We Must Combat the Gangs. The Legal Ones

 62 people – 53 men and 9 women – own the same wealth as half the world Oxfam 2016

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

6-7-21

As I get closer to the end of the road on this life journey I often think about the wants and desires people have shared with me, the same desires I have, and not just personal desires but social needs that just never come to fruition.

 

To desire something endlessly is very stressful as a desire has to be met in some way. It’s sort of like the fight or flight response to a stressful situation. It has to be resolved in some way through the confrontation or escape from the danger. It is the human body’s natural response to danger or a situation that leaves little time for discussion and reflection. When we are running to catch a bus that is crucial for getting to that appointment on time, it is a very rare moment indeed that the body decides it’s time to eliminate. The bowel movement is subordinated to the present danger, catching the damn bus.

 

The fight or flight response then is a healthy thing as long as it has a final chapter, fleeing or fighting. But in class society, in our example capitalist society, more often than not there is no resolution and we live in a permanent state of anxiety to one degree or another.

An integral aspect of capitalist society is competition, fear of losing out to someone else, never ending uncertainty and insecurity, and at all times fear of foreigners whoever they may be. We are never safe. And I am not just talking about the poor or those that have the least. In the US especially, living a middle-class life doesn’t guarantee security and everything one has worked for all their life can be gone including that most precious need, a roof over one’s head. One can be a war veteran that US society supposedly reveres, but if you have no money in the US you are worthless. Health care for example is the number one cause of bankruptcy. If you can’t pay, you can’t play as a common saying goes.

 

This fear, coupled with the dominant ideology that we control our own destiny, that where we end up is simply a matter of making the right decisions and if the result is not a good one it’s our own fault, makes us very sick indeed. This dominant ideology in US society is promoted by the mass media the pulpit, the higher education system and so on and we blame ourselves and internalize the anger or direct it at each other rather than at capitalist society that is inherently abusive and antisocial.

 

If we take basic things that any so-called civilized society should provide as a social service, housing, mass transit, health care, education or the basic need to get fixed when you break down, like dental care. Most people want society to provide these things as they are necessities. Where I live no one uses buses except poor people and old people who are both old and poor; the car is king and that is no accident. Many immigrants from the former colonial countries to the south would be dependent on what is a very poor mass transit system.

 

Why can’t US capitalism provide these basic necessities for its citizens?  Why can’t we just vote to change things? The answer is the immense social power of gangs.

 

I’m not talking about MS-13 described by the mass media as an international criminal gang, or the Mexican Mafia, the  Bloods or the Crips  or the Aryan Nations*  and the host of other gangs that the FBI would identify as criminal organizations.  These groups are more often than not the product of social policies.

 

No, I’m talking about legal gangs, thousands of them that represent different sections of the capitalist class and the interests of that class as a whole. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) that has a long history of violence toward workers and unions is one of the oldest. I recommend reading some of the earlier volumes of Philip Foner’s, History of the Labor Movement of the US to find out a little more about the NAM.

 

There’s the US Chamber of Commerce, this is another capitalist gang that represents their interests in society. The US Chamber of Commerce even opposed the formation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, (OSHA) which is a government agency that is supposed to protect workers at US jobsites. On last checking, OSHA has approximately 2,400 inspectors covering more than 8 million workplaces where 130 million workers are employed. It is a toothless organization that shows up when workers die. What sort of organization would oppose that?  One that is hostile to working people is the answer. The Chamber’s yearly spending on bribing politicians to pass laws favorable to business was $94.8 million in 2019.

 

Mass transit in the US is practically non-existent, particularly west of the Mississippi. Some people have a four-hour commute day sitting in freeway traffic. Why is it when most people would support an efficient, affordable national mass transit system that we don’t have one? Well the auto industry would oppose it. The Business Roundtable, another legal gang would oppose it unless investors can reap the rewards. The BRT, made up of CEO’S of major corporations believes that what’s best for business is best for the worker. The Round Table’s yearly bribing costs to safeguard business interests in 2919 were $23.1 million. It has non-profit status.

 

Worried about the cost of life saving drugs in the US? Do you get your prescription drugs from Mexico or Canada? Well the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America ‘s yearly spending bribing legislators as of 2019 was $27.9 million. It has non-profit status.

 

You want a better health care system that doesn’t bankrupt you? You support Medicare for All or a national state provided health care system?  Well, Blue Cross Blue Shield won’t support that unless this insurance company gets a cut and spent $23.6 million bribing legislators in 2019 to safeguard investors in that industry.

 

The American Hospital Association spends $23.9 million a year on lobbying, (the euphemism for bribery when they do i)t as of 2019. These are just a tiny sliver of the thousands of organizations that bribe politicians, pay billions in advertising and basically terrorize our communities through policies that serve the interests of investors and capitalists as opposed to workers, the middle class and our communities. This is a powerful collective force and when you add the police, the judiciary and the prison industrial complex, war is waged against the US working class every minute of every day.

 

The right-wing Wall Street Journal, the prominent voice of US finance Capital, writes about the power of “big labor” and refers to the union officialdom as “union bosses” as if they are bosses in any way similar to the captains of industry. They may well be in their ideology, how they view the world, but they are more a parasitic clique atop the workers’ organizations rather than as bosses vis-à-vis capitalists. I once read them referred to as like the Stalinists of the old Soviet Union but without state power which sounds fairly accurate though I am sure some seasoned leftist will correct me on that.

 

I posted some comments here with regard to the election of Richard Brown as the new president of SEIU 1000 in California, the largest union in the state. The video interview along with it is worth watching. Brown opposes politics completely and argues that building a powerful strike fund is how we can win. But we cannot compete with the capitalist class on their terms. They have the money and organized labor is small potatoes in comparison to the thousands of organizations representing the interests of capital and opposing the interests of workers. Most of all, the state or government, is not a workers’ state, it is a capitalists state. We have capitalist democracy not workers’ democracy and the state will always defend the rights of capital over the rights of labor.

As for money, this article in Portside quoting official AFL-CIO documents, that the AFL-CIO 2018–2019 budget report projected, “$113 million in total revenue for the fiscal year, and about $123 million in spending. This amounts to peanuts when compared to what corporations alone spend. The AFL-CIO report also stated that the largest portion of that budget, “….more than 35 percent—is dedicated to funding political activities…” and that means handing it over to another major capitalist institution, the Democratic Party. The bosses are not afraid of a money war especially when organized workers are providing human resources and money to one of the world’s most powerful capitalist parties through our union dues.

 

What we have is numbers. We are uniquely situated in the process of production to bring that process to a halt. We don’t work and the mighty US economy ceases to function which means profits suffer. It is an attack on profits where we hurt the bosses and how we can win. This is why racism, sexism and all forms of discrimination are so harmful to workers and so useful, albeit controlled, to the capitalist class.

 

All the trendy talk coming from the petit bourgeois in academia about how to talk about racism and books about how to help white workers understand why they are racist, and to overcome their white fragility and all this nonsense is approaching racism with a corporate view and preserving the status quo. It is designed to divide. Malcolm X said that, “You can’t have capitalism without racism”, lets start from there. Capitalism will never eliminate racism or in the US what amounts to color prejudice, as it is the most useful tool for weakening class unity. Religion has been used in the same way and capitalism will not deal with these divide and rule strategies that are used to undermine our collective power.

 

If we want to discuss racism or white supremacy in the US let’s begin with how white supremacy arose in the history of the colonization of this continent and why. How it was created as a means of undermining class solidarity and how fighting against it is in the interest of all working people. If it wasn’t color it would be something else. On what basis would the Irish end up in the same racial category as the English? Only as a means of weakening class solidarity and maintaining social control from above. I strongly recommend reading Theodore Allen’s two volume history, The Invention of the White Race  You can also find useful information on this subject here: Class Struggle. And the Origin of Racial Slavery. Also visit Jeffrey B Perry’s website

 

In my view there is a very strong mood against racism in US society, especially among the youth. Does the reader honestly think the Starbuck boss closed all 200,000 or so stores for a day after a racial incident in order hold their pathetic diversity training if the mood in US society wasn’t against racism. We just witnessed a massive movement over the last three years against police violence and racism. It was a multi-racial movement ignited by the Black Lives Matter response to racist police murders. It was a direct-action movement and the fear of it growing, encompassing more workers and youth, is the reason that Derek Chauvin the cop that murdered George Floyd  was convicted on all counts. There were protests all over the world. US capitalism will respond with the carrot and the stick and the carrot is the most dangerous. The lesson is we must learn through this experience and approach, it the need to build on it and cast its net wider. This is how we respond the capitalist class and its organizations.

 

I began this with a comment on the fight or flight response and how it is a positive thing if it’s resolved through one of those two options. Well, there is no fleeing the capitalist system, it reaches in to every pore of our body, every aspect of our lives, every nook and cranny in nature.

 

So if we can’t escape it, we have only one viable alternative left; we have to fight and we have to build a society, for me a Democratic Socialist society, in which we produce not for profits of a minority, but for social need. A society in which those who work control and manage what we produce, how we produce in a way that is harmonious with nature, and when we produce it. The international working class must seize the time and fulfill the task that history has set for it.

 

*The White Supremacist gangs have to be viewed a little differently as they would have a closer connection to sections of the US ruling class, the root of White Supremacy and would be used and have been used when it serves their interests to the detriment of the white worker. White supremacist organizations have been used against workers organizations, and to break strikes throughout our history even when most of them had racist policies barring black workers.