Workers refused work by capitalism because they can make enough profits without them. Capitalism is a vicious cruel system.
Think about it this way. How much work could 30 million people do. How much could they produce and provide in terms of food, housing, services and the rest. 30 million people is the size of the workforce in a good sized country. Well this is the number that US capitalism cannot employ. There are approximately 30 million Americans either out of work or in part time work who want full time work. And this is leaving aside the millions in jail.
We continually say on this blog that capitalism does not work. These 30 million are proof. Any society which cannot give work to thirty million people does not work. Such waste is proof of this. The labor power of thirty million people would transform this country and have a huge affect on the world if correctly applied. But US capitalism cannot do this. It cannot combine the labor power of the unemployed working class with its vast sums of capital. It does not work. It has forfeited the right to exist. It has to be ended.
Liberal capitalist opinion such as expressed in the New York Times is increasingly worried about the explosive anger that is building as millions cannot find jobs and millions of others plunge into poverty. The New York Times on August 10th wrote that the unemployment situation is "just far beyond anything we have seen in the job market since the 1930's." It goes on:"We are not even beginning to cope with this crisis, which began long before the onset of the so-called great recession. The economy is showing absolutely no sign of countering the nation's staggering jobs deficit."
"The politicians approach to the jobs crisis has been like passing out umbrellas in a hurricane. Millions are suffering and the entire economy is being undermined, and what are they doing? They are appropriating more and more for warfare while schizophrenically babbling about balancing the budget. At some point we're going to have to claw our way out of this denial."
Yes a section of the capitalists see the danger. However we need to be clear; capitalism will continue with its job cutting and wage slashing for as long as it can get away with it. Only when they are faced with massive movements of opposition will they consider trying to look at some other policies and even then they are stuck. If they take on more workers and increase production they have to find a market for the increased production. But workers wages have been cut, workers jobs have been cut, government spending has been cut, capital spending overall is not increasing due to the excess in capacity with the reduction in demand. As marxism explains capitalism faces a crisis of over production, and it is trying to deal with this by huge attacks on the working class and the result is that it just makes the crisis of over production worse.
We stand for a program for 30 million jobs. This to be achieved by reducing the working week with no loss in pay and thus having more jobs to go around. Along with this take the trillions from the swindlers on Wall Street and in the banks and industry and invest this in a program of public works to build roads, hospitals, schools, to transform the infrastructure of the country, to network the country with high speed trains and public transport, to build a new energy system based on clean renewable energy sources, I could go on. The main point to see is that there is an alternative. But the problem is that this alternative cannot be achieved on a capitalist basis. The capitalists' addiction to profit blinds them to their system's destruction of the planet and to their waste of millions of working peoples' human labor.
Capitalism does not work. We need to take the wealth from the capitalist class and build a democratic socialist society based on the democratic planning and management of the working class. This is the only way. Capitalism does not work.
Some say this will never happen, they say look the US working class are apathetic and they support the system. There is truth in this even though polls show over 30% of Americans favoring socialism over capitalism. But to the extent that there is truth in this it is because capitalism was able to deliver the goods in terms of living standards for the majority of US workers over the past decades. This is no longer the case. Only by going into unprecedented debt is workers living standards not plunging even further even faster. But this will soon happen and when it does US workers will have no choice but to take action, organize and fight.
This would already be happening if it was not for the role of the union leaders who hold the movement back. But they will not be able to do this indefinitely as their false methods will not be able to deliver the goods to their members. They will then begin to lose control over the working class. People like ourselves have to be ready then. For that we need now to be organizing opposition caucuses in the workplaces, locals, unions, schools and colleges and communities at all levels, around the program above. Then we can build a movement which which can offer an alternative to capitalism.
End Capitalism. For a Democratic Socialist Society.
Sean
No comments:
Post a Comment