Occupy Wall Street a response to years of creeping austerity

Business Week prepared the capitalist class for the turmoil we see from Oakland to New York over thirty years ago during the 1973-75 recession which signaled the end of the post war boom.  World trade was cut drastically and the US came off the gold standard---the dollar was no longer as “good as gold”.  Business Week, then owned by McGraw Hill wrote,

“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.” 

Carter came to power in the later half of the 70’s and began the assault on workers and the Unions using the Taft Hartley against the miners in 1978. He began the deregulation of industry that gained further steam under Reagan.  Despite controlling both houses and the presidency, not one piece of legislation of major importance to labor was passed by Carter. 

American workers didn’t exactly accept this reality sitting down though. Air traffic controllers, members of PATCO went on strike in 1980 and included among their demands a shorter workweek with no loss in pay.  Reagan, the thug who arrested PATCO’s leaders and fired 11,000 controllers banning them from working in their industry for life is a national hero to US corporate power and the capitalist class, the 1% that are now vilified throughout the nation thanks to the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

The heads of organized Labor did nothing in response to the assault on PATCO giving the bosses the go ahead in their offensive against Labor.  Despite this there were major strikes that took a national or semi national character during the 1980’s that resurrected some of the methods of the 1930’s and of the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s; mass pickets, defiance of the law, flying pickets etc.  Two Greyhound strikes, Eastern Airlines, UFCW P9 (Hormel) were among the struggles that were eventually defeated, primarily due to a formidable combination of the bosses and the Labor hierarchy although local leaderships made tactical errors like relying on Ray Rogers and his corporate campaign strategy and failing to occupy the workplaces.

During the 1980’s public sector Unions fared better than the private and Unions like AFSCME, my former Union, made significant gains and growth.  The officials used to call us the “Lean green fighting machine” to boost us up at International conventions.  The assault on auto was speeding up but the 1990’s tech boom gave US capitalism some breathing room.  Still, in the first two years of the Clinton Administration when the Democrats controlled both houses and the presidency workers got nothing.  In fact, during the nineties when profits reached a 40-year high, the labor hierarchy still refused to mobilize an offensive of our own and while wages did increase for workers on the low end of the income ladder this gain was market driven. We got Nafta from Clinton as well.

The US lost 4.4 million manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2008 which has had a negative effect not only on employment but also on wages.  It is not all the export of jobs that has caused the decline though, capitalism has developed such efficient and powerful productive forces that fewer and fewer workers are needed to produce the same amount of goods. This is true in all industry as Richard Katz points out in the November issue of Foreign Affairs, “Manufacturing mirrors farming: just a tiny sliver of the work force can now feed the entire country.”  US manufacturing is such a small percentage of GDP not simply because of manufacturing moving to Vietnam or China but due also to the incredible productive power and efficiency of that sector.  In fact there are 12 million fewer factory jobs in China today than there were in 1996 yet factory output has tripled.

Marx pointed out this problem over 150 years ago, that capitalism, driven by competition has to revolutionize the means of production through technology and other advances in productivity and is able to produce more with fewer workers.  But this creates a crisis of overproduction as more and more workers are unable to buy what we produce.

So improved productivity and profits don’t necessarily mean higher wages.  Between 1990 and 2008 as manufacturing output per worker rose by135%  Michael Mandel and Susan Houseman point out “the durable goods manufacturing sector showed only a 0.2 percent cumulative increase in real wages for production and supervisory workers.” according to the BLS.

Since PATCO and the defeats of the 1980’s wages have continued to stagnate or decline and the more the Labor hierarchy cooperates, the more the bosses want; weakness under such conditions, breed aggression. This has reduced Unionization and Union power which has also had a severe effect on workers' incomes as Union wages and benefits have been around 35% higher than non-Union.

The inflation-adjusted minimum wage has fallen 30% since 1970 while government policy, deregulation and other legislation has overwhelmingly favored the rich.  The share of the total income going to the top 1% of taxpayers has more than doubled from 10% to 21% according to Katz, that’s 1.5 million people.  Katz adds that for the top one-hundredth percent of taxpayers, some 15,000 people, their share of total income went from 1% to 5%; there has indeed been a “sumptuous feast” for some as Lawrence Summers once put it.  Meanwhile, Katz points out, we have a situation in the US where “Half of all single mothers without a high school diploma live in poverty.”

Those that have profited from this set up the most have lost their humanity had they had any in the first place; this is what capitalism does to human beings. Carnegie opposed any sort of relief for workers because he believed it bred laziness. Chuck Prince, the former head of Citigroup said of the bubble that made him a billionaire, “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing,”

Unfortunately, for Prince’s victims the dance is a nasty one, a dance of death for millions of men women and children throughout the world of global capitalism.

The rise of the OWS movement is a long time coming and things will be different from this day on.  It is not a revolutionary situation in the US by any means but in the wake of an historic economic collapse of capitalism we are seeing an historic change in mass consciousness that will hopefully go forward and build a more permanent movement and structure to not only challenge the capitalist offensive but build an offensive of our own.

Also, there were significant victories this week in Ohio, Mississippi and New England on the issues of Union rights, womans’ rights and voting rights. 

If the movement ebbs we will not return to pre-crisis conditions with regard to consciousness and political activity.

For the OWS movement to grow it must draw in the millions of ordinary workers and youth, as well as sections of the middle class that are giving voice to the movement and announcing their presence as the 99%. We have already stated many times that to do that the movement must stand and fight for concrete issues that meet people’s needs.  The OWS movement has shown the tactics that will win, mass defiance of the law, occupations and mass strikes, it must now develop a program and structure.

The danger is that if the movement fails in this regard and becomes isolated from the mass of the 99% then the state will feel confident that it can crush it and crush it it will, brutally if need be.

We can learn from our enemies: “Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.”

Postscript:  5.pm.  As I write the Oakland City Council pressured by the corporations and money that control local politics is preparing the ground for ridding themselves of the tents and crowds that occupy the city center and at this moment police are wading in to students up in Berkeley.