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| Thieves took it all |
I pointed out how consciousness tends to lag behind events for various reasons. Sometimes the effects of a society in crisis can stun the mass of the population and it takes a while for the depth of the crisis to sink in. What is happening? What do we do? How do we respond?
Historic social events like the present global economic crisis have an affect on all aspects of the existing state of affairs. Institutions that existed as long as we can remember disappear (Lehman Brothers for example). Political parties and other social institutions are torn apart like a ship that’s run aground. What appears to be relative peace between the classes, the exploiting and the exploited begins to break down. But we also begin to see divisions opening up within the representatives of the ruling class as they squabble with each other about how to proceed.
What made me think of this are the events surrounding Harrisburg, the capital of the US state of Pennsylvania that just filed for bankruptcy. This overwhelmingly working class city of 47,000 is the largest bankruptcy of a US municipality since Vallejo here in California three years ago.
The decision to file for bankruptcy was not a smooth one as factions on the city’s ruling council fought over how to find a way out of the debt crisis the city is facing. What was obviously a majority of this “divided city council” as the Wall Street Journal put it (sometimes division is a good thing) refused to accept a state plan for dealing with the crisis. The state legislators backed a plan that called for the selling off or leasing of public assets, buildings public property and such.
The power base for the state politicians tends to come from the suburbs where many state workers who work in Harrisburg live. Some Harrisburg politicians want to impose a tax on these commuters as a way of raising revenue to pay off debts. “There is definitely a sense of us versus them” says the attorney for the city council; some members of the city council don’t want to “be pushed around any more”.
What declaring bankruptcy does is give the municipality some protection from creditors just like it does for individuals. As it is bondholders and moneylenders who decide the allocation of capital in society, bankruptcy is shunned as the WSJ points out, “for fear of ruining their standing among bondholders”. In a truly “democratic” society, the welfare of the citizens would be the condition by which elected representatives judged their standing. The same applies to individuals, we may get some immediate protection from the moneylender but they make sure we pay for a bankruptcy filing; failing to pay the moneylenders in the US can prevent you from functioning as a normal human being, you can’t buy a car, you can’t rent a place to live or buy a home. You’ve heard of a “failed state”? Well when you don’t pay the moneylenders you’re a “failed human being”.
But more and more, workers are refusing to buy in to this arrangement. The “loyalty” that workers had for paying their debts is wearing thin. We saw websites like walkaway.com arise in the aftermath of the housing crisis. We have seen Unionized workers reject concessionary contracts only accepting them after a powerful combination of their own leaders and the employers wore their resistance down. Central Falls Rhode Island declared bankruptcy after retired city workers refused to accept concessions, particularly the savaging of their pensions which is all the rage these days. The WSJ points out that officials in Jefferson County Alabama were able to extract “more than $1 billion in concessions from debt holders” by threatening to file bankruptcy, a concession the Journal described as,“an unprecedented haircut in the municipal bond market.”
Harrisburg, like Central Falls Rhode Island is a fairly poor community with a population about 32% white and 55% black American. The fact that these urban centers are overwhelmingly working class, often low waged and people of color is beginning to exert pressure on municipal officials. Bankruptcy offers a temporary respite from owners of debt. “In Harrisburg, bankruptcy proponents favor taking a tougher line with the state, bondholders and the insurance companies that have backstopped the city’s debt” says the Wall Street Journal. The city and it’s taxpayers have been “pushed against the wall by the bondholders and the state, and to some extent by the administration” says one of the city councilors who voted for bankruptcy protection.
The state plan would have pushed them further selling their property and raising their taxes to pay creditors; this is in a city where the poverty rate is 29%. It would turn the city in to a “ghost town” says the councilor. This is the legacy of the market, check out Detroit.
It is clear that the politicians of the two capitalist parties are being influenced by their political power bases. Many of the state employees live in the suburbs but work in Harrisburg and I would gamble that more of them are white so the state legislators lean more to shifting the burden on to Harrisburg residents. Factions within the city officialdom want to shift the burden more in the direction of suburban workers. But imposing taxes on suburban workers or raising them on the city’s working class population does nothing but divide our class in the face of a general onslaught by the corporations and their political representatives whether in city hall or the state legislature.
The same scenario is played out when it comes to schools. The first response is to raise the property taxes of homeowners, in other words, reduce the disposable income of one section of the working class to slap a band-aid on a problem others face due to the massive waste and misapplication of public funds in society. The heads of the teachers and school employees Unions all take this divisive and solidarity wrecking road.
This is what appears to be happening in Harrisburg and other communities. It is nothing new. We have been faced with this divisive strategy in the Union movement for years, a strategy designed by the bosses and adopted by the Union hierarchy; they call it the Team Concept, workers in different workplaces make concessions to their employers in order to help them win market share from their rivals. Workers in rival companies make further concessions to assist their bosses. The result is a never ending downward spiral and an almost impossible environment for building solidarity among all workers which is what is necessary to win----the old divide and conquer.
An opportunity was lost when 100,000 workers protesting in the streets of Madison Wisconsin were sent home and directed in to an electoral campaign to replace elected representatives of one capitalist party with those of another instead of building an independent working class mass movement in the streets out of which an independent working people’s party could arise.
The politicians of both capitalist parties squabble about the details but both agree on the fundamentals---the working class should pay for the crisis of capitalism, a crisis we never created. The alternative to them arguing over which section of the working class should pay the most is a united mass movement aimed that can lead an offensive of our own. They are having trouble putting the genie back in the bottle. They subdued the movement in Wisconsin and other similar areas ">with the help of the Labor hierarchy but now the Occupy Wall Street movement has arisen.
We demand what we want and need to live a decent and secure life not what the bankers and the politicians in the Republican and Democratic parties say is realistic or acceptable.
I am a socialist, I believe that our goal and the only real lasting solution to the ongoing global capitalist crisis is a democratic socialist federation of states and the public ownership, and management of the dominant sectors of the economy that produce the necessities of life. But in the course of the struggle to change the world around us I believe those that do not see that at the moment come to realize its inevitability (with a little help) if we are to survive.
It’s impossible to say how far the OWS movement might go but even if it subsides as the student movement did a few years ago and the Wisconsin events have, there will be more to come and lessons will have been learned. We are in a historic period of global integration and global crisis. Events in one country influence events in another.
The US working class has been influenced most positively by the recent events in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. As resistance to this offensive of capital increases, we will see more and more division and lack of cohesion within the capitalist class as it tries to maintain its rule over society---we must exploit these divisions as they exploit ours.
We have a lot to be optimistic about, the bastards aren’t getting it all their own way.
The decision to file for bankruptcy was not a smooth one as factions on the city’s ruling council fought over how to find a way out of the debt crisis the city is facing. What was obviously a majority of this “divided city council” as the Wall Street Journal put it (sometimes division is a good thing) refused to accept a state plan for dealing with the crisis. The state legislators backed a plan that called for the selling off or leasing of public assets, buildings public property and such.
The power base for the state politicians tends to come from the suburbs where many state workers who work in Harrisburg live. Some Harrisburg politicians want to impose a tax on these commuters as a way of raising revenue to pay off debts. “There is definitely a sense of us versus them” says the attorney for the city council; some members of the city council don’t want to “be pushed around any more”.
What declaring bankruptcy does is give the municipality some protection from creditors just like it does for individuals. As it is bondholders and moneylenders who decide the allocation of capital in society, bankruptcy is shunned as the WSJ points out, “for fear of ruining their standing among bondholders”. In a truly “democratic” society, the welfare of the citizens would be the condition by which elected representatives judged their standing. The same applies to individuals, we may get some immediate protection from the moneylender but they make sure we pay for a bankruptcy filing; failing to pay the moneylenders in the US can prevent you from functioning as a normal human being, you can’t buy a car, you can’t rent a place to live or buy a home. You’ve heard of a “failed state”? Well when you don’t pay the moneylenders you’re a “failed human being”.
But more and more, workers are refusing to buy in to this arrangement. The “loyalty” that workers had for paying their debts is wearing thin. We saw websites like walkaway.com arise in the aftermath of the housing crisis. We have seen Unionized workers reject concessionary contracts only accepting them after a powerful combination of their own leaders and the employers wore their resistance down. Central Falls Rhode Island declared bankruptcy after retired city workers refused to accept concessions, particularly the savaging of their pensions which is all the rage these days. The WSJ points out that officials in Jefferson County Alabama were able to extract “more than $1 billion in concessions from debt holders” by threatening to file bankruptcy, a concession the Journal described as,“an unprecedented haircut in the municipal bond market.”
Harrisburg, like Central Falls Rhode Island is a fairly poor community with a population about 32% white and 55% black American. The fact that these urban centers are overwhelmingly working class, often low waged and people of color is beginning to exert pressure on municipal officials. Bankruptcy offers a temporary respite from owners of debt. “In Harrisburg, bankruptcy proponents favor taking a tougher line with the state, bondholders and the insurance companies that have backstopped the city’s debt” says the Wall Street Journal. The city and it’s taxpayers have been “pushed against the wall by the bondholders and the state, and to some extent by the administration” says one of the city councilors who voted for bankruptcy protection.
The state plan would have pushed them further selling their property and raising their taxes to pay creditors; this is in a city where the poverty rate is 29%. It would turn the city in to a “ghost town” says the councilor. This is the legacy of the market, check out Detroit.
It is clear that the politicians of the two capitalist parties are being influenced by their political power bases. Many of the state employees live in the suburbs but work in Harrisburg and I would gamble that more of them are white so the state legislators lean more to shifting the burden on to Harrisburg residents. Factions within the city officialdom want to shift the burden more in the direction of suburban workers. But imposing taxes on suburban workers or raising them on the city’s working class population does nothing but divide our class in the face of a general onslaught by the corporations and their political representatives whether in city hall or the state legislature.
The same scenario is played out when it comes to schools. The first response is to raise the property taxes of homeowners, in other words, reduce the disposable income of one section of the working class to slap a band-aid on a problem others face due to the massive waste and misapplication of public funds in society. The heads of the teachers and school employees Unions all take this divisive and solidarity wrecking road.
This is what appears to be happening in Harrisburg and other communities. It is nothing new. We have been faced with this divisive strategy in the Union movement for years, a strategy designed by the bosses and adopted by the Union hierarchy; they call it the Team Concept, workers in different workplaces make concessions to their employers in order to help them win market share from their rivals. Workers in rival companies make further concessions to assist their bosses. The result is a never ending downward spiral and an almost impossible environment for building solidarity among all workers which is what is necessary to win----the old divide and conquer.
An opportunity was lost when 100,000 workers protesting in the streets of Madison Wisconsin were sent home and directed in to an electoral campaign to replace elected representatives of one capitalist party with those of another instead of building an independent working class mass movement in the streets out of which an independent working people’s party could arise.
The politicians of both capitalist parties squabble about the details but both agree on the fundamentals---the working class should pay for the crisis of capitalism, a crisis we never created. The alternative to them arguing over which section of the working class should pay the most is a united mass movement aimed that can lead an offensive of our own. They are having trouble putting the genie back in the bottle. They subdued the movement in Wisconsin and other similar areas ">with the help of the Labor hierarchy but now the Occupy Wall Street movement has arisen.
We demand what we want and need to live a decent and secure life not what the bankers and the politicians in the Republican and Democratic parties say is realistic or acceptable.
I am a socialist, I believe that our goal and the only real lasting solution to the ongoing global capitalist crisis is a democratic socialist federation of states and the public ownership, and management of the dominant sectors of the economy that produce the necessities of life. But in the course of the struggle to change the world around us I believe those that do not see that at the moment come to realize its inevitability (with a little help) if we are to survive.
It’s impossible to say how far the OWS movement might go but even if it subsides as the student movement did a few years ago and the Wisconsin events have, there will be more to come and lessons will have been learned. We are in a historic period of global integration and global crisis. Events in one country influence events in another.
The US working class has been influenced most positively by the recent events in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. As resistance to this offensive of capital increases, we will see more and more division and lack of cohesion within the capitalist class as it tries to maintain its rule over society---we must exploit these divisions as they exploit ours.
We have a lot to be optimistic about, the bastards aren’t getting it all their own way.
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