driving people mad.

I see that Walmart whipped up people in New York state with a small number of cheap products and then set the timetable for opening its doors to very early in the morning. The result was hundreds of frenzied hysterical shoppers. When it came close to opening time they knocked down the door and tramped over and killed a worker who was on duty. This capitalist system is utterly rotten and insane. 

I was reading what Marx said about such things when he talked about capitalism. "The extension of products and needs falls into contriving refined, unnatural and imaginary appetites." Yes capitalism does that alright. If we do not need something it will try and convince us we need it. Or if we need only one of something it will try and convince us we need several. And then there is the other racket. It will try and make products that fall apart as soon as possible so we need to buy more. 

Capitalism is inherently inefficient and wasteful. And as the worker at Walmart found out, and as the millions of workers in sweatshops world wide know, it is also a killer.

And here is another one from wee Marx. "It is not consciousness that determines life, it is life that determines consciousness." Now what does this mean? It means we were not born with fixed ideas in our heads and from these we then went on to shape the world. It means that we were born into an already existing world and this world and our interaction with it created our consciousness. 

Why is this important? There are many reasons. The christian movement try and tell us that we are born with "original sin" that is, we are already in trouble and that we have to come to their christian god to get saved. this gives them power and creates great confusion. All the religions have some version of this. This is nonsense. They indoctrinate the children to believe their views. As the Jesuits say: "Give me the child and I will give you the man." Notice not woman. Jesuits do not think women are important.  But they do think indoctrination is.

The other and more important reason this consciousness thing is important is that it shows consciousness can change. If we live in a period of economic stability and upswing we are liable to be more of the opinion that capitalism works. If we live in a period such as now when the banks and finance houses are crashing and jobs disappearing then we are more liable to think that capitalism does not work. In these circumstances socialism has a better chance of taking root.

So be prepared, "life" that is the capitalist world around us is now bringing down events that will remove all believe that this world is stable and capitalism works. By preparation I mean that we get organized to end this sick capitalist system and replace it with a democratic socialist society. In the stable democratic world of abundance that this would make possible we could all evolve a consciousness that would be much more conducive to a decent life for all. 

Sean. 

bits and pieces

I got diverted and did not comment on it before. But it is a scandal that proposition 8 which banned gay marriage was passed in California. The Mormon church and the rest of the churches were the main forces whipping up support for the ban. The Mormon church has some neck with its history of polygamy and racism. And also sexism. When they carried out polygamy only the men were allowed to have more than one partner. And they thought they were morally justified in leading the charge to ban gay marriage. The Catholic Church was of course not far behind. It with its history of child abuse and rape. And the cover up of these crimes. They Cardinals and Bishops were instructed to cover up these crimes by the pope as "priests were god's gift to the church." What a bunch of hypocrites. The prisons should be full of popes and cardinals and priests. Who do these people think they are anyway. I hope it will the vote in California will be reversed.

And talking about sexism I see that Obama has appointed to be his main economic adviser Larry Sumners. This is the man who was drummed out of Harvard for saying that women were inherently  incapable of becoming leaders in science and math. Him and his buddies did not do so good in science and maths when it came to the economy. They brought the world financial system crashing down around them. 

Sumners is joined in the Obama team by former Citigroup head Rubin. This is the man who pushed through the change in the policy of this bank between 2002 to 2005 so that it would take greater risks even though he was warned publicly that this was wrong. Now he whines that nobody knew this crisis was going to happen. This is a lie. Those of us who based ourselves on the method of Marx knew that this collapse was inevitable. Rubin won't take responsibility for his mistakes. But he took $115 million in pay since 1999 and stock options on top of that. Over this time the bank got a hand out of $45 billion of our taxes and a government guarantee of protection against most losses on $306 billion of its assets. William Smith a New York money manager and frequent critic of Citigroup's current management and board had this to say: "He has overseen the entire meltdown...." Citigroup's shares are down 86% from their peak two years and since Rubin came on board. And this is the creature  that is supposed to take the country out of its financial crisis, the creature that Obama has picked. 

Listen to to his lying excuses. The Wall Street Journal asked him if he had any regrets about his catastrophic times at Citigroup and he said: "I guess I don't think of it quite that way!" Yes i wonder why. And in the same article when the Wall Street Journal asked what he thought he accomplished at Citigroup he replied: "It's a funny way to think about it. I think I have been a very constructive part of the Citigroup environment. That has been particularly manifest since August 2007. I have been very involved." This is the period the bank's shares fell by around 80%. 

Obama is surrounding himself with a bunch of swindlers and thieves and robbers of big capitalism to take charge of the economy. Working class must get ready to fight or we will pay the price. 

Sean.

Mumbai.

It is too soon to say anything with much certainty about what looks like an invasion of Mumbai, India's major financial and business center. But while we cannot yet say who is responsible for this we can say a few things. 

Such actions will increase division amongst Muslim and Hindu people and amongst Indian and Pakistani people. This is negative for the working class in the Asian sub-continent and internationally. Increasing division may have been the very reason for this slaughter. The new president of Pakistan, Zardari, from a capitalist point of view, developing a larger capitalist market, has been calling for more links between Pakistan and India and instituting a no first strike nuclear policy and even for South Asia to be a nuclear free zone. There is no evidence he ever cleared this with the Pakistan military or Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) organization. A very incautious initiative. Such steps were already very unlikely and now just about ruled out. 

This slaughter in Mumbai will make any lessening of the tensions very difficult. The Indian Prime Minister talked about forces outside India possibly being responsible. He was clearly directing his remarks at Pakistan. Many sources in India believe previous bombings were coordinated with the help of the Pakistani ISI. 

Of course the dirty hand of US Imperialism is in the middle of it. US Imperialism built up the Islamic fundamentalists and the Pakistani ISI to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. When that war was over they were not able to disarm or stand down the organizations they had created. Some of them went on to participate in September 11th. US Imperialism was in some murky way involved in the development of the nuclear bomb in Pakistan. Then under the present Bush they helped India develop the nuclear weapon. Now these two huge nations are at daggers drawn and with nuclear weapons. There is a very serious situation developing in South Asia. 

On a capitalist basis things will only get worse. Only working class unity on an international basis with self determination for all nations and a democratic socialist federation can end the mass poverty, develop the economy of the entire region and demilitarize the area and establish peace for all its peoples. 

Sean. 

Auto exec welcomes Unions and government hand outs

Oh how quickly things change. A very short time ago the media was full of articles about the wonders of the market. Bush was calling the Western Europeans "old Europe" as they were resistant to pressure from the US to reform their economies by making it easier to fire workers, reduce vacations, increase work hours and weaken worker's right on the job.

"New Europe" were the former Soviet states of Eastern Europe who were adopting the free market policies pushed by the US, privatization of public assets, reduce public spending, no hindrance to capital formation or movement etc.

Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Renault as well as Nissan is not so fond of the market these days and supports government intervention. Bailing out US auto is "the right thing to do" he says in an interview in Business Week, "...the car industry by itself cannot find enough financing to do that alone."

So the US taxpayer will borrow money from bankers and investors who also own a fair share of the auto industry but refuse to invest money in it. They are blackmailing the US working class with the threat of catastrophe if the industry isn't bailed out. The taxpayer will invest this money and pay the owners of the auto industry interest. We have done the same with the bankers who won't lend it to private individuals and have turned to the safety of public debt. We've borrowed from the bankers who won't lend in what they see as a risky market and we invest that money in the banks in order to coax them to lend.

The Union leaders are all on board with this Ponzi scheme as witnessed by Ron Gettlefinger of the UAW pleading for public money in Congress along wiht the auto execs. This team has waged a vicious war against the auto workers driving down wages and eliminating jobs. The whole auto industry needs to be nationalized under workers control and managment and the resources can then be turned to more socially useful public transit.

Ghosn has no problem with Union leaders like Gettlefinger and the leadership of the entire US trade Union movement. When asked by Business Week if the Unions are killing the American auto business he makes it clear that Unions aren't the problem as long as they represent the employer's interests: "I don't think the question is Unions" he says, "The question is: Do you have the flexibility to operate and be competitive. If the Union helps you be flexible, then the Union is an asset. If the Union forbids or handicaps this flexibility to operate, then you have a problem."

You can't be clearer than that and the leaders of the Unions have taken it to heart, delivering the standard of living of US workers to the employers in the process.

The capitalist class was very clear about its intentions as Business Week explained some time ago:

"It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow--the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more...Nothing that this nation, or any other nation, has done in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must be done to make people except this reality." Business Week 10-12-74.

We should pay attention to them. Its best to know what your enemy's plans are if you intend to piut a stop to them and implement your own.

thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a day when most Americans get together and eat an enjoy their family. When I came to this country first I did not know anything about thanksgiving so I asked what it was about. I was told it was for giving thanks for getting to America safely. This puzzled me so I asked about the Native American people who were already here and who originally helped the European settlers to survive but were then slaughtered and forced into reservations in which they remain today.  Did they celebrate thanksgiving day? I asked also about the millions of African Americans who were brought to this country against their will and died in the middle passage. I asked about the millions of Irish who were forced off their land by British capitalist and landlord policies and died on the death ships. This history is not taught. 

But maybe you think if we think about all those things how could we celebrate? This is a wrong way to look things. Facing up to reality and taking the side of the oppressed is the only way we can really give thanks. 

For instance we could celebrate the many many instances when working class Americans of all races and backgrounds came together to fight against the powerful wealthy forces like the slave owners, the American capitalists and landlords, the British and French colonialists, who carried out the exploitation and division and slaughter and in the process these working class Americans fought for a better life. 

Look at what we are not taught about working class people coming together. Around two hundred years ago African American and White and Native American people were marrying together and living together so much that this tendency towards coming together threatened the upper classes. So what did they do? They passed a law to make marrying or living together illegal. Racism comes from the top down. It is a conscious and deliberate policy. Divide and rule. How can a small minority which rules a big majority and robs it blind keep control unless it keeps the big majority divided and fighting amongst itself. 

Look at the lies we are told. I only heard this one the other day. Of course I had always heard about the savage lynchings of African American men which went on in this country up to a few decades ago. And we see now racists are hanging nooses again. They will have to be stopped. The bosses history, told to us through their schools and universities and media tells us that the lynchings were mostly motivated by African American men disrespecting White women in the main, but also White men. 

There is a much more real explanation for these savage lynchings.  After slavery was ended, mainly by the great walk off of African American labour from the slave owners plantations in the South during the civil war between the capitalists and the slaveowners, there was a tremendous increase of free labour onto the labour market. A lot of this labour was very skilled as the slaveowners had needed skilled workers for their luxurious living conditions and for the tools and implements they used. So they had developed very skilled labour. 

But there were lots of small White business men and more importantly White craftsmen with their own shops and businesses already in existence. They were threatened by this wave of skilled African American labour on the market and its potential to open its own workplaces such as forges and woodworking shops etc., and from there accumulate capital and open its own stores. The white business owners were not prepared to allow the African American skilled labour compete on an equal basis. So with the backing of the Federal government who did not want this new "free African American labour" to vote much of the lynchings were actually carried out to break the potential of this skilled African American labour. This deskilled what was originally skilled African American labour and ensured that it was kept in severe poverty. It was only really when the CIO movement of the 1930's and the African American revolt of the 1960's took place that African Americans could get into the better paid jobs such as auto and steel and get into the skilled trades.  The capitalists who backed the KKK to do this handy work for them do not want to admit this. After all they "believe in the free market" and they would not want to admit they got rich at least by lynching African American skilled workers. 

While recognizing this today we could celebrate how in the 1930's the uprising of the Congress of Industrial Organizations took on the racist and sexist policies of the employers and the old American Federation of Labour and built a new union movement which united workers of all races and genders and won big increases for the working class of all races and genders. 

We could also gives thanks for the great movement of the 1960's, the African American revolt in which people of all races and genders joined and which won gains for people of all racial backgrounds and give a tremendous boost also to the women's movement. 

Karl Marx developed a way of thinking which helps us understand the world. One of the main elements is that we take an all sided approach to things. Capitalism does not like this approach as it brings all their dirty linen into view. They prefer their own their selective one sided approach which hides their crimes. For thanksgiving we should take an all sided approach. 

Another element in Karl Marx's method was that society is based on class struggle. Yet another is that all things in our world has to be seen as part of a process, not isolated and not static, but as a process in motion. And finally that this method will help us understand the world, if properly applied, can help us come to a view which corresponds to reality. 

And if we have a view that corresponds to reality this is the best way to have contentment in our lives. This is the best way to celebrate giving thanks. We give thanks for the struggles of working class people in the past whose struggles improved our lives. This is the reality that most corresponds to our reality as working class people at this time in history.

But this is not enough on its own. Celebration will not last for long if we do nothing about our understanding of the world. A view that corresponds to reality today tells us that the world capitalist system need to be overthrown and replaced by a Democratic Socialist World Federation. This means that we have to take up the struggle of the working class. So celebrate today and tomorrow get back into the struggle. Well even today. Go and see whoever is struggling to keep from foreclosed on, or being fired, or has no health care, or who is suffering from the after affects of war or who is still at war and give them your support.  

Happy thanksgiving. Sean 

Why do they constantly pressure us to buy things?

On the news last night they talked of the $800 billion stimulus package that we are borrowing in order for us to be able to buy things; this comes on top of the other $850 billion they gave to their banker friends to save their system from collapse. They are worried because to buy things we normally have to borrow a down payment or some portion of the item, although this past bubble had a lot to do with the availability of money and its low cost.

The securities industry, the industry where they buy and sell debt, is in a fix because there is not enough consumer activity and there is not enough "affordable" credit the newscaster went on. Then an article I read complained about the same thing basically; that the employer's were not paying enough wages so consumers weren't able to spend.

But why don't the employer's pay enough wages to buy the products that come out of their establishments? Why do we have to borrow money to buy things? You would think it would benefit the employer's to avoid this problem

But they have no choice in the matter, it is a social issue. It's pretty obvious to most of us that their profit comes out of hiring us in some way. They don't pay us wages that are not enough to buy the products we make because they don't like us or because they're greedy in the abstract; in other words, the reason is not found in the lack of decency or bad character on the part of the individual. It is ingrained in the system.

Wealth in a capitalist economy is accumulated through the Labor process. The capitalist class pays the workers less in wages than they produce in value and the surplus value created in this process is the source of their profit; it is also the source of all sorts of other problems, war, hunger, the colonization of other nations.

In other words, wealth comes from the unpaid Labor of the working class. This great deal for the owners of capital is enforced through the state apparatus they control and is perpetuated in the minds of people through the means of communication that they own, the media, the education system, the pulpit etc. The Union leaders also echo these same ideas as they have the same view of the world as the employers.

The old adage, "a fair days pay for a fair days work" a saying that the capitalists made up, is an impossibility and the saying is an attempt to confuse us and deter us from struggling for higher wages just as the false idea that wages cause prices increases does; it is one of their ideological weapons. The intention is to convince us that they pay us 8 hours pay for 8 hours work and make money by charging more for the product in the marketplace, but this is impossible as an economy cannot work this way, wealth cannot be generated this way. The commodity that they sell contains within it Labor they have paid for and Labor they haven't and in order to free this trapped wealth, this "surplus value" in there they have to make the sale; that's why we are encouraged every minute of every day to buy the product; there's a gem in there.

Our wages come from an accumulated pool of capital or dead Labor. Whether they have it or borrow it to make payroll doesn't change this. It's source is previous unpaid Labor. We are being paid with our own money.

Why this is so important to me as an activist and was so important in the 25 years I spent as a Union shop steward of one sort or another, is that understanding it grounds me in times of difficulty. In a world of hostile and alien ideas (class alien that is) it is always in my mind that this is how wealth is created. I used to ask guys at work occasionally if it would be OK if I gave them $15 for a $20 bill and they always said no of course, its an unfair exchange. "Exactly" I would answer, you wouldn't do that unless you were coerced in some way and that is what the owner of capital, the employer does, coerce you in to exchanging the use of your life activity for a period of time and paying you in money less than what the use of this life activity produces in value.

I used to say to myself, "That damn Marx" when I felt like I wanted to seek an easier road than revolution or if I just wanted to step outside of it all either in to boredom or some drunken oblivion were some of us end up. Religion is another haven for the tired. "Maybe capitalism can be made nice" I might think. But theft is theft. It's like I used to tell the guys at work, "How can you have harmony between a thief and their victim, a prostitute and a pimp?" One lives of the Labor of another.

Obama says yesterday on announcing the stimulus package that in addition there will be "some serious belt tightening ahead" he will not discriminate between "friends and foes" we all have to sacrifice to balance the budget. This is a budget that has tripled or so over the last few months.

Who for one minute thinks a big business politician will make his or her "friends" suffer as much as you and I? When we "cheat" the boss at work by adding an extra hour to the timesheet or taking an extra five minutes break, worker's (the best of us) don't snitch on each other, we take care of each other; in our gut we know we are getting "our own back". Class consciousness hasn't gone away. Among Obama's friends are Warren Buffet, Paul Volcker, and other billionaires. They take care of each other. They will attempt to make us pay for this crisis of theirs in the form of more taxes and decreased living standards. As always it will be the poor, the infirm and the least organized among us who will suffer most.

The last story I saw on the news was about the huge increases in lines at food kitchens and they talked of a farm in Colorado that offered people to come and pick excess food that they had on hundreds of acres (unable to sell it no doubt), an act that the newscaster called kindness. They expected a few thousand but 40,000 people turned up.

At the root of all the problems that exist in today's world from the environment to hunger and disease, is this relationship between the owner of capital and those whose Labor power allows this accumulation of capital.

These problems will not go away unless this relationship does and workers control the Labor process and the surplus value created by our collective Labor becomes collectively owned and its use decided by all of us. But we have to be armed ideologically to accomplish this transformation and Marx is invaluable in that he explains how the present system works and gave some ideas about how it we can change it. But as well as being armed we have to act; theory is worthless without practice.

You can't have capitalism without racism

Racism is not a personal problem as they would have us believe. How many times do we hear that we are born with racist ideas? This ideological viewpoint is the ideology of the ruling class. It is obviously advantageous to the capitalist class to perpetuate this view. But they develop and propagate these and divisive ideas. Racism,religious sectarianism are tactics aimed at dividing the working class; we are not born racists, it has to be learned.

Ideas have a material base. It was not the peasant whose surplus Labor gave the king his wealth that dreamed up the idea of "Divine right", that the king was god's emissary on earth.
Injecting divisive racist ideas in to society makes perfect sense if you are the 10% that gets rich by stealing from the other 90% as they are always thinking of ways to get even.

Racist ideology and the idea of white supremacy really began to take hold with the advent of capitalism and imperialism in particular. Indentured servants, commoners and slaves ran away together in the East Indies so they passed legislation making the indentured servant responsible for the slave.

The Untied Irishmen was comprised of both Catholic and Protestants, in fact, many Protestants led it. I was just checking out William Cobbett in Wikipedia as he was a bit of a character who lived during the revolutionary 1790's 1800's. Cobbett pointed out that in the colonies of Virginia and the Carolina's "free negroes" were being admitted in to the United Irishmen who had brought their ideas of struggle with them to the Amercias after being driven out by the British after the defeat of the rebellion in 1798.

There were examples of poor white indentured servants who rioted calling for the kiling of the whites. They meant their opressors, the rich, of course but this is how we express ourselves sometimes. The point is that history is more about class division, division between the rich and the poor while race and religion were not so much an issue. The capitalist class that was threatened by the unity of those they exploited made an issue out of race and white supremecy in order to divide their enemies. "You can't have capitalism without racism" said Malcolm X. He was right.

the financial houses.

The Bush government and the coming Obama government have the same policy in relation to the banks and financial houses. Bail them out. We do not agree. We believe in nationalizing them under workers control and management. 

In 1974 there was a revolution in Portugal with the working class and military rising up and throwing out the dictatorship. During this great event the bank workers organized and went on to occupy the banks and refused to leave until they were nationalized. 

What about some action aimed at the bank and finance workers here. How about a drive to unionize the workers in the banks and financial institutions. These workers know all the swindles that have been going on and they are under threat of massive job losses. I am not talking of course about organizing the top swindlers just about the majority of people who work in these places who do the filing and typing and cleaning and so on. The people who actually keep them going.

Unionize the workers in the banks and financial houses. Nationalize the banks and financial houses under workers control and management with compensation only on the basis of proven need. Use the capital in the newly nationalized financial institution to solve the problem of people in homes they cannot afford, renegoiate mortgages to they are no more than 15% of income, use the rest of the capital in this newly nationalized financial institution to build homes, roads, schools, hospitals, bridges and create union jobs with union benefits and conditions. 

Sean.

Some Union and Suicide Data in Mexico

I read a very interesting article on unionism in La Jornada, the liberal newspaper from Mexico City. The article is about how dangerous it is to be a union activist in Mexico and Latinamerica in general. It comes from an international union organization from Brussels. CSI (International Union Federation-Confederación Sindical Internacional). In their annual report says that 91 unionist were murdered defending workers rights, 39 in Colombia being the highest with an ultra right government but other countries in the region like Guatemala, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Mexico, Panamá and Perú. CSI represents 168 million of workers around the world in 155 countries. At the end the article states that they noticed a slight reduction on the murders in Colombia but one of the main reasons is because a lot of the murder attempts on union activists failed.
And also concerning labor facts another article about the suicide rate from 2007 in the whole country(Mexico) states that from the 4,394 suicide cases in that year, 88% were young male(between 15-24 year olds) and 1,179(26%) were UNEMPLOYED, and the other statistics do not say anything clear in particular for example that 50% were married and things like that. But it is becoming clear how economic pressure is making people take extreme measures even upon themselves. The other interesting fact in the statistics is that the division in occupations in the people committing suicides the first are workers in the industry 18%, farmers and fishermen 14%, white collar workers 12% , no mention of entrepreneurs or businessmen, at least they do not make an statistic.

Our hidden history and the heroes of the past

History is filled with many heroes, men and woman whose names we never will know like Kurnutovsky, the engineer who fought against the Tsar and for the revolution in Russia. I am reading at the moment the story of Edward and Catherine Despard, two heroes I have had no previous knowledge of. They are both etched now in my memory as among those I have to thank for fighting, and in the case of Edward, dying for a better world.

I am always impressed in particular by those revolutionaries like Edward who came from a privileged background as an Irish landowner and became an important figure in the British colonial system; they have other choices and reject their class privilege. He was a friend of Horatio Nelson who pleaded for his life before he was executed by the British Bourgeois.

His wife was a black woman who he may have met in Nicaragua or Belize, or possibly Jamaica but he never left her there on his return to England, instead taking her home as his wife and companion. As the authors of the book I am reading point out, she was one of the influences on him as she was, as a slave and a woman no doubt experienced in revolt and resistance.
Other influences on Despard were the struggles against poverty and repression in the Caribbean where, as an influential figure he took the side of slaves and the free poor against merchants and landowners.

Executed with him was another Irishman and his early years in Ireland provided him with ample examples of the brutality of the English invasion as well as the resistance to it.

I just read a great quote from the book (p 279) from Thomas Russell in "An Address to the People of Ireland" (1796) and it is no less relevant today.

"You have been told that politics is a subject upon which you should never think: that to the rich and great men of the country you should give up your judgement in the business of government....Who gives this advice?...The men who profit by your ignorance and inattention. Why not think of politics? Think of it seriously; think of your rulers; think of republics; think of kings"

For more reading on the Despards and the conspiracy for which Edward was executed read: The Many Headed Hydra by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh ISBN 0-8070-5006-7

Gut Awareness On the Rise

Over the last few days the newspapers in toronto have been carrying a story about a suburban triple homicide-suicide.
And for the first time there has been no attempt to blame this tragedy on "unbalanced " personalities or angry domestic situations etc.
The "only thing clear" the paper states is that the family may have "been under some financial pressure." Seems the family remortgaged their home and it is speculated that large sums were lost on the stock market in the current financial debacle.
On top of that they have an very chronically ill son , unemployed and on very expensive medication. Unable to portray so far this as an isolated event perpetrated by a "disturbed" individual-the "you never know what goes on behind closed doors" scenario-the severely dysfunctional family routine etc - they point to the economy as a key factor in this tragedy.
Two things come to mind. Apart from the unspeakable tragedy - it is the first time that I have heard the press so readily point to economic reasons and make the links to the financial crisis in a situation like this, avoiding all reference to severe emotional issues or deranged behaviour.
Clearly if they are comfortable making these assumptions re the causes of this families desperation they have something to base it on.
Granted this is an act of severe desperation in a family - an extreme reaction to being forced into economic ruin. But not isolated and we will hear more!
It would be irresponsible to view this in an opportunistic manner and exaggerate the circumstances. On the other hand it is also irresponsible not to point out the tremendous human cost at the most basic level of everyday experiences and emotional desperation ordinary working people are feeling.
Less dramatic but related is conversations at work again-all the time.
Workers are revealing in actual numbers how much they have lost in the last few months.Usually reluctant to discuss individual finances and certainly never specifics, it is starting to pour out.
I am talking ordinary nurses, some single , some double income , some single parents-none wealthy or anywhere near wealthy. How does 20 thousand sound, one 30 thousand lost in three months. This represents years of packing away as much as possible into retirement funds -sacrificing vacations and new clothing -gone.
Now talk of what next-knowing that layoffs in the health sector are probably coming.
I hear confusion and fear. For the first time I hear workers saying it seems futile that there is no permanence and absolutely no economic security in life.
This of course raise all kinds of opportunities to point to alternatives -and I do all the time. Still somewhat insulated , in highly skilled jobs in an essential services hope in the system has not been exhausted -but it is being eroded. No one cringes when i use the word capitalism and point out the advantages of a planned economy . No one laughs when I walk around the nursing station , working as we talk , saying "nationalize the auto industry under workers ownership and control."
Granted a new concept to most -but no more rolled eyes and looks like "there she goes again." Seriously! Even last night we had a brief conversation about how employers treat workers as children and are abusive - agreement across the table when I pointed out that workers are capable of self management collectively-but as one worker, a social workers stated-"sure we are and we are more efficient as well." Such bold talk !!-would not have heard it a few months ago.
But there is a huge vacuum-not a word, not a damn word from the trade union leadership. No persectives, no forewarning to the membership of the losses coming down the tube, probably sooner than later.
Not one feeble attempt to make the connections between this economic crisis and how it will affect public services and public sector workers.No organizing, nothing but passivity . They are useless and they are collaborators.
So reading all these posts it has never been clearer that we need to continue to articulate and explain and point to alternatives boldly and skillfully.I am heading out to the printer Monday to pick up some more copies of the FFWP.
No one else will do it in the workplace or in my union Local or in my union period so what the hell it might as well be me.

Ron Gettelfinger, worker's leader pleading for the bosses on CNN

Ron Gettelfinger is on CNN at the moment pleading for the government to help the auto industry. He is painting a picture of complete devastation if the Congress doesn't act. He is stirring up protectionist sentiment comparing the incentives "foreign" companies got here. He attacks the government for doing this and abandoning the big three that are the "backbone" of this country. And that if this is not done one or more of the big three could go under by the end of the year.

He talks of "us" meaning the employers and the workers, the Team Concept again. He is making a good argument like all employers would, he is a good ally. Inaction is not an option he says, but he doesn't raise an option that is independent of the capitalist class and that doesn't guarantee the auto investors their profits.

There is no talk of nationalization, even under a capitalist economy, never mind workers control and management in a democratically planned socialist one. He argues for a loan to get "us" the auto industry through this economy, ignoring the cuts and savage attacks that will follow as they will not be attacks on him. He says nothing about the fact that they have just handed billions to bankers. CNN is giving him a lot of time to make the employer's argument and to appeal to workers that if they don't support the bosses getting this money all will be lost, it will be a catastrophe is the word that comes to mind and that has been thrown around. Given this, it is most likely auto workers in particular will support this as they see no other way and no other way is offered, only a solution within the framework of capitalism and that will help survive the very same people who have savaged his members with his help for year.

This crisis has proved that the resources are there and that the capitalist class has forfeited their right to run the auto industry and the economy as a whole.

During the Seattle general strike workers ran that city for a week until it was crushed though a combination of the employers and the Union leaders. But this is an important piece of working class history as it is a glimpse of how workers can run society. Hospitals were run by those that worked in them. Collection of garbage was managed by the workers and the docks were completely controlled by a worker's committee. The Seattle general strike showed us an example of worker's rule, a sort of workers council in a way, and reveals what an alternative social system can look like; the minutes from that committee that ran the docks can still be read. See Jeremy Brecher's book, Strike.

This is history they don't want us to read, our history.

it is hard to believe

Just now I see that Stephens the Republican Alaskan Senator who has been convicted of a number of felonies, that is taking bribes as a Senator, was making his farewell speech in the Senate. But it was not this that got me. I had expected this house of millionaires to let him talk about the great life he had there. But what got me was that when he finished they gave him a standing ovation. Yes, a standing ovation! So here was a convicted felon standing before the Senate getting a standing ovation. I am sure the many young people who are unjustly in the country's jails would like to address the senate. But their crime was too small and their power too little and they did not know enough on enough big shots. 

The people that run this country are going to provoke a major movement. Not just because of the attacks they are carrying out on living standards. But also because of their extremely stupid arrogance. Yesterday the CEO's of the big three flew each in his own companies private jet from Detroit to Washington to beg for money. Today the Senate gives a standing ovation to a Felon, to a convicted criminal who has been robbing the country blind. An explosion lies ahead.  

Sean.  

Surrounded by lies and hypocrisy.

I was driving home last night and listening to the radio. The auto bosses were on pleading for money. Each of them had flown to Washington on their company's own private jet at the cost of about $20,000 each. They are clearly not getting the picture. I believe our solution is the best. Nationalize the auto industry under workers control and management with compensation on the basis of proven need only. 

Later reading the bosses' paper, The Wall Street Journal, I saw it was talking about how CEO's snuck money out of their companies before they went broke. Lehman Brothers CEO took $184.6 million between 2003 and 2007. Bears Stearn CEO took $163.2 million. And while it has not gone broke Charles R Schwab CEO took $816.6 million over this period. These people like all the top CEO's and management are a bunch of robbers. What they swindled should be taken back from them. 

As revolutionary socialists we do not accept that company books should be secret. Our demand is "Open the Books." We want to see what money is there and what money has been there and where it went.  If, when we open the books, there is money there then we want our demands met, if we find there is no money there then we want to know why and if the money has been taken by management and shareholders we want it back. And if the company is completely bankrupt and we cannot trace any money anywhere then this shows that management have forfeited all right to manage and we want it nationalized under workers control and management with compensation only on the basis of proven need. This is the transitional method. That is a method which helps the working class make the transition from where they are at present, thinking that the present system is the only alternative, to coming to the conclusion that the present system can be challenged and an alternative system built. 

As I was reading the paper another item came on the radio. This was about Iran and the need for it to act in a way that would allow it to be "accepted again in the International Community." I started to think about this - the International Community. I wondered, was I part of the International Community. What was the International Community. It is not hard to figure it out. The International Community is the Imperialist countries dominated by US Imperialism and those countries that go along with them. If countries do not go along they are not in the International Community and so they are squeezed and pressurized in every way to make them knuckle under. Including invasion such as Iraq, Afghanistan and now the increasing raids in Pakistan. The International Community, such a mild sounding name for such a vicious militaristic and imperialist outfit. I am proud I am not part of it. 

Sean.

The Coming Speed Up at Your Job: Parts One and Two

Part One:
As a carpenter who’s been in the trade 25 years I’ve been more than aware of the constant ratcheting up of speed on construction sites. I’ve had to stop apprentices running on site, I’ve witnessed numerous accidents that could’ve been avoided and I have felt the pain of routinely working 10 hours in an 8-hour day.
Each introduction of new technology on the job that could’ve slowed the pace of work only increased it. Then this Recession hit and it’s like every boss wants even more. Always pushing, always complaining.
When my one daughter gets home from school she sometimes sits in my lap and counts the small cuts on my hands. I noticed recently an increase in those small cuts. We as workers are expected to give more for less. The employers want more blood out of the stone. Working people have always paid for the lifestyles of the bosses. Now we have to pay more. Why? Because they have the power. As George Bush finally admitted 8 years into his tenure, we live under capitalism. That's right. What’s good for capital is good, period. And that’s bad news for the millions of us who are already enduring our repetitive strain injuries.
Part Two:
Blue collar, white collar. If we are lucky enough to keep our jobs, we will all be working harder in the next year. I wanted to share one example of the boss turning the screw on white collar workers. I recently got off a job where we built out a commercial space for a finance company. During the job the drawings changed and a number of private offices we were building shrank in size. We built 20 offices that were less than 6-foot by 8-foot. A rather generous size for a grave, but incredibly small for a human being to work in, with desk, chair and all. None of these offices have windows, but they do have frosted glass in their doors. Oh, and they have plenty of artificial light, and white, white walls.
One worker joked that now they’re closing Gitmo and that maybe the detainees are getting sent here.

The big business press makes it clear what their future holds for workers

Speaking in favor of the auto industry bailout, Ron Gettelfinger, president of the UAW said that "for these companies to be competitive we had to make tough calls". The tough calls he is talking about are the massive concessions he has handed to the auto bosses over the past years. Obviously they didn't work, so they want more concessions in order to compete.

Meanwhile, in the Financial Times the other day, a special section on Mexico reported on one of the major concerns of the Mexican capitalist class that Mexico's workers "need to be more competitive". It appears that the bosses can find much cheaper human beings in Asia and just as lucrative working conditions, no real Unions, little regulation.

These comments alone prove that bailing out the bosses and their system means helping them become more competitive. It means helping our own individual or national employers drive their rivals from the marketplace. This is disastrous for working people as it is impossible to build the unity that is necessary to defend ourselves as we are forced to undermine each other for who can work cheapest, fastest and with the least obstacles to profit taking.

If Mexican workers are too expensive what does that mean for the future of workers in the US and other industrialized countries.

The solution is to unite with workers in Mexico, southeast Asia and throughout the world in order to raise all our wages and conditions and build a democratic socialist alternative to the capitalist system.

We will be told this is a nice idea but utopian. That's what the feudal aristocracy said about capitalism.

Change??????

I have written in a previous blog that close aides to Obama have said that he himself, because he is the first African American President elect is the "change" and they do not have to select an administration that will implement change. In other words there is going to very little change. They are sure carrying out this policy. The new administration is being packed with people who have served in Clinton's administrations and even Republicans are being discussed with. So why did we have to go through the interminable primaries and then the seemingly endless presidential campaign? Only to end up with Obama moving to work with the his rivals in the Democratic Party and even his main contender for the Presidency,  McCain and he are meeting to see how they can work together solve the country's problems. Incredible!

It is as we say. The two parties, the Democrats and Republicans are two capitalist parties and seek to solve the problems of society within the confines of capitalism. From the working class point of view there is no fundamental difference between them.  We believe the working class needs a new party, a mass workers party, which would tackle the problems working people face by seeking to end capitalism and moving to establish a democratic socialist society. This is what we fight for. Comment on our blogs and contact us and let us work together. 

Sean

They still have no idea when it will end

"When things will improve is anyone's guess" so we Californians were told tonight after hearing the political report on the local news. Don Perata, the Democratic president of the state Senate says he's never seen anything like this in his life time.

The state university system is cutting enrollment by some 13000 students due to cuts that will be forced on working people by the Democrats and Republicans in order to pay for the crisis of the system they manage. They didn't go in to a lot of detail in order not to rile us up too much, but they want to cut education by $2.2 billion (no bail out for education) cut $300 million from state employment which will mean big layoffs in the public sector and cut $230 from what is already a dismal transit system.

Along with this they are suggesting increasing the sales tax by 1.5% and income tax by 5% It is what we have stated all along, they will pay for this crisis which includes the bail out of the private sector with public funds through a combination of cuts in services and tax increases.

Naturally, anti-tax Republicans will get the ear of some workers with their opposition to raising taxes and with what will be a divisive alternative which will include cutting one section of the working class, the less organized among us, in order to alleviate some of the attacks on others.

This will work to an extent initially as the heads of organized Labor will offer no independent alternative that can unite working people; they will raise only what is acceptable to the Democrats which is a strategy aimed and dividing and weakening us.

As the next period as layoffs and cuts increase, we will be facing a lethal combination of cuts in social services as increased need for them grow. Raising taxes in a recession or possible slump will also exacerbate the problem as it will further cut in to consumption.

Earlier on on CNN they were also discussing the issue of the US auto industry and the bail out being discussed in Congress.

There is no reason to raise taxes on workers and the middle class or for education and other social necessities to be eliminated for thousands of people. One thing this crisis has shown us point blank is that the resources to provide such basics as education, health care, transportation and other social needs is there; the problem is that within the present economic system we call capitalism, they own these resources and that means they can do with them what they like; they have chosen as they always do to allow people to starve, die, do without health care and work, and line the pockets of their friends with our resources instead.

What is missing in all this is the only alternative that will work, taking in to public ownership the dominant or commanding heights as we sometimes say, of the economy under workers control an management. (see previous posts) This does not only apply to an industry that provides transportation like auto but also the taking in to public ownership the vast wealth that our Labor has created and is stored in their banks and private assets.

This is the alternative that we fight for. We should not be dismayed by the fact that this alternative is not on the evening news; we recognize they control the media, the universities and therefore the manufacture of ideas as well as cars. The present crisis has ushered in a new period where the sanctity of the market has been seriously undermined and it is not over yet.

Land of the Free

I put some information here recently showing that the US had more prisoners in its prisons than any other country in the world. Meanwhile it claims to be the land of the free. There is another area where it is very low on the freedom register. This is in the exchange of ideas. No other major industrial country has such censorship on the issues that matter. 

Look at the elections. Only the two absolutely committed capitalist candidates from the two completely trusted capitalist parties were allowed to debate on the mass bourgeois media. And even there the serious questions were never asked. What about all the other candidates for President and vice President? Most people did not know they were any other candidates. 

Then we come to the crisis in auto and more censorship. According to the mass media there are only two options. Bail out, that is tax payers money being handed over, or bankruptcy. But this is just more of the censorship. 

There is a third option. Nationalize the entire auto and auto supply industry under workers control and management with compensation only on the basis of proven need. This is the alternative that would work, that would keep workers in jobs, that would end the golden handouts to management and shareholders, that would shorten the work week, that would begin the process of moving to fuel efficient and environmentally friendly vehicles. And along with collaboration with the rest of the transport system lead to an integrated system based on road, rail and air fueled by sustainable and clean energy. 

Is this alternative ever mentioned in the mass media? Or if we are to be correct the mass bourgeois media. No. Their media only puts forward options that are acceptable to it, that are within the guidelines of its capitalist system. The media in the US is extremely censored. More so than any other major industrial country. Land of the free? Like how many people it puts in prisons, its censorship shows it is not the land of the free. 

Sean.

Something else.

Another thing Obama did not campaign on was the prison rate in the USA. The US has more prisoners than any other country in the world. It has more prisones than China which has a population more than five times as big. So much for the land of the free. One in one hundred US adults in the US are in jail. Then when it is broken down. One in nine African American  men aged 20 to 34 are in jail. There was not a word from Obama about how he is going to deal with this racism. 

Why are there so many prisoners in US jails compared to other countries. It is very simple. Capitalism needs a certain amout of workers to be unemployed. If there is full employment workers will get confident and organize and drive up their wages and cut into profits. So the job of the Federal Reserve chief, Greenspan and now Bernanke was to keep interest rates up to make sure that growth would be slowed and unemployment kept at the necessary level. They did not regulate Wall Street but they kept workers out of work. 

Here in the US single young men get nothing when they are unemployed. In most countries in Europe they get the dole and rent subsidy. They can live on this. But here the young men have nothing. So they have to try and get something to eat through crime. then the state comes down on them. And then because unemployment is higher amongst African American workers than other workers this is used to stir up racism. 

Capitalism is a dirty system. We are against it. We stand for working class unity, unite the employed and the unemployed and fight for a Democratic Society on a world scale.

Sean

The future under the Barak Obama administration.

Barak Obama's victory has been welcomed by big business. Even the right wing editorial writers in the Wall Street Journal extended a conciliatory hand. 

Barak Obama is now moving to build an administration which will be acceptable to big business. At the same time he is setting out his priorities in line with those of big business. Deal with the financial crisis, end the Iraq war, step up war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, deal with the Iran nuclear issue, seek to deal with the developing world economic depression. 

When we consider these priorities and the individuals he is picking to carry them out, such as the right wing Zionist as Chief of Staff, we should step back a bit and consider a few other things. In particular the issues he has not mentioned as priorities for his administration. The same issues in the main he never mentioned in his campaign.  

For example: 

The US unemployment rate for whites this October was 5.3%. For Latinos, it was 8.8%. For African Americans it was 11.1%. That is twice the rate for whites. The median white household income in 2007 was $54,920. For African Americans $33,916. For Latinos $38,679. The African American poverty rate is three times higher than the rate for whites.  Poverty rates: Whites, 8.2%, African Americans 24.5%, Latinos 21.5%. The African American infant mortality rate is 2.4 times the rate for whites. The African American child poverty rate is actually higher today than it was in 1968. The incarceration rate for African Americans is 4.8 times higher than for Whites. For Latinos it is 1.6 times than than for whites. 

These figures show extreme discrimination against African Americans. However they are not the full picture. And not only that they make it look better than it is. Racist discrimination affects all African Americans but it does not affect them all equally. In terms of unemployment, less educated African American men, African American men in major cities, and African American youth are all significantly worse off. 

So what about priorities now? None of these issues are priorities in Obama's agenda. None of them were raised in his campaign as he made sure he would not frighten off his big business backers or scare of white voters. 

So now what we will see is that the Obama administration or administrations will not step up to solve these problems. 

Working people need to organize our own organizations. We need to follow Martin Luther King's example when towards the end of his life he organized the Poor Peoples' March on Washington and when he said maybe America needs some kind of socialism. We need to follow Malcolm X's example when he also to the end of his life began to talk about working class unity and to talk of capitalism and socialism. We need to follow the example of many of the Black Panther party who come out for socialism. 

Obama is committed to try and solve the problems within capitalism and it will not work. He will end up implementing the capitalist solution of making working people pay. We need out own organizations, we need to defend ourselves with direct mass action, we need to reject the capitalist alternative at every turn about, we need to organize for socialism.  Sean 

The break up of so many African American families is directly related to high unemployment. 

First the banks now auto

First it was the financial institutions that capitalism has bankrupted. Now it is the auto industry. The multi millionaire swindlers of Wall Street who have been condemning the state and insisting it keep out of its business suddenly are on their knees cap in hand to Washington asking to be bailed out. And they are in the process of getting their $850 billion. 

We opposed this. Our alternative instead was to nationalize all the financial institutions. This means take them out of private hands and placing them in a publicly owned institution. The only compensation that would be paid would be on the basis of proven need. that is if a working class person had some shares in the privately owned institutions and that is all they had to live on they would be compensated. Proven need would be decided by democratically elected committees of working people. 

The nationalized institution would not be run by people from the financial industry. They have shown they cannot run it.  It would be run by elected representatives of the working class. From the workers who would be unionized in the industry, from the working class as a whole and from holders of household mortgages. This would mean the new nationalized institution would be run in working peoples interests not in the interests of private capital and profit. 

The capital that would be in this institution would be used to solve the crisis in the housing industry but also would be used to invest in schools, hospitals, infrastructure, areas that would be good for the interests of the majority not squandered and speculated away as has been done by the private owners of the financial sector up to now. Decisions on this would be taken by the democratically elected workers' leadership of the new institution and the working class in generaL. 

Now we come to the auto industry. There are over three million people involved. And just as capitalism ran the financial institutions into the ground and bankrupted them so the owners of auto and capitalism has bankrupted the auto industry. The private owners for years spent millions in Washington  bribing politicians not to pass laws that would have made their automobiles more fuel efficient. Now they are back at Washington again but this time to plead for $50 billion in a bail out because they cannot compete with fuel efficient cars. 

We have the same position on the auto industry as the financial institutions. We opposed the bail out there, instead we demanded the nationalization under workers' control and management of the financial industry. We also demand the nationalization under workers control and management of auto, including all the auto suppliers and distribution networks. This nationalized auto industry would be run under workers control and management, there would also be compensation only on the basis of proven need. 

If there is a bail out the conditions will be massive lay offs, work speed up and cuts in benefits and pensions. The owners and the profit system have bankrupted the auto industry. They have lost all right to run it. Nationalize it under workers control and management with compensation on the basis of proven need. In alliance with the other sectors of the transport industry such as rail and air and taking into account the development of a sustainable economy and protection of the environment and the need to move immediately to fuel efficient cars and to move quickly to more mass transport then the problems can be solved and workers jobs and living standards protected. 

Sean

  

Their system is getting worse.

Lenin said that marxism was the science of perspectives. What did he mean by this? By perspectives he meant an understanding of the developments in the world around us. And he was talking about the objective world, the objective processes, that is the world and the processes which are independent of our will until we become a mass revolutionary force. 

Here in the US as socialists we have been trying to win more support for our ideas over the past years when capitalism has been able to deliver the goods for most working class people. Yes they have had to work very hard, but nevertheless they have in the main been able to get by. So when we suggested that they change their way of looking at things and get involved in studying history and politics and economics and how to fight capitalism and in fighting for socialism the overwhelming numbers of workers looked at the alternatives. One was getting by as they were at the moment even with having to work harder. The other was continuing to work hard but alsoget involved in socialist politics and organizing and take the risks that this involved. Mccarthyism is still remembered in this country, so is the repression and killing by the state of the leaders of the black revolt and other movements such as AIM which challenged US capitalism. 

Then there is the other factor. The union movement is twelve million strong and could lead and organize the working class and challenge the system. But rather than do this the union leaders hold the movement paralyzed. They do not believe there is an alternative to capitalism. They themselves are doing well out of capitalism. They show no way forward to the organized working class. The union leaders play the role of betrayers. But not only do the union leaders do this in the general struggle with the employers, but they also consciously and viciously repress and drive out union activists and socialists from their ranks. This puts the working class off fighting. 

The result has been that very few workers have been prepared to be involved in struggle. But to go back to perspectives. And also that basing ourselves on perspectives we can see that things are going to change. For the past almost seven decades US capitalism ruled the world, looted the world and its economy with only the occasional bump delivered the goods. So for us socialists it has been very hard. Capitalism was delivering the goods. Then almost two decades ago Stalinism collapsed and the capitalists were able to claim this was socialism and this got us a bad name. However what we have to see is that things have changed dramatically in our favour in the past two months. 

The US and world capitalist financial system is in in a state of collapse. Following fast on its heels is coming the economic collapse. Look at what top spokespeople of capitalism are saying. Former Goldman Sachs Chairman John Whitehead says the coming economic crisis could be "worse than the great depression." Merrill Lynch CEO said Tuesday the slump would be more like the 1929 period than the dislocations of 1987, 1998 or 2001." These are the mouthpieces of capitalism speaking, not some left wing anti-capitalist. 

The perspective ahead is going to be very different from the perspective of the past.  Capitalism is going to take the bread out of the mouths of the US workers, the roof away from their heads, and the health care and education away from themselves and their children. It is a system in extreme crisis and which will seek to solve this crisis on the backs of the working class. 

This is an objective process. It is also the perspective that is now agreed upon by the capitalist class. For years they believed their boom would go on for ever. But now they see the game is up and their system is crashing. And they will try and make the working class pay. But there has already been a major shift in consciousness in the working class. They see the system does not work and they blame Wall Street and Washington in the main. this is a major step forward. The working class while not yet lining up to get involved in the struggle to change society is beginning to see that the old way will soon not work anymore and we will have to get involved in struggle. This is a huge step forward. 

When the working class was able to get by it was very hard to convince them they had to take action. But what is unfolding now is that capitalism is moving to convince the working class that they can no longer get by through keeping their head down and working harder. they are  going to have to take action and organize. Capitalism is moving to convince the working class through its attacks on the workers living standards. As Marx said sometimes the revolution needs the whip of the counter revolution. 

We take no pleasure in the fact that the workers living standards will come under even greater attack before they conclude they have to take action. If the union leaders would organize the resources they control and give leadership the working class would have been in offensive fighting action long before this and have been able to hold onto all its gains and beat off all attacks.

The perspective is clear. the crisis of capitalism will seek to impoverish the working class. This in turn will force the working class to realize they cannot act as they have been doing. They have to fight. And from this a new movement of the US working class will be born. This is where socialist like Labors Militant Voice and Facts For Working People come in. We intend to help this movement be built and develop, but we also intend to be part of it. And as such we will explain our socialist alternative, our direct action methods of struggle, our criticism of the role of the leaders and their refusal to challenge capitalism and offer an alternative and we will fight for the world socialist alternative. 

With the help of the capitalist politicians, corporations are lining up for their welfare handouts and are proud of it.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that there are almost 50,000 homeless veterans in California, "the most of any state". New York comes next with just over 21,000; the total US homeless population is well over 100,000. Mind you, this doesn't include people who sleep in their cars or drift in and out of homelessness and go unreported.

When it comes to ending homelessness or poverty, or providing health care or education, there is never enough time or money. People on welfare are portrayed as lacking initiative or in their predicament due to their own miserable failures.

But not so for the private companies lining up to get their share of the $800 billion taxpayer relief fund.

GM is claiming it is broke and wants the taxpayer to help. The moneylenders whose parasitic existence traps people in a life of perpetual insecurity and who, if their circumstances are such that the blood money can no longer be paid, ruthlessly drive their victims from their homes, deprive them of their health care or transportation with the government's help, are lining up for their share of taxpayer's money. They feel no shame and none is heaped on them by the media and the state.

American Express, one moneylending firm has just been granted the right to appeal for some of the taxpayer's money. What allowed this is the federal government stepping in and suspending the rules to allow AmEx to miraculously become a "bank holding company". "Normally it would take months to win regulatory approval for such a switch" writes the Wall Street Journal (11-11-08)

Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, another bunch of moneylenders also had the rules quickly changed enabling them to apply for corporate welfare. Having former employees well positioned in government circles has its advantages.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Fed waived it's normal procedures to "expedite" these applications. The Fed's justification for giving this unprecedented access to public funds for corporate welfare is "unusual and exigent circumstances affecting the financial markets."

Hundreds of thousands of homeless people, many of them veterans, the mentally impaired and such, are not facing such circumstances it seems as there is never enough money to help. Is sleeping under a freeway underpass a "normal" set of circumstances then? There is never enough money we are told, for housing, health care, education or other social needs. And apart from that, the cogs of the government machine turn slowly we are always told. Even Barak Obama said in his acceptance speech that the road will be steep, will be hard, we may not get there quickly etc but we will get there.

Yet how quickly these corporations who bleed the American workers and middle class dry get their hands on public funds. One bourgeois commentator says "How could you possibly pass up the flexibility to be able to access these programs in a highly uncertain and volatile world."

So corporate hand outs are sound rational decisions. What stigma, what a savage media war the capitalist propaganda machine wages against the poor and low paid who cross that extra "T" or dot that extra "I" to "access" a measly payment that barely keeps them alive.

In their own papers they talk so rationally and honestly about plundering the public wealth, "Without this status we do not have access to these important tools (government money)" says Toni Simonetti, a spokeswoman for GMAC, GM's financial services arm. So they get their politicians in the Democratic and Republican parties to change their status overnight and give them access.

This crisis is far from over and is only beginning to enter the real economy. Thousands more job losses are on the way. Cuts are already being made in public services like health care at a time when more people will need them. We should keep in mind the term Monolines. These are the insurers who insure municipal bonds and such, in other words, they insure the money our communities are forced to borrow to maintain public services or build our infrastructure. It is likely more and more municipalities will default on debt and if the Monolines go under that will be another insurance group the taxpayer will be expected to back up.

It is likely the government will take a stake in GM. The company and its bought politicians are urging the government to bail it out. It's possible it could be nationalized altogether depending on the depth of the crisis, something that no one can really determine. But the arrogance of these bastards. Rick Wagoner, the head of GM refuses to resign in return for taxpayer money, "I think our job is to make sure we have the best management team to run GM." he says.

These are the same people that have run industry in to the ground and have wasted human and material resources. He is still making demands when him and the rest of the capitalist class have forfeited their right to own the prodcutive forces and govern society.

This is one of the great lessons of this crisis and working people in great numbers will draw this conclusion.

More job cuts

The crisis is spreading at a rapid pace from the financial sector in to the "real" economy. Circuit city which announced it is closing 154 stores has now declared bankruptcy and DHL, the shipping company is closing all of its US service centers and eliminating almost 10,000 jobs. This is just the beginning. Unemployment, with all its consequences, lack of demand, increased government expenses, etc. is on the rise.

A US slowdown is going to have serious effects on the Asian economies as they are so dependent on US and European consumers, China has just announced a $600 million stimulus package. The capitalist class have no idea as to the extent of the damage from the financial crisis or where all the money is. They have had what the Financial Times has referred to as a "sumptuous feast" and we are now expected to pay the bill.

Sweet commerce.

The capitalists have run GM in to the ground; its time it had new owners

I see GM is crying broke and, after announcing it lost a further $2.5 billion GM bosses say they are running out of money. Well, when we run out of money, when we can't pay the rent or the phone bill or the electric, or the mortgage, they cut us off; they take out house. If we can't afford medical care we get sick, some people get dumped on the street.

So if its good enough for us, it's good enough for them. Let's take Kirk kerkorian's factory; he has no right to own it anyway other than the right of force, of might makes right. No bail out for the auto industry that has been run in to the ground and, with the capitalist class at the helm has wasted precious resources making gas guzzling autos.

Under workers control and management not only will the billions that are scooped in to the pockets of a few wealthy be available, but the resources wasted here can be used to design an effecient and environmentally sound public transit system.

What do you think? Crisis of hope and the Baby Boomers

I was in a discussion with some friends recently--drunk on Obama hope friends. Hope-bama addicts.

One of my friends mentioned that her mom said that Obama's election has "given her her future back." My friend's mother, a Baby Boomer, felt that during her youth the hope and passion she experienced at that time were due to iconic political figures like the Kennedys and the world events of that time. She said that the assasination of the Kennedys ripped her future from her.

The discussion went on about this hope that the President-Elect has inspired. It went on about the action it has inspired. It was a passionate discussion, but someone said, "what if somone takes this away from us." They wondered what would happen if Obama came to some ill fate at the hands of some extremist or racist. I said, what if someone else has nothing to do with it? What if Obama himself lets "us" down? What if nothing changes?

How long before hope evaporates? What will the reaction be of so many of my friends who are a new generation who have bought into this "hope" hook, line, and sinker? What of the old generation who may have found new hope in the President-Elect?

Baby Boomers face a time when they are wanting to retire from a workforce that seems to be faling apart around them. Their retirement savings may have dried up in the recennt financial crisis. They may have children facing foreclosure or be facing foreclosure themselves. They may have renewed hope--albeit based on one anecdotal incident--in a system that will eventually let them down.

When the let-down comes, generations of the working class will be spurned. We can work toward creating an understanding of a true alternative in this time so that those spurned generations may finally think outside the capitalist system and create a party and a society where the working person has a snowball's hope of survival.

Cities and municipalities will be hit hard by the economic crisis and they'll be coming to us for more money

The economic slowdown in the US is really beginning to hit the states. There will be a huge combination of cuts in social services and increased taxes as the recession deepens. There will be no federal bail out here although the source of the bail out will be the same, the taxpayer.

There should be a private bail out. Taking private capital from the capitalists and using it for public good. After all, workers are the source of this capital as it is stolen labor power, the product of labor power that the capitalists paid no wages for.

Church-going Slumlord loses $5m, tenants get last Laugh

A comrade from the Campaign for Renters Rights called us today to let us know that a major adversary of ours has just suffered a huge defeat.
About five years ago we received a call from a tenant who had left his apartment explaining that his old landlord, Richard Thomas, was refusing to give him his security deposit back. Not only that, but he was claiming that the tenant owed him money for the poor condition he left the apartment in. The tenant had photos, the apartment was immaculate.
Nothing out of the ordinary, until we started picketing the landlord's office and flyering the landlord's other buildings. We were flooded with stories of former tenants who had been ripped off by him. One former tenant said that when they attempted to get their security deposit back that the landlord threatened to counter sue the tenant in Superior Court (requires a paid-for lawyer) because, he claimed she had dyed the color of the carpet a different color than when she moved in! Crazy, but absolutely true.
To cut a long story short, we collected the names of 23 cases (some single people, some families) who collectively were owed $39,000 in Security deposits by this slumlord and they were also collectively being counter-sued by him for up to $50,000.
What did we do? The Campaign for Renters Rights with up to 30 tenants occupied the Mayor's Office, occupied the City Attorney's office and forced them to pay attention. We christmas-carolled, anti-slumlord songs outside the slumlord's house. We twice picketed Thomas' church, where he was a Deacon (this hurt him badly!) He put 3 resraining orders out against our members.
Our efforts forced him to slow down and stop keeping people's security deposits. Meanwhile a couple of lawyers took up a class action lawsuit against the bastard. Today Richard Thomas, a scumbag to beat all scumbags, lost that 3-year court saga and owes his tenants $5.5 million in damages.
I will probably call him tonight to get the last laugh.
Fight to Win with Direct Action
Rob
Campaign for Renters Rights/Hands Off Our Homes 510 595-5545

Life will get worse for the world's millions as capitalism emerges from this crisis ever more violent

Obama's victory speech prepared people for the worst. Things will take a long time, the road is steep etc. etc. It didn't take a long time to come up with the money to bail out the banks though. When the first vote was defeated, they went back, added a few more million and got it passed. This took a matter of two weeks.

During the fist two weeks of October, the strike of capital by the bourgeois (what they call a credit crunch) threw an added 44 million people in to poverty in Southeast Asia according to the UN World Food Program. People in this part of the world are living on the brink anyway, suffering all the usual ills, including women becoming mail order brides for western men in order to escape a life of starvation and misery.

But this sort of poverty is not a natural disaster, like Katrina, it is a capitalist disaster, a man made disaster if you will, a product of the free market. This is what the free market means in Africa:

Up to 500,000 babies die within a day of being born
More than 1,000,000 babies die within their first year of life
In Liberia 66 in 1,000 babies will die
In Japan, the mortality rate is 2 out of 1000

Paul Risley, a spokesperson for the WFP commented that the US bank bail out would feed all of the world's poor for the next 100 years. So clearly the capitalist class have forefeited their right to rule. They manage our money, the wealth we create. They are meeting next week, the so-called G20 in order to discuss how to rectify the current crisis, in particular how to manage it globally and take collective action; it is being called "Bretton Woods 11" after the agreement made after the war in New Hampshire.

The same people who are responsible for the present crisis and whose defense and perpetration of the system that is responsible for the statistics above are meeting next week to resolve it. One bourgeois commentator suggests that "they will be deciding the future of civilization." meaning the future of capitalism.

I can't help quoting Marx who wrote in 1848 that the capitalist class:

"compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image."

The rulers of the world are not meeting next week to solve world hunger. They are meeting to prop up what they call "civilization". This civilization of theirs , this world image, has had a set back and we should send it to its grave.

The post election moves.

Obama is moving very quickly to consolidate his victory and get his government prepared. The details are not known yet. There are rumours he will have two Republicans. What is sure is that he will make sure that the overall compensation of his administration will reassure the capitalist class that his government will be safe and handle things in its interest. 

Another aspect of the formation of the new administration will be the increased influence and rise of the African American bourgeois. The Wall Street Journal has an article on its front page today headed: "Black power brokers ready to rise in tandem with new president. 

It writes: "For more than a decade Mr Obama has cultivated ties with a growing circle of black power brokers who are poised - and eager - to wield greater national influence. Some of these stand to gain new status in an Obama administration, and many more in law firms, big corporations and Wall Street." What we see here are the rising black corporate elite, the increasingly strengthening black bourgeois. 

The article goes on to say: "Absent from the senator's advisory circle for instance, are the civil rights leaders and ministers who figured prominently in the candidacies of an older generation of black politicians such as Jesse Jackson." The article goes on to quote an influential African American minister from Boston, Eugene Rivers. He says: "There is no one who represents the black inner city, who is rooted in the black community. It's the whole black Brahim thing: Vote for us because we are better than you." Damning and accurate condemnation. 

African Americans have a much higher rate of unemployment, have a much lower wage, have much worse housing. Obama did not mention this in his campaign. Obama is part of the rising African American bourgeois, and now as President he will move decisively to represent the US bourgeois as a whole. There will be great disappointment. 

What is necessary is the building of a fighting working class movement in the African American population and the population as a whole. 

This blog fights for:

#Build "Hands off our Homes" committees in the neighbourhoods to stop all foreclosures and evictions through mobilizing in direct action. 

#Build "Hands off our Jobs/Wages/Benefits" committees in the workplaces and unions and defend our standards and rights through direct action. 

#Link these committees together and mobilize working class people to defend every home and job and wage and benefit and to fight for a decent job on a decent wage and benefits for all. And to fight for universal free health care and a free federally equally funded education system.

#Out of these struggles and working class committees lay the basis for building a mass workers' party which can unite the working class in the country irrespective of race or gender in a struggle against the employing class and their parties and representatives. The Republicans and Democrats are capitalist parties. 

#Basing ourselves on this struggle we invite the millions of Obama volunteers and the tens of millions of Obama voters to work together with us in the struggle against foreclosures and evictions and to defend jobs, wages and benefits. And in doing so consider our analysis that the problems we face cannot be resolved inside the capitalist system or inside a capitalist party. 

#Join us in building a mass workers' party and in fighting for a democratic socialist alternative to the present system with its mass poverty, destruction of the environment, wars and occupations. Only a democratic socialist world can solve the problems we face and this can only be brought about by an international democratic working class socialist movement.  

Sean.

 

Are we headed back to sanity?

President John Sweeney, (he is head of the US trade Union movement but most Union members and workers as a whole would never know it) sent out a note after the elections. He claims that "the political pendulum is swinging back toward sanity."

Perhaps he is talking of the sanity that Clinton introduced, NAFTA and the throwing of working class poor off of welfare or the bombing of Serbia, or even Sudanese drug factories that made life-saving drugs. Oops, sorry we made a mistake there. Maybe he's talking about the sanity the Democrats showed helping the Republicans repeal the Glass Steagall act or those that gave the Savings and Loans industry the freedom to hand the US taxpayer a $300 billion tab. Henry Waxman, heading the commission inquiring in to the present crisis and pointing blame here and there was part of that fiasco.

Perhaps he is talking of the sanity of Al Gore who in a Business Week interview headed "Getting Smaller with Al" which was in response to the Republican victories in 1995, wanted to prove to the business community that the Democrats were better than Republicans when it came to laying off public sector workers and cutting social services under the guise of government restructuring.

"We've been doing it for two years. He (Gingrich) wants me to talk to Republicans about how best to do it, and I look forward to that. In the past-- including 12 years of Republican Administrations--there was lots of talk about reducing the size of government, but it increased. This is the first Administration (Clinton) that has actually cut the size of government."

The interviewer suggests the Democrats are not cutting government employees like the Republicans. But Al assures him:

"Cabinet departments don't get created by accident. Below that level, there are many agencies that we have eliminated. In one year, we downsized by 100,000 employees. We have locked in place plans to eliminate another 200,000 workers. That's a bold start."

Perhaps Sweeney is talking about the good old days in the eighties when Rengel of Philly attacked AFSCME workers there or perhaps of the sanity of Governor Perpich of Minnesota who smashed the Hormel meatpacker's strike by calling out the national guard.

Maybe the sanity of the Carter years when the Tafty Hartley was used against the miners by this deeply religious Democrat who lusted in is heart.

Now Barak Obama is the Labor leader's hope for the future, a wall street candidate in a capitalist party surrounded by the likes of Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin and other elite representatives of the US capitalist class.

While I was moved myself by the moment and the emotion on the faces of black folks last night, especially older black folks who have every reason to be thrilled at such a historic event for them, it is likely that as the Democrats and President Obama carry out the policies of US capitalism it will be the poorest Americans who suffer most and this will mean a lot of African Americans.

Obama made it clear in his victory speech, preparing the ground for the let down. The road is going to be "long" "steep". We "may not get there in one year or one term" he says. But we will get there. But with the Democrats majority why should there be a problem? Why would it not take a few wekks to provide for workers; it only took three weeks to come up with 800 billion dollars for bankers and this was with a supposedly divided Congress. (Divided by an aisle only, not by ideology)

Obama calls for a "New spirit of service" a "New spirit of sacrifice and patriotism"
All of these terms are to prepare us for the attacks to come. The bail out has to be paid for and it will not be paid for by Donald Trump. The President of the US represents all Americans, but represents them differently for sure.

We all have to pitch in, Obama says. Are US workers not sacrificing enough? Are the poor not sacrificing enough? We work some two months a year longer than workers in other industrialized countries and we have worst benefits and social services. And health care?

The movement around Obama's election was the closest thing to a movement without being one. He has 4 million volunteers. He has three million in his data base. These people, black people, youth, they have high expectations that in the main will be dashed. Where will they go? Even if only 10% of them come out of this looking for an alternative this is almost a half million people.

Activists must recognize that a new period has opened up. The market has lost some of its allure, its credibility. It no longer has all the answers in the minds of all those people under 40 who have never known anything but lazze faire. As we have said on this blog, as the crisis deepens it is likely the Democrats will be forced to introduce some new deal type reforms but the policies of capitalism will be carried out and this will mean job losses and cuts in social spending as well as increased taxes.

We can provide an alternative and fight to build a movement based on direct action and independent community/labor groups like these hands of our homes and jobs committees that can defend our interests and through which and independent mass worker's party can be built.

A more favorable objective situation has opened up for socialists and other anti-capitalists.

Obama elected.

The election of Barak Obama is seen by most African Americans, especially older African Americans who remember segregation and Jim Crowe, as a major development. It is also a positive event in the minds of most youth who see in his election proof that America is no longer so racist as becoming more progressive. And along with this for a large portion of the population it is just such a relief to be rid of the hated Bush/Cheyney regime.

But there is no panic in the halls and journals and think tanks of capitalism. The Wall Street Journal editorial has as its opening sentence: "Hearty congratulations to President elect Barak Obama."It then goes on to reassure its readers not to worry writing: "We have had in recent years two black secretaries of state, black CEO's of our biggest corporations, black governors and generals - and now we will have a president."

US capitalism will use the colour of Obama's skin for its own ends. It will claim to the world that Obama's colour proves that it is not racist and use this to try to recover from the collapse in its credibility and respect endured under Bush. At home it will say that Obama's election proves race is no barrier and use this to condemn the black unemployed and the lower pay and benefits suffered by black workers, claiming these are their own fault.

But Obama's election does not prove that the US is no longer racist. Incarceration rates for black men are seven to eight times that for white men and black family income is only between 60% and 70% of white family income. The USA is still a racist society.

Obama did not take up these issues in his campaign. He preached the message of so-called unity and we would all solve out problems and the present crisis together. But we are not in this together. People like Treasury Secretary Paulson come out of the looting of the past ten years with $800 million. The richest 400 people in the USA looted $670 billion out of the economy under Bush. But the income of the majority, that is the working class, black and white, fell.

Obama is already lining up top capitalist economists such as Volker former head of the federal reserve, whom the Wall Street journal calls an "icon of the right" and other capitalist advisers for his regime. He has made it clear that he intends to solve the country's problems within the capitalist system. This means the working class will have to pay. If as is likely the financial crisis gives way to a deep recession he may have to bring in some policies such as were adopted by FDR. But he will defend capitalism's ownership and control over the economy and as a result the working class will pay the price of the crisis.

Obama's election is no alternative to taking up the struggle against foreclosures, evictions and to defend jobs, wages and benefits. It is no alternative to building "Hands off our Homes" committees in the neighbourhoods and "Hands off our Jobs/Wages/Benefits" committees in the workplaces and linking these in direct action struggle and in the building of a mass workers party.

Sean.

election

Labor's Militant Voice does not believe that capitalism can be ended through elections to capitalist parliaments. However elections represent a mass dialogue and a struggle for the consciousness of the working class. Until working class people can transfer power into democratic workers councils then they have a responsibility to take part in the bourgeois electoral process. Opting out gives an open field to capitalist ideas and parties.

As usual massive censorship has been exercised in this election in the US. All but the two capitalist party candidates have been excluded from the mass media with the exception of perhaps one or two appearances on one or two of the more exotic shows. Voters are presented with the choice: One capitalist candidate or another. The overwhelming majority of voters have no knowledge that any other candidates are even running. When you add onto this the censorship in terms of alternative ways to deal with the financial and economic crisis then these elections are not democratic. But they still represent a way to struggle for ideas and any serious activist must participate.

In this election in the US the struggle for consciousness in this election has been between the two capitalist candidates McCain and Obama. Both are committed to this system and see the solutions to the problems society faces within this system.

However there is no doubt that this election has an extra excitement and tension to it as, for the first time in US history, it is possible an African American can become president. For the overwhelming majority of African Americans who have suffered for centuries at the hands of one of the most racist systems in the world, this appears to be a major step forward. As you hear again and again: "I never thought I would live to see the day." This cannot be discounted or ignored.

There are two aspects to a possible victory of Obama. One is the symbolism. To see an African American in the White House will increase the expectations and confidence of the African American population in general. There will be greater expectations not only from African Americans but from all his supporters and those who voted from him and his drumbeat of change. However this has to be qualified. The illusions and expectations are liable to be relatively short-lived. As the Wall Street Journal says on election day in its main front page headline: "New economic ills will force winner's hand."

There is a class divide in the African American population as in any other sector of the American population. Under Obama those who will benefit will mainly be the Black upper middle class and bourgeois as more jobs in the state apparatus will come available and as more access to state funds also.

Obama will try and solve the financial and economic crisis of US and world capitalism by cutting living standards. This will hit the African American working class very hard. We are looking at the beginning of the economic crisis to follow the financial crisis. 50,000 plus jobs are under threat in auto. Circuit City has just announced it is closing 155 stores. 4.3 million foreclosures are expected by 2010. If Obama is in the White House he will preside over this crisis. There are already the jokes about yes they are letting an African American take over because the country is broke and he and all African Americans can take the blame.

If the economic downturn gets too severe then he will possibly bring in FDR policies, that is some public works programs etc. He will move to prop up and even take over more financial institutions and even possibly companies in other sectors. But he will continue to operate within the capitalist system and because of this he will seek to solve the problems on the backs of the working class. Because of their already existing higher unemployment rates and lower wages, the price will be especially high for the African American working class.

If Obama wins today there will be great celebration in the African American population and also amongst a large section of the population who will feel that his election means that the US has grown up and become more progressive and mature. They will have an increase pride in the country and they will have such a relief to be rid of Bush/Cheney and their party. However, down the road, Obama, having committed himself to work within the system will be used by that system to solve its crisis on the backs of the working class and this includes the African American working class. .

It is estimated that Obama has four million volunteers working for him. This is a staggering figure. It represents a major mobilization of African Americans, Latinos, working class, youth and progressive people into political life. Imagine how these millions could have been mobilized differently.

Keeping in mind these four million, the union leaders have millions of members in the union ranks and hundreds of millions of dollars in their accounts. They are reputed to have given $300 million to Obama and they have turned out hundreds of thousands volunteers.

How about this: they should have taken that money and those resources and put up a workers candidate on a program to solve the country's ills in the interest of the working class. The candidate chosen should have been the result of a democratic process and been the best candidate available. If it could have been an African American candidate this would have been best.

The emphasis of the campaign should have been as follows: End all foreclosures and evictions and firings. For a $15.00 an hour minimum wage or a $5.00 increase which ever is the greater. Free health care and education for all paid for by ending all wars and military spending. Nationalize the financial institutions with compensation on the basis of proven need only, invest the finances thus made available in the infrastructure, schools, hospitals, affordable housing etc. Build Hands off our Homes committees in the neighborhoods and Hands off our Jobs/Wages/Benefits committees in the workplaces and unions. For the leaders of the unions and all workers organizations to be paid the same wage as the average wage of a their members with the right of recall at any time. Build a mass workers party around this program and these organizational proposals. End the dictatorship of capitalism build a democratic socialist society.

In this election there are other candidates to vote for. They are not all on the ballot on all states. But there is the Peace and Freedom Party. There is the Green Party and its presidential candidate former Congress woman and African American Cynthia McKinney. There are the various socialist candidates and there is Nader. It is not only as the capitalist media would tell us McCain or Obama.

Sean

interesting times

Today the Editorial of the Wall Street Journal is hedging its bets. They now say a vote for Obama will be a gamble but they are not saying to definitely vote against him. They want to be in with him if he gets into the Whitehouse but also a large section of the capitalists have become concerned that McCain actually might be too erratic.  Their new ambivalence on Obama comes at the same time as increased talk in capitalism's journals about FDR measures perhaps being necessary to help the country avoid a depression. The deepening of the financial crisis, the development of a depression and the development of anger and a movement from below could very well see FDR measures being taken by whatever president was in power. Facts For Working People have been raising perspective this now for months. In such developments there would be increased politicalization and increased class consciousness amongst the US working class. And increased opportunities for activists and socialists. 

Obama will select and surround himself with the most establishment of capitalist advisers such as former Fed chief Volcker, whom the Wall Street Journal calls a"an icon of the right and a supporter of the strong dollar." Obama already consults with Volker on a regular basis. Volker never had a cell phone before but now has actually got one just to take Obama's calls. 

It is better to vote for one of the the socialist candidates or the Green Party candidate or Nader but in doing so explain that their programs are inadequate and explain that we need an independent workers party on democratic socialist policies.  And also to build the revolutionary socialist alternative in the process.

The other development we should keep our eyes on is what is happening in auto. There are efforts to merge Chrysler with GM with the loss of over 50,000 jobs and a major slashing of benefits. The leader of the UAW, Ron Gettelfinger has taken "action." He has employed Stephen Girsky, president of a private equity firm!!!!! and even more unbelievably a former adviser to Rick Wagoner, the Chairman of GM.  This is like the chicken asking the fox to help it fight the other fox. 

We at facts For Working People strongly opposed the recent concession contracts in auto and Delphi. We said that the bosses would be back for more in no time. This is exactly what has happened. What is the alternative?

We are opposed to any concessions. Call a conference of delegates from the shop floor of all of auto, the big three and all suppliers. Let this conference draw up a program to take the auto industry out of private hands, that is nationalize it under workers control and management. The owners have run it into the ground. They have forfeited any right to run it. Let there be compensation only on the basis of proven need and this proven need to be decided by committees of auto workers. The capitalists have been prepared to have the taxpayer bail out their banks when they have recently been in trouble. And they have kept their big bonuses and pay offs. No concession contracts for them. 

Such an nationalized and workers controlled and managed industry could then plan the auto sector, the working week could be shortened with no loss in pay to keep the jobs that exist and create more jobs. The industry could immediately stop producing the gas guzzlers and move to an auto industry based on green technology. It could also coordinate with the transport industry as a whole to help build fast rail technology and develop public transport based on green technology. 

This is the alternative. 

We stand for the formation of "Hands Of Our Jobs/wages/benefits/ Committees" in every workplace and in the unions to fight for this alternative. This is better than hiring the "former" assistant and buddy of GM boss Wagoner.  

Sean.

A couple more days

I was with a bunch of working guys in my local pub tonight and naturally, the elections were a hot topic of discussion. Three of the four of us were white and three of the four of us were voting for Obama, me being the only one who was not. This caused a lot of discussion and I think that my arguments for why I wasn't voting for Obama made sense although non of them agreed with me.

I asked one white guy to explain in a nutshell why he was voting for Obama. He told me that, and these are almost his exact words, "when I think of some kid in Pakistan or over there in the middle east or anywhere else in the world, I think that if Obama gets elected and they see this man's face on the television as President of the USA they will think that we are not the nation they thought. They will think that we are a nation that can put a man in to the highest office in the country and that this man can look more like them than me. This will give us some credibility again."

There is no doubt an incredible amount of hope if you like, or illuions which is how I would put it, in Barak Obama, and the next, probably Democratic, administration.

Samuel L Jackson, an actor that I enjoy very much said of Barak Obama that,

"Obama is the president to take us to the next place. He's not part of the establishment, number one. He doesn't have that sense of entitlement that others have had."

This is not true of course, Obama is very much part of the establishment, is very much part of the elite. As the Australian jornalist, Greg Sheridan pointed out:

" It is typical to see Obama's life described as an incredible odyssey that could only happen in America. There was nothing incredible about it. His mother was a peripatetic academic researcher. He was reared mostly by his grandparents. His grandmother was a bank vice-president and his grandfather a furniture store manager and then insurance salesman. They gave him a sturdily middle-class life. He went to Hawaii's best high school and America's efficient meritocracy later saw him attend Columbia and Harvard universities. This is all entirely admirable, but there is nothing the least incredible or odyssey like about it."

Sheridan is correct but fails to recognize that racism in America has a profound effect on people of color from all classes, the OJ saga proves that. Given America's racist past it would be a mistake to not see how incredible it is in the eyes of millions of people of color that someone that looks like them could be president. The same could be said were Hilary Clinton the likely victor on Tuesday. But Barak Obama is indeed a person of privilege.

But no one can deny the hisotric significance of the possibility that on Wedneday the US will wake up to a president with a black face. As one of my co-workers said, "I've voted for white men for years and got screwed for it; he can't be worse." It should be rememberd by all white folks over 55 that in our lifetime black men were castrated for attempting to vote in what was trumped as the world's greatest democracy; a president Obama is truly of great significance.

But Obama, or McCain should he win, will be forced to wage war on America's workers. The bill for the bail out will have to be paid. The folks that put up most of the money for this one billion dollar election want their money's worth and the capitalist class, fortunate enough be represented by both candidates, will expect an Obama or a McCain to carry out the policies they have paid for; a political party does not exist in a vacuum, it is not devoid of class content.

The problem is that the Democrats have tapped in to the tremendous desire of Americans for change. That's the problem with elections in a bourgeois democracy. The Bush administration has probably been the worst in the history of US politics and people are thirsting for change. Obama by some accounts has 200,000 volunteers on the ground in Florida alone. In the streets of Oakland California I have come across eighteen year old white kids and their black, university educated colleagues stumping for Obama. When I asked one young teenager if she supported Obama's plan to increase the presence of US troops in Afghanistan she looked at me with a blank expression, it was obvious she had no idea. All she knew was that he was going to make America a better place. He will end conflict, bring harmony and change; he offers a brighter future, and the youth more than any group need that.

The many thousands of people waking up Wednesday morning will not be pacified by a statement from the Presdent announcing the cancellation of all promises; they will have to produce something. Where will the 200,000 in Florida go? Where will the remaining hundreds of thousands drawn in to political activity by the Obama campaign go? This will be a major dilemma for Obama and the Democrats; it will come on top of the smashing of the idea that the market is god and can solve all problems. It will follow on the heels of home losses, the destruction of pensions and billions lost in peole's 401ks; it will follow on the heels of the imbecile Bush.

I think it is likely they will be forced to introduce some reforms; to make some concessions. Maybe it will be on health care or with regard to housing, perhaps stopping foreclosures. Even JP Morgan, the world's premier userers announced this weekend a moratorium on foreclosures; the capitalist class is worried this might get out of hand.

The bail out occured not because there is a shortage of money, it was an expenditure of taxpayer's money in the hope that the folks who own the world's wealth will let go of some of it, will play again. I liken the market to a huge cess pool full of solid waste of the type we are familiar with. The capitalists are saying that if we, the workers, jump in and clean out the turds they will come swim. The British state, representing the interests of the capitalist class as a whole is warning the financial capitalists that they had better cough up; if they do not, says the Financial Times, "public outrage will ensure that those drastic plans gather no dust." The plans they are talking about is a complete nationalization of the banks; they are warning their class brothers of the dangers if things continue to worsen.

Regardless of the level of reform, the next US administration will be forced to savage worker's living standards and social services; the bill has to be paid. Chrysler will no dounbt go under or merge with GM or Ford, in itself a sign of defeat. In the past month the US working class has seen the market humbled and government take over of two thirds of the housing industry the bail out of the banks and the takeover of the world's largest insurance company. We have seen concrete evidence that the money is there for education, housing and other social needs as two trillion or so has appeared from nowhere. We have learned that the wheels of government don't necessarily have to move slowly.

Not long after the elections many Americans, dejected once again with politics, will retreat in to inactivity and apathy, but there are many more that will be looking for an answer, somewhere to go after the shattering of their illusions in the market and the failure of bourgeois politics.

For socialists, and other anti-capitalists the objective situation will be more favorable than it has been for years. Our ideas and alternative will get an echo that is a long time coming. We must not lose grasp of this reality and should take advantage of it. Facts For Working People want to be part of this process and are open to working with others who feel the same way.

We won't object if you want to join with us in this process.

US elections. Millions vote early.

Up to 27 million people have voted early in the US elections. Millions of these have lined up for hours. There have been long lines all over the country. Seeing these lines reminds me of the election in South Africa where the ANC won.  The composition of the lines are mainly African American and youth. Along with the hundreds of thousands who have become politically active in the Obama campaign there has been a movement of millions into politics, albeit bourgeois politics.. 

This has been motivated by a hatred of the Bush regime, the financial collapse, the fall in living standards, the wars abroad, the excitement of possibly having the first African American president and and from this combination a powerful desire for change. 

It would not be right to say there has been a movement of the working class as a class in spite of the unions mostly supporting Obama. But there has been a movement of mainly working class and youth into political activity. This is significant and presents new opportunities for activists. The form these opportunities will take will depend on the result of the election. But one focus Facts For Working People have and which we do not see changing is building Hands Of Our Homes committees in the neighborhoods to fight foreclosures and evictions through direct action. There have been 42,000 foreclosures this year so far in Chicago alone. This is more than 100,000 people put out of their homes. 

Sean. 

a couple of things.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Nov 1-2, 4.3 million families are expected to lose their homes between 2008 and 2010. This is a crime. The criminals are US capitalist and their bankers and financiers. The activist movement has to intervene to stop these  4.3 million people loosing their homes. Facts For Working People advocate the following:

#Unite to build "Hands of our Homes" committees in every neighborhood. These would mobilize the neighborhood through direct action to prevent any foreclosures or evictions. 

#Campaign for the nationalization of all financial institutions under workers' control and management. The new nationalized financial institution thus created would re-negotiate all mortgages and see that nobody paid more than an affordable mortgage, a maximum being 15% of family income.  

#The capital in this newly nationalized financial institution also to be used to invest in building affordable publicly owned housing so that all, irrespective of income would have a decent home.

Contact us and let us work together. 

Today I see that The Economist, the serious capitalist journal out of England, in writing about the US presidential election, gives its perspectives for the US. This is a very pro US capitalism journal but in spite of that they are not optimistic. It is important to see what journals like these write. They are the voices of the capitalist class, we have to see what the enemy is saying. The perspectives below explain that the US capitalist class is losing its dominant position in the world and its powerful economic engine at home. It was a combination of these two factors that allowed US capitalism to give enough concessions to the US working class to keep them from moving to the left and building independent fighting organizations. The Economist explains this period is now coming to an end.

With this change in the objective situation, with this crisis of US capitalism, the US capitalist system itself will drive the US working class to its feet and to take an independent position. In this process the ideas of revolutionary socialism can get a mass base if the revolutionary socialists do their work right. Contact us and fight for revolutionary socialism. 

Here is what The Economist writes: The immediate focus which has dominated the campaign (the election) looks daunting enough: repairing America's economy and its international reputation. The United States is at the start of a painful recession. Some form of further fiscal stimulus is needed, though estimates of the budget deficit next year already spiral above $1 trillion. Some 50 million Americans have no health care cover. Abroad, even though troops are dying in two countries, the cack handed way in which Bush has prosecuted his war on terror has left America less feared by its enemies and less admired by its friends than it once was. Yet there are also longer term challenges, worth stressing if only because they have been so ignored in the campaign. Jump forward to 2017, when the next president will hope to relinquish office. A combination of demography and the rising costs of America's huge entitlement programs - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - will be starting to bankrupt the country. Abroad a greater task is already evident: welding the new emerging powers to the West. This not just a matter of handling the rise of China and India, drawing them into global efforts, such as curbs on climate change, it means reselling economic and political freedom to a world that too quickly associates American capitalism with Lehman Brothers and American justice with Guantanamo Bay. "  

This is no time to be downhearted. W now have the greatest of opportunities to explain that as Alan Greenspan recently said: "Capitalism doesn't work." In the times ahead the opportunities to explain the alternative is socialism will grow exponentially. 

Sean