Coded racist crap, the cowardice of the union leaders in the face of capitalism, and stupidity.

Left: Martin Luther King and Malcolm X moved closer to socialism towards the end of their lives.
I am Irish. I have lived in the US now for over 25 years. I had the misfortune to be talking to another Irish immigrant to this country last week. After a couple of minutes it became clear. In spite of the careful coded language I was talking to a racist. With his face twisted up he explained that Irish people were just as discriminated against and had suffered just as much as black people yet black people were always asking for more. And why should he pay reparations to them? Look what he was at. By saying the Irish were just as discriminated against he was in fact denying the discrimination against black people. He was lying about history, pretending he was being even handed, bringing up who was hardest done by and by bringing up reparations he was finding a way to divide and rule and create fear and a sense that the Irish suffering was not being sufficiently recognized.

I was close to laying my hands on him. Black people were still being lynched for being black up to the 1960's. For hundreds of years black people were up for sale and their children taken from them and sold. For hundreds of years they were paid no wages and so could accumulate no savings never mind capital. Sure there was discrimination against Irish people but nothing like as bad as against African Americans. I was ashamed of being from the same country as this man.

Reading Friday's Wall Street Journal this conversation came back to me again. Working class people are getting hammered as this recession drags on. The rich are doing better than ever of course. But the working class are not. And this is not even. Median household income for all Americans is about $50,000 per year, for whites it is between $50,000 and $60,000, for Hispanics it is just under $40,000 and for blacks it is just over $30,000. Some difference. The percentage of black and Hispanic people in poverty is 25%, the percentage of whites is around 13%, about half the rate. It is dramatically higher amongst black and Hispanic Americans. It is here in these economic statistics that you have to look for the source of the so called crisis of the black family which the capitalist media like to yak on about. Secure well paid jobs are essential for secure healthy family lives. Black America has less of these than any other section of America.

I am not bringing this up to divide. These problems faced to one degree or another by all workers can only be solved by workers uniting and fighting for common goals as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X concluded in their last days. It was no accident they were murdered by the state at that time. They were then addressing the central problem with the proper approach. They were moving to build unity of the working class against capitalism. But they also continued to insist that reality has to be faced and part of the reality is that there is gross discrimination in US capitalist society and this discrimination is used for two purposes. One is to divide and rule and weaken the working class and two is to get more cheap labor from the sections of the working class discriminated against and cheaper labor from all workers as the discrimination weakens all workers.

The statistics in the Wall Street Journal also showed the situation with earnings when it comes to male and female workers. Earnings of full time year round female workers as a percentage of male workers earnings is only between 70% and 75%. More cheap labor and more divide and rule. Women workers are discriminated against by capitalism.

I see the union leaders are getting worried about getting out the vote for their traitorous friends in the capitalist Democratic Party. The AFL-CIO is planning to spend $50 million of its members money for this and the SEIU to spend $44 million. They will have thousands of their full time organizers working and tens of thousands of their members making phone calls and knocking on millions of doors. Let us say they will be spending about $100 million. Incredible. But in spite of this these leaders are worried, and so they should be. Obama and the Democrats have capitulated to the bosses on everything since they got in and now they want the workers to vote for them. Is it any wonder there is no enthusiasm for the Democrats amongst workers.

The union leaders whine that there is no alternative and if they do not get the Democrats in they will get the Republicans. It is the lesser of two evils they bleat. What an ignorance of politics this shows, what cowardice in front of the employers is embodied in this approach. there is a simple solution. They should take the tens of millions they are going to spend on the democrats, their thousands of full time organizers, their millions of union members and take the following approach.

First adopt a program that solves working peoples problems and take this program to the working class and get its support. This program could for example be:

#A minimum wage of $15.00 and hour or a $5.00 wage increase whichever is the greater and this to apply to all workers.

#Equal pay for all for equal work.

#Free health care, free education, free childcare and affordable decent housing as civil rights.

#A program to build homes, hospitals, schools, roads, a modern public transport system on a sustainable and environmentally friendly basis.

#No firings, no foreclosures under any conditions.

On this program hold meetings in every union and non union workplace, draw in new non union workers, from this organize mass city wide demonstrations and a one day country wide general strike and organize physical opposition to any attacks on wages, jobs or conditions.

From this run candidates on the ticket of a "Working Peoples Party" and drive aside the Republicans and Democrats and break the political monopoly that capitalism has over US society at the moment.

#Explain that the 30% plus of Americans who favor socialism over capitalism are right and insist that all mass media and all elections must have as a legal requirement the right for the socialist view to be heard.

This would transform US politics shifting the balance of forces to the side of the working class.

I can hear the union leaders bleat. Practical politics. Well their practical politics does not work too well. But I accept their challenge. Practical politics. As long as the union leaders tie themselves to the Democrats they will do the bidding of the Democrats and this means do the bidding of the employers who are the bosses of the democrats. This is the practical reality of the politics of the union leaders.

Ah but we could never win a majority the union leaders will whine. Well so what. Put tens of millions of american workers on the streets around the program above, organize a day of occupations of workplaces country wide, raise the banner of anti capitalism and democratic socialism throughout the entire working class movement, target and take on with the censorship of the mass privately capitalist owned media, set up our own working class mass socialist media, put the fear of the working class into these capitalists. This is what will bring improvements into the lives of working people, not pleading with the capitalist Democratic Party. These are the real practical politics. Putting the fear of the working class into the capitalists and their system. We would win more from the system in this way than in a hundred years of delivering votes for the Democrats and pleading with them for favors. The civil rights movement did not win by pleading with the Democrats, the womens movement neither. They took mass direct action which made it clear that unless reforms were forthcoming then all hell was going to break loose and the entire capitalist system would be threatened.

Yes I am all for practical politics.

Sean.