Working people in the U.S. and around the world have been under
unprecedented attack in the last 25 years, with falling wages, rising
hours of work, high unemployment, millions of jobs reduced to "temp"
work, and social programs such as food stamps and welfare slashed.
The question is, why is all this happening? Two different answers
have been given to this question. Politicians, corporate leaders,
union officials-and Marxists-have one answer. New Democracy has
another.
THE CORPORATE VIEW:
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
Corporate leaders, politicians, and union officials agree: the
current problems of working people stem from America's supposed
economic decline and the emergence of Japan and Germany and other
powerful rivals. The decline of American power has also affected
the public sector, they claim, where a dramatic decrease in tax
revenues and huge federal deficits have made social programs unaffordable.
These leaders also agree on the solution: workers should join
the Company Team and the American Team to beat the competition.
How do we become more "competitive?" Work faster. Take
a pay cut. Surrender medical benefits. Give back Cost Of Living
Allowances. Join a "Quality Circle." Promote Labor-Management
Cooperation. Stop fighting.
THE NEW DEMOCRACY VIEW:
CORPORATE COUNTERREVOLUTION
The facts show the corporate view to be a lie. The last twenty-five
years in fact result from a counterrevolution carried out by the
world elite against the global revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s
and '70s.
Those years witnessed a "revolution of rising expectations"
on many fronts. In the U.S., millions of people mobilized for racial
equality and to oppose the Vietnam War. Workers struck in historic
numbers, and challenged companies and union leaders with wildcat
strikes. In France 10 million workers occupied their factories and
offices. All around the world, East and West, people were rising
up.
In response to the revolutionary upsurge, capitalist and Communist
rulers planned a counterattack. Elite strategy for assuring relative
social peace since World War II had been social reform, rising wages,
and relative prosperity for working people. In the early 1970s,
the Business Roundtable, the Trilateral Commission, and other elite
bodies determined that this strategy had to be abandoned. Their
answer to the revolution of rising expectations was to lower people's
expectations and to go back to a rawer, more brutal form of capitalism.
The problems which working people have suffered in the last
twenty-five years are not problems which the ruling elite are trying
to solve but weapons they have devised to attack working people
in a class war:
*Unemployment is intentionally promoted by the government to make
people frightened and controllable. The government encourages the
shipping of jobs overseas through NAFTA and GATT. It gives tax rebates
to companies to relocate abroad. It encourages corporate takeovers
by giving tax deductions for the massive debt which companies take
on through buyouts.
*Federal deficits created by the sweeping tax cuts and huge defense
budget of the Reagan years were, as Budget Director David Stockman
explained, created as a rationale to destroy New Deal and Great
Society programs which gave workers some defense against the corporate
assault.
*"Slow growth" is elite policy. In 1994, for example,
the Federal Reserve raised interest rates six times to slow economic
growth. The point of slow growth is to keep unemployment high.
*Corporate "downsizing" is not due to competition. Many
companies with record profits have laid off thousands of workers.
WHAT ABOUT "FOREIGN COMPETITION?"
Capital has no loyalty to any country or corporation. It flows
from Tokyo to London to Wall Street in search of profit. The "new
global economy" is really the global elite cooperating more
than ever, using competing corporations as a tool to pit workers
against each other. Where there is no competition, they create it,
as when they deregulated the airlines-to squeeze workers.
*Much of the "foreign competition" is actually jointly
owned by U.S. companies. GM and Ford, for example, own large parts
of Toyota, Nissan, and other "foreign" auto makers.
*The trade deficit-a record $48 billion as of 12/10/96-is a sign
of U.S. strength:
1) more than a third of "foreign" trade is actually from
U.S. corporate operations overseas; 2) the U.S. economy, the strongest
in the world, is "the world's richest ...market...where everyone
wants to sell."
Investors have reaped the rewards of these policies. Ten of the
last 15 years have been the most profitable in U.S. history. In
1995 the Dow Jones stock average hit record highs over 60 times,
even while workers' wages continued to fall to levels not seen since
1958. The stock market has gained over 60% in the last two years.
At the same time, these policies have resulted in an unprecedented
transfer of wealth upward from working Americans to the rich. 55%
of all the wealth created in the US from 1983 to 1989 went to the
richest 1/2 of 1% of US families. The bottom 40% lost $256
billion.(Boston Globe, 10/30/92) There are now 358 billionaires
in the world and they own as much wealth as the bottom 45% of the
world's population.(The Nation, 12/19/94)
MARXISM HAS IT WRONG
Marxist analysis of the last twenty-five years is dead wrong.
Most Marxists agree with corporate leaders that the problems workers
have suffered in these years are effects of international competition.
They see capitalism as driven by its own laws, beyond human control.
Marxists believe capitalism is in an "economic crisis":
unemployment, the federal deficit, slow economic growth are problems
that capitalism is trying to solve but cannot, as it "plods
blindly yet inexorably to ultimate collapse."(New Unionist,
9/96).
WHY IS THE QUESTION IMPORTANT?
How we analyze a situation affects our ability to change it. If
history is driven by blind economic forces, as the Marxists maintain,
there really is very little we can do.
But the history of the past 25 years is not driven by economic
forces beyond human control, but by a struggle between the majority
of the world's people and a powerful world elite acting in concert.
The future of human society depends on the outcome.
The drastic response of the world elite to the revolutionary upsurge
of the 1960s and '70s shows that they have enormous tactical strength.
It also, however, exposes their strategic weakness.
The basis of social stability since the close of WWII has been
people's belief that life would be better for their children than
it is for them. In their drive to reduce people's expectations and
force them to accept a diminished future, the ruling elite have
had to attack the political basis of their power: people's confidence
in the future under elite leadership.
The "crisis" in capitalism is not an economic crisis,
and the problem of the capitalists is not each other. Their problem
is their inability to win the class war. Capitalism is in crisis
because it cannot satisfy people's longing for a fully human society.
We can succeed at revolution. The first condition of our success,
however, is to realize that history is driven not by blind economic
forces but by the struggle of human beings for a fully human existence.
New Democracy works for democratic revolution. Call John
Spritzler (617)566-9637. For free literature: New Democracy, P.
O. Box 427, Boston, MA 02130, USA. E-mail: newdem@aol.com. Web Page:
http://www.newdemocracyworld.org
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