WSJ: Broken US politics--"Something's going to explode"

Americans have not felt so glum about the system in which they live for a long time and it is not only the working class that feels this way. Sections of the US bourgeois are very worried about the future and the rise of the Occupy Wall Street has intensified their concern.  Billionaires like Warren Buffet are pleading with the US Congress to please raise their taxes so they can contribute more to the national pie. They fear they could lose more than they bargain for if something isn’t done about inequality in the US.

Along with the economy and the political representatives in Congress, confidence in the institutions of capitalism is crumbling.  In the 1960’s George Packer writes in the December issue of Foreign Affairs, “..institutional forces still existed in politics, business and the media that could hold the center together.  It used to be called the establishment and it no longer exists.”  *  Packer is concerned that this growing inequality undermines democracy. Between 1979 and 2006 middle class Americans’ annual incomes after taxes rose 21% (adjusted for inflation) the poorest of us by 11% while the incomes of the top 1% rose 256%.  Packer is not confident this train can be stopped.  The top 1% tripled their share of the national income which at 23% is the highest since 1928.

“Inequality hardens society into a class system, imprisoning people in the circumstances of their birth---a rebuke to the very idea of the American Dream.”,  Packer writes. Of course, the American Dream never existed for most people, just enough to sustain relative class peace.  During the period that laid the material foundations for the American Dream,  the post-war boom (1950 to 1973),  there were still some major strikes and extreme violence was waged on a huge section of the population that were denied it in the Apartheid South.  “If you want the American Dream today….” someone once wrote, “….go to Norway”.

The trend toward greater inequality seems unstoppable to Packer as more and more wealth is accumulated at the top the, “….more influence and favor the well-connected rich acquire which makes it easier for them and their political allies to cast of restraint without paying a social price.” he writes. As the idea that the working class might enter the scene and change the situation for the better is alien to him, he doesn’t even allude to it other than in a reactionary way (xenophobia and protectionism for example) Packer’s hope is that the wealthy might “rein themselves in” and offer higher taxes as Warren Buffet and Steven Schwarzman have.  Buffet and Schwarzman are worth $39 billion and $4.7 billion respectively according to the Forbes 400. The cause of the problem is decidedly, “Our leaders and our institutions”, he writes.

This somewhat pessimistic view on the part of the US ruling class exists to great degree as an increasing sense of frustration among the working class at the political wasteland in the US and the domination of it by the two capitalist parties. While the OWS movement has begun to generate some stirrings and hope that action will change things among  organized and unorganized workers, people don’t have anywhere to go in the electoral sphere.

And vote who in?

All the statistics and polls confirm this. Last year just 40% of voters took the trouble to come out and vote.  The Wall Street Journal this weekend has yet another article on the crisis the two Wall Street parties, the Republicans and Democrats, are facing. This top mouthpiece of US capitalism points out that in 1992 when Ross Perot won 1 in 5 votes as an independent 39% of Americans were “dissatisfied” with the way the country was being governed.  Today that figure has risen to 81%.  In a recent Gallup poll, over 50% of voters said that a third party is needed in the US up from 40% in 2003.

Bourgeois political strategists consider the situation so dire that an independent candidate will hopefully emerge. Peter Hart, the Democratic pollster makes it clear, “There’s just too much unrest out there for this to be put back in the box. Something is going to explode.”, he tells the Journal. The WSJ gives us some examples of these third candidate prospects, the Billionaire mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg and Ron Paul the anti-Union right-to-work Libertarian. According to the Gallup poll, blue-collar workers and “soft Democrats” are the most enthusiastic about a third party (somewhat different than an independent candidate) while those supporters of an “independent run” by Ron Paul tend to be rural and Republican.

There is an online group, Americans Elect, that is gaining some traction and has gotten on the ballot in eight states and hopes to increase that to half of the states before years end opening up the ballot to an independent candidate. However, this group is funded by wealthy donors and disgruntled Democrats and Republicans and claims to have considerable support among “politicians, business executives and former military officers” the Journal claims. Not an alternative that would change the course of increased austerity that Wall Street and its two parties have chartered for us working folk.

The discontent with the political situation and hatred of the established parties offers, in addition to the direct action tactics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, fertile ground for a real mass workers party, a party based on workers, our organizations and communities. But what is noticeably missing from this detailed report about the electoral process in the US is any mention of the only workers’ organization at this point in time that has the resources and structure to provide not simply an “independent” capitalist candidate but an independent political party that can challenge the dictatorship that the two parties of capital have in the electoral arena. A party that can run candidates based on a program that meets our needs and shifts the burden of the crisis from workers to the 1% whose policies have  brought us this far.

Despite the decline in unionization in the US, the organized Labor movement has the capital and human resources to fill this political vacuum.  The AFL-CIO has more than 500 Central Labor Councils in all 50 states that could play a crucial role in organizing an independent political base in our communities. My former Union AFSCME has 3,400 local unions, 58 councils and affiliates in 46 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. AFSCME turned out 40,000 volunteers for Walter Mondale’s campaign for president in 1984. No other organization of workers in US society has such potential.

Yet in the Wall Street Journal’s somber analysis of the crisis capitalism is facing politically there is not one mention of organized Labor and the possibility of this organization or its top leadership offering an alternative to the workers of America.  The US capitalist class is confident that this will not happen.  Despite the mood of discontent that the poll results above reveal, the heads of organized Labor will do whatever they can to save capitalism form itself.  Time after time from Seattle 1999 and the WTO shutdown to Wisconsin and the present OWS movement, the bureaucracy that sits atop this potentially powerful structure uses the resources at its command to intervene in these movements and deliver them to the Democratic Party in order to render them ineffective and harmless.  They will in this period do their utmost to convince the mass of working people to support Obama for president--- to support a political party that workers have long ago abandoned. The AFL-CIO  has increased its presence in the OWS movement in order to use it for this purpose.

In the course of direct action campaigns, bank occupations, school and library take-overs, university occupations or occupying foreclosed homes in support of the victims the moneylenders want to deprive of shelter, local candidates can be put forward, rooted in these campaigns and the movement and on a platform that fights for what we need not what the politicians claim is realistic.  Direct action on the ground and independent political action is what will help build and strengthen the movement further both domestically and internationally, is what will help stir the rank and file of organized Labor in to activity which would inevitably mean an open struggle against the obstacle of our own leadership and their policies of collaborating with the bosses.

It is frustrating on the one hand but also criminal that the WSJ, a mouthpiece of capitalism, can discuss such an issue within its pages and that the possibility of organized Labor appearing as a threat is not even considered.  The heads of organized Labor will not take such a step toward an building an independent political party voluntarily; they are the staunchest defenders of the market and the rights of capital and it is this world view that is the main cause of their collaboration with the bosses in their assault on workers wages, benefits and conditions. To them, mobilizing the power of their membership which would naturally have a huge influence on the millions of unorganized and super exploited workers can only lead to chaos so any and all movements that threaten this world view are suppressed and co-opted. A successful campaign against these methods is only possible by rooting ourselves in the the ranks of organized Labor and building fighting caucuses based on making real gains and abandoning the failed methods of the present leadership based on the Team Concept and cooperation.

It is impossible to say what will happen next or if there is an ebb in the movement how long that will be or if the movement will surge forward yet again in response to the brutal offensive it is facing from state forces.  It is difficult to say exactly what the economy will do which is a factor but what is certain is that the rise of the OWS movement has changed the scenery forever and the objective situation is more favorable for us than it has been in a long-long time.

Stan Greenberg a former Clinton campaign pollster points out that while Perot’s challenge to the political duopoly was considerable  “What we saw then pales in comparison to the anger and frustration now” He adds that “Both parties are crashing at popularity at the same time. It’s a race to the bottom.”

Nature abhors a vacuum as they say and while the present scenario can be very favorable it doesn’t have to remain that way.  Given the refusal of the Labor hierarchy to wage a fight and the tendency of many in the OWS movement to reject political activity, we can be sure we’re in for a rough ride.

* The Broken Contract: Foreign Affairs, December 2011