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considers that the 731,000 "discouraged workers" they identified in February 2009 have dropped out of or have withdrawn from the work force, i.e., that they are no longer workers!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
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/international-communist-current
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/student-debt
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/seattle-general-strike-1919