The curse of nationalism; the Team Concept on a global scale

Around the time of the Invasion of Iraq I came under some pressure at work to blindly support the invasion although Iraq or its population had not threatened the US in any way. In fact the opposite has been the case, the US government and the British before them have a long history of interference and violence in Iraq and were major supporters of the dictator Saddam Hussein and his murderous policies.

The "United We Stand" mantra was everywhere and I used to explain to my co-workers that I was not in any way "united" with Bush or Clinton or Kissinger or any people like that. I am originally from Britain and made it clear that I was not United with the Queen either, or United with the British government's policy in Ireland. Many Irish American co-workers would not disagree with me on that position.

I also used to ask folks who they were united with when it came to strikes or a picket line. Were they united with the boss or the workers out on strike. naturally, they always said they were united with the workers. Then there is no need for us to be united with our own bosses, in the form of employers or the government. This has nothing to do with defending our homes and democratic rights from anyone who attacks them.

A few times, especially once in the Union when I tried to introduce a resolution against the war, I was called a Taliban and un-American by one guy, everyone was "proud" to be American. In response to this mood, which wasn't exceptionally bad, just in the early stages, I wrote a short piece about Labor history that I handed out at work. I am opposed to nationalism as being proud to be American, or British put me in the same camp as the Queen or Donald Trump and George Bush and I'm not proud of them. But being proud of being a worker is another issue. This was the piece I handed out to my co-workers in an effort to counter the nationalist frenzy and share some of our great history, a period of intense warfare between US workers and US bosses.

This Makes me Proud To Be An American Worker

Brothers and Sisters:

The following is an account of the struggle to win a union at GM, the largest corporation in the world that owned countries. It is one of the heroic moments in U.S. history, second in my opinion only to the revolution (both phases) and the civil rights movement. One month after the GM strike 193,000 workers engaged in 247 sit-downs; a half million more workers "sat down" before the end of 1937.

Western Union messengers, merchant seamen, milliners restaurant workers, all, followed suit and occupied or sat down in their places of work, as did workers in theater projection booths. Scabs tried to deliver coal to a school and the kids walked out. This is how the "unskilled" workers built unions in the thirties and why much of the social legislation we enjoy today was passed by the very politicians who used the troops, thugs and the Pinkerton's to crush workers halting production in order to defend and expand our rights and for a better life; our own Union, AFSCME, my own Union, was formed during this social upheaval.

Art Preis in Labor's Giant Step writes: "The very non-violence of the sit-downs infuriated the employers and their government agents. It was impossible for police or troops to provoke violence without clearly initiating it themselves. They had to attack and break in to plants where there was obviously no disorder, because strikers were on the inside, strikebreakers on the outside. Thus, only 25 sit-down strikes were broken by police of the more than 1,000 sit-downs reported by the press in 1936-37."

The GM victory might seem mild by today's standards but violence and intimidation of workers, including spying on them, was commonplace. The workers won the right to a union, they won the right to discuss unionism on company property during lunch and rest periods without being fired, and bargaining on wages, hours and line speed (a major issue with factory workers). GM, a corporation that told its workers they would never have a union, succumbed. We live off the fruits of this victory today and each day the employers erode more and more of it aided by a weak and pliant labor officialdom. It would be a dereliction of duty to allow the employers to take from us what these heroic brothers and sisters won at great cost to themselves.

The quote below is a bit long but is an account of one of the major occupations, the Chevrolet # 4 plant. The workers, knowing there were company snitches attending meetings, had arranged a decoy occupation of plant #9 to keep the police and troops busy while they occupied #4, a key plant in the victory. The account is from "The Searchlight" the official publication of UAW Chevrolet Local 569 in Flint, and written by Kermit Johnson one of the strike committee members, it's inspiring to me.

But first, Preis describes the march on plant #9, the decoy:

"Several thousand strikers marched to Chevrolet plant No. 9 from Union headquarters. They were led by Roy Reuther and Powers Hapgood. GM informers, as had been expected, had tipped off management about the march on # 9. Armed Flint detectives and company guards had been installed in the plant. The workers inside began yelling "sit-down!" and a forty minute battle was waged inside the plant. The Women's Emergency Brigade, organized and led by Genora Johnson (now Dollinger), fought heroically on the outside, smashing the windows to permit the tear gas to escape from the plant."

Johnson already inside plant #4, describes the occupation in the "Searchlight" :

"Plant #4 was huge and sprawling, a most difficult target, but extremely important to us because the corporation was running the plant, even though they had to stockpile motors, in anticipation of favorable court action." (to get the workers ousted from the plants RM).

"GM had already recovered from the first shock of being forced to surrender four of their largest body plants to sit-down strikers. They already had the legal machinery in motion that would, within a short time, expel by force if necessary, the strikers from the plants. If that happened, we knew the strike would be broken, and the fight for a union in General Motors would be lost."

"The next few minutes seemed like hours, as I ambled toward the door, my previous confidence was rapidly giving way to fear--fear that we'd lost our one big gamble. My thoughts were moving a mile a minute, and I was rehashing the same plan over and over, but this time, all its weaknesses stood out like red lights." ".......then the door burst inward and there was Ed! Great big Ed, his hairy chest bare to his belly, carrying a little American flag and leading the most ferocious band of twenty men I had ever seen. He looked so funny with that tiny flag in comparison with his men, who were armed to the teeth with lead hammers, pipes, and chunks of sheet metal three feet long. I felt like laughing and crying at the same time."

"When I asked where the hell the three hundred men were that he had guarunteed to bring with him, he seemed dumbfounded. I don't think he'd ever looked back from the time he'd dropped his tools, picked up the flag, and started his line plunge to plant 4. It didn't take a master mind to know that trying to strike a roaring plant of more than three thousand men and almost as many machines with just twenty men was almost impossible. We huddled together and made a quick decision to go back to plant 6 for reinforcments, and if that failed to get out of Chevrolet in a hurry. Luckily we encountered little opposition in Ed's plant and in a short time we were back in Plant 4 with hundreds of determined men."

"Although we didn't know it then, a real war was going on in and around plant 9, the decoy. Every city cop and plant police were clubbing the strikers and using tear gas to evacuate the plant. In retaliation the men and women from the hall were smashing windows and yelling encouragement from the outsdie."

"Back in plant #4, a relatively peaceful operation was proceeding according to plan; a little late, but definitely moving now. Up and down the long aisles we marched, asking, pleading, and finally threatening the men who wouldn't get in line. For the first hour the men in plant #4 were being bullied not only by us but by management as well. Almost as fast as we could turn the machines off, the bossses, following our wake, would turn them on, and threaten the men with being fired. As the lines of marchers grew longer, the plant grew quieter, and finally after two hours every machine was silent."

"The men were standing around in small groups, sullenly eyeing members of supervision. No one knew who belonged to the Union because no one had any visible identification. We had successfully taken the plant, but we knew that our gains had to be immediatly consolidated or we'd face counteraction. We had a few men go through the plant and give a general order that all who didn't belong to the Union should go upstairs to the dining room and sign up. While the vast majority were thus taken care of, a few hundred of us were left unhampered to round up the supervisors. It didn't take long to persuade them that leaving the plant under their own power was more dignified than being thrown out. Herding the foremen out of the plant, we sent them on their way with the same advice that most of us had been given year after year during layoffs. "We'll let you know when to come back." "

"The next day, when Judge Gadola issued his injunction setting a deadline for the following day, the strikers held meetings and decided to hold the plants at all costs. The Fisher #1 workers wired Governor Murphy "Unarmed as we are, the introduction of the militia, sheriffs, or police with murderous weapons will mean a blood bath of unarmed workers...We have decided to stay in the plant. We have no illusions about the sacrifices which this decision will entail. We fully expect that if a violent effort is made to oust us, many of us will be killed, and we take this means of making it known to our wives, to our children, to the people of the state of Michigan and the country that if this result follows from an attempt to reject us, you (Governor Murphy) are the one who must be held responsible for our deaths."

"Early the next day, all the roads in to Flint were jammed with cars loaded with Unionists from Detroit, Lansing, Pontiac and Toledo. More than a thousand veterans of the Toledo Auto-Lite and Chevrolet strikes were on hand. Walter Reuther, then head of the Detroit West Side UAW Local, brought in a contingent of 500. Rubber workers from Akron and coal miners from the Pittsburg area joined the forces rallying to back the Flint strikers. No Police were in sight. The workers directed traffic. Barred from Fisher #2 and Chevrolet # 4 by troops with machine guns and 37 millimeter howitzers, the workers from other areas formed a huge cordon round Fisher #1"

end quotes

The Flint sit-down strikes should be Labor's Fourth of July. The men that took over those plants were prepared to die and broke the back of one of the world's most ruthless employers. The women that helped them, fed them through factory windows, picketed outside plants etc, are also giants in American history. It is these brothers and sisters that make me proud to be an American worker.

Richard Mellor

Swine Flu

My friend and I were talking about the Swine Flu pandemic, epidemic whatever. The system always wants cheap labor and for the most part this has been done recently by undocumented immigrants mostly from Mexico. During that time the Border Patrol just couldn't get a hold of the border. It is because they really wanted people to come over to work for cheap but did raids to keep them intimidated ( don't want any more May 1st 2006's when millions of immigrants went into the streets). So now that the economy is down they step it up and actually don't want people to come into the country. I would not be surprised if this was Flu was used to promote racism and division among documented and undocumented workers and unemployed.

Another thing, US companies go into countries like Mexico and treat it like a garbage can. They pollute the waters, rivers and the air and treat the animals in such inhumane conditions that they develop diseases. Its like the swine's coming home to roast, only the working class is effected and not the wealthy.

This says something else about the economy. There is no shortage of people wanting to work but the economy is in the toilet, why. Because there are " too many" people willing to work and not enough people willing to buy it. Think of the potential of working people who are now unemployed. If we had a different system people could be working on building up environmental projects, hospitals, schools, growing food and doing other things to save humanity. Instead we have a system where people are dying from Swine Flu because they are poor.

Working Class Environmentalism

This piece was written in January 2007 in a Facts for Working People Issue. I thought it was relevant to post seeing as how companies that drop bombs and make poison are now "Going Green". Say anything to trick the workers! Some workers are discouraged from environmental politics because some of the movement ( publicized by teh media) seems anti-working class. still we workers have a stake in this planet and hopefully this Environmental Issue addresses it.


Our Alternative for the Environment
End Capitalism’s poverty and earth-destroying policies
End poverty

A democratic socialist world could:

-Immediately end unemployment
-Immediately cut work week to 30 hours
-End world Hunger within 3 months
-Establish healthcare for all people of
the world within 6 months
-Provide housing for all within 1 year

Everybody in the world could have access to clean water, food, housing, health care and education for $80 billion per year, according to the UN. The world’s seven richest people have $1.54 trillion between them. We believe in ending the private ownership of the world’s biggest corporations and developing systems of energy and goods production, housing, and transportation to end worldwide poverty and global warming. Agriculture and Food Production

-Promote local, organic food production to decrease
wasteful cross-continent and cross-hemisphere shipping.
-End the environmentally damaging practices of factory farms, mass cattle production, genetically modified foods, and use of pesticides and hormones in food production.
-Increase wages and workforce on farms to offset the increased labor needed to produce healthy, organically grown food.
-Increase focus on organic community gardens to provide fresh, healthy, and local produce.

Pollution
-Making many of the discussed changes would significantly decrease overall ongoing pollution.
-Put resources into environmental cleanup.
-Focus on eliminating the need for landfills by using recyclable materials and implementing mass scale composting and recycling programs.
-Establish community-based libraries and circulation centers for things such as furniture, household items, tools, clothes and toys.

Transport
-Create an efficient mass transit infrastructure of buses, trains, subways,and boats that provides
people with a feasible alternative to driving.
-Give the public free access to this system, making private cars less
desirable.

Water
-Emphasis on clean and renewable water sources.
-Develop infrastructure to provide a safe water supply where needed.
-Prohibit new development in areas without the water to support it.
-Eliminate unnecessary water uses and focus on recycling water as much as possible.
-Turn residential lawns into vegetable gardens and use household runoff water for watering
-Provide housing with the ability to catch and use rainwater.

Housing
-Base new housing development on society’s needs and not on market speculation.
-Reshape existing communities for more collective living by adding shared public space including community kitchens and laundries.
-Provide good affordable housing for all.
-Increase housing density in areas near where people work,
-Provide access to well planned outdoor community space and community gardens.
-Develop a system of stores to distribute goods and services within communities and reclaim land currently used for shopping malls and parking lots for open space and
other community resources.

Energy
-Take complete public control of the energy industry to develop cleaner power resources and distribute energy to the public without profits.
-Investigate and further develop solar, wind, tidal and renewable alternative energy sources
-End the corporate-driven disposable culture that makes it more expensiveto fix many things than to buy new ones.
-Focus on decreasing overall energy

Socialism
A democratic socialist plan of production and conservation under the control of working people would immediately unleash the creative talents, energy and skills necessary for ecological repair and an end to poverty.

Chrysler, Industry, Freedom and Socialism

The horrific system in the former Soviet Union did tremendous damage to the idea of socialism. Most workers my age were totally put off by it. After all, I want to be free to say what I want. But this was not socialism, and it certainly wasn’t communism.


Factory Occupation, Chicago

But to be free means different things to different people. Freedom for a capitalist means the right to exploit Labor. As an owner of capital, a capitalist finds a very unique commodity in the marketplace, this commodity is human Labor power, or a human being’s ability to work, our life activity. They purchase this and use it over a period of time. It is the use of our life activity over a period of time that is the goose that lays the golden egg as it is the source of the capitalist’s profit and of all wealth, including the reserve capital that they have accumulated from the use of Labor power in the past and out of which they pay wages. The great deal for them is that they return less to the worker in the form of wages than the value we produce; it is an unfair exchange that is maintained through coercion and violence.

In order for this relationship to exist, there had to emerge in society a group of people with significant money wealth on the one hand, and on the other a group of people who were “free” meaning they were free from being tied to the land as serfs were. Free from the possession of any means of sustaining themselves independently like instruments of Labor or little plots of land on which they could produce their food and much of their wares. This took place with much violence as a family that could produce its own food and clothes, its own means of subsistence, could not be enticed to work for wages for someone else. In Britain, peasants were violently driven off the land so that they were free to sell the only possession they had left, their Labor power, the same methods were applied throughout the world as the capitalist system roamed the globe in search of raw materials and more Labor power.

But we don’t own the products of this life activity. In fact, the object of our activity as a worker is not the product we make but the wages we receive that allow us to purchase the commodities we need to live; housing, food, education, transportation and the little pleasure we require. They called this wage slavery, as we are not owned in total like a chattel slave, or in part like a serf or peasant. We are free in that sense, but we cannot escape working for the class of capitalists who control society. We can leave one, we can go to another, but sell our Labor power we must; we must be dependent on them for the set up to work, for profit to be had. The only other alternative within this set up is to become one of them, something that is impossible for us all to do and that is actually something working class people do not find easy to do either. As workers we have a strong sense of collective identity, we may not all call it this but it is class solidarity. To be a successful capitalist you have to be individualistic, selfish and above all ruthless. I am not talking about the owner of the corner store here but the owners of industry.

What makes me think about this today, as opposed to every minute of every other day, is the situation in the auto industry. I read this morning that the moneylenders that own Chrysler are in negotiations with the government. Because there are too many car factories in the world that produce too many cars (they call this overcapacity and all industries are burdened with it) not enough profit can be made making them so capitalists want to shift the capital around. The moneylenders that own Chrysler also own or owned food services, like Albertsons, car rental companies like National and Alamo, apparel companies like Mervyn’s and arms makers like Remington. The founder of Cerberus, Steven Feinberg was said to have earned $50 million in 2004 and the company includes among its head honcho’s the imbecile Dan Quayle, paid millions no doubt for the connections he has.

So moneylenders are in negotiations with the government concerning how much money they will or will not lose and how much they’ll receive from the taxpayer to clean up the mess in auto. They are, in other words, negotiating the future of the company. For them they are in discussions about money. They are not in negotiations about their jobs. They are not in negotiations about their homes and whether they will keep them, Dan Quayle and Steven Feinberg will not lose their homes and be forced to leave their communities---their communities will not be destroyed by these negotiations, in fact, their communities will benefit from them.

The homes, jobs, and communities of the workers that actually build the cars at Chrysler are being discussed between the moneylenders and their political representatives. Those chosen by the Obama administration to deal with the crisis in auto, are themselves investment bankers or other capitalists; the very people responsible for the crisis that exists in industry and society as a whole.

Three generations of working class families are responsible for the auto industry, they built it; they created its wealth, but they don’t own it and they have no say in how it should be run, what it should produce and how. They are barred from the talks. Moneylenders are determining their futures and indeed the future of workers throughout the US and the world. The “negotiations are private” reports the Associated Press.

Is this freedom? It is for the owner of capital.

If we accept that the system of production in which we live, capitalism, is the only way society can be organized, then we cannot do much about this. If we accept that a few private individuals the Dan Quayle’s, Donald Trumps and Steven Feinberg’s to name a few, have an inalienable right to own the productive forces and all the main industry of society then we should congratulate them and head for the nearest Burger King and fill out a job application. If we accept this freedom of theirs then we can’t moan about them moving their capital, factory or workshop to Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso where they can buy human Labor power for $1.50 an hour.

The likes of UAW president Ron Gettelfinger and all the top Labor leaders accept that they have this right. They are realistic you see. Hal Stack, a director of Labor studies at Wayne State University agrees with me. Union leaders like Gettelfinger “know that it’s better to live and fight another day than to go down nobly with a sinking ship” he tells the media. (1) The Union officials are “realists who understand the problems facing the industry” says the Financial Times.

But the ship is sinking. The Labor leaders realism leads them to collaboration in a mass drowning. They do not fight at all. Neither do they understand the problems facing the industry or any industry. The problem is that it is privately owned. Production in society is based on profit and that profit comes from the unpaid Labor of the working class as we are paid less in wages than we create in value. This is the cause of overcapacity, the massive build up of debt and the present crisis.

Capitalism was a historical step forward. It socialized production. The next step will be to socialize ownership, but the present owners will resist this with all means at their disposal, applying divide and rule through racism and a dose of violence if they need to. But how society’s Labor and capital is utilized should be a collective decision. What we produce, how we produce it and when is our collective responsibility. We must overcome the stop in our minds that leads us to believe we cannot accomplish this and that workers cannot make such decisions, that workers cannot run or rule society. There are great lessons to be learned from the Russian revolution to the Seattle general strike that teach us how an economic system like this would function. This is a step toward genuine freedom.

If the past two years have taught us anything is that the market is not what they said it was. They have shown that they have forfeited their right to run not only Chrysler or GM but also society in general. Workers can not only do a better job, we can guarantee everyone has one, even Dan Quayle.

We can guarantee them a job, which is something they can’t guarantee us.


(1) High Wages Put Detroit Under Pressure Financial Times12-15-2008

A Mother's Death

Last week my youngest brother sat bedside holding my mothers hand as she died. On Monday we buried my mother’s body. My mother was not a union steward or political activist, but she was a worker and a fighter.
When my brothers and I were youngsters my mother worked 3 part-time jobs. She cleaned a local pub, then served meals at our school and on the way home from school we would watch through the window as she waitressed at a local café. In our early childhood money was always short. We rarely missed a meal, but ate a lot of bread and jam. More often we experienced winter nights going to bed early to stay warm.
This was in a way my mother’s choice. It was this way or the brutality that marriage to my dad had been. I am grateful my mother freed us from that. We eventually emerged from that emotional shell shock.
When I was nine, we three brothers were then taken from my mum. The state deemed my mother “unfit” essentially because she had no man. For two years we paid the price of a backwards government family policy. I now know that losing your children is far worse than losing a parent.
Our economically rocky life eventually stabilized when mum got a unionized factory job at EMI. Then my brother hit 15 and left school apprenticing at a local garage, bringing in a second wage to the family. Life evened out a bit.
At the funeral on Monday I included in my tribute a word about how mothers in this world are expected to be saints. Yet, they are given neither the resources nor the respect to live up to this. Our world is hostile to women, there’s no other way to say it. Yet mothers survive and if anyone sees good in me or my brothers, they see my mother in us.
My mother was something before a mother. According to those that knew her then, she rode a motorbike all over West Wales without a helmet, apparently she was a troublemaker at school which she left at 14 and her last surviving sibling called her the best sister you could ever have.
On the day before the funeral, my younger brother and I headed up the hills behind my father’s old house. Up the winding lane to the rocks where we three each took a stone on the day we scattered my fathers ashes nine years ago. The Welsh hills right now are full of tiny white noisy lambs each coupled with their scruffy grey mothers. As urban as we are, we recognized one lamb was literally a day or two-old, judging by its spindly body and awkward gait. On that walk we saw perhaps six lambs lying listless, with mother nearby. This seemed worse than the one lamb aimlessly circling its dead mother.
My younger brother cared for my mother in recent years. Despite having his own family and children. He bathed mum, shopped for her and comforted her. He changed her in the middle of the night. In her last months she stayed at a National Health Service care home. On the way home from work every night he would pop in to see mum. He is a great son, but only the son that my mother produced.
It must have been hard for my mother to leave us and all those that loved her. Her life improved the world. She parented without judgment or criticism. She taught us not to be talked down to and she taught us solidarity and its sister, love.
I will repay the sacrifice my mother made for us by doing all I can to tear down this world that can create a billion different Ring Tones, but cannot put to work the 13.5 million unemployed.

With Our Opponent On The Ropes, It’s Time To Go On the Offensive

And they are on the ropes---just ask them

“A reckoning looms if ordinary people come to believe that US capitalism is a rigged system run by insiders for their own benefit.” So writes Matt Miller in today’s Financial Times.* He is attributing this understanding to “patriotic chief executives” who he sees as different from the bad executives that have acted with abandon and taken $100 million dollar bonuses as they drove their companies in to the ground.

Miller is a strategist of capital, one of their theoreticians. He is a management consultant and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Like many of them in the midst of the worst crisis since the great depression, he is concerned about the future of the system. Progress for Miller, is a stable environment for the accumulation of capital, stable in the sense that the exploitation of human beings can take place with the least resistance. There is a need to curb some of the excesses that might threaten this stability.

Miller is no egalitarian. What scares him is the potential power of the working class, not just in the United States, but also throughout the world. He appeals to the “patriotic” capitalists to curb the excesses of the greedy ones; those who have given themselves exorbitant bonuses and executive pay. To those capitalists who are concerned about the public flaunting of wealth and unrestrained plunder but have said nothing he warns them that this is not the best form of class solidarity. They think it is not “their fight”. Their fear, although he doesn’t admit it, is that curbing profit taking in any area could spread; a daunting prospect. But the risk is worth it. “I have news for this silent majority” he writes, “If you care about the future of American business, the brewing revolt makes it your fight now.” The “brewing revolt”. We should take note; Miller is not a sensationalist, but a sober representative of the capitalist class.

Along with curbs on pay-----an issue of note primarily because it is information more easily accessible to the public as opposed to profit rates and all the other forms of plunder hidden between the pages of business ledgers------Miller wants a more progressive capitalism, a better “social contract”. He stresses the need to make American workers feel “more secure in an era of accelerating change”. The new capitalist visionaries who can pull the system out of the quicksand must deal with health care, a basic human need. He wants the outdated system where business is a major provider of health coverage changed and the burden shifted to the taxpayer; it has become too expensive for business and is a tinderbox waiting to explode on to the streets if something isn’t done about it: “14, 000 people a day have lost their health coverage during this recession” he adds. The state of health care in the US is abysmal. In 1993 health care spending was $912 billion and there were 37 million uninsured. In 2008 health care spending was $2.5 trillion with 47 million uninsured, a failure by any measure. See Facts For Working People at: http://www.clnews.org/forums/showthread.php?p=16101#post16101

This crisis along with job losses and home evictions is a major factor in the family annihilations that occur almost daily in the US. People who have worked all their lives, done everything right, and have found themselves without access to medical care or a roof over their heads simply snap. With no significant social movement to which people can turn, the future offers only darkness and with the dominant ideology that we are in control of our own destiny and solely responsible for our condition, the guilt and feeling of personal failure is overwhelming.

Miller is basically calling on a section of the capitalist class to show a way forward as many theoreticians of capital have done in response to the crisis of their system; which amounts to the failure of the US model and discrediting of its heroes like Alan Greenspan. He recognizes the freedom of capital to go where it pleases throughout the globe and that this means a loss of manufacturing jobs in the west but he hopes the service sector can provide the benchmark for entry in to what he calls the “middle class” as auto did in the past.

This mobility is crucial: “How can the US turn this kind of work into jobs that can sustain a family?” he asks his readers. He adds, “Failure to acknowledge the centrality of this question will only deepen the perception that there is a corrosive gap between the interests of US based corporations and those of Americans.” There has always been a corrosive gap between the interests of workers and capitalists, their goal is to soften this experience, to convince people that that gap can be bridged, that it is not a chasm---this is, after all, the land of opportunity.

One commentator stated that if you want the American Dream, go to Norway. The end of the post second world war upswing has seen a steady decline in living standards and opportunity for American workers. There have been within organized Labor attempts to drive back the offensive, particularly during the eighties, and while the leadership of these efforts bear some responsibility for their failures, the main reason for these defeats is that every strike, every struggle was faced with a powerful opponent, a combination of the employers and the heads of organized Labor.

The capitalist class, their political representatives in the Republican and Democratic parties and the trade Union officialdom, are equally terrified of the revolutionary potential of the working class. There is a daily ideological war being waged to convince workers that the system is not at fault, it is just a few rotten apples. Union leaders, local officials, academics and politicians are all soldiers in this ideological war, a war to contain class hatred and anger at the system and those that benefit from it. It is a war waged to prevent us from seeing our existence as it really is.

But in the last analysis, consciousness has a material base. They will not contain this anger forever. This is a lesson we should learn from our enemies, bourgeois strategists like Matt Miller. They read history. They remember the factory occupations of the 30’s, the civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s and the rich militant history of the American working class that has been driven underground. They know better than the liberals who see the American working class as this reactionary mass incapable of acting in our own interest and that needs to be led----by them. The capitalist class is concerned, afraid of the potential power of the working class, as is the Union hierarchy, that, like rotten apples on a tree would fall with the first strong gale.

Miller warns his colleagues, the captains of industry, “Chief executives face a choice. They can help bolster workers’ security, or they can hire more security guards and hunker down.” These words alone confirm the real state of things, the ever-present class divide, and reveal why the patriotic nonsense about national unity and all being in this together is a con game. Capitalism will emerge from this crisis in the absence of an alternative. It will almost certainly pass through a period of some restraint and regulation. But the system itself drives it to exploit Labor power in its rapacious thirst for profit and capitalism will enter deeper crisis ahead.

As a representative of capital Miller is telling us that we are strong, stronger than we think. That we can bring down this rotten system, this so-called free market. Even when anger takes the form of indiscriminate rioting as it often does in its early stages, political currents inevitably develop as people begin to question the system itself and look for alternatives. Miller appeals to his rescuers to step forward, appeals to the new leaders to take the helm. We are in a similar position, but our goals are different.

If we have doubts about the fragile nature of the system in the present crisis we should heed Miller’s parting words: “With business nearing the brink, who will answer the call?”

* Business Needs To Speak Out Against Greed FT 4-21-09

Threat of terrorism will be used against Union organization, to attack workers in general and to eliminate civil liberties

Click on image to left for larger view

This odious piece of literature was distributed at a Chrysler plant in Kokomo Indiana. It shows the close links between the military and industry. It wants workers to snitch on each other under the guise of fighting terrorism.

What terrorist activity workers should look for among other things are:

Someone monitoring or recording activities ( A militant rank and file Union steward perhaps)
People or organizations attempting to gain information about operations, capabilities or people.
(this could be any organizing activity as in order to organize we have to gain information)

This stuff is written vaguely in order that laws enacted to fight terrorism are used against trade unions and workers in general. Strikes, occupations, organizing on the job, this is all terrorist activity to the employers as it disrupts the economic life of the nation.

Chris Ryan, the activist that sent Facts For Working People this memo has a reputation for fighting for working people and has been active at his plant in Kokomo and has been interviewed on the radio. In response to the terrorism directed against workers by the auto bosses, he has talked of the need for us to return to the methods that built the Unions in the first place, direct action, mass pickets etc. There is no doubt that while this memo and the military---industry link called eagle eyes is part of a wider attempt to eliminate our rights using terrorism as an excuse, it is not an accident that it appears in this plant. Its intent is to intimidate, and deter activists like Chris from speaking out and organizing.

Capitalism is wasteful and inefficient

The capitalist class, through their control of the means of communication, in short, in command of the production of ideas in society, naturally holds up the market, the capitalist system, as the most efficient and productive means of organizing productive life, which is life itself.

I remember reading some time ago how an arms manufacturer in order to improve the efficiency of a new bomber that was being developed, had about 500 engineers working on it. "What an incredible waste of human talent and expertise" I thought to myself.

I am reminded about this in a small way reading the latest business week. It reports that IBM is creating a new unit "that will advise corporations on how to better analyze data and make smarter decisions." The new unit has 4000, consultants dedicated to it. IBM's rival, Hewlitt Packard, has a similar unit of 3000 experts. Oracle and others are following suite as the competition in tech heats up.

The purpose of this capital expenditure is to figure out how best to exploit Labor power--how to increase profit at the expense of their rivals. This is the basics behind this activity, the incredible waste of human capital is another aspect of it. It is not that human capital shouldn't be used to develop technology or other means for increasing the prodcutivity of Labor or to improve the human and environmental condition, it is the quest for surplus value that makes this activity so destructive and wasteful.

Meanwhile, the UN reports that it needs $6 billion to save the 400 million or so people around the world who have been driven in to starvation due primarily to food price increases due to the present strike of capital. Farmers in the former colonial world are being deprived of loans that they need to buy seed.

The richest 200 people inthe world have a combined wealth of more than $1 trillion, equal to the combined annual income of the porrest 47% of the earth's population, about 2.5 billion people. There is no need for anyone to be hungry, except by the laws of the free market.

A couple of important freedoms of the market are that a human being is free to posses nothing but his or her Labor power, his or her ability to work. Capital must be free to exploit Labor across borders and unencumbered by Unions and issues sucha safety. And the another is that you have the freedom to starve to death.

Democrats and Republicans ganging up on workers in California state legislture

After shifting a $42 billion deficit on to the backs of the workers and middle class of California, the politicians of both capitalist parties are gearing up for more attacks as the deficit projected for next fiscal year (ending in July 2010) is already $8 billion and will surely grow.

Amid all the hype about hope and the Pollyanna, cult of personality atmosphere that dominates American political life, the reality is that more attacks are on the way. Politicians whose task it is to carry out the cuts at the local level, call meetings of those whose votes they sought under false pretenses to map out a plan to institute the cuts. Workers gather together in little groups at these community forums and are presented with one agenda item only: where should the cuts occur?

The heads of organized Labor do the same, showing their democratic credentials by calling their members forth to discuss how they cut their own throats. The big business politicians and their allies atop organized Labor are champions of democracy and community involvement when the issue on the table is layoffs or wage cuts, layoffs or reduced social services, less jobs or fewer classrooms with less subjects and increased workloads for those teaching them. "let them make the decision" they tell each other in order to lay the blame after as the pain hits.

Eventually people get worn down as seeing no united way forward division, internal squabbling over who should be cut first or the most and other far more dangerous social chasm's open up. The relatively comfortable and well connected liberal middle classes on the local city council, school board or well off Union officials who set the whole thing up can then point to the ignorance of American workers or our inherent failures and selfishness.

"Can't they see" they echo in chorus, "there's just no money to spare. We all have to make sacrifices for the nation.

As they cry crocodile tears while carrying out the dictates developed in the board rooms of the few hundred corporations that control society we watch as some $3 trillion is handed over to the perpetrators of this fraud, the the capitalists, yes that's what they call themselves in their papers, to the capitalists who caused the problem in the first place. They are about to hand over trillions more through the "toxic asset" relief program that Treasury Secretary Geitner (the man who forgot to pay his taxes) has announced.

With our organizations suffocating under the stifling weight of the Union bureaucracy and having no mass political party of our own, the forces against us are formidable--but not insurmountable. We don't have to accept their reality, their analysis of the problems or their solution to it.

One thing that is blatantly obvious is that the Democratic Party, an insidious and bitter enemy of working class people cannot show a way forward. Noreen Evans, the California state assembly's budget chairwoman, whines that "we have cut way past the bone at this point" referring to the past budget deal. This member of a political party that the heads of organized Labor supported and handed over some $400 million of its members' hard earned dues money to had more to say about the future, "California residents are going to feel a reduction in services--there's just no way around that."

There you have it.

We don't have to accept it though.

Lawrence Summers----paragon of virtue

Lawrence Summers, the Director of the National Economic Council and trusted advisor and friend to President Obama is now a great friend of the working class. It's great that workign folk like us have this man on our side. He tells Business week that President Obama has "insisted" that the rules regarding the bailout monies are "administered without fear or favor and with tremendous transparency so the Ame4rcian people can see where every dollar goes and any kind of favoritism is avoided." Summers was asked this question because so many public officials with access to the levers of power, come from Goldman Sachs, the moneylending firm that received $10 billion in taxpayer money.

Surely we are lucky in the United States to have such honest freedom loving characters in control of our wealth and its distribution. Every American I meet on the streets each and every day knows exactly where the bailout money is going and what it is being used for----let freedom ring.

To top it off, Lawrence, or Larry to his friends, has promised that the $5.2 million hedge fund D.E. Shaw paid him and the $2.7 million in speaking fees he received from Goldman and Citigroup in no way influences his decisions. Not only that, the Office of Government Ethics agrees with him.

Larry's colleague at Harvard, Cornell West, referred to him as "an unprincipled power player" , but heck, should a professor at Harvard be making rap albums? Obama's support of Larry proves he's no racist. And Larry's view that women just don't have what it takes to be scientists, or have the drive to be successful in high powered jobs? Well, he didn't mean it. Did he? Hilary Clinton would't want to be in an administration with someone like that would she?

"Higher Consideration" and Labor's Catch-22

"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." --Abraham Lincoln

On a business' balance sheet--whether it be a recently bailed out bank or a coffee shop--labor is a liability. We have to get paid. As many have experienced, in bust-times, companies try to reduce their liabilities and we end up on the unemployment line. Executives/bosses give labor "high consideration," but only as one might give high consideration to treating their cancer.

We are on the unemployment line. Meanwhile, "experts" say that increased spending will get us out of the economic crisis. We can get out of this mess if we buy a TV with our benefit check! In this way, we are given "high consideration" as a comedian might consider the best punchline for his new routine.

Back to the balance sheet. In the tug-of-war to keep balance between assets and liabilities, labor will lose. We are among the biggest liabilities, and we are seen as flexible--if not altogether expendable. Instead of joining the unemployment line we might agree to a few unpaid days off--especially in a time like this. That is "high consideration" in the way one might consider paying the kidnapper's demanded ransom.

It can seem as if we have no good options. In this recession we either have a job we are afraid of losing or we have lost the job already and are anxious about being able to find a new one while also stressing about how to afford the basics of life. It is a catch-22.

How are we to be considered differently? Remember this: "Capital is only the fruit of labor, could never have existed if labor had not first existed." Labor makes the things we are asked to spend our money on (the sales of which make a few people richer while people who made them enjoy an unpaid day off or wait in line). If capital is the fruit of labor and if capital would not exist with out us, don't we deserve respectful, "high consideration" as a powerful group?

Part of being able to meet goals and achieve is the ability to take responsibility for actions. A person must believe that they have some control over what happens to them. It is called "internal locus of control." It is not that "my mom/teacher/boss made me do it" or that "it was bad luck that I failed." A choice was made and actions taken.

If labor is responsible for capital, it is partly responsible for capitalism. We enable the system in order to survive. We struggle to gain that internal locus of control as a group--that power to break out of the catch-22 we are getting pushed into. In our struggles against the system and with ourselves as we try to gain a collective consciousness, a good mantra is this: "Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Violence Against Women One More Time,

Once more briefly on the topic of the oppression and violence against women.
I remember reading The Donegal Woman for the first time.I started reading it in California, where I was fortunate enough to be able to talk a lot with the author Sean . What startled me when I was was my own reaction to the brutality against the wee young bride , at the hands of hands of her husband , a crude and raw exploited and oppressed man himself. My own reaction was anger at the author, and I had to really look at that.
So well did this book convey the brutality, that i was angry that a man had written it. The brutality against this young woman was conveyed so well that I felt as if I had been exposed and all the brutality against all women had been exposed. It was as if my own undeserved shame, carried around for years and really never to be discarded was exposed and I was angry at the author for doing that. i was furious for a while that a man could have such insight into this violence.
I mention this only because without exhausting and crippling ourselves with emotion and pain about this unique and pervasive form of violence against women , it is good that we are raising these issues in various ways on this blog.
I would recommend this book to any blogger that has not read it.

Women and Terror at Home and Abroad-The "everydayness" of Misogyny

It is important to make the links between the abuse of women in other countries and what is happening everyday in our own countries, streets and homes .
I am also angered when the media headlines the terror against women in Afghanistan for instance, as if women are not terrorized every moment in their homes and on the streets in Canada and the US, in ways so subtle often we do not even see it unless we are trained to have a critical eye, ears and minds.
We need to make the links and uncover the everdayness of it, talk about and fight against it.
However I do want the media to report abuses and terrorizing of women elsewhere , in order to make the links.
So often I have heard it said -oh we have enough problems to focus on at home, we should not worry about other places.
As Internationlaists we need to make the links globally on these issues just as we do on every issue.
So in that light I would love , just love to hear someone comment and discuss the declaration of sharia law in SWAT in an attempt to appease the Taliban forces and to stop "deeper hostilities."
These "laws" have undoubtedly been in effect "de facto" for years , but it is one qualitative step backwards to have them legitimized in law.

Community and Solidarity

We live on a block in Oakland, California. We know everyone on the block by name. Everyone looks out for everyone and we have regular block parties and occasional block meetings.
Tonight my neighbor, Earl, came around to collect money for another neighbor, Michele, who recently died of cancer. Michele was in her 40s. Last Monday the doctor told Michele she had two weeks to live, she was dead within two days. She was an upbeat, thoughtful person and lived in a home with four generations, of women and children. Her grandmother, Muddy, is still driving a car.
Earl and I went door to door and collected a total of around $150. Earl is a retired firefighter, he was one of San Francisco's first black firemen. He is an avid barbequer. He is going to cook a big traditional soulfood dinner and we will sneak into the house (Earl has a key) on Thursday and set the food up for when everyone returns from the funeral.
No-one hesitated to give us money when we went door to door. Those that had, gave. Those that didn't have, gave.
Solidarity like this goes on across the country, across the globe, day in day out. It is with this power, harnassed, that we will replace the selfish, greedy, individualistic system that we live under.

Observe and Report, Where Date Rape=Edgy Comedy

I don't see a lot of movies, and I particularly don't see too many comedies unless it's well established that they're not totally juvenile. Therefore, I've missed most of the recent breed of movies that tend to have pathetic men finding ways to get hot women into bed. Actually, I had the misfortune of seeing Superbad, sort of by accident, and I was at a friend's house, and I just tried not to think too much about the incredibly narrow portrayal of women in the film. Although I did have to say something about how annoying I found the whole menstrual blood scene, where a scrawny teenaged boy dirty dances with hot a 20-something menstruating women and somehow manages to get blood smeared on his pants. First of all, I don't see this happening in real life; I guess it's possible, but it seems pretty unlikely. Secondly, c'mon, it's a little bloodstain on the guy's pants. The guy has a terror reaction, like he's just seen someone get killed or something.

Anyway, I started tuning into to all the blogging activity around Observe and Report, the new Seth Rogen film. Rogen plays a pathetic and inept mall security guard who is in love with Brandi, a cosmetics counter clerk played by Anna Farris. Brandi is portrayed as a really awful, shallow, mean, and stupid woman who takes too many drugs and drinks heavily. The big money scene in the movie is when Rogen's character date rapes Farris' character while she is passed out drunk, with vomit on the pillow next to her. Mid-rape, Rogen begins to look a little concerned, when she suddenly comes to just long enough to say, "why are you stopping, mother f-er."

The best discussions of this scene and movie are here and here. But just type "observe and report date rape" into a search engine and you'll find plenty of debate. It's grotesque to watch reviewer after reviewer talk about this movie being "gutsy" and "a step forward for comedy" (Mick LaSalle in the SF Chronicle) while making no mention of rape played for comedy. Maybe Mick himself is a little unclear on whether a passed-out drunk woman can consent to sex. Michael Phillips reviewing in the Chicago Tribune is apparently wholly unclear on the rape concept: "The best, riskiest bit in "Observe and Report" involves Faris, with wee vomitous spillage drying on the pillow by her slack jaw, underneath Rogen, who cannot believe the dolt of his fondest desires is trashed enough to give him a toss." Manohla Dargis writing here in the New York Times is a definite exception; her review begins: "If you thought Abu Ghraib was a laugh riot then you might love “Observe and Report”"

Most of what you need to know about this movie is summed up by the two lead actors talking about it. I'm quoting Karen Valby's article from Entertainment Weekly...

In the theater, where I first watched the movie, the tense audience gave a collective sigh of relief, followed by a wheeze of nervous laughter, when Faris’ character rouses and barks at him to keep at it already. "I think people are laughing because I'm not being full on date-raped," says Faris. "I'm not sure it makes things much better," she says, with an earnest grimace, "but we don't need to go down that road."

The sex scene was always in the script, but because it is a big studio movie, Faris says she "really thought they would weed stuff out. And they did some, but not a whole lot. And I'm proud of that, actually. But at the time when we were shooting that scene, it was like, 'Really? We're going to do this? Vomit down the side of my face? Really?'" Rogen says nobody at the studio ever asked them to alter or excise the scene. "There were some arguments with the studio," he says. "That wasn't one of them. Shockingly." (Warner Brothers chose not to comment on the matter.)

There you have it. Some cynical, woman-hating creep (Jody Hill, in this case,) writes a piece of garbage movie with a date rape-for-laughs, and Corporate America says, sure thing. We'll make your funny little rape movie and we'll pay millions of dollars to advertise and distribute it. We have no problem with producing something that increases the confusion in society about what really constitutes rape or promotes the idea that women are objects whose purpose is to be acted on by men. We're happy to make a movie that portrays a working-class woman as so worthless that she deserves to get raped. We like promoting movies where manhood=power=sexual control of women, and where a man who doesn't have those things is laughable. These are the kinds of ideas that increase divisions in society, that mightily contribute to the horrific mass shootings in which 53 people lost their lives last month, that influence those who commit sexual assault. Anyone who wants to should be able to make a movie, but someone decides which movies will be shown in the most theaters, and that someone should not be Corporate America.

53% of Americans favor capitalism

A recent poll by Rasmussen Reports found that only 53% of Americans are in favor of capitalism. 20% say socialism is better, and 27% aren't sure which is better. Younger Americans under 30 have even more dramatic views on the subject: 37% in favor of capitalism, 33% for socialism, and 30% undecided. With those numbers, you'd think we could all go out and have a revolution tomorrow...but first the working class needs to rebuild its own organizations or create new ones, organizations with leaders who understand the potential of the working class to run society. Too bad these stats won't be showing up on the nightly news. Read the report here.

US workforce: 20% unemployment a more accurate figure

The official unemployment rate inched up to 8.5% it was reported last week. But that’s only half of it, literally. There are millions of people working sporadically or in half time employment. The ranks of this group has grown by some 80%, in the last year to almost 9 million people and 750,000 workers lost their jobs in March. The real unemployment is closer to 20% of the workforce.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a real unemployment rate called the U6, sounds a bit like a German submarine and is just as explosive which is why it is not popular news. Plus, millions more homeowners are expected to lose their jobs in coming months which will add to the unemployment statistics along with the 689,000 people who filed for unemployment in the first week or so of April. This will also intensify the foreclosure trend putting further strain on public services that politicians in both capitalist parties are eagerly enacting;

This will continue even during the recovery one “expert” announces. The expert, a bourgeois academic, defines recovery, as do all strategists of capital, in terms of stock activity, housing starts and GDP growth or non-growth. Most workers would not describe human beings being deprived of their means of subsistence and their shelter as a growth period.

Absence of an Alternative
As I headed for the coffee shop to read the papers the other morning, I spoke to a city worker and asked him what he thought of the new contract. He wasn’t very pleased, he said there were no raises but the only alternative were layoffs or furloughs. These are the two alternatives the employers offer and are brought to the rank and file Union members by the Union leaders. I suggested there could be a third alternative; we could fight back as some of the French workers have been doing. Naturally, living in the country with the most censored press in the industrialized world, he was unaware that French workers had two general strikes in the last few weeks and that individual bosses had been held hostage in plants forcing them to negotiate-----a tactic that produced some results. The employers aren’t going to make an issue of this in their media.

The next two folks I spoke to were teachers. They were disgusted with the situation as they have been under attack and in many states across the nation are being forced to take unpaid leave, euphemistically called a furlough, They also never considered any alternatives other than cutbacks of one sort or another. The NEA, the Union to which they belong, is the largest Union in the US with over 3 million members. It has some 330,000 members in the state of California. Yet the strategy of the top Union leadership is the same as they accept completely the employer’s view of the world and the sanctity of the market. The money isn’t there, they argue, echoing the bosses’ propaganda, we have to take concessions. They organized rallies at which members would wear pink to protest layoffs of teachers and try to pressure the bosses to be a little less aggressive. Pink symbolizes pink slips which are layoff notices in the US. Naturally, due to these pathetic responses from the heads of organized Labor to a major assault on their members the result is these affairs being sparsely attended and accomplishing nothing.

Further cuts are on the way as the 3 trillion the Democrats and Republicans have handed over to their banker friends will have to be paid for by increased taxes and cuts in public services.

While there is no doubt that people are cautious and somewhat afraid of losing more of what they worked so hard to get; this is not the main obstacle to a fight back. Most people do not know where they can go; there is not yet any organized and significant objective force that offers a way out. The see that the trade Union leadership is collaborating completely with the big business politicians in their efforts to save capitalism and profit making. Even at the local level, where the stifling grip of the bureaucracy can be weaker, few local leaders are openly challenging the collaborationist policies offered by the heads of organized Labor and offering an alternative strategy. Many just have no plan, no perspectives and consequently no solution.

The Labor leadership put all their eggs in the Obama basket and the shells are cracking already. But the collapse of the Anglo Saxon economy, a collapse of the US model of capitalism, has not gone unnoticed, nor has the capitalist’s response to it. Consciousness lags behind events, and as the economic crisis deepens, a reality a headline in the Wall Street Journal confirmed recently, the anger that simmers beneath the surface of US society will become more pronounced. People are looking for answers while others will act.

The actions of June Reyno, the courageous woman who chained herself to her house in San Diego and has been arrested on numerous occasions, are ahead of the game, but people watch and learn. US working class history is not one of passivity and meek acceptance; moments of apparent calm have been interrupted by huge explosions from below. This economic crisis has been historic in its scope. It has not only changed the United States, it has changed the world and the role of US capitalism in it.

It is also changing the working class in the US and throughout the globe. The working class here in the US is not immune, just leaderless, but struggles and movements of resistance throw up new leaders and change old ones. History proves that.

If you like what this blog has to say, and want to fight back contact us:
LA Arturo 323-428-5711 or Julia 310-474-6729
Bay Area: 510-595-4676 email erin@bringdownbush.org
Chicago: email LMVchicago@yahoo.com
Toronto: 416-323-0620

CAPITALISM, EARTHQUAKES, PROFIT AND DEATH

Reading and thinking about the earthquake in Italy on April 7th, what stood out for me was the fact that most deaths and injuries can be attributed to the fact that the majority of the 10,000-15,000 buildings that collapsed were new buildings that did not meet safety standards.A 59 year old postal worker in the area “upset by the shoddy construction of the modern apartment buildings” states “the problem is that the new apartments are not as strong as they should be. The old ones can resist this to some degree. They must control the construction of the new buildings.”
Another quote reads “experts say the vast majority of buildings in the most vulnerable regions of earth-quake prone Italy don’t meet modern seismic safety standards. “(Associated Press)
Reading this reminds me of how important it is as a Marxist to read and interpret the world, big things and small, from a historical and materialist perspective. We have all had what I call “aha” moments in our lives- eye-opening moments, where we are able to see clearly the destructive yet often hidden logic of capitalism. And the way we see the world is absolutely different from there on in.
In the early 90’s as a graduate student in a Global Feminism course I was listening to a Peruvian Marxist professor talking about capitalism, neo-liberalism, structural adjustment programs, the IMF etc, and their adverse effects on working and poor women in Peru and in all “developing countries.” It was when she rooted the causes of a devastating cholera epidemic in Peru that killed thousands, in the economic policies of capitalism, when what I thought I already knew was suddenly hammered home in a manner so concrete that I won’t forget that moment -when I finally understood that so called “natural” events and phenomena can never be accurately understood outside of history. Finally I realized the material and historical causes of events, up till now only partially grasped. I understood the myriad of ways that capitalism kills, not just through wars and starvation but through continual and persistent economic policies that in this case caused a cholera epidemic when money and resources were pulled out of existing infrastructure , when safety standards are reduced to bare bones etc. in order to make profits for 2 percent of the world’s population.
Some may ask – why did it take you long to understand this- as a Marxist this is pretty basic! Yes it is for sure but what this moment represented for me was a complete turn- around in the way I read the world on an everyday basis, in the manner that I understand the relationship between nature and society from the perspective of class analysis and struggle. Everything just snowballed from this moment. As a nurse I could understand why deadly infections were suddenly on the rise in hospitals in Canada, an advanced capitalist economy. It was not just so called antibiotic resistant superbugs that were killing patients in what should be safest place for sick people to be – it was related to real economic factors such as severe cutbacks in support workers. I wrote an article in our socialist publication at the time that directly related the deaths of many in a small town in Ontario from e-coli infections in the water to the cutbacks of unionized public service workers in the government agency responsible for testing water – an article published in my union newsletter.
So what does this have to do with the earthquake in Italy and the deaths of over 235, mainly working people and their families? The same as the catastrophic events of Hurricane Katrina were directly related not just to nature but to the political and economic system in which these natural events occur.
The Capitalist system and the IMF, the enforcing agency responsible for the so called structural adjustment programs, a euphemismistic term for the gutting of “costly” material infrastructure like health care and public utilities, clean water and sewage systems etc, are also responsible for the gutting to bare bones “costly” building codes and safety standards and regulations. We have all heard of the collapse of huge factories in Indonesia and Thailand where hundreds of workers were killed, fires that wiped out entire factories with workers trapped or locked in in free trade export zones ; women suffering miscarriages and a rise in birth defects as well as reproductive cancers as result of potent toxic pesticides in the cut flower and fruit industries in Central and South America. Pesticides chemically engineered to deteriorate in toxicity as they travel north to the American and Canadian consumer.
So the over 200 deaths in Italy this week could have been prevented or at the very least reduced, were these same “cost cutting” , deadly measures avoided.
Building codes and safety standards save lives. But they eat into profits. We all know what is more important to capitalism-profits over human life. This can only be overcome when workers and ordinary people own the profits of our labour and plan our societies to produce, nourish, shelter working people and keep us safe.

In with the new

A lot of the time when I have discussions with friends, families, co-workers, whoever, about the ideas of socialism, I get responses like, “that is great, but it will never work”, “no one is going to work without the motivation of profit”, “that sounds good, but it is idealistic”. At times, it feels like we are programmed to believe the worst about the human spirit. Unless there is a direct benefit to me, I am not going to waste my time. I don’t accept that. I see examples of human kindness everyday. I know that we all have a need for community, we are social beings after all. I tend to listen to the news most days on my drive to work. Lately it seems to be filled with the worst examples of human rage, but in between the stories of desperation are ones that truly show the potential of society if it was organized around human need. There are two stories in particular that I wanted to share.

First one takes place in Wyoming. There was a man in a small remote town waiting for a liver transplant. He did not have much time left to live, when he got the call that the hospital had a liver for him and he needed to be at the hospital by a certain time in order for the organ to remain vital. Problem was there happened to be a horrendous snowstorm and the hospital was 80 miles away. He had given up hope of being able to make it when the local reserve of snowplow drivers heard about his situation. They came together and decided to help this man get to the hospital. Creating a force field of snowplows around the man’s vehicle, he was able to make it the 80 miles and receive his liver transplant.

Second story takes place in the Michigan. Michigan has been hit hard by the economic downturn. A man wanting to do something in his community to help decided to create a new policy at the diner he owned. One night a week, he has a pay as much as you can, eat what you want meal. Some of his food vendors found out about this and have started to donate some of his food supply to help support the effort. When he spoke about what he was doing, one of the things he said is that people begin to feel all alone during these times. They don’t think anyone else has the financial problems they do and are embarrassed and humiliated. There is something powerful about being with a roomful of people who all are experiencing the same thing. It breaks the silence and tells you that you are not alone.

I don't share these stories with the belief that this will be the way the world will change. What I do believe is that they show the capacity of human beings to operate from a different framework, from one that is not based on the need for personal wealth, but one based on human needs.

“Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.”

I am re-reading some of Marx’s writings on colonialism and, as usual, it is fascinating stuff. Nothing even the casual observer wouldn’t know in general, but to read some of the particulars as Marx wrote them 150 years ago is powerful and a testament to his great courage and foresight and what great benefit that has been for human knowledge. It earned him the vilification and hatred of all the ruling powers, the Popes and kings, the bankers and moneymen who are all complicit in the slaughter of human beings.

He writes of the development of capitalism, its beginnings and its expansion in to the world in search of raw materials and markets for its commodities. He describes the activities of Holland the dominant capitalist nation in the 17th century.

He talks of the role of the “official” Christian church and quotes a prominent writer of Christian affairs of the times, William Howitt. Howitt noted, “The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region of the world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth." (1)

He then goes on to describe the Dutch colonial administration in Holland that was labeled by one observer, a former governor of Java as “one of the most extraordinary relations of treachery, bribery, massacre and meanness.” (2)

Marx adds, “Nothing is more characteristic than their system of stealing men to get slaves for Java. The men stealers were trained for this purpose. The thief, the interpreter and the seller, were the chief agents in this trade, native princes the chief sellers. (As a famous Irishman once said: The rich always betray the poor. RM 3) The young people stolen were thrown in to the secret dungeons of Celebes, until they were ready for the sailing to the slave ships.”

He goes on to describe how the Dutch came to “secure” Malacca. “…the Dutch corrupted the Portugeuse Governor. He let them in to the town in 1641. They hurried at once his house and assassinated him, to “abstain” from the payment of 21, 875, the price of his treason. Wherever they set foot, devastation and de-population followed. Banjuwangi, a province of Java, in 1750 numbered over 80,000 inhabitants, in 1811, only 18,000, Sweet Commerce.”

I have been racking my brain trying to remember where I read that sweet commerce comment years ago and I have found it again. Remember it: Sweet Commerce.

He also describes British capitalism in China and their rule in India. The British fought two wars in China to impose opium on them and to open the country to British goods. In India, they one time bought up all the rice, a staple food, to drive up prices and therefore their profits; hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, died. The lessons of occupation were learned first in Ireland and practiced throughout the Indian sub continent.

I am not intending to rag on the British or my Dutch friends here. It is the system of production that determines this horrible existence. Holland, and then Britain were simply the countries where it first began to take on national prominence; where the relatively stable, self sustaining feudal economy was on the wane, forced to make a deal in the English revolution and suffering a mortal headache in France a hundred years later. History enforces its will with a vengeance.

As capitalism ventured beyond the boundaries of the nation state it took the state religion with it. This is the reason for this barbaric Christian history. It is one of the reasons Islam was met with less hostility in Africa; it was not so associated with commodity slavery.

US president Obama is telling the world that the US it not at war. He supports the Turks, he supports the Palestinians, he supports the Iranians; this is the new friendly US imperialism. As he talks this talk, the number of Americans on food stamps doubles to 32 million, one tenth of the country. Homelessness has skyrocketed and millions are losing their homes. In the former colonial world that Marx describes above, nothing much has changed over the centuries for millions of people except for the introduction of cell phones and the cheap commodities that flood the world. Millions of children die from starvation among plenty; that’s commerce.

Capitalism is a permanent state of war; it is not a friendly system never was and never will be. Marx’s great contribution to human existence was he stripped bare the cloak of mystery that serves the interests of the ruling classes so well and looked at what really was and how it came to be. This is what allows us to have some say in what will be in the future, to consciously make history and not just be victims of it.

(1) William Howitt: Colonization and Christianity 1838
(2) Thomas Stanford Raffles: The History of Java 1817
(3) Henry Joy M’Cracken
(4) Marx quotes from Capital; Vol. 1 Chapter 31 This chapter is also published in pamphlet form titled, The Genesis of Capital. It is superb reading. Also in a book On Colonialism by Progress Publishers
Image A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs: William Blake

Larry Summers

Larry Summers is the main economic adviser to President Obama. He was formerly head of Harvard but kicked out when he said that women were inherently unable to grasp the hard sciences. It is now coming out that he spent years at the head of a hedge fund and earned millions of dollars in that position. He also earned millions of dollars making speeches to oil billionaires. So this is the person Obama picks to handle the financial crisis that has only just begun. Obama wants to make sure that the big financial capitalists have one of their own in the top position so the crisis can be solved in their interests.  Obama and his regime are determined to remain in the pockets of finance capital. 

Sean

A day in the life of a middle school student

I try and bring different, creative ways to talk to kids about the world. My school is predominantly Latino. More often that not, you hear Spanish in the hallways. Immigration and race are topics that surround our community. In a meeting this weekend, a friend lent me a book of collected writings and poetry that Langston Hughes put together. As I was going through it, I remembered a few years ago using on of Hughes poems in a class and talking about the themes discussed and their relevancy today. I decided that it would be good to try and find the poem and see what kids have to say about it now. Below is the poem I used. What happened was a class discussion about Obama. What does Obama symbolize to the youth? Does it mean racism is no longer an issue? The majority of my students were happy Obama won, but they had a hard time talking about whether racism is still a problem and expressing what they felt. As I watched and listened to them, I felt the complexity of what my students are told and what they see. Were my students struggling because although other adults and the media say one thing about Obama, back home, in the ghetto where these kids come from, are they seeing something very different? It can’t be easy growing up today, with all the contradictions laid out before you and no one to help make sense of it.

Children's Rhymes

By what sends
the white kids
I ain't sent:
I know I can't
be President.
What don't bug
them white kids
sure bugs me:
We know everybody
ain't free.

Lies written down
for white folks
ain't for us a-tall:
Liberty And Justice--
Huh!--For All?

Let’s be realistic---we have to get rid of the system

During my many years as a rank and file representative of working people on the job (I put it this way as the influence of Unions in the workplace has declined so drastically, even in workplaces that have Unions, that many young workers have no idea what a shop steward is) I can’t recall how many times I had to sit across from the bosses and be told how this or that worker needed a lesson. “He needs to change his behavior” was a common refrain. “A week off will get the message across” management would tell me to justify their actions. A “week off” imposes considerable damage on a household’s finances but, people have to learn and “justice” has to be served---we have to be “realistic”.

When we are laid off or fired. When we are forced by the bosses and coerced by our Union leaders to accept reductions in our wages and benefits, our standard of living in general, we are told that we have to be realistic-----the market has spoken. During our strike in 1985, there was the underlying threat that we were endangering people’s lives as the commodity we worked to produce was fresh water and that curbing the production of this necessity was a fire and health threat.

Realistic depends on which side of the class divide you’re on. There is no such realism when it comes to the owner of capital, the buyer of Labor power rather than the seller of it. These capitalists are on strike and have been so for over a year. Their strike has caused untold deaths around the globe, increased the misery of the living, and here in the US thrown millions of their so called “national” kin, out of their homes and in to the streets.

Their politicians are a little more vulnerable to the public pressure that results from all of this than the real rulers of society and are trying to get them to put capital to work. A major obstacle, as many of us are aware, is the trillions of dollars in bad deals they made during the sumptuous feast they had over the last few years. These bad deals are what they call “toxic assets”, mortgage debt that struggling workers have been unable to pay.

The unelected rulers of the world have been debating how to deal with these massive underperforming assets. They are resisting a total nationalization of the banks and last week, Timothy Geitner, the US Treasury Secretary dragged out a new plan that they hope will get the capitalists to play the market game.

It’s a great deal for them and makes the quite happy. In their more serious journals, they are very clear about what is happening. The Geitner plan has “the right mix of incentives to ramp up the program” writes Business Week. These incentives include pricing these bad loans at such an attractive level that investors will buy them. Not only that, there will be what is mistakenly called a “public-private partnership” that we are told will combine public and investor funds that will be used to buy up these bad bets so the investors will play the game again and the banks can lend. I sort of see it like a huge cess pool full of human waste and they are asking us to dive in first and clean it up, then they can go swimming.

But what is this public/private partnership? The capitalist politicians will borrow money that workers will be forced to pay back. Then they will lend that money to this phony partnership at, “below market rates” so that the partnership can then buy up the toxic assets and the investors, seeing risk levels decline, will invest and the banks can lend again. The plan will also limit investor’s potential losses by having the taxpayer back them up. Socializing risk, privatizing gain.

The capitalists, the ones that caused the problem we are in, have to be “coaxed” have to have “incentives” in order to inject what they mistakenly refer to as “their” money in to the economy.

In order to passively accept wage and benefit reductions, the incentives being offered to workers by employers and Union officials are layoffs. The incentive to homeowners to not resist foreclosure and loss of their shelter is jail time. The police are the ever present incentive, the coaxing element.

Economic state terror is the incentive we get.

The TARP cop will save us

At one time, Washington DC had more cops per capita than any other US city. It also had one of the worst murder rates which goes to show that more cops don't protect working class life.

There are a lot of cops that come out of Washington DC. There are drug cops, environmental cops and now "Tarp Cops". Authorities have initiated more than a dozen investigations against allegations of fraud to do with the bank bailout funds. The new TARP cop, Neil Barofsky, says that there is a huge potential for billions of dollars to be stolen given the size of the bailouts so far at 3 thousand billion dollars. The size of the potential he bases on the average rate of fraud in federal programmes.

What is the rate of fraud in federal programs? It's pretty damn high that's for sure. The figures are staggering even though we don't know them specifically as the transparency all the capitalist class are talking about does not apply to their financial dealings and the ability of the working class to see them. Although Katrina one of the worst disasters in US history, much more devastating in scope than September 11th, has almost slipped from memory, the theft of taxpayer's money probably runs in to the hundreds of billions, maybe trillions. Contractors that were receiving hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds to clean up the city were, in some cases, picking up trash in one section of the city and simply dumping it in another.

It's interesting to note that the US treasury department has "suggested it would not be useful to require banks to disclose exactly how they use the TARP money."

In times of crisis, the class nature of society becomes harder to obscure. Workers on welfare not only receive little enough to survive on but they are told what they can and cannot spend it on. People work hard all their lives and are evicted from their homes for it. We hand the banker, or should I say, the bankers politicians hand them our money and they are free to do with it what they choose and without explanation; this doesn't go unnoticed

Every day there are mass killings in the US as people's lives collapse around them. People see what is happening and see the unfairness of it, but see no way out. Now the fox is policing the bailout of their friends making sure not too much of our money is stolen in blatant, hard to cover up schemes. The present crisis is far from over and further shocks are on the way.

So now Oscar Grant "contributed" to his death

Well it should come as no surprise but it makes you mad. I haven't heard the full story yet but the 15 second soundbite telling me to watch the nine O'clock news says that BART, the San Francisco Bay Area transit system, is telling its side of the story regarding the shooting of an unarmed black man, Oscar Grant, by a white transit cop. "Oscar Grant" says the news anchor, "contributed" to the shooting.

So an unarmed man, flat on his stomach on a subway platform with hands behind his back and surrounded by armed transit police and shot in the back "contributed" to his own death. I guess breathing is a contributing factor in these cases.

I was closely involved in the case of Jerrold Hall who was also shot by a BART cop. He was shot in the back of the head by a shotgun blast while walking away from the cop. The cop later committed suicide. Rumor has it that he died during a sexual act called auto-asphyxiation.

I am waiting to hear their excuse for defending this cop this time.

Women, Capitalism and Afghanistan-More Abominations

Yesterday I started to write about women in Afghanistan and then stopped, partly out of anger and partly out of a feeling of powerlessness. What with the final meeting of the G20 dominating the news, the angry protests of the day before in London, the headline in the business section of the morning paper talking about the 26 million buyout package of the former boss of GM, I chickened out. I chickened out because I thought who will see the relevance and importance of what is and has been happening to women in Afghanistan -perhaps I will be viewed as just some sort of feminist ranter who never misses an opportunity to miss the point.
What prompted my outrage was a headline in the Globe and Mail four pages into the main section. "Law legalizing rape in marriage prompts outcry."
My first question was what is the purpose of this article?.. Why now , when almost unprecedented brutality against women and children in Afghanistan has been going on since the Taliban, US armed and backed in order to defeat the Soviets, has been going on for decades? In Afghanistan there has been nothing short of reign of terror on women and female children for years- so why would Canada's main newspaper give it a 4th page main section headline now, today, at a time when Obama is escalating the conflict in Afghanistan and Canada's bootlicking Prime Minister falls in step behind him despite the fact that Canada has maintained more casualties than any other coalition supporter of the occupation there.
Where has the general "outrage" been up till now? Certainly a very few women's groups and the courageous women in RAWA who daily risk their lives to expose the minute by minute abominations against women have been trying to break the silence.
When has the rape and control of womens minds and bodies, every waking moment,ever been a reason to go to war, to occupy a country or influence foreign policy. I have learned that the capitalist class and their elected politicians have absolutely no interest in anything other than profit and the short and long term survival of the capitalist system. So what is this "ourtage" about "marital rape"? I just do not get it. What's up here? After all it not until 1982 that the Canadian government officially recognized rape in marriage and made it a criminal offense.
Where was the outrage when the US supported Taliban took power? One does not have to support the short lived Soviet government in Afghanistan to know full and clear that under the Soviets women in Afghanistan began to enjoy full and equal rights to men, to university education, to jobs and at least as much control over their bodies and minds as any women in the West.
What hypocricy, what abominations!.
So perhaps someone can enlighten me . Why yesterday and today are we hearing this outcry against a law, approved by puppet President Karzai, that legally condones marital rape? Clearly the passing of this law is an attempt to solicit support from the most conservative and extreme elements in Afghanistan? In the interests of "nation building" , in the interests of maintaining American economic interests in the area, in the name of "democracy" , (certainly no democracy for over 50 percent of the female population of the country)? what a sham! As Canadian politicians and foreign affairs officials bluster and storm , in a effort to fool Canadians into thinking that they care about the lives of women anywhere, the usual Imperialist game persists and women are mere pawns.
One provision of the law states that the wife '"is bound to preen for her husband as and when he desires" and the husband "has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night."'
But who cares? After all it is a small trade off I guess for the "collective security of Afghanistan" and its allies. What count the lives, well-being and "security" of the women and female children of Afhganistan in this so called "collective" notion?
Nothing here is new. I am just marvelling and cringing at the BS and the hypocricy and the corruption of the capitalist system. Working people everywhere are all slaves of capitalism, men and women and our children alike. Our land, our labour is owned used and abused every second of the day. Obama, the phony sell-out traitor would like to see workers aound the world compete for meagre subsistence wages , in order to save the imperialist capitalist class that created racism , and subordinated and oppressed women over centuries.
Maybe I have answered my own question-maybe not. Just as Obama tried to deflect working people's anger onto a few rich CEO,s in order to obscure the reality of the failure and corruption of capitalism as a SYSTEM until he was reigned in by the class that ensured his election , so Canadian politicians and foreign policy makers feel they must bluster a bit about the the laws in Afghanistan , allow a little bit of protest into the mainstream media so they can look good to the working people in Canada who daily question our action in Afghanistan as more and more dead soldiers return,more jobs go and the economy sinks. What does this mean? I know what it does NOT mean-it does not mean that the capitalist class gives a damn about the rights of women anywhere unless they are forced to feign interest in order to subdue rising protest. And only if that protest is part of a larger anger and growing mobilization of the working class, youth and the oppressed. They sheed abuses of the rights of any oppressed section of any society only when it is necessary to maintain the short and long term survival of their system. I guess being one step ahead of the rising protest, collaborators blustering in outrage before they pull back into business as usual, is part of the art of capitalist war.
After all as a University of Ottawa professor states, "the new law is so egregious that western nations had an easy choice to oppose it, but as they scale back emphasis on democracy and support reconciliation with Taliban elements, other hard choices will come." What a soft peddle-"hard choices."
I feel a chill going down my spine as I have so often before as I write this and hope others will too.

Unemployed in Oakland, California - Week 9

Well, this week I went from #221 on our Union's out of work list to #212. At this rate I should be uptop of the list around 2011. The national statistics released today showed unemployment going up about 650,000 this past month from a February total of 12.5 million unemployed to 13.2 million unemployed. All the talk about turning the corner is a carry over from George Bush's "go out and consume" philosophy that if we all buy more, we'll feel better and buy more and then the economy will get better. Madness.
If our 13.2 million army of unemployed was a state in the union, it would now be the 5th biggest state behind California, New York, Texas and Florida, and bigger than states like Pennsylvania and Illinois. The madness and inefficiency of the Market.

The Unelected Rulers of the World visit the White House

The unelected rulers of the United States met with their president last week to set things straight. Obama has made some nasty public remarks about their activities of late. The heads of fifteen banks, including Bank of America, J.P. Morgan and Citibank were invited to the White House to “ease tensions” according to the media. In actuality, the unelected rulers of society were there to remind the president and his party that they call the shots and it is they who finance the apparatus; the Democratic Party serves their
interests first—the market economy must be defended.

Obama has not been alone in his criticism. The public disgust at the excesses flaunted by these folks as people lose their jobs and homes has the potential to get out of hand; politicians had to pretend to be sympathetic and angry at the culprits but they’ve gone too far.

Consequently, the big bourgeois struck back, threatening to extend and solidify its strike of capital if the attacks don’t stop. As reported earlier in the week, Federal Express threatened to cancel orders for 30 planes from Boeing at the mere thought of pro-Union legislation making it through Congress.

The taxes on the AIG bonuses are the focal point but it is what they represent that really matters. The Democratic administration cannot be seen as legislating serious curbs on capital accumulation and the rights of the bankers to do what they want with what they mistakenly refer to as “their” money. Alongside this, the ideological war against the market, the demand for state intervention in the form of increased regulation, and headlines in Newsweek claiming “We’re all socialists now” is putting class issues too firmly in the limelight.

Barak Obama and other bourgeois politicians would have reminded these folks that it is much more difficult for them politicians as they are the public face of the regime; they have to get elected. But the meeting was fruitful and the new face has been presented to the US working class.

The AIG bonuses issue is pretty much dead, “the issue has not gone away” said Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, but informed the press that the Senate version of the bill was “on hold”. Obama has “pushed back” after his initial outbursts and warns people not to “demonize” investors and entrepreneurs.

The old unity card is being played to the hilt much like it was in order to get people on board with the Iraq invasion. Obama called for shared sacrifice and his press secretary, Michael Gibbs announced that, “Wall Street needs Main Street and Main Street needs Wall Street and everybody needs to pitch in….we’re all in this together” (1)

The unelected rulers of society agreed. “If there is a big lesson, it’s that you can’t distinguish Main Street from Wall Street” echoes Lloyd Blankfein, the head of the moneylending firm of Goldman Sachs who was at the meeting. “It was a cooperative, pleasant meeting….” said BofA chief Kenneth Lewis. "You can't distinguish Main Street from Wall Street?" Millions of Americans losing their homes might take exception to this view. The 400,000 or so children that the World Health Organization estimates will die each year due to the economic crisis might take exception also if they had a voice. Their grief stricken families will certainly take exception to it. Democrats and Republicans in Washington have not.

Many of these moneylenders go from firms like Goldman Sachs directly in to public office, a lucrative slot that facilitates the plundering of the wealth of workers around the world. Robert Rubin was another one. He was at Goldman for 26 years and served as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary. He also worked for Citigroup for eight years for a meager $126 million. Hank Paulson, former Treasury Secretary under Bush and former Goldman Sachs Chairman is estimated to be worth over $700 million. By mere coincidence, Goldman Sachs received billions of taxpayer money, some $12 billion by accounts, from the AIG bailout. How many lives would this save?

These people are thieves and the system they support is rotten to the core.

The unelected rulers society were very happy with the outcome of the chat they had with their political representatives; they needed to remind them whose interests it is they really represent. Elected representatives must resist public pressure and do their job. The Financial Times reported the good news to its readers:

“Following the meeting, the bankers appeared on US television to salute the president, commending his understanding of the issues facing the financial services industry and the economy.” **

Good thing we’re all in this together

(1) Financial Times 3-28-09 Obama Soothes Strains on Bonuses
(2) ibid

Whistling past the graveyard.

Whistling past the graveyard.  When I was growing up in rural Ireland fifty years ago this was a common expression.  Many people still believed in ghosts and considered it better not to be around graveyards at night. So it was said that if they had to pass one they would whistle as they did so to keep them from being afraid. 

I am thinking of this as I watch the leaders of the G 20 countries meet in Europe. The world economic crisis is getting worse. The Wall Street Journal first page headline today announces without qualification: "Global Slump seen deepening." The second and third and fourth shoes of the financial crisis are still to fall. Nobody knows how much debt there is still there. Massive lay offs lie ahead. Their capitalist world is crashing around their ears. Yet these capitalist leaders, most of whom presided over the events that led to the present capitalist crisis are acting as if all is well, they have no fear and they will be able to solve the problems. Whistling past the graveyard. 

The other bit of news that I would like to share today is a piece I have shared before. I think that the US is the most corrupt country in the world. They have the whole system lined up to where the capitalists can legally bribe the politicians. The lobbyists and political action committees are used to do this. And they are all at. Both Mccain and Obama took over $100,000 each from AIG. The entire political system is bought and paid for. 

Then we have a couple of other pieces of corruption news this morning. Members of Congress have been paying bonuses to their staff out of funds that belong to the tax payers. 2,000 staff members were paid bonuses in this way last year. 

And then we have the two judges in Pennsylvania. They have been kicked out of their jobs for jailing kids. They were helping their friends who owned a privately owned for profit prison keep the facility full. They are totally corrupt you would say. And you would be right. But there is not much different in what they do to what US society does. This land of the free has 5% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prisoners. Incredible. This society is not based on freedom, it is based on repression and lock 'em up and throw away the key and corruption. 

Sean. 

Vacant Homes and Hill-side Palaces

This is not an April Fools story, although it should be.
A buddy of mine showed me around a huge 5,000 foot home where he is working on the hardwood floors. The hill-side house is a brand new $2.5 million home with a panoramic view of the bay area. Gene explained that to build a home on the side of the hill required foundations that go 50 or 60-feet into the ground. He complained about the wastefulness of a house with a reception room that has a 25-foot high ceiling. The four-floor palace even has a personal 6-person elevator. The owner runs a business that sells computer games. The house is essentially a place to show others how much money he has to throw around. In capitalist terms, how much he is worth.
Two things struck me immediately: what a waste of human labor. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of work: for what? So a guy can have cocktail parties and show off his view of where the rest of us live. What a waste of the planet’s precious resources. Some go hungry, while others throw their money away.
The other thing is that there is close to 20 million vacant homes in America, according to the US Census Bureau, so why are people still building homes? Why drive 20 minutes up into the hills when there are homes closer to everyone else. Aside from the existing vacant homes, human society will need, in the not too distant future, to start living closer together not further apart if we are to survive as a species.
When this rich business owner has his home finished it will no doubt be a marvel to all those that he allows access to it. But most likely it will, like capitalism’s hopes for the future, at some point lie empty as a stark reminder of the madness of the past.