The charade in Washington continues: What sort of freedom excludes the producer from making decisions about what they produce and how?

I can see the plan for the auto industry. They will probably do what they did at Delphi, the auto parts supplier that was spun off from GM in 1999; they'll declare bankruptcy as they have also done to public sector workers like in Vallejo California.

The advantage here is that they will simply negate any contractual agreements, enforce conditions on workers through the courts (a little economic terrorism will be applied to discourage resistance) and there will be not even the pretense of negotiation like there is now. I say pretense because it's not really a negotiation as far as the workers are concerned. Union officials, who are ideologically in league with the employers are meeting with them not to defend workers and our jobs and benefits but to dismantle them in order to protect bosses profits. Any differences that arise are over how best to accomplish this and, for UAW officials, how they can still retain their jobs which are quite well paid with good benefits as well as some sort of stature in the eyes of the employers and the Democratic Party.

Incidentally, the "toxic bank" plan which is almost completed is not really a public/private venture like they claim. In order to get the big bourgeois, big capitalists, investors, whatever one wants to call them, to part with what they mistakenly call "their" money, the US taxpayer will go further in to debt to lend money to them at cheap rates. The new debt the moneylenders receive as part of their entry in to this deal will be backed up by the taxpayer.

It's the same game, socialized risk, privatized profit. The present state of affairs should convince even the most skeptical observer that democratic socialism, worker's control and management of productive life, is possible. Guaranteed it isn't------but without it, life on this planet as we know it is the likelier prospect.