Radical
Ideas for Radical Times
by
CARL FINAMORE
Capitalism is
again in the cross hairs of global climate activists. To save the earth,
declare young activists, we need earth-shaking change going beyond the narrow
constraints of a system that unapologetically prioritizes profits over people.
The clock is
ticking with scientists warning that substantial changes must be made in this
century or our environment will suffer irreparable damage. As a result, more
and more people are becoming less and less patient with an unresponsive power
structure saturated with dollars.
For example,
popular author and social activist Naomi Klein, doesn’t mince words in her most
recent best seller that unabashedly identifies the problem upfront in her title
– Capitalism vs. the Climate.
Such a frank
discussion of how private ownership of our natural resources poisons the earth
below and pollutes the atmosphere above needs to shift to economics as well.
In this
realm, one of the most renown figures of modern economics, John Maynard Keynes,
describes best the pitfalls of our privately-owned economy by colorfully
putting it this way: “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most
wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of
everyone.”
To get out
from under this wickedness, I argue that we need to go beyond Keynesian reforms
that normally propose massive government stimulus creating more jobs.
Of course,
any and all reforms that offer even temporary relief should be fully supported.
But,
Keynesian promotion of massive government spending does not address the biggest
problem of our times and something that Karl Marx was most concerned – private
ownership of production and surpluses created by the total workforce and the
ultimate control by capitalists over how and to whom the subsequent profits are
distributed.
In Marxist
lingo, this imbalanced equation is the contradiction between private ownership
by the few vs. social production by the millions.
Putting aside
theory, Keynesian proposals also, in practice, put us on the defensive,
continually asking relief from a government that arguably represents big
business and banks more than the average person.
Similarly, on
the defensive again, attempts to raise taxes of the super rich occurs after
value [money] has already been created during the normal day to day production
of goods and services and after it has already been deposited into one of their
lush offshore bank accounts.
More
fundamental reforms, Marxists advocate, would divert the nation’s wealth toward
working people and social needs even as it’s produced, before the rich
appropriate it for themselves.
It can be
done, as we will discuss later in this article.
Three Great
Reforms Gone Awry
But first, to
help explain the limitations and fragility of even the most ambitious reforms
in our country that did not extend into reducing capitalist control of the
social product, let’s examine three historic legislative acts of the 1930s.
It’s hard to
find other laws that have so significantly influenced our economic lives, yet,
two utterly failed to achieve their promise and one is continually being
undermined.
They were the
Wagner Act legalizing the right to organize unions, the Fair Labor Standards
Act establishing the 40-hour work week and the enormously significant Social
Security Act.
Each of the
three monumental reforms of the Great Depression were, over time, corrupted and
devalued. Broad social movements advocating “Get Wise-Organize” and demanding
“Less Hours, More Pay–Fight for Jobs with a Shorter Work Day!” demobilized and
the power structure tweaked and twisted their original purpose.
Today, the
Wagner Act has been amended several times by Congress to distort and delay
union representation by imposing on grievance settlements and contract
negotiations an impossibly complex and paralyzing legal maze. At the same time,
Courts have obstructed organizing by giving employers too much leeway to
threaten employees.
The 40-hour
week is also a mockery of itself. Left unchanged for over 75 years, it is still
drudgery to work a full week, yet, it does not even necessarily guarantee a
living wage as we know from millions of fast-food and Wal-Mart workers.
Worse yet for
part time and the underemployed. And, it simply is not rationally necessary.
As Eric Rauch
from MIT noted in his heralded 2000 paper Productivity and the Workweek, “An
average worker needs to work a mere 11 hours per week to produce as much as one
working 40 hours in 1950.”
This data is
14 years old. Productivity has increased even more since.
Anticipating
these productivity gains in 1930, Keynes, himself, predicted technological
advancements would mean everyone eventually working just 15 hours a week.
But, alas,
this did not happen. Nor could it happen.
Under
capitalism, Keynes knew better than most, outcomes are not decided by logic but
by profit. Therefore, into whose pockets did proceeds from higher productivity
go if not to working people? It’s a rhetorical question.
And, when it
comes to the third great benefit of the 1930s, social security, there are
continual threats to end guaranteed monthly payments by outsourcing retirement
funds to the stock market, threats to stop annual inflation adjustments and
threats to increase the age of eligibility.
These three
most profound legislative acts are, therefore, prime examples of why changes
are insufficient and subject to erosion as long as they do not establish social
and economic standards actually overruling the natural tendency of capitalists,
individually and through the government and courts, to emphasize personal
profits over people’s needs.
We expect no
less from the super rich, so we must restrict their ability to selfishly decide
how to distribute the benefits and values of production that are, after all,
created collectively by working people.
Without these
restraints on their unilateral discretion, we have no hope of reshaping our
economy so that it works for the majority and to do otherwise, history informs
us, invites catastrophe.
Old Solutions
Left Unfinished
The following
are a list of proposals that actually assign society’s surplus values from
normal production of goods and services and from increased productivity for
specific purposes benefiting the majority before being appropriated by the
wealthy for their own personal use.
All have been
championed by militant labor, populist and socialist movements of old but only
the minimum wage is currently part of a major national campaign. Nonetheless,
they are all worth serious consideration.
1. We demand more leisure time and national
legislation that finally amends the Fair Labor Standards Act by mandating a
work week of 32 hours or less with no loss in pay and, henceforth, lowering
further the work week with no loss in pay as productivity increases. This 20%
reduction in the work week would mean immediate job openings for millions of
unemployed and underemployed. These ideas were regularly raised during the
Great Depression and during the rise of the CIO union federation.
2. We demand a living wage and national
legislation establishing a minimum wage of $15 an hour for all workers with
annual cost of living adjustments protecting against wages sliding backwards. A
San Francisco proposition scheduled for the November ballot states this exactly
3. We demand an end to business secrets and
swindles and national legislation requiring expert public examination of
account books of corporations who demand concessions from employees or tax
breaks from the government. The same for banks who receive government bailouts
while bankrupting debtors and homeowners. This is an unfinished campaign of
openness abruptly cut short after the Occupy Wall Street protests subsided.
4. We demand full employment and national
legislation requiring permanent public works programs with community input and
expert infrastructure analysis performed regularly. This would include planning
vast environmental conversion projects. Versions of this idea are supported by
liberals and progressives but it still largely sits on the sidelines,
especially the permanency angle.
5. We demand quarterly Cost of Living Wage
Adjustments and national legislation stating that wages would not suffer due to
manipulative monetary policies. Once very popular, this idea lost steam in the
1980s during the concessionary attacks on labor.
Impossible
for Whom?
An immediate
reaction might be that these reforms are unrealistic and impossible under our
current system. Not true, some of these proposals such as the lower work week
have already been enacted in other industrialized countries and several U.S.
labor agreements contained cost of living wage adjustments through the 1970s.
But this
avoids the real question – are the proposals reasonable, do they benefit the
overwhelming majority of people and are they, as a result, worth building a
movement?
Each of us
must rethink our loyalty to a system controlled by the few uber-rich families
who currently dominate everything, who so dramatically limit our choices and
who make us consider impractical and utopian legitimate reforms designed to
reshape and redesign our economy and, in fact, our whole world, to make it work
better for us.
Until the
majority decides on the big picture of eliminating private ownership and
control of our planet and to put Marx’s socialist vision of a new world
community back on the table, it’s a start.
Carl Finamore
is a delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He doesn’t like
capitalism.
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