[PAA-Discuss] Is Capitalism on the Ropes?

[Ron and Kris Graham]

I still say that Cynthia McKinney should seek face time with the heads of
ALL labor unions and talk with them honestly, intelligently and from the
heart about the very real problems facing working Americans today. The labor
movement MUST get behind working men and women and stand up to the corporate
powers that be, otherwise we will continue to see the poor get the shaft,
the middle class decimated and the wealthiest among us get even wealthier.

 

Cynthia did not answer my question the other night about getting in front of
union leaders to my satisfaction. Some of us attended the screening of the
movie, Rethink Afghanistan at HIFC and Cynthia took questions after the
movie. I mentioned Eugene Debs and how he joined a union and rallied railway
workers and how she might get her message in front of workers by getting
face time with union leaders. Cynthia said she was shut out of unions
because they only support Democrats. I think she should still try to get in
front of union leaders and talk with them. I really like Cynthia and respect
her for walking her talk, but I think she¡¯s making a major mistake by not
engaging union leaders AND workers of all stripes. The only way I can see
that we are going to get out of this mess we¡¯re in is if workers stand up
and refuse to continue to support an unjust system that exploits them on a
daily basis and if they demand another type of system that respects and
protects all people and the natural world.

 

I spoke with Cynthia about a mass worker strike and also about some other
scenarios that might change the status quo. If she could get her message in
front of workers and get unions behind that message I think we¡¯d stand a
chance at changing the system.

 

Cynthia is very intelligent, has been in Congress and knows the ins and outs
of the inner workings of that body and she has the courage of her
convictions and the guts to speak out about the inequality and inhumanity
she sees not only here in the United States but all over the world. I don¡¯t
know of anyone better to carry the banner for working people and really for
all disenfranchised people than Cynthia McKinney.

 

Please read the article below and comment on it. Also, give me your thoughts
on Cynthia McKinney and the benefit of her getting in front of labor union
leaders and workers and having lengthy discussions about the crisis in our
economic, political and social systems brought on not only by the inherently
unfair and unjust system of capitalism we have but also because of the
United States and its imperial designs on every part of the world that has
something it covets (which is really related to the number 1 problem:
CAPITALISM). Capitalism = Greed.

 

Thanks.

 

Kris

 

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/10/is-capitalism-on-the-ropes/

 


Is Capitalism on the Ropes?


Interview with Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff

by Mike Whitney / October 29th, 2009

Mike Whitney: In your new book, The ABCs
<http://www.monthlyreview.org/books/abcsoftheeconomiccrisis.php>  of the
Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know, you allude to right wing
think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise
Institute, which promote a ¡°free market¡± ideology. How successful have
these organizations been in shaping public attitudes about capitalism? Do
you think that attitudes are beginning to change now that people understand
the role that Wall Street and the big banks played in creating the crisis? 

Michael Yates: Corporate America began to wage what turned out to be a
one-sided war against working people in the mid-to late-1970s, when it
became apparent that the post-World War Two ¡°Golden Age¡± of U.S.
capitalism was over. As profit rates fell, businesses began to develop a
strategy for restoring them. This strategy had many prongs, and one of them
was ideological, that is, a struggle for ¡°hearts and minds,¡± to use a
military term now being applied to Afghanistan. The presumed failure of
Keynesian economics, marked by the simultaneous existence of escalating
inflation and unemployment, gave the ideological struggle its foundation.
Maybe there had been too many restrictions placed on the market, and these
restrictions (minimum wages, health and safety regulations, laws
facilitating union organizing in labor markets; public assistance in the
form of money grants, housing subsidies, and the like; restrictions on the
flow of money internationally) had led to results opposite those that
liberal Keynesians had thought most likely. If these complex arguments could
be tied to simple clich¨¦s, like ¡°get the government off our backs,¡± ¡°the
unions have gotten too powerful¡± (with always a hint that they are too
radical thrown into the argument), and ¡°welfare queens¡± (with that always
popular whiff of racism), they could provide ideological cover for what was
really a matter of corporate economics, namely the making of money.

This ideological attack bore fruit quickly. President Carter appointed Paul
Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Volcker, under
the guise of fighting inflation, immediately began to snuff the life out of
working class communities by forcing interest rates up to nearly 20 percent.
Today, Volcker is treated like a hero by Democrats and above reproach
(though ignored by President Obama¡¯s more right-wing economic advisors),
which shows just how far to the right economic discourse has moved. What
Carter began, Reagan completed, firing the Air Traffic Controllers and
putting the nail in labor¡¯s coffin. Behind the scenes in all of this and
growing in strength for the next twenty years (funded by wealthy business
leaders) or so were the right-wing think tanks you mention. Just as retired
generals go to work for military contractors and defeated politicians become
lobbyists, government economic advisors get jobs at Heritage or the American
Enterprise Institute or the Cato Institute. The staffs of these ideological
centers churn out endless position papers and studies, which find their way
into our newspapers and the offices of our congresspersons. A gigantic
network of professors, journalists, politicians, lobbyists, and, today, a
television network (Fox) bombard us with right-wing propaganda. That all of
this has been successful is seen by the fact that the shibboleths of
neoliberalism¡ªsuch as the needs for privatization of public entities, the
free reign of markets, the obviousness of the success of welfare reform, the
evils of raising the minimum wage¡ªare all commonplaces today.

While the public now knows that something is rotten, I am not sure that
neoliberal ideas are so under attack that they will lose their sway. I think
that the tenacity of these ideas owes something to the lack of an
ideological alternative, which, in turn, is due to the abject failure of
organized labor to provide one. For example, we need universal health care.
Labor, however, has not consistently argued in favor of this or supported it
at all. Now Congress is poised to enact healthcare legislation that might
well be worse than the profit-driven system we have all come to hate. Labor
should refuse to support this legislation, but I doubt it will. Then, when
the new healthcare plans fail to deliver the goods, the right-wing will be
lying in wait, ready to pounce and say, ¡°See, we told you so. The
government always makes things worse.¡± In other words, until there is a
radical ideology to replace right-wing thinking, the latter is unlikely to
lose its drawing power.

Fred Magdoff: Although these institutions were very successful, along with a
number of other forces, in shaping public attitudes toward the economy, the
reality of the current severe economic conditions are causing many,
including some economists, to rethink their views of how ¡°efficiently¡±
markets function in the real world (as opposed to their ideological
make-believe world) and that some different approaches may be needed. People
seem to understand that the ¡°big players¡± played a major role in the
crisis, but most of the anger has been placed on the outrageous salaries of
the top echelon. Of course, this is just ¡°chump change¡± compared to the
massive amounts at that are transferred to the wealthy through the
speculative casino that our economy has become.

¡¡
MW: Socialism has a huge public relations problem. Wouldn¡¯t you agree that
socialism has been effectively discredited in the U.S. media and that, even
now¨Cwith unemployment soaring at 10 percent and more than 300,000
foreclosures per month¨Cthe average American worker still believes in the
virtues of capitalism? How do you explain this phenomenon?

Michael Yates: Part of my answer here can be seen in my response to your
first question. Socialism has, indeed, been discredited here, partly due to
its rejection by its natural supporter, namely the labor movement. The CIO
expelled in the late 1940s and early 1950s the left-wing forces who built
the great industrial unions. When it did this, it abandoned the
worker-centered ideology that might have laid the basis for support here for
at least the kind of social democracy we find in the Scandinavian nations.
This left the ideological field to the enemies of social democracy and
socialism. Of course, we cannot ignore the long and inglorious history of
police-state repression of those persons and organizations that championed
socialism. Our government has never hesitated to arrest, imprison, and even
kill the enemies of capitalism. So it has been dangerous to be a radical
here, though not so much today when radical ideas aren¡¯t taken seriously
and there are no powerful radical organizations left. Suppose that after the
Second World War, the left in the labor movement had grown, and the left-led
unions had continued to successfully organize workers and win good
collective bargaining agreements. Suppose that they had built upon their
impressive worker education programs, made inroads in the South, and fought
hard against U.S. imperialism and the Cold War. We might have a much
different political terrain on which to fight today.

Two other factors that must be considered in the attachment of the working
class to capitalism are racism and imperialism. In the past, employers
routinely pitted white workers against black, and one weapon they used was
to associate black workers (and the civil rights movement) with communism
(It was interesting to note in this connection the attempts to make Obama
out to be a radical socialist). The claim that black union supporters were
reds helped to solidify white support for capitalism. By the same token,
anti-imperialist struggles in the poor nations of the world (often former
colonies of the rich countries) were typically led by political radicals.
These could be made out to be anti-American, and then those in the United
States who allied themselves with these struggles could also be labeled
anti-American, despite the fact that they might also be supportive of
policies that would benefit working people. The schools and the media could
be counted out not to try to set anyone straight on any of this.

Now, having said this, I must also say that to the extent that left forces
in the United States identified themselves uncritically with the former
Soviet Union and its extremely undemocratic political system, they sometimes
played into the hands of those opposed to socialism. And I must also admit
that socialist forces were, at their strongest, never powerful enough here
to force their best ideals permanently into the consciousness of the working
class majority. Finally, in the past, the success of capitalism in the
United States allowed for some sharing of the wealth with workers, and this,
too, made people less willing to entertain radical ideas.

Old and deeply ingrained ideas die hard, and unless there are forces at work
to develop new ones and unless there is at least widespread experimentation
with new ways to organize production and distribution, little is likely to
change, even in the face of economic catastrophe, such as so may working men
and women are facing right now. Quite the contrary, workers might be
persuaded that actions detrimental to their long-term self-interest need to
be taken, such as, for example, draconian measures against immigrants.

Fred Magdoff: There is no question that the term socialism has a public
relations problem. But while it¡¯s true that most people don¡¯t fully
understand the basic workings of the capitalist system nor what socialism
is, there are indications that many people are ready to talk about
alternatives¡ªand that includes socialism. The positive public response to
Michael Moore¡¯s movie, Capitalism, is one indication. But a Rasmussen poll
last spring found that only 58% of American¡¯s say that capitalism is better
than socialism. For adults under 30, 37% preferred capitalism and 33%
preferred socialism. It¡¯s not clear what the poll results really mean. But
it does indicate that people are willing to hear about and talk about
alternatives to capitalism.
¡¡
MW: In a chapter titled ¡°Neoliberalism¡± you focus on the disparity of
wealth in the US today. Here¡¯s an excerpt:

By 2006 the top 1 percent of households received close to a quarter of all
income and the top 10 percent got 50 percent of the income pie. In 2006, the
400 richest Americans had a collective net wealth of $1.6 trillion, more
than the combined wealth of the bottom 150 million people. This degree of
income and wealth inequality was last seen just before the beginning of the
Great Depression. (pg 50)

Let¡¯s ignore the moral issue for now, and focus on the supply/demand
question. Is it possible for an economy to produce sufficient demand when
more and more of the wealth and income goes to the upper 5 or 10 percent of
the population? (isn¡¯t this proof that capitalism is inherently
crisis-prone?)

Michael Yates: If a certain amount of output is produced, an equal amount of
income is generated. So, conceptually, there could be enough demand to buy
the output, no matter that the incomes generated are getting more unequally
distributed. It certainly has been the case that the rich people now getting
such a large share of the pie spend gobs of money. And rich foreigners spend
a great deal of money in the United States as well. However, the rich also
save a lot of money (the more they get, the more they save), and this money
does not enter immediately into the spending flow. Working people, on the
other hand, can be counted on, by virtue of the limited income that they
command, to spend all of their income. Therefore, the more income the rich
have, the more savings there will be, and, unless some way is found to
convert all this saving into spending on newly-produced goods and services,
the more likely it is that there will be a crisis caused by not enough
spending (and its corollaries of unsold goods and services and unemployed
labor). If we understand that growing inequality is the normal trajectory of
capitalist economies, a trajectory only mitigated by the power of organized
working people to win a bigger share of the pie for themselves and to compel
the government to intervene in the marketplace on their behalf, then it is
correct to say that capitalist economies are crisis-prone for this reason
alone.

Growing inequality also creates other potential problems for the system.
Sometimes it can generate a political crisis, a crisis of legitimacy so to
speak. The rich exert tremendous political power, and this power grows as
those at the top command a larger and larger share of a society¡¯s income.
To the rest of us, the game looks increasingly rigged, with us having little
chance to improve our circumstances through individual efforts. More
inequality also has harmful social and economic consequences that we don¡¯t
normally think of. Recent research has shown that if we compare two entities
(two states in the United States, for example) with equal average incomes
but different degrees of inequality, then the place with more unequal
incomes will also have higher rates of infant mortality, arrest and
imprisonment, school dropouts, low infant birth weights, and many other
measures of social well-being. Growing inequality actually kills some of us,
makes some of us sicker, and puts some of us in jail.

I want to add an important point. To say that capitalist economies are
crisis-prone, because of a tendency toward income inequality or whatever
other reason, is not the same as saying that these economies are on their
deathbeds, no matter how severe a crisis may be. It is possible for an
economy to exist in a crisis or a prolonged period of slow growth
(stagnation) without it being ready to collapse. In the end, it is political
struggle, that is, class struggle, that truly destabilizes an economy and
generates conditions in which it is possible to imagine the birth of a new
system.

Fred Magdoff: It is one of the many contradictions of the system. If
ordinary folk are paid well they can buy a lot of stuff and help keep the
system going. So from the point of view of the system as a whole, higher
paid workers would help the economy. However, there is only one driving
force for individual capitalists¨Cand that¡¯s to make as much money as
possible. What might be better for the overall economy can be of no concern
to the individual trying to maximize profits. For an analogy, let¡¯s take a
look at ocean fishing. Almost every fish species is being fished to the
point at which the population crashes. It would make sense for all of the
companies operating the large trawlers to cooperate and fish less in order
to preserve the resource on which they depend. So what¡¯s good for their
long-term future is sacrificed as each individually tries to maximize their
catch and therefore profits.

MW: Here¡¯s another excerpt from the book: ¡°In 2006, the financial sector
employed about 6 percent of the workers but ¡®produced¡¯ 40 percent of the
profits of all domestic firms.¡±(pg 56) A few paragraphs later you add that,
¡°Making money without actually making something turned out to be the
largest growth sector of the U.S. economy from the early 1980s to the
present crisis.¡±

This seems to imply that as manufacturing and other parts of the ¡°real¡±
economy have become less lucrative, the trading of paper assets has become
Wall Street¡¯s new profit-center, the Golden Goose. What impact has the
¡°financialization¡± of the economy had on ordinary working people?

Michael Yates: I think that an answer here has two parts. First, it was the
neoliberal ¡°revolution¡± begun in the 1970s that did immense harm to
working people. For example, unionization rates began to fall dramatically
in the 1980s, as Reagan began his ¡°magic of the marketplace¡± assault on
the working class. Real wages (the purchasing power of our paychecks) began
to stagnate in the 1970s and are not much higher today than then. Relatively
high-wage public employment began to endure a long period of privatization,
which also damaged working class living standards. The move toward ¡°free
trade¡± did workers here no good, as manufacturing began to flee our shores
for low-wage havens abroad. None of these things had to do with
financialization per se.

Second, however, once the neoliberal attack on working class living
standards took hold and incomes began to flow upward, those with a great
deal more money began to look for ways to put this money to work. The
corporations that they owned also had higher profits, and they did the same.
The United States has always had a robust financial sector, though in the
past, it was not the tail that wagged the dog as far as our system of
production and distribution was concerned. Neoliberalism brought with it a
deregulation of international movements of money and goods and services. [It
is important to note that we see neoliberalism as a political response to
capital¡¯s quest for restored profits beginning in the mid-1970s when the
post-Second World War two economic boom ended and the slow growth
(stagnation) common to mature capitalist economies reasserted itself.]
These, in turn, required a certain amount of financial innovation, to
reduce, for example, the risks of fluctuations in currency exchange rates
and sharp changes in political conditions that could threaten investments.
>From these innovations came still more, until finance began to take on a
life of its own. And while neoliberalism and direct corporate actions inside
workplaces did reduce costs and raise profits, they did not create nearly
enough capital spending opportunities (investment) to absorb the growing
individual savings and business profits. Finance of one kind or another then
began to be seen as a place to dispose of surplus and make still more money.
Leveraged buyouts, stock market speculations, real estate ¡°investments,¡±
all took off from the 1980s on, absorbing money that could not find enough
opportunities in the real economy of production. As these things happened,
financial ¡°innovation¡± exploded, with all of the alphabet soup of
financial instruments we describe in our book.

This explosion of finance proved detrimental to working people in a number
of ways. Leveraged buyouts inevitably resulted in the hollowing out of what
were often perfectly viable businesses. Companies were saddled with debt,
assets were stripped and sold, and workers were furloughed by the tens of
thousands. The inflation of asset values gave rise to the notion that it was
the job of managers to increase the share price of their businesses¡ªin any
way possible. Businesses came to be thought of as mere collections of assets
rather than entities that produced things. Asset inflation gave rise to
asset speculation and the development of ever more complex financial
instruments, all leading sooner or later to financial bubbles and the
inevitable bursting of the bubbles. As we have seen, the bursting of
financial bubbles has had tremendously negative impacts on working people:
shuttered workplaces and unemployment to name but the primary ones. The last
bubble, in real estate markets, was harmful to workers not only after it
burst but also as it was developing. In the aftermath of the dot.com bubble,
Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Fed Board of Governors, directed Fed
policy to pressure interest rates down to very low levels. This helped to
push loose money into real estate. As house prices began to rise, banks and
brokers started to encourage working people to do two things: borrow money
against the appreciated value of their homes and buy homes, either as
first-time buyers or as purchasers of more expensive homes (after selling
old ones). Working people were eager to do both because they saw houses as
sources of cash to compensate for stagnating household incomes and as a form
of wealth that could help secure them against the hazards of ill health,
lost pensions, or college-age children needing money for school. Working
class households began to take on large amounts of debt, making themselves
more vulnerable, even as they thought they were making wise financial
decisions. Ironically, those who saw their incomes rise so high because of
neoliberalism were now, in effect, loaning money to those who didn¡¯t fare
so well. As banks accumulated mortgages, farsighted Wall Street swindlers
saw golden opportunities to develop a slew of new financial instruments
based upon the packaging and repackaging of mortgages into new and exotic
instruments. Greenspan played their shill, arguing that they had uncovered
the secret of hedging infallibly against risk. From here it was but a short
step to the criminal schemes of Countrywide and a host of other financial
institutions. The billions of dollars made were used not only to finance a
new gilded age of revoltingly lavish consumption but to corral the most
tractable politicians money could buy.

Fred Magdoff: Financialization of the economy created the possibilities for
people to take on more and more debt¡ªcredit cards, new cars, 2nd mortgages,
etc. It was the selling of a lifestyle way beyond people¡¯s ability to pay
for it plus the easy access of loans that created the bind that many people
find themselves in today. In essence, it allowed people to live beyond their
means. They were encouraged to take on debt as their house values seemed
headed up forever, and the great rise in foreclosures and bankruptcies is
the unfortunate result of the financialization of the economy. Also, those
people who had retirement money in individual accounts or with pension
systems and thought that they had become very wealthy, now found themselves
with much less to rely upon.

MW: In the last couple of decades, consumer debt has skyrocketed, as you
note, ¡°doubling from 1975 to 2005, to 127 percent of disposable income.¡±
(pg 60) Have we gone as far as we can without deleveraging and paying down
debts? What happens to a credit-dependent economy when the consumer can no
longer increase his/her debt-load? Is this just the beginning of a
decades-long down-cycle?

Michael Yates: Certainly no entity¡ªnot a person, a family, a business, even
a government¡ª can take on rising levels of debt (relative to income)
indefinitely. Sooner or later, the piper has to be paid. Working-class
consumers took on large amounts of debt, to compensate in part for
stagnating wages and incomes, and, it is important to note, to pay for
health problems and other household traumas. This meant that the burden of
the debt rose, since income wasn¡¯t rising as fast as the debt, and also
because the interest rates charged on credit cards and subprime mortgages
were so high. We at Monthly Review have been decrying the rise of consumer
debt for many years, and we said that the debt chickens would come home to
roost sooner of later. I must say that I was surprised that debt could be
broadened and deepened for so long. The ingenuity of creditors in extending
loan periods and devising so many new forms of debt has to be admired for
its audacity. Then, the ways in which these debts were packaged and sold so
that more debt could be extended was truly breathtaking. Unfortunately,
consumers ultimately couldn¡¯t pay and all hell broke loose. Now, with so
much unemployment, workers are truly strapped. They will not be borrowing so
much or spending so much anytime soon. [One interesting recent development
is that, as some households have defaulted on debts or simply stopped making
payments, consumer spending has showed a bit of an upward tick!] So the
question arises: what spending will fuel a sustained recovery? It won¡¯t
likely be consumer spending. Capital spending was stagnating to begin with
and was the root cause of the crisis. There are no new ¡°epoch-making¡±
innovations on the horizon that would generate the amounts of investment
that were brought forth by the automobile. U.S. exports seem a very unlikely
demand support. That leaves the government. In a capitalist economy,
especially one like the United States with its lack of a history of
generally accepted public spending, it seems very unlikely that public
spending will make up for shortfalls in aggregate demand. Already, there are
widespread entreaties (and not just from the far right) urging the federal
government to wind down in spending programs¡ªwell before, I might add, the
economy has recovered. As we see it, the United States is, indeed, in for a
long period of stagnation, a ¡°down cycle¡± as you put it.

Fred Magdoff: This is one of the major constraints on the system. The
economy is in a process that economists call ¡°deleveraging,¡± which is just
another way of referring to somehow getting rid of debt. Some are able to
pay off what they owe, a few are able to renegotiate down some of their
debt, many are losing their homes, and some are going bankrupt. Until this
works its way out, and a lot of debt is shed one way or another, there will
be a drag on the ¡°consumer¡± portion of the purchases. This is particularly
significant to the U.S. economy because it is so dependent on consumer
purchases¡ªin 2007, these absorbed approximately 70% of the goods and
services produced.

MW: The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know is as
lucid and compelling summary of the financial crisis as any I have read. In
the closing chapter you state that capitalism is undergoing a ¡°crisis of
legitimacy¡± and that ¡°the system can never deliver what is needed for us
to realize our capacities and enjoy our lives¡­ That ¡°instead of private
gain¡± the purpose of society and the economy is ¡°to serve the needs of
people, by providing the necessities of life for all, without promoting
excessive consumption (consumerism) while protecting earth¡¯s life support
systems.¡±

All of the things that which kept capitalism in check¨Cprogressive taxation,
crucial regulations, and the power of unions¨Chave either been reversed,
repealed or greatly eroded. More and more people are beginning to see the
greed which governs the system, and it scares them. But is the country
really ready for structural change or will the vision of an economy which
¡°serves the needs of its people¡± be dismissed as ¡°pie-in-the-sky¡±
Utopianism?

Michael Yates: Well, first thank you Mike for the kind words. They are much
appreciated. Typically, the best we have been able to hope for from the
public in the United States has been an amorphous populism; people are
willing to say that the system is corrupt and that it is biased in favor of
the rich. But proposals for change, much less a radical transformation of
the economic system, are rare commodities. I think things would be
different, however, if we had a real labor movement, one that was rooted in
communities, broad in its composition, and not afraid to have principles and
stand by them come hell or high water. This should be the lesson that
progressives learned from the right-wing. The talking heads of Fox may seem
insane to us, but they and their intellectual gurus almost never deviate
from the set of reactionary principles with which they began to transform
the ¡°common sense¡± of the nation. We suggest at the end of our book that
we ought to ask ourselves if a return to the pre-economic crisis status quo
is what we want. In the best of times, there is plenty of unutilized labor,
a degraded environment, poverty, dead-end jobs, and much more that is not so
desirable. So we chose a number of alternative outcomes to what we have now
that we think have mass appeal, from universal healthcare to basic food
guarantees. However, as you say, these might well, and I think will cause
people to react with a pie-in-the-sky indifference. What might make working
men and women stand up and take notice would be for these goals to have a
mass-based advocate, one that would make these goals matters of rigid
principle and begin to fight for them through mass actions. We might think
that the right-wing ideologues we see on television are insane. Yet, come
hell or high water, they stick to their guns. Their political and economic
adherents have wielded tremendous power for a long period of time, and even
today when they seem to be losing their grip on the national ¡°common
sense,¡± they can still mobilize the faithful. The left needs to take a
lesson from this. More particularly, the labor movement must take a firm and
rigid stand on issues like national health care, food security,
environmental degradation, full employment, good and cheap housing, U.S.
war-making and imperialism, racism, and a host of others. Then it must
educate members rigorously and constantly about such principles. Most
importantly, it must begin to actively fight to achieve them, activating its
millions of members and allies, wherever it can find them. It is through
action, bold and unafraid, that people¡¯s minds will get changed and a new
¡°common sense¡± developed.

Having said this, I think it is clear that the labor movement, as currently
constituted, is not up to the tasks at hand. Too many unions are moribund,
stuck in the failed labor-management cooperation mind set of the past and
run by people too old and infirm to do much of anything. So, not only will
we have to have a worker-led opposition to the status quo, fighting to
change it radically, but this opposition will have to be built on a new
basis. There are some hopeful signs, such as the development of
community-based worker centers, mainly in immigrant communities. These may
be models for the labor movement of the future.

Fred Magdoff: Just getting what should be the most reasonable reforms
through Congress is a major effort, which usually fails or is corrupted in
the process. Look what¡¯s happening with health care ¡°reform.¡± Even if a
¡°public option¡± is finally part of the bill, it will be a bill that helps
some people, but is primarily a boon to the health care industry, which will
get a lot of new revenue. It¡¯s not a bill designed with the single purpose
in mind: how can we supply medical care for everyone at reasonable cost.
Rather it¡¯s a bill designed with significant input from the for-profit
sector that will end up supplying them with extra profits. It is clear that
government-run systems (and there are a variety of ways to do this) are far
cheaper and more efficient and can actually cover everyone. SO, it seems as
though piecemeal reform is a) very difficult to obtain and b) can be
reversed as the power of the wealthy increases. A system is needed that can
break the power of the wealthy and create a real political and economic
democracy in order to be able to meet the basic needs for all the people.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at:
fergiewhitney at msn.com. Read other articles by
<http://dissidentvoice.org/author/MikeWhitney/>  Mike, or visit Mike's
website <http://> .

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://paa-tx.org/pipermail/discuss_paa-tx.org/attachments/20091029/c21b4329/attachment.htm>