text:
Often the best way to begin to understand something is to consider what it is not. Socialism for the twenty-first century is not a society in which people sell their ability to work and are directed from above by others whose goal is profits rather than the satisfaction of human needs. It is not a society where the owners of the means of production benefit by dividing workers and communities in order to drive down wages and intensify work—i.e., gain by increasing exploitation. Socialism for the twenty-first century, in short, is not capitalism.
Nor is it a statist society where decisions are top-down and where all initiative is the property of state office-holders or cadres of self-reproducing vanguards. Socialism for the twenty-first century rejects a state that stands over and above society and squeezes "the living civil society like a boa constrictor."1 Also, socialism for the twenty-first century is not populism. A society in which people look to the state to provide them with resources and with the answers to all their problems leaves them as people who look to the state for everything and to leaders who promise everything.
Further, socialism for the twenty-first century is not totalitarianism. It is not a society in which the state demands uniformity in productive activity, consumption choices, or lifestyles. In particular, socialism for the twenty-first century does not dictate personal belief (through, for example, a state religion or state atheism). Nor does socialism for the twenty-first century worship technology and productive forces—a fetish that took the form in the Soviet Union of immense factories, mines, and collective farms to capture presumed economies of scale and destroyed the earth, our common home. Finally, contrary to its self-proclaimed inventor (Heinz Dieterich), socialism for the twenty-first century is not "essentially a problem of informatic complexity" that requires cybernetic calculation of quantities of concrete labor as the basis for an exchange of equivalents.2
The Key Link
So, let us explain what socialism for the twenty-first century is. There are lessons to be learned from the experiences of the twentieth century, and the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela, adopted in 1999, reflects many of those lessons. They are evident in Article 299's emphasis upon "ensuring overall human development," in the declaration of Article 20 that "everyone has the right to the free development of his or her own personality," in the focus of Article 102 upon "developing the creative potential of every human being and the full exercise of his or her personality in a democratic society," in Article 62's declaration that participation by people is "the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective." They are present in the identification of democratic planning and participatory budgeting at all levels of society. They are visible in the focus in Article 70 on "self-management, co-management, cooperatives in all forms" as examples of "forms of association guided by the values of mutual cooperation and solidarity." Lastly, they can be seen in the obligations noted in Article 135 which "by virtue of solidarity, social responsibility and humanitarian assistance, are incumbent upon private individuals according to their abilities."3
To understand this concept of socialism more deeply, we need to retrieve Marx's focus upon human development. In his 1844 Manuscripts, Marx introduced the concept of a "rich human being"—a person who has developed his capacities and capabilities to the point where he is able "to take gratification in a many-sided way" and "in whom his own realization exists as an inner necessity, as need." "In place of the wealth and poverty of political economy," Marx proposed, "come the rich human being and rich human need."4
Real wealth, in short, is not the accumulation of material possessions but, rather, the development of human capacity. "What is wealth," Marx asked in the Grundrisse, "other than the universality of individual needs, capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc."?5 Accordingly, he stressed the importance of the "development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption."6 This was Marx's conception of socialism: the creation of a society that removes all obstacles to the full development of human beings. And he maintained this position in Capital: in contrast to the society in which the worker exists to satisfy the need of capital for its growth, Marx there explicitly evoked what he called "the inverse situation, in which objective wealth is there to satisfy the worker's own need for development."7
Consider what the worker's own need for development implies. In that inverse situation, each individual is able to develop his or her full potential: that is, the "absolute working-out of his creative potentialities," the "complete working out of the human content," making the "development of all human powers as such the end in itself."8 These are the productive forces of people, which have "increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly."9 Rich human beings are the premise and result of this inverse situation.
How, though, are rich human beings produced? How do we ensure that everyone has the opportunity for the full development of their potential? It is not by giving people gifts from above. Marx was very clear on this point. In his Theses on Feuerbach, he insisted that people cannot be changed simply by changing their circumstances—for example, by creating new structures or new communities. On the contrary, he argued, it is really existing human beings who change circumstances, and they change themselves in the process. This is "revolutionary practice"—the "simultaneous changing of circumstance and human activity or self-change."10
As with the goal of rich human beings, the central concept of human development through practice was already present in Marx's 1844 Manuscripts. Commenting upon Hegel's focus upon activity (activity only in ideal form), Marx repeatedly emphasized human activity as the way real, concrete human beings produce themselves, and he explicitly described "real man—as the outcome of man's own labor."11 This concept of the simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change runs as a red thread throughout Marx's work. For example, in the very act of producing, Marx argued in the Grundrisse, "the producers change, too, in that they bring out new qualities in themselves, develop themselves in production, transform themselves, develop new powers and new ideas, new modes of intercourse, new needs and new language."12
The link connecting revolutionary practice and human development is obvious, too, in the struggles of workers against capital, which transform "circumstances and men" and make workers fit to create a new world. Thus, Engels stressed that, through such struggles, the worker "is no longer the same as he was before; and the whole working class, after passing through it, is a hundred times stronger, more enlightened, and better organized than it was at the outset."13 Similarly, Marx insisted that struggles over wages prevent workers "from becoming apathetic, thoughtless, more or less well-fed instruments of production"; indeed, without them, workers would be "a heartbroken, a weak-minded, a worn-out, unresisting mass."14
What we do, in short, forms us—this is the point of Marx's key link of human development and practice. We can remain dominated by the old ideas and can continue to be shaped by the inherited culture or we can construct ourselves as new people through our protagonism. Human development and practice, as the Bolivarian Constitution recognized, cannot be separated: the protagonism of people is necessary "to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective."
The Second Product under Capitalist Relations
Once we grasp Marx's key link, we understand that every human activity has two products—both the change in circumstances and the change in self, both the change in the object of labor and the change in the laborer. In addition to the material product of activity, there always is a second product—the human product. Unfortunately, that second product is often forgotten.
Accordingly, we need to ask a question that is rarely asked: what are the changes in the worker? What kinds of people are produced in the workplace? And the answer is that it depends. It depends upon the nature of relations within the process of production. That second product, under the appropriate conditions, can be positive. But, as Marx understood when discussing the failure of workers to struggle, the second product also can be negative.
Consider what occurs under capitalist relations of production. Within the capitalist workplace, people are subjected to "the powerful will of a being outside them, who subjects their activity to his purpose." And, this subordination to capital cripples and deforms workers. In Capital, Marx described the mutilation, the impoverishment, the "crippling of body and mind" of the worker "bound hand and foot for life to a single specialized operation," which occurs in the division of labor characteristic of the capitalist process of manufacturing. Did the development of machinery, though, rescue workers under capitalism? No, he said, it completes the "separation of the intellectual faculties of the production process from manual labor." It completes, in short, the crippling of body and mind.
And, in this situation, Marx explained, head and hand become separate and hostile, and "every atom of freedom, both in bodily and in intellectual activity" is lost. "All means for the development of production undergo a dialectical inversion," Marx accordingly indicated; "they distort the worker into a fragment of a man," they degrade him and "alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process."15
Rather than producing the all-round development of human beings, in short, capital deforms the workers into fragments; rather than producing rich human beings, capitalist production mandates the "complete emptying-out" and the "total alienation" of workers.16 The second product of capitalist production is the fragmented, crippled human being whose enjoyment consists in possessing and consuming things, the impoverished human being.17
Inverting the Capitalist Inversion
Capitalism, Marx stressed, inverts everything. Characteristic of capitalist relations of production is that "it is not the worker who makes use of means of production, but the means of production that make use of the worker."18 Referring to this same inversion at another point, Marx noted that "it is not the worker who employs the conditions of his work, but rather the reverse, the conditions of work employ the worker."19 In "this inversion, indeed this distortion, which is peculiar to and characteristic of capitalist production, of the relation between dead labor and living labor, between value and the force that creates value," subjects become objects and means become ends.20 Within the capitalist system, Marx concluded, "all means for the development of production undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become means of domination and exploitation of the producers."21
In contrast, Marx envisioned that inverse situation in which the means for development of production are not means of domination and exploitation. To build a society oriented to "the worker's own need for development," we must invert the capitalist inversion; we must end "this distortion, which is peculiar to and characteristic of capitalist production." In doing so, we end the crippling and fragmentation of the producers and create the conditions in which the producers are able to develop their capabilities—the conditions in which the second product of productive activity is a rich human being.
Whereas the worker, under capitalist relations, "actually treats the social character of his work, its combination with the work of others for a common goal, as a power that is alien to him," with the inversion of the capitalist inversion (i.e., the negation of that particular negation), the associated producers expend "their many different forms of labor-power in full self-awareness as one single social labor force." In the "inverse situation," rather than the crippling of workers, workers develop their capacities: "when the worker co-operates in a planned way with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species."22
For Marx, it was absolutely essential to invert the capitalist division of labor, the "dialectical inversion" that cripples the bodies and minds of workers and alienates them from "the intellectual potentialities of the labor process." In the inverse situation, the producers in full self-awareness plan together and end the separation of thinking and doing. There is "no doubt," he indicated in Capital, "that those revolutionary ferments whose goal is the abolition of the old division of labor stand in diametrical contradiction with the capitalist form of production."23
By ending what Marx called, in his Critique of the Gotha Program, "the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor," the second product can become not a distorted "fragment of a man" but a rich human being.24 Ending that separation of thinking and doing is why he stressed the importance of the introduction of education into the workplace: this was seen as a method not only of "adding to the efficiency of production, but as the only method of producing fully developed human beings."25
The Elementary Triangle of Socialism
Every day in which thinking and doing are separated is a day in which the second product is a fragmented and crippled human being. And that points to the necessity for worker decision making that breaks down the division between head and hand. In its absence, the division between those who think and those who do continues—as does the pattern that Marx described as one in which "the development of the human capacities on the one side is based on the restriction of development on the other side."26 The recognition in the Bolivarian Constitution that the protagonism of people is "the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective" identifies an essential element of socialism for the twenty-first century.
Clearly, the activity through which people develop their capacities is not limited to the sphere of production as narrowly defined within capitalism. We produce ourselves through all our activities—not only in recognized workplaces but also in homes and communities. Thus, every activity with the goal of providing inputs into the development of human beings (especially those which nurture human development directly) needs to be understood as an aspect of production. Further, the conceptions that guide production must themselves be produced. Only through a process in which people are involved in making the decisions which affect them at every relevant level (i.e., their neighborhoods, communities, and society as a whole) can the goals that guide productive activity be the goals of the people themselves.
Creating the conditions in workplaces and communities by which people can develop their capacities, however, is only one side of the concept of socialism for the twenty-first century. How can the worker's own need for development be realized if capital owns our social heritage, the products of the social brain and the social hand—i.e., if the results of social labor over time are monopolized by those whose goal is the growth of capital? And how can we develop our own potential if we relate to others as means to satisfy our individual material self-interest and to other producers as competitors and rivals in a market? Viewed as a connected whole, socialism, as a system of reproduction, contains not only social production organized by workers but also social ownership of the means of production and production for the purpose of satisfying communal needs and purposes.
In short, "the inverse situation, in which objective wealth is there to satisfy the worker's own need for development" is an organic system, a particular combination of production, distribution, and consumption, a system of reproduction. What Chávez called in January 2007 "the elementary triangle of socialism"—social property, social production, and satisfaction of social needs—is a step toward a conception of such a system. Social property, because it is the only way to ensure that our communal productivity is directed to the free development of all rather than the private goals of capitalists, groups of producers, or state bureaucrats; social production, because it builds new relations of cooperation and solidarity among producers and allows them to develop their capacities; and production for social needs, because instead of interacting as separate and indifferent individuals, we function as members of a community and begin from the recognition that "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."27
These three sides of the "socialist triangle" mutually interact to form a structure in which "all the elements coexist simultaneously and support one another."28 That very interdependence of the three sides, though, suggests that realization of each element depends upon the existence of the other two. Without production for social needs, no real social property; without social property, no worker decision making oriented toward society's needs; without worker decision making, no transformation of people and their needs. All three sides are needed because the absence of any particular side infects the whole.29 Thus, this particular organic system reproduces its premises only through institutions and practices by which people develop their capacities on all three fronts.
In this particular case, those institutions are workers' councils and neighborhood councils and the means for integrating them horizontally and vertically. Those institutions are essential to ensure a process of production for communal needs and communal purposes in which protagonism within the workplace and community ensures that this is social production organized by the producers, and they constitute a state—a particular type of state, a state from below, a state of the commune type.30 Such a state, which Marx described as the "self-government of the producers," is central to the concept of socialism for the twenty-first century—a point that Chávez grasped in describing the Venezuelan communal councils as "the cells of a new socialist state." And this new state does not wither away; rather, it is an integral part of socialism as an organic system.
Subordinating the Old Society
However, an organic system does not drop from the sky.31 A new system never produces its own premises at the outset. Rather, when a new system emerges, it necessarily inherits premises from the old. Its premises and presuppositions are "historic" premises that are produced outside the new system. Hence the system does not develop initially upon its own foundations.
Therefore, every new system as it emerges is inevitably defective: it is "in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society."32 Accordingly, as Marx indicated, the development of an organic system "consists precisely in subordinating all elements of society to itself, or in creating out of it the organs which it still lacks. This is historically how it becomes a totality."33
Because of the particular defects it has inherited from the old society, socialism must proceed to subordinate those elements if it is to produce its own conditions of existence. However, that process will be subject to many variations because every society has its unique characteristics (its unique history, its level of economic development and its internal correlation of forces) and exists in a particular external conjuncture. Given differing starting points, the paths to reach the goal will differ. It is an "impossibly pedantic" conception of Marxism, as Lenin argued in 1923, to insist that there is only one way to build socialism.34
However, to assemble the elements of the new society, one step in every particular path is critical—control and transformation of the state. To end the rule of capital, it is necessary to take the state away from capital—i.e., to end capital's ability to use the police, the judiciary, the army, legislative bodies, and its other oppressive mechanisms to enforce its rule. Without the removal of state power from capitalist control, every real threat to capital will be destroyed.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels argued that, "the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy" and that workers would then use their "political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie."35 The twentieth century demonstrated, however, that political supremacy of the working class is not achieved simply by winning elections or seizing the state. The real battle of democracy involves the creation of institutions that provide the space where members of society can develop their capacities through their protagonism.
Of course, that process cannot happen overnight and, indeed, may be quite lengthy. However, Marx understood that we must begin to remove the defects inherited from the old society immediately ("from the outset"). He made this point clearly in his Critique of the Gotha Program by introducing the matter of two specific "deductions" from the total social product before it is distributed to individual producers for consumer goods. Consider the first deduction—"the general costs of administration not belonging to production," which is to say, the costs associated with state administration. Marx was unequivocal in indicating clearly that "this part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops."36
But why is there this immediate reduction and why is this the measure of the development of the new society? Marx's argument must be put in the context of what he learned a few years earlier from the Paris Commune. Those costs are "very considerably restricted" because the state, he explained, immediately ceases to be "a public force organized for social enslavement." This was what the working class in motion discovered during the Commune: "from the outset," state functions are "wrested from an authority usurping pre-eminence over society itself, and restored to the responsible agents of society."37 And, success of the struggle, Marx indicated, would have meant that, in place of the old centralized government, "all France would have been organized into self-working and self-governing communes." Indeed, the result would be "state functions reduced to a few functions for general national purposes."38 "As the new society develops," in short, the state would be converted more and more (in the words of the Critique) "from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it."
What happens with that old state with its "systematic and hierarchic division of labor" in which state administration and governing are treated as "mysteries, transcendent functions only to be trusted to the hands of a trained caste—state parasites, richly paid sycophants and sinecurists?" From the outset, it is "considerably restricted," and the new society proceeds to create the new organs it lacks—those self-working and self-governing communes in proportion as it develops.39 The experience of the Commune, Marx declared, revealed "the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of Labor." In describing the course of the first of these deductions both "from the outset" and "as the new society develops," the Critique of the Gotha Program reflected what Marx learned from the Commune.40
The second deduction points to the transformation in distribution of the total social product in the new society. "Secondly," Marx indicated, there was "that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc." In contrast to the first deduction, Marx indicated that "from the outset this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops." Immediately, more and more of its total social product provides use-values for common satisfaction of needs; more and more of its output is deducted from the private claims of individuals. However, he noted, "what the producer is deprived of in his capacity as a private individual benefits him directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society." In place of distribution in accordance with contribution, a conception of "right" inherited from the old society, as the new society develops, a new relation of distribution emerges in which our claim upon the output of society increasingly is as a member of society. The measure of the development of the new society is the expansion of the commons.
This emerging relation of distribution, however, cannot rest in mid-air. The concept of a "just" distribution cannot be imposed upon the producers. "Right," Marx indicated in the Critique, "can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby." Accordingly, to introduce new relations of distribution requires new relations of production. In place of their relation as individual owners of "the personal condition of production, of labor-power," who demand an equivalent for their individual activity, there emerges a new productive relation. The condition for the new distribution relation is a relation in which the producers function consciously as members of a community (and their cultural development is "conditioned thereby").41
To subordinate the bourgeois right based upon individual ownership, the associated producers must create new organs that ensure conscious cooperation of "activities, determined by communal needs and purposes." As described in the Grundrisse, in this relation of associated producers "a communal production, communality, is presupposed as the basis of production." And this new relation of production determines the relation of distribution: "its presupposed communal character would determine the distribution of products. The communal character of production would make the product into a communal, general product from the outset."42
The relation of distribution, in short, is not changed by exhortation. Rather, it changes as the new society involves producers directly in a conscious process of planning as "determined by communal needs and purposes." Through such communal organs, the result is "an organization of labor whose consequence would be the participation of the individual in communal consumption." "In proportion as the new society develops," it learns to "distribute its time in a purposeful way, in order to achieve a production adequate to its overall needs." As Marx noted in the Grundrisse, "economy of time, along with the planned distribution of labor time among the various branches of production, remains the first economic law on the basis of communal production."43 Planning by the associated producers, in short, is at the core of this economic structure—one in which "the instruments of labor are common property and the total labor is co-operatively regulated."
This is how the new society develops upon its own foundations, how it proceeds to produce its own premises. It increasingly subordinates elements inherited from the old society and creates new organs for co-operatively planning the distribution of society's labor in order to satisfy "the worker's own need for development." It does so by increasingly substituting for the old state, which stands over and above society, a new state based upon democratic institutions "completely subordinate" to society—i.e., through those "self-working and self-governing communes" through which people are able to develop all their potential (that all-sided "rich individuality").
Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program, understood in the context of the Grundrisse and what he subsequently learned from the Paris Commune, contains within it the elements of socialism for the twenty-first century—in particular the focus upon all-round human development and the creation of institutions that foster the protagonism necessary for "complete development, individual and collective." Recognizing that socialism as it emerges is "in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society," His Critique identifies the process by which the defects inherited from the old society are transcended by the creation of new relations among the producers. "From the outset" and "in proportion as the new society develops," every step must build the capacities of the working class.
Why Socialism for the Twenty-first Century?
Why, though, do we speak of socialism for the twenty-first century and not simply about socialism? Very simply, because there was a rupture. Marx's critical emphasis upon human development disappeared in twentieth-century socialist experiments. Missing was a focus upon the key link of human development and practice—upon the simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change. And, with the failure to think specifically about the second product (positive or negative), the question of the nature of people produced under particular relations of production disappeared.
One departure in the twentieth century from Marx's perspective was the theoretical interpretation of socialism not as a process but as a separate stage with specific characteristics that distinguish it from "communism." A second was through the actual development of "real socialism." These two twentieth-century departures shaped the popular understanding of the meaning of socialism and interacted to support each other.
Marx's focus on socialism as a process directs attention, as we have seen, to consideration of those elements of the old society that must be subordinated, and to the process by which the complete development of human beings "both individual and collective" occurs. The idea of socialism as a specific stage, however, emerged in the course of the Bolshevik struggle for power and led to a quite different emphasis—one which stressed the centrality of the development of productive forces.
In the context of charges that the Bolsheviks were unrealistic utopians, in 1917 Lenin interpreted the distinction that Marx made in his Critique of the Gotha Program between communist society as it initially emerges (its "lower phase") and the "higher phase" once it rests upon its own foundations as indicating the difference between a stage of socialism and an ultimate stage of communism possible only after "an enormous development of productive forces."44 Marx's distinction between two moments in the process in which the new society advances by producing its own premises (thereby tending to become an organic system) accordingly hardened into a difference between two systems: socialism and communism—each with its own strikingly different relations of distribution.
As noted earlier, when the new society emerges, one of the "birthmarks of the old society" is that workers remain the "owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power" and, as a result, consider themselves entitled to an equivalent in exchange for their activity. However, rather than focusing upon the development of new productive relations (a new economic structure) in order to create the conditions for removing this birthmark, the twentieth-century formula accepted and built upon this self-orientation by insisting upon a so-called "socialist principle" of distribution to individuals on the basis of their contribution. If people in this stage are inherently self-oriented, then according to this logic the most important thing is to ensure that they are provided the necessary economic incentives to induce them to work well.
No matter that Marx had already stressed in the Critique that from the outset and as the new society developed, a different distribution principle would increasingly prevail; no matter that he rejected a focus upon the right of distribution as an equivalent for one's activity as "a right of inequality" and as a one-sided view of producers, treating them "only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored"; no matter that he declared that it is "a mistake to make a fuss about so-called distribution and put the principal stress on it" (as opposed to focusing upon the mode of production)—all that the twentieth-century interpreters took from Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program was their conclusion that distribution in accordance with contribution is necessary in the socialist stage!45
Transition with Capitalism's "Dull Instruments"?
How precisely, though, does this "socialist principle" go beyond the economic, moral, and intellectual "birthmarks of the old society" to get to the higher stage of communism? If "right cannot be higher than the economic structure of society," is it possible to proceed along a socialist path without changing economic relations among the producers? The twentieth-century answer was that development of the productive forces in the socialist stage, supported by material incentives, creates the conditions for abundance. And, in communism as that system of abundance, the labor of people would become "so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their ability" and that this abundance would allow a person to take freely "according to his needs."46 New people, in short, emerge as a "trickle-down" effect of the development of the productive forces.
One would search in vain, however, for any suggestion from Marx that it is possible to get to a future stage of abundance by trying to build upon a defect inherited from capitalism. Indeed, the second product characteristic of producing under these conditions points in precisely the opposite direction. Since the owners of the "personal condition of production, of labor power" want as much as possible for their property in an exchange with society, they look upon labor as a means to obtain articles of consumption, and if they do not get what they consider their entitlement (the equivalent), they offer less labor. Alienated labor to obtain alien products, alienation from other members of society, and alienation from the socially owned material conditions of production, and thus potentially their theft as a means of securing more articles of consumption. Could abundance ever be reached under these conditions? If alienated labor leads to constantly growing needs to possess alien products, can there ever be an end to scarcity?
Lost in genuflection to the "socialist principle" is any understanding of how the particular relations of production in the so-called socialist stage may produce cultural development and consciousness compatible with the restoration of capitalism. As Che Guevara warned in his Man and Socialism in Cuba, reliance upon material self-interest is a dead end:
The pipe dream that socialism can be achieved with the help of the dull instruments left to us by capitalism (the commodity as the economic cell, individual material interest as the lever, etc.) can lead into a blind alley. And you wind up there after having travelled a long distance with many crossroads, and it is hard to figure out just where you took the wrong turn.47
Indeed, once you accept and rely upon individual material interest as the lever, the solution to all that ails you is clear: use the lever more. From this perspective, the source of economic problems must be (as Gorbachev explained) "serious infractions of the socialist principle of distribution according to work."48 The point is simple: if you try to create the new society by building upon its defects, what it has inherited from the old society, rather than building the new society, you are strengthening the elements of the old society. By elevating the right to an equivalent (that "right of inequality") to a "socialist principle" that must be enforced, the concept of a separate socialist stage undermines the building of socialism as a process.
"Real Socialism": The Soviet Model
Understanding the theoretical departure from Marx's concept of socialism is important—especially for those who seek to understand the alteration in the Marxist legacy. Far more significant, though, in shaping the inherited view of socialism has been the experience of concrete socialist experiments in the twentieth century. Drawing upon what was then called "the rich experience of countries that have successfully built (or are building) socialism," the concept of "real socialism" emerged in the 1970s in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for the principal purpose of distinguishing the existing system there from theoretical or abstract concepts of socialism.49 "Real socialism" refers thus to the Soviet Union and countries which accepted, with variations, the Soviet model.
That model appeared attractive (especially in poor countries) because the Soviet Union succeeded in combining its large rural population with state-directed investments to build an industrial base and achieved substantial increases in the standard of living—and all in the context of external hostility. However, by the early 1960s, the deficiencies of that model became increasingly apparent—so much so that Che predicted the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union.50
Certainly the Soviet model explicitly rejected capitalism—in particular for its inherent tendency to generate unemployment, inequality, and insecurity. Thus, characteristic of "real socialism" was its emphasis upon full employment (and its protection of workers from dismissal), subsidization of necessities, protection from price increases, and the promise of future increases in the standard of living. These clear benefits for workers were part of a "social contract" in which workers in return acquiesced in the direction of the party and state over the workplace and society.
Despite those benefits (now a source of nostalgia in the countries that have restored capitalism), however, that social contract precluded the development of rich human beings. Characteristic of the model of "real socialism" is the conviction of the party/state that it alone knows how to build socialism, that it alone can see the whole picture and that, accordingly, it alone must lead. The perspective is that of the orchestra conductor who believes that spontaneity and the absence of predetermined unity produces disaster, that without direction there would be chaos and that, accordingly, the working class must be prevented from making mistakes.
Thus, in the workplace, it was not the workers who decided. Rather, it was "the powerful will of a being outside them" that determined how and what to produce. Nor was there an end to the separation of thinking and doing and the subordination of the individual to the capitalist division of labor; rather than developing the capacities of workers, "real socialism" produced "a fragment of a man," one degraded and alienated from "the intellectual potentialities of the labor process." Further, protagonism within the workplace and society that might permit the simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change was discouraged. Transmitting its decisions downward through official social organizations (and marginalizing social activity outside these), the party/state precluded the opportunity for the working class (in the words of Rosa Luxemburg) "to make its own mistakes and learn in the dialectic of history."51
After all, why follow such an uncertain and indeterminate path when the party/state could guide society correctly? Given the existence of juridical state ownership of the means of production (equated with socialist relations of production), the central task (as set out in the official theory) was to develop the productive forces and thereby to ensure passage to the stage of abundance in which distribution would be in accordance with need and labor in accordance with desire.52 Very simply, characteristic of "real socialism" was the premise that the circumstances of workers and workers themselves would be changed under the direction of the party/state.
Of course, this is precisely the perspective Marx rejected in his Theses on Feuerbach! Those who propose to change circumstances for people, he explained, forget "that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society."
What was lost in "real socialism?" In an obvious reference to what was missing in the Soviet model, Che commented about Cuba in 1964: "For the first time in the world we have established a Marxist, socialist system, that is congruent, or approximately congruent, with one that puts man at the center, that speaks about the individual, that speaks about man and his importance as the essential factor in the Revolution."53
Consider what happens when Marx's key link of human development and practice (that "coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change") is forgotten. Missing from "real socialism" was protagonism of the working class—protagonism in the workplace, protagonism in the community, protagonism throughout society. The result was predictable: alienation in the workplace, low productivity, and the desire for alien products; the result was "apathetic, thoughtless, more or less well-fed instruments of production." "Real socialism" did not merely fail to produce rich human beings; its second product was a working class with neither the will nor the strength to prevent the restoration of capitalism. That path is a dead end.
Reinventing or Restoring?
President Chávez of Venezuela was determined not to follow that path and insisted upon a rupture with the model of "real socialism." Explicitly rejecting the Soviet experience as state capitalism, he declared in January 2005 that "we have to reinvent socialism"; and, in subsequent months, he called specifically for the invention of socialism for the twenty-first century. "We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project, and a path," he insisted, "but this must be a new type of socialism, a humanist one, which puts humans and not machines or the state ahead of everything."54
At the core of his view of socialism for the twenty-first century was Chávez's stress upon the key link of human development and practice. "Socialists have to be made," he explained on Alo Presidente in 2007. "A revolution has to produce not only food, goods and services it also has to produce, more importantly than all of those things, new human beings: new men, new women." Agreeing with Che's point about the necessity of simultaneously developing productive forces and socialist human beings, Chávez insisted that the only road was practice: "We have to practice socialism, that's one way of saying it, have to go about building it in practice. And this practice will create us, ourselves, it will change us; if not we won't make it."55
Precisely because he understood the importance of revolutionary practice, Chávez stressed the development of the communal councils where people transformed both circumstances and themselves, calling those councils the cells of a new socialist state. And, it is why, in his last reflection (when already seriously ill), Chávez stressed the absolute necessity of building the communes ("comuna o nada") and argued that capitalist workplaces with their built-in hierarchical social division of labor should be replaced by one that involves the full participation of the associated producers and an appropriate means of coordination (and thus "radically different" from the organization of both the capitalist economy and the post-capitalist variety "presented deceivingly as 'planning'").56
For Chávez, the road was protagonistic democracy, protagonistic democracy in the workplace and community as the practice which transforms people. However, it is essential to grasp that this is not a reinvention. Rather, socialism for the twenty-first century is a revolutionary restoration—the return to Marx's understanding of socialism. This renewed vision (as reflected in the "elementary triangle of socialism") once again puts human development, the full development of human potential at the centre. It insists that:
(1) Everyone has the right to share in the social heritage of human beings—an equal right to the use and benefits of the products of the social brain and the social hand—in order to be able to develop his or her full potential.
(2) Everyone has the right to be able to develop his and her full potential and capacities through democracy, participation, and protagonism in the workplace and society—a process in which these subjects of activity have the precondition of the health and education that permit them to make full use of this opportunity.
(3) Everyone has the right to live in a society in which human beings and nature can be nurtured—a society in which we can develop our full potential in communities based upon cooperation and solidarity.
That renewed vision is desperately needed now because it can once again move people to struggle against capitalism and to "reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project, and a path."
- ↩Karl Marx, "First Outline of the Civil War in France," in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On the Paris Commune (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971), 149–50, 154; see Michael A. Lebowitz, Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 193–95.
- ↩Heinz Dieterich, interview with Cristina Marcano, Rebelión, January 2, 2007, http://rebelion.org. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi in MRZine March 1, 2007. In his talk at the 2005 World Youth Festival in Caracas, Dieterich stated that three objective requirements to construct a socialist economy are mathematical matrices (e.g., input-output tables), "complete digitalization of the economy," and a computer science network between the main economic organizations.
- ↩The explicit link between protagonism and human development in the Bolivarian Constitution is unique among twenty-first-century constitutions in Latin America. See the discussion of the Bolivarian Constitution in "The Revolution of Radical Needs: Behind the Bolivarian Choice of a Socialist Path," in Michael A. Lebowitz, Build It Now: Socialism for the 21st Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006).
- ↩Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3 (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 302, 304.
- ↩Karl Marx, Grundrisse (New York: Vintage, 1973), 488.
- ↩Marx, Grundrisse, 325.
- ↩Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1977), 772
- ↩Marx, Grundrisse, 488, 541, 708.
- ↩Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, vol. 2 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Press, 1962), 24.
- ↩Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 5 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), 4.
- ↩Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, 305, 332–3, 342.
- ↩Marx, Grundrisse, 494.
- ↩Frederick Engels, "The Ten Hours' Question," in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 10 (New York: International Publishers, 1978), 275.
- ↩Karl Marx, "Russian Policy Against Turkey.—Chartism," in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 12 (New York: International Publishers, 1979), 169.
- ↩Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 548, 643, 799.
- ↩Marx, Grundrisse, 488.
- ↩Marx was emphatic, too, that capital destroys not only workers but also nature. Although a society can bequeath the earth "in an improved state to succeeding generations," capitalist production "only develops the technique and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker." Marx, Capital, vol. I, 638.
- ↩Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 988.
- ↩Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 548.
- ↩Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 425.
- ↩Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 799.
- ↩Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (New York: Vintage, 1981): 178; Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 447.
- ↩Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 619.
- ↩Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 24.
- ↩Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 614.
- ↩Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1861–63, in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 30 (New York: International Publishers, 1988), 191.
- ↩For a discussion of the three sides of the social triangle and its logic as an organic system, see Michael A. Lebowitz, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), chapters 1–4. Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, in Collected Works, vol. 6 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), 506.
- ↩Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 6, 167; Marx, Grundrisse, 99–100.
- ↩See, for example, the discussion of this problem with respect to Yugoslav self-management in Lebowitz, The Socialist Alternative.
- ↩For a discussion of the processes involved in planning from below, see "The State and the Future of Socialism," in Michael A. Lebowitz, The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2015). While some may not wish to call this set of institutions a "state," because these are society's "own living forces" and not "an organ standing above society" but "one completely subordinate to it," it does not matter if they prefer to call these articulated councils a non-state or the "Unstate," as long as all agree that socialism as an organic system requires these institutions and practices in order to be real. Karl Marx, "First Outline," 152–53; Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 30.
- ↩In socialism as an organic system, "every economic relation presupposes every other in its [socialist] economic form, and everything posited is thus also a presupposition, this is the case with every organic system." A slight paraphrase of Marx, Grundrisse, 278.
- ↩Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 23.
- ↩Marx, Grundrisse, 278.
- ↩V.I. Lenin, "Our Revolution," in Collected Works, vol. 33 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965).
- ↩Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 504.
- ↩Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program.
- ↩Karl Marx, "The Civil War in France," in Marx and Engels, On the Paris Commune, 68–73.
- ↩Karl Marx, "First Outline," 155–56.
- ↩Marx, "First Outline," 154–55.
- ↩Marx, "The Civil War in France," 75.
- ↩One of the "birthmarks of the old society," Marx understood, was that initially there was only a partial passage beyond the "narrow horizon of bourgeois right." Although the material conditions of production were now common property, workers remained at the outset the "owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power." Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 23, 25.
- ↩Marx, Grundrisse, 171-2.
- ↩Marx, Grundrisse, 172-3.
- ↩V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), 112–16.
- ↩Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 24-5; Lebowitz, The Socialist Alternative, 70–72.
- ↩Lenin, State and Revolution, 115.
- ↩Carlos Tablada, Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism (Sydney: Pathfinder, 1989), 92.
- ↩Michael A. Lebowitz, The Contradictions of "Real Socialism": The Conductor and the Conducted (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012), 138.
- ↩Richard Kosolapov, Socialism: Questions of Theory (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979), 8, 11–2, 482.
- ↩See the discussion of Che's critique of the Soviet Manual of Political Economy in Helen Yaffe, Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), chapter 9.
- ↩Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism? (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1962), 108.
- ↩In fact, development of the productive forces became the answer to all questions—not only how to move from one stage to another but also how to proceed through a single stage. What became important were matters such as the output of steel, the percentage of economic activity owned by the state—quantitative data meant to measure the advance of socialism. This perspective was so pervasive that the great intellectual question became whether a country with a low level of economic development could become socialist or whether it would have to wait—and wait.
- ↩Che Guevara, cited in Yaffe, Che Guevara, 231.
- ↩Cleto A. Sojo, "Venezuela's Chávez Closes WSF with Call to Transcend Capitalism," January 31, 2005, http://venezuelanalysis.com; Lebowitz, Build It Now, 109.
- ↩Alo Presidente, episode 279, March 27, 2007.
- ↩Hugo Chávez Frias, Golpe de timón (Caracas: Ediciones Correo del Orinoco, 2012). Translated as "Strike at the Helm," April 1, 2015, https://monthlyreview.org.


text:
Today's release of the Chicago Federal Reserve National Activity Index (CFNAI) indicated that national economic activity slumped significantly in May with the index declining to -0.63 while the three month moving average fell to -0.05.
The CFNAI is a weighted average of 85 indicators of national economic activity collected into four overall categories of "production and income", "employment, unemployment and income", "personal consumption and housing" and "sales, orders and inventories".
The Chicago Fed regards a value of zero for the total index as indicating that the national economy is expanding at its historical trend rate while a negative value indicates below average growth.
A value at or below -0.70 for the three month moving average of the national activity index (CFNAI-MA3) indicates that the national economy has either just entered or continues in recession.
It's important to note that at -0.05 the current three month average index value is indicating very weak growth.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The Review
The Paris Review No. 54
"I do not want to be remembered. These are dehumanizing times—it's best to be forgotten": An interview with Jerzy Kosinski.
A movie-picture outline by James Ivory, Michael O'Donoghue, and George Trow.
Stories by Gail Godwin and Harry Mathews. Poems by Allen Ginsberg and Ron Padgett.


text:
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This place goes by multiple names some of them are Central District, Chung Wan or Choong Wan and Cantonese. Central was known as Hong Kong's central business quarter which was thought to be included in the Victoria City. It is located on Hong Kong Island's north shore in Hong Kong. It is situated right across the Victoria Harbor if you approach it coming from the Tsim Sha Tsui, which is the southmost point of Kowloon Peninsula. Headquarter of numerous multinational corporations offering financial services are established in this region.
The government headquarters, Consulate generals and consulates of various countries are located here. Due to being nearby the Victoria Harbor, Central was a quite significant location with respect to trading and financial businesses. It has been maintaining its impression since the British Colonial Period back in 1841. After China was given sovereignty in 1997, it became an administrative Centre and is progressing well. It was previously known as the Heart of Victoria City but it's been quite long since anybody's called it by that name.
The Western and Western District take ownership of the area during their council elections along with its equivalent western districts. To name, Sheung Wan, Kennedy Town. Sai Wan, Shek Tong Tsui, Mid-levels and Sai Ying Pun are some of them.
Hong Kong is considered as one of the most intriguing cities in the world. For all the expats and fake designer brands, you'll find a bustling hub with a cultural undertone that's unmistakably Chinese.
The tourist sites in Hong Kong are quite superlative. An evening stroll up one of the island's hills – Victoria Peak being the classic route - will give you the chance to take that timeless Hong Kong skyline photo, while you can garner a similar experience in velvety luxury by heading for cocktails in the trendy, scraper-topping sky bars. A trip across the harbor on the iconic star ferry gives another angle on the skyscrapers & the Symphony of Light show; if you prefer to ogle the cliffs, the Ocean Park Cable Car gives a terrifyingly steep view down the forested hillsides into Deep Water Bay.
There are plenty of bargains to be found amongst the jostling crowds, with early mornings reputably the best time to grab them. A dawn bowl of juk – rice porridge – makes the perfect sunrise pep up, while later in the day you can indulge in steamed pork buns and – for the courageous – a warm bowl of she gang, snake soup. Elsewhere, there are countless temples and museums to explore, and even a horse racing circuit and theme park to take in.
Of course, it's not all about the city. Hong Kong's countryside – especially the beautiful outlying islands – has a growing reputation amongst hikers, bikers and climbers as an inspiring an accessible spot to indulge. Boat trips take you to surprisingly secluded island beaches, where harbors full of flaking boats crawl out to sea and the extensive bird life helps you forget the city's only an hour or two away. Don't miss the exhilarating Ngong Ping cable car to Lantau island, giving unparalleled views of the giant Buddha, and take a trip to the Po Lin monastery for some peace and spirituality.
Hong Kong's an iconic city, and from sampling food from the night stalls to stocking up on Chinese medicine and designer brands at Stanley Market, there's plenty of exhilarating, culturally diverse encounters to be had. Then, of course, there's Jackie Chan…..and ~ Disneyland! yoohoo!! The electronic market is good but the prices are close to European union so not found occasionally cheaper.
Hong Kong is a beautiful city with something to do for every age and type of traveller. Public transportation is excellent and is accessed using the "Octopus" card. Travel times between different parts of Hong Kong rarely exceeds one hour.
The natural language is Cantonese, but everyone in the tourist areas speaks enough English to convince you to eat their food or purchase their goods.
The food is inexpensive and delicious, but dietary restrictions are discouraged if you want to be submerged in the full experience. There really isn't anything like the small corner shops that sell beefball or tofu on a stick. It is also crucial to try the sugar cane juice (green bottle).
Shopping designer brands are near the tourist traps in Tsim Sha Tsiu or Central, but these price ranges are similar to those found in New York City. Underground shopping for cheap and fun gifts should be bought in one of the street markets. The shopping for specific genres are especially convenient. There are streets devoted to cars, Gundams, silver, watches, shoes, etc. Prices are generally the same, but certain shops have special supplies. It also encourages sales to form bonds with customers to return to their services.
Exchange rate fluctuations can have a considerable impact on your trip budget. If your home currency has appreciated in value in the recent term over the currency of your destination you are likely to find the place inexpensive.
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Do you know of anything else about the enviroment that makes you happy to come to Hotel Panorama By Rhombus? If it's a city or neighbourhood are there any climatic, or microclimatic features that you could tell others about. If the location is a building or place, then can you describe it maybe as "sun-lit", or "cold in the mornings". We'd love you to contribute - why not let us know in the drop box below
Graphic showing average weather in Hotel Panorama By Rhombus in Celcius and Centimeters (Change to Farenheit and Inches)
Month | Temp °C | Rainfall Cm | Temp °F | Rainfall Inches |
Jan | 14.9 | 32 | 58.8 | 12.6 |
Feb | 14.8 | 46 | 58.6 | 18.1 |
Mar | 17.2 | 80.3 | 63 | 31.6 |
Apr | 20.9 | 143.5 | 69.6 | 56.5 |
May | 24.7 | 303 | 76.5 | 119.3 |
Jun | 26.7 | 408.6 | 80.1 | 160.9 |
Jul | 27.4 | 388 | 81.3 | 152.8 |
Aug | 27.1 | 387.1 | 80.8 | 152.4 |
Sep | 26.5 | 292.1 | 79.7 | 115 |
Oct | 24 | 122 | 75.2 | 48 |
Nov | 20.3 | 42.9 | 68.5 | 16.9 |
Dec | 16.8 | 28 | 62.2 | 11 |
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Neuropathy Explained
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Think of giving not as a duty but as a privilege.
– John D. Rockefeller
You are a good person. You feel bad when other people are sad; you try not to laugh when someone trips; you're fond of puppies.
Now, maybe you're not rolling in cash. Most of us have some debt, and we're all trying to build our savings. But you've got 10 bucks to spare, and there's some disturbing shit going down in the world. Perhaps you've heard.
The surprisingly good peoplethe ones who are feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and pulling small children out of harm's waythey could probably use that 10 bucks more constructively than we could. Give it up, and bask in the warm glow of self-satisfaction.
1. Southern Poverty Law Center started out as a small civil rights law firm in Montgomery, Alabama, and grew into a well-known center for tolerance. They sponsor tolerance-education programs, fight white supremacists in court, and track hate groups throughout the U.S.
Ten bucks in their pockets: fight evil
Ten bucks in our pockets: wineglass charms
2. The Carter Center is a non-partisan organization that works to alleviate human suffering, and they have one of the least-annoying mission statements I've ever seen. Among other points, they pledge not to 'duplicate the effective efforts of others' and to '[address] difficult problems and [recognize] the possibility of failure as an acceptable risk.' They're for peace, world health, and democracy. Coincidentally, I'm also a big fan of those things.
Ten bucks in their pockets: thwart corruption, fight social inequities in the Western Hemisphere
Ten bucks in our pockets: ticket to The Perfect Score
3. Heifer International gives an animal to a needy family to help feed them or sustain the family economicallya cow, pig, duck, buffalo, some bees, you name it. The family signs a contract saying they'll give the first female offspring of their animal to another hungry family. They also agree to teach their neighbors how to care for the animal.
Ten bucks in their pockets: milk and honey for hungry people
Ten bucks in our pockets: olive-oil mister
4. Habitat for Humanity finds a family that needs a house, helps them build it, and then lets them purchase the house at cost with no interest paid on the mortgage.
Ten bucks in their pockets: build a house every 26 minutes
Ten bucks in our pockets: a lovely bud vase
5. Mine Action Group is dedicated to solving the problems caused by leftover landmines and unexploded bombs. Problems like how those things tend to blow up at hideously inconvenient times. The group locates, clears, and destroys leftover weapons so those weapons don't destroy the lives of children who accidentally play too close.
Ten bucks in their pockets: protect lives
Ten bucks in our pockets: heart-shaped pancake molds
6. Wings for Kids is an after-school program for 240 elementary-school kids in South Carolina. The organization's focus is on 'emotional competence,' meaning they teach the kids empathy, self-awareness, and how to negotiate relationships and manage their emotions. If we give them some money, maybe they'll let all of us in.
Ten bucks in their pockets: help little kids develop emotional intellect
Ten bucks in our pockets: new eye shadow!
7. Helping Hands trains capuchin monkeys to help quadriplegic people in their daily lives. I am not making this up. We're talking about real, live trained helper monkeys. The monkeys feed people, pick up things they've dropped, operate lights, and generally provide a pair of hands and some company. All this, plus they're friendly little monkeys!
Ten bucks in their pockets: monkey helpers!
Ten bucks in our pockets: chili-cheese poppers
8. WaterAid provides safe water and basic sanitation to 15 countries in Africa and Asia. Thanks to them, some of the poorest women and children in the world no longer have to walk miles for water, freeing up time for them to generate income or attend school. WaterAid also builds latrines in communities with open sewage systems.
Ten bucks in their pockets: safe drinking water
Ten bucks in our pockets: Cranberry Chutney scented candle
9. ProLiteracy Worldwide teaches adults how to read. They offer literacy programs and publications that are distributed to schools and libraries all over the world. Their work touches 45 developing countries and the United States.
Ten bucks in their pockets: teach 350,000 people how to read in a year
Ten bucks in our pockets: Girls Gone Wild: Spring Break III
10. Big Brothers Big Sisters provides one-on-one mentoring for at-risk kids from ages 5 to 18. This greatly decreases the odds of them skipping school, using illegal drugs, and generally becoming little punks. It's the oldest and largest mentoring program in the United States.
Ten bucks in their pockets: friendship for 200,000 kids
Ten bucks in our pockets: ironic Mickey Mouse T-shirt


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Toward Quantitative Scenarios of Climate Change Impacts in Switzerland
The CH2014-Impacts report presents the results of a concerted effort of 15 Swiss research institutions to describe impacts of climate change in Switzerland quantitatively. Please use the below links to download the report and summary. Data from individual impact studies are available from the data page on this website.
Full report * (English, pdf, 49 MB)
Full report *, high resolution (English, pdf, 73 MB)
Download by chapter
How to cite this report:
CH2014-Impacts (2014), Toward Quantitative Scenarios of Climate Change Impacts in Switzerland, published by OCCR, FOEN, MeteoSwiss, C2SM, Agroscope, and ProClim, Bern, Switzerland, 136 pp.
* Please note that the color scale Fig 7.1 was corrected compared to the printed version.


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A Road to Recovery
Jason Davis
In response to Europe's biggest growth shock in a generation, the European Union (EU) council agreed on the outline of the "Recovery Fund"[1] to help cushion the EU's economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
After four days of negotiations, marking the second longest European Union (EU) summit to date, the EU Council finally agreed on the outline of the Recovery Fund. The Recovery Fund itself is EUR 750 billion which equates to 5.5% of 2019 EU GDP. Grants have been reduced from the initial proposal of EUR 500 billion to EUR 390 billion, however, this was mostly at the pan-European level, while grants within the core Recovery & Resilience Fund were actually increased. At the same time, loans have been increased from EUR 250 billion to EUR 360 billion and will only go to sovereigns where it would actually reduce funding costs.
The main beneficiaries are therefore peripheral and Eastern Europe. In fact, over four years, we can expect Italy to receive up to 12% of GDP in loans and grants, greatly helping reduce the funding needs resulting from the pandemic.
Percent of GDP over four years
This episode is particularly impressive. Although a fiscal union is a long way off, the combination of joint issuance, joint taxation and net transfers from the stronger to weaker sovereigns is a powerful response, and certainly a step in that direction.
Political risks will remain in the Eurozone and may flare up again as countries haggle over their recovery plans or argue over when to re-impose some form of fiscal prudence. That said, at the very least, this agreement removes the tail risks of a Eurozone break up and should make Euro assets structurally more attractive. If the Eurozone can find a way through the COVID-recession, then surely it can handle anything thrown its way. The Eurozone has gone from being as vulnerable as its weakest member, towards becoming as strong as its aggregate balance sheet.
Of course there were some concessions to get a deal over the line. Importantly, rebates were increased to keep the frugal Northern European countries happy. Over 7 years, these sum to approximately EUR 54 billion. This reduces the net transfers within the Eurozone, but not by much:
Percent of GDP (grants minus GDP weight)
Combined with an ECB that is buying EUR 1.2 trillion of bonds this year alone, the first implication for portfolios is that Eurozone spread risk has a very powerful backstop. We remain structurally positive periphery in portfolios with room to add further on any cheapening as the supply returns after the summer.
The second implication is that a lot of supply will be coming to the market in the next few years. The EU needs to issue EUR 850 billion, which represents 40% of the current AAA stock of bonds outstanding. All else equal, this should lead to an underperformance of European core duration relative to higher yielding countries with steeper curves.
AAA Debt Outstanding (nominal, fixed)
Despite some watering down of the plan, the details are still very positive and represent a big moment for EU solidarity. There have been ample opportunities over the past two decades for the Eurozone project to fail, and each time, Europe's leaders have found a way to end the impasse.
[1] Note the EU has not passed the Recovery Fund but agreed on the fund in principle. It still needs to be passed by all parliaments.


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Inglorious Basterds is a 2009 war movie that centers on two assassinations against Nazi leaders by a group of Jewish U.S. soldiers and a young French Jewish cinema owner. Here, the title of this film poster resembles Inglorious Basterds Font namely, EgyptianEF Extended Bold.
If you are into video making, short films, or movie making, designing a poster as a marketing strategy can be very fruitful for your upcoming videos or movies. So, you can use these fonts for attractive lettering in your video or movie poster.
How to download and use the Inglorious Basterds Fonts?
You can download Inglorious Basterds Fonts from Font Sherlock. The site will redirect you to the front page where you will find the Character Map of Inglorious Basterds Fonts. In order to understand the glyphs and typeface of this font, a character map can be very helpful. Also, you can use the "Preview" Feature to see the snapshot of the desired text on the font. Lastly, follow the steps below to download and install the font in your local system and use it :
- Click the "Download" button below.
- The page will redirect you to the Inglorious Basterds Font page.
- Click the Download button to get the zip file of the font.
- Extract the zip file.
- Install the font file and use it.


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Privacy Policy
Effective: February 26, 2018
This Privacy Policy (the "Policy") applies to the NextDayFinancial.com website (the "Website"). It tells users ("you") of the Website and the services it provides about the information collected by the Website and how the Website uses and shares this information.
The Information NextDayFinancial.com Information We Collect
NextDayFinancial.com collects both information that may identify a particular individual ("Personally Identifiable Information") and anonymous information that cannot be associated with a specific individual ("non-Personally Identifiable Information") from or about users of its websites.
Personally Identifiable Information
NextDayFinancial.com collects Personally Identifiable Information when you provide it through your use of the Website, such as by completing one or more stages of an online registration (a "Registration") requesting a loan offer from a lender participating in NextDayFinancial.com's lender network (a "Lender Partner") or by sending questions to NextDayFinancial.com via the Website. The types of Personally Identifiable Information NextDayFinancial.com collects include: name, physical address, telephone number, social security number, email address, date of birth, driver's license number and state, information about home ownership, citizenship status, employment information, active military information, amount and frequency of pay checks, and information about your banking account.
Non-Personally Identifiable Information
The types of non-Personally Identifiable Information that NextDayFinancial.com collects (either directly, through the use of "cookies," or through the use of a third party tracking system) include: the IP address of the computer making the request; your browser type and language; access times; information about areas of the site visited by users of the site; information about the links that users may select to visit on the site. IP addresses are not usually associated with your personal computer, but with a portal through which you accessed the Internet. IP addresses are not linked to Personally Identifiable Information. A "cookie" is a piece of information a website sends to your computer while you are viewing a website to remember who you are without personally identifying you.
NextDayFinancial.com may share this non-Personally Identifiable Information with its suppliers and other third parties for the purpose of website statistical and trend analysis. This information is not linked to any Personally Identifiable Information.
Information Collected by Third Parties
NextDayFinancial.com may allow third parties, including advertising partners and personal loan lenders, to display advertisements on the Website. These companies may use tracking technologies, including cookies, to collect information about users of the Website who view or interact with these advertisements. NextDayFinancial.com does not provide Personally Identifiable Information to these third parties.
How We Use Personally Identifiable Information
NextDayFinancial.com uses the Personally Identifiable Information you provide through the Website in order to deliver the products or services you have requested; provide you with customer support; communicate with you by email, postal mail, telephone, and/or mobile devices (including through short messaging services, or "SMS") about products or services that may be of interest to you either from NextDayFinancial.com, Lender Partners, other third party lenders, NextDayFinancial.com's marketing partners, or other third parties; display advertising tailored to your interests or background; perform data and statistical analysis on use of the website; enforce NextDayFinancial.com's terms and conditions, and perform any other functions otherwise described to you at the time NextDayFinancial.com collects the information.
NextDayFinancial.com may review and use your financial information and your social security number to connect you with Lender Partners or other third party lenders with whom NextDayFinancial.com has a business relationship. NextDayFinancial.com may also review your financial information and social security number to verify your identify and protect against possible fraudulent transactions.
Sharing Your Personally Identifiable Information
NextDayFinancial.com may share your Personally Identifiable Information (including, without limitation, your financial account information and social security number) with Lender Partners and other third party lenders with whom NextDayFinancial.com has a business relationship. These third party lenders may use your Personally Identifiable Information to offer you a personal loan or to communicate with you about other business or marketing offers. In addition, NextDayFinancial.com may share your Personally Identifiable Information (including your financial account information and social security number) with unaffiliated third party marketers and list managers with whom NextDayFinancial.com has a business relationship.
Any third parties with whom NextDayFinancial.com shares Personally Identifiable Information may have their own policies which describe how they use and disclose your information. Those policies will govern the use, handling, and disclosure of your information once NextDayFinancial.com has transferred or shared it with those third parties as described in this Policy or the NextDayFinancial.com Terms and Conditions.
NextDayFinancial.com will disclose your Personally Identifiable Information in response to a subpoena or similar investigative demand, a court order, or a request for cooperation from a law enforcement agency or other government agency; to establish or exercise our legal rights; to defend against legal claims; or as otherwise required by law. NextDayFinancial.com will disclose your Personally Identifiable Information when NextDayFinancial.com believes disclosure is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activity, suspected fraud, or other wrongdoing; to protect and defend the rights, property, or safety of NextDayFinancial.com's parent company, its employees, its website users, or others; or to enforce the Terms and Conditions or other agreements or policies.
In addition, NextDayFinancial.com may transfer Personally Identifiable Information to an entity acquiring all or substantially all of its parent company's stock or assets.
Links to Third Party Websites
NextDayFinancial.com may provide links or automatically redirect you to third party websites that do not operate under this Policy. For example, if you click on an advertisement presented on our site, you may be taken to a website that NextDayFinancial.com does not operate or control. You should review the privacy statements and terms of use of all third party websites you access. These third party websites may independently solicit and collect information from you. On occasion, those third party websites may provide NextDayFinancial.com with information about your use of those sites.
The Website's policies, content, information, promotions, disclosures, disclaimers and features may be revised, modified, updated, and/or supplemented at any time and without prior notice at NextDayFinancial.com's sole and absolute discretion. Changes to this Policy will be posted on the Website and NextDayFinancial.com will revise the "Effective" date at the top of this policy. You should review this Policy each time you access the Website. If NextDayFinancial.com makes any material changes in the way it collects, uses, and/or shares personal information that may impact you, NextDayFinancial.com will notify you by prominently posting notice of the changes on this website.
Children's Privacy
The Website is not intended for use by anyone under the age of 18 or the age of majority in your jurisdiction. NextDayFinancial.com does not knowingly collect Personally Identifiable Information from children under the age of 18.
NextDayFinancial.com has put in place physical, procedural, and technological security measures to help prevent unauthorized access to and improper use of the information NextDayFinancial.com collects online. For example, only authorized employees and authorized third parties are permitted to access Personally Identifiable Information, and they may do so only for permitted business functions. No website or Internet network can be completely secure. Although NextDayFinancial.com takes steps to secure your information, NextDayFinancial.com does not guarantee, and you should not expect, that your personal information, searches, or other communications will always remain secure.
Accessing Your Personally Identifiable Information
If you would like to review and/or request changes to the Personally Identifiable Information that NextDayFinancial.com has collected about you through your use of the Website, please contact NextDayFinancial.com by writing or sending email to the addresses below.
Privacy Rights of California Residents: Companies that collect Personally Identifiable Information from California residents and disclose such information to third parties (including affiliated entities) for marketing purposes must, in response to a request by a consumer, either (1) provide a list detailing the categories of information shared and the entities to which such information was provided, or (2) provide a mechanism by which a consumer may opt out of having his or her information shared with third parties. NextDayFinancial.com has elected the second option, and you may opt out by completing one or more forms on our Opt Out page.
California residents are also entitled to know that they may file grievances and complaints with California Department of Consumer Affairs, 400 R Street, Suite 1080, Sacramento, CA 95814; or by phone at 916-445-1254 or 800-952-5210; or by email to [email protected].
If you have questions, comments, or concerns regarding our Privacy Statement, please write to us or click below to contact us.
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Material Disclosure. The operator of this website is not a lender, loan broker or agent for any lender or loan broker. We are an advertising referral service to qualified participating lenders that may be able to provide amounts between $100 and $15,000. Not all lenders can provide up to $15,000 and there is no guarantee that you will be accepted by an independent, participating lender. This service does not constitute an offer or solicitation for loan products which are prohibited by any state law. This is not a solicitation for a particular loan. We do not endorse or charge you for any service or product. Any compensation received is paid by participating lenders and only for advertising services provided. This service and offer are void where prohibited. We do not control and are not responsible for the actions of any lender. We do not have access to the full terms of your loan. For details, questions or concerns regarding your loan please contact your lender directly. Only your lender can provide you with information about your specific loan terms, current rates and charges, renewal, payments and the implications for non-payment or skipped payments. The registration information submitted by you on this website will be shared with one or more participating lenders. You are under no obligation to use our service to initiate contact with a lender, apply for credit or any loan product, or accept a loan from a participating lender. Loan transfer times and repayment terms vary between lenders. Repayment terms may be regulated by state and local laws. Some faxing may be required. Be sure to review our FAQs for additional information on issues such as credit and late payment implications. These disclosures are provided to you for information purposes only and should not be considered legal advice.
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