EDITORIAL
A worker by any other name
Last year the average net worth--what you own minus what you
owe--of people in the United States dropped for the first time
since 1945, when the government started keeping these
statistics. It has declined an additional 4 percent so far this
year.
This news comes on top of revelations that 401(K) retirement
accounts have taken a bath in the stock market, losing 10
percent in value last year. These workers' savings have
continued to evaporate in 2001.
Boosters of capitalism love to advise the better-paid
workers that they are really part of the middle class and have
nothing in common with the most oppressed. It has been a
strategy of the bosses to dilute class consciousness by
offering these workers stock options and other financial
packages instead of pay increases or better benefits. This kind
of compensation for labor is alluring when the stock market is
going up. A few years ago, workers with quickly growing 401(K)
accounts or some other kind of investment nest egg could very
well feel they had moved up socially.
Now reality is setting in with a shock. Workers who thought
their old age was secure, or that they had enough money set
aside for their kids' education or the down payment on a house,
are now looking in disbelief at the erosion of what they had
scrimped to set aside.
Every capitalist crisis teaches profound lessons. The most
important is that workers are a social class with fundamental
interests in common. Our strength lies in our unity, our
ability to act together to protect our interests against the
bosses who exploit us. When workers are induced to think of
themselves as part of some amorphous middle class, based on
income or money in the bank, they lose this sense of identity
with others who are exploited.
When investments go sour, who can you unite with to regain
what you have lost? No one. It's each investor alone--dog eat
dog--and in the long run all are at the mercy of the really big
capitalists. But when workers unite and organize they can force
the bosses to grant concessions like raising pay, improving
conditions, cutting the workday. An increase in base pay is a
sure thing; a stock option is just a lottery ticket.
It's the people we work alongside every day who are our
natural allies in these increasingly hard times. Build
solidarity in struggle with them and you've got something.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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