If we pay attention to what the bosses actually say, they make it clear that their vision of the future is much different from ours

President Obama says that before the government hands over more of our money to the auto executives to bail out that industry and make it profitable, there has to be more sacrifice: "it's got to be one that's realistically designed to weather this storm and to emerge - at the other end - much more lean, mean, and competitive than it currently is,", he announces on Face the Nation this Sunday

There has to be tough concessions from union workers, bondholders and others Obama made clear . Now we all know that bondholders, (moneylenders) and workers on the factory floor are equal partners here don't we? Of course we don't.

We should heed Obama's words here; they tell it all; he is describing the future for US workers and it is third world conditions. We don't need a university education to see that in order to be "competitive" we have to have something or someone to be competitive with. Oh, yes, there's Chinese workers, or Mexican workers. But aren't their wages much lower than ours? I think they are. Don't they have fewer rights and benefits on the job? I think they do.

So being competitive with them means a lower standard of living for us doesn't it? I believe it does. It's not just workers outside our borders either. It means workers in organized workplaces giving up the gains that have been fought for and won over the years to ensure they are cheaper, and make more profit from the boss than the unorganized ones. We have seen this happen in the US as well paid Union jobs have feld south where a legacy of racism has helped make Unionization much more difficult.

Instead of building international solidarity with workers abroad in order to build a secure and fruitful existence for all us all, we are supposed to help the private owners of the US auto industry and the bondholders, who are often the same people, drive their competitors from the market (which means a loss of another worker's job) and they do this by finding the cheapest workers and creating working conditions that offer no impediment to profit making.
So worker's competing with each other is a disaster for us but very good for the capitalist. Not only does it drive down wages and conditions, like racism, it creates an obstacle to organizing, drives a wedge between workers.

For the capitalist class, the group that actually owns the auto industry and makes all the relevant decisions as to its operations, their goal is to find a place place to put their money and make some profit, they might just as well have their money tied up in shoe manufacturing, or as many of them do, speculation.

Marx descibed them perfectly:

“a schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.”

As we all know, GM has billions invested in Chinese auto manufacturing and it is a Union free environment and cheap Labor that is the attraction.

Mass transit if organized properly, would certainly not build cars. They are wasteful, environmentally destructive, and a very stressful means of mass transport. This doesn't mean we would eliminate them en masse, but we would gradually opt for the saner alternative for sure. The alternative to what the capitalist class is offering and as their representative, Obama is putting forward, is for this industry, what is actually a social service, to be publicly owned under worker's control and management. In this way, committees of workers, consumers and experts would decide what means of transportation best serves the interests of society as a whole; all of society which means the natural world also. This is how the dominant sectors of the world economy should be managed.

It denies the capitalists certain rights, the right to own a factory, profit off the labor of generations, and then when the money well runs dry, close it and destroy a community. They have a right to a job, just like us. The difference is that they deny us that right while socialism guarantees jobs to all.

Changing this relation is the task ahead of us.