Workers on the march on International Workers' Day. Our Facts For Working People blog explains that this period in which we live is dominated by an offensive of international capitalism against the working class worldwide. This underlines all of our experiences at this time. At the same time we understand that the working class in country after country are fighting to halt and throw back this offensive. See France recently for example. See also the many struggles of the US workers in the 1980's, 1990's, and the last ten years. This reality also underlines our present experience. But the dominant feature of the period is the on going successful capitalist offensive.
The efforts by the working class to throw back the capitalist offensive have been blocked by their own leaders, that is the trade union and labor leaders. These leaders play this role because they believe there is no alternative to capitalism. Their consciousness is dominated by this thinking so they go along with the capitalist offensive. But not only do they go along. In fact they intervene actively to put down any serious threat from the working class to this offensive. They sabotage strikes and struggles. The last thing they want is a major victory for the working class. Such a victory would inspire other workers to fight as well as show that the workers' leaders are wrong and that there is an alternative to their capitulation to the bosses and their demands and system. The workers' leaders also do well out of capitalism with their high salaries and secure jobs.
We have also explained on this blog that what we are involved in everyday is a struggle for the consciousness of the working class. The capitalist class are extremely conscious of this. They mobilize all their resources, their media, education system, state apparatus, their monopoly of the political system with their two mass parties, to make sure that the working class do not base themselves on a full consciousness of the capitalist offensive, on how to organize to fight and defeat it and on the alternative to this offensive and to capitalism as a whole. The Internet will help, is helping the working class in this struggle.
In this context we would like to draw attention to a recent book. It is written by two US academics - political scientists Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of the University of California, Berkeley. It is entitled: "Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington made the rich richer - and turned its back on the middle class." In spite of the good information in this book and how it confirms our analysis, in one very central way, even here we see the struggle for consciousness that goes on and the failure of the left academics to challenge capitalism in its fundamentals.
It is vital for the US capitalists that the US working class does not see itself as a strong independent class. If the working class comes to see itself as independent and strong then it can begin to get the idea that it can change society. Part of this struggle by capitalism and its academics and even its liberal academics is never to talk about the working class, instead always to talk about the middle class. You cannot think of yourself as part of a strong independent class if you do not see the existence of a strong independent class.
Bob Herbert, a liberal journalist with the New York Times (November 2nd, 2010.) reviewed the book of Hacker and Pierson. Like the title and contents of the book Herbert's review talked about the "middle class" and not the working class, from start to finish. This lowers the consciousness of the working class in terms of its own independent strength and its ability to build a new society of its own. It lowers its consciousness. The book of Hacker and Pierson also talks only about the middle class and leaves out the working class. You would think they would wonder. Why is the working class being removed from history and discourse? You would think they might think there must be something they are missing here.
Keeping this in mind there is useful material in Herbert's review of this book and in the book itself. Herbert writes about the enormous increase in wealth of the top minority of capitalists and says this was the result of : " a long series of policy changes in government that overwhelmingly favored the rich. These changes were the result of increasingly sophisticated, well financed and well organized efforts by the corporate and financial sectors to tilt government policies in their favor and thus in favor of the very wealthy. Over the last generation more and more of the rewards of growth have gone to the rich and super-rich. The rest of America, from the poor through the upper middle class, has fallen further and further behind." See again the working class is not mentioned in this description. See also what is being described here is a conscious thought out well planned offensive against the working class.
This book asks the question how this enormous shift in wealth away from the majority could have happened "in a democracy in which - in theory at least - the enormous number of voters who are not rich would serve as a check on policies that curtailed their own economic opportunities while at the same time supercharging the benefits of the runaway rich." The authors go on to answer their own question when as Herbert says they recognize that: "politics is largely about organized combat. It is a form of combat between those who are organized, who can really monitor what government is doing in a very complicated world and bring pressure to bear effectively on politicians. Voters in that kind of system are at a disadvantage when there aren't reliable, organized groups representing them that have clout and can effectively communicate to them what is going on." Yes what is needed here is a mass working peoples party. But as usual these authors and this journalist will not say so. Such a vulgar thought as an alternative would result in them being out out of polite company.
The book describes an "organizational revolution that took place over the past three decades in which big business mobilized on an enormous scale to become more active in Washington, cultivating politicians in both parties and fighting fiercely to achieve shared political goals. This occurred at the same time that organized labor, the most effective force fighting on behalf of the middle class (see again no working class) and other working Americans was caught in a devastating spiral of decline."
See how this is put. Not only is the working class once again not mentioned. But also organized labor was caught in a "devastating spiral of decline." This is posed as being something that was inevitable, the working class was just caught in it, something completely and inevitably passive. Not something that was and is a result of the capitalist offensive with the collaboration of their associates in the union and labor leadership. This is why the capitalists have got stronger in Washington and in the country and the working class has got weaker. The union leaders have refused to organize and to fight instead they have left the field open to the capitalists.
Have you every watched those TV shows on cable such as the Bill Maher show. Very critical of the politicians. I found them good for a laugh for a few episodes. But then I got enraged. Like this book, like this review of Herbert, they all do the same thing, they refuse to give any alternative to capitalist society of any alternative to the existing political set up. For example they never mention the need to build a mass working peoples party. Of course if they did they would lose their spot on TV. So they can make money out of making people laugh about the rotten capitalist politicians, something everybody knows about already, and they can become rich and therefore part of the middle class and capitalist class while doing so, but because of lack of an alternative leadership, the working class remains stuck, unable to act to build a working peoples party which can provide an alternative to capitalism and to organize the unorganized to take on the bosses offensive and throw it back and also to open up the discussion of the 36% of Americans who have a favorable view of socialism and how we build on this and build a democratic socialist society.
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