Whose crisis?

The employment figures for June confirmed the negative trend of earlier months for the U.S. economy and sent the stock markets down for the following few days. More jobs were lost than created. That official unemployment dropped a little was due only to the fact of 600,000 discouraged workers giving up the search for a job and thus ceasing to be counted as unemployed. That’s another sign that the capitalist crisis that began at the end of 2007 is entering its second downturn, as Workers World contributing editor Fred Goldstein pointed out in an article earlier this year, based on a dip in production gains in the first quarter of 2010.

In short, the recovery was a “jobless recovery,” that is, whatever uptick there was in production and profits, jobs continued to be lost.

Now it appears likely that the recovery was only a temporary blip up due to the stimulus funds. So now there may well be another downturn with an even greater loss of jobs.

There is now an argument taking place in the corporate media among establishment economic gurus. On one side are a few Keynesians, who want unemployment insurance extensions and a new stimulus to assist the state and local budgets — in order to rescue the capitalist system from its crisis. On the other side are the majority of neoliberals, most of whom have never done a day of honest work, who argue that unemployment insurance discourages workers from finding (nonexistent) jobs and want to balance budgets on the backs of the working class. They also believe this will revive the capitalist system.

We don’t think the capitalist system deserves to be revived. Nor do we believe either measure that the pro-capitalist pundits are proposing will revive it.

But we do believe that workers’ jobs, livelihood and living standards must be defended. We therefore demand that the Congress immediately extend unemployment benefits; that Washington subsidize state and local budgets so that no jobs are lost, no workers furloughed, no pensions cut; and that education and health care services be maintained.

And that government funds be used to create a massive public jobs program that can immediately employ millions of workers.

As the Greek workers say, “It’s the bosses’ crisis — let them pay for it!”