A Primer on Class Struggle - too important to sink down the memory hole!

[ProudDad]

Capitalists want laws that weaken and cheapen labor. This means laws that make it harder for workers to organize unions; laws that make it easier to export production to other countries; laws that make it easier to import workers from other countries; laws and fiscal policies that keep unemployment high, so that workers will feel lucky just to have jobs, even with low pay and poor benefits.

Capitalists want tax codes that allow them to pay as little tax as possible; laws that allow them to externalize the costs of production (e.g., the health damage caused by pollution); laws that allow them to swallow competitors and grow huge and more powerful; and laws that allow them to use their wealth to dominate the political process. Workers, when guided by their economic interests, generally want the opposite.

...

There is fierce resistance to thinking along these lines, precisely because class analysis threatens to unite the great majority of working people who are otherwise divided in a fight over crumbs. Class analysis also threatens to break down the nationalism upon which capitalists depend to raise armies to help exploit the people and resources of other countries. Even unions, supposed agents of workers, often resist class analysis because it exposes the limits of accommodationism.

Resistance to thinking about class struggle is powerful, but the power of class analysis is hard to resist, once one grasps it. Suddenly, seemingly odd or unrelated capitalist stratagems begin to make sense.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/31-4?print

[Exilednight]

1. There's fierce resistance at the grassroots level and lower rungs of politics (state senats and

such), but not much at the top of Democratic leadership. Obama has made some simplistic remarks, but has failed to produce anything meaningful in the way of protecting workers rights, nor does have any intention to. He's more worried about making more free trade agreements than he is about protecting the rights of workers.

If he really believed in the rights of workers, he would be making fair trade agreements and not free trade agreements.

[ProudDad]

2. Exactly...

I get hammered here when I point out that Obama is NOT on our side in the class war...

Amazing!

[Exilednight]

6. Sometimes, the truth hurts and people are afraid to admit failure when they've invested so much of

themselves into a person. This is the flawed logic of some that I see on these boards. They're more worried about the man in power than they are about the ideas of the people who put him there.

This is going to be an interesting election cycle. You see many threads on these boards stating how Obama is going to coast to victory. I doubt it's going to be that easy. Republicans are going to nominate an old school Republican more in the mold of George H W Bush instead of a tea party type.

The tea party will lose Iowa because of bio-fuel and corn subsidies, two things the tea party are strongly against. Odds are, Pawlenty will come out of the middle of the pack and take Iowa and NH. Pawlenty will portray himself more of a softer gentler type of Republican and then Obama is going to be in a real fight for the 2012 presidency.

Obama has already lost ten percent of the liberals, and as he moves closer to the middle and more and more liberals start questioning his policy, that number will increase.

People are quick to point out that he has to move to the middle to capture the independent vote, but while he does need the independent vote to win, he also needs the support of the base. Gore lost support of the base and it cost him the election in Florida where he lost by six hundred votes and three left leaning candidates all captured more votes than what he lost by.

[gtar100]

8. No hammering from me here. I see that too. Since his election Obama has

all but abandoned the working class. He's thrown a few bones for us to chew on - more than any republican ever would - but it's clear where his emphasis lies.

[The Magistrate]

3. Hear Hear, Sir!

[ProudDad]

4. Why, thank you, old friend. (n/t)

[Grey]

5. Right, everyone should read this.

[scarletwoman]

7. This is an excellent piece, thank you for posting it again. +1 (nt)

[ProSense]

9. Was FDR a capitalist?

Is Warren Buffet and George Soros?

<...>

It’s not because they want to balance budgets, create jobs, improve government efficiency, or achieve any of the goals publicly touted by governors like Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Rick Snyder, or John Kasich. It’s because of the profit and power they can gain by destroying the last remaining organizations that fight for the interests of working people in the political sphere, and by making sure that private-sector workers can’t look to the public sector for examples of how to win better pay and benefits.

<...>

Somehow arguing that Republican Governors are acting in the name of capitalism doesn't cut it. These people could not care less about capitalism. They're definitely out to destroy the public sector, but it's not because they care more about people in the private sector. They only care about amassing wealth for a chosen few. Low- and middle-income Americans in the private sector mean nothing to them. Minorities mean nothing to them. They would deny them health care and benefits just the same.

Capitalism is flawed, and the article makes some good points, but Walker, Christie and the rest aren't simply acting in the interest of capitalism. They are anti-government, anti-civil rights and more. The public sector represents an obstacle to their views, which has nothing to do with the common good.

[ProudDad]

11. Capitalism is counter to the Public Good

FDR just temporarily saved capitalism... And, having suffered some himself, understood and commiserated with the suffering of others.

Say what you will about the right-wing, Murdoch, Shaefe, Coors, the Kochs, etc., etc., etc. were are are ready and willing to put in BILLIONS to build a propaganda machine the likes of which the world has NEVER seen to sell THEIR version of capitalism... Murdoch alone lost over 100 million dollars on faux-noise in order to spread his message.

Buffet and Soros and Gates are wimpy at best, spending a few crumbs to try to save a few of the victims of capitalism (except Gates who's screwing the whole concept of public education with his support of undemocratic "charter schools") without touching the root cause of human misery, the inevitable unequal distribution of resource that IS the capitalist system.

They could afford to pony up 4 or 5 billion if they WEREN'T committed capitalists and therefore oblivious to the BEAM in their eyes...

Capitalism is MORE than "flawed", it's deadly to air-breathing mammals on Earth.


On Edit: "They only care about amassing wealth for a chosen few" that is the END PRODUCT, the logical result of capitalism...

[ProSense]

12. "Say what you will about the right-wing, Murdoch, Shaefe, Coors, the Kochs, etc., etc., etc.

were are are ready and willing to put in BILLIONS to build a propaganda machine..."

:loveya:

[Bozita]

10. K&R, bigtime!

[ProudDad]

13. Still too important to sink

Kick...

[ProudDad]

14. Still too important to sink

On today of all days, the 43rd Anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination...

For putting on his walking shoes and walking with Union Workers in Memphis...

They didn't kill him for trying to "get the vote" 'cause they knew regular folk can't do shit with that "right"...

But organizing workers and poor people, that earned him a bullet...

Which side are you on in the class war?