[Peace-discuss] Making workers pay

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The following is a good but not unusual prognosis - if you're not constrained 
by the narrow limits of allowable debate in US political discourse. (For a 
typical example of the latter, see Fred Giertz' awful piece on the national 
economy in this morning's N-G, about how "the recovery is going to be much more 
slower" [sic].) What's remarkable about it is that it appeared in Australia's 
oldest general-circulation daily, the Sydney Morning Herald, which has a 
generally conservative editorial stance. Can you imagine its appearing in the 
NYT or the WaPo? I can't. --CGE]

2010: a class odyssey
John Passant
December 31, 2010

During 2010 the third phase of the global financial crisis – making workers pay 
– began to play itself out.

Capital in Europe has used and is using its parliamentary dominance — it doesn't 
matter whether reformists or conservatives are in power – to attack their 
working classes. While there have been magnificent strikes and demonstrations, 
the lack of a genuine mass revolutionary party to provide guidance to the class 
and learn from it has allowed the reformists to sidetrack the fightbacks and 
ultimately accept capital's attacks.

It may be a holding pattern if the left begins to build out of the turmoil and 
the attacks continue and deepen. Given the stagnant rate of profit across the 
developed world this seems likely, especially with capital witnessing the 
present defensive withdrawal of the European working class from the field of battle.

In the US, President Barack Obama, as the representative of one wing of 
business, has continued the policies and practices of the other wing of 
business. Official unemployment is stuck at almost 10 percent and the real 
figure is, according to political commentator Noam Chomsky, double that. 
<http://permaculture-media-download.blogspot.com/2010/12/noam-chomsky-on-economy-us-midterm.html>

One in seven Americans — 43 million people – are on food stamps, 30 million 
working Americans earn less that $9.80 an hour, which itself is barely enough 
for one person to just live on. American workers and their unions have by and 
large accepted cuts to wages and conditions under the mistaken belief this will 
save their jobs.

In Australia, the Labor Government after an election in August just held on to 
office with the support of three independents and a Green. There was a 
noticeable swing to the Greens in disgust at three years of the Labor's abject 
capitulation to capital.

One thing is clear. The ongoing degeneration of the Labor Party into a 
completely neo-liberal organisation continues apace. It is arguably now just 
another party of the bourgeoisie, irrespective of its formal links to the 
working class through the trade union bureaucracy. Even there the situation is 
changing as some bureaucrats in the union movement begin a hunt for "real" Labor 
both outside and inside the ALP.

The ongoing boom in Australia, courtesy of China's growth and our minerals, long 
unpaid hours, high levels of debt and an historic shift of national income going 
to capital at labour's expense have shielded Australian workers and governments 
from the crises enveloping the rest of the developed world.

It cannot last forever given that China is dependent on US and European 
consumers for much of its wealth. And when circumstances do change the two 
parties of capital – the ALP and the Liberals – stand ready to take the axe to 
public services.

The attacks on public services across Europe mark the end of the grand 
compromise between capital and labour in Europe after WWII, social security and 
welfare systems built on the long boom. Until now dismantling those systems has 
been piecemeal. Today the continued profitability of capital demands a full 
frontal attack.

Australia might be shielded at the moment but it too is only a few years away 
from this savage dismantling.

Globally, 2 billion people are starving or malnourished while more than enough 
is produced to feed every man, woman and child on the planet. What greater 
indictment can there be of a system that has failed?

The contradictions of nation-based capital in a system of global production mean 
that real action on climate change will not and cannot occur – other than 
perhaps individual ruling classes imposing the costs of capitals' pollution on 
workers. Systemic imperialist rivalry between the declining US and a rising 
China destroyed Copenhagen and allowed Cancun little.

The decline of US economic dominance continued and the centre of production, 
finance and profitability moved more clearly to Asia, in particular China. With 
US defence spending equal to the combined total of the next 16 biggest armed 
nations, American imperialism will try to retain global superiority and contain 
China through military as well as diplomatic and economic means. That has 
already been occurring with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the war 
games off the Korean coast — all part of US imperialism's China encirclement 
strategy.

But the growing economic power of China also means that the US ruling class will 
look to extract more and more profit out of its own workforce to counterbalance 
China's strength. The attacks on American workers will intensify even further. 
The "enemy" at home threatens the American ruling class as much as the enemy abroad.

Imperialism has met setbacks. In Central and South America popular left-wing 
movements have challenged, or been pushed to challenge, the rule of both 
domestic and international capital. These struggles have within them the 
potential to destroy capitalism but the situation remains fluid and inchoate, 
not least because of the lack of a mass revolutionary socialist organisation of 
the working class to push the movements forward and confront if necessary the 
populist leaders.

WikiLeaks has exposed our rulers for the liars the left has always argued they 
are. The ferocious response of power to the release of "secret" information and 
the attempts to frame WikiLeaks head Julian Assange and calls for his 
assassination all show that there is but a thin veneer of democracy that 
attaches to most Western countries.

Yet while the class is sullen, watching and waiting, it is not bowed. If there 
is any hope it lies with the proles.

That hope can only be built through the working class establishing its own 
political parties to tear the head off the bourgeoisie and destroy their 
crisis-ridden system – a system of war and poverty.

In Australia you should consider joining Socialist Alternative in the fight for 
a better world free of their system's war and poverty, free of sexism and racism 
and homophobia, a world where production is organised democratically to satisfy 
human need.

This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in En Passant with 
John Passant.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/2010-a-class-odyssey-20101231-19bjj.html