No, it's not a recovery
Workers face crisis & recession
By Milt Neidenberg
Now is the season of our discontent. Anger and frustration
are rising in the ranks of labor and the oppressed
communities.
How could it be otherwise?
The imperialist war against the Iraqi people is mired in a
quagmire and the U.S. economy is shrinking. There is a
systematic decline in the quality of life for workers,
especially in the oppressed communities. The heroic resistance
of the Iraqi people, seen most recently in the incredible
defense of the shrine of Najaf, continues to undermine the
strategy of endless wars for the profits of Wall Street, the
oil barons and the transnational corporations.
Demands on the workers and the oppressed nationalities
continue una bated. It is indisputable that the compelling
issues of war abroad and war at home are intertwined. This will
have serious consequences--economically, politically and
militarily--now and into an unpredictable future.
High-tech military eats up resources
Past and present military spending despite a flagging
economy have sapped U.S. capitalism's resources. The current
$417 billion military budget, passed by a Senate vote of 98-0,
shows how determined the ruling class is to use militarism and
war to solve the crisis.
Both presidential candidates are committed to it.
It won't work. Their investment of $200 billion of
taxpayers' money to rob the Iraqi people of their oil and other
resources is not paying off. Nor are other military adventures
to enslave huge sections of the globe.
Taking money that is desperately needed to provide social
services and spending it instead on the military exacerbates
inflation, hurting the workers, especially the poor and
jobless.
The Pentagon doesn't buy hardware in the open market. Prices
and profits are unlimited for the military-industrial complex.
Militarism ends up being a depressant, not a stimulus, to the
economy.
Marxism teaches that the capitalist cycle of development
goes through phases of crisis, depression, recovery and boom.
Thereafter, a new cycle of crisis inevitably begins, more
devastating and destructive than before. Is the present period
one of recovery, as the bourgeois apologists want us to
believe?
There will be no recovery during an oil crisis. Oil runs the
modern industrial economy. Yet, in two separate headlines on
Aug. 21, the New York Times promoted the lie that a recovery is
in place: "Investors Regain Optimism as Crude Prices Decline"
and "An Oil Shock That Could Also Be an Economic Stimulus."
The articles described how oil prices climbed to almost $50
a barrel before dropping to $47.86--a sign, they say, that the
oil crisis has peaked. This line was parroted in the Wall
Street Journal and other bourgeois media. The stock markets
reflected this short-term optimism by gaining for the week.
Does this so-called drop in oil prices confirm the "soft
patch" theory? This view, that a short downturn in the economy
is now over, is promulgated by Alan Green span and the Federal
Reserve Board.
But it is not true. Only a few weeks ago, when the price of
oil hovered at $40 a barrel, the stock markets shuddered and
plunged below the levels of 2003. Now, with the price near $50,
commentators would have the public believe the economy is in
recovery mode. On the contrary, the current spike in oil prices
has had a depressing effect on the economy.
Higher oil prices stimulate inflation
The Federal Reserve Board is forced to raise interest rates.
This increases the cost of borrowing and investing, dampening
any optimism that the Gross Domestic Product will grow.
Increased oil prices operate as a tax hike on the
worker/consumer, who can least afford higher prices of food and
other necessities. Those hurt most are the lower-paid,
service-oriented workers, mostly oppressed nationalities,
immigrants and women--the majority of the work force. Consumer
spending constitutes two-thirds of the GDP.
Oil prices will remain high, as demand exceeds supply.
Recently, the resistance movement in southern Iraq blew up a
strategic pipeline. This will continue to happen.
The U.S. military machine requires a gigantic amount of oil
to feed a high-tech mobile army, air force, and huge
armadas--particularly aircraft carriers. Gas guzzlers at home
crowd the highways. Capital spending on energy exploration has
lagged badly since the 1980s, and speculators have grabbed onto
oil as a profitable commodity that enables them to influence
price. They can capture the market, raising the specter of
another Enron-type debacle.
If you're one of the more than 11 million unemployed, it's a
recession. If you're a consumer who can't make ends meet, it's
a recession. The March 2001 recession, which, according to the
government, ended in late November 2001, never solved the
unemployment crisis. The heavy loss of good-paying jobs in
manufacturing was followed by a plunge in the technology
sector. The capitalist media, reflecting the downsizing, called
it a "jobless recovery."
The recovery that followed was stimulated by a sharp
reduction in interest rates to 1 percent, the lowest in 45
years. It was a debt-fueled recovery that did not ameliorate
the crisis in the job market. Credit card debt exploded in
2002, rising today to 83 percent of the GDP. (Wall Street
Journal, Aug. 20) Bankruptcies have since increased as
household income declines. Exploitation of the work force
intensified and accelerated the race to the bottom.
The deep, protracted technological revolution and private
ownership of the means of production have displaced millions of
workers. While productivity increases, almost 25 percent of
industry lies idle.
The recession of 2004 has begun. It will not go away.
Clearly the trade unions and the entire working class have
reached an historic turn ing point. A fight back is in the
making.
Truckers' strike spread like wildfire
Between June 28 and July 13 in strategic centers of
transportation, port truckers on the East Coast and the Gulf
Coast parked their rigs in protest of low pay and the high cost
of delivering cargo to and from the ports. They almost shut
down the ports of Boston, Savannah, Ga., Charle ston, S.C., and
Miami.
Job actions disrupted the ports of New York, Newark, N.J.,
Baltimore, New Or leans, Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif.,
according to the June issue of the Dispa t cher, monthly
newsletter of the Inter national Longshore and Warehouse
Union.
This is as close as it gets to a national strike--a strategy
that served the working class well in the 1930s. The drivers
coordinated, centralized and expanded on a tradition that
should be emulated.
These truckers, multinational and unorg anized, who bought
their rigs on the installment plan, are exploited by the same
huge transnational corporations that rule shipping and retail
companies like Wal-Mart. They are in the same boat with
millions of organized and unorganized workers who make up the
strategic sector of low-paid, service-oriented workers.
The truckers want collective bargaining power--a union. But
that is denied them by the government and terminal operators
like Stevedoring Services of America, a Pentagon pet that also
runs Iraq's ports. Their militant action comes in the midst of
war and a campaign of patriotic frenzy about national security
and "terrorism."
Here is an excellent example of a strategy that goes beyond
surrendering to the "do as you're told" management mentality.
It's an opportunity for the anti-war movement and other
progressive forces to support an exemplary workers'
struggle.
Without broad support, the truckers were forced to end their
general strike when a federal court ordered them to cease
engaging in any "conspiracy, combination or violation" of any
provision of the Sherman or Clayton anti-trust acts. Sounds
like a century ago, when workers joining collectively to
bargain over the price of their labor power were called a
conspiracy.
The time is ripe to break the old mold of labor-management
relations. New forms of struggle are necessary to stop the
anti-union, anti-worker offensive. The truckers have set a
splendid example.
The anti-war movement and others fighting for their own
issues should join the laboring masses in one giant class-wide
independent regrouping. Coming together would truly shake the
foundations of the capitalist system, which is based on
exploitation at home and imperialist wars abroad.
Reprinted from the Sept. 2, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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