As you carry out your struggle the capitalist offensive continues on many fronts. Wall Street crashed the world economy in 2008. As this became clear and the obscene wealth of these Wall Street criminals became obvious they moved to limit the anger against them and to prevent any serious measures to curtail their power. These criminals were able to wreck the degree of economic havoc they did partly because of the previous thirty years of deregulation. We need to think about this deregulation. It means lifting the laws that were passed in the 1930's under the pressure of the working class movement to prevent another 1929. Capitalism has always hated this regulation and with Reagan they stepped up their offensive to have it removed.
Wall Street and its bought and paid for parties the Republicans and Democrats in Washington talked of self regulation as an alternative to these laws. Self Regulation? What is self regulation? It is as if the mafia came to court and said the existing laws were restricting their business and if the laws were repealed they would regulate their own behavior, they would police themselves. Or it would be as if a mugger came to court and said please repeal the anti mugging laws, we will regulate ourselves. Not many would fall for this line. So how did the Congress fall for it in relation to Wall Street and US capitalism?
We have argued on this blog that the US economic and political system is utterly corrupt. That the degree to which it is democratic is very limited. We have argued that as well as the dominant sectors of the economy being in private hands and this making real democracy impossible, we also have the capitalist class bribing and buying the politicians of the two parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. This is an accepted part of the system. There are other related reasons. The Republicans and Democrats are the only two mass parties in the US. They are both capitalist parties. This means that capitalism has a political monopoly. To an extent it is a one party state, in the sense that the two parties agree that capitalism is the only alternative. A monopoly of politics, ownership of the economy, bribery and buying of the politicians, US capitalism is corrupt and not democratic.
This deregulation while allowed the capitalists to make billions was not good for capitalism. It has weakened belief in the system. Some capitalists saw this and opposed the deregulation. The billionaire Warren Buffett calls the financial instruments such as derivatives used to make high stakes bets on just about everything "weapons of financial mass destruction."He also talks about "market fundamentalism." But nevertheless this deregulation went ahead. The reason is that the capitalist class wanted it and had the political power to make it happen.
Look at this. In the ten years leading up to the crash of 2008 US capitalism spent $5 billion to bribe politicians to deregulate and to prevent enforcement of existing laws. Since November 2008 when the crash hit, Wall Street has spent $40 million to bribe the politicians to weaken the call for action to be taken against them. But this is not all. There is in Washington a large contingent of traitors to the US working class who act as agents for Wall Street, for US capitalism. More than 900 former federal employees, including 70 former congress members, work in Washington as so-called lobbyists, that is bribers, for the banks and the financial institutions. These comprise a fifth column for capitalism.
Brothers and sisters in the student struggles in California and elsewhere, what lies behind the attacks on your economic well being and rights is the US and world capitalist system and its decayed and corrupt system. Unity with the working class on your common issues, building a mass movement against capitalism, building a mass movement for a Democratic Socialist America and World, these are the the guidelines within which we should take our movement forward.
Sean.
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