[Militant No. 19, September 1966, p. 2 and 3. Of course in later texts Lynn Walsh did not use the word “Negro” any more]
Struggle of Negro workers and students
By Lynn Walsh
The United States of America is the richest country in the history of the World. Its productive wealth has recently been estimated at over 2.200.000 million dollars. But although this vast wealth, together with the latest scientific and technological developments, has opened up the possibility for providing an hitherto unimaginable standard of living for the whole of society, this is by no means the case. While a handful of private owners rake-off massive profits. many millions of American people live in poverty.
Out of a population of 200 millions 83m. people are admitted to be surviving on incomes which fall below the minimum adequate wage estimated by the U.S. Department of Labour. The so-called “Office of Economic Opportunity” estimates that 34.6 m people have a standard of living too low to meet their most basic needs.
Great Society
President Johnson and his supporter continually make speeches about the “Great Society”, but far from solving these terrible problems, American capitalism everyday becomes less and less capable of finding an answer. Even under the most “normal” capitalist conditions, automation, which under a rational order of society could release people from the drudgery of the factory floor, makes millions jobless – under private ownership automation merely means that the capitalist can produce more with fewer workers, to hell with the rest!
At the moment 2 million workers lose their jobs every year through automation, nearly eight million have to try to survive on meagre public assistance. Official unemployment figures rate the jobless as 4-5 per cent. But they make it difficult to find the truth, because they do not include those working for even a few hours a week, or young people waiting for their first jobs. The true figures have been estimated as much more that this.
Poverty Millions
Even during the most favourable conditions, those created by the prolonged boom in the economy, which followed 1945, American capitalism has not been able to eradicate the problems of poverty among a large section of the people. Now with a slowing down of growth of world markets and with the first signs of an economic crisis becoming apparent in the American economy, serious social consequences loom. The falls on Wall Street, the severe credit restrictions imposed by the administration, and the attempts they have begun to make to implement a wage freeze indicate the difficulties the American economy is encountering. On top of this, over £10,000 million is being drained from the economy by the war in Vietnam.
Vietnam Effects
One of the main fears the American capitalists have about the Vietnam war is the consequences that it will have in the US itself. Despite Johnson’s grand promises that all American citizens will be drawn into the Great Society to share its benefits. the difficulties, accentuated by the unprecedented drain of the Vietnam war, have led to an inevitable cutting back amount spent on the “war on poverty” campaign and on the civil rights legislation.
A section of the capitalist class in the US has already declared its opposition to the war. In many ways these people, such as Wayne Morse, Fulbright, Robert Kennedy, are the most far-sighted representatives of American capitalism. Apart from realising the hopeless position of the US in Vietnam, and the inability of the economy to bear the strain of a £10,000 million-a-year drain for a prolonged period, they fear of the profound social crisis which could result from the further delay in solving the problem of poverty, especially in relation to the Negro population.
Mass Demonstrations
Three consecutive summers of mass demonstrations and rioting have revealed the depth of the Negroes social problems. It is not merely an abstract questions of “civil rights”, as Johnson and many American “Liberals” have tried to represent it. As far as the Negro is concerned, American Capitalism has created (as one sociological survey has put it) an “intractable urban tangle of poverty, joblessness, slum houses, inadequate schools and family life.” The complete inability of capitalism to provide even the basic means of life for the whole of society, is nowhere more strikingly revealed. The Negro poor is first the hit by any unemployment. Of all the poor communities of America, they live in the most destitute squalor. 44 per cent of America’s 21 million Negroes live in sub-standard housing, as against 13 percent of the 180 million Whites. In Chicago, scene of violent riots last year, 1 million live in Ghettoes and are even denied access to the parks. From Omaha, Nebraska, to Cleveland, Ohio, to Hernando, Mississippi, Negroes and those who support them have demonstrated their frustration and their determination to end their miseries in mass demonstrations, marches and ultimately in rioting.
Real Equality
Since the Negro struggle began, and won legal concessions such as the Civil Rights Acts (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965), the participants have learned that the concession of abstract rights is of no use in itself. The Negro poor feel no enthusiasm for laws that declare their equality with whites, when they are still without jobs, houses, schools for their children, and everything else that a citizen of the “Great Society” might expect.
In a certain limited way, therefore the development of a section of the civil rights movement which is putting forward the idea of “black power” represents a forward step. It is a groping towards the roots of the Negro’s problem which lie in the organisation of society, in a system of production which has the technical resources to send men to the moon, but which cannot provide the essentials of life to a large section of its people. The growing war expenditure and the consequent cutting back of welfare expenditure. give the lie to the government’s promise of a speedy solution
Socialist Policy
In itself, however, the slogan of “black power” is of a reactionary nature. Although it recognises the economic and social character of the so-called “colour problem” it offers no solution to the problems of poverty conditions of joblessness and homelessness. The Negro workers and the white workers have a common interest in a fundamental change in society.
Slogans and struggles which further divide these two sections of the working class can only play into the hands of American capitalism. Resistance and hostility to the Negro struggle is often most hysterical among the white workers nearest to the conditions of the Negroes themselves. They have an instinctive fear for their jobs, their homes and their schools.
Black and White Unite
But the poorer white workers will never be sure of a sufficient and secure standard of living while their fellow Negro workers remain oppressed. While the means of life are owned by a capitalist class interested only in its own profits, they will always share the same miserable conditions.
With housing, for instance, it was recently revealed by the US. Government that half the 7,400,000 welfare recipients in the U.S.A. paid more than half their income in rent for slum landlords.
“Black power” can offer no solutions to problems such as this, The way forward must lie in the demand for a socialist solution uniting white and Negro workers within the American labour movement. Already the capitalists are trembling at the power of organised labour; they will do all they can to use racial tensions to divide the oppressed sections of society which together make up the working class.
The strength of the Negro lies not in Black separatism, or in spontaneous violence. but in organising together with white workers and the trade unions.
Power of Labour
The strength of the Labour movement way clearly shown by the New York transport strike earlier this year. Johnson tried to prevent the transport workers gaining a pay rise. Despite the long history of anti-communist, anti-militant witch-hunting, the union leaders were forced to call a strike, in response to the enormous pressure of rank and file militancy. The power of the organised workers was hammered home when Malcolm Quill was arrested under the anti-strike law. Far from stopping the strike, section after section of New Yorkers came out, or prepared to come out, in support of the transport workers. Quill was released and the employers and the government forced to capitulate.
It has not only been over wages and conditions that the American labour movement has shown militancy. Many sections have come out strongly against the war in Vietnam. The mass demonstrations against the war by students and intellectuals are an indication of a more profound movement beginning within the mass of the working class. This poses the real threat to the ruling class
For Labour Party
Already, George Meaney of the AFL-CIO has threatened the President with the formation of a Labour party. Although this was on a reactionary basis (blacking of ships to North Vietnam) it indicates possible developments in the future. This is a step forward the American movement could take in the future. The capitalist class fears nothing more: such a party would provide a political expression for the resistance of the unions to attempts to make them pay for the growing difficulties of American capitalism. It would open up the possibility of drawing all the oppressed sections of American society into a single struggle on a Socialist programme
The failure of the government to prevent a strike of aircraft mechanics, and their subsequent victory, was a further blow to Johnson’s guide-line of 3.2 per cent for wage increases. The unions have, one after the other, shown their determination to resist any attempt to restrict their right to strike, “A wave of strikes.” reports the Times, “is expected to spread across the United States during the next 12 months as organised labour settles down to a titanic test of strength with the government in Washington,” since, as with the mechanics, “exactly the same situation will shortly confront the unions in the communications, motor car and electronics industries. All three industries are connected with National Defence and would therefore invite the direct intervention of the administration.”
Fall on Wall Street
Shares on Wall Street are at their lowest level for two years. and the more pessimistic bankers have, for some time been vowing their fears that “their boom is going too fast” comparing the prosperity to “the fabulous twenties which ended in the 1929 crash.”
While it would be wrong to expect a crash of such dimensions in the immediate future, there is no doubt that U.S. capitalism is finding it increasingly hard to know where to turn to solve its difficulties.
Internationally, the movement of the colonial peoples has turned the tide against America, as its inabilities to win the Vietnam war and the massive drain on its resources shows. And at home it is confronted with the massive strength of organised labour, finding its feet politically after the comparative peacefulness of the post-war boom.
Social Stability?
The civil rights struggle, the movement against the Vietnam war and most important, the widening struggle of the trade unions against the attacks made on them by Johnson, are symptomatic of the radicalisation which is taking place within American society at the present time. After a long period of relative “social stability” these disparate strands threaten in the future to come together in a mighty movement that will shake this colossus of world capitalism from top to bottom.
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