“We have not seen the end of American sacrifice in Iraq” Obama told a group of disabled veterans earlier this week. Sounds just like the imbecile Bush that preceded him. If that’s not sickening enough listening to stuff like that from those that profit from these conflicts as opposed to making any sort of sacrifice at all, Obama spouted more of the same at the AFL-CIO Executive Council yesterday. “We are going to rebuild our economy stronger than before, and at the heart of it will be three simple words: made in America.”, he told them. He could have said anything really as the important thing for the Union officials on this body is that a slick bourgeois politician spoke to them at all; it legitimizes their existence. Their role as the main buffer against their members and the rest of the working class building any generalized movement against the attacks Obama and his class are waging on workers, is the only reason these politicians give the Union heads any time at all. As long as they defend capital and suppress their ranks, they can glow in the attention.
It’s very easy to please them: “I think if I was a coal miner, I’d want a union representing me to make sure that I was safe and you did not have some of the tragedies that we’ve been seeing in the coal industry.” Obama told them, “ If I was a teacher, I’d want a union to make sure that the teachers’ perspective was represented as we think about shaping an education system for our future.”
Sadly, the miners have not been protected by the Union and the leadership of the teachers Unions, like the entire top leadership of organized Labor, are doing their very best to assist Obama and his colleagues in driving us back to the conditions that existed before the great Labor uprising in the 1930’s. The capitalist agenda for education is what is prevailing, not the teachers, parents and students agenda. Why would a representative of the employers object to workers joining Unions as long as they are led by the likes of the folks atop the AFL-CIO, solid supporters of business and the market and “partners” in the Team Concept? It is the potential power of the rank and file of the teachers Unions that the leadership holds back that slows the assault by big business.
Obama’s audience yesterday would all claim to support international solidarity and recognize that cross border organizing is key to defending US workers’ living standards. But in action they support US employers in their quest to drive their competitors from the market. Made in America, means lay off Japanese, German, Canadian workers. The foreign capitalists then use the same propaganda to win their workers to their side in this struggle for markets and call for production and investment to take place in their nation. The situation then arises that has workers in one country competing against workers in another country for who can work cheapest, quickest and with the fewest impediments to profit taking for their employers.
The same false argument is used as different regions in the same country compete to entice industry to their community through tax breaks, no Unions, weak worker protection on the job and environmental regulation. It is a disastrous policy and makes it impossible for working people to unite in the struggle against global capital which seeks the cheapest Labor power to exploit no matter where it is. The US is still the leader in foreign direct investment. This protectionist strategy is a capitalist response to the crisis of overproduction/overcapacity, the flip side of the coin that has capitalist “free trade” on the other. Though the bosses practice it all the time, they are terrified of the consequences of protectionism if it accelerates given how integrated the world economy is; they remember the disastrous effects of the Smoot/Hawley tariffs that exacerbated the great 1929 depression and led to world war.
Another related item in the news has been the CIA’s use of unmanned drones to assassinate people. The drones have also killed a lot of civilians in Pakistan, and Afghanistan, people at weddings, funerals, children in their beds etc., creating recruits for the terrorist groups. I see a pic in the Wall Street Journal yesterday of a young officer (looks not much older than 22 although the picture is blurred to protect his identity I assume) and he is holding a joystick looking intently at a screen.
He sits at a console in Creech Air Force Base in Nevada operating a drone over Afghanistan. They can kill people riding a jeep 8,000 miles away like this but can’t find the $9 billion reconstruction money (US taxpayer funds) that disappeared in Iraq. It would take a massive “archival” operation I read. I wondered what this young fella thinks about when he’s playing on this console that can result in the deaths of 60 people at a wedding.
Destroying its rivals abroad, savaging workers living standards at home. They are a violent bunch, the US capitalist class. After appearing at the AFL-CIO Executive Council, Obama and his class colleagues must have a chuckle to themselves. The Union officials are like children, tell them anything, just give them recognition, make them feel important and they’ll not stand in our way.
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