We should not be fooled by the phony " House Oversight Committee" in Washington headed by the Democrat, Henry Waxman. I saw him on the TV the other night scolding the Lehman Brothers executive for earning $300 million dollars as millions of people lose their savings, pensions, jobs and homes.
Now this phony committee is having a go at AIG officials, the insurance company that the taxpayer just bailed out. Waxman acts like he is suprised this happened as he asks the CEO if he thought it fair he should be earnign millions as the company went under.
This is theatre for the public, an attempt to pacify an angry populace. They are going to have to have a couple of sacrificial lambs like Jeffrey Skilling and the other guy from Enron.
Waxman, like all these capitalist polticians knew what was going on. This stuff is not the result of a few individuals, it is the consequence of a rotten system.
Waxman took a fair amount of money from the finance industry before the S&L crisis in the early eighties and nineties. He voted along with practically all the other members of his party to deregulate S&L investments. He voted not to restrict "risky" S&L investments. He voted for the S&L bail out at a huge cost to the US working class after he had participated in creating the mess. Like Ron Dellums, Pete Stark and George Miller, all left Democrats, he would have voted to remove caps on interest rates had he not been absent.
Pelosi, who is now talking about corruption also voted along similar lines in the S&L fiasco. Only one person went to jail back then and maybe two or three might go to jail in the present situation given the scale of it and the fear that workers and the middle class will move in to action; the faith in the market has been shattered. The consciousness bubble has been burst.
The first bail out vote was defeated due to the pressure they felt from workers and the middle class, especially as some of them were up for election. This sham congressional committee, they have the nerve to call it an oversight committee, is simply another tactic to prevent the disgust and anger that exists from breakin out in to the open and taking organizational form. They are assisted in this sham by the Labor leaders.
Plus, the Democrats also cooperated in repealing the Glass Steagle-Act in 1999. Big players in this were Robert Rubin, an advisor to Barak Obama, and Phil Graham, a former McCain advisor.
Glass Steagle restricted speculation that led to the 1929 Depression.
The capitalist class is using both of its parties and various strategies in order to prevent the anger that exists in US society from breaking out in to the open. They will be forced and willingy sacrifice a couple of their folks to prevent a threat to the system itself.
The threats are obvious. If we don't accept this bail out and their methods, things will be worse. This is what Union leaders tell their members in order to get them, against their best judgement to accept disastrous concessions, accept cuts or have no job. They are also terrified of the power of the working class and do all they can to supress it, make us feel helpless, there's nothing we can do but put out faith in Henry Waxman and Barak Obama.
Every struggle, no matter how small, against a landlord, the city, the sherriff, can be fought collectively. The CEO's slumlords, bosses, can be ganged up on like they gang up on us using the courts, the police and basic econimic terrorism to force us to pay for crises that are of their making.
I have participted in succesful campaigns like the rental struggle in Alameda CA and the tax struggle Can't Pay Won't Pay in North West Indiana where people occupied city halls, mayor's offices, turned up at the churches and neighbohoods of those that are responsible for carrying out the attacks on working people, Democrats, Republicans and Union leaders who coooperate with them. We must return to these traditions that won us the rights and standard of living that they are now taking away from us.
The alternative to concessions is to mobilize the power of working people and fight back, to go on the offensive. The alternative to bailing these bankers out is to take over all the finance houses profitable and non profitable and in this way we can centralize and secure the countries finances and use these to produce what is necessary for the majority, the working people of the country and to develop a sustainable economy. Medical care, education, transportation, the necessities of life, these must be liberated from what are a "cabal of private interests".
No matter how small and personal a struggle is it must have this goal in mind, to free the forces of production from this gang and to change the system that supports them. This crisis has shown that the money is there and that the market is the problem.
Genuine socialism is not idealism, it is also not what existsed in the totalitarian former Soviet Union. It is healthier, more humane, and ultimately a more efficient way of managing society. They rule by committee, so can we.
No comments:
Post a Comment