As the wealthy gorge themselves Democrats and Republicans step up their war on workers.

Friends enjoying life

"It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow--the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more...Nothing that this nation, or any other nation, has done in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must be done to make people accept this reality."

That’s what the US big business journal Business Week had to say back in October of 1974. The post war boom and the conditions that formed the material basis for the “American Dream “ were over. The mighty dollar was no longer as “good as gold” and defeated former rivals were once again competitors on the global stage. In order to get the American working class to swallow that pill, the ideological “selling job” was accompanied, as it always is, by a frontal offensive aimed at weakening the organized sector of the working class.

Just four years later, Democratic President Jimmy Carter de-regulated the airline industry, opened the doors to the deregulation of trucking and used the Taft Hartley to break a miners' strike. Despite Democrats controlling both houses of Congress and the presidency, not one piece of legislation crucial to organized Labor was passed in the Carter years.

When workers moved to curb the assault, the hammer fell. The Republican Ronald Reagan, the former B movie actor was elected president in 1980 and in 1981 fired 11,000 striking air traffic controllers and jailed their leaders. They were banned for life from working in their industry. Throughout the 1980’s there was an attempt by the organized working class to resist the pill with strike actions. Greyhound drivers, Hormel meatpackers, Teamsters, airline workers including pilots, all had major strikes that were defeated primarily due to the refusal of the Union leadership under Lane Kirkland to organize an offensive of our own.

By 1992 the US had the lowest Labor costs in manufacturing of its major rivals, “even with the staggering cost of health care” wrote Business week. (1) In steel, the war against workers was a major success. Companies had eliminated 280,000 jobs since 1980 and spent $22.5 billion modernizing their plants so that by 1992 a ton of steel that took 9.3 person hours to produce in 1980 now took 5. (2) This is a staggering increase in the productivity of Labor, the benefits of which accrue to the owners of capital in the form of profits as opposed to the worker in the form of increased leisure time through shorter work hours.

Clinton came in to office as a tech boom began to breathe some life in to the system. The cold war had ended, the peace dividend we were promised never materialized and during the 90’s when profits reached a 40 year high, and when, at one point the Democrats again controlled both houses and the presidency for two years, organized Labor’s stifling bureaucracy still refused to go on the offensive. Clinton broke his promise to the Labor hierarchy as they always do and passed NAFTA which exported jobs and threw a million Mexican farmers off their land, depriving them of their means of subsistence. He threw working class women off welfare and supported the repeal of the depression era Glass Steagle Act. Major strikes were defeated in Decatur and in mining. Economically, the objective situation was so favorable for workers that the fast food industry was paying above minimum wage. Low waged workers received raises in this period due entirely to market forces.

But most Americans were worse off than we were 25 years earlier. The 90’s expansion lifted some of those from the bottom rungs of the economic ladder but the poverty rate overall in the U.S. was still 12.7% in 1998, around 35 million people. Among African Americans the figure was 26%, (3) and the income gap between rich and poor was at its widest since the great depression with the average U.S. top executive making 419 times the average worker in 1998, up from 42 to 1 in 1980. By the end of the nineties the combined wealth of the top 1% of U.S. families was about the same as that of the entire bottom 95%. Cutting the time of production of a ton of steel by almost 50% didn’t help workers too much did it? By the end of the 90’s not only did workers in the U.S work longer and harder than our counterparts in the other advanced capitalist economies, we got less wealth returned to us in terms of social benefits.

We’ve had the imbecile Bush twice and two recessions in the first decade of the 21st century, the second one of historic proportions when capitalism was dragged from the edge of the abyss through the infusion of public monies. The capitalist class has been saved from the catastrophic consequences of their beloved free market, bailed out by the working classes; “socialistic” measures to the rescue.

Capitalism doesn’t just disappear though, and it is emerging from this crisis somewhat different with its proponents determined to fulfill their mission of driving down the living standards of US workers closer to its competitors. The present crisis has given them added impetus; the, war on the private sector was successful with the aid of the Team Concept strategy of the Labor officialdom and now the world of the public sector must change.

We have written on this blog of the cuts in social services and privatization of public property. In the first five months of this year state and local government “shed” 100,000 workers and a total of 350,000 since the beginning of 2010 according to the Wall Street Journal. (4)

And once again, the politicians of the two capitalist parties, or more accurately, the capitalist party with two dominant wings to it, squabble over strategy. The headlines in the mass media talk of deadlock and delay, but the deadlock is not over two sides, one attacking workers and the other defending us, the two parties are in full agreement on the goal, make workers pay; they simply disagree over the details.

Over the last few days, news from the Obama administration is that a compromise is possible as Obama has made it known that Social security, Medicaid and Medicare cuts are on the table and John Boehner, the Republican House speaker indicates he might bend on taxes. They want to devise a new inflation measure for Social Security that will eat away at benefits. Naturally, any atacks they implement will be so designed to divide the working class in  one way or another; pacify seniors and screw the youth.   The bosses call it "grandfathering". Most of the budget balancing efforts in the states has been accomplished through cuts as opposed to taxes so these are the choices on the table for the working class of this country, cuts in the form of social spending or increased taxes. Meanwhile, annualized corporate profits rose 42% from June 2009 to December 2010 when 4th quarter profits hit a staggering $1.68 trillion, a record.

The climate is still not lucrative enough for them to invest in hiring though as the capitalists are still on a strike of capital. “Companies are hoarding cash” says Michael Spence, an economist at NYU.

All of Obama’s pre-election rhetoric is history as he directs the offensive against workers and the poor with a $2 to $4 trillion dollar deficit reduction deal over ten years; the latter seeming like a real possibility. The Democratic Party liberals are crying their crocodile tears as the great game nears completion. Nancy Pelosi supports the 10 year $4 trillion reduction package on the table but is concerned about cuts to social security and Medicare according to the Wall Street Journal but her “concerns” will amount to nothing.  Their concerns never do.  This is a woman from a bourgeois family in a bourgeois party. She is from money and married in to more of it. You only have to look at what California’s Democratic governor Jerry Brown has done to Medicaid to see where Pelosi is stands.

The dictatorship that the two parties of Wall Street have over US political life continues with support from the strategists atop organized Labor. Theoreticians would be the wrong term as the Labor bureaucracy has no independent opinion on the state of affairs relying instead on liberal academics and their friends in the Democratic Party. The top Union officials in California are supporting Brown who is savaging social services and jobs. The NEA, the largest Union in the US with some three million members has just come out in support of Obama in 2012 as he and his education secretary Arne Duncan proceed with their education privatization plans.

Despite tremendous sacrifice and heroism on the part of the Unions’ rank and file during the huge strikes in the 1980’s they were defeated by a powerful combination of the employers and the trade Union leadership at the highest levels that continues today.   Defeat after defeat has left the US working class extremely cautious about taking industrial action as can be seen by the dwindling strike activity. In the decade form 1970 to 1980, there were 3,075 strikes involving 1000, or more workers according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. From 2000 to 2010, this had dropped to 212.

Meanwhile the wealth accumulates for a small select few.  As Ben Leet commented on this blog a few days ago: "3.1 million millionaires make up 2.5% of the nation's households, and they probably own about $25 to $30 trillion. The top one percent own 37% of all U.S. wealth, or $20 trillion, the top 10% own 70% of everything, or $38 trillion. This is the U.S"
This country will explode at some point.


This lack of a mass workers’ party in the US is a major reason for the dismal social services and workplace benefits here.  We cannot rely on the Democrats to fight in our interests. An open break from this party is not just necessary it is crucial to our survival. The Democrats and the Republicans play the game well and like cops, one gives you a cigarette and the other beats you but they are both after the same thing. A mass workers’ party and a mass movement built on a fight to win direct action strategy rather than one of simply electing Democrats, the so-called friends of Labor, is crucial of we are to begin to reverse the tide.

(1) How to Get America Growing Again. Business Week, Oct 1992
(2) Ibid
(3) Poverty in America: Business Week, 10-18-99 P.156
(4) State of the States, WSJ 6-07-11