No Bailout For Corporations. Take Them In To Public Ownership

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I hope it’s “over soon” a friend said to me of the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, it has only just begun and even when it is over, or contained and at level where a certain normalcy can return, the crisis is laying the groundwork for significant political and social developments as the dust settles.

The response in the US has been very poor. US society is not equipped to deal with such things. With the working class having no political party of our own, health care is a business and all aspects of social health, including access to life saving drugs, are dominated by the private sector and for profit interests. Medical bills are the primary cause of bankruptcy here. The ridiculous “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” con game has left the US working class in poor shape when it comes to disasters like that we are experiencing now.  What will happen to the homeless, the poor, and the immigrant population trapped in US camps is hard to imagine.

We are in the early stages of the crisis and cannot yet gauge its depth. But thousands of workers are being sent home by their employers, some may be able to work at home, most will not. Others will be wondering what actually will happen to them. Will they receive any money? What about the mortgage? The rent?

I talked to a building trades worker the other day and he told me all the major jobs are shut down. This week, the big three in auto, GM, Ford and Fiat/Chrysler have shut down all their North American factories. North America of course is Mexico, Canada and the US. (we are not known for our geographical expertise). Honda and Toyota are closing their facilities temporarily next week. Consumer demand has crashed of course which is bound to happen if no one goes anywhere and has no income.  This will also spill over and affect dealerships and suppliers. In 2018, the U.S. automotive industry, including retail and suppliers contributed 2.7% to U.S GDP. 

In the last major capitalist crisis of 2008, the US taxpayer dragged the decaying capitalist system from the edge of the abyss and in the US, nationalized the auto industry as well as others. The US government spent $80 billion between 2008 and 2014 bailing out the auto industry and the cost to the taxpayer in the end was $10.2 billion. We should not forget that the investors that run this industry made a lot of money choosing to build profit making, gas guzzling SUV’s and big trucks, and as we know over the past decades, auto workers have given billions in concessions and changes in work rules.

So we cannot underestimate the depth of the crisis here. The tech company billionaires have been meeting with government officials and we know they will be looking for a bailout for themselves as well as lucrative opportunities in the efforts to mitigate the damage. The airlines are also seeking about $50 billion from the taxpayer. Even in good times, the captains of industry like to get their snouts in the public trough, but in times like this, they are buried deep. Not that it’s hard as the body politic and the two parties to which they all belong represents their interests. They will certainly expect the money.

The US capitalist class is in a state of panic.  A friend asked me yesterday if I thought they will try to introduce authoritarian measures given the severity of the situation. Of course they will. Will they try to get the government to bail them out again like the taxpayer did in 2008?  Without a doubt. The government, or the state to use a more accurate term, is but the “Executive committee” of the class that rules society. It looks after the interests of the class that governs society and the system of production that they own and manage. The Billionaires, the corporate CEO’s and the investors who have made billions over decades will expect their government to work for them.

But it is inevitable that there will be pushback. It will not be so easy for them to hand over billions to the people whose policies are the underlying cause of the crisis and the poverty, inequality and insecurity that wrecks people’s lives. The US ruling class is familiar with how explosive US history is and as always talk about caring for workers and saving jobs. But the mass will not remain compliant forever as the representatives of capital plunder our collective wealth and make the workers and middle class pay for a crisis that is not of our own making. We should not forget their so-called war on Terror has cost the US taxpayer some $6 trillion.

The other aspect of this is that the desperate measures they are being forced to take to save their own necks and the system itself, paying workers who stay home, sick leave and increasing unemployment benefits, are for them temporary. They are deathly afraid that we workers will think long and hard that sick leave, which millions of us don’t have and when we do it is pretty poor, could be put in place so quickly, it doesn’t have to take 150 years. It’s like the taxes they impose on us. They are never temporary like parcel taxes on homeowners to “save” public education. It doesn’t save public education and is not intended to. Taxing workers and the middle class also makes it harder to build the mass direct action movement that can save education and a lot more.

“We don’t like this temporary government role in commerce….”, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote on Monday (3-16-20), and went on to justify it because the, “….state and federal governments are essentially ordering the economy to close.”

“This is a health crisis that government is addressing with command-and-control emergency powers.”, the Journal adds.

Think of how ridiculous this is. So 48,000 suicides a year isn’t an emergency. I guess 49,000 gun death a year isn’t anything to worry about either. I mentioned in an earlier piece of what will happen to the homeless once the virus enters that community, older people, sick people and so on.  The top causes of homelessness in the US are:  (1) lack of affordable housing, (2) unemployment, (3) poverty, (4) mental illness and the lack of needed services, and (5) substance abuse and the lack of needed services.

The US infrastructure is in dire shape, it is in fact a national emergency. Business Week years ago referred to it as the “Third Deficit”. The damage to Oroville dam that could have led to the death of thousands of people in Northern California was well known but the danger was ignored. Apparently Cuba is more of a threat to us than that. And to remind ourselves of the violent nature of the people that run our country we need to reflect on the fact that the US government is increasing sanctions on Iran, Cuba and Venezuela that is causing untold misery in the wake of the coronavirus and undermining the efforts globally to solve the problem

I could go on but are we supposed to accept that the billionaires atop US society, and there are 54 of them here in California, don’t have any conversations with the politicians and the occupants of the body politic? The state simply ordered them all to shut their factories, close shop and that’s it. So the 12,000 or so registered lobbyists (bribers) in 2019 are all acting as private individuals for their own personal interests. $3,7 billion was spent on this activity, bribing politicians to pass laws that benefit a corporation.

They talk about union bosses and big labor but we don’t come anywhere near big business when it comes to lubricating the wheels of commerce with money and bribes. As for the labor hierarchy, their compliance has been so reliable the capitalist class hardly even needs them at this point. And we certainly wouldn’t know they’re alive. In the midst of the worst crisis I have witnessed in 50 years the silence from the heads of organized labor is deafening.

The theoreticians of capital want the Federal Reserve, a private bank to lend money to lubricate the economy. The coupon clippers do not want the politicians to make those decisions even though they are their representatives because public pressure is greater on an elected representative than on the bankers at the fed. The politician has to leave Washington and visit their constituents once in a while.

With all the talk of we’re in this together, and how Americans are strong as a nation and all the nationalist phrase mongering we can be sure the public/private consortium that will be put together to rescue capitalism for the second time in a decade will ensure the working class pays.

I can’t help thinking of how Marx described the driving off of British peasants from their common land to which they had rights under feudal law, and enclosing it for capitalist farming, notably sheep and wool production. He wrote of the taking of communal land, “To say nothing of more recent times have the agricultural population received a farthing of compensation for the 3,511,770 acres of common land which between 1801 and 1831 were stolen from them by parliamentary decree presented to the landlords by the landlords.” My added emphasis. *

This activity drove the peasantry to vagrancy and begging which was a capital offense at times.  “Philosophers have only interpreted the world…….,” wrote Max,  “…..the point is to change it.”

This experience and its aftermath offers us an opportunity and as US workers we must clear that rubble from our minds about the so-called vibrancy of the private sector and how efficient capitalism is. The biggest receiver of state subsides since the formation of the United States is the capitalist class and private industry.

Instead of bailing out the auto industry once again we must demand the industry be taken in to public ownership and re-tooled for the production of mass transit and social need.

We must demand the same for tech and the sickness industrial complex. Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies must be made public. The insurance giants that determine whether we receive health care or not should be dismantled. Developers and speculators need to be taken out of housing and providing human shelter, This can only be efficient if it is a public venture.

The finance industry, banks finance houses must be nationalized. And most importantly, capital. Those whose labor produces the wealth must determine what we produce, how we produce it and how capital is allocated. This is not utopian; the idea that capitalism can end war, poverty, climate catastrophe or can be made human friendly is. We used to say that the  “commanding heights” of the economy should be taken into public ownership. This is a reasonable demand.  Compensation can be based on proven need. In other words, a worker or middle class person whose pension or subsistence is in GM stock would be safe. The speculators and coupon clippers like Carl Icahn, Kirk Kerkorian, Buffet and others like them who play monopoly with people’s lives, no. They have a right to a safe, secure productive existence something their activity denies millions of others.

That the working class has no political party makes this seem a little abstract. But in other countries, nationalized industry, within a capitalist economy have support. But we are correct to demand these measures as they are the only real solutions to the problems humanity faces. Joe Biden is the Democratic Party candidate for president despite many people who voted for him preferring Sanders’ reformist policies. People want stability and safety and they want Trump gone. But in the present period this is not possible. All was not well before Trump and it will not get better after him if he loses. Any changes will be relatively minor and temporary.

Regardless, I cannot imagine that there will not be some major political and social developments rising up from below in relation to this situation as workers, the poor, people of color, immigrants, the homeless and whole swathes of US society will be dragged in to it, including small community businesses.

The resistance will be complicated and uneven but at some point an independent political voice for working people will emerge as the movement seeks organized political expression and it will reach out and take on an international character,

*. Capital, ch. 27 Expropriation of the Agricultural Population From the Land