The deafening propaganda blitz of the electoral campaign has finally come an end after almost two years. The ruling class media mouthpieces tell us that this has been the most important election in American history, demonstrating yet again the power of "democracy." This propaganda holds that not only do we have an African American president for the first time in American history, but also, above all, the Obama victory embodies the desire for change.
We are told that the "people have spoken," and that "Washington has listened," thanks to the "wondrous" workings of the ballot box. We are even told that America has now overcome racism and has become a land of true brotherhood.
So now Obama is president. But what does it mean? Obama promised to deliver change, but this promise was nothing but ideological sophistry. The whole campaign was a hypocritical lie, that captured the hopes of a population, and above all of a working class increasingly fed up with misery and war, but still unclear as to its own role in society and as yet unable to dispel the ruling class's mystifications.
The real victor in this election was not the fictitious "Joe Blow" of middle America, not the African Americans who are part of the US working class, but rather the ruling class. It is clear that more of the same and worse will be dished out to the workers, increasing the weight of misery. Obama was not a "peace" candidate. His criticism of Bush was that the latter got bogged down in Iraq, spread the troops too thinly, and left American imperialism incapable of responding adequately to future challenges to its dominance. Obama plans to send more troops to Afghanistan and to be ready to strike back against threats to America's imperialist interests. He was fiercely critical of the Bush administration's inability to respond to the Russian invasion of Georgia last summer. Such a peace-nik, is he!
During the presidential debates, Obama explained that he supports strengthening education in America, because an educated workforce is vital to a strong economy and no country can remain a dominant militant power without a strong economy. In other words, he sees education spending as pre-condition for imperialist domination. Such idealism!
For the ruling class this election has been a success almost beyond its wildest dreams.
It has managed to rejuvenate electoralism and the democratic myth, which has taken so many hits since 2000, especially amongst the younger generation, and left so many people disenchanted with the "system".
The post-election euphoria - the literal dancing in the streets that greeted Obama's victory - is testimony to the extent of this political victory. The impact of the election is comparable to the ideological victory that occurred immediately after 9/11. Back then the bourgeoisie benefited from a surge of nationalist hysteria, binding the working class to the bourgeois state. Today, hope in democracy and faith in a charismatic leader, binds large sectors of the population to the state.
Within the black population the weight of this euphoria is particularly strong; there is now a widespread belief that the oppressed minority has now been empowered. The bourgeois media even celebrates America's overcoming of racism, a ridiculous claim if ever there was one. Almost overnight, the black population in the US has gone from being one of the most alienated, disenchanted sectors of the population, to one that is firmly behind the state, through the persona of the new president-elect.
On the international level, the bourgeoisie has benefited almost immediately from a successful distancing of the new administration from the failures of the Bush regime on imperialist policy and the opening up of opportunities to reestablish American political authority, credibility, and leadership in the international arena.
On the level of economic policy, the new Obama admnistration's ability to carry out necessary state capitalist measures to shore up the system of oppression and exploitation will be unsurpassed. Its rhetoric will be that of providing "relief", whereas what will be provided is the highest debt in US history, and a trillion dollar budget deficit, which is placed on the back of future generations of the working class. Local and state governments are already planning to slash social services and programs because of the economic crisis, at the same time that Obama advocates yet more "bailouts" for major corporations and banks and insurance companies, to be financed out of the sweat of the working class.
Almost startled by its own success, aware that it will not and cannot deliver the changes promised in the campaign, the ruling class is already developing a rhetoric that will help "temper the enthusiasm". We have already heard things like "Obama can only try to straighten Bush's crooked policy" "There's a legacy of mistakes." "Change will not come immediately", "sacrifice will be needed."
In the face of all of this, we stand on the historic positions of our class:
The euphoria cannot last long. The coming austerity programs, initiated in a decentralized manner through local and state governments, will serve as an inescapable impetus to class struggle. The failure of the Obama administration to bring the promised "change" for the better will lead inevitably to disenchantment and seething discontent.
Internationalism Nov. 11, 2008
There is no place to hide now. According to the December announcement by The National Bureau of Economic Research - the agency responsible for dating the beginning of a recession in the US - the American economy has been in recession since December 2007. In other words, for most of last year Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Paulson, the White House and Congress were busy denying the existence of, and trying to avoid, a recession that had already started!
But, we are being told, that is all in the past. Who cares about the Bush administration's faulty sense of reality? This is 2009 and with the new year comes a brand new president predicting that the economy will get worse before it gets better, a new congress ready to act where the past one fumbled, and a great new economic team educated at the most prestigious American institutions, with fresh ideas on how to save capitalism from catastrophe.
As if there weren't continuity with the departing economic officials who represented a national capital that, as a rule, white-washed the gravity of the economic situation and often predicted that there was light at the end of the tunnel; the incoming administration seems to be sticking closer to reality, openly acknowledging that the economy is going through the worst recession since the Great Depression, and that there won't be an easy turnaround in the next couple of years. Why this change of language in the dominant class to which both the departing and incoming politicians belong? It is possible that given the stubborn facts of a developing economic catastrophe, the bourgeoisie economic theorists are finding self-delusion more difficult to achieve? It is more likely that this more truthful language is, above all, a political ploy to give the new administration a better chance to manoeuvre in its quest to reverse the current economic disaster. In particular this policy is geared to temper illusions about a better future spread by Obama's presidential campaign rhetoric about "change."
Yet given the fact that so far the bourgeoisie has failed to contain the crisis, the odds for Obama's success are definitely not good. Nothing in the toolkit used by the doctors of moribund capitalism seems to have worked so far. After uncountable monetary and fiscal gimmicks -the Fed's key interest rate is close to being negative, trillions of dollars have been injected into the financial system, the federal budget deficit has ballooned to over one trillion dollars - the economy just keeps getting worse. The financial system is still in shambles, while the so-called real economy is getting worse by the day. Economic production and commodity sales are rapidly falling, bringing with them a wave of company bankruptcies and a massive upsurge in the numbers of workers being laid off throughout all the sectors of the economy. Although there are still no comprehensive figures about the economic performance during the past holiday season, all estimates predict historically low sales, while the last official figures on unemployment have the unemployed rate running at a 7.2 percent, the highest in the last 16 years. If discouraged workers, who have given up looking for jobs that don't exist, and underemployed workers, who want fulltime jobs but are forced by the economic situation to accept part-time jobs, are included, would put the rate of unemployment and underemployment by some estimates at almost 13 percent.
And even if the US economy is at the centre of the storm, this is not an American event, but rather a worldwide economic crisis. The whole world is plunging into recession. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has forecast that the United States, the world's biggest economy, would suffer a huge 2.8-percent contraction in the fourth quarter of 2008. Germany, the biggest European economy and number three worldwide, officially tumbled into recession last November as output contracted for the second quarter running. France with a miserable 0.1 percent growth in the third quarter managed to just avoid a technical recession. Italy is officially in recession and the Bank of England has said the British economy is also probably already there. Outside the Euro zone, the Japanese economy, the world's second biggest, was predicted to be in recession at the end of 2008 and continue contracting in 2009. According to a recent OECD statement, "the OECD as a whole is currently in recession and will likely stay there for some time."
Furthermore, even the so-called "emerging markets," represented by Russia, China, India, Indonesia and Brazil, that until recently where thought to be somehow insulated from the present financial tsunami, are now also treading water, cutting to size these supposed new upcoming superstars of world capitalism.
These massive convulsions rocking world capitalism the last two years have revived the ghost of the Great Depression of the 1930's. The bourgeoisie specialists themselves are talking about the similarities and many are arguing for the same state interventionist policies with which the bourgeoisie back then responded to the worst ever - up to that time - open economic crisis of its system. One can even read in the bourgeois press descriptions of the return of "state capitalism" referring to the economic policies which all national states are enacting in their attempts to contain the present crisis.
In the face of the current earthquake shaking capitalism throughout the whole world, all governments are responding with a flurry of "bail out" programs, nationalizations and "economic stimulus" packages. These policies, which are in open contradiction with the much cherished "free market" ideology, according to which capitalism can, through "the invisible hand" of the market, resolve its own contradictions, are what some economic commentators refer as a return of state capitalism.
The reality is that state capitalism is not "returning," basically because it never went away. But obviously what revolutionaries consider as state capitalism and what this concept means for the specialists of the bourgeoisie are not the same thing. Thus some general remarks are necessary to make clear what we mean by state capitalism. For us:
With the present economic crisis's similarity to the Great Depression in the foreground, the incoming Obama administration is often being compared to the assent to power of FDR in 1933. Obama's promised "economic stimulus" with its blend of tax cuts and government financed infrastructure programs is being presented as a some kind of "New Deal" that is supposed to "jump-start the economy" and save American capitalism.
However, in our view, whatever the similarities of the present situation to the Great Depression, the situation today of world capitalism is much worse than in the 30's. Of course, in a formalistic sense, the collapse of the financial system, the plunge in production, and the unemployment rate, to mention some economic indicators, were much more dramatically affected in the Great Depression than what we have seen so far today. By 1933, unemployment in America had risen to 25 percent of the work force, domestic production had fallen by more than 30 percent, the stock market had dropped close to 90 percent, and more than a third of the nation's banks had failed. By comparison the present 7.2 percent rate of unemployment and the still positive GDP seem insignificant.
But this is not the whole story. First of all what the specialists often ‘forget' is that the present crisis did not begin in 2007. As we have often pointed out the present economic slump is just one moment in the open crisis of capitalism that started at the end of the 1960's, and that has only gotten worse ever since, despite the "recoveries" which follow the progressively worse "recessions" over the last four decades. Throughout these years -up to now - state capitalist policies have been able to avoid a dramatic collapse similar to that of the great depression, but only at the price of aggravating on the long term capitalism chronic crisis. Thus the ongoing recession -in America and throughout the world - with its dramatic shakeup in the financial system and its apparent unresponsiveness to the government economic manipulation, expresses the reckoning with reality of a system in crisis kept artificially alive by state capitalist policies.
Let us be clear, the policies being prepared by Obama's bright boys are not new, they are variants of the same capitalist policies implemented by the state at one moment or another during the last four decades and that were widely used before during FDR's Depression era. However the failure of this state capitalist economic toolkit to work its magic and keep this moribund system alive is what gives the present world economic slump its true historical significance. And this does not bode well for the Obama's administration. If anything, the margin of maneuver that the state has today to manipulate the economy is far more reduced than what the bourgeoisie had in the 30's. In any case, it is a myth that the New Deal constituted a "solution" to the economic crisis in the 1930's. After managing to contain the devastating spiral downturn initiated in 1929 the New Deal run quickly out of steam. There was another ruinous economic downturn in 1937 and the economy only recovered its pre-Depression era level in the context of the war economy during the slaughter of World War Two. Even the prosperity in the postwar reconstruction period was not just a result of state capitalist policies, but a product of unique set of historical circumstances that can't be replicated today -see the series of articles on the reasons for the post-war prosperity in the last issues of the International Review.
As we have said before many times the reality is that the bourgeoisie has no solution to the crisis of its system and no future to offer society other than an increasingly devastating crisis and more murderous imperialist wars. State capitalist policies have never been able to overcome the crisis, the most that they can do is to provide a kind of last resort life-support for the bourgeoisie's moribund system.
The solution to the crisis rests on the historical overcoming of capitalism and with it of society's class divisions and exploitation. It is the historical responsibility of the working class to give a true alternative to society. The present upsurge in class struggle throughout the world is a necessary step for the world working class's own solution to the crisis: the overthrowing of capita lism and building of a real human community.
Eduardo Smith 01/15/2009
Dear Internationalism
Thank you for the copies of your press that you've been sending. I read the last issue with particular interest, as the economic crisis makes me more urgent about clarifying positions and developing analyses.
Something that has been interesting to me of late is how the far Left and Right wings of capital have been putting forward largely identical analysis of the current crisis - only focusing on finance capital, claiming the bailout was merely to "pad the pockets of the bankers", allusions to some conspiracy of ‘financial elites' behind the crisis etc. I would call this conspiratorial ‘half-way critique' structural anti-Semitism, and I'm glad to see the ICC is refusing to fall into that dangerous populism. As always, the Left and the Right are enemies, and I think they will be in many ways indistinguishable from each other, at least on the extreme ends of both. I fear the neo-fascist populism of figures like Ron Paul will catch on even more than it has.
How will the working class respond to the crisis? That is the million dollar question. Will capital turn to the unions or is their reach too diminished except in a few vital industries?
It is sad to see some so-called radicals rallying around Obama, but then again, I guess it's good when people show their true colors.
P.S.: This is an entirely different conversation , but I'm curious how you explain/defend the Bolshevik betrayal of internationalism at the treaty of Brest-Litvok? This was in 1918, yet the ICC maintains that the Bolsheviks remained in the proletarian camp for several more years. Isn't this inconsistent with your position of intransigent internationalism as the cornerstone of all revolutionary positions?
P.P.S.: I'm also interested in your take on Andrew Kliman's recent articles about the crisis. November 15th 2008
Communist Greetings, DDear D.
Thank you for your letter, which we received and read with great pleasure and interest. We can't here answer in detail all the points you raised, but we would like to share a few ideas with you.
First of all, we totally agree with your sense of urgency about ‘clarifying positions and developing analysis' regarding the present economic situation. We salute your preoccupation. There is indeed an urgency and great importance for revolutionaries to be clear about what to say to the working class in order to be able to aid it in the process of developing its class consciousness. Particularly today, because, as we have said many times, the crisis is an ally of the working class, in the sense that it pushes it to confront its mortal enemy on its own class terrain. So, we would like to ask you for comments on any of the economic analyses we develop, and above all, about how to intervene in the class struggle. What are your ideas regarding this important issue? We have recently heard a lot of questioning about ‘what to do' in the interventions in the class struggle, and we would like to hear your ideas as well.
Of course, you are right on point when you pose the question of how the workers will respond to the crisis. Capital will have to rely on its faithful ally, the unions to derail the class response. The question is really whether the working class will fall for them. But this depends on the class' ability to struggle on its own terrain, the terrain of economic demands. More importantly, though, it depends on the politicization of its struggle. Will the class be able to extend its struggle? Will it recognize its identify as a class, that is, will it develop class solidarity in its struggles? What do you think? Do you think that the working class can politicize its struggle? Is there a potential for this?
While this issue is extremely important, we regret to say that when we went to the public meeting organized by the New Space and the Marxist Humanist Committee in November, where we heard Andrew Kliman's presentation of his articles on the crisis, no link whatsoever was made between the crisis and the class struggle. So, while the analysis was made from a Marxist framework that emphasizes the falling rate of profit to explain the crisis, it was not able to really clarify very much because of the lack of the connection between the theory and the practice. All in all, it remained on a purely academic level. At the theoretical level we believe, as we have developed in many articles on the theory of decadence and the economic crisis, that the falling rate of profit alone is insufficient as an explanation of the crisis. In our view it is the relative saturation of the global market that accentuates the effects of the falling rate of profit and produces the economic impasse of the global crisis. Kliman tends not to see the current situation as a manifestation of the historic crisis of capitalism, but more as a conjunctural phenomenon, and thus is an inadequate perspective for the workers movement.
We also agree with you that the left and right wings of capital are not different from each other. To us, it is not surprising that their ‘analysis' of the crisis focuses on finance capital, blaming ‘greed' and lack of regulation, since their primary ideological function is that of mystifying the workers' understanding of what is at stake. Better to blame greedy, dishonest capitalists who "need more regulation" than to recognize that what is at stake is the utter bankruptcy of capitalism, the global and deadly crisis of capitalism, which can only lead humanity to destruction unless the working class carries out its historic mission: the communist revolution.
Regarding your question about the Brest-Litovsk treaty, without going into any explanation here, we simply invite you to read our articles in International Review 134, "Germany 1918-19: From war to revolution" [11] and International Review 10, The political confusions of the Communist Workers Organization (UK)." [12] You can read both articles on our website: www.internationalism.org [13]. We have written many other articles on the problems of the Russian and German revolutions, but these two articles should be a good beginning.
Well.....this is it for now. Hope to continue the correspondence with you.
All the best, Ana, for Internationalism 1/09
All across the media, the economic experts are still debating whether the American economy is in a recession or a depression. This is hardly relevant for the working class, which is bearing the impact of the crisis. The ugly consequences of the ongoing economic collapse are there for all to see.
Since the start of this recession a staggering number of workers have lost their jobs and, in many cases, workers have actually lost all means of subsistence. According to the official Labor Department records, the number of unemployed rose by 851,000 in February to a total of 12.5 million workers and the unemployment rate increased to 8.1 percent of the work force. In the last 12 months alone, the number of unemployed workers has increased by nearly 5 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 3.3 percentage points. And as bad as they sound, these figures give a very imperfect picture of the true world of the unemployed in the U.S..
The official government method for calculating unemployment historically tend to understate the number of workers out of work. For instance, for the government statisticians, a person is only unemployed if he doesn't have a job, has looked actively for one in the last four weeks and is available to work. This definition does not count workers who have given up looking for jobs that don't exist. The government officially considers that the 731,000 "discouraged workers" they identified in February 2009 have dropped out of or have withdrawn from the work force, i.e., that they are no longer workers! In addition, the official statistics tend to inflate the number of workers who are considered to be "employed" by including in this category those workers who involuntarily work part time simply because there are no full time jobs available. According to the Labor Department data the number of involuntary part time workers rose by 3.7 million over the past 12 months to a total of 10 million. In February alone, the number of involuntary par time workers rose 787, 000. In other words, if the official unemployment figures were adjusted to reflect both the "discouraged" workers and the involuntary part-timers a more realistic picture of 24 million workers or 15.6 percent of the work force are affected by unemployment!
Furthermore there is no real safety net for unemployed workers. The so-called government Unemployment insurance program is a joke that that can't even cover the minimal needs of food and shelter for unemployed workers and there families. Unemployed workers are often obliged to take on onerous credit card debt to make ends meet, digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole from which there is no easy way to climb out. Being unemployed does not guarantee a government handout. In fact the unemployment insurance program is designed to disqualify a majority of the unemployed from getting any benefits. According to figures cited by organizations that study the government Unemployment insurance, only 40 percent of the unemployed workers over the past 12 months in the US have qualified to collect insurance payments, leaving the rest in danger of falling into total destitution. There is a direct link between the massive surge of unemployment in the last year and the rise of homelessness and soup kitchens in many major American cities. The "tent cities" in California that recently caught the attention of the media are surely just the tip of the iceberg.
And if you are among those that still have a job, you are in constant fear that you may become a casualty in the next round of "readjustments." Meanwhile you are being asked to give up wage increases and accept cuts in current salaries and benefits and quietly accept increasing workloads and widespread management abuses. Pensions, medical benefits, vacations, holidays, salaries, working conditions, everything is under the ax.
The dominant class is always trying to divide us, senior workers against recent hired ones, the old generation against the young one, immigrant workers against native born workers, black against white workers. One thing that this crisis is making clear is that nobody is safe -everyone is under attack. Young people are finding it increasingly difficult to integrate into a work force saturated with an abundance of older and experienced workers recently laid off. Young workers are today even competing for scarce jobs with the rising wave of retirees who, finding themselves unable to live on their current meager pensions, are coming back to the work force, forced to give some more blood and sweat to capitalism.
During the present economic collapse even the popular myth about the "wealthy" baby boomers on the verge of retirement is now clearly more and more just a fiction with no bearing on reality. In fact many workers' retirement pension funds have been wiped out and dreams of retirement from capitalist exploitation have been put on hold or abandoned.
And there is no end in sight. Left to its own devices the capitalist crisis will only worsen and its weight will be borne by the whole of the working class.
At the end of March the government announced with much fanfare its latest attempt to revive the financial system: a gargantuan 1 trillion dollar infusion of capital to the banks in exchange for the so-called "toxic assets" now in possession of a large number of financial institutions. This money comes on top of Obama's $800 billion "economic stimulus," approved at the end of January, which itself came on top of the $800 billion of the TARP program enacted in the last days of the Bush administration, which came on top of still other previous ‘bail out' programs. By any stretch of rationality the dollar numbers quoted by the government have become irrelevant. The state has pumped into the economy such an enormous amount of paper money that one more trillion here or there seems meaningless.
The hard reality from which the dominant class can't escape is that all its state capitalist policies have so far failed to stop the unfolding capitalist catastrophe. And the only ‘solution' that the ‘bright' men of the ruling class can propose is still more state capitalism. Yet no amount of state intervention seems to be able to untie capitalism crisis' Gordian knot: production has ground to a halt because there are too many means of subsistence and production relative to the solvent capacities of society. Historically capitalism overcame this periodical tendency to overproduction essentially by the discovery of new markets and thus the extension of capitalist relations of production the world over. This way out of its economic crisis for capitalism has been essentially closed for most of last century with the creation of the world market and the expansion of capitalism around the globe. The dominant class has responded to this historical impasse of its system with state capitalism measures directed essentially at managing a permanent state of economic crisis, keeping the economy afloat through ever worsening cycles of booms and busts. The significance of the current economic collapse sweeping the globe is that it is showing an unyielding resistance to all the drugs in possession of the doctors of the capitalist economy. After years of overuse these drugs -basically monetary and fiscal expansionist policies aimed at creating an artificial solvent demand - are now also part of the problem contributing to what is clearly becoming the worse crisis in capitalism history.
For revolutionaries there is only one solution to the crisis and that is sending capitalism once and of all to dustbin of history. This is the historical task of the world working class. But this will not happen automatically. A social revolution that will leave behind the ‘prehistory' of humanity by overcoming the exploitation of man by man, the divisions of society into classes, the existence of nations.... can only be the product of a conscious and collectively organized effort of the world proletariat. Of course this revolution will not fall out of the sky; it can't only be the result of a prolonged class struggle of which today we are only seeing the beginnings around the world. Faced with relentless attacks workers need to respond by refusing to submit to the logic of capitalism and developing the class struggle to its ultimate conclusion: the overthrow of capitalism. The task is immense, but there is no other way out.
Eduardo Smith. 03/30/2009
This is the 150th issue of Internationalism, an historic moment for us as an organization and in a larger sense for the workers' movement in the United States. It represents a continuity in publication that began in 1970, advocating the left communist perspective and political principles in the most powerful capitalist state on the face of the earth. Internationalism's very existence, as modest as it has been these past 39 years, is proof of the revolutionary potential of the workers struggle against capitalist exploitation.
The survival of Internationalism for four decades and 150 issues has not been easy. The key to this longevity, which stands in sharp contrast to the many political expressions of the working class that have arisen and disappeared over the years, is the fact that it is part of an international centralized revolutionary organization, the International Communist Current. The revolutionary Marxist understanding that the working class needs an international political party and that the revolutionary organization plays an indispensable role in contributing to the development of class consciousness has been the basis of Internationalism's ability to maintain a political presence in the US for nearly forty years.
When Internationalism first published in 1970, the comrades were in political correspondence with others of similar political perspective in France and Venezuela. Following a series of political conferences in the early 1970's, Internationalism joined with groups in five other countries -- Revolution Inernationale (France), World Revolution (Britain), Accion Proletaria (Spain), Rivoluzione Internazionale (Italy), and Internacionalismo (Venezuela) to found the ICC. Today the ICC has grown to an organization with sections or nuclei in 16 countries, Turkey and the Philippines being the newest sections. The ICC website publishes in 19 languages and is visited more than 120,000 times per month.
Today as the world economy is gripped by the worst recession since the Great Depression, and a new generation of the working class is turning towards revolutionary political alternatives, Internationalism stands ready to engage in the political dialog necessary to build toward the organization of an international party of proletarian revolutionaries.
Internationalism, April 2009
The debt trap has to some extent always been a feature of class society. After the bourgeoisie gained control over the state in its period of ascendancy, it tended to enact laws that mitigated the most devastating consequences of debt. Along with the abolition of slavery, debt peonage was gradually done away with, debtor's prisons were closed and in some countries new laws were enacted that gave businesses and individuals the right to erase their debts and gain a fresh start through bankruptcy proceedings. While most of these laws were enacted to benefit the bourgeoisie by eliminating the risk of imprisonment should one's business fail and the proprietor was unable to pay its debts, these reforms also helped to develop the working class and increase its standard of living by eliminating competition from other forms of bonded labor.
For most of its history, the working class was largely unable to access consumer credit in order to increase its consumption level. Workers' main source of credit was at the local level, through workers' cooperatives or the unions, but strict rules tended to prevent workers from borrowing more than they could reasonably afford to pay back. More frequently, bosses made use of credit through the company store to tie more vulnerable workers to the company and gain a powerful weapon with which to threaten their well being in times of class struggle. If workers threatened to organize, the company could threaten to "call in" their debts at the company store.
Faced with an open crisis of overproduction, as the World War II postwar period of reconstruction drew to a close, the bourgeoisie-with the full cooperation of its state apparatus-had to find a way to break the bottleneck and get society consuming goods and services once again. One way in which it attempted this was to extend consumer credit to the working class. By increasing home ownership by making mortgages available more easily, developing a federal student loan program to "make college affordable to all who want to go," and making it easier to qualify for credit cards and other forms of consumer credit, the bourgeoisie sought to accomplish two key goals at the same time: addressing the economic crisis by increasing consumption, while simultaneously depressing the militancy of the working class by burdening it with debt and tying it to the state.
Today, this process has reached absurd proportions, particularly-although not exclusively, in the United States. Faced with declining incomes, working class families have had to resort to debt in order to maintain a so-called "middle class lifestyle." According to the Federal Reserve Board the average credit card debt for a family in the United States now stands at $8,000-an increase of 22 percent since 2000. What's more, much of this credit card debt carries interest rates greater than 20 percent and in some cases more than 30 percent, making the usury rates of previous times appear mild. In addition, these cards usually come with a minefield of legal loopholes that allow the banks to tack on various fees and charges any time a payment is missed or a credit limit is exceeded
However, as the sub-prime mortgage crisis that is now ravaging global financial markets shows, credit cards alone have not been enough for the American working class to sustain the consumption levels that the bourgeoisie and its media mouthpieces repeatedly tell it are necessary for the health of the nation's economy. With cheap and easy mortgage credit driving up property values during the first half of this decade and an army of parasitic loan sharks pushing a multitude of risky mortgage products, American workers were encouraged-with the full consent of the government-to treat their houses like an ATM and use the equity in their homes to maintain their levels of personal consumption. In fact, much of the so-called economic recovery following the events of 9/11 was fueled by the massive tapping of home equity to support consumption. The inevitable collapse of the housing bubble in 2006 has now left large numbers of working families with mortgages greater than the value of their homes and monthly payments that skyrocket once the initial teaser interest rates reset, forcing growing numbers of families to decide that it is in their best interests to walk away from their homes and many others subject to legal foreclosure proceedings.
As a result of this skyrocketing personal debt, in the context of the worst recession the US economy has seen in 70 years, personal bankruptcy filings have soared in the United States. According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, bankruptcy filings jumped 33 percent in 2008 over the prior year and a whopping 255 percent over 2006. While American workers still have the legal option of filing bankruptcy to erase most of their debt, this is not as simple a process as it is often portrayed in the bourgeois media. In bankruptcy, workers must give up all their assets (if they have any) to their creditors except for a small amount that is exempted. Moreover, recent changes in the bankruptcy law made at the bequest of the credit card companies now force many people who file into a period of trusteeship for 3 to 5 years, where they have to surrender any "surplus income" to the court.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the explosion in personal debt has been its devastating impact on the younger generations of the working class. This has been accomplished primarily in two ways: 1) giving young people access to credit cards much earlier in life than ever before and encouraging them to use them, and 2) through the massive explosion in student loan debt necessary to obtain a college or graduate degree. Everyone who has been to university in the last ten years, or knows someone who has, is familiar with the extent to which college campuses have become a chief marketing target for credit card companies, anxious to sign students up for debt-many of whom don't even have a real income. According to Nellie Mae-a non-profit student loan provider-the average credit card debt of American undergraduate college students currently stands at $2,200, while graduate students owe on average $5,800, figures that once again almost certainly underestimate the extent of this debt for students from working class families. Moreover, since young people generally do not have an established credit history, much of this debt is accrued on cards with higher than average interest rates.
Even more pernicious than student credit card debt is the explosion in student loan debt over the past decade and half. With their families' incomes falling, their savings depleted and access to home equity funds increasingly denied, but with the cost of college tuition and living expenses rising faster than the rate of inflation, more and more students are resorting to taking out tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans to finance an education that is literally required in order to even have a chance at viability in the labor market. According to the Federal Reserve Board-the average college graduate currently has $21,000 in student loan debt; the figure can approach five or six times that amount for those who pursue a post-graduate degree.
Ironically, as a college education has become more and more essential to finding a job, the value of that education on the job market has decreased, such that a college degree no longer even guarantees a job at all, never mind one that pays more than just enough to meet one's basic expenses, not factoring in student debt. The insanity of this explosion in student debt is compounded by the fact that student loans are treated much differently in American bankruptcy law than almost all other types of debt. In 1998, Congress passed legislation that rendered student loans made through federal and state government programs permanently non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. In 2005, Congress expanded this to make all student loans exempt from bankruptcy discharge, except under the most extreme of circumstances. Under these laws, students can still file bankruptcy to address their credit card debt and forfeit their non-exempt assets, but they will be forced to pay their student loans after the conclusion of the case and can still be subject to lawsuits, wage garnishments and even seizure of social security payments, effectively creating a situation of debtor's prison for many young workers.[1]
The younger generation of the working class in the United States is now faced with a situation where significant numbers of their fellow workers will begin their working lives in a situation that might be considered a form of modern debt peonage, in which a large portion of their income is confiscated to service a debt from which many will never escape.
While it is possible that more farsighted elements in the American bourgeoisie will recognize that the emerging generation's consumption power will be severely hampered by all this non-dischargeable debt and change the bankruptcy law to make student loans dischargeable in order to attempt to stimulate more consumption, it is just as likely that the American state will be unable to find the political consensus to address this contradiction in the period ahead.[2] Caught between the declining consumption of young workers and the need to address the national deficit, which threatens its global imperialist position, the American state could just as easily decide to step-up collections and impose even more draconian measures on those in default on their student debt.
Young workers will need to transcend any illusions that they can depend on the benevolence of politicians to address their modern debt bondage and look instead to the older generations of their class and learn from their experiences on the tough road of the class struggle to destroy the capitalist system which daily demonstrates its historic incapacity to provide any reasonable future for society.
Henk 03/03/09
[1].-The situation has become so dire for many students that Studentloanjustice.org, an organization with the stated aim of pressuring Congress to restore "standard consumer protections" to student loans, in an interview in late February on the National Public Radio (NPR) Program "On Point," claims to have documented at least 3 cases of suicides caused predominantly by student loan issues, as well as many more cases of student debtors fleeing the country.
[2].- In late February of this year, Obama announced a plan to basically nationalize the student loan industry. While touted by many leftists as a "reform" in that it would largely eliminate private companies from the student loan business, this plan does nothing to alleviate the debt burden on young students and does not address the treatment of student loans in bankruptcy. In fact, it appears the motivation for this plan is to "rationalize" the industry from the point of view of state capitalism, by eliminating the state subsidies paid out to private lenders and centralizing administration and collections under the Department of Education. If the plan goes through as proposed, countless working class youth would face the prospect of basically becoming debt peons of the state, a situation more reminiscent of the societies Marx described as conforming to the "Asiatic Mode of Production" than modern capitalism.
A recent incident among teachers at New York City high school demonstrates clearly that workers in the U.S. are making the first attempts at putting aside the divisions imposed by capitalism, in this case those divisions that pit the ‘senior' workers against the younger, more recently hired workers. In this sense, New York City workers are totally part of the resurgence of class militancy and solidarity we have been witnessing over the last three or four years worldwide. Just as our class brothers and sisters across the world are relearning that one of the most important tools the working class has to organize its struggles is the spreading of solidarity amongst its ranks, so too are workers in the U.S. beginning to come to grips with solidarity and unity in struggle.
This small moment in class struggle for the New York teachers occurred in the context of the same issue that is faced by hundreds of thousands other workers: the threat of lay offs. As usual, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the teachers' union, was trying to make use of the built-in-the-contract seniority rules to divide the teachers in two categories and then pit one against the other during a meeting at high school in Brooklyn. The UFT has always spread the lie that these ‘seniority rules' give the more senior teachers greater job protection. In reality, these rules are intended to discourage the more senior workers from engaging in a unified struggle by creating the illusion that they will either be spared the attacks or bear a lesser brunt, and thereby isolate the least senior teachers from their more experienced class brothers and sisters and create distrust between them. With this tactic of divide and conquer, the UFT has been a loyal arm of the ruling class' attempt at breaking workers' solidarity.
As the general economic crisis deepens, however, it opens up the perspective for workers to understand the total bankruptcy of capitalism. Teachers, as well as all other workers, are beginning to see that no one is spared and that the only course to follow is the one that leads to the unification of the struggle, the better to confront the common enemy. In a word, it raises the question of solidarity. Thus, at the recent meeting in question, the UFT's attempt at ‘reassuring' the more senior teachers that in the face of the threatened lay-offs the most recent to have been hired would be the first to be laid off, was openly denounced and rejected. There was a strong and clear reaffirmation of the need for solidarity, as expressed by a teacher who intervened to say, "An injury to one is an injury to all" and went on to explain that solidarity was not only a matter of family or friendship ties, that it was not just that the recent hirees might be the younger sisters, or daughters, or grand-daughters, or neighbor's son, but that solidarity was the only way to defend everybody from the common attacks. This intervention also argued that the working and living conditions would continue to deteriorate even for those who remained on the job as the attacks would then be enforced more easily, once the spirit of solidarity had been broken.
These comments were received with cheers and applause in the other workers, young and old, obviously showing that what this worker said expressed the sentiments of many others. The necessity for solidarity was again expressed at a subsequent meeting, where the young, newer workers were openly invited to participate and speak their minds. The UFT obviously did not just stand by idly. Understanding the importance of what was said, it has already tried to occupy this terrain where class consciousness has a potential for development, and is calling for meetings and inviting teachers to give an input for the agenda of items to be discussed! Never heard of before! It is clear that the UFT will try and diffuse workers' anger and discontent and divert the attention to less burning issues, in the attempt at drowning teachers' rising militancy and consciousness. Along with all other unions, the UFT will be forced to take center stage as the class reaches out for real solidarity among its ranks, across categories. The rally called on March 5th by the UFT, DC 37, 1199, and a host of other unions exemplifies how this apparatus of the bourgeois state quickly mobilizes when workers show they have a willingness to fight back. The rally attracted some 70,000 workers, according to UFT accounts. This clearly shows that workers across categories are deeply concerned with the present situation and what it means for their future. But at the rally these workers from different categories were unable to discuss with each other, and nothing was set up for them to secure that discussions will happen or continue in the future. Obviously, the unions' job will be to try and pre-empt any attempt by the workers at self-organization and the spreading of solidarity.
Teachers clearly feel the same needs other workers feel, and they are calling for wide participation at meetings, they want to meet and discuss. There is the beginning of a recognition that it's only by taking matters into their own hands, by extending the struggle, and by uniting it through solidarity that a profound reflection over the fate of humanity can find expression, and that the first answers to the burning questions of what future capitalism can offer, and what we need to do in its face, can be offered. At the next meetings, teachers, like all other workers worldwide, need to continue to pose the necessity of the widest possible discussions at the widest possible meetings, the general assemblies, and the need for reinforcing and spreading solidarity, and unifying the struggles across generations, ethnicities, and any other artificial division that the ruling class and its unions tries to throw up as an obstacle to unity.
While we don't want to exaggerate the impact of this modest development, it is important to understand that it is not an isolated event, but a reflection of a general, worldwide tendency towards the development of consciousness and strengthening of the working class's response to the economic crisis. From the French students' and workers struggles of 2006 to the SEAT workers strike in Spain the same year, to the German automobile workers wildcat strikes, and, very recently, again the students in Italy, France, Germany, and Spain, to the Greek students and workers massive protests against the unprecedented wave of attacks on working and living conditions, in the last three years the European working class has shown a tremendous ability to express, develop, and channel its militancy and anger against the conditions of impoverishment it suffers because of the worsening crisis of capitalism. The working class has begun to say no to the unprecedented violence of the attacks the ruling class is forced to try and impose on the workers as a result of the crisis of its system. In the U.S. in the New York City transit strike of 2005, and more recently the Chicago factory occupation in December 2008, we are seeing the echoes of this global trend. In this sense, New York City workers are totally part of the resurgence of class militancy and solidarity we have been witnessing over the last three or four years worldwide.
Ana- 03/29/2009
Against the backdrop of the unprecedented proletarian political ferment of 1919 the U.S. working class did not hesitate for a moment to take up the class struggle at the point of production throughout the country in industry after industry. In all there were 3.630 strikes involving 4,160,000 workers during 1919, including:
The militant participation of foreign-born workers in this strike wave, particularly Eastern Europeans influenced by the Russian Revolution was especially significant. As part of its service to the bourgeoisie in weakening and dividing the working class, the reactionary AFL had long denigrated immigrant workers, supporting racist legislation to block the further immigration of workers from Southern and Eastern Europe and insisting that immigrant workers were unorganizable, and undisciplined. However, under the inspiration of events shaking the European continent, foreign speaking immigrant workers put themselves in the forefront of the struggles both at the point of production and within the Socialist Party, demonstrating graphically the truly international nature of the proletariat as a class.
The year 1919 began with the Seattle General Strike. Leftist historians frequently pay only lip service to this important event, preferring instead to extol the alleged virtues of the union organizing drives of the CIO in the 1930's. However, the CIO drive was a manifestation of the counterrevolution, not an echo of the international revolutionary wave, as was the Seattle General Strike. The CIO drive of the 1930's was a government-supported effort to introduce unionization on a massive scale in basic industries, as part of the American bourgeoisie's mobilization of society for imperialist slaughter in World War II. Leftist historians like, Philip S. Foner, tend to deny the revolutionary potentiality of the Seattle strike, belittle the revolutionary utterances of its participants as non-representative and unwittingly playing into the hands of capitalist attempts to red bait the strikers. Instead Foner insists the strike was just a sympathy strike. One historian insists it was not revolution but a misguided rebellion against everything and therefore against nothing in particular. Other leftists falsely emphasize the revolutionary potential of the unions. And within the proletarian camp, councilists, like Jeremy Brecher in his 1970 book, Strike uncritically hail the Seattle strike in workerist fashion, totally ignoring or underestimating the political shortcomings of the struggle. This does a terrible disservice to the working class, because learning the lessons of past struggles, both positive and negative, is a crucial element in the deepening and generalizing of revolutionary consciousness. It is within this revolutionary marxist context that the historical legacy of the Seattle-General Strike, with its strengths and weaknesses can be recognized and saluted.
Seattle workers were already particularly radicalized, especially in their sympathy for the Revolution in Russia and it was this radicalization that shaped the evolution of the strike. While what transpired in Seattle was called a General Strike and was organized formally within the framework of the unions, it had less the characteristics of the general strike orchestrated from above by union officialdom, than it did the central characteristics of a mass strike, in which workers from all sectors and industries joined the struggle around their own demands and in which control of the struggle was placed in the hands of a strike committee controlled by the masses of workers.
The struggle broke out among the metal trade workers in the shipbuilding industry, a dominant force within the Seattle proletariat. During the war, union leaders had worked feverishly to dissuade disgruntled shipbuilders from striking employing both blatantly patriotic appeals and dire warnings that such job actions were a violation of their contracts and hence illegal. But as soon as the armistice was reached in November 1918, workers began to demand wage increases. Employers were willing to agree to raises for skilled workers but not the unskilled. However, because wartime government controls were still in effect the government's Emergency Fleet Corporation ordered the companies not to yield to any of the workers' demands and threatened to cut off steel allotments if raises were given to any workers. Workers soon grasped a central characteristic of the class struggle in decadent capitalist: economic struggle is quickly transformed into a confrontation with the state.
This realization wasn't restricted solely to the shipbuilders. Workers in other industries interpreted the government intervention as a preparatory attack against all workers. On January 21, the 35,000 shipyard workers struck. Responding to an appeal for support from the metal trades unions, the Seattle Labor Council adopted a resolution on January 22 calling for a general strike to support the strikers, which was immediately endorsed by rank and file workers in 24 unions, including painters, barbers, blacksmiths, boilermakers, construction workers, carpenters, cigar makers, cooks, garment workers, longshoremen, milk drivers. Within two weeks, 110 local unions had voted overwhelmingly to join the strike, including even the most conservative of the AFL unions. But as these different categories expressed their' solidarity, the struggle was changed qualitatively from a "sympathy" strike for the metal trades workers, into a generalized struggle against capital, as workers in industry after industry openly discussed the fact that they too had grievances and demands to be made against their employers. This illustrated still another central characteristic of the class struggle in decadent capitalism: active solidarity and the successful generalization of struggles depend on workers joining the struggle on the basis of their own demands, not simply "sympathy."
This groundswell for the mass strike developed while Seattle's top 25 labor leaders were out of town, attending a conference in Chicago. As union officials they were dismayed by the turn of events. These so-called "progressive" union leaders quickly joined with AFL leaders in working to block or end the strike. Some historians have argued that there would have been no Seattle General Strike, except for the fact that the established union leadership was out of town. Thus despite the leftists penchant for extolling the role of the unions, the Seattle General Strike, erupted in spite of the unions, not because of them, pointing to yet another important characteristic of class struggle in decadent capitalism: the counterrevolutionary nature of the trade unions and their use by capitalism to control and derail workers struggles.
The strike was scheduled for February. A General Strike Committee was empowered to coordinate the struggle. The Strike Committee was comprised of three hundred workers --mostly rank and file, everyday workers, with little previous leadership experience --three delegates from each union joining the strike. The General Strike Committee and a smaller 15 member executive committee, called the Committee of 15, met in daily session beginning on February 2 at first to plan the struggle and then to direct it. Every afternoon an open session of the committee was held so that any worker could attend, observe the deliberations and contribute to the discussion. The Committee quickly took on the characteristics of a rival workers' government in the city, an embryonic example of dual power, as the workers planned to safeguard the general welfare of the community during the strike. Careful decisions were made by subcommittees of the Committee of 15 to exempt vital services from the strike. For example, it was decided that garbage workers would collect wet garbage that might pose a health hazard. Laundry workers were authorized to keep one shop open to handle hospital laundry. Firemen were asked to remain on the job. A 300 man force of labor war veterans was recruited to maintain peace and security. These worker guards carried no weapons, and wore only white armbands to identify them. They used their power of persuasion and the authority of the General Strike Committee to defuse difficult situations and preserve order.
Reflecting the genuine dual power that existed, employers, government officials, including the mayor, and groups of workers came before the Strike Committee to request strike exemptions. A request from the county commissioners to keep janitorial staff on the job at the government office building was rejected. A teamster's union request to haul fuel oil for a hospital was granted. A proposal from retail pharmacy clerks that prescription counters be allowed to operate during the strike was granted. Each pharmacy was ordered to display a sign that read: "No goods sold during general strike. Orders for prescriptions only will be filled. -The General Strike Committee." Milk workers were authorized to deliver milk for the children of the city; each wagon carried a sign that read: "Exempted by Order of the General Strike Committee." Restaurant workers cooks, waiters and other food industry employees established 21 dining halls and fed 30,000 people per day during the strike. Telephone workers were asked to put themselves at the disposal of the Strike Committee's security force and to maintain communications for the strike. Electrical service was maintained, except for commercial enterprises. When the strike began at 10 am on February 6 the city ground to a halt, a total of 100,000 workers joined the strike including 40,000 non-union workers. Streetcars stopped running, shops closed and nothing moved unless authorized by the embryonic workers' government. Order was maintained. Workers at the Seattle Union Record, the paper controlled by the Central Labor Council also joined the strike, and this unfortunately left the struggle without a daily news bulletin to keep workers informed and to counteract the rumors and false reports spread by the bourgeoisie. Seeking to avoid providing any pretext for the government to send troops or armed police against them, the Strike Committee called upon people to stay home and organized no mass demonstrations. The troops dispatched to Seattle at the Mayor's request on the second day of the strike, found a peaceful city with crime down by 66 percent.
The forces of reaction moved quickly to counter the workers. The mayor hired additional police, deputized company goons, requested more federal troops, and issued an ultimatum to the workers to return to their jobs. However, it was not the threat of repressive force that was decisive in bringing the strike to a halt indeed the General Strike Committee ignored the mayor's ultimatum. It was the intervention of the international unions against the workers that was the key element in the bourgeoisie's counteroffensive. As soon as the strike began, the AFL unions bombarded the strikers with telegrams warning of the illegality of the strike, threatening suspensions and urging immediate end to the strike. As soon as they could get to Seattle, unions' leaders threatened and cajoled, and warned of dire consequences. At one point the executive committee seemed to bow to the pressure, and voted by 12 to 2 with one absent to end the strike. They then brought the back-to-work resolution before the full strike committee, where many of the delegates seemed to waver, until the committee adjourned for a meal break. Delegates consulted with the workers they represented during the break, and, imbued with the militancy of the rank and file, returned to the General Strike Committee meeting rejected the resolution to call off the strike. This illustrated another characteristic of workers struggle in decadent capitalism: the necessity for the workers to control the struggle themselves to have revocable delegates, to ensure genuine representation in the deliberative bodies that are established to coordinate the struggle.
Having failed to get the Strike Committee to abandon the struggle, the international unions focused attention on individual unions, in search of a weak link. The first cracks came from the streetcar workers, who were ordered back to the job by their executive board under pressure from the international officials, followed by teamsters. Sensing that the tide had turned the Strike Committee now opted for an orderly retreat, and ended the strike on February 11. The metal trade workers continued on strike against the shipyards.
Three political weaknesses in particular weighed heavily on the strike. The first was the failure to understand the union question, to recognize clearly that the unions who badgered them into liquidating their struggle were in fact part of the capitalist state apparatus a weapon against them The unions, on their part, were quite clear about their counterrevolutionary role. The American Federation of Labor bragged openly about its dirty work for American capitalist order in ending the strike: "It was the advice and counsel and fearless attitude of the trade union leaders of the American International Trade Unions and not the United States troops or the edicts of a mayor, which ended this brief industrial disturbance of the Northwest." (Americall Fedemtiouist March 1919).
The second was the failure to understand the danger of remaining isolated. Even though they took up the struggle out of an understanding that they faced a generalized attack by the capitalist class, the workers kept the fight confined to Seattle. Strikers were asked to remain at home and off the streets, whereas delegations of workers should have fanned out across the northwest, and the rest of the country calling upon other workers to join the battle. By remaining isolated the Seattle workers left themselves open to the onslaught by the unions to destroy the struggle. The unions were able to concentrate their counteroffensive on a single city, rather than having to face a spreading wildfire across the country. Clearly as the thousands of other strikes that broke out that year demonstrated the basis for the Seattle strike to spread certainly existed.
The third weakness was the lack of an organized revolutionary vanguard that could intervene effectively in the struggle. The emotional identification with the Russian Revolution was not enough to rise to the challenge. The struggle needed a revolutionary minority capable of pointing out the real lessons of the soviets and the mass strike in Russia. However, the socialist left was at this moment embroiled in a battle to gain control of the Socialist Party, and delayed forming a communist party until the end of the summer of 1919. As far as Seattle was concerned, the left was late. The struggle was waged without the intervention of an effective revolutionary minority.
The Seattle strike last only six days but it was crammed with valuable lessons. To recapitulate the central lessons of Seattle:
As this summary demonstrates, we harbor no illusions about the shortcomings of Seattle. There is no need to glamorize, exaggerate or romanticize the Seattle General Strike. Revolutionaries must not for a moment hesitate to embrace it and salute it as a magnificent moment in the history of our class, and to learn from it, so that future struggles can build on that experience. As workers across the country today confront the continuing· attacks of the ruling class against their standard of living, and seek ways to respond collectively, revolutionaries must insist on the need for workers to push aside the unions and take control of the struggle into their own hands, and to work for the generalization of struggles. These are not abstract propositions, but rather the very concrete lessons of the struggle of the world proletariat in the 20th century, including the experience of the Seattle General Strike.
Jerry Grevin 10/05/1999. Reprinted from Internationalism # 109
Capitalism today requires an arsenal of ideological mystifications to survive. As an historically bankrupt social/economic system, capitalism has nothing to offer humanity except a future of misery, decay, and war. The ruling class finds it necessary to obscure this reality to keep the working class from recognizing and acting upon its revolutionary, historic responsibilities. The latest mystification the world bourgeoisie has rolled out from the arsenal is the green economy. Media pundits, politicians, economists and business leaders increasingly envision green industry expansion as a significant component of economic recovery. Some compare the green economy to the biotech and computer technologies in terms of its transformative potential for the American economy. It's almost funny to see all the corporations jumping on the green bandwagon, now that environmentalism is "in." Even the biggest polluters are now advocates for the green movement, like the home heating oil industry television commercial in the U.S. that claims that oil heat is energy efficient and environmentally friendly!
Like all ideological swindles, the green economy has a certain link to reality. There is indeed a genuine and widespread concern about the despoliation of the environment and the very real threat of climate change with potentially catastrophic social impact. And there is undeniably a disastrous global economic downturn that is destroying jobs by the millions throughout the world, worsening poverty and deprivation. This link to reality makes the green economy myth even more pernicious than your typical run-of-the-mill, trumped up propaganda campaign. The world bourgeoisie advances the preposterous claim that it has a policy alternative to save the day in order to short-circuit the development of class consciousness and the recognition that the environmental disaster and economic crisis graphically expose capitalism as an anachronistic system and poses the necessity for its overthrow in no uncertain terms. In so doing the bourgeoisie denies the fact that the current crisis is a systemic problem and pitches the notion that it is a policy problem that can be dealt with. The green economy, they tell us will revolutionize the economy and bring back prosperity.
Environmental and Economic Realities
The scientific evidence about the seriousness of the environmental crisis is voluminous. According to a report released by Barack Obama's White House scientific advisers, global warming has already caused significant changes in weather patterns in the United States, including more heavy downpours, rising temperatures and sea levels, rapidly retreating glaciers, longer growing seasons and altered river flow. This report anticipates that average temperatures in the U.S. could rise by 11o Fahrenheit or approximately 6o C by end of the century. The International Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen in March, 2009, reported that "temperature rises above 2o C will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and will increase the level of climate disruption through the rest of the century." And the last time we checked, 6o is three times greater than 2o!
One of the key conclusions of the March Copenhagen Conference was that:
"Recent observations confirm, that given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-cast IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realized. For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrives. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climactic shifts."
Regarding the economic situation, there is hardly a need to present here evidence of the seriousness of the current recession. The bourgeois media itself acknowledges this as the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Since the current recession has occurred despite the myriad state capitalist safeguards and palliatives put in place after the Great Depression in the 1930 supposedly to make sure that such economic devastation never happened again, one could argue that this recession is even worse than 1929. It has certainly brought the world's biggest and most powerful economy, the United States, to its knees, requiring the virtual nationalization of the banking industry, the propping up of the entire finance industry and the bankruptcy of General Motors, the largest corporation in the world. They used to say "what's good for General Motors, is good for the USA."
The Obama administration first predicted that U.S. unemployment would rise to only 8 percent before stabilizing. Reality has already outstripped this overly optimistic prediction, as official unemployment has risen to 9.5 percent and Obama himself now openly acknowledges the unemployment rate will hit double digits before things start to improve. Even these bleak numbers seriously underestimate reality. In the U.S. a person is considered unemployed only if he/she has no job and has applied for a job in the previous 30 days. Unemployed workers who have not applied for a job during this period or have become so demoralized looking for jobs that don't exist and have given up applying for positions are by bureaucratic fiat considered to have withdrawn from the workforce. According to the American state, these "discouraged workers" are no longer workers and are therefore not unemployed!
Workers who have lost their jobs and can't find new full time positions, but scramble to find menial part-time jobs just to survive - called "involuntary part-time workers" - are not considered unemployed or even underemployed. Provided they have a part-time job of at least 10 hours per week, they are considered "employed" and what's more each and every one of their part-time jobs counts as a "job" in the statistics that record the number of jobs in the economy. Thus for example, a laid off 59-year old special-education teachers aide who lost her job nine months ago, now works four part-time jobs. Not only is she not unemployed according to the government, she alone accounts for four new jobs in the economy. Working as a fitness instructor teaching five classes a week, a day-care worker, a personal care attendant to a patient with Down's syndrome, and as a personal fitness trainer for private clients, she manages to pull in a grand total of $750 per month, which doesn't help very much since her monthly mortgage payment is $1,000.
The U.S. Labor Department acknowledges that there were 9.1 million such ‘involuntary' part-time workers in May and that if discouraged workers and involuntary part-time were included in unemployment calculations, unemployment would stand at 16.4 percent, not 9.4. Even the most optimistic prognosticators predict that "full" employment (defined as 6 percent unemployment) can't possibly return until 2013 or 2014 in the U.S.
The Green Economy
The green economy mystification was a key element in the Obama presidential campaign. In the second presidential debate in October, 2008, Obama said, "if we create a new energy economy, we can create five million new jobs, easily." More specifically his campaign web site promised to "create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future." Programmatically, the Obama/Biden green economy proposal includes the following:
In February, 2009, Congress passed Obama's economic recovery plan which earmarked $80 million in stimulus spending for developing alternative fuel sources and other eco-conscious initiatives, which was widely touted among environmental groups as a down payment on the green economy. However, despite the triumphalism of the environmental groups, this paltry $80 million mathematically means that Obama will now have to "strategically" spend $149.92 billion dollars in nine years to fulfill his green economy pledge.
The green economy mystification is not simply an American phenomenon. According to a European environmental activist, "the clean economy is about to take off." The European Union is actively promoting green industry investment. European countries introduced their own carbon dioxide cap-and-trade programs in 2005. Germany has enacted the German Renewable Energy Act and introduced a feed-in tariffs(FITs) program providing incentives for clean energy investment. In Canada, Ontario Province has adopted a measure modeled on the German FITs. In Britain efforts to promote environmentally friendly investments are a central element in economic recovery plans. Australia seeks to increase green jobs by 3000 percent over the next several decades. Germany, Spain and Denmark have been promoting wind power programs. Germany and Spain have also been supporting solar power ventures.
Is the Green Economy a Magic Bullet?
The green economy is hardly the magic bullet that will save capitalism from itself. The comparisons of the green economy to the so-called "computer technology revolution" are spurious. This is no new technological revolution that will transform society the way the industrial revolution was able do when it transcended natural production and permitted the development of modern manufacturing, which decreased costs and increased production and helped raise the standard of living. When capitalism was an historically progressive system, capable of expanding the forces of production, when new technologies and new industries arose, they produced millions of new jobs, even as they may have destroyed old jobs and industries. So for example, the rise of the automobile industry, though it largely destroyed such industries as blacksmithing and buggy manufacturing, created millions more jobs in the auto, rubber, steel, aluminum, petroleum and allied industries. However today, in a crisis of global overproduction, insofar as it was able to reduce production costs and increase productivity, computer technology didn't revolutionize the economy, didn't enable the system to overcome its economic crisis, but on the contrary actually aggravated the crisis of overproduction.
The notion that fixing the mess that capitalism has created over the past century is the basis for economic progress is a complete fallacy. It's like saying that Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2004 was good for the economy because it created thousands of new construction jobs and makes possible economic growth. This kind of ideological sleight of hand only works if you leave out of the equation all the human suffering (death, dislocation, poverty) and destruction of productive forces, housing, schools, hospitals, etc. that was caused by Katrina. Fixing something that's broken is not "revolutionizing" the economy.
In any case, all the hype about how the green economy will produce new jobs is rubbish. A study commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Mayors projects an increase in green jobs in the US from about 750,000 today to 2.5 million in 2018, an increase of 1,750,000 jobs - much more modest than Obama's prediction of 5 million jobs. However, academic researchers from such universities as York College in Pennsylvania, the University of Illinois and University of Texas Arlington have challenged the Mayors' projections as wildly inflated, because they pad the job numbers with clerical and administrative support positions that have no direct involvement with clean energy production. In any case, even if Obama's inflated claims were accurate, five million new green jobs over ten years would be a drop in the bucket in this economy. Since the current recession began in December 2007, the American economy has lost nearly 6 million jobs to lay-offs and the economy needs 125,000 to 150,000 new jobs a month, or 1,500,000 to 1,800,000 jobs per year, just to absorb new workers coming of age and entering the workforce and keep unemployment stable. Thus, the alleged five million new jobs that will be created "easily" over a period of ten years will not even compensate for all the jobs destroyed in the last 18 months of the current recession!
Nor would the new green jobs compensate for the jobs lost in the oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and automobile industries that would result from the wholesale shift away from fossil fuels in what they call the "black" economy.. The highly promoted cap-and-trade program which allows polluting companies to trade allowances to pollute which has already been in place in Europe for four years has yet to have any positive benefits, as emissions levels have increased in the those countries.
Capitalist enterprises will only switch to environmentally friendly practices and investments if there are profits to be made. Since these new technologies require tremendous start up and research and development costs, they have to be very profitable. The only way that governments can promote the green economy is to introduce disincentives for continued use of fossil fuels and incentives to push companies towards green economy investments. So-called "free market" forces will never make this happen; it requires vigorous state capitalist policy intervention. This means increased taxes on the use of fossil fuel technologies, driving up costs for commodities produced by traditional manufacturing processes, and hence prices for consumers. And at the same time, it means government subsidies and tax breaks to green technology companies. All of this will of course be financed out of the hide of the working class, who will pay higher prices for "clean" consumer goods and higher taxes to finance subsidies and compensate for lost revenues due to corporate tax breaks. In the end the green economy that will supposedly "revolutionize" the economy and save the world from ecological disaster is ultimately just another way to foist austerity on the working class and erode even further its standard of living.
World capitalism is totally incapable of the degree of international cooperation necessary to address the ecological threat. Especially in the period of social decomposition, with the disappearance of economic blocs, and a growing tendency for each nation to play its own card on the international arena, in the competition of each against all, such cooperation is impossible. While the U.S. has been attacked for its refusal to participate in the Kyoto Protocols guidelines for curtailing carbon emissions, the nations who were enthusiastic participants in the treaty accomplished nothing in terms of reducing greenhouse gases in the past decade. Even when capitalism "tries" to implement solutions to the environmental crisis, the profit motive works irrationally to undermine social well being. The disastrous example of what happened with the profit-driven switch to produce ethanol from corn as an alternative fuel which prompted many agribusiness to switch from food production to producing corn-for-ethanol and contributed to global food shortages and hunger rioting offers just a taste of what a capitalist green economy has in store for humanity.
The Green Economy is a Smokescreen
The green economy is nothing but a smokescreen, an ideological campaign to give capitalism a human face. In its quest for profits, capitalism has debased the environment. The environmental calamity that capitalism has produced is yet another proof of the fact that it has outlived its usefulness, that it must be cast aside. But the green economy is a cynical response by the ruling class. They say they can fix the problem that flows directly from the very nature of their system. The distance between the promise of the green economy and reality is so enormous as to be laughable. The jobs it will create over the next decade won't even compensate for the jobs lost in the current "recession." They market ecologically friendly foodstuffs that are supposedly more natural and more organic, but are often priced beyond the reach of the average worker. To conserve energy, they tell us to switch from incandescent bulbs to fluorescent lights, which contain mercury which is disastrous for the environment unless disposed of in controlled manner.
No matter how you package it ideologically, capitalism works for profit, not for the fulfillment of human need.
There is no way for capitalism to extricate itself from the economic crisis, no way for a system based on the profit motive to save the environment. Only the proletariat has the capacity to salvage humanity's future --to destroy this rapacious system of capitalist exploitation of man by man based on a relentless drive for profits and replace it with a society in which the fulfillment of social need is the paramount principle in economic and social life. All this talk about green and black economies is nonsense. Only a red economy will offer humanity a future.
J. Grevin 6-30-2009
Most people in the U.S. are at least tangentially aware of the so called "drug-wars" that are being waged within the borders of their southern neighbor. Some months ago, in March, New York Times journalists wrote about violence "spilling" over the border. They cited some vague facts about homicide figures rising in certain American cities and then proceeded to hook the reader with some detective-like stories about a kidnapping and a pistol-whipping incident - incidents implied to be connected to the drug-violence in Mexico. While the New York Times and all the whole lot of the corporate media might be very competent at making sensationalist narratives out of these disjointed tragedies that imply that the crimes are related to a few trouble makers, the situation is different and worse. The escalation of drug violence in the US, as in everywhere else, is symptomatic of a rot that lies in the heart of the current economic world order. In order to understand this gangsterization of the economy as a convulsion of a decomposing capitalism, one must analyze it through its historical origins, its effect on class dynamics, and the obstacles it places against communist political clarification.
The history of narco-violence seems like a surreal circus of the macabre. The stories of corpses dissolved in hydrochloric acid and decapitated heads catching flies do signal something terribly wrong in the order of things. However as every massive social malaise, there is a material foundation deep within the heart of the economic order. In order to understand this material foundation it is necessary to start with the story itself. The rise of drug syndicates is certainly an international phenomenon - the appearance of the capitalist phase of decomposition around the late 70s, escalating in the 80s and 90s with the dissolution of the Soviet imperialist bloc, came with the rise of a decomposing bourgeoisie increasingly irrational in its lack of ideological direction and in the extent of its barbarity. One of these "manifestations" was the rise of international crime syndicates. These new "illegalist" capitalists came from all corners of the world - from the opium of Afghani "freedom fighter" Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, to the new gangster-capitalism of the Russian mobs. However, the most interesting of these stories lies in the heart of the Americas. The story of the narco starts in Colombia. Although Colombia already had a history of international drug-trafficking that goes all the way to 1914, it makes no sense to talk about the narco as an almost omnipotent entity until the rise of the Medellin and Cali cartels in the 80s, when the profitability of cocaine transformed these gangsters into truly international paramilitaries. Increasingly, but assuredly, these new "gangster-capitalists" became integrated into the economy and the social fiber. They invested their gains in land, respectable businesses, and some like Escobar even participated in parliamentary politics. The current violent situation in Mexico (and its extension in the US) is more or less a continuation: the Mexican cartels' power does not reside in their productive capabilities, but in their monopoly over the routes through which Colombian cocaine flows and connects to the U.S. The same phenomena that happened in Colombia- namely the integration of these new mob-capitalists into the world economic order, happened more or less in the Mexican context. They lie everywhere in the decomposing layers of bourgeois society: within the state, and both in the realm of respectability and illegality.
The integration of the cartels into the world economy means that their differentiation from more "respectable" factions of the bourgeoisie is far from an easy task. After all, one of the aspects of decomposing capitalism is the rot of the ruling class itself, throwing into constant flux the demacrations between different bourgeois factions. The shadow of the narco, being essentially almost one with the ruling class of Mexico and Colombia, slides through the legal space of the transnational tentacles of world capitalism, making its presence known in respectable institutions in both Latin America and the United States. This hybridization of the ruling class makes more sense if we analyze it in the context of the current escalation of violence in Mexico. Most security analysts opine that one of the main causes of escalation of violence is the loss of political power of the PRI (Partido Revolutionario Institucional), when its power started to increasingly wane in the late 80s. The PRI has been traditionally a vessel of narco-politicians: from full blown narcos like Gomez Palacio's ex-mayor Carlos Herrera, to Carlos Salinas de Gortari, ex-president of Mexico, the latter whose brother went to prison for links with the Cartel del Golfo. The rise of the right wing PAN (Partido de Accion Nacional) came with the rise of a new faction of the boss-class, willing to challenge violently the strong grip of the drug lords over the Mexican economic and political apparatuses. The declaration of war against the cartels by this new faction of the state created an all-total war. Cartels fight each other for new territory as some of their political links to the state wane. Shots are heard routinely in the barrios: hitmen from different cartels get into fast paced car gunfights, shooting each other, the cops, and the military alike. Calderon, president of Mexico, himself admitted that just in 2008, 6500 people have died in this civil war. Yet, this context of total war might be deceiving, for many bosses high up in the state and behind many respectable businesses have links with drug trafficking.
As stated before, the legal space of these gangster-capitalists extends all the way to the U.S. Money laundering occurs not just in small businesses, but in the heart of American finance capital itself - the big banks. On April 26, 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported that more than $11 million were laundered in the Wachiovia bank within the accounts of known drug traffickers. The U.S. Justice Department also reported numerous banks, including American Express International, which allegedly laundered more than $55 million, have been involved in money laundering operations. Further south, we see the US funding the Colombian government with "Plan Colombia" money to counter the drug-traffickers while it was this same Colombian government that protected and encouraged the narco-founded right-wing paramilitaries. Similar, the U.S. government claims that 90 percent of the guns seized from the Mexican drug-traffickers can be traced back to the U.S. These weapons, the use of which sometimes makes for spectacular headlines in the press, can be as sophisticated as rocket launchers and hand grenades. On the opposite side of "legality", the spilling of violence into the borders of the US just confirms the international aspect of decomposition, and thus this tendency to gangsterization.
And yet, as always in the times of social chaos, the media and the other mouthpieces of the dominant class try to diminish the importance of class. In their discourse of legalist doublespeak, the media tries to convey this as a war between the legalist "good" and the criminal "bad." To us communists, this type of discourse is meaningless. It has no meaning even in the myopic limits of the dominant's class discourse, for in some parts of Mexico the narco and the state are one. While in this period of decomposition, the bourgeoisie seems to lose the ideological clarity it once had, in the structural level it is still the bourgeoisie who causes these wars and it is still the working class who suffers and becomes the foot-soldiers. Whether the bosses are "soviets", democrats, or criminal gangs, there are still these capitalist wars - product of the tendency of decadent capitalism to descend into savagery. In the end, it is the workers that pay when the gunshots ring in their neighborhoods, and when they are sent to pull each others' intestines out in the name of either legality or gangster morality. The descent of decadent capitalism into decomposition reaffirms even more urgently that old slogan of "socialism or barbarism".
Ricardo Santiago 7-02-2009
We are publishing here a shorter version of a statement by Revolución Mundial, the ICC's section in Mexico, about the outbreak of swine flu which began in that country. After the first weeks of panic and doom-mongering, the new strain of flu almost disappeared from the headlines.
But even if the danger of a pandemic was exaggerated and if the bourgeoisie made good use of that exaggeration, the disease is real and a number of extremely serious cases have occurred in the US particularly in the New York City area where 23 people have died by mid-June, the most in the nation.
Only an understanding of what the decadence of this system means can explain why there is a permanent danger of epidemics like the one we are now seeing in Mexico. The internet is packed with the most mythical and exaggerated theories about this epidemic, expressing the widespread distrust of the official version which stresses that this is a ‘natural process' linked to the life cycles of the virus and to chance, which obviously doesn't help us to understand what's going on. It's also no surprise that the left wing of capital and its trade unions (the SME for example) are doing all they can to hide the real problem by seeking the origins of the epidemic in the perverse actions of a particular individual or country, claiming for example that the epidemic spreading through Mexico was deliberately created by the USA, or that it's all just a publicity stunt to cover up secret financial and commercial deals by the government. These kinds of explanations, which may look very radical, simply defend the idea that there could be a more patriotic and human capitalism if only the activities of certain predatory states were kept under control, if the correct policies were carried out and if we were governed by honest and well-intentioned people.
But the origins of these threats to life on our planet are not to be found in a plot. They are the product of the very development of capitalism. The frenetic search for profit and an increasingly vicious capitalist competition can only lead to stifling levels of exploitation where living and working conditions are severely affected; what's more, with this desperate quest to reduce costs, increasingly noxious and polluting methods are being used. This is true both for industrial production and for agriculture and cattle-rearing, both for the countries that are highly industrialized and for the ones which are not, even if the effects of capitalism's destructive tendencies are more dramatic in the latter.
An example of this is the conditions of cattle-rearing: abuse of steroids and antibiotics (to accelerate growth), overcrowding of animals with a very high levels of waste which is thrown away without due concern for hygiene, exacerbating the danger of contamination. It is this form of production which has led to scandals like Mad Cow Disease and the various forms of flu.
To this we should add the attacks on health services and the lack of preventative measures which facilitate the spread of viruses. We can see this clearly in Mexico with the relentless dismantling of the Mexican social security system and its health centers, which are in general the only ones that workers have access to. There have been government reports about the danger of epidemics since 2006 (cf the journal Proceso no, 1695, 26.4.09), where it was argued that a virus known as ‘A type flu' could infect cheap poultry and livestock, mutate and attack humans. Reports were written, projects drawn up, but it all remained a dead letter for lack of any funds.
The appearance of this flu epidemic in Mexico has again exposed the precariousness of the conditions in which the working class lives: the aggravated levels of exploitation and unbearable poverty are the perfect soil for the germination of disease.
Newspaper investigations have shown that the effects of the virus were known about by 16 April and that the government waited seven days before sounding the alarm. The announcement of the existence of ‘swine flu' in Mexico on the night of 23 April was clearly not the beginning of the problem but the aggravation of everything that the working class has to put up with in capitalism. Despite the confused and doctored figures provided by the Ministry of Health regarding the number of people the virus has killed or made ill, the real balance sheet is not hard to draw up: the only victims of this epidemic are the workers and their families. It is the wage-slaves and their families who have died from this disease; it is they who have been expected to drag themselves from one hospital to another, often having to wait for care in overcrowded corridors where precious time is wasted and where the needed anti-viral drugs are often not available. While the official announcements tried to present the epidemic as something that was under control, the working class population cruelly experienced the lack of medical services, of medicine and preventative measures. It was also the workers in the health service (doctors and nurses) who now had to face even more dangerous and intensive working conditions, which led the medical interns at the National Institute for Respiratory Diseases to demonstrate and denounce this situation on 27 April; and despite the fact that this was a short and small mobilization, the press covered it up.
The way this epidemic has been dealt with in the first weeks is very significant: the bourgeoisie and its state have argued that this is a matter of ‘security' which calls for national unity. But while the workers are exposed to contagion because they are obliged to use transport systems like the metro or the bus where there is a massive human concentration, the bourgeoisie protects itself in an appropriate manner with a single concern: how to justify the wage reductions that the bosses will have to impose to make up for the losses resulting from the obligatory closure of certain workplaces, especially restaurants and hotels.
There is no doubt that the bourgeoisie, in mid-April, was surprised by the appearance of a mutant virus for which it had no vaccine. It panicked and took a number of hurried decisions which served only to spread the panic among the whole population. At the beginning the ruling class was caught up in the panic, but very quickly it began to use it against the workers. On the one hand it used it to give the government an image of strength and efficiency; on the other, spreading fear encouraged individualism and an atmosphere of generalized suspicion where everyone saw the person next to them as a possible source of contagion, the exact opposite of the solidarity that could arise among the exploited. We can thus understand why the Secretary of State for Health, Cordóba Villalobos, justified (and thus encouraged) the aggressions which residents of Mexico City were subjected to in other regions of the country after they were accused of being ‘infected'. This high state official said that these were natural expressions of the ‘human condition'. The bourgeoisie lives in fear of solidarity among the workers and it is quite capable of using this affair to counter it by encouraging chauvinism and localism. It is this same nationalist strategy which capital uses in China, Argentina or Cuba to justify stringent controls over who enters or leaves its territories.
The class in power, by launching its campaign of fear, is trying to make the working class see itself as powerless and to accept the state as its only savior. This is why the antidote to these campaigns of fear is serious reflection among the workers, enabling them to understand that as long as capitalism is alive, the only thing we can expect is more exploitation, more poverty, more disease and premature deaths. Today more than ever it is an urgent necessity to put an end to capitalism.
RM, May 2009.
As reported on our website [27], in April 2009 Internationalism hosted a weekend-long Days of Discussion conference which brought together a number of correspondents, readers, and sympathizers from geographically dispersed parts of the US and Canada for a much needed opportunity to meet face to face (often for the first time), to learn from each other, to exchange views, to deepen our understanding, the better to contribute to the development of class consciousness and class struggle in the period ahead. The agenda was developed in consultation with the participants and addressed the strategy of the bourgeoisie in the current economic crisis, the response of the working class, and the intervention of revolutionaries in the class struggle. An additional discussion focused on Darwinism and the workers movement. Presentations for each discussion were prepared by non-members of the ICC and were intended not so much to present any particular position but rather to serve as point of departure for the discussion.
In order to give readers a better appreciation of the content and quality of the discussions at the conference and to share more fully the fruit of this important conference, we publish in this report the presentations on the strategy of the bourgeoisie and the intervention of revolutionaries in the class struggle. The presentations have been edited slightly for reasons of space. Each is followed by a brief description of the discussion. - Internationalism, July 2009.
Presentation by Roza
1. Introduction
This presentation will limit itself to the economic and monetary-policy strategies employed by the current Barack Obama Administration to manage the current problems of a continually deteriorating U.S. economy. Obama's strategy of choice seems to be one in which desperation is quite evident, and which merely seeks to alleviate, in the short-term, the problems the country currently faces. Though its price tag would imply otherwise, the economic-monetary strategy employed is actually modest, as the state of a moribund U.S. capital takes away much of the incentive to seek long-term, stronger solutions to the problem. If the patient's disease is terminal, a palliative approach makes sense.
The harshness and distastefulness of these economic-monetary remedies require an ideological/political approach that will make austerity more palatable to the masses, who are either unemployed or are facing the very real possibility of unemployment in the near future while watching the financial sector receive aid many believe it does not deserve. The administration seems to hoped that mass austerity and the propping up of the financial sector will be accepted as "necessary evils" to be endured on the "road to recovery"-though, of course, the most likely scenario is that the bourgeoisie are counting on normalizing austerity so as to make it palatable indefinitely beyond a period of "recovery."
One of the ingenious, and thus dangerous, aspects of the Obama Administration is the relative ease and success with which it has thus far substituted lofty words for concrete plans (even the bourgeois type of plans!); and sold to the masses vacuity as substance. As the current Manager-In-Charge, Obama will continue to try to perfect his administration's record as most effective snake-oil sales team through its plan to use the current widespread (and blind and uncritical) distaste for the Bush Administration and the current economic crisis, as a means to implement a social approach to the crisis, reminiscent of the Clinton Administration's portrayal of the dismantling of the remaining social safety net in the U.S. as responsible and needed "reform."
2. Economic Level
The U.S., and indeed the world bourgeoisie, faces the most serious economic crisis since at least the Great Depression. The meltdown of the housing market from the second half of 2006 provoked a massive financial crisis on Wall Street, which posed the possibility, in Fall 2008, of the complete collapse of the global financial system.
Since the fall of last year, only massive state intervention into the economy, in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars in cash infusions and asset purchases, has kept the U.S. and global economies from total impasse. However, even as the U.S. state flexes its muscles to prop up the banks, insurance companies, etc., the U.S. working class is being devastated. Massive layoffs have led to levels of official unemployment not seen since the recession of the early 1980s. And as everyone here knows, the official unemployment numbers do not begin to accurately describe the depth of the situation faced by the long-term unemployed who are not included in the official statistics
Faced with this situation, even bourgeois commentators have openly asked themselves if "capitalism is finished." [1] While the rosier prognosticators continue to claim that recovery will happen sometime in the next year, the general consensus seems to be no consensus at all about how long the economic crisis will last and to what depths it will reach.
One thing is certain: The U.S. bourgeoisie will respond to this crisis by strengthening its state capitalist apparatus. Already, through the T.A.R.P. plan and through direct cash investments into the banks, the U.S. bourgeoisie has virtually nationalized the banking industry-at least temporarily. The U.S. government is now a major shareholder in banks such as CitiGroup and Bank of America, has encouraged or supervised the merger of other banks or financial companies, and taken a major step to shore up the banks and other financial institutions by bailing out AIG.
After nearly 30 years of so-called Reaganomics, which saw the U.S. state lift numerous regulations in the banking sector and throughout the economy as a whole, the Obama Administration has begun to implement an economic policy which some economists believe is reminiscent of the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Based on the theories of John Maynard Keynes, the American state is attempting to correct the economic crisis by taking a central place in the management and direction of the economy.
However, the nature of the Obama administration's turn to Keynesianism is up for debate: will it invest on military adventures or in the direct investment on the productive (or potentially productive) sectors of the economy?
There are two types of Keynesianism: "weak" and "strong." In the weak version, the state increases its "defense" budget and engages in militaristic adventures abroad in order to increase the market for military goods and the secondary institutions that support it. In the "strong" version, what economic historians have identified with the New Deal, the state engages in deficit spending and job creation. It intervenes on the social level with the goal to create jobs, lower unemployment and stimulate demand and consumption through massive infrastructure programs and investment. [2]
Both of these versions, however, have their problems from the point of view of the bourgeoisie. On the one hand, one of the problems with weak Keynesianism is that it requires significant increases in the state's military budget. The United States military is already stretched precariously thin, thanks in part to the militaristic presidency of George W. Bush, even as it claims to be winding down its mission in Iraq. The Obama Administration, however, perhaps in an attempt to both continue its imperialist agenda and to prop up the economy to some extent through weak Keynesianism, has proposed a $527 billion (excluding war costs) FY 2010 defense budget, which has been calculated as an 8% increase from the FY 2009 Bush Administration allocation of $487.7 billion. [3] True to his promise during the campaign when he insisted he was "not against all wars, only stupid wars," his will not be a "peace" administration, but rather as much a bellicose administration as the eight years of George W. Bush were.
On the other hand, strong Keynesianism's efficacy is limited by the appearance of the proverbial "white elephant," as the cost of job creation and infrastructure building at one point become too costly and absurd to continue. [4] The Obama Administration has not so far made serious overtures towards this type of economic policy other than to propose minuscule subsidies toward the growth of a "green economy," and to pay similar lip-service toward other such initiatives. As things stand, after its financial sector bailout efforts, the U.S. Treasure finds further deficit spending extremely difficult. Furthermore, deficit spending (provided it is successful in creating jobs), combined with bailout money, poses the risk of runaway inflation once full(er) employment wages and the cash injections made to the financial sector begin circulating in the broader economy.
Perhaps one of the most dangerous consequences of the current monetary and economic policies is the collapsing value of the dollar. As the U.S. tentatively feels its way out of the current economic crisis, the central banks abroad could begin to "diversify" their foreign currency holdings away from the dollar, and the OPEC countries to begin "shifting" away from pricing its crude in U.S. dollars. As confidence in the U.S. economy (and the dollar in particular) weakens, and as the U.S. national debt continues its upward climb, the U.S. could experience a devaluation of its national currency, spelling the end of U.S. imperial omnipotence.
3. Political / Ideological level
During the past six months, just as the economy was collapsing around them, the U.S. bourgeoisie enjoyed a temporary political and ideological boost with the election of Barack Obama. The Obama campaign's rhetoric of hope and change, coupled with the media barrage regarding the historic nature of the election of the first African American President, served to deflect most social and political unrest into electoral politics. For some time, it appeared that a messiah had arisen who would fix the economy, end the war, pay your mortgage, cancel your credit card debt and create a utopia of brotherhood on earth. The bourgeoisie will continue to play on these themes to the extent that it can in the period ahead, particularly with some of the most vulnerable groups in the population.
However, almost as soon as Obama took office, another message was propagated stressomg the tough road ahead to fix the myriad of economic, political and social problems "created by the irresponsible George W. Bush administration." The American population was told that things would get worse before they get better, and that there would be no easy turn around in the immediate future. They were told to prepare for sacrifice in the form of continued job losses and lack of access to credit. Recently, Obama has taken this rhetoric further, arguing that Americans must learn to consume less and export more. [5] The glory days of consumerism fueled by home equity and credit cards is now over. If Obama has kept one promise, it is that of "change:" A change from a credit-subsidized consumption bubble (which to some extent propped up the standard of living for the working class for the last two decades); to direct austerity in the form of a declining standard of living and record unemployment. "Change we can believe in," indeed!
While the Bush and Obama administrations work feverishly to prop up the banks and financial sector, they simultaneously work to smash whatever remnants of "high wage" and "high benefit" employment remains, with serious talk of forcing General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy. The unions for their part are only too happy to oblige, agreeing to "compromises" in order to keep the companies solvent. [6] The Obama administration, with full cooperation of its Republican mouthpieces in Congress and the media, have taken advantage of the crisis to mobilize public opinion against the auto workers, labeling them overpaid special interests. [7]
4. Social level
On the social level, the U.S. bourgeoisie has taken advantage of the economic crisis and Obama's election to continue the policies of previous administrations to impose austerity against the working class.
However, the Obama administration has also hinted at certain measures that appear on the surface to be reforms. In particular, he has announced a supposedly ambitious plan to enact a "universal" health care system in the U.S., the absence of which drags down the U.S.'s international competitiveness. [8] Obama's attempt to change the health care system in the U.S. is above all an attempt to rationalize health care delivery from the point of view of the state. The American system of public education is yet another area in which Obama seems to plan further "reforms." His appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, suggests that public schools and their teachers will continue to experience the attacks begun under the Bush Administration. From No Child Left Behind, we will soon see No Teacher Left Standing. [9]
5. Questions for discussion
1. To what extent can the Keynesianism of the Obama administration succeed in alleviating the worst effects of the economic crisis? Is a new New Deal really possible?
2. To What extent are the ideological campaigns about socialism emanating from the Republicans reflective of a real split in the U.S. bourgeoisie regarding how to handle its response to the crisis?
3. Is the bourgeoisie's willingness to bail out the banks reflective of the domination of finance over productive capital? To what extent is this distinction useful for understanding the capitalist economy today?
4. What is the meaning of the attacks on the autoworkers for the broader working class response to the crisis?
5.Will the Obama administration be successful in imposing austerity withut provoking a serious working class response? Are confrontations of the scale witnessed in France, Greece and other European countries likely to happen in the U.S. Why or why not?
Notes
1. See for example Tobin Harshaw's blog for the New York Times, "Weekend Opinionator: A Different Kind of Red America [28]"; (Press TV's interview with Noam Chomsky; David Harvey's "The End of Capitalism? A Response to Tim Geithner [29]"; and The Atlantic's "The End of Capitalism? [30]".
2. Harvey, David. "Why the U.S. Stimulus Package is Bound to Fail. [31]" Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey, February 12, 2009.
3 Congressional Quarterly. "White House Draws Line on Defense Budget." CQ Politics, February 2, 2009.
4. See this article [32] for a brief definition of the economic "White Elephant;" and Kevin Depew's commentary, "Two Ways to Play", broadcast on PBS's Nightly Business Report on February 5, 2009, for a brief critique of public works spending.
5. ibid.
6. Dwyer, Dustin and Michele Norris. "United Auto Workers Open to Contract Changes [33]." National Public Radio, All Things Considered, December 3, 2008.
7. Weber, Sarah. "Local Auto Workers Frustrated by Lack of Support From Fellow Americans." Sandusky Register Online, February 21, 2009. Maddow, Rachel. "Talk Me Down! Since When are Auto Workers the Fat Cats?" Newsvine, November 26, 2008.
8. Kaufman, Marc and Rob Stein. "Record Share of Economy Spent on Health Care [34]." The Washington Post, January 10, 2006.
9 Giroux, Henry A. and Kenneth Saltman. New Catholic Times, January 19, 2009. Rossi, Rosalind and Lynn. Chicago Sun-Times, December 15, 2008.
10.https://en.internationalism.org/wr/318/doortostruggles [35]
The presentation triggered a very stimulating discussion which stressed the importance of placing the current economic situation in an historic context. In particular it was noted that the present recession is but the latest manifestation of the permanent crisis of capitalist overproduction, and that the current crisis is in fact the worst capitalist crisis in history since it has occurred despite all the state capitalist palliatives that were put in place in the 1930's. Regarding the recent media fixation on the distinction between finance and productive capital and the significance of this differentiation, the conference felt that this campaign was an ideological manipulation needed by the bourgeoisie for the purpose of obscuring the perspective of "no future" that capitalism offers to the working class. The campaign to blame the "evil" bankers for the current crisis seeks to obscure the fact that this is fundamentally a crisis of capitalist overproduction. This ideology will be utilized also to try to impose and justify austerity attacks against the working class. Repeatedly it was stressed that the ruling class has no way out the crisis, no choice but to continue to resort to debt, military expansionism, strengthened state capitalism, and austerity against the working class. A number of points that needed to be deepened in further research and discussion were identified, particularly the growing weight of gangsterism or illegality in economic life.
Presentation by Jogiches
In Class Consciousness and Communist Organization, the ICC quotes Marx as saying: "Theory is only realized in the masses to the extent that it is a realization of their needs..." and goes one to say, speaking of Bolshevik intervention in the class struggle in 1917,
"...the party had to go beyond the illusions remaining among the proletariat...Rather than waiting for the working class to get rid of them itself, without any intervention from its vanguard, it had to, on the contrary, put itself ahead of the confused aspirations of the workers, give them a clear expression, facilitate the development of class consciousness, act in such a way that the proletariat might arrive at a conception of its real historical interests. For Lenin, this was not a matter of flattering the prejudices that most workers still held to, nor of acting without taking into account the level of consciousness of the working masses, but of generalizing throughout the proletariat the awareness of the necessity for the seizure of power and of making the proletariat capable itself of realizing its historical task."
I read a quote from an article in Internationalism that said: "A working class that can't defend itself can't make a revolution." 10 which made a lot of sense to me in terms of revolutionaries intervening in the class struggle. Along those same lines, there was an article in last month's Internationalism that said:
"A social revolution can only be made by those ‘below', those who have least to gain from the preservation of the existing order. But those below will never advance towards making a revolution unless they forge themselves into a force that is capable of defending itself today, of fighting against every encroachment made by the capitalist system - every factory closure, every benefit cut, every wage reduction, every attempt of the bosses and the state to repress this resistance and victimize those who take part in it."
In some senses, defensive class struggle is a precondition to revolutionary offensive struggle--the intervention of revolutionaries must be to encourage the extension of these defensive struggles. But what is our role in these struggles? Is it our role to initiate them?
I was speaking to a Trotskyist who quoted me an old maxim he'd heard saying that "'sectarians' are like a man standing on the shore shouting swimming instructions to a drowning man (the working class), whereas what is needed is to throw the drowning man a lifesaver or swimming out to him to carry him to shore" Such a conception is false because, to extend the metaphor, the drowning man doesn't learn to swim. The entire set up of the metaphor conceives of the working class entirely as the victim of history, the object of history, but never as a revolutionary subject. However, because the revolution can only be carried out by the conscious, organized effort of the entire class acting for itself (and not as the obedience of the class to the slogans and demands put forward by revolutionaries), the intervention of revolutionaries in the class struggle must always be attempting to increase the consciousness and self-confidence and self-reliance of the working class--if workers are unconscious masses to be led by revolutionaries, they can just as easily be led by the bourgeoisie and will never be able to end their exploitation.
The central goal of all intervention in the class struggle then is to contribute to the process whereby the working class becomes a force strong enough, united enough, and conscious enough to overthrow capitalism and build communism internationally. The most important question for each intervention to answer is: how does this increase the consciousness, the self-confidence, and the self-reliance of the working class and increase their belief in their own capacity to struggle together as a class? How does this move toward the working class constituting itself into a force that can overthrow capitalism?
How can revolutionaries be an active part of the growth of the class into such a force?
It is the material interests of the working class push it to struggle against the most fundamental demands of capitalism, and the only way for the struggle to be successful is for them to consciously unite with other workers. This is why the defensive struggles of the working class are inherently revolutionary in the period when the bourgeoisie cannot give an inch but is instead constantly asking for lower wages, longer hours, fewer staff, more insecurity, etc. The role of revolutionaries is to encourage this tendency and speed it along as much as possible and spread the consciousness of this process and encourage the class to take control of its own struggles.
Again from the Communist Organizations and Class Consciousness pamphlet:
"When they (revolutionaries) intervene in the class struggle, they do not put forward a pure abstract theory that the workers are supposed to ‘appropriate' instead of struggling. They are in the struggle. In it, they defend demands, forms of organization (strike committees, genera1 assemblies...). They support everything that can spread and strengthen the struggle. Their task is to intervene and participate - as far as they are able - in all the partial struggles of their class. They must stimulate every tendency for the proletariat to organize itself independently of capital. Revolutionaries will be present in every political and organizational expression of the proletariat, in every struggle, in the general assemblies, soviets, and neighborhood committees. There they will rigorously attack the maneuvers of capital's guard-dogs who will use the cover of ‘working class' language to try to detour the struggle into dead-ends and defeat."
"...as communists, we do not have the task of initiating slogans of daily struggle amongst the working masses - these must be posed by the workers in the factories. We must always point out to the workers that the solution of these daily questions will not better their situation, and that in no way will it be able to bring about the downfall of capitalism. We Communists have the task of participation in this daily combat, of marching at the head of these struggles. Therefore, comrades, we don't reject this daily combat, but in this combat we put ourselves ahead of the masses, we always show them the road and the great goal of communism." (Intervention of Meyer-Bergman (KAPD) at the same congress)
What do revolutionaries do to ensure that class consciousness moves forward?
They participate in every struggle and in its organization, and from beginning to end they use the driving force of each combat to take the greatest possible number of steps towards the constitution of the proletariat as a force capable of overthrowing the dominant system.
"The aim of communist intervention is to contribute to this apprenticeship. In every struggle, communists must show the movement's historical and geographical dimensions, but this does not mean remaining satisfied with setting out the final goal of world-wide communism. We must, moreover, at each instant know how to weigh up the point the struggle has reached, and be able to make proposals which are concretely realisable, and at the same time represent a real advance of the struggle in the development of the unity and awareness of the whole class. To go as far as possible in each struggle, to push its potential capacities to the limit by proposing goals which are realizable but always more advanced - this is what revolutionaries aim, for when they intervene in the open struggles of their class."
Concretely, what does this mean? From "Unions Against the Working Class":
[the revolutionary organization must] "be among the most resolute participants in the struggle, propagating a general orientation for the struggle and denouncing the agents and ideologies of the bourgeoisie within the class. During the struggle it stresses the need for generalization...It is neither a spectator nor a mere water-carrier."
In addition to this, revolutionaries should encourage the appearance of workers' discussion circles and participate in them--not to artificially turn them into transmission belts of parties or thinking that they will become workers' councils--workers' circles can only be valuable if they don't adopt half-formed platforms but instead remain a place open to all workers interested in discussion the problems that face workers as workers..
In regard to the intervention of revolutionaries in the class struggle, there was consensus that there is:
It was agreed that the objective of the revolutionaries' intervention in the class struggle is:
As one comrade noted, there is a statement by Marx that the revolution is the task of the workers themselves. The organization does not organize the class, does not give orders to the class, as that would contradict the notion that it is the task of the class to make the revolution. It is the responsibility of the revolutionary minority within the class to contribute to the rise of consciousness. The organization is not able to formulate the immediate demands of the class. Indeed it does not have the capacity to do so, and it does not have that function. The dangers of an immediatist approach to our intervention, what to do in our own job, etc. were considered. Sometimes we intervene at locations other than where we work. We have also talked of the need for the working class to draw continuously the lessons of its struggle. We cannot think of intervention as an "individual" thing, but rather as a reflection of the collective struggle of the working class.
Readers will recall that we reprinted in our last issue an earlier article on the Seattle General Strike of 1919, which pointed out the importance of this event in the development of the class struggle in North America, analyzed its strengths and weaknesses and showed how, despite persistent myths of the passivity of the working class in North America, the post-World War I revolutionary wave, which put capitalist social relations into question, did not spare North America.
In this issue, we continue our look at the history of the revolutionary wave in North America with a new article on events north of the 49th parallel, where the working class in Canada launched its own offensive against the capitalist system in a series of struggles across the year 1919, culminating in the Winnipeg General Strike in May and June of that year that would threaten the capitalist social order and would, in the form of spontaneous mass assemblies of workers, prefigure a new social order beyond capitalism.
Winnipeg was a bustling city in the spring of 1919, the largest city in the Canadian West and home to the tallest building in the British Empire at the time. An important transportation hub linking Western and Eastern Canada as well as a route into the United States, Winnipeg stood as an important center of working class life in the western part of the continent. In the spring of 1919, Winnipeg's isolation on the immense northern prairie, where it sits almost 500 miles from the nearest major metropolitan center, did not prevent it from serving as the focal point of a wave of working class struggle that swept Western Canada.
The working class in Winnipeg had to overcome many obstacles in order to come together in the massive struggle it launched that year. Ethnically diverse, with workers coming from Anglo-Scottish, French, Jewish, German, Mennonite, Ukrainian and other heritages, Winnipeg's working class was far from a homogenous. Differences of trade, gender and language further segmented the working class, although the most important fission at the time was probably that between workers who had served on the battlefields of Europe during World War I versus those who had labored in the factories, in the shops and on the railroads at home. The situation was so bad that in January 1919, the ruling class successfully manipulated tensions between the returning war veterans, who faced unemployment and insecurity, and immigrant workers, resulting in anti-immigrant rioting. Returning soldiers marched on a meat packing plant demanding that foreigners be fired from their jobs. The veterans also attacked a socialist memorial meeting for the martyred German revolutionaries, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. For several days immigrants were attacked in the streets and even in their homes.
Try as they might, the bourgeoisie and its state apparatus were unable to use these divisions to keep Winnipeg's working class prostrate as it faced the social and economic turmoil that accompanied the war and its conclusion. Throughout the spring of 1919, Winnipeg's working class demonstrated a tremendous capacity to transcend these various divisions and act in concert as one force in defense of its own class interests. In perhaps one of the most important developments in the Winnipeg struggle, working class veterans who just four months earlier had been suckered into anti-immigrant rioting, overcame the xenophobic bourgeois ideology and threw their support to the general strike. [1] Even rank and file police officers attempted to join the rebellion.
These events occurred in the context of widespread working class support and sympathy for the proletarian revolution in Russia throughout North America in general and in Winnipeg in particular, where for example a mass meeting of 1700 workers, including immigrants and native-born workers, in December 1918 voiced support for and adopted resolutions endorsing the revolutionary struggles in Russia and Germany. The example of the Seattle General strike also stood clearly in the minds of the workers as well. Events in Winnipeg drew further momentum from the Western Labour Conference held in Calgary during March 1919. During this conference, delegates from unions across the West seceded from the Trades and Labour Conference of Canada (TLC) to propose a new organization called One Big Union (OBU), sharing much in common with the principles of revolutionary syndicalism defended by the International Workers of the World (IWW). Many delegates who formed the OBU openly identified with the Russian Revolution and called on the working class to launch a revolution in Canada to overthrow the bourgeois state and create a new society modeled on Soviet Russia. While the OBU itself would prove ephemeral, its formation in March of 1919 led to two main consequences. First, it set the Canadian ruling class back on its feet, leading to the development of a Red Scare in Canada and causing the authorities to react to each working class struggle with a high degree of paranoia and fear. Second, it imbued the working class with a spirit of struggle and created the sense that a new society was indeed possible and that the working class could make it happen.
In May, with the country already gripped by tension, Winnipeg's building and metal workers went out on strike against intransigent employers unwilling to bargain. In response to the building and metal workers' strike, the Winnipeg Trade and Labour Council (WTLC) decided to hold a vote of all affiliated unions on a proposal to declare a general strike. Within a week the votes were in with more than 11,000 workers voting for the general strike compared to just 524 opposed. On May 15, 1919, the factories, shops and rail yards in the city fell silent. The response to the strike was even more impressive than its organizers had expected. Not only did workers in the affiliated unions come out, but thousands of unorganized workers also joined the ranks of the strikers. For the next six weeks, the city's industries would come to a virtual standstill with 30,000 strikers filling the city's streets, parks and halls to protest, voice their demands and plan the direction of the struggle. Following the example of the Seattle General Strike, the strike committee authorized continuation of vital services, demonstrating the embryonic dual power that existed in the city. The strike committee even gave permission for the local theatre to remain open so that workers could have a place to gather during the strike.
Almost from the outset, the radicalism of the Winnipeg working class was evident. The strike spread like wildfire from sector to sector and workers very quickly took the strike into their own hands by spontaneously forming mass assemblies and appointing committees to ensure that the city was fed and essential services were provided. In the mass assemblies workers debated and discussed the goals of the strike, taking matters into their own hands even where this conflicted with the union hierarchies. Displaying tremendous unity in the face of all that on the surface would appear to divide them, the Winnipeg working class consistently rejected the intense ideological barrage and yellow press efforts of the bourgeois newspapers to divide them along the lines of ethnicity, gender or war veteran status. One historian has estimated that at least 171 separate mass meetings of workers took place during the six week course of the strike. [2]
The local ruling class in Winnipeg, as well as the Canadian federal state itself, did not stand idly by, while the working class ran what they considered to be "their" city. In addition to the vicious ideological barrage, which labeled the strikers as "Bolshevist dogs" and "traitors to the Crown", the local bourgeoisie organized itself in the Citizens' Committee of 1000, (CC 1000) with the stated aim of destroying the strike and returning Christian order under the King's government to Winnipeg. Firmly convinced a revolution was underway, the CC 1000 quickly worked to ensure the cooperation of the federal government in crushing the strike. On the 26th of May, the federal government ordered Winnipeg's postal workers back to work or face termination. On advice of a top member of the CC 1000, the federal government passed tough new immigration laws to permit the arrest and deportation of aliens advocating subversion or the destruction of property.
The Winnipeg working class stood strong, rejecting orders to return to work. Returning soldiers sympathetic to the strike held parades in the city, further worrying the authorities. The CC of 1000 and federal authorities held back on deploying violence to crush the strike. Fearful of the consequences of a violent end to the strike, the authorities played a delicate game of wait-and-see, all the time remaining resolute in their call for an end to the strike and the arrest of its leaders. Nevertheless, the authorities were constantly preparing the means of the repression for when the moment came, growing more and more desperate as the stakes became more dire for their social order in Winnipeg and the radicalism of the working class threatened to spread as a series of sympathy strikes broke out in Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton and other cities in Western Canada.
However, just as the strikers stood at the height of their power, basically running the city through their mass assemblies and the various committees, the movement began to lose momentum. Contrary to the worst fears of the bourgeoisie, the working class in Winnipeg was unable to pose the question of overthrowing the bourgeois state or put the fundamental nature of capitalist exploitation into question in a conscious way. Although their actions already prefigured these questions similar to the way they had been posed in Russia and Europe in the preceding two years, the Winnipeg working class was unable to bring matters to a revolutionary conclusion. Despite the widespread sympathy for the Russian and German revolutions, the political consciousness of the workers had not assimilated the lessons of the European struggles. The strike committee leaders were all members of either the Socialist Party or the Social Democratic Party of Canada, but their role in the struggle was guided more by their experience as union leaders than by the political lessons of Soviet Russia. The demands of the struggle remained mired at the level of "trade union consciousness," calling for the right to bargain, for a more egalitarian distribution of the fruits of economic development and for a right to be represented in critical decisions about their city and their various industries. In a sense, although their actions already posed the possibility of a different social order, workers' consciousness remained at the level of reformism.
This gap between the workers' actions and their consciousness and the strong role of the unions ultimately gave the bourgeois authorities the time they needed to regain control of the situation. In mid-June, fearing that the loyalty of the city's police force would not hold, the authorities organized a force of special police to crush the strike. However, the special police proved wholly inadequate to the task and a crowd of 15,000 strikers thoroughly routed a force of 1200 special police sent in after an attempt to direct traffic in the downtown area led to a riot. With options running thin, the authorities consented to mobilizing the Royal North West Mounted Police (RNWMP) to crush the strike. On June 21, the RNWMP and special police brutally attacked a parade of returning soldiers, while agents moved to arrest the main strike leaders in Winnipeg and other labor radicals across the country. As a result of the repression, but also under the weight of its own limitations, the strike was officially over by June 26th with a provincial government pledge to investigate its causes.
In drawing a balance sheet of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, one must first salute the radicalism of the working class during those six spring weeks. Time and again, the workers surprised the local bourgeoisie, the federal state and even their own unions in their determination to reject divisions and their capacity to spread the struggle and take over the management of society. While the working class was ultimately unable to pose the question of overthrowing the bourgeois state in a conscious way and the ruling class, through its state, was able to once again gain the upper hand, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 stands as a potent reminder that far from the stereotype of a passive North American working class, workers on this continent have their own radical history of struggle. A history that the working class will need to re-appropriate as it responds to the devastating attacks on its living and working conditions imposed by a global capitalist system in full decomposition.
Henk 06/03/2009
[1] The recent solidarity demonstrated by immigrant and non-immigrant workers at the Lindsey oil refinery struggle in Britain is a modern day reminder of the capacity of workers to overcome xenophobic propaganda aimed at dividing them.
[2] Michael Butt cited in Tom Mitchell and James Naylor "The Prarires in the Eye of the Storm" in Craig Heron, ed. The Workers' Revolt in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) 1997. pg. 187
Just a few months ago the dominant media message was that the global economy was in deep trouble. In the US, Mr. Obama and his team came to power warning that the worst of the crisis was yet to come, that things would get worse before they would get any better. Then they quickly changed their tune. In March when by all measures the economy was still in free fall -in the first quarter economic output declined by 6.1%, the second biggest drop recorded in the last 26 years, after the 6.3% of the fourth quarter of 2008 - Obama and the Fed chief Bernanke took the lead in a White house campaign aimed to espouse the alleged "good" prospects of the American economy. They even went as far as to say that they could detect early signs of recovery.
In a television interview in March Mr. Bernanke said that the "green shoots" of economic revival were already evident and predicted the end of the recession by the close of 2009. In April, Obama declared in a speech at Georgetown University that "there is no doubt that times are still tough. By no means are we out of the woods just yet. But from where we stand, for the very first time, we are beginning to see glimmers of hope."
With not much to brag about, the White House's overly rosy picture of the economy was met with widespread skepticism and ridicule among economic "experts". And this was not difficult when layoffs were running around 600 000 a month at the time, and General Motors - once the world's largest automaker and iconic symbol of American manufacturing power - and Chrysler were headed towards bankruptcy protection.
That was then. Now, after two years of depressing economic news as the so-called Great Recession unfolded, a new consensus seems to be forming among politicians and economists around the world that the worst of the economic crisis is over. There is even an increasing talk of "recovery" and a growing excitement about the so-called "green shoots" appearing all over the economic landscape. The OECD chief economist, Jorgen Elmeskov, goes as far as to declare "we clearly have a recovery at hand that seems to have materialized a little earlier than we expected." On the bases of Bernanke's "green economic shoots sprouting everywhere" the G-20 meeting in London in early September gave itself a main task the assessment of the "global recovery". Thus the consensus holds that capitalism has managed to dodge the bullet, that the great men in charge of the system have managed to pull the global economy from the brink of the abyss.
It depends on how one sees reality: through the bourgeois economists' view of the recession, or the Marxist analyses of the crisis.
Economists across the world are producing tons of figures to back up their new found optimism. According to this view the tsunami that swept across the global financial service industry is a thing of the past, and credit, the life-blood of the system, is once again starting to flow. Even the credit market has started to thaw and the speculators are coming back in force: the once battered stock markets are everywhere rising - in the US and Europe they are up 50% and 30% respectively from their lows at the beginning of the year. In fact, from March 9th to September 9th, the US stock market just completed its best six month period since 1932. Furthermore we are being told that China, the third biggest economy in the world, has avoided the worst of the recession and is posed to grow a healthy 8% this year.
There is in fact so much excitement about the supposed improved economic landscape that the least we can say is that capitalism's acolytes are passing "the half-empty/half-full glass" test with such high marks for optimism that it borders on delusional. How else can one explain the bourgeois media's rejoicing over the OECD's downward revision of its forecast for economic contraction in 2009 across the industrialized Group of Seven countries from -4.1% to -3.7%? Is 0.4 percent expected less contraction something to celebrate? Is it really meaningful?
That the media finds solace in the OECD latest forecast of "slightly improved outlooks for Japan (-5.6% vs. -6.8% earlier) and the European Union economies (-3.9% vs. -4.8%) and an unchanged overall projection for the U.S. at -2.8%" only testifies to the whole bourgeois class's congenital myopia or, at best, its need to mystify reality.
There is plenty of cold water to throw over this excitement and you don't need to be a Marxist revolutionary to put in doubt the whole fairy tale about "green shoots" sprouting all over the global economy. We will return to this question later, but for now let us here restate what we think is the reality of today's capitalist crisis.
Bourgeois propaganda offers a well diversified menu of explanations for the present capitalist economic troubles. They range from blaming individuals - speculators and greedy financiers -and government policies - neoliberalism and deregulation - to the fatalistic "business cycle" of the economy. The common thread of these explanations is the view that capitalism's present economic difficulties are more or less just a temporary setback in an otherwise healthy and eternal system.
For Marxism capitalism's economic crises have always been a product of capitalism itself, a manifestation of the contradictions of this system as a social mode of production. This violent disruption of production and distribution have been a feature of capitalism since it became the dominant mode of production, first in Europe in the early 19th century, and from then on throughout the whole world.
In the Communist Manifesto in 1848, Marx and Engels would give this description of the crises which is remarkably fitting today.
"For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity-the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce".
In hindsight we know that the founders of Marxism were wrong to think that the crises of the early 19th century that they were witnessing were already manifestations of capitalism's historical decline. In fact despite the economic and social disruption that they caused, capitalism would come out of these crises poised to continue its historical march conquering for its relations of production one region of the globe after the other. The mechanisms used by the bourgeoisie to get over the crisis -"enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces"... "the conquest of new markets and the more thorough exploitation of the old ones" - still provided the system with the impetus needed for a new level of accumulation.
It is not until the 20th century and the world crisis known as the Great Depression that for the first time this phenomenon took place in the context of capitalism's decadence, the new epoch that revolutionaries identified as commencing with the imperialist inferno of WWI. In this sense the catastrophic proportions of that crisis, which still makes the bourgeoisie shiver in awe, was due in the last instance to the fact that capitalist relations of production had become an obstacle to the progressive development of society. This new historical context, the decadence of capitalism, made the mechanisms used by the bourgeoisie to overcome the crises in the previous period at worst useless or at best exceedingly less effective - for capitalism as a whole there were no new markets to conquer.
Thus, threatened by forces that where menacing to break apart its whole social order, the bourgeoisie took refuge behind the State as a last guarantor of the continue survival of bourgeoisie society. State capitalism became the mode of life of every nation to best manage the national economy in crisis, to keep society together, and to defend its imperialist interest in the world arena. However, as is well known, state capitalism policies did not manage to get the world over the crisis of 1929, instead they sunk humanity into WW II, a new carnage far more devastating than the first Great War.
After the respite afforded by the period of reconstruction, world capitalism's crisis once again came to the fore at the end of the Sixties and early Seventies and has persisted for almost four decades like a terminal cancer eating slowly away the life of bourgeois society. Moving between state capitalist policies that have engineered economic booms, each one weaker than the preceding, and busts, always worst than the last in the cycle, this crisis has never gone away.
It is only in this context of chronic crisis that we can understand the so-called current Great Recession. From our perspective this event is not an isolated incident of the life of capitalism, but a moment in the course of a crisis of the system that has taken on catastrophic proportions.
As we said before is really not difficult to take the air out of the economic "recovery" balloon. As anybody that has been paying attention to the present unfolding slump knows, the current semblance of economic improving environment (Bernanke's "green shoots") is the product of an onslaught of state initiatives the world over aimed at keeping the national and global economy from falling into total collapse. This decisive intervention from governments of all political credos in the economy has fueled a lot of talk about the return of state capitalism. This is of course misleading; state capitalism is not returning because it never went away. In fact in essence there is not even much of a change in bourgeoisie economic policies geared at managing the crisis. The irony is that at the center of these policies is once again the abuse of the credit/debt mechanism, which by creating an artificial demand has helped to keep the system alive for decades, but which has at the same time also fueled the monstrous speculative bubbles, a virtual casino economy, that has contributed so much to the weakening of the financial system and the violence of the disturbances of the world economy in the bust swing of the cycles.
Some critics of the recovery credo are predicting that there will be in the coming years a double dip economic recession following the present stabilization. We can't say for sure what will happen in the near future, but what is sure is that the measures that today the bourgeoisie has taken to save its system are creating conditions for even more violent convulsions in the future. This applies first of all to the US economy that has been at the center of the current storm.
The monstrous amount of debt that the state has taken on in order to keep the national economy afloat can't but in the end backfire by destabilizing even more the global economy and the international financial system. Besides, it is never wise to count the chickens before they hatch; currently there is plenty of data that contradicts the early recovery tale. For instance:
§ the financial industry apparent stabilization is full of qualifications. In general the whole industry is only working thanks to the trillions of dollars pumped into it by the state through direct "bail outs" and the cheapening of credit. The big commercial banks Citigroup and Bank of America and the insurer AIG are only standing because the government took huge stakes in them. The good bill of health for many of this financial institutions is based on a very convenient accounting trick: they have been allowed to erase from their liabilities the famous "toxic assets", which have wreaked havoc throughout the financial system the moment of the speculative bubble collapse. The reality is that many banks are still sitting on mountains of debt that will never be repaid.
§ the housing market problems that played such a huge role in the current economic bust are far from over. The wave of home foreclosures that plagued this sector for the last 3 years according to many projections is expected to get a new boost from two sources: on the one hand unemployed workers unable to keep up with their mortgage payments will fall into default; and on the other millions of home owners will default on their higher monthly payments as their "interest only" mortgages reset to a normal amortization (interest plus principal) in the coming years. In turn these foreclosures will continue to sustain the vicious cycle of oversupply of houses and downward prices that has been driven the housing construction slump and the instability of the financial system.
§ the commercial real estate collapse is far from having run its course and most predictions expect things to get worse in this sector in the coming year. And with the air going out of this highly speculative industry that sustained the construction craze for office buildings, hotels, malls, etc., the banks that underwrote it will be once again counting their loses and in need of more "bail- outs".
§ the relentless growth in unemployment. In September the US official unemployment rate edged to 9.8 percent, the highest in 26 years and the clearest sign that the crisis is far from over. The unemployment situation is even worse if the long term unemployed who have stopped looking for jobs (what the bourgeoisie calls "discouraged workers") and workers working part-time because they can't find nothing better (what the bourgeoisie calls "non-voluntary part time workers"), are accounted for. In total adding these categories, according to official figures of the US Labor Department, 17% of the work force would be unemployed. This amounts to the astonishing figure of around 25 million workers affected by unemployment. Furthermore according to every expectation the unemployment rate will pass the double digit mark by the end of the year and despite all the official talk of recovery, nobody is expecting the employment situation to improve anytime soon. At best, so called "full employment" (defined as 6 percent unemployment level) is predicted to return by 2013 or 2014. As one indicator of how much capitalism has declined in the course of the last four decades, it should be noted that in the 1970's, full employment was defined as 4 percent unemployment.
The bourgeoisie can talk all it wants about "recovery", but the hard reality is that it has no real solution to capitalism's economic crisis. This is the main lesson of decades of bourgeois gimmicks to manage its system's decay. Today we seem to have entered a new moment in the economic breakdown of the system in which state capitalism's policies to keep the economy afloat seem to have lost their past relative effectiveness, foretelling a future of social instability and growing misery for the working class and other impoverished sectors of the population around the world.
For revolutionaries the only solution to the crisis is to once for all get rid of capitalist relations of production. This can only be done by the collective and conscious struggle of the international working class. This social revolution can only be the result of a long struggle through which the working class can build the political force to finally send capitalism to the dustbin of history and build instead a real human community. Today this struggle implies the resistance to submit to the logic of capitalism's crisis (layoffs, wage cuts, benefit cuts, worsening working conditions, etc.) and taking it to its ultimate political conclusion, the confrontation with the state and the overthrow of capitalism. There is no other way out.
Eduardo Smith 10/11/09
For two days in late September, leaders of the G-20 gathered at their traveling semi-annual summit, this time in Pittsburgh and yet again demonstrators flocked to the scene. It was a rather surrealistic event, with leaders of 19 countries and the European Union engaging in an orgy of self-congratulation for supposedly saving the world economy with their decisions six months ago. President Obama, himself joined the meeting and praised the assembled leaders for quickly setting in place new policies to further stabilize the world economy, strengthen world financial markets, and lay the basis for a return to economic growth. Meanwhile, everyone else who lives in the real world seemed confused because they haven't seen hide nor hair of the highly touted economic recovery. At the same time demonstrators traveled, as they usually do at these events, from far and wide and protested against nearly everything under the sun - from the ecological crisis, to the lack of a single-payer medical insurance program, to exploitation of labor in underdeveloped countries, to financial crisis, and all the attendant evils of globalization. Of course, it wouldn't be a G-20 Summit without rioting in the streets by masked marauders and self-proclaimed anarchists, smashing windows and clashing with the cops. It was more subdued than at past G-20 summits, but nevertheless nearly 100 demonstrators managed to get arrested for causing $50,000 in property damage and overzealous police managed to go overboard, unnecessarily shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at innocent bystanders.
Under the circumstances, it seems like an appropriate moment to take a serious, analytical look at the question of "globalization," what it is and what it isn't.
From the very beginning, Marxists contended that capitalism must by nature build a global system. In 1848 Marx wrote that the "rounding of the Cape... The East-Indian and Chinese markets, and the colonization of America", in other words the creation in embryo of a world market, was the precondition of the development of industrial capitalism. Marx also noted that the endpoint of capitalist development was the creation of "one nation" where "capitalist production is everywhere established and has possessed itself of every branch of industry". For Marx, the creation of the world market and the resultant crowding out of all non-capitalist economy is capitalism's great historical act, which makes possible the working class' worldwide revolution. This point was further elaborated by Rosa Luxemburg who contended that the fight for "colonies and spheres of interest, opportunities for investment", and the resultant "international loan system, militarism, tariff barriers, the dominant role of finance capital and trusts in world politics" were symptoms of this crowding out and signals that capitalism had reached the endpoint of its development as a progressive system. For the revolutionary elements that would later form the Communist International, "capitalism was entering its period of decline precisely because it had become a global system, a veritable world economy" (IR 111 [40]).
What, then, is the justification given by people who claim that globalism represents something essentially new? Globalism as such (distinguished from its ancestor, neoliberalism, which grew up in the late seventies and early eighties) began to confront the working class with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. With the "fall of communism", according to the prophets of globalization, capitalism could become a global system, a system which would bring prosperity due to the vastly increased amounts of raw material and capital at its disposal. This contained two important mystifications for the working class. In predicting a new period of prosperity, it represented an attack on the traditional analysis of capitalism as declining, as well as confronting the ICC's analysis that the collapse of the Eastern Bloc heralded the decomposition of capitalism as a whole (IR 111 [40]). It also represented an attack on the hard-won acquisition of the interwar and postwar left communists that the USSR and the bloc that it constructed around itself was not separated from the world capitalist system at all. Not only did capitalist relations (albeit of a caricatured state capitalist variety) exist in the Eastern bloc, but it and the Western bloc carried on international trade in capitalist forms even at the height of the Cold War. Soviet-style state capitalism had never represented a barrier to the world market. Globalization dogma thus first confronted the workers' movement not merely as a mystification, but as an outright lie.
It came to mean the destruction of tariff and other barriers to capitalism's penetration of the developing countries, in other words a more thorough than ever ferreting-out of pre-capitalist economic relations where they had been ignored in the past. In the capitalist metropoles in North America and Europe, it came to mean the ever more comprehensive creation of a "ghost economy" of financial speculation and debt taken on by the state, by consumers, and by enterprises who could not profit any other way, all facilitated by deregulation, the latter, as well as the progressive destruction of expensive state welfare services. This resulted in a massive transfer of fixed capital and industry from the metropoles to the developing world, allowing more capital to be freed up for financial games in the metropoles, and allowing for capital to more effectively establish itself areas it had exploited only marginally hitherto. Globalism evolved to mean something more complex than the supposed reintegration of the Eastern bloc into the capitalist system. From a lie concocted in the brains of Fukuyama and Friedman, globalism had grown into something that seemed real.
To what extent does the fact that globalism has become a recognizable tendency in the real world imply that it is a "rupture" with previous capitalist development? For the portion of the bourgeoisie that supports it, globalism is a sign of capitalism's entry into a new period of ascendance, that is, real historical progress. They justify this position by inventing a society based on microchips and information-sharing over the Internet that has fundamentally different laws of motion than industrial capitalism. This new society works in essentially the same way as industrial capitalism, in terms of the wage labor relation and the accumulation of capital, but "information technology" has managed to exorcise the crisis, in the historical and immediate sense, from the system. There is nothing essentially new in attempts to deny the existence of capitalism's crises: they can be found in classical political economy, in revisionist Social Democratic texts, and in Keynesian manifestoes. Nor is there anything substantially new in "information technology", except that it represents technical innovation. The computer is not the savior of capitalism: attempts to make it appear so are given the lie by the most recent manifestation of the open economic crisis.
However, the bourgeoisie, especially in the epoch of decomposition, is not homogeneous, and another part of the bourgeoisie opposes globalization. To do so, they also claim that globalization represents a "rupture" with the past. In the golden Keynesian, Fordist age, they claim, capitalism was successfully managed, its destructive tendencies contained, by the power of democratic national states. The policies of these states not only deferred the crisis, but ensured a more "just" distribution of wealth. Neo-liberalism and its globalist progeny destroyed this arrangement by handing power to multinational enterprises and undemocratic "international" institutions controlled by those enterprises. What is necessary, according to this faction, is a return to the most just past. Nearly all of this position is built on lies. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization were never international institutions. The first two were set up by American imperialism and have operated in its interest ever since. The WTO has a broader base but is still the tool of a small number of capitalist countries. Similarly, "multinational" enterprises function not as independent actors, but as tools for the imperialism of the state whence come the majority of their shareholders. Capitalism cannot transcend nationality. The Fordist era was not a lost golden age of just social relations, but in fact the deepest depths of the counter-revolution, in which nowhere were capitalist social relations challenged by the bourgeois "democratic" states.
Last but not least, Keynseianism did not successfully manage the crisis: it returned in full force in the late sixties and blossomed in the seventies. The return of the crisis was what made the shift away from Keynesianism to neo-liberalism and globalism necessary for the bourgeoisie. Doing so was the only way in which the bourgeoisie could continue to profit in decomposing capitalism. This fact lays bare the real nature of globalization. It is not some sort of "rupture" with the past, but in fact a deliberate a considered revision of state capitalist policy.
Clearly, globalist policies represent an attack on the working class. In the metropolis, globalism means plant closures, layoffs, wage reductions, and other attacks on living conditions meant to reduce the portion of revenue that goes toward wages and thus maintain profitability. In the developing countries, globalism means vicious exploitation, the workers in these countries lacking the safety nets that the workers in the metropoles won for themselves during capitalism's ascendance, and which capitalism is trying to destroy. Thus, even though globalism does not represent anything fundamentally new, in the sense that it is merely another in a long line of state capitalist strategies for managing the economic crisis, it is necessary for revolutionary minorities to formulate a theoretical response, just as the working class finds it necessary to mobilize in defense of its living conditions. In doing so it is important to guard jealously the traditional internationalist principles of the Communist Left: no compromise with participators in bourgeois government or cheerleaders for imperialist war. It is on this basis that the ICC denounces as bourgeois mystifications the World Social Forum and its offspring, the major "anti-globalist" forces in existence today, even as it intervenes in order to rescue some of the individuals who are there searching for a revolutionary perspective against capitalism.
It is also on this basis that revolutionaries must intervene in the open class struggle, in order to combat the nationalist, anti-immigrant, and racist attitudes with which capital tries to derail workers' struggles. However, it is important to recognize that just as globalism represents a material attack on workers' living conditions and just as its fraternal twin, anti-globalism attempts to derail their response onto nationalist grounds, the open identification of capital as an international relation represents an opportunity for the working class. Just as capital is international, so is the working class, and the open identification of one leads to the realization of the other. The proletariat's response to globalization must be and can only be the defense of its living conditions, the linking up with other workers, that is, the international class struggle.
R. White 9/28/09
The bourgeoisie has introduced the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) in the last three sessions of Congress over the last five years, even while Bush was still president and before Obama was even nominated. In 2007 it passed in the House of Representatives 241 to 185, but in the Senate it failed to get the 60 votes necessary to shutdown debate and have a final vote. However, it did have a majority, or 51 senators who supported it. It is very likely that it will pass now.
So, what really is the EFCA? What will it do? And, most importantly, why is it being enacted by the bourgeoisie now? The EFCA will make it easier for unions to organize workers, boost their membership, and re-establish their credibility. The unions will more easily organize workers because the EFCA will bypass the current requirement of holding a collective bargaining electing after 30% of workers in a bargaining unit express willingness to become unionized. Over the past 30 years, due to policies in place during both Republican and Democratic administrations, it was often the case that in the period leading up to the collective bargaining election, employers would harass workers and even fire pro-union activists, making it increasingly difficult for unions to win the right to represent workers. EFCA will abolish the need for elections and will grant bargaining rights to unions simply on the basis that a majority of the workers have signed authorization cards. The law will impose stiff penalties against ‘unfair' tactics by management, such as harassment, ‘illegal' firings, etc. Additionally, EFCA will make sure that the first union contract is in place within a year of union recognition. In recent years, more than 35% of the time, management resisted negotiations and it would take more than two years for unions to get their first contract. The EFCA law mandates the use of mediation if negotiations do not progress quickly and requires arbitration if mediation doesn't quickly result in an agreement. Guaranteeing a contract within a year also will strengthen the credibility of the union and minimize the risk to the bourgeois order that angry workers might take matters in their own hands and go out on wildcat strikes, an action that can certainly promote and accelerate the development of class consciousness, which is what frightens the ruling class the most.
The deepening economic crisis requires that the bourgeoisie refurbish its trade union apparatus. Millions of workers are hurting because of job losses, or, when they are ‘lucky' enough to still have their jobs, they experience pressure from a tremendous erosion of benefits, a bleak and uncertain future, and even a scaling back of wages themselves. Even if at the immediate level workers' reaction to the economic situation may be more one of fright and disorientation, in the longer term this is creating the conditions for a renewal of class combat and militancy. Obviously, the ruling class must try to contain the working class' discontent, and, above all, it has to try and dampen the development of class consciousness. The trade unions have long been the central tool used by the ruling class to control the working class, to maintain working class discipline and sabotage the class struggle. Historically, because class struggles for economic demands inherently have the potential to lead to political confrontations with the state, the bourgeoisie has tried to divert struggles away from the defense of economic demands, either towards struggles for the creation of unions, or to defend existing unions. For example, in the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression, the bourgeoisie successfully diverted the struggles for economic demands towards unionization, as they did in the sitdown strikes in the auto industry. More recently in the 1980s and 1990s economic struggle was diverted toward the defense of the unions, against union busting. Even though workers would suffer deterioration in their wages, benefits and working conditions, the unions would always declare a victory celebration because at least they had "beat back" union busting.
Today, as the attacks against the working class intensify in the worst economic crisis ever, even worse than the 1930's, the bourgeoisie is setting the stage preventively to divert the class struggle again toward unionization campaigns. The EFCA is then a recognition that things went too far in weakening this important tool of the bourgeoisie, and the more intelligent sectors of the ruling class understand the necessity to revamp the union mystification after decades of ‘union busting', and are supporting EFCA.
The strengthening of the union mystification will not only help the bourgeoisie in controlling older workers already on the job, but it will put them in position to control the new generations of workers, as they enter the work force. This sector of the working class is particularly brutally attacked, bearing the brunt of the erosion of benefits, as demonstrated by the creation of new ‘tiers' with diminished benefits and the like for new workers, and a bleak perspective for their future. The bourgeoisie understands the necessity to occupy this social terrain with reformist and pro-union ideas before communist ideas and organizations can influence it.
Without the unions, the bourgeoisie cannot so easily derail working class discontent and short-circuit the development of class consciousness. Failing to place the unions in the midst of the workers will leave workers the opportunity to autonomously organize on their own class terrain and with itheir own methods and means to struggle, i.e. the general assemblies and the extension of the struggle. EFCA is the bourgeoisie's attempt at controlling and derailing the future struggles of the working class, and it has to be denounced as such. Against the attempts of the bourgeoisie to break our militancy and obfuscate our consciousness, the working class need to self-organize by creating wide open assemblies where all workers can participate and discuss, by electing revocable delegates with mandates to the assemblies, by developing its class solidarity, and by extending its struggles to all workers across categories.
Ana, 9/28/09
The following text was written by a young militant who has been in discussion the ICC for some months now and participated in the Days of Discussion conference last spring (see Internationalism 151, "North American Political Milieu: Days of Discussion Conference [45]"). The text describes the author's efforts to grapple with complex issues pertaining to the union question and the intervention of revolutionaries in the struggle. We think this an extremely important documentation of the process by which new revolutionary militants develop political understanding, familiarize themselves with the theoretical acquisitions of the workers movement, attempt to seek out a collective framework to find the link between theory and practice, and to reflect on their experiences. We salute the combative spirit of the comrade, his commitment to the working class, his political honesty and selfreflection, his materialist method, and in particular his willingness to share his experience with others.
Dear Internationalism,
Ever since the "financial" crisis (really a crisis of the palliatives applied to the longer term crisis of overproduction) came out into the open last fall, I've been struggling to try to contribute to helping the working class fight back against the attacks of capitalism in crisis. I had been interested in "revolutionary" politics and theory for about 5 or 6 years ever since I finished college, starting with anarchism, then after a brief flirtation with situationsim, becoming interested in left communism. Up until that point my knowledge of revolutionary politics was entirely theoretical and academic-I had engaged in online discussions with anarchists, trotskyists and one self-described "council communist," and was a regular reader of Loren Goldner's website, the trotskyist World Socialist Website, and your and the IBRP's sites. What initially attracted me to left communism was the left communists' understanding of the Russian Revolution's degeneration and emphasis on the activity of workers themselves in the revolution-historically, I was "on the side" of the lefts in the Comintern (Luxemburg and the KAPD were "right" and Lenin was "wrong"), but because of the absence of a revolutionary situation right now in the 21st Century, I did not have a clear idea of what the correct approach for communists to take in the present period would be. I also was somewhat put off by what I perceived as the left communists' "impractical" lack of "activism." I had no idea what left communists actually did, besides what I perceived as arguing too much about small differences, but I thought they had a correct analysis of many questions (support for "workers' states," nationalism, the Russian question).
As the crisis began I got in touch with some Trotskyists and anarchists in my city and began discussions with them about what to do as a communist and how they conceived of their role in the class struggle. At the same time, I was voraciously reading libcom.org for ideas about class struggle and criticism of Trotskyism and the transitional program specifically. I had literally no militant experience at all and was trying to understand how, as a communist, I was to relate to the rest of the working class and contribute to the advancement of class consciousness, especially now that the crisis had come out into the open. About a month later, I contacted Internationalism and began discussing with them. Around the same time, the city agency I'd been working at for only 1 month announced that due to a $1 million budget gap, they would be laying off 71 employees and drastically scaling back services to residents. Since I was so new (still on my probationary period) I was told (by union stewards and most other workers) to update my resume and call my former employer to beg for my old job. I contacted a citizens' group to save city services, and also began talking extensively with Internationalism about what I could do to intervene in this issue, often in very immediate terms-should I join the citizens' group and try to push it towards working class positions? How would left communists intervene here? etc. My main concern again was how do revolutionaries intervene in the class struggle and what is their role?
Discussing things like the Trotskyist transitional program, reading the ICC's incredibly lucid book, Communist Organizations and Class Consciousness [46], and attending the Days of Discussion in April all gave me a much clearer picture of how the ICC conceived of intervention in the class struggle. I agreed very much with the general approach taken by the ICC, but still thought they had a somewhat extreme position on some things especially on the unions and working in "community based" activist groups. I continued to read the ICC's texts, especially about the revolutionary nature of the working class, and I also read Herman Gorter's defense of the left in the ComIntern. As a fight for a new pension and talk of a potential strike came onto the, I again began talking to the ICC, and also posted a thread on libcom.org, about how to convince people to stick together and also to take decisions in their own hands. Initially I thought the main thing for me to stress as a communist was for workers of different unions to stick together, so I went to a union meeting to ask if we were coordinating our contract negotiations with those of other city-workers in other unions.
I didn't say much at the union meeting because it began with a motion from the people who were crowded in the staircase, and couldn't see or hear anything, to adjourn until we could get a bigger meeting place. The president of the local quickly and dismissively took a vote and only counted the front rows, angering the people in the back and causing a big demoralizing shouting match. The format of the meeting was not one of discussion but of monologue. The only people who got to talk were people who were prepared to yell and I had thought I would be able to say all my ideas and have them discussed. I was disoriented by the president's writing off of the people who were in the back and I honestly don't think I intervened in a positive way at all-I only asked if a meeting between both memberships would be possible and they said "maybe," and I didn't have a response. I was, however, able to do was talk with coworkers face to face before and after the meeting about their frustrations with the unions-their inaction, their blaming this inaction on the members' lack of militancy/loyalty (the same in their eyes), as well as the co-opting militant workers into committees and steward roles.
Talking with Internationalism, they stressed the importance of not taking an immediatist attitude towards this struggle in trying to propose things that are way beyond where people are, or getting myself victimized for any exemplary actions. The most important thing, they said, was that people begin to discuss what's going on and what they can do about it-that they identify as workers under attack and try to independently discuss as workers what to do about it. This would be the best guarantee for any kind of real class struggle or political reflection or move toward class consciousness in the whole struggle.
The next week there was a rally planned with 4 unions: 2 city-worker unions, the transit workers for the regional transit authority, and an SEIU union with workers in the public schools. The rally began with various democrats running for city and state government denouncing the current administration from a stage, followed by speeches from each union president, answered by each union chanting its local number. After being told that the official rally was over, "but some folks are going to march around city hall" (which is in the center of a roundabout in the middle of downtown), most people started marching on the sidewalk around it, but then just stood in the road and took the street corner, chanting "no contract, no peace" and "shut it down." I don't think this was sanctioned by any of the union leadership I think the workers just did it and then other people followed suit. After about 15 minutes in one of the busiest intersections downtown, we marched around city hall again, this time in the street (although by this time the police had blocked off the streets for us) with the same chants. After once around everyone met up at the corner of city hall and was addressed by some men in suits who I later found out were union officials. Their basic message was "it's good you came out for this rally even though there was such short notice--you need to do that even moreso in the future, whatever the union president says, you do-we say ‘jump,' you say, ‘how high?'" Despite the fact that the blocking of the street wasn't their decision, they still chose to use their time to hammer home their message that the union membership can't know about any planned job actions in advance and just needs to wait and listen to the union leaders.
After all this, I realized that if I wanted to "ever act or speak in such a way that the class consciousness of the workers shall be roused and strengthened" (Herman Gorter, Open Letter to Cde. Lenin, 1920), I would need a clearer analysis of the unions and try to encourage workers to discuss and decide things on their own. Further meetings called by the union have been nothing more than monologues from these same suit-wearing union officials, and one other march, but in both cases workers either sit and listen to a sermon from the union, or just march in line--and they have no control of the struggle. Recently, the mayor has threatened to lay off 3000 of us and close down entire city departments unless the state legislature passes a regressive tax for the city to fill the budget gap, so the union has told us to call our representatives and urge them to pass this, and to remove from it punitive pension-related amendments. None of this action is done as workers, though--it is only as "citizens" begging their representatives. Like the sermons on obedience, the calling of meetings in small halls during the workday with little notification, and all the other actions of the union, it pre-empts, and in a way prevents the independent and conscious action of the workers.
Workers are for the most part feeling threatened and a good number are eager to struggle (many of the "professionals" are not as eager), but the unions only tell us to wait for them-you could say they serve to abort class consciousness before it is born, or that they act as a contraceptive to class consciousness. I'm not certain that I share all of the ICC's positions on the unions, but I certainly see the necessity for stressing rank-and-file control of the strike and not trying to work within the union, except to speak to members about the need for discussion during the meetings (which is often not really possible, because there is no discussion during the meetings). I've tried to read more about the theoretical underpinnings of the ICC's position on unions and am beginning to move closer to their position--especially seeing that the unions, as permanent, legal organs, are basically not allowed to suggest or even condone most forms of struggle that might actually push back the bosses' attacks (solidarity strikes, mass protests that really disrupt things, etc.). The unions cannot really act as an instrument for workers struggling as an independent class. They also tend to demoralize people and drastically reduce their willingness to fight, by roping them into ineffective actions that affirm neither their common situation with other workers or their potential power as a class, but only make them feel powerless. Many of my coworkers are just plain tired of being told to do things by the union that don't work and would rather give in than to struggle the way the union is proposing. Workers are now suggesting taking furloughs and other givebacks, partly I think because all their frustration was channeled into things that didn't work-the best paid are ready to give back and the worst paid want to fight but don't see the point because all they can conceive of is the union-led fight. This is an essential point about the class struggle requiring active self-conscious and self-confident fighters-if the workers are to be steadfast, they will need to understand deeply what they are doing and why they must be actively engaged in it if they are to resist bourgeois propaganda.
Another event served in helping me make a break with leftism last year: I attended a protest to close a video-game based army recruiting center for minors and children. At this rally were a number of Trotskyist, Maoist, liberal, and Christian front groups and across the street was a right-wing counter-protestor with a megaphone elaborating all the connections these groups had to the worst sorts of dictators and nationalist movements, and the whole protest was geared toward liberals, NOT workers. Nothing the protest was about went directly to anything specific about capitalism, but only a war which was conceived of as an aberration. This can in no way increase either the self-consciousness OR the self-confidence of the working class as a class. These kinds of "demands" don't emanate from the proletariat as an exploited and revolutionary class in capitalism but from the minds of idealists-this kind of struggle is not materialist and it seeks to chain the proletariat to causes and concerns based on general human abstract ahistorical and classless morality. What is revolutionary about the working class, especially in a system that is in permanent crisis, is the fact that it cannot "escape" exploitation-it can only fight exploitation directly by resisting increased exploitation until it is strong enough to go on the offensive and abolish exploitation. Every defensive "economic" struggle of the working class fights exploitation head on--workers are exploited de facto by competition, and THE way they fight that is by uniting against competition, against "competitiveness" and the sacrifices demanded by private production for exchange to say "no layoffs, no cuts, no nothing" and in doing so, they confront exploitation head on and attack the very heart of the system. They can't run, they can't hide, they MUST fight. Marx asserted, "theory is only realized in the masses to the extent that it is a realization of their needs." What makes the working class revolutionary is only the consciousness of itself and its real material historical interests. This is precisely what is ignored in substitutionist conceptions--by directing attention toward political concerns (especially in a reformist sense), rather than beginning with the economic struggle which inevitably becomes political, these groups serve as the left-wing of capital, whether that is their intention or not.
While I still have many questions about the exact nature of the unions I'm certain that they don't help workers become more self-conscious, more self-confident, and more unified as a class, and they specifically derail the independent action of workers that could actually beat back attacks on their living standards by channeling them into ineffective, divisive, classless, unconscious action.
I'm trying to clarify and deepen my understanding of the union question as well as the importance of the revolutionary minority, and deepen more and more my understanding of how to intervene in class struggle. As Communist Organizations and Class Consciousness [46]says,
"Far from following passively the flux and reflux of their class' struggles, the communists' role is to organize themselves so as to accelerate the revolutionary tendencies smouldering within these struggles. ...once revolutionaries have understood the bankruptcy of an old political system, of a previous organizational form and political practice, their responsibility is not to wait until the rest of the workers have caught up before organizing themselves on a clear basis and putting forward a perspective for the struggle. ...how is the proletariat as a whole to become aware of the death of these old forms of organization and of the bankruptcy of past political positions if its most conscious elements themselves hesitate to say that they are dead and to propose a new orientation?"
I want to clarify my understanding of the unions and deepen my conviction about exactly how revolutionaries and workers should relate to them, so I can present a clearer vision and not hesitate to try and push the workers' consciousness forward. What the working class needs above all at this moment in history is to gain confidence in its own strength, not in the strength of union-hacks to bargain above their heads or in the legal methods of struggle they prescribe, but confidence in themselves and consciousness of themselves as an exploited but revolutionary class-a class without whose labor the world stops turning.
J Jogiches 9/15/09
Michael Moore's new movie, "Capitalism, A Love Story" opened at the end of September, touted as an "anti-capitalist" polemic. The film contains some very moving depictions of workers confronting mortgage foreclosures and factory shutdowns. There is footage from the factory occupation in Chicago last December. When the workers talk, they confirm what we wrote in Internationalism at the time, that the workers did not want to lose their jobs, that they wanted to fight for their jobs. It was the unions and the politicians who stressed that the workers should get what they were "legally" entitled to, which totalled about $6,000 for each worker for vacation and severance money
The bishop of Chicago came to visit the workers and told them that he himself was the son of a steel worker and he understood that their struggle was just and then he blessed them and gave them communion. There was very moving footage of other workers coming as individuals and families to donate food to the workers to show their solidarity.
There was also moving footage of a group of 20 or 30 community people in Miami declaring an eviction null and void and then moving the evicted family back into their home. A guy from the bank comes and tells them they are trespassing and then nine police cars come. There is a lot of yelling and arguing and then the cops and the bank guy leave and the family stays in the house. (At the end of the film, during the credit crawl, we read that the family was permitted to stay in their home permanently.)
The film is filled with the standard Michael-Moore-is-the-focus-of-the-story antics. These antics include Michael Moore trying to meet the chairman of the board of GM, or trying to place the entire board of AIG or everybody at the NY Stock Exchange under citizen's arrest, or putting yellow crime scene tape around the stock exchange, or driving an armored truck up to Bank of America and announcing that he's there to pick up the $10 billion in bailout money.
The big problem is Moore's politics. His attack on capitalism is largely provocative, not substantive. It's as if he decided to turn all the rightwing hysterical accusations about Obama's "socialism" upside down. The global meltdown crisis of 2008 is attributed to Reagan's deregulation policies that began in the 1980s and continued through the Bush Bush I-Clinton-Bush II years and the supposed defacto takeover of the US government by Goldman Sachs who pushed through policies to benefit their company at the expense of the taxpayers and their competitors. In other words, the real problem is not a generalized capitalist economic crisis but rather the greed of a few elite political/business figures. True, Moore says capitalism is evil, and even interviews three or four catholic clergy who declare that Jesus would have been against capitalism, but in essence his opposition to capitalism is actually opposition to deregulated capitalism. He includes footage of demonstrations by a couple dozen people from leftist groups like the Answer Coalition against the corporate bailouts or foreclosures as the emergence of a mass anti-capitalist movement in the US.
He seems beside himself in how to deal with Obama, who he sees as making Wall Street quake in their boots with his calls for change and points out that they responded by contributing to his campaign. He denounces all of Obama's economic advisers as henchmen for Goldman Sachs, but he is still enamored of Obama.
Against capitalism, the alternative is "democracy" in Moore's view. He interviews Vermont's Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who claims to be an advocate of democratic socialism, which is defined as the government serving the interests of the middle and working class folks, to protect their rights. Moore has found historically lost footage of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union message, about a month before his death, in which FDR called for a second Bill of Rights for Americans after the war, which called not for socialism or for the destruction of capitalism, but a welfare state type state capitalism:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
Moore laments that FDR died before he could create this wonderful society in the US, but he says that in the post war period the US sent FDR's people to Europe and Japan where during the reconstruction of Italy, Germany and Japan as well as other countries in Europe, this vision of society was implemented. Just as he did in Sicko, he idealizes the European state capitalist social wage as the glorious goal for Americans. Moore's anti-capitalism would in no way destroy the capitalist state, or implement working class control over the means of production; instead it would turn America into France or Germany or Japan or Norway - all of which are capitalist societies, where the working class has to struggle to defend itself against exploitation. Moore ends the movie with a call for everyone to join him in the struggle for this society with a popularized version of the Internationale, which sounded more like Bobby Darin singing Mack the Knife than a revolutionary song.
Jerry Grevin. 9/20/2009
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/barack-obama
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/us-elections-2008
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/obama-president
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/state-capitalism
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/01/gaza
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/58/palestine
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/gaza-bombardment-israel
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/134/germany-1918-19-pt2
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/content/2550/political-confusions-communist-workers-organization-uk
[13] http://www.internationalism.org
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/brest-litovsk
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/readers-letters
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/andrew-kliman
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/international-communist-current
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/student-debt
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/seattle-general-strike-1919
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/262/environment
[22] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/joe-biden
[23] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/green-economy
[24] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/1848/mexico
[25] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/drug-violence
[26] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/swine-flu
[27] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/200905/2902/days-discussion-icc-readers-conference-debates-class-struggle
[28] https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/weekend-opinionator-a-different-sort-of-red-america/
[29] https://davidharvey.org/
[30] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/04/the-end-of-capitalism/16734/
[31] https://davidharvey.org/2009/02/why-the-us-stimulus-package-is-bound-to-fail/
[32] https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/series/anzsog/improving-implementation
[33] https://www.npr.org/2008/12/03/97765976/united-auto-workers-open-to-contract-changes
[34] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/09/AR2006010901932.html
[35] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/318/doortostruggles
[36] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/days-discussion
[37] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-consciousness
[38] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/6/iran
[39] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/1919-winnipeg-general-strike
[40] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/111_pres_pref_decadence.html
[41] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/g20-protests
[42] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/anti-globalisation
[43] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/employee-free-choice-act
[44] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/trade-unions
[45] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/200907/3031/north-american-political-milieu-days-discussion-conference
[46] https://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/classconc
[47] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/michael-moore
[48] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/review