General update

Hello, all. I wish I had better news this week, but it's all grim.

Britain is pursuing additional massive cuts, the brunt of which are falling on the revenue share allotted to Scotland as punishment for Scotland electing so many progressives. This continues the government's pattern of targeting Scots for revenge- plans for stripping Scottish MPs of voting power (!) in parliament were in this year's Queen's Speech- traditionally written for her by the current government to announce their current plans- and cut after cut has been forced on the entire UK.

Last week, Osborne (Cameron's treasury guy) announced that they're proceeding with privatizing the Royal Mail wholesale, even abolishing the last 30% stake the government was required by law to maintain. Even the BBC has pointed out the striking appearance of insider trading or even outright undervaluing of the Mails that followed the last round of Mail privatizations in 2013, with some of the government's approved buyers making 70% profits within days of the initial sale.

President Obama and Senator Paul have submitted competing schemes to abolish Endangered Species Protection- Obama's plan calls for abolishing all new protections and gradual phaseout of existing ones. Paul's plan calls for setting a five year cap on all protections regardless of species' viability, and requiring the consent of state governors to maintain any protections at all. Obama's plan is obviously more likely to go into effect as a regulatory adjustment, and it is plenty scary enough. Couple this with the administration's renewed love for drilling in the Arctic as well as opening huge new coal reserves to strip mining (containing a total carbon footprint of more then 4 times the reduction which would result from their own energy plan, should it ever even go into effect) showcasing once again the strength of this president's love for the environment.

The Labour leadership contest is continuing to heat up- a new candidate has entered- Jeremy Corbyn, the oldest candidate yet to declare. He's a good representative of what is called “Old Labour”- that is, Labour before Blair made them the second party of privatization and cuts. Seems he got in a bit of trouble for taking too hard a line against Thatcher's evisceration of British manufacturing and imposition of discriminatory poll taxes. He sounds terrific, and I'm reconsidering my support for Creagh. There are four previously declared candidates

Mary Creagh- used to be Labour's spokeswoman on agriculture and the environment (separate from the post of energy and climate change). She seems to be the Ed Miliband in this pack- fairly conservative on a lot of important issues- taxes, union rights, wants Labour to start pursuing the fallacious “aspirational voter” who thinks “I don't want to tax the rich, I'm going to be rich someday because I'm better than everybody else who doesn't make it”, all of which are spectacular strikes against her in my book, but she does have a really strong and active environmental record, and that is the single most important issue in my estimation. She pulled off an impossible victory some years back when her protest campaign managed to convince the Cameron government to abandon its plan to abolish 85% of Britain's forest reserve. I don't know much about Corbyn's environmental record, so unless I find out he's better on it than her, she would probably be my first choice though I do have my reservations.

Edit- as of Tuesday, Creagh has rejected a popular fracking ban. I'm now firmly behind Corbyn.

Yvette Cooper- shadow Home Secretary or something. She seems to be the mainstream of the leadership candidates, and has extensive ties to the last few Labour leadership teams. Pass.

Liz Kendall- the Blairite, shadow health secretary, the privatize everything candidate. Pass.

And Andy Burnham- the union's favourite, and dominant frontrunner- this makes him my third choice behind Creagh and Corbyn.

Penultimately, (back to the states) Wisconsin's budget- already horrendous in its attacks on everything from school funding to the Secretary of State's office, is taking a new tack to ensue ideological reliability in the second state to ban public employees from acknowledging climate change: abolishing tenure and putting university policy and curricula entirely in the hands of governor-appointed boards of trustees. Really, watching Scott Walker go is like Frank Underwood without the stealth. I worry that Underwood references are about to become a new Godwin's Law of political discourse but the extent of Walker's power grab is truly astonishing- from the armed paramilitary goons by mining sites harassing local journalists and staging false-flag “eco-terrorist” attacks to the purge of all opposition from both party and government, to requiring unions to function without charging dues, all while being bankrolled into invincibility by the Koch family, Walker has encountered no meaningful opposition since his first union busting in 2011. No bet on whether he or Bush (architect of the most successful purge of Black voters since 1877) will be the GOP nominee.

Finally, everyone should be calling the capitol switchboard complaining about the administration's Trans Pacific Partnership, which is set to clear a procedural hurdle on Friday with the passage of “trade Promotion Authority” which will suspend all debate on the as yet incomplete measure until after we fully adopt it. Because that makes sense to business. Call at (202) 224-3121 , ask for your House member because the senate already passed this disaster.

This treaty, Obama's current top foreign policy priority, will give corporations in any of the 13 signatory countries standing to sue in a privately run court any member government for loss of profit due to regulation, while eliminating all buy-local ordinances and preferences. The cost in jobs alone will be catastrophic, and this will spell the end, once and for all, of things like GMO labelling, renewable energy standards, and if fully enacted, the minimum wage. The reasoning for supporting it is that apparently it will help us sell our GMO beef easier in Australia, and will make China upset, also we're not supposed to know any of this because the bill is entirely secret- Congresswoman Louise Slaughter D-NY risked serious charges by disclosing this much. Obama has joined forces with the Republicans to deal another body blow to the workers of the world, and render all future regulations subject to a corporate tribunal. Believe in that change.

Solidariät, Genossinnen und Genossen

Designing the Perfect Election system

Designing the Best Election System

Hello, Genossinnen und Genossen.

Last week we discussed the truly abysmal state of democracy (here defined as the proximity between people's votes and the actual result measured in legislature seats) in last month's British election. According to Political Scientist Robert Dahl, Britain is one of only four nation-states among the ranks of democracies and semi-democracies to use simple plurality, single member districts as the method for choosing their legislature. (The United States, France, and Canada are the others). To recap our problems with this system, let's briefly recount the offenses committed by First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) single member district systems

1. Huge numbers of votes are wasted,- extra votes for the winner beyond the second place finisher's total+1 are wasted as the range of outcomes does not change with the margin of victory, and no vote that went to someone other than the winner has any effect on the outcome anyway.
2. A Party/ideology's strength is determined as much by geography and gerrymandering as by popularity, which can produce gross over or under - representation as the case may be- see my previous article for examples from the recent British election
3. The system forces out minor parties by confining representation to groups that command local pluralities, rather than a consistent share of the electorate spread across the entire country, i.e. a plurality party in 1 district gets more representation than a party that has 20% support everywhere but no pluralities. This has the following effects
   1. - A subsidy to the largest one or two parties
   2. Marginalizing the expressed views of even sizable minorities
   3. creating a chilling effect on that expression, by making voting for alternatives meaningless except as a protest
   4. - One positive effect- every locality has at least one legislator dedicated to advancing that region's interests.  This is called Dyadic Representation

It is particularly revealing that whenever we've been in position to dictate another country's constitution (Post-war Japan, Germany, Italy, several others) we've spared them the farce that is our voting system, acknowledging that political science has advanced since our constitution was written.

Now let's talk fixes, and more broadly what our ideal election system would look like. For the purposes of this discussion, I'll be ignoring the titanic power of mega-donations as well as geographic imbalances (equal representation for unequal population) and focusing on how votes are cast and counted.

There are three general alternatives to FPTP

1. Ranked or instant runoff voting- you list candidates in order of preference, the candidate with the fewest first place votes is eliminated, with those votes going to their second choices, and so on until only one candidate remains. Decent at avoiding the chilling effect, but does lead to a lot of shenanigans, as you sometimes have to figure out the optimum sequence to get your slate represented- if there are multiple candidates you could support, you want to make sure one of them isn't eliminated early! This is fun to game out but it doesn't really help us with problems 1 or 2, does it?
   
2. List or Proportional Representation Voting. I LOVE this- it works best the larger the constituency voting as one- ideally the entire country would vote in one election for this to work. Each party nominates a list of candidates in preferential order, up to the total number of seats in the legislature/Congress/Parliament. (Parties can nominate these candidates in different ways, commonly through a national-level primary, which is how I would do it). Some more progressive countries like Sweden require quotas of women's or minority representation among candidates on this list, some even mandating that the subsidized demographic be listed every x spaces on the list to make sure that an unpopular demographic isn't confined to the bottom of the ticket, where they're unlikely to prevail in this case.  There may be other qualifiers- a party may require its candidates to be affiliated with a trade union, or have served in the military, or in some cases profess a particular religion.
   
   
   Voters then cast ballots for this list, and the seats are awarded on a proportional basis among all parties that clear a certain threshold. I've heard of thresholds being set from .4% to 20%, though I'd personally recommend pegging it between 5-15%- too high a threshold fails to address problems 1, 2 and 3, and too low a threshold incentivizes the creation of myriad fringe parties which can then extort the government for their support as seen in the Israeli Knesset and in the Weimar-era German Reichstag.
   Done properly, list voting solves problems 1, 2 and 3. Every vote (except those cast for truly marginal parties) matters equally in determining the composition of the legislature, giving politicians incentives to campaign everywhere, as well as being its own reward, and parties are represented regardless of their ability to win a plurality anywhere. There are a couple of problems with a pure list system though- first, we lose advantage 4- Dyadic Representation.  With a national election, we lose the benefit of each local community having a representative to further local aims in the national legislature.
   The other problem isn't unique to list voting, but it is amplified in this case: you have to choose between denying unaffiliated voters the right to choose candidates IN THE NOMINATING PROCESS, NOT THE GENERAL ELECTION, but still, that is a problem, and undercutting party responsibility by letting people who are unaffiliated with a party's ideas vote on who its candidates will be. Between these two problems, I would move for a closed primary for two reasons (There are ways to mitigate the exclusion of independents, one of which is already happening under a PR system*), and my support for party responsibility- the extent to which a party is about ideas rather than personality, which would be undercut by allowing casually informed independents to influence the nominating process.
   *The list system creates openings for far more views to be represented, so many independents will see something they like under a list system

3. Finally,a multi-member district system. (MMD). This can operate the same as FPTP or Ranked voting except that the top x finishers are awarded seats where x>1. This mitigates problem 1 and solves problem 2 while not sacrificing advantage 4 or alienating independents, but leaves 3 unsolved. Also, being a district system, it is still somewhat contingent on accidents of geography. This is definitely my favorite for incentivizing campaigning everywhere because of the myriad scenarios in which parties should be paying attention to each district. Consider a slightly competitive district (say under a system with 3 members per district) that tends towards one party- the second and third largest parties have every reason to fight for whatever seat they can get in the district, because they can “win” without getting a plurality vote. Or consider a district overwhelmingly loyal to one party- that party has an incentive to compete for every vote, because if they nominate multiple candidates, they might walk away with more than one representative. Meanwhile, if they do this, smaller parties still have a decent shot at a win. Of course, this could be very subject to manipulation (It may conceivably be more valuable to deny a certain opponent a single seat than to win three for your own comrades), so I don't recommend doing this on its own. It is the only meaningful progressive voting reform currently adopted by an American state (Vermont) and has improved the situation a bit. You're still subsidizing the largest parties based on location though, but if you must do a district system, this is how to do it.

Everybody got that? Now we're getting a bit more interesting, with the model first developed by West Germany and Allied diplomats in the late 1940s

Let's hear it for

MIXED MEMBER PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION!- the best system I've seen anybody actually try.

What is it, you ask? Why is our normally calm, emotionally distant hostess describing it so dramatically, let alone talking about herself in a hypothetical third person?

Well, it is just that damn cool, that's why. Basically, the citizens vote in two elections simultaneously, with separable votes. One for a party list, and one for a candidate in a single member district. The threshold in the German example is 5%, and I like it. There are two twists to make this work- there are more legislative seats than there are districts, and any candidate who wins a district is bumped to the top of her party's preferential list, thus mostly preserving the advantages of a PR system while still letting districts do their thing and get dedicated local representation into the legislature. It's also sexy to independents who may want to ticket split, or even vote for a candidate without a party affiliation.

There is still one big problem though- Problem 1. It is very easy for a larger or sectionally stronger party to win more seats than it is entitled to by proportion of the vote. When this happens, the extra seats aren't taken from anyone else, but they are added in as what are called “overhang” seats, thus subsidizing the biggest party.

I think we can fix this- MMPR mitigates problem 1, solves problems 2 and 3, and leaves advantage 4 completely untouched, while giving independents a new option of choosing a party and a candidate who may not necessarily be on the same side. We can further mitigate problem 1 by taking this to the next level, and making the districts be multi-member! This means that each party has incentive to compete for every vote, everywhere for the list, and for any district where they are polling at close to 3^rd place or better. You have all the advantages of a list system, while dividing the advantage won from the district system among the top three parties in a regionally homogeneous country, or far more in a regionally heterogeneous country. What this means is way, way more votes affect the outcome, which means more constituencies will be represented, both in their ability to actually elect people or parties of their choice, and in the attention paid to them during campaign season. What this leaves us with is a system that represents more people's wishes, gives politicians more reason to seek votes in new areas, and can also preserve party responsibility with closed primaries.

To Recap, a Mixed Multi-Member Proportional Representation system (MMMPR patent pending:P), in which voters get to vote twice- once for their district's representative, and another time for a party list would represent far more ideas and constituencies in government, and make sure everyone's vote truly matters in a way inconceivable under FPTP Single Member. We should all do what we can to get this adopted in as many states as possible- it's even possible (not plausible, sadly) that with the repeal of one federal law from 1960, states could choose to do this for their house delegations too!  But even at the state level, there's so much to do, and as long as we're giving this whole democracy idea a shake, we should make sure as many votes as possible actually matter.

Solidarität, Genossinnen und Genossen

I've got to ask... Please comment more!

Occasionally we get a huge spike in readership- for example today, when we hit our entire monthly average pageviews in 2 hours.  This seems odd.

As I see it this has two possible explanations- is something I write being used in a class or other institutional setting?  Or is someone rigging up bots to look at my pages?  It drives up my numbers, either way, but I'd really appreciate it if readers could tell me what you think!  This lets me know how this writing is being used, and what people want to see more of!  Obviously I want to write for people rather than bots. But the numbers are flattering.  Thanks, Genossinnen und Genossen!

Antidemocratic elections

Ok, Hi. You all know how into election design I am, and this last British election, while disastrous in its own right, also provides an opportunity to discuss how fundamentally antidemocratic the single member district, first past the post system used by the US and UK is.  There are many problems with it, and I will try to explain them in an engaging manner. My primary contention is as long as we're giving this whole democracy theory a shake, its goal is to make as many votes as possible have an impact on the outcome. The British/American election system, by which voters are divided into constituencies/districts, each of which elects 1 representative by simple plurality vote, is an obsolete menace to the fair representation of the public's views.

First- location. People can vote all they want in droves- if 10% of the electorate across the country endorses a particular party's agenda, they still get no seats unless they have a plurality in a given location. Meanwhile the largest parties (the most likely to command pluralities) end up winning a far bigger share of the seats than they earn of the popular vote. This is not Democracy!

You can also have the opposite problem cause the same result- a party can overwhelmingly win one district by more than they need to carry it, but reap no additional benefits from doing so. This is currently being displayed in North Carolina, where the GOP legislature has packed over 90% of the state's African-American residents (22% of the population) into just 3 of the state's 13 congressional districts, so their voices don't affect any other elections. That's pretty close to a representative share of the electorate but there are huge advantages for the conservatives in keeping the other districts from having any minority input, and those 3 districts do not need to be as homogeneous as they are to produce these results- the net result is massive under-representation for the Democratic Party, as only these three majority minority districts can elect democratic pluralities. The result? Republicans won (on their best day ever in 2014) 55% of the vote but got 77% of the seats, while the Dems got 45% of the vote but only 23% of the seats. The ratios for each are 1.4 of representation for the Republicans, and .51 for the Democrats. This is not Democracy!

These twin tendencies of First Past the Post and Single Member districts produce a chilling effect on political activity, because the tendency to vote strategically is so strong, not only can minor to moderately sized parties win no representation at all, but this is self-reinforcing, as people become less and less willing to vote for parties that they believe in- 20% of the American public favors Socialism. How many Socialists do we have in Congress? (1- Bernie Sanders). Lemme see, 1:535 is... less than 20%, yet no one will vote to represent their interests because under a first past the post system, how many votes you get is only as important as where those votes came from. This is not Democracy!

What it is instead, is a system in which some people's votes matter and others' do not. If you live in a safe seat, it doesn't matter to the dominant party if they win by the slimmest of pluralities or 80 % of the vote- they're overwhelmingly likely to win there, which means those people get less attention from political figures except during primary season than those living in swing districts. This can be fixed in a lot of ways- multimember districts and list voting (perhaps at a larger level) would both make those votes more valuable. Because there is only one seat to be decided, the scale of victory doesn't matter except for bragging rights- in a multimember district, a strong party would have incentive to compete for all the seats, with a super-high margin of victory divided among several candidates, while a minor party could likely gain some representation by hitting a minority threshold, not needing a plurality. All sides would have reason (at least mathematically) to campaign everywhere and hold the approval of as many constituencies as possible. I'll write more soon about an ideal system, but here's my autopsy of Anglo-American-Canadian-French Democracy. Every other semi-democracy and even the few true democracies has fixed at least some of these problems in their electoral system! We need to catch up quickly.

All British parties except the conservatives, including both the Heroic SNP and the Villainous UKIP are fully behind reform and transition to a list system which would eliminate the necessity for the last row!  We see in this system that the SNP, the Tories, Labour, Plaid Cymru, and most Northern Irish parties get significant subsidies through geography, while the Greens, Libdems,  and UKIP get shafted.  That may be a worthwhile bargain from my usual Socialist standpoint, bu it does mean a huge number of wasted votes on all sides.  I'd rather try to carry the day on skill and persuasion, not an obsolete election system- it's also worth noting that with a list system, Cameron would have needed to go into coalition with UKIP (which he couldn't do without being known as the menace he truly is) or the DUP (which would probably have precluded his current plan to scrap the Irish peace treaty, just sayin').  Either way, the UK would be slightly better off than they are now.  It will take more than fixing a broken electoral system to fix the worrying fact that half of all Britons voted for the Tories or UKIP, though.

British election results- Parties- results from wikipedia

Party Name and my opinion of them	Scottish National Party (Scotland only) Heroes	Plaid Cymru, Party of Wales (Wales only) Good	Greens goodish	Labour centrists	Libdems centrists	Tories evil	UKIP Really, Really evil	Ulster Union Party (N. Ireland only) evil	Democratic Union Party (N. Ireland only) evil	Sinn Fein (N. Ireland only) damned post modern hipsters	Social Democratic and Labour Party (N. Ireland only) good
Votes	1.4 million	180000	1.1 million	9.4 million	2.4 million	11.3 million	4 million	115000.00%	185000	175000	100000
Votes (%)	5.00%	0.60%	4.00%	30.40%	8.00%	36.80%	12.00%	0.40%	0.60%	0.60%	0.30%
Seats won /650	56	3	1	232	8	330	1	2	8	4	3
Seats won (%)	8.60%	0.50%	0.20%	35.00%	1.20%	51.00%	0.20%	0.40%	1.20%	0.60%	0.50%
Vote/seat ratio	25,000 to 1	60,000 to 1	1,100,000 to 1	40,500 to 1	300,000 to1	34,000 to 1	4,000,000 to 1	57,500 to 1	23,000 to 1	44,000 to 1	33,000 to 1
representation %/votes	1.72	.83	0.05	1.15	0.15	1.38	0.02	0.75	2	1	1.6

Clarifications- representation%/Votes%- this last row expresses how far each party deviated from the vote percentage that they earned. Ideally (from a democratic perspective) each number in this lowest row should be 1. Less than that means a party got fewer votes than it would have under a system which counted all votes equally, more than that means they got more.  For example Labour got 115% of what they should have, Greens got 5%, and Sinn Fein actually got the "correct" amount.

What do you think- should I add in the numbers of seats that each side would get under a list system?

Yes

Under a pure list list system (with a bit of rounding), the SNP would receive 32, Plaid 4, the greens 26, Labour 198, Libdems 52, Tories 240, UKIP 78, UUs 3, the DUP 4, Sinn Fein 4, and the SDLP 2.

Solidarität, Genossinnen und Genossen

Thälmann vor Allen!

Vor Allen Thälmann !

Hi, Genossinnen und Genossen!  Trying something new today- I'm proud to present DGBFHTP auf Deutsch!  I'll continue with a regular post later tonight.

Edit- should add in some current news.  Since winning a majority of the seats with less than 40% of the vote (damn you, single member district system!), David Cameron has set out to massively reduce the already punch-drunk British welfare system, and now he is about to abolish the Northern Irish peace treaty that ended the Troubles.  Not sure what he hopes to gain from that- it is part of his plan to install a written Bill of Rights in UK law which is a good idea but going after a popular treaty seems poorly advised to say the least.  I'm very pleased with the SNP's showing (which admittedly also depends on the anti-democratic quirks of First past the post single member districts) they got over 95% of Scotland's seats in parliament with about half of the vote.  I'll analyze this all in n upcoming piece restating my positions on election design in a hopefully sexier, more concise manner than I've yet delivered.

Wisconsin is still in the grip of the Kochs- in a blatantly punitive move, the GOP legislature is cutting Secretary of State La Follette's staff by 2/3 and office space (for the state's records) by 9/10, primarily because La Follette is the only Democrat holding statewide office.  He also had the nerve to go on national television to talk about the punitive campaign being led against environmentalists in general and Tia Nelson in particular- Treasurer Adamcyk and AG Schimel have, in their capacity as members of the Commission of Public Lands, banned the staff of this commission from acknowledging climate change-whether they'll go as far as Florida did and declare acceptance of the science behind Climate Change to be a mental illness requiring psychiatric evaluation remains to be seen.

I'm also keeping an eye on the Labour Party leadership election.  More on that later but for now I can only say "Go Mary Creagh!".  Now on to the article.

      Wenn nur ein Wahlkampf anders ausgegangen wäre, würde so viel besser sein hätte. Die Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands hatte einen so guten, so mutig, so starken ein Vorstand in der späteren Weimarzeit, und es ist so nahe an seiner Ziel gekommen: die Rettung Deutschlands von Faschismus und Kapitalismus. Immer wieder für gewählt mit 100 anderen KPD Reichstagsangehöriger, der Kommunistische Partei worden von der Held der Arbeiterbewegung, Ernst Thälmann geleitet. 

      Ernst Thälmann bleibt ein ewiges Symbol des Deutschen Widerstandes gegen Faschismus. Thämann wünschte und behaupte immer, dass wichtige Betriebe der Arbeiterklasse gehören sollte. Er hat viele Streik-Aktionen geleitet, nach seiner Beteilung in der 1918 Revolution als er wider Willen Wehrdienst für Monarchie machte. Während der 20er Jahre, kämpfte Thälmann mit den Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands gegen den Freikorps und die NSDAP.

      Wenn Thälmann nicht ermordet wäre, würde alles ganz anders sein. Heute gibt es so viele Probleme, die seine Ideen gebrauchen. Thälmann würde nicht mit der Entwicklingshilfe sparen, sondern er benutzte die Wohl der Erste Welt, um alle ArbeiterInnen zu helfen. Strom würde auch wichtig, wenn Thälmann noch leben würde, aber es würde ganz anders verwaltet sein. Der Volkseigenen Betriebe Systemen würden noch zu dem Volken gehören, wie eine Mehrheit Berliner noch wollte. Es würde keine Debatte mehr über Kinderkrippen geben, weil Thälmann wußte und es noch wissen würde, dass es ist sehr wichtig, junge Muttern zu arbeiten zu helfen, um ihre eigene Unabhängigkeit, und die Entwicklung die Wirtschaft.

      Stellen Sie sich vor, wie ein Europa ohne den zweiten Weltkrieg aussehen würde. Es gäbe weder Massenmord noch Bombenangriffen. Thälmann wußte immer das Krieg sich am stärksten auf die Armen und ArbeiterInnen auswirkt, und würde Deutschland in eine friedliche Koalition mit dem Soviet Union gegen alle Rüstungsliefern und Imperialisten einreihen.

      Wenn Thälmann noch leben würde, würden einen neue Mindeslohn für alle ArbeiterInnen einräumen, und es würde auch Arbeit für alle geben. Deutschland leitet schon der Entwickelten Welt in Grüne Technologie, aber mehr muss getan worden, und mit Thälmann als Bundeskanzler, würde es so sein.

     Ein weitere interessante Frage ist ob die Vereinigten Staaten werden so großes ein Militär gebaut hätten wenn es de zweiten Weltkrieg nicht gegeben hätte. Es ist warscheinlich dass es noch schneller hatte passieren können, wenn Deutschland und Russland zusammen gearbeitet hättet, aber vielleicht nicht. Eine Welt ohne Amerikanische Imperialismus wäre ganz anders- Es hätte eine kurzerem vietnamischen Krieg, keine koreasichen Krieg, und keine Besitzungen im Nähen-Osten.

Thälmann würde so viele Problemen lösen, wenn er nur überlebt hätte. Und vielleicht, würde er diese Zielen erreichen, wenn die gebrauchte Einheitspartei zwischen die Sozial Demokraten und der Aktuelle Linkspartei passiert. Aber die Vision Ernst Thälmann lebt trotzem weiter.

Solidarität

German State Feminism since Annexation

      One could draw many parallels, superficial and meaningful, between the current state of the women's movements in Germany and the United States. Which is to say, both look to be in pretty dire straits if we look at the federal level. An examination of movement goals, politics, and political opportunities will reveal some meaningful differences, and show that by embracing bureaucratization, certain German feminist movements have been able to make great strides in regaining some of the protections lost when West Germany (hereafter the BRD) annexed East Germany (hereafter the DDR), and in placing women's rights firmly on the agenda at the municipal and state level. This analysis will be conducted through a political opportunity lens, and will show that bureaucratized “state feminism” is the viable future of the German women's movement.

      Barbara Epstein has thoroughly outlined a pessimistic view of the American women's movement which is far from inaccurate. She points out how despite feminist publicity of the unfair expectation that women perform household and childrearing labor regardless of whether they work outside the home or not, this “second shift” persists, along with increasingly successful attacks on reproductive freedom, lethargic action to improve protections against pay and hiring discrimination, and myriad other defeats.¹ On the same page she also highlights the role elite feminist theory has played in reducing issues in women's lives to the most abstract minutiae, segregated from any concept of relevance or applicability to women's lives or the activist process. She discusses the cultural successes the feminist movement has achieved, mostly spreading awareness of feminism as an idea which seems unlikely to die completely due to the breadth of its ostensible support, but has weakened politically since its heyday.² The parallels cannot be overstated- Epstein links the decline of the American feminist movement to the loss of the world's most prominent alternative to American hyper-capitalism: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The collapse of the DDR government was hastened by the same forces which brought Soviet Socialism down, and women's movements in both the United States and Germany have been hampered by the political discourse forbidding further alternatives. The German women's movement has adapted to this by bureaucratizing as has the American women's movement, but also has infiltrated both of Germany's mainstream leftist movements- the Greens (hereafter die Grünen) and the Left Party (hereafter Die Linke, or PDS when Professor Guenther was writing), which has borne notable results, particularly at the local level.

      Much of the framework for women's rights during the DDR's existence was laid decades beforehand- German feminists were extremely active in radical circles and in war resistance. Germany's greatest woman radical, Rosa Luxemburg was a crucial leader in the aftermath of the 1918 revolution until her martyrdom at the hands of the proto-Nazi Freikorps in 1920, and her writing led the new Communist Party of Germany (KPD) to embrace a detailed platform to undermine the influence of sexism on society, calling for public daycare, hiring protections and educational expansions which would have taken a meaningful chunk out of the “second shift” had they been implemented. Weimar Germany also saw the first organized forays of feminism into film, including the  first film with lesbian protagonists, “Mädchen in Uniform” (previously reviewed on this site) critiquing double standards of behavior and misogynist, natalist ideology. This free, critically thinking climate was one of the Nazi party's many targets, and the surviving Communist leadership seems to have felt a degree of solidarity with other Nazi victims- they would have little other reason to legalize homosexuality and conscientious objection to military service. Under the communist government of the DDR, women were able to make dramatic gains in the field of arts, especially in theatre with works like Franziska Linkerhand, and films like the Legend of Paul and Paula which concern themselves with the struggle of proletarian women in what was still very much a man's world, and music with Tamara Danz of Silly being the most prominent example of feminist rock musicians. Many male artists also devoted considerable attention to what are often considered “women's issues”- the Puhdys released songs about heroic single mothers, loathsome abusive fathers, the absurdity of some performative gender roles, and women's suffering in war zones, to name a few. The ultimate anthem of empowerment however, has to be Silly's “Mont Klamott”- a funky power ballad recounting the rebuilding of Berlin by its women- the “Trümmerfrauen” in the wake of World War II. This is important as evidence of what ideology the regime was willing to support, and as will be demonstrated later, the DDR was extremely supportive of women's personal and professional rights.

      Over the same period as American feminism's decline or abeyance, German politics have taken an increasingly hostile stance towards women's economic empowerment and reproductive freedom, actually starting considerably sooner in the early 70s as the Supreme Court struck down the Brandt government's modest reforms as unconstitutional attacks on religion. The 70s also marked the beginnings of modern globalization, producing a contest between progressive interest in state power over market abuses against the force of globalization making firms and their interests bulletproof. State power has shrunk just as women begin to access it, abetted by the conservative approach of putting some issues out of state reach.³

     Even aside from that, the fact that all German women now live under the BRD has been a major blow to their liberties. There were serious campaigns and mass mobilizations to legalize Abortion in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, bu none of them has yet achieved lasting success. The closest German women have yet come is in the early 70s, when the practice was legalized by the Willy Brandt government. After protests began, the supreme court struck the legalization down. Abortion has now been legalized for reasons of hardship, eugenics(!) health of the mother, or rape or incest cases. The solution was in 1995 to ban other abortions but only punish with mandatory de facto religious counseling⁴, and both public and private insurance is forbidden to cover abortion services. Finally, the dominance of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has led to massive government subsidies to Catholic churches and organizations which conduct the shaming/counseling of women who seek abortions or obtain them without certain doctors' permission, even in heavily protestant or atheist areas. Bavarians have used their outsized influence through the CDU to ban doctors from earning more than 25% income from Abtreibung.⁵ While this is a gross violation of human rights, there have been positive developments arising on other fronts at the local level.

      A large part of the current activity of German Feminism is motivated by the desire to regain the rights women had under the Communist government, which were considerable. Among its highlights were a formal (though hard to enforce) ordinance mandating equal division of household labor, family policy that did not incentivize marriage, a full year of paid maternity leave, and guaranteed time off to care for sick children available to both parents, and an extra day off each month for women to deal with time sensitive errands and childrens' appointments.⁶ (This latter policy obviously contradicts the goal of equal division of domestic labor, but it sure helps more than having a culturally mandated second shift and no day off). Access to healthcare was also markedly improved in the DDR- birth control was fully available for free to single and married women alike, and abortion was also free and legal, if somewhat stigmatized,⁷ and the revolutionary Poliklinik model brought more people access to specialist medical providers than ever before. Culturally, single motherhood was not only tolerated but actively embraced by the state with several popular state-backed musicians both male and female producing songs glorifying their work and openly acknowledging their difficulties. Employment was more available than in the west, but glass ceilings were ubiquitous. Despite this, the DDR set a new world record in 1984 with 83% of women employed outside the home, compared with less than 40% in the BRD.⁸ The advantages of this cannot be overstated- employed women are more valued in a materialist culture, and also have the means to free themselves from abusive situations. Crucially, 90% of DDR children under 3 were cared for in state day facilities, compared to 3% of BRD children⁹. All of this would be destroyed overnight by the western government, whose lack of a minimum wage law until 2014 meant that it was not unheard of for women to be hired in the service sector for only 1 euro per hour¹⁰.

     The opportunity to act came about through great backlash among eastern women and some men at the loss of women's rights under the western regime. Organization efforts were primarily localized, and this arena provided the best opportunities following the legal mandate for each political unit of 10,000 or ore citizens to appoint a high level official as “Bearer of the Equality Objective” (hereafter Die Gleichstellungsbeauftragte, or GB). Nascent women's movements sought to cooperate with and in some cases supply this new leadership of state activism.¹¹ Gleichstellungsbeauftragten are generally tasked with ensuring municipal compliance with gender equality legislation, and for gender mainstreaming city policy- making sure it doesn't have a disparate negative effect on vulnerable populations as well as disseminating information on inequality as well as providing governmental advice and counseling to citizens seeking redress and direction.¹² This opportunity allowed for symbiotic institutionalization- many cities' women's movements became dependent on the political power of these new officials, who themselves relied on information, policy drafts, and activist support from these organizations to remain relevant, ensuring a steady stream of state funding for things like women-targeted job training and domestic violence shelters.¹³ Particularly in Rostock, women's movements' partnering with the local Gleichstellungsbeauftragte has contributed greatly to the resurgence of daycare co-ops, and was crucial in getting city funding for these feminist undertakings.¹⁴

     The leading organization in women's rights in northeastern Germany (at least as of 2005) was the Landes-Frauenrat Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (State Women's Council of West Pomerania), based in Rostock, seeking women's equality in politics, women's political participation, solidarity among women, consolidation of women's interests, improving the representation of women in media, business and politics, reducing long-term unemployment among women, and restoration of support for single mothers. They primarily use petitions and letter writing campaigns to engage at the legislative level rather than street protests, but with strong GB offices in both Rostock and the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, they've accomplished much, especially in the arena of funding for women's shelters and job training.

      We can see examples of successful bureaucratization in Germany, helped by a receptive political climate and elites in the east. The American feminist movement should look to our German sisters for inspiration of how to get back up after the most savage of punches, and look to work at municipal levels to gain access to the health care, childminding, and employment rights Washington would withhold from us.

Sources

Epstein, Barbara. Decline of the Women's Movement, the. From the Social movements Reader, 2^nd edition. Goodwin, Jeff and Jasper, James, eds. Wiley-Blackwell publishing, West Sussex, UK: 2009

Günther, Katja. Making Their Place: Feminism After Socialism in Eastern Germany. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA: 2005.

McCarthy, John D. and Mueller, Carol McClurg. Cultural Continuity and Structural Change. From Women's Movements Facing the Reconfigured State. Banaszak, Lee Ann, Beckwith, Karen and Rucht, Dieter eds. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2003.

1Epstein, Barbara. Decline of the Women's Movement, the. From the Social movements Reader, 2^nd edition. Goodwin, Jeff and Jasper, James, eds. Wiley-Blackwell publishing, West Sussex, UK: 2009., p. 376.

2Epstein, Barbara. Decline of the Women's Movement, the. From the Social movements Reader, 2^nd edition. Goodwin, Jeff and Jasper, James, eds. Wiley-Blackwell publishing, West Sussex, UK: 2009.P. 379.

3McCarthy, John D. and Mueller, Carol McClurg. Cultural Continuity and Structural Change. From Women's Movements Facing the Reconfigured State. Banaszak, Lee Ann, Beckwith, Karen and Rucht, Dieter eds. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2003. p. 231.

4McCarthy, John D. and Mueller, Carol McClurg. Cultural Continuity and Structural Change. From Women's Movements Facing the Reconfigured State. Banaszak, Lee Ann, Beckwith, Karen and Rucht, Dieter eds. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2003. , p. 232.

5McCarthy, John D. and Mueller, Carol McClurg. Cultural Continuity and Structural Change. From Women's Movements Facing the Reconfigured State. Banaszak, Lee Ann, Beckwith, Karen and Rucht, Dieter eds. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2003. p. 235.

6Günther, Katja. Making Their Place: Feminism After Socialism in Eastern Germany. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA: 2005. p. 27

7Günther, Katja. Making Their Place: Feminism After Socialism in Eastern Germany. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA: 2005. p. 27.

8Günther, Katja. Making Their Place: Feminism After Socialism in Eastern Germany. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA: 2005., p. 30.

9Günther, Katja. Making Their Place: Feminism After Socialism in Eastern Germany. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA: 2005. P. 30.

10Günther, Katja. Making Their Place: Feminism After Socialism in Eastern Germany. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA: 2005., p. 74.

11Günther, Katja. Making Their Place: Feminism After Socialism in Eastern Germany. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA: 2005., p. 37

12Günther, Katja. Making Their Place: Feminism After Socialism in Eastern Germany. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA: 2005., p. 38

13Günther, Katja. Making Their Place: Feminism After Socialism in Eastern Germany. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA: 2005., p. 40.

14Günther, Katja. Making Their Place: Feminism After Socialism in Eastern Germany. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA: 2005. P. 75.

Brief thoughts on the British election

Hey all, I'm back after a long absence- sorry about that.  The clock is ticking, and here are my thoughts.  Much more to follow later- and you'll also get to see the thirty pages of mediocrity I call my thesis.

Oh my oh my I am so excited. If Ed Miliband can just stop flipping off the Scottish National Party for a few minutes, he may be Prime Minister and the G7 can finally boast at least one leader who sees stopping climate change as a top priority. That's reason enough for me to be excited, but fivethirtyeight shows it can be done! Labour needs to work with its Irish partner party, the SDLP, as well as both separatist movements, but there is a clear path to a bare plurality (majority if Sinn Fein maintains its abstentionist tradition) which gets easier if Liberal Democrat leader/ Tory stooge Nick Clegg loses his seat.

The problem is Miliband has started saying he would rather see a Conservative government that a Labour government that gets the Scottish National Party' support. This is the SNP that has been busily out-Labouring Labour itself for the last 15 years or more, ever since Alex Salmond undertook the titanic mission of purging the fascists from what was becoming a very ugly organization and turned it into Britain's leading force for democratic socialism. Now under the leadership of his longtime deputy Nicola Sturgeon (architect of the SNP's progressive expansions of childcare guarantees and a staunch advocate for nuclear disarmament and increased public action to improve the economy), the SNP has produced miracles in Scotland with regard to youth unemployment and climate protection. Miliband is the most progressive leader Labour has had in a generation, and if even he can't agree to work with the SNP, it's going to be a very depressing five years.

Watching the leadership debate. Ed is disappointing-he had a chance to stand up and mention British acceptance of refugees as saving his parents' lives. Sad to see he's giving in to the rising tide of xenophobia. No European economy would be even as strong as it is without lots of immigrant labor off-setting declining birth rates

Clegg got in a great line- said Farage was incapable of viewing any foreigner as anything other than a menace.

The star of UK politics right now is SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon- she alone is unafraid of Nigel Farage, and is calling him out at every opportunity on the need to create a welcoming environment for newcomer, saying that Britain is strengthened by diversity. She's equally impressive on war spending and healthcare- she's calling for the abolition of Britain's nuclear arsenal, and has masterminded the re-nationalization of Scotland's NHS with stellar results, and has served in the government that recently expanded free childcare. She is the greatest stateswoman I've seen come out of Britain, and I desperately hope her party will enter the next government, or at least get meaningful policy concessions from Miliband.

Solidarität, Genossinnen und Genossen.