not a result of government intervention b) it can sustain itself without government regulation.

Well Carl I appreciate the honesty on what I see as irreconcilable views. One who supposedly wants liberation wants to embrace some of the most enslaving discourse imaginable. I must say you're doing a very naughty thing in transposing your own socially constructed era on another. This is a perfect recipe for totalitarianism. How many times has one heard a Maoist excuse the horrors going on in Tibet by saying "but it was feudal!” Yeah well let the inhabitants decide that. That should be the essence of anti-imperialism; unfortunately people such as Carl inherit a very narrow Euro/modern centric Leninist conception which is laughable to any true "consistent" anti-imperialist such as myself. And you know that I'm not romanticizing feudalism as much as I'm saying it's hegemony has not matched capital and modernity. Marx actually said it well "its so easy to be liberal against feudalism"(something such).
And as far life span goes this should be seen as subjective pure and simple. Life expectancy should be seen as relative to a particular epoch. Besides if you want to look at a human existence with the least amount of toil and disease look no further then primitive societies. I suppose you think they were "brutal and short" as well, which puts you well within the thinking of the British Empire Club members. As for cybernation, I'd rather have hibernation thank you;)You sound like something of a Donna Haraway, someone who has all of these crazy(admittedly interesting)fantasies but avoids the question of technology in regards to maintenance. Marxists have been especially guilty of this as they cloak these specific concerns with all that abstract "real" movement nonsense. As if you will not have to squeeze people into centralized computer rooms, send people to mines and factories, develop mass levels of bureaucracy and most of all, biopolitical disciplinary measures to keep things maintained, my god it sounds a bit like capitalism with another name!

In regards to knowledge you display the classic (intellectually destroyed) Cartesian logic of absolute self-certainty. Pure presence at hand as Heidegger would say. Only problem is this whole Cartesian logic is based on an "I" without a "world" as Marty H also put it. Your logic mirrors 2001 A Space Odyssey where I am more in line with Solaris. Both Space movies, one is all about progress and moving forward, the other is about inter-subjectivity. It's ironic that you like to make the point that the individual can not exist without the social(as I would as well) but fail to realize that your whole conception of knowledge falls back on the most subjectively narcissistic "I" centered drivel that I can think of. Ultimately our existence in the world is as reciprocal as any other. How we operate is always contextual and full of potentialities (with no forward or backward nonsense).

On a small not about Russia, it's ironic that you essentially fall back on a crude idealist "big man of history" clause by invoking the excuse of Stalin. It's a way to avoid discussion of the discourse and conditions that created him. Way not to be a materialist(from one who is neither a materialist or idealist)

And on your last point, shouldn't the point of a libratory agency mean 'unbecoming' a politician? Certainly Lao Szu and the fat gold statue from India would agree;)

Well, Wolverine, I think i'll just recommend you read my book, co-authored with Jerry Harris. 'Cyberradicalism: A New Left for a Global Age.' Go to www.cyrev.net

Far from being Eurocentric, our starting point is that all economies and political systems are subsets of the ecosystem.

Far from being Cartesian, we're rather monistic, and look to the pragmatism of John Dewey and George Herbert Mead as the 'dialectical materialism' of the late 20th century, and Ilya Prigogene for the 21st Century.

Far from being ideologists, we like working hypotheses and open universes.

Finally, personally, though its a long journey, as a student of The Way, I'm plugging away on deconstructing the delusion on the Immortal Soul/ Independent Self. It's a tough climb more often than not.

All in all, while it drifted some from Walmart, it's not been a bad thread. I learned a few new things, and had to rethink some old ones.

As someone who is working on this Ordinance. I can tell you that both sides know the facts relating to what a living wage should be and how it will affect profit and loss for the "BigBox Reatilers" The discussions i have read here regarding said facts unfortunately have nothing to do with the point of "BigBox Ordinance" Not truly. If they did then Target the second largest consumer product retailer would not be in the City of Chicago paying wages comparable to Walmart. Target Execs have made it clear to the Illinois Retailers Commission that they will Leave the city limits of Chicago and close all stores if this ordinance is not overturned. Lets talk about the ramifications of that taking place. Target and Walmart serve a particular socioeconomic group- i.e working class and below and they market to middle class. I don't know of anyone listed in any Aldermaic list that purchases clothing from either Target or Walmart. Food products in the City of Chicago are also needed in the lower socioeconomic wards. THe Alderpersons who voted against this ordinance are all from wards that are not currently serviced by multiple Jewel-Osco and Dominics. So that means food products are more expensive to get to i.e paying for gas to get to the suburbs to shop. Overinflated gas not withstanding Public transportation is difficult to manage for grocery shopping.
So as someone who lives in a ward where the Alderperson recognized that the "moral" thing to do had nothing to do with "BigBusiness" facts and more to do with my ability to get the things i need for my children and myself and voted with conviction to SAY NO to the BigBox ordinance. I want Walmart and Target to stay in my community so my teenagers can get jobs there and i can purchase food and clothing for considerably less than i would to pay in "overinflated gas prices" to get to the Target and or Walmart in the Suburbs.

Target is going to leave Chicago over $10 an hour? I don't believe it no matter what they threaten. Costco is making good profits here in town at an average wage of $15 and a union to boot. I'd make a friendly wager on it. But even if I'm wrong, and they do, let's organize a 'Co-Mart' coop collaborative to take over the space, do things right and still make money.

Carl,

Update. It seems that 3-4 aldermen are going to switch sides and Daley will be able to veto this ordinance.