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When it comes to marriage legal for all, communist has no say.
Communist also has no say on religion.
The Communist Party is committed to full equality

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What is the Communist Party's stance on LGBTQ equality?

The Communist Party is committed to full equality - including equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. The party opposes any effort to deny employment, housing, adoption privileges, or marriage rights to any person or couple on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Homophobia and the oppression of LGBTQ people, like racism and sexism, only serve to keep working people divided from one another and block movements for social and economic justice. Communists work together in coalition with other progressives to fight for a future in which diversity in all its forms is valued and celebrated.

Though our organization was slow to recognize the importance of LGBTQ struggles in the past, individual Communists have been at the forefront of this movement from the very beginning. It was Harry Hay, a former Communist Party member and union organizer in New York's department stores, who founded the first gay organization in the United States - the Mattachine Society.

Today, we are proud to celebrate this heritage and stand together with the LGBTQ community in its struggle for equality.
C.J. Atkins Opinion Editor, People's World

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What is the Communist Party's stance on LGBTQ equality?

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The Communist Party is committed to full equality - including equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. The party opposes any effort to deny employment, housing, adoption privileges, or marriage rights to any person or couple on the basis of sexual orientation or gender i...

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Communist believe that it should be the government who provide health benefits.

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Right to life: PRO-CHOICE, PRO-LIFE: "WE ARE BOTH"

Freedom of Choice:
Support Roe v. Wade:
Cases of Rape/threat to mother:

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Right to bear arms:  The Party does support the Second Amendment rights to gun ownership, and also support common sense restrictions on that right.
Any limitations:  limitations but not bans.
Background Checks:  yes background check is crucial
Guns in public places Ohio:

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Q I am curious as to the stance of the Communist Party USA on gun ownership?

A The Communist Party doesn't have a "stance" or "official position" on gun ownership. We do support the Second Amendment rights to gun ownership, and we also support common sense restrictions on that right-limitations but not bans.

We have members who are hunters, own guns, and appreciate that right, and others who are appalled by the level of gun violence in our society. We think that registration, waiting periods, limits on the KINDS of guns that can be sold AND MANUFACTURED can help with the extreme levels of gun violence against people, and the many fatal accidents that occur each year when children play with guns and end up causing horrific damage and death.

Having lots of guns around by itself won't change the political balance of forces. The existing power structure, including police and armed forces, will always have more weapons and firepower. We see revolution as basic change brought about by the actions of millions of people; it is a fundamentally democratic act. We don't see revolution as inherently violent. We seek a peaceful revolution. At the same time we recognize that historically many ruling classes, rather than giving up their power, resort to violence against people's movements, and we support the right of those movements to engage in armed self-defense.

This I think represents our general feeling about guns, not the "official position" nor a unanimous one.

Author

Marc Brodine is Chair of the Washington State CPUSA. A former AFSCME member and local officer, he is currently an artist and guitar player. Marc writes on environmental issues and answers many web site questions. Marc is the author of an extended essay on Marxist philosophy and the environment, titled Dialectics of Climate Change.

For democracy. For equality. For socialism. For a sustainable future and a world that puts people before profits. Join the Communist Party USA today.

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Q I am curious as to the stance of the Communist Party USA on gun ownership? A The Communist Party doesn't have a "stance" or "official position" on gun ownership. We do support the Second Amendment rights to gun ownership, and we also support common sense restrictions on that right-limitations but not bans.

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10. Any Issue affecting RMEC/ High School Students

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10. Any Issue affecting RMEC/ High School Students

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Funding for public schools too increase the quality of education is an issue that encompasses RMEC and its High School Students. Not only this but the denial of education is another issue that may be seen in certain areas, which is frowned upon. The communist party see's this as an issue and chooses to act against it by. Introducing subtle yet drastic changes to educational systems. They believe that federal assistance is necessary as well as improvement on the teaching curriculum and teachers. They also believe in breaking barriers for students, social ones generally.

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The
Historic Importance of Public Education

Public education
represents one of the major achievements of the historic struggles of
American workers and their allies. The courageous efforts of African Americans
during and after Reconstruction and since then, and of organized labor
throughout the period of the Industrial Revolution to secure quality education
for the children of working Americans, resulted in the establishment of
public schools throughout the country. Public schools have provided opportunities
to the children of American workers to improve their life opportunities
that would otherwise have been denied them. The fact that approximately
90 percent of school age children in our country attend public schools
provides evidence of the significance of this achievement.

At this time,
for too many of these children, however, especially in urban and rural
areas, the promise of public education is being denied. An advanced state
of crisis afflicts their schools, due primarily to lack of adequate funding,
which in turn results from the failure of the state and federal governments
to meet their obligations to the children of America's workers. A patchwork
of inequitable local property tax schemes, which survive despite numerous
court decisions calling for change, allows the "savage inequalities"
now widely recognized across the country to continue-and worsen.

Public education,
our nations proud achievement, is under attack. Chronic underfunding exists
as governments at all levels boast of surpluses amassed by "prudent
fiscal management" and sweeping cuts in social services. In order
to avoid meeting their responsibilities to their people, these governments
too often have capitulated to education proposals originating with ultra-right
forces such as "school choice" vouchers, charters, contracting
out, and other privatization schemes. In fact, the problems caused by
lack of resources provide fertile ground for these forces to spread their
dangerous proposals. Vouchers or charters appear to frustrated parents
as an escape route for their children.

The attack
presently is aimed primarily at the largest urban school systems where
majority African American student populations struggle in racially isolated
circumstances against the harshest conditions. The targeting of majority
African American school districts exposes the racist nature of the attack
on public education. It also points up the need to renew the struggle
for school desegregation. Segregated education holds back the building
of unity of the working class. Where integration has been tried, it has
worked to the benefit of students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.

In these
circumstances, we are encouraged by the developing broad support for public
education across the nation led by organized labor and civil rights organizations.
The Communist Party USA therefore resolves to support, actively participate
in and offer leadership to the struggle to defend, expand and improve
public schools nationwide through:

-a "New
Deal" for public education, which would make available massive federal
assistance to guarantee quality education for all from pre-school through
higher education;

-drastically
reduced class sizes and student to teacher/staff ratios at all levels,
especially in early childhood programs and in the lower grades;

-removing
barriers of geography, class and race, such as between city and suburbs
which deny America's youth the opportunity to benefit from our nation's
diversity;

-a multicultural
curriculum which enables the youth of our country to become aware of the
destructive influence of racism and bigotry and of the contributions made
by the diverse peoples of our country and the world;

-teacher
training programs that include building sensitivity to bigotry based on
race, class, religion, or gender;

-a comprehensive
curriculum, which includes more than simply "the basics" and
gives attention and respect to the diverse areas of human knowledge;

-building
unity and promoting organization among those who work in the schools,
those who send their children to the schools, and those who attend the
schools-that is, among school workers, parents and students.

With this
program our Party will be able to make its unique and critical contribution
to the struggle for public education at this crucial time.

Author

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The Historic Importance of Public Education Public education represents one of the major achievements of the historic struggles of American workers and their allies. The courageous efforts of African Americans during and after Reconstruction and since then, and of organized labor throughout the period of the Industrial Revolution to secure quality education for the children of working Americans, resulted in the establishment of public schools throughout the country.

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9. Economy/Taxes (Lower taxes give businesses more money to hire more workers? Increase taxes, esp. for businesses/wealthy, so government can provide more jobs/services?)

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9. Economy/Taxes (Lower taxes give businesses more money to hire more workers? Increase taxes, esp. for businesses/wealthy, so government can provide more jobs/services?)

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The economy lies in the hands of the authoritarian leader. The communist party is against or opposes capitalism (which they believe serves the higher classes). A major downfall however is the power that one leader has on such decision which could lead to unfair advantage. The common people dont pay taxes or heavy taxes to pay for government funded institutions. They believe in taxing large corporations which would be better for the common people. But what quality is given to the services of the people? That is truly a difficult one.

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Donald Nausbaum | Getty Images

The landmark regulations will change the relations of Cubans with their government and are a signal that market-oriented reforms, launched since President Raul Castro succeeded his brother, Fidel Castro, in 2008, are here to stay.

The recently published code constitutes the first comprehensive taxation in Cuba since the 1959 revolution abolished just about all taxes.

In the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country's main benefactor, the Cuban government imposed a few scattered taxes, but mostly preferred to maintain low wages so it could fund free social services.

The government's free market reforms introduced over the last two years, are designed to encourage small businesses, private farming and individual initiative, along with plans to pay state workers more. Under the new tax code the state hopes to get its share of the proceeds.

The government also envisions replacing subsidies for all with targeted welfare, meaning that the largely tax-free life under a paternalistic government is on its way out.

"This radically changes the state's relationship with the population and taxes become an irritating issue," said Domingo Amuchastegui, a former Cuban intelligence analyst who lives in Miami and writes often about Cuba.

The new code covers 19 taxes, including such things as inheritance, environment, sales, transportation and farm land, various license fees and three contributions, including social security.

A sliding scale income tax - from 15 percent for earnings of more than 10,000 pesos (about $400) annually, to 50 percent for earnings of over 50,000 pesos, (about $2,000) - adopted in 1994, remains in the new code for the self-employed, small businesses and farms, but it also includes a series of new deductions to stimulate their work.
Tax Deductions
For example, farmers may deduct up to 70 percent of income as costs, and small businessmen, who are taxed by income not profit, up to 40 percent, plus various fees and secondary taxes they pay.

A labor tax of 20 percent will gradually be reduced to 5 percent by 2017, and small businesses with five employees or less are exempt.

Eventually all workers will pay income taxes as well as a new 2 percent property tax, but both measures are suspended until "conditions permit" them to go into effect.

The government admits, with an average pay of about 450 pesos per month, or $19, many workers do not earn enough to make ends meet.

"They collect taxes for all these things around the world, it's normal," said Havana economist Isabel Fernandez.

"But here we face two problems. On the one hand we are not used to paying for anything and on the other our wages are so low we can't spare a single peso," she said.

Under the old system, large and small state-run companies, which accounted for more than 90 percent of economic activity, simply handed over all their revenues to the government, which then allocated resources to them.

The reforms call for large state-run businesses to be moved out of the ministries and become more autonomous.

Under the new tax system they will pay a 35 percent tax on their profits, but can take advantage of a myriad of deductions ranging from amortization and travel to sales taxes, insurance and environmental protection.

Many smaller businesses will become cooperatives or be privately leased and taxed based on income.

The state-owned Cuban National News Agency said Cuba had studied the tax systems of a number of other countries, including several with capitalist economies.

"The experiences of China, Vietnam, Venezuela, Brazil, Spain and Mexico were taken into account, but they were refined to the particularities and conditions of the island," the new agency said.

The new code is not etched in stone - it can be amended each year as part of the annual budget passed by the National Assembly, and temporarily modified for different reasons by the executive branch of government.

"Like the reforms, it is a work in progress, a work that has barely begun and will take time to put in place," said a Western businessman who has worked in Cuba for almost two decades.

But, he added, "this is of course a major step forward toward the 21st century and a modern state."

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Donald Nausbaum | Getty Images The landmark regulations will change the relations of Cubans with their government and are a signal that market-oriented reforms, launched since President Raul Castro succeeded his brother, Fidel Castro, in 2008, are here to stay. The recently published code constitutes the first comprehensive taxation in Cuba since the 1959 revolution abolished just about all taxes.

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8. Affirmative Action (Make up for past disadvantages? Best person for the job? Should race, gender, disability, etc. be considered for employment/College enrollment?)

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8. Affirmative Action (Make up for past disadvantages? Best person for the job? Should race, gender, disability, etc. be considered for employment/College enrollment?)

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The Communist party does not really focus on affirmative action and they are nothing alike, unlike some may think. They focus on their person of choosing or liking for whatever job. The single authoritarian has all control of social and economic instances. So they choose who is best for the job/should be considered for college enrollment or who makes the decision and on what basis. Usually not on that of race, gender, and disability (In these common times); The past was a little different. They dont take into favor the minorities or vice versa.

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(In this article, Prabhat Patnaik demolishes the "efficiency argument" which claims that affirmative action, including reservations, lowers the "efficiency", or quality of output, in any sphere where it is practised. The basis for an analytical objection to affirmative action on the basis of the "efficiency argument", he says, can only be provided by a rejection of the presumption of even distribution of talent across social groups, in favour of an alternative presumption that either talks of the all-round superiority of some groups over others (which underlies racialism and concepts like the herrenvolk), or talks of different groups having different kinds of talent (which is supposed to justify the caste system). If both of these alternative presumptions are rejected as they should be, then the analytical objection to affirmative action on the efficiency argument not only disappears, but becomes its very opposite, namely an argument for affirmative action.)

Both the defenders and the critics of affirmative action, of which reservations are one particular instance, are paradoxically in agreement on one point, namely that such action lowers quality of output in any sphere where it is practised. For example if there is affirmative action practised in the recruitment of doctors, then it lowers the quality of the service offered by the medical profession; if there is affirmative action in the appointment of university teachers, then it lowers the quality of teaching, and so on. But while the proponents of affirmative action argue for it on the grounds of "social justice" and "equity", the opponents profess to be unwilling to pay the price of a lowering of quality for the sake of such "social justice".

The statement that even the proponents of affirmative action believe that it would lower the quality of output may appear surprising at first, but is nonetheless true. Indeed the very phrase "social justice" which has been advanced to defend reservations since the days of the V.P. Singh government in India, bears out this claim. Underlying the demand for affirmative action is a desire for "justice", which is supposed to override all other considerations. Implicit in this view is the admission that these other considerations are likely to be pulling in the opposite direction, i.e. there is an implicit recognition of the existence of a cost in terms of loss of quality. Or putting it differently, since silences are also eloquent, the exclusive emphasis on "justice" unaccompanied by any critique of the "efficiency" argument, is tantamount to an acceptance of the "efficiency" argument.

Since any such loss in the quality of output is equivalent to a reduction in the amount of output being produced, measured in terms of "rupees' worth ", it follows from this perception that in a society with affirmative action, the vector of outputs in any period is smaller, for any given endowment of inherited material and human resources, than in the absence of such action. This loss in output represents therefore an "inefficient" outcome. Affirmative action in other words is commonly conceded to produce an inefficient outcome, even when it is defended in terms of "equity" and "social justice". I call this argument, which is based on a comparison of the output vectors in two situations, the "efficiency" argument.

The purpose of the present paper is to examine this "efficiency argument" in some detail. It argues in particular that the efficiency argument, far from going against affirmative action, actually supports it. In other words, the argument for affirmative action is not merely that justice overrides efficiency, though that is a perfectly legitimate position to take, but that both justice and efficiency demand it.

I

Since intelligence, or talent, is evenly distributed in any society across different groups, i.e. the probability distribution of talent within each group is pretty much the same for all groups, it follows that an inordinately large representation of one particular group, or a few particular groups, in any profession is ipso facto efficiency-lowering, for then it must be the case that less talented members of the "privileged" groups would be getting accommodated in lieu of more talented members of the less privileged groups. Putting the matter differently, as long as the selection from within each group is on the basis of talent, then the closer the group-wise composition of the members of a particular profession is to the group-wise composition of the population as a whole, the greater would be the level of efficiency in the economy. Efficiency enhancement, in other words, requires not only that selection be made on the basis of talent, but that the composition of the recruits into any sphere should be as close as possible to the composition to the population as a whole. Since in practice selection made on the basis of talent appears nonetheless to throw up recruitment patterns whose composition is unrepresentative of the population as a whole, then, given the presumption that talent is evenly divided among groups in a population, the only reason for it must be the existence of some implicit or explicit barriers to entry that certain groups must be facing. As the objective of affirmative action is to enable those groups which face barriers to entry to overcome these barriers, it follows that affirmative action is efficiency-enhancing.

The question that immediately arises is: what exactly constitutes a "group"? Given the analytical nature of the above argument, this question too requires first of all an analytical answer. It is obvious that between two groups, one of which has ten million members and the other ten, the proposition that talent is evenly distributed across groups, is likely to lack general validity. The proposition acquires greater general validity as each group acquires a larger size. A group must have a certain minimum size before it can be said that the distribution of talent within it approximates the distribution of talent for the population as a whole, or the distribution of talent within any other group with a similarly above-minimum size. It can be larger than this minimum size but not smaller, since the very fact of the group being large enough to approximate the distribution of talent within any other group or the population as a whole implies that its becoming still larger will not deprive it of this property. The answer to the question what exactly constitutes a group may then be given in a manner that appears at first sight to constitute circular reasoning but is actually far from it, namely that a group in this argument consists of that conglomeration of individuals the distribution of talent within which is almost exactly the same as in the population as a whole.

The whole debate about affirmative action in the Indian context of course has occurred around social groups, or caste categories. But since these social categories around which the debate has taken place are very large in size anyway, and since the basis for demarcating these categories is such that the presumption about the even distribution of talent across categories remains valid, it follows that these categories qualify to be called groups in the analytical sense we have just defined, in which case we can unhesitatingly assert that affirmative action, such as is proposed in the Indian situation, is efficiency-enhancing.

Affirmative action, it was mentioned above, is meant to overcome barriers to entry. But in a situation where talent has unequal scope across individuals and groups for revealing itself, any selection exclusively on the basis of revealed talent itself constitutes a barrier to entry. In other words the imposition of formal equality in a situation that is fundamentally unequal, acts in an inequalizing manner, i.e. in a manner that attains the very opposite of equality. Affirmative action here must take the form of overcoming the effects of the fundamental inequality, for which it must go beyond formal equality in order to achieve substantive equality. Since the revelation, or expression, or nurturing, of talent takes time, affirmative action may entail some short-term "efficiency loss", but it would necessarily achieve long-term efficiency gain. The short-term "efficiency loss" arises from the fact of violation of the principle of recruitment on the basis of existing "revealed talent"; the long term efficiency gain arises from the fact that the distribution of "revealed talent" changes over time through affirmative action. (The affirmative action required for the "nurturing" of talent, in the sense of bridging the gap between "intrinsic talent" which is evenly distributed, and "revealed talent" which is not, to start with, will in practice entail much more than reservations alone; it will need an additional remedial effort in the form of "bridge courses", pre-requisite courses, special programmes and such like).

But then how can we compare the short-term loss with the long-term gain? If the agency making the choice was characterized by extreme short-sightedness, then the consideration of loss would triumph. The economist Arthur Cecil Pigou had called such short-sightedness "a lack of telescopic faculty". Whether or not individuals are characterized by such a lack of telescopic faculty is itself debatable. Many writers including Joseph Schumpeter doubted this strongly. They denied that individuals had any innate positive rate of time preference in the sense of preferring a unit of additional consumption today to a unit of additional consumption tomorrow if the consumption stream in the absence of this additional unit is otherwise identical between today and tomorrow; they ipso facto therefore also denied that individuals always work with finite time horizons. If individuals do not have such a lack of telescopic faculty, then attributing such a lack to society as a whole of course makes no sense, even when society is seen as a mere agglomeration of atomized individuals. But even if individuals as atomized entities have such a lack, but society is seen not as an agglomeration of atomized individuals but as a supra-"atomized individual" entity, then again there is no reason why society should have such a lack, since society in this sense lives for ever. (Societies of course may actually be hit by calamities, but this fact never enters into their reckoning).

For societies then, the question of having a short-sight, or a lack of telescopic faculty, or even a positive rate of time preference, simply does not arise. Consequently, the long-term efficiency gain in their reckoning should always necessarily outweigh the short-term efficiency loss, since the efficiency loss is transitional but the efficiency gain, once it starts accruing, keeps accruing in every period ad infinitum. It follows then that, as far societies are concerned, their time-horizons must necessarily be always so long that affirmative action for them is efficiency-enhancing.

II

The formal argument for affirmative action advanced so far is curiously reminiscent of the "infant industries" argument for protection from free trade. The basic point about the "infant industry" argument is that the industry can become fully competitive, with equal or even lower costs of production compared to what the current producers in the industry, hitherto located in other countries, have. But to become so it needs time, to outgrow its infancy, as it were. Not to. protect it entails a long run loss of efficiency (if its costs would become lower than what currently prevails); but protecting it entails for a time, when it has not yet outgrown its infancy and hence is uncompetitive, with costs higher than those currently prevailing, a loss of efficiency. The infant industry argument states that such an industry must be protected; the short-run efficiency loss must be suffered for the sake of the long-run efficiency gain, which is exactly the argument for affirmative action, and indeed for reservations.

The infant industries argument is almost universally accepted. But the argument for reservations is not, even though the latter argument is even more powerful than the infant industry argument on at least two counts. First, the infant industry argument is typically an argument for protecting the infant industry of a nation against producers located elsewhere. Even if the eventual cost of production of the national producers will be the same, or of a similar order of magnitude, as the cost of production of producers located elsewhere, and no lower, there will still be an argument for protecting national producers. In other words, an actual lowering of costs relative to what currently prevails internationally is not required for the argument to be valid, and hence an actual lowering of cost is not necessarily postulated. But reservations entail an actual improvement in efficiency once the initial phase is over, because of the presumption of even distribution of talent. Once this presumption is granted, the case for reservations is even stronger than the case for infant industry protection on efficiency grounds. In other words, reservations necessarily improve efficiency in the long-run in a way that infant industry protection does not.

Secondly, which industries deserve infant industry protection is not always clear in advance. Nobody can say with certainty beforehand that the industry that gets infant industry protection will necessarily be able to achieve a level of cost over time that is comparable to what prevails internationally. But on the presumption of even distribution of talent across groups, the target groups for whom reservation should be enforced are quite clearly visible beforehand. True, there are always alternative methods of classification because of which one may arrive at alternative distinctions between the "privileged" and the "excluded", but this practical problem of classification is qualitatively different from the analytical problem arising from the fact that there is no certainty about the target beneficiary not achieving the requisite level of efficiency to justify protection/reservation. But while the "infant industry" argument is universally accepted despite this shortcoming, the reservation argument is not so accepted, despite its being free of this shortcoming.

There is another important difference between the reservation argument and the infant industry argument. An infant industry, assuming it can achieve the requisite level of efficiency, will do so if allowed to come up. In other words, the argument itself postulates that the traverse from high immediate cost to low eventual cost in the case of the protected industry is an automatic process, a result, if you like, of "learning by doing". Protection against international competition for a while is all that is needed for the infant industry to stand up and compete freely when protection is withdrawn. But in the case of affirmative action, as already suggested, reservation will have to be accompanied by a host of other remedial measures to ensure that the innate talent of the beneficiaries manages to get revealed. In the case of reservation in higher education, these measures will include "bridge courses", "remedial courses", more flexible programmes (such as provisions for repeating courses etc.). "Learning" here cannot simply be through "doing". It will have to be additionally provided.

If we think of affirmative action in higher education as a package consisting of reservation together with such remedial measures, then it is difficult to see what analytical objections can be raised against it. There will to be sure be a host of practical problems, of classification, of the possible need for going backwards and having to introduce affirmative action even at a pre-higher education stage, of actually arranging the complementary remedial courses, and so on; but there cannot be any analytical objections on the basis of the "efficiency argument", of the sort that have been raised in India. The only basis for such an analytical objection can be provided by a rejection of the presumption of even distribution of talent across social groups, in favour of an alternative presumption that either talks of the all-round superiority of some groups over others (which underlies racialism and concepts like the herrenvolk), or talks of different groups having different kinds of talent (which is supposed to justify the caste system). If both of these alternative presumptions are rejected as they should be, then the analytical objection to affirmative action on the efficiency argument not only disappears, but becomes its very opposite, namely an argument for affirmative action.

III

There is a second, methodological, objection to the "efficiency argument". This objection is based on the same premise as the one that implicitly underlies the view that "social justice overrides efficiency considerations". Let us look at this objection and in the process make this implicit premise more explicit. When we say that state A of society represents a more efficient point of production than state B, in the sense of entailing, for given endowments of material and human resources, a larger vector of outputs, that fact does not ipso facto make state A preferable as a social state compared to state B. What it means is that the output vector of state A, since it is larger (in the sense of >), can in principle be distributed among all members of a society in a manner such that at least some persons are better off, with none being worse off, than in state B. In other words, in state A everybody's utility can in principle be vector-wise higher than in state B. (In technical economic parlance this is often expressed by saying that the utility possibility curve associated with state A is higher than the utility possibility curve associated with state B).

But to say that everybody's utility can in principle be greater in state A than in state B is not the same as saying that it is actually greater than in state B. In other words, the claim that the output bundle available in state A can in principle be distributed in a manner such that everybody can be made better off compared to state B, is not the same as saying that the output bundle is actually so distributed. If A has two goods, say x and y, in amounts 100 and 80 respectively while B has the same goods in amounts 50 and 50, then clearly A represents a more efficient point of production compared to B, if the initial resource endowments are the same in the two cases. Clearly with the larger output bundle of A everybody can be made better off compared to his or her situation in B. But "can be made better off is not the same as saying "is better off. If there are only two persons in the society 1 and 2, and while the output bundle is shared equally between the two in state B but accrues entirely to l in state A, then clearly 2 is worse off in A than in B. So, even though A is a more efficient point of production, so that everybody can be better off in A, not everybody actually is better off in A.

In all such cases where not everybody is better off in one situation compared to another, the comparison between the two situations requires some kind of a social judgment. (Such a judgment incidentally is also required even when everybody is better off in one situation compared to another, but most would accept the judgment that the more efficient point in this case is socially preferable). It is quite possible therefore that while A is more efficient compared to B, social judgment may be such that B is considered socially preferable to A. A more efficient state in other words is not necessarily the socially preferred state. In a society which places a premium upon "distributive justice", B will be socially preferred to A even though A happens to be the more efficient point of production. This is the sense in which the proponents of affirmative action argue that, even conceding that affirmative action may entail "inefficiency", "distributive justice" overrides "efficiency considerations", and hence affirmative action that will shift society from A to B is justified.

This extremely elementary principle of Welfare Economics would suggest that those who argue against the shift from A to B, because such a shift entails an efficiency loss, must either believe that distribution does not matter, which is nonsensical, or at best represents a value judgment which is socially unacceptable; or that, contrary to first impression, everybody is actually better off m state A than in state B. ("Everybody is better off" here should again be interpreted only in a vector-wise sense, i.e. it should be interpreted as "some are better off with nobody worse off"). Their argument for instance may be as follows: if there is reservation, say in the recruitment of doctors, then the quality of the medical treatment offered by the doctors will suffer, in which case everybody, including those who stand to gain from such reservation, will suffer in their capacity as consumers of such treatment; and what is more, the gain they make as beneficiaries of reservation in recruitment will be more than offset by the loss they make as consumers of such treatment. But if this was the case, then the latter group too (at least some of them) should be opposed to reservation that is ostensibly meant to benefit them. If they are not (and there has never yet been any instance in India of the purported beneficiaries of affirmative action being opposed to such action on the grounds that they would be net losers from it), then ipso facto they must be net gainers from it, in which case the claim that everybody is better off at state A rather than state B must be false.

It follows that the standard argument so often heard in India that reservation is socially undesirable because it will lower quality is invalid, whichever way one looks at it. What the argument refers to is a vector-wise loss in output, which will be socially undesirable (even assuming that we accept the basic Pareto- criterion that a vector-wise increase in the utilities of individuals entails an improvement in social welfare and a vector-wise reduction in utilities a loss in social welfare), only if it entails a vector-wise loss in utilities, i.e. some being worse off with nobody being better off. But since reservations do make some people better off, this vector-wise loss in output (if there is such a loss that is) does not per se entail a loss in social welfare. On the contrary if society values distributive justice, then it entails a gain in social welfare. (There may of course be ways other than reservations for bringing about the same improvement in distributive justice starting from state A, but those are not germane to the argument here).

One of the most remarkable features of the debate on reservations in India has been that such reservations have been presented as being against the social good. But if this had actually been the case, then there should have been at least some members belonging to the social group that is the targeted beneficiary, who should have been against reservations. Those among them who would individually lose from such reservations even if it is for their group might have been expected to oppose it; but there is no such opposition. And if social good is defined in a supra-individual sense, then this argument, if it is compelling, should have persuaded at least some of them to rise above their individual interests and stand for this transcendental social good; but there has been no such instance. "Social good" in short has had no takers among the excluded groups, which suggests that this notion of "social good" has been a self-serving notion advanced by the privileged groups.

IV

Let me pull together the threads of the argument advanced till now. The commonest argument used against affirmative action, which in the Indian context has essentially meant reservations, is that it lowers the quality of output, i.e. causes a vector- wise loss in output in terms of "rupees' worth". A vector-wise reduction in output in any given period, for given endowments of material and human resources, constitutes a loss of efficiency. Hence this argument against affirmative action can be called the "efficiency argument".

There are two basic problems with the "efficiency argument". The first is that a move from one state to another when there is a vector-wise loss in output, i.e. an efficiency loss, is not necessarily socially undesirable. It is only in the case where the loss in output makes some people worse off without making anyone better off that we can call it socially undesirable (though even this entails a value-judgment). But in a situation where the loss in output is accompanied by some becoming better off and some worse, the comparison of social states requires a specific distributive judgment. If the state entailing a loss of efficiency is associated with a distribution of output that is considered socially "better", then this so-called "less efficient" state is socially preferable to the more efficient one. Efficiency in short is not synonymous with being socially preferable when we compare any two states. The "efficiency" argument in the way it is usually presented therefore is a false argument.

The second problem with the efficiency argument is the following. So far we have talked about just one period in which there is a vector-wise output loss. But since talent is evenly distributed across different social groups (each having a minimum size), reservation should have the very opposite effect of increasing rather than decreasing the vector-wise size of output. True, this does not happen immediately, so that the vector- wise output loss argument may hold in the short-run. But as soon as the talent of the recruits belonging to the hitherto excluded categories reveals itself, there should be an output gain relative to the situation prior to affirmative action. This is similar to the infant industry argument for trade protection: a short-run efficiency loss is more than made up by the long-run efficiency gain. In fact one can be more certain about this happening than of any particular infant industry making good. But oddly, while there is universal acceptance of the infant industry argument, there is little acceptance of the argument for reservations as a means of achieving efficiency gains (though for these gains to materialize, reservations have to be backed by a set of remedial measures).

Finally, we must note an asymmetry. While distributive considerations imply that the short-term efficiency loss is not per se a reduction in social welfare, but may constitute an improvement in social welfare relative to the initial situation, the long-term efficiency gain should certainly cause an improvement in social welfare relative both to the short-term situation and to the initial situation. Relative to the short-term situation it would entail ceteris paribus a larger output vector and hence an improvement in social welfare. Relative to the initial situation it will entail both a larger output vector and distributive justice, and hence an improvement in social welfare.

This last point can be established as follows. Suppose the government uses "lump sum" taxes to ensure that between the initial situation and the long-term situation, nobody is worse off. Then the fact of efficiency gain because of the sheer change in the composition of recruitment will make the long-term situation preferable. Now, if income distribution is allowed to change through an adjustment in the "lump sum" taxes, to reflect the change in the composition in recruitment, then this would make the long-term situation additionally preferable on grounds of distributive justice (as long as the change is justifiable on grounds of distributive justice). Affirmative action therefore can be defended on grounds of both efficiency and distributive justice.

(Valedictory Address to the Conference on "Affirmative Action in Higher Education in India, the United States and South Africa", organised by the Programme for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and the Centre for Comparative Constitutionalism, University of Chicago on 19-21 March 2008 in New Delhi. This text of the address is reproduced here with the permission of the author.)

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Affirmative Action and the "Efficiency Argument"

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(In this article, Prabhat Patnaik demolishes the "efficiency argument" which claims that affirmative action, including reservations, lowers the "efficiency", or quality of output, in any sphere where it is practised.

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Abolish: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) described death penalty as “inhuman” and said death penalty should be abolished in the country as it is “arbitrarily implemented” and advocated imprisonment till death in rarest of the rare cases.
Cruel & Unusual punishments:

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7. Immigration (Amnesty? Earned Citizenship? Enforce current laws and deport? Anchor babies? Businesses that hire illegals? 

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7. Immigration (Amnesty? Earned Citizenship? Enforce current laws and deport? Anchor babies? Businesses that hire illegals? 

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The communist party advocates for the rights of immigrants. Thus wishing for their Amnesty and hoping for their allowance of earned citizenship. They wish to win a progressive reform of U.S. immigration laws which protects the rights and interests of both immigrant and U.S.-born workers. They are pro businesses that hire illegals. No specific view on anchor babies but supports them because they are U.S.- born.

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Communist Party Resolves: Immigrant rights is a struggle for democracy

Whereas, Corporate globalization has impacted the economies of the poorer countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America in such a way as to displace millions of workers and poor farmers who have no other option than to migrate to seek work;

Whereas, Faced with this high level of labor migration, wealthier countries such as the United States, France, Italy, Germany etc. have responded with new restrictive polices and the persecution of immigrant workers;

Whereas, In the United States, this has led to particularly vicious legal and extralegal attacks against immigrants, including repressive national, state and local laws, racist anti-immigrant propaganda in the media and even physical attacks including the murder of immigrant workers by racist vigilantes;

Whereas, Organized labor and its allies, including the AFL-CIO, Change to Win and independent unions, have come out in support of new legislation that would legalize the undocumented workers in a framework that protects the rights and interests of both immigrant and U.S.-born workers; and

Whereas, Huge mobilizations of immigrant workers and their allies in 2005, 2006, 2007 and now 2010 have emphasized this important issue; therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Communist Party USA is committed to supporting, joining and helping to build the growing movement to defend immigrants from attack and to roll back far-right anti-immigrant measures such as Arizona's racist, hate-filled SB 1070, and urges all districts and clubs and members to increase their involvement in this vital democratic struggle;

That the CPUSA is committed to participating in and helping to build the broadest possible united movement to win a progressive reform of U.S. immigration laws which protects the rights and interests of both immigrant and U.S.-born workers.
Resolution adopted by the 29th National Convention of the Communist Party USA, New York, NY May 21-23, 2010.

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Communist Party Resolves: Immigrant rights is a struggle for democracy

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Whereas, Corporate globalization has impacted the economies of the poorer countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America in such a way as to displace millions of workers and poor farmers who have no other option than to migrate to seek work; Whereas, Faced with this high level of labor migration, wealt...

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6. Legalization of Marijuana (How would it positively/negatively impact the U.S.?)

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6. Legalization of Marijuana (How would it positively/negatively impact the U.S.?)

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The only stance that communist have pertaining to the legalization of marijuana and other opioids alike. Is that it should be legalized. And stop incarceration for it and other substances and treat addiction medically.
It seems that the communist party does not feel that such drugs negatively affect the U.S. or any other nation alike. Rather they believe the unnecessary incarceration rate is a problem. They believe that making drugs illegal is a problem and could cause social problems for a nation. However, not necessarily being in their realm of focus.

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The illegalization of kratom represents a blow from the capitalist state against individual freedom and a rational drug policy. The only sensible communist policy on drugs is full legalization and medical treatment for addiction.
It has recently been announced the recreational drug Kratom is going to be officially placed on schedule 1 of the controlled substances hierarchy of the DEA, right alongside heroin. Anyone familiar with Kratom knows that it isn't hardcore stuff. While the drug does have addictive properties, it's nothing compared to morphine and the like. Many opiate addicts use Kratom as a safe and legal substitute for opioids that's easier to wean off of. Kratom doesn't have the capacity to repress breathing like opioids do, so it is not a substance one can overdose on, much like marijuana. Yet as of September 30th, this plant is enough to get you a 5 year prison sentence just for possession. While the media panics about an opioid epidemic, a drug that is actually helping people quit opiates is being made illegal! The attitude of the the capitalist state is as paternalistic as ever: how dare you get high, how dare you use an over the counter painkiller that is effective. (Update: the attempted ban has failed as of now.)

The hypocrisy of the drug scheduling system established under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 warrants an article of it's own. What is so galling about this system is the way it attempts to justify itself with scientific objectivity when it is in actuality blatantly unscientific. The act establishes 5 "schedules" or categories of drugs, with schedule 5 being the most benign and schedule 1 being the worst. The benchmarks for declaring a substance a schedule 1 drug are: high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use, and lack of a safe way to use the drug even under medical supervision. Having thus established a superficially objective way to categorize these drugs the federal government immediately went about ignoring it, placing drugs on this list based on the needs of politicians and unelected bureaucrats. The fact that marijuana is a schedule 1 drug (cocaine is schedule 2) tells you all you need to know about the scientific objectivity of this system. A growing scientific consensus, along with basic common sense, is showing that marijuana certainly does have medical uses and is safer to use than even many over the counter drugs.

Moreover the federal government does not simply ignore science which does not suite it's political narrative, it actively prevents research which may yield inconvenient results. Research into the potential medical uses of marijuana were stymied for decades. The potential therapeutic uses of LSD or MDMA remain a mystery because of the difficulty in carrying out objective research. Now the potential use of kratom in treating opioid addiction will likely remain a matter of speculation since research into the subject will likely be made much more difficult. When it does allow studies to move forward it often only allows ones designed to yield a desired result. Several years ago there was a study purporting to show rats overdosing on THC. When one actually looked into the study however it showed the rats were injected with pure THC until they died. Leaving aside the ridiculous method of ingestion (nobody injects pure THC), scaled up for human consumption the amount of THC one would have to consume to OD was the equivalent of smoking a joint the size of a telephone pole in a day. If anything this shows the safety of the drug, but that's not the picture the headlines painted. By stopping or manipulating scientific research into the potential benefits and real harms of drugs the government is not just being shady, it is endangering public health.

The ideal communist position for drugs is simple: legalize them. ALL of them. If you are truly against the drug war you shouldn't make exception even for drugs you wouldn't personally use. This is simply because no one deserves to be incarcerated for experimenting with their brain chemistry. Most banning of drugs in the USA has been associated with racialized moral panics. With opium and marijuana these substances were respectively associated with Chinese and Black Americans. Today moral panics about drugs are usually about "legal highs" like bath salts, drugs that would not be as popular if MDMA, methamphetamine and cocaine were legal.

Beyond moral panics, we should look at drugs rationally. Drugs no doubt have had bad effects on people's lives, but this doesn't happen in a vacuum. In capitalist society we live in a world where we must act as commodities on the marketplace, atomized individuals competing for subsistence. This is a world where our lives become structured around the pursuit of the abstract and intangible thing called "value" where the consequence of failing can be death for some. Life is stressful and the human psych is warped, we suffer from alienation. To deal with this some people turn to drugs, and some abuse them.

For those that abuse drugs, making them illegal doesn't actually reduce the harm associated with that abuse. There is much literature on this topic, and it's a point that's been made enough to not have to repeat. You don't have to be a communist to realize it makes more sense to treat addiction as a mental problem, not a moral failing where one must get a beating from the state for their transgressions.

Not only does making drugs illegal not only make them more harmful, it is also generally an anti-freedom stance. Fears of drugs are largely a result of misunderstandings and not scientific inquiry. As communists we aim for an emancipatory society, one based on the flourishing of human freedom through reason. We know that god will not punish us for sexual acts, and we also know that unsafe sex can have bad (even deadly) consequences. Through rationality we can express our capacities for pleasure, and drugs should be no different. If one wants to explore the highs and lows of drugs, it should an option open to them and be as a safe as possible.

The left doesn't exactly have a perfect track record on this issue; for example there was support for Prohibition for amongst Socialist Party Members USA and IWW members. An argument for prohibition was that it would make workers more disciplined and less prone to domestic violence. Instead prohibition created a whole lumpen subculture of Cartels that was exceptionally patriarchal. "Real Socialist" states have failed to legalize drugs, which of course simply allowed for black markets to flourish more. On the other end, many "zones of autonomy" from the near civil war Italy experienced in the 70s became drug dens. Drugs can and do pose real problems. But the solutions are not illegalization, but rather simply making drugs openly accessible yet regulated for safety needs while making deeper social changes.

People abuse drugs, to escape the alienation of everyday life and its traumas. They also use them purely hedonistically and harmlessly. Sometimes this hedonism is simply an expression of the truly empty pleasures capitalist society has on offer. Sometimes it's good for its own sake. We are aren't moral puritans of any kind. Moral 'decadence' is a scare-word of the bourgeoisie who want to keep society regimented and orderly. The search for some kind of moral "order" in the USA is a thread as old as the republic itself. And it has been an excuse to take away individual freedoms of the populace. There is no "public health crisis" created by kratom but rather a regressive step in drug policy which ultimately punishes the proletariat the most.

Some would say communists should have nothing to say on this issue, that struggles at the point of production should be the point of focus, that issues related to politics not directly connected to this are a distraction. Often this is in the context of avoiding "dividing" workers by being a political partisan, sometimes it is simply a product of theoretical views of certain tendencies in marxism. Either way this economism tries to silence the talk of any form of political oppression than isn't directly related to the workers struggle. Yet this is counter to the Marxist approach. Marxists fight not merely for economic demands but democratic demands that give more rights to oppressed groups and for more democracy and political freedom in society in general. Yet we fight for these demands as marxists, never failing to point out their class dimensions. As Lenin said:
"the Social-Democrat's ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat"
Communists should speak out against and fight against all forms of oppression and authoritarianism when possible, because ultimately we envision a world not simply where workers own their factories but one absent of exploitation and oppression. Marx believed that the proletariat was the class that would fight for communism because it was the class that held the interests of all humanity. By showing that the interests of labor are the interests of humanity, the communist party can lead the struggle for the future of the species itself.

But what exactly can we do about kratom at this point? Sadly at this point the answer is nothing, unless one has much hope in petitioning bourgeois politicians. What we can do as Communists is fight for democratic rights ("win the battle of democracy as" Marx said) when possible or at least when possible show we care about issues such as drug legalization or free speech. Perhaps less people would turn to the libertarian right if leftists had a better record on these issues. Today the right portrays itself as a force fighting against the foes of democracy for free speech, a terrain that cannot be left to the right. If the political right are the mere defenders of democracy then we have lost the battle for democracy, and the image of Communism as Stalinism will be unchallenged.

While we (the Communist League of Tampa) have yet to write a programme (we are hardly at that stage yet) I believe the legalization and regulation of all drugs should be part of the minimum programme as well as immediate release of all drug offenders. Could these demands be won under capitalism? It is possible, but either way communists shouldn't be silent on them and should fight for them when they have the capacity to. This often mean supporting a referendum to legalize marijuana or using electoral reps to challenge drug laws. While we are a far way off from being a party, as a propaganda group we should make crystal clear what the rational and communist position on drugs is.

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The illegalization of kratom represents a blow from the capitalist state against individual freedom and a rational drug policy. The only sensible communist policy on drugs is full legalization and medical treatment for addiction. It has recently been announced the recreational drug Kratom is going to be officially placed on schedule 1 of the controlled...