(Militant International Review, No. 57, August 1994)
Militant Labour General Secretary Peter Taaffe, a recent visitor to the US, examines the perspectives for the world’s greatest superpower.
‚The American tradition is based on expectations of rising wealth. Large parts of the population are now faced with the reality of being poorer than their parents or even grand parents‘ (Financial Times).
Leon Trotsky once commented that Britain was the country in which the ‚religion of capitalist progress‘ was strongest. Such ideas however began to fade in Britain with the economic decline of British capitalism and with it the living standards of the mass of the population, particularly in comparison to its counterparts in Europe, Japan and the US. The position formerly occupied by Britain was taken by the USA during the long 1950-75 post-war economic expansion. Despite the shock of the recessions of 1974-75 and 1979-81, the idea of an unlimited vista on the basis of capitalism held sway amongst broad sections of the population. The ‚Reagan boom‘ of the 1980s seemed to re-enforce the notion that today is better than yesterday and tomorrow will be even better. However during the hollow ‚boom‘ of the 1980s millions of US workers were also plunged into an abyss of poverty and deprivation. A growth in the army of poor, particularly amongst blacks and Latinos, was the other side of the amassing of obscene and unprecedented wealth by the billionaires who hold the destiny of the USA in their hands.
The 1980s witnessed the greatest disparity between rich and poor in the history of the USA. The real wages of blue-collar workers were stagnant or actually declined relatively in the last 15 years. Workers were only able to keep abreast of the rise in the cost of living through overtime, taking part-time jobs (sometimes two or three other jobs) and by extending their working week, sometimes to 80 hours a week!
On top of this came the recession from 1991-93, associated in the minds of the US population with Republican president Bush. It was this that lead to his downfall. However, there were not great expectations in Clinton prior to his election. He in fact received less of the vote than the defeated Democratic candidate Dukakis in the 1988 presidential elections. Yet his assumption of the presidency did generate certain expectations, although not any great enthusiasm that he could decisively change things.
Amongst organised labour however the top trade union leadership tried to feed the illusion that the coming to power of Clinton opened up a more favourable era for working people. But such hopes have been quickly dashed as Clinton has more and more demonstrated that he is as much a tool of big business as his predecessor.
The NAFTA debate, which pitted the organised trade union movement against Clinton and his congressional and senate supporters, opened up what the Wall Street Journal called a ‚class struggle‘. Clinton quickly moved to mend his fences with organised labour following this clash. Lane Kirkland, the head of the AFL-CIO, was invited to the White House, took a walk in the rose garden, and declared that the Clinton presidency was now ‚an oasis‘ for organised labour. But it will take more than honeyed words to reconcile organised labour to this administration. The grim realities of everyday life on the shop-floor are sharpening the already existing class gulf which has begun to open up.
The US working class has not yet developed to the stage of consciousness of its European counterparts. It is in the words of Karl Marx ‚a class in itself‘ but not yet ‚a class for itself‘. When Marx used the term ‚a class in itself‘ he referred to the objective existence of a class. But the US working class, at least its great majority, are not conscious of themselves as a class separate and counterposed to the ruling class. It is not yet a ‚class for itself‘.
A rounded-out class consciousness is in its first stages of development, and only amongst some sections of the working class. Nevertheless, the NAFTA debate, followed by the teamsters‘ strike, the threat of a railway workers‘ strike, and turbulence on the shop-floor because of the attempt by the employers to intensify the exploitation of the working class, is resulting in a growing class polarisation.
The bosses are seeking to apply on quite a wide scale class collaborationist ideas of ‚the team concept‘, ‚jointness‘ and so on. These notions imply the virtual liquidation of the independent organisations of the working class, the stewards in particular, into ‚teams‘ which are in reality ‚management teams‘. The US socialist pioneer Daniel De Leon once said that the capitalists sought to transform the trade union and labour leaders into the ‚labour lieutenants of capital‘. Now the same efforts are being made, this time directed towards independent union organisation on the shop-floor, with the stewards who are to occupy this role. But such efforts will inevitably breakdown as the mass of the workers see that it is an attempt to further tighten the screw on them. They are already chained to industry for longer than most of their counterparts in the advanced industrial countries. They are worn-out by work, plagued by sleep deprivation and suffering increased stress both at work and in travelling to and from work because of the massive breakdown of the infrastructure. The ground is being prepared for a huge eruption of the US working class.
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The stagnation and even decline in living standards for the broad layer of US workers has stoked up huge resentment. Even the Wall Street Journal admitted on 23 May, „wage increases haven’t even kept up with the cost of living for years. The trend in productivity, the amount produced by every hour worked, seems to be improving“. And with amazing frankness, arising from a misplaced confidence that they are not challenged by an organised working class, this journal can also state, „economists teach that the unemployment rate can fall too low. Push the jobless rate down too far, and wages will probably start to go up faster than productivity is improving. Price increases follow and up goes the inflation rate. ‚It is only sensible‘, says Brooking Institute economist Barry Bosworth, ‚when people aren’t so worried about being laid off there is more pressure for raises‘. When profits are flush people wonder how come I can’t get a bigger wage‘.“
The development of the US economy, estimated between 2-3% growth rate for the next year, has not been on the basis of a big extension of new plant, of increased investment. Indeed US capitalism faces a glut of capacity. At the height of a „boom” it can not achieve more than 83% ‚capacity utilisation‘. The development of the economy also comes up against the barriers of stagnant income for the US working class. Any „upswing“ in the USA now will bypass whole swathes of the population. Moreover in a ‚country‘, which is in effect a continent, the development of the economy, social relations etc. can proceed at different tempos, from one state and one region to another. In California, for instance, where the jobless rate is almost 10%, wages are only rising at 2.8%, whereas in Illinois in the mid-West wages are rising at almost double this and the unemployment rate is half that of California. The collapse in the fortunes of the ‚Golden State‘ symbolises the dashing of that ‚golden future‘ that was held out by the ideologists of US capitalism in the 1960s and 1970s, and revived by Reagan in the 1980s.
All of this is preparing a revolt of the US working class. Commenting on its own proposals to hold down living standards the Wall Street Journal comments „all this must sound pretty hard-hearted to those American workers who voted for Bill Clinton because they believed in his vow to improve living standards. That can only happen if wages climb faster than the cost of living. But pushing the economy into the inflationary zone in pursuit of a short-term wage boost won’t accomplish that end“.
It is not just wages which are held down but now there is an attempt to savage public expenditure. Spending is being cut at federal, state and city level. As a result of Clinton’s promise to cut the budget deficit an estimated 100,000 federal employees will lose their jobs. The Republican mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, has evoked protests, including demonstrations and threats of strikes, with his proposal to slash city expenditure on jobs and services. In a thinly veiled racist appeal he promised during his election to maintain jobs for city employees in teaching, the fire service and the police which, by coincidence, employ largely white workers. Those departments largely employing Afro-Americans and Latinos face drastic cuts. It will also be black and Latino areas, already blighted by lack of services and social deprivation, which will bear the burden of Giuliani’s cuts.
Giuliani, however, is merely treading in the footsteps of the newly-elected ‚Democratic‘ mayor of Philadelphia, Rendel, who has become the great hope of the capitalists both in the US and internationally with his savage programme of ‚downsizing‘ (read slashing) spending at a city level. This provoked the fury of working people, leading to a massive campaign by the trade unions to defeat Rendel’s ‚referendum‘ empowering him to slash and cut. They distributed 500,000 pieces of literature, 100,000 phone calls were made to the workers and middle class of Philadelphia, and 1,500 volunteers turned out on ‚referendum day‘. This. has in turn propelled many workers towards the unions, particularly in the public sector.
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During the 1980s, and as a result of the pusillanimous right-wing trade union leaders, union membership in the US dropped to 16%, to roughly 16 million, of the labour force. Now, for the first time in 14 years, a small growth, numbering 200,000, has been registered in overall union membership. Many unions now see the urgent need for a drive to draw in the unorganised workers. The Service Employees, for instance, which previously devoted 5% of its budget for recruiting new members, has recently decided to devote 30% of its resources for training organisers to drive into the unorganised sections of workers.
On the other hand the Teamsters‘ Union, still severely affected by the old guard, Mafia elements, devotes a mere two cents out of every dollar collected for organising recruitment drives. This union, with more than one million members, occupies a pivotal position within the US trade union movement. It is a barometer of future developments. On the one side it is still profoundly affected by one of the most corrupted and rotten union bureaucracies to be found anywhere in the world. This bureaucracy enjoyed, and to some extent still does, a lavish life-style, which would be envied by the average capitalist. It has been in the pockets of the mob, as we have explained elsewhere. However, a rank-and-file revolt has led to the systematic eviction of the mafia from one region, from one ‚local‘ (union branch) after another. This upsurge from below was reflected in the election of Ron Carey as president of the Teamsters‘ Union in the late 1980s. This represented a big step forward in the beginning of the transformation of the teamsters and of the trade unions in the US. However this victory was not pressed home by Carey or by the forces around the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). They did not have a clearly worked out alternative programme and did not press home the advantage they had gained in the election to drive the ‚old guard‘ out of the union. The latter therefore have been given time to re-group. They have also been given sustenance by Carey’s failure to fully articulate and fight for the best contracts for all teamsters.
In the recent United Parcels Services (UPS) negotiations, part-timers who account for 54% of the labour force received no real increase. Pursuing a policy of divide and rule the company were quite prepared for the time being to give increases to full-timers and thus widen the differential between them and part-time workers. Union activists clearly understand that by accepting very low rates of pay for part-timers this is a wedge that can be used by the company against full-timers at a later stage. They could offer some time in the future an hourly-rate below that presently enjoyed by full-timers but significantly above the part-time rate. They hope in this way they could tempt part-timers to vote for what would be perceived as an increase in hourly-rates and a big step forward for them. By pitting part-time workers against full-time workers the company, along with the US bosses as a whole, hope to drive down their wage bill.
Last year wage costs actually dropped in the USA. However, faced with the counter-offensive of the ‚Old Guard‘, Carey may be compelled to give more of a fighting lead and this in turn could lead to a certain revival of the TDU. In any case some of the best, combative teamsters are being drawn into the orbit of Labor Militant, the newspaper of the co-thinkers of Militant Labour in Britain.
In general the ground is also being prepared amongst the working class for a movement to organise the unorganised. A situation somewhat similar to that which developed with the formation of the CIO in the 1930s could develop in the USA before this decade is out. A vital area for union growth will come in the South. The capitalists, fleeing from the relatively strong union organisation and high wages of the North, relocated industries in the South, completely transforming through huge industrialisation the image of the area as a ’sleepy backwater‘. In the area between Atlanta and the Carolinas 25% of workers now work in manufacturing, compared with a national rate of 17%. Unions like the textile workers have begun to take on flesh as new union drives have opened up.
At the same time the political, as well as the industrial situation, is pushing in the direction of the unions separating, at a certain stage, from the Democrats and creating their own political party. Sectarian muddleheads see the development of a labour‘ or ‚workers‘ party as a ‚barrier‘ to the pristine pure political development of the American working class, usually envisaged as being under their „Marxist“ tutelage. They are deaf to Engels advice of over a century ago that „a million or two of workingmen’s votes next November for a bona-fide workingmen’s party is worth infinitely more at present than 100,000 votes for a doctrinally perfect platform. The very first attempt – soon to be made if the movement progresses – to consolidate the moving masses on a national basis will bring them all face to face“.
The attempts to form a labour party in the latter part of the last century foundered, largely because there was still scope for a certain expansion of industry. The ‚West‘ also offered a route of development for the most energetic sections of the working class to acquire land, establish a small business etc. A powerful development of the working class and labour movement began to take shape in the early decades of this century. But this again was cut across somewhat by the first world war and also by the economic boom of the 1920s. The establishment of the Communist Party raised workers‘ aspirations, but these were dashed by its Stalinist degeneration.
Paralysed, at least economically, in the 1929-33 depression, the working class only recovered with the revival of industry but did so with seven-league boots in the mighty development of the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO) in mass battles in autos, steel, rubber, motor vehicles, the teamsters etc. Disillusionment with Roosevelt’s ‚New Deal‘ led, towards the end of the 1930s, to a growth in sentiment for the creation of an independent political party based on the trade unions. However this was in turn cut across by the outbreak of the second world war. Once the war ended there was a wave of strikes between 1946-48 which surpassed even those of the 1930s. But once more the beginnings of the long post-war economic boom softened social relations. Whenever the working class displayed its frustrations the US bourgeois was able to rock the congressional/senate political cradle from the right – the Republicans – to the left‘ – the Democrats.
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The reason why a labour party has not developed in the US, almost alone in the advanced industrial world, is that US capitalism has always, up to now, found through a further expansion of industry, a means of reconciling the great majority of the population to its system. An additional factor was the refusal of the trade union tops to articulate the disillusionment with the Republicans and Democrats. But that situation is now coming to an end.
The US economy is still the strongest in the world. But it does not possess either the weight or the economic power of the immediate post-1945 situation. Then 50% of the world’s gold was in its vaults, and it alone accounted for 50% of world trade. It is now challenged by Japanese and European capitalism. Its decreased competitiveness with its rivals on the world market has resulted in the inexorable growth of its trade deficit. The legacy of the 1980s, in the form of a huge accumulated budget deficit and national debt, is a massive albatross around the neck of US capitalism. Clinton’s attempt to slash the deficit means that he has to embark on the same road as the British Tories and their European counterparts in attacking the ‚welfare state‘.
The main difference in the US is that the conquests for the working class in the form of the ‚welfare state‘ does not exist. There is no ’safety-net‘, meagre though it is, which exists in Britain and other advanced industrial countries. This is one of the consequences of the lack of an independent workers‘ party in the US. The organised pressure exerted through a labour party compels the bourgeois to make certain concessions. This becomes evident, even to a superficial observer, when you step from the US into Canada. Despite the fact that the New Democratic Party has never held power on a national scale (it is presently in power in the Ontario and British Columbia provinces), together with the trade unions it has compelled the Canadian bourgeois to establish a health, education, and social services system somewhat akin to the British pattern.
The absence of an independent labour party, together with the weakening of the trade unions, as well as relatively higher living standards (out of which the majority of workers could pay privately for the benefits provided by the state in other countries) all allowed the US bourgeois to dispense with a ‚welfare state‘. But for those outside the charmed circle of the ‚American dream‘ life could be brutal. And with the systematic undermining of the position of US capitalism, and with it the living standards of more and more workers, millions have been drawn into the economic vortex of unemployment, poverty and social deprivation. Forty million US workers, for example, are presently without health cover. This has fuelled the clamour for the establishment of a national health service (ironically at a time when the British bourgeois are systematically dismantling the NHS in this country).
Clinton’s health bill is not designed to establish a national health service. In fact its purpose is to cut the share of GDP which is presently devoted to health spending. And yet nine-tenths of the population, according to the most authoritative opinion polls, are demanding the establishment of a properly funded national health service. This has been denounced as ’socialised medicine‘ by the right but the overwhelming majority support it. This counters the notion peddled by right-wing commentators and sectarian muddleheads that in some way the US working class is moving to the right.
All kinds of ideological rubbish which has accumulated in the skulls of the US workers bursts out from time to time, on issues such as crime or hostility to ‚welfare bums‘. But this will be blown away on the basis of the big events that impend. One of the most important developments coming out of this will be the creation of a labour party. The first steps towards such a force are encompassed in the formation of Labor Party Advocates (LPA) which is gathering support within the union movement. Led by the former oil workers leader Mazzocki, already this union, as well as two labour federations in California, representing a combined total of 100,000 workers, have come out for a labour party.
Cuddling up to the Clinton administration the majority of the trade union bureaucracy at this stage are hostile to such a development. It is possible that Lane Kirkland will in the near future denounce the LPA. However a significant section of the trade union officialdom is under pressure from the ranks to separate from the Democratic Party. In the light of the NAFTA events, the cuts which Clinton is proposing in welfare, and the slashing of jobs at federal, state and city level by Democratic and Republican grandees alike, has led to widespread disillusionment in the Democratic Party.
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One thing is clear: the contradictions of US capitalism are preparing unprecedented social and political convulsions. Once more a revolt of the inner cities is being prepared which could dwarf the uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s and even the huge Los Angeles uprising. The illusions of the 1980s that the black and Latino populations could steadily advance up the ladder of economic progress are now shattered. Only a thin layer of bourgeoisified blacks and Latinos have benefitted, while all the statistics show a worse position of social deprivation and unemployment now than 20 years ago. Families have been broken up, neighbourhoods destroyed, unemployment is endemic, and battening onto these horrific conditions is now the nightmare of drugs. US capitalism in its death agony is criminalising whole layers of society.
On a world scale, the ‚drugs industry‘ now generates greater income than even the arms industry. Without the connivance of the police tops, utterly corrupted and rotten, and the customs, drugs could not be systematically used on such a wide scale. Many blacks now comment that ‚it is not us (blacks) who fly the aeroplanes which bring the drugs in, we don’t man the customs posts‘. Completely alienated from US society, layers of blacks, Latinos and even whites have been drawn into the gangs which now exist in every major city in the US. The symbols of the ‚Cripps‘ and ‚Bloods‘ seem to exist in every neighbourhood and most of the cities of the US. Their membership is now estimated at something like a million.
The horror which this phenomena generates is graphically described in the book Monster, the autobiography of an LA gang member, „Monster“ Kodie Scott. This ‚original gangster‘ moved from being almost a teenage ‚terrorist‘, through prison, to a consciousness that led him to reject this path, challenging capitalism, although ending up supporting the idea of the separation of the blacks in the US. More than 50% of blacks now support an independent black party. There is total disillusionment, reflected in most polls, with the alleged „progress” of the 1980s. However, as history has demonstrated, these tendencies towards separatism will be cut across once a revival of the working class takes place. Above all a surge in union membership and organisation will draw in blacks and Latinos, to a much greater extent than even amongst whites in the first instance, towards a labour party.
Not just domestic but international events could act to radicalise the US working class. Revolutionary upheavals like that in Mexico, together with the possible victory of Lula in October’s Brazilian elections, could give a big push to the development of the consciousness of US workers. If the economy should go into a nosedive Clinton could become a ‚lame duck president‘ even before the next election looms.
One thing is clear. The political fragmentation reflected in the last election – particularly by the 19% vote for Perot, which in turn indicated the possibilities for a labour party at this stage – look certain to be repeated. Under this fragmentation there is however an underlying polarisation. There is widespread disillusionment with the present system. Voters feel that Washington has become ‚an iron triangle‘, which cannot be changed by voting.
In the presidential elections of 1996 it is likely that apart from a Democrat and a Republican candidate, Perot will stand again and the rampant ‚moral majority‘, the Buchanan right of the Republican Party, could also stand. It is possible therefore that there could be three or four candidates in the next US presidential elections. At the same time, as the disillusionment with Clinton develops, it cannot be excluded that other populist figures like Jesse Jackson or Ralph Nader, together with forces for an independent labour party, could be pushed into standing even in the presidential elections. At city and state level, the unions in particular could be pushed into putting forward independent labour candidates. All this will prepare the ground for the emergence of an independent political organisation of the working class, which would represent a colossal step forward not just for the US but indeed for the world labour movement.
We said at the beginning of this decade that the 1990s would be characterised by the emergence of the three most important working classes of the world, Germany, Japan and that of the US. Already the German working class has flexed its muscles in the huge strikes of the first few months of 1994. The economic crisis, together with the ‚political revolution‘ in Japan, is preparing the ground for the re-emergence industrially and politically of the Japanese working class.
But the US working class probably occupies the most important strategic position of the world labour movement. It has a powerful radical, socialist and revolutionary tradition which has been covered over by a combination of the post-war economic boom and the hampering effect of the right-wing trade union leadership. But big events will push this working class into action. And once it moves it will be at the velocity of America, at American speed, and not at the slower European tempo. This is the country upon which ultimately the fate of mankind rests. It is the anvil which will shape the future of humankind. And the hammer which will accomplish this task is a mass Marxist force, which exists in the germ in the US Marxist journal, Labor Militant. Once the US goes socialist it will draw in the rest of the world like iron filings into a huge magnet into a socialist federation.
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