Trump Forces More Economic Refugees North To Feed HIs Base

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

Trump's decision to cut off aid to some Central and Latin American countries is a tactic designed to drive more economic refugees northward to the US Mexico border in a frenzied desperation to head off starvation and death.  His intention is to feed his base and also support for his wall. He is looking at 2020.  He can get away with this because, as I say in the short video, the US working  class has been robbed of its history. Here in the US we are taught, white male capitalist history and class consciousness is weak

In any case, the  history of the working class in the US is a rich and militant one, despite its weakness and failings. And there have been examples of unity alongside the injection of racism in to our movement by the ruling class from its origins in the creation of the concept of a white race to the re-emergence of white supremacy through Jim Crow after the great betrayal of 1877  The failure of the trade union movement to respond to these attacks are another aspect of this history.

We, workers, do not understand history form our point of view, only from theirs, the ruling class.  This is natural in a sense as the ruling class in any era writes the history books. The ruling class in any society has to demonize through racist or other arguments, it subjects and that includes those it colonizes outside its own territory. How else can it justify its dominant position?

It is important to look at history from a historical materialist perspective not just with regard to other countries and Trump's recent statement about aid to El Salvador for example. But to our own. We wrote in a previous post here on Facts For Working People the following statement about why the leaders of the US trade union movement betray the interests of the class they are supposed to defend. It has its roots in positions the leadership of our movement took a century ago. We wrote:

As the last century drew to a close, the Wall Street Journal produced a centennial edition. This included a segment titled - "Events that Helped Shape the Country". It explained that in 1893 there was an economic slump that left half the membership of what was then the main union federation, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), unemployed. The AFL was composed overwhelmingly of craft unions (skilled trades).  Samuel Gompers was the leader of that federation. Under his leadership, and against the background of that economic slump, the AFL made a decision as to what its general policy should be towards U.S. capitalism.

Here is how the wall street journal reported this decision. "The AFL led by Samuel Gompers votes against adopting socialist reform programs....Gompers believes that U.S. labor should work with capitalism, not against it, and that the AFL’s  proper concerns are wages and hours and better working conditions".
Take note, this is the statement from the main public voice of US capitalism, of the employers, as it looked back over the previous century at what were the "events that helped shape the country". This is no small deal. This public voice of US capitalism saw that the decision of the trade union leaders over 100 years ago, "helped shape the country", that is, the United States we all live in today.  The bosses, the employers, U.S. capitalism, speaking here through their most important public journal, recognize the importance of the decision taken by the trade union leaders of the time to "work with capitalism, not against it". You can read this commentary in full here.

History is great stuff if we look at it from a class perspective.