PEN-L message, [Pen-l] Sleepless in Florida: the politial middle and fighting

III.

Apparently, some folks feel as if some of us are not giving the new administration a chance. Let us not forget that Americans are pretty impatience and we are not required to give anyone a long time to do anything if we think it can be done in a short time. We might not be exactly right all the time about how long it takes for the meat loaf to cook, but something suppose to happen with the meatloaf in two or three hours. Now how long do we wait for any new administration to get something fixed?

We need an example.

Remember when the black peoples were singing, marching, fighting and protesting at the same time? And asking anyone that would listen, âhow long you want me to wait?â

The American working class is asking, âHow long you want me to wait?â

The same people getting uncomfortable about asking, âHow long you want me to wait?â . . . advocate a program that American communists should invest our meager forces in attacking the "far right" rather than a line of march through the political middle, asking, âHow long you want me to wait?â

Attacking the "far right" is, in my opinion the wrong because it reorients the working class movement to the so-called left of the Democratic Party, rather than striving to form itself into some kind of political force or social movement with its own demands. The "left" means and has always meant the left musical chair of the bourgeoisie. Every time the music stops it is the workers are âleftâ . . . without a seat.

Real world politics is tricky and it is important to know what you are fighting for. If we let Keith Oberison, Joe on the âJoe Show,â the Nation magazine peoples and everyone else pissed off at the âfar rightâ go on attacking the far right, and then we can fight with a clear voice about our demands. If all of us put our energy in attacking the âfar rightâ - Senator Shelby in Alabama for example, then when we look up the Senate Democrats are going to come up with a Health plan that is not only short of what Hilliary Clinton advocated for in the 1990s, but completely leaves out 40 million of us that need health care coverage.

In order to win something, anything in America you have to organized and present what you want and not hope to get something because you believe a group of Senators know what you are talking about. If we press for our demand - universal health care, rather than some Democrat or Republican demand then we have a better chance of getting more of what we want. We have to maintain our vision of the Dream at all times.

Let us use another example so we understand better.

Remember when the black peoples were singing, marching, fighting and protesting at the same time? And Martin Luther King gave the âI Have A Dreamâ speech? At the time I thought that was the damnest thing to talk about but it seem the fellow got everyone attention. Anyway, he did not mean that the night before the speech, he had a dream or that everyone listening had the same dream on the same night before the rally. What he meant was that the things you want might be a little different here and there, but taken together all those things are âthe Dreamâ or a vision of a better society.

We have to fight for the Dream and figure out what it is that stands in between us and the Dream. The âfar rightâ does not stand in between the working class and the Dream at this time. The last time I checked the far right Republicans were still pretty beat down with no recovery insight.

Now before we can fight for "The Dream" we have to learn how to dream the dream. If you dreaming about all the factories coming back and the auto industry being like it was in 1975, that is the wrong kind of dream because it can't happen. More than that only about 150 people are dreaming that dream.

If in the process of our epochal fight for socially necessary means of life, we wrench health care from the bourgeoisie and some welfare checks, much better. Now the goal of the movement is not welfare checks or just health care, but âThe Dreamâ: to reorganize society and ourselves so that we can collectively pay for everything we need to improve our lives and the lives of the next generation.

We have to remember what and how things happened with the black peoples and then one can understand the Dream of the Mexican immigrants who want to become American citizens.

Remember when the black peoples sat in restaurants demanding to be served a cup of coffee in a âwhite onlyâ joint? Some folks thought they were fighting for a cup of coffee or not to be forced to sit at the back of the bus, but that was not âThe Dream.â

The Dream was of a new society where you were free to get a job and not be held back because you were black. The fight was against the entire system of segregation. The Black peoples and white peoples did not just fight the âfar rightâ (the KKK politicians - North and South), but also the political middle Democrats who would not righteously stand up and fight for progressive legislation.

You have to fight for âThe Dreamâ and figure out the entire social and political forces standing in between you and âThe Dream.â

The working class has a Dream. One of the dreams is that the bill collectors will stop calling so you do not have to check the caller ID before answering the phone all the time. If it is a 1-800 number, do not answer the phone.

The people standing in between us and getting that legislation to straightjacket the Credit Card companies is exactly who? Senator Shelby - who I personally care nothing for, or mealy mouth Democrats?

However, I see no need to wait until the advent of communism to get a check in the mail, while capitalism breaks downs in stages. How to fight for reform, as revolutionaries, rather than reformists is the issue. Fighting for the political independence of the workers is always job one and this fight is conditioned by another set of factors. Fighting for the political independence of the workers does not mean fighting so the workers take independent actions.

Political independence means that in the course of our struggle to compelled government to act on behalf of the workers rather than the zillionaires, we teach the workers why they have to stop thinking and looking at the economy and each other like little capitalists, out to exploit the next personâs misfortune.

As the economy continues to collapse, we get a chance to inject new ideas into the working class movement, which is ready to listen in a new way. Standing in our way - the way of âThe Dream,â is the Democratic Party.

IV.

Collapse of the political middle is nothing new to communists, but we faced such in only a partial meaning and never for decades at a time. Lou Dobbs, who I happen to disagree with all the time, has been talking about the destruction of the American middle class, since back when the black peoples were having âThe Dream.â

Since 1900 we have faced momentary collapse of the economic middle (economic middle is communist talk for the middle class) as the transition from one quantitative boundary of development of the system to the next. With each recovery of capitalist crisis, the political middle, as an economic formation, would bounce back and expand. This has not been the case since 1978. Every recovery has seen the bottom of the working class expand or the $10 an hour jobs and below.

This is proof of 30 years of the collapse of the middle.

A historic collapse of any political/economic formation means that, which was fundamental to its existence, sustaining its life force, is in decay and has broken down, and a period of polarization is underway. This in turn causes society to break down because society is held together by the economy. As society break down everyone in society is compelled to leap to a new basis, to reestablish the broken unity of the productive forces and production (social) relations.

Rather than repeat old formulations, let try and add something new to the discussion and outline the historic meaning of the political middle and why âfighting the far rightâ carries us off the path of âThe Dream.â

Politics of the Past/present/today

As the US continues to aggressively impose its will on the world stage, it
must develop and used increasingly sophisticated means to crack down at
home and further militarize society to guarantee the American people, do not resist their plans.

The capitalists must drive down the price of labor power of the American workers so they can compete globally. Moreover, they have to crush the growing social response to economic collapse of the middle. The ruling class has to accomplish its goals while maintaining 900 military bases, two hot wars of imperial aggression, rally against tiny North Korea and Iran; keep an eye on all of South America as it tried to get free of American zillionaires, try and stabilize the Middle East, push to realign continental Africa and then support its imperial friends and neighbors. Then the state department and intelligence has to monitor the Russian state as the second most powerful nuclear power.

They must at all cost prevent the growing social movement in America from achieving the political consciousness of the cause of their problems and the solution. When everyone becomes clear of the cause of their problems and say out look we need such and such to fix the problem change in you favor starts happening. Here is the government is drifting to fascism. Only a fascist government can stop the American people from talking.

Our capitalist must use all their spokespersons to convince the American workers they do not need to become an independent political force with their own interest.

âLet the administration represent your interest Mr. and Mrs. American workerâ is what they say.

If you want to help us Mr. Capitalist politician the better. Nothing wrong in switching sides, especially when it is to our side. However, we are capable of representing our interest ourselves, and become better in doing this as we slowly get more workers to stop thinking like little capitalist. All we ask it those capitalist politicians that switch to our side and voting in our favor is to leave their capitalist dream outside our meetings, because our hands are still full dealing with our own little bitty capitalist thinking workers.

Throwing the main blow against the political middle means winning the workers to the cause of communism. The far right does not have a grip on the thinking of the majority of the workers in America. The implications behind âfighting the far rightâ as the way to organized our working class in its own self interest are pretty disgusting. The American workers are not a million little Richard Shelby, Senator from Alabama.

The way things are spiraling out of control in the country and world today, fascism becomes the only route for the capitalists to achieve their goals.

This is not the WWII period of history.

Unlike the period leading to WWII, when the fascist option presented itself as a solution to the question of markets and working class insurgence through seeking to reestablish the closed colonial system, fascism today emerges as a political necessity to preserve the entire ruling class, rather than a sector of capital. German fascism sought to reestablish its colonial system as outlet for its productive capital. Today, fascism emerges as the only means to preserve the ruling class as a class because the value system has hits its historical boundary. The value system is the system of producing everything in society exclusively for capitalist profit. When health care become out of the reach for 50 million people on our free market economy, the response of the system is to say, âTo hell with them, we will concentrate only on those who can afford our product.â

When the cost of public education rise and it rises because of the price of books, buildings, heating the building, maintaining the building, etc, as a profit making capitalist enterprise, the free market system say let the public school system collapse and blame it on the teachers. All of our problems relate back to capitalism and have as their solution replacing capitalism in education and health care with collective labor exchange, which ainât really exchange when everyone agrees to do basic society function as part of their duty.

The reason our working class has no history of political and ideological independence and think like little capitalist can be found in our history.

As the political superstructure consolidated in our country, the ruling class made sure that there would be no working-class parties or proportional representation. The political superstructure in this meaning is the Senate, House and State House of Representatives, Mayor Offices and City councils and the entire structure of government. The ruling class ability to impose such a class dictatorship in the name of democracy grew from key particularities of American history. One was the availability of farmland as the Native Americans were slaughtered and their lands expropriated. There was room for millions of immigrants and matters of government were not that important, other than taking the Indians land. (I am just saying that is what happened).

The other was slavery, which made color more important than class. From the late 1800 until 1865, if you were not the black peoples, you could pretty much escape Southern slavery and this was a big thing if you were an immigrant from Europe. (I am just saying that is what happened).

These factors created a broad and stable "political middle" that held the two poles of worker and capitalist together. Capitalist could get his profit and workers could work and make a living much of the time. The Republican Party and Democratic Party (the twin parties of capital) stabilized on this basis. Republican Party and Democratic Party are the names of the political formations in our superstructure, stabilized by and expressing the will of the political middle, while carrying out the policies of the capitalist first and foremost. Things were not a bowl of cherries for the working class but the system worked and maintained a certain stability.

For objective reasons, rather than the ideas in ones head, all past attempts to break away from the two party system have been in the form of a third party, rather than a class party for workers. Such parties represented the interests of the economic "middle" and were essentially reactionary despite their radical pronouncements. Has not every communist wondered at some point why every attempt at a "Third Party" formation results in middle class whites with the noblest of intentions? No disrespect meant to the Green Party or the Peace and Freedom Party. The reason these Third party formations can have good people in them and still be reactionary is because they are part of the system maintaining the class division, even while hating the social injustices in society.

The reason things happened this way resides in the existence and economic stability of the middle.

In the United States, this economic/political middle for historical reasons was very large, consisting of small farms, small businesses, home ownership, concentration of capital investments here at home and so forth. Even during the great depression most of America was still on the land, connected to farming, and could survive. This was no consolation to the Northern workers concentrated in the big cities of industrial production and things got ugly until WW II pulled the economy out of crisis. Roosevelt became the hero for his modern programs of infrastructure development and aid to the working class and memorialized as a working class leader, like some are already trying to do with Obama, for his wartime leadership and restoring the health of the economy. The point is that the economic middle grew. During and after World War II, a political alliance was formed between the organized, (unionized) sector of the working class and monopoly capitalism. To this very day a huge section of the American people, have bad feelings about organized labor and some of these feeling make good sense, although a big union is always better than no union. Some of the bad feelings are the fault of the big unions who did not pour enough money and energy into organizing the unorganized.

Nothing wrong with criticizing the decades of selfishness of the big unions but we do not need to look at the unions like little capitalists.

Perhaps it is necessary to say what organized labor is and is not. The union movement (organized labor) is not the labor movement or necessarily needs to be the voice of the entire labor movement. The labor movement in America is all those who have to sell their labor for wages. The labor movement is 7-11 workers, temporary and part-time workers, and over 100 million people who have no organization to fight for them. The most economically depressed section of the labor movement remains the soft underbelly of capital, precisely because it lacks organizational structures mediating its political relations with capital and economic relation with their employer. Without any organization to represent these workers in wage negotiations with their employer, the individual has to got at it alone and as a majority group in society they have no way to express themselves as a workers interest group.

The proper voice for the labor movement is a Party of Labor that is a voice for economic communism. Unions cannot serve this function because they are unions representing a very narrow section of the workforce. This relationship has given us the best of times and the worse of times; the worse of times if you were part of the majority labor group in the past.

This political alliance between organized labor and capital was not just an ideological agreement where one read a book and says, "I agree with that," but expressed a material unity as the process of capitalist production in an expanding economy. Everyone in America of my generation understood the agreement; the agreement included the GI Bill and Social security; Civil Rights Act and Fair Housing Laws, but more importantly, a very well paid unionized labor force.

Our imperialist bourgeoisie and their spokesperson are practical and speak in simple terms: "You work and I will pay you a good wage; medical coverage and a pension contractually protected if you in a union, with enough left over to send your kids to college. You can pay off the mortgage or build up equity in your house and jump to a bigger house as the economy expand. Everyone will not be paid the same or treated the same but everyone will get a better shot at the good life than their parents had. And the black peoples are not going to stay segregated and will take their place, as did others, at the bottom of the industrial social order as everyone move up including them."

This political alliance between organized labor and finance capital broadened and stabilized the middle. Everyone in America was taught that Henry Ford Sr., and automotive production created the modern American middle class and most agree with this but could not draw the communist political conclusions from the facts. Only the Marxist could kind of see around the bend, many of them got things wrong, and became stuck in the old way of looking at things.

For forty-five years, the American middle became bigger and stronger and so did the unions. The unions peaked before the middle but both are in fundamental decay and cannot be restored on the old basis. Trying to restore the middle as it existed is tantamount to demanding that the current means of production (all the advanced robotics in the newer plants) be destroyed and a new set of productive machinery be created with a 1960âs shape and capacity . . . âso that the workers can have their jobs back.â

Those who fail to see the transition from one economic boundary to another cannot make sense of transition from one political/ideological boundary, to another.

Reminds me of the old communist stuck in the 1910 era of domination of craft unionism who could not grasp the emerging system of Fordism, deskilling of labor and the coming social consequence of mass assembly line production. That old communist was a good communist fighting to protect the craft basis of the workers wages, but he was fighting an uphill battle that could not be won. Mass assembly line production is more productive and profitable than craft production of cars and the craft workers were displaced the same way the horseless carriage (car) displaced and replaced the horse driven carriage.

Today we in the same kind of transition.

[Pen-l] Sleepless in Florida: the politial middle and fighting the far right