People Power V Money Power

The Wisconsin re-call ballot failed to remove Governor Walker who has been curtailing the union rights of public employees. For years, companies have been chipping away at workers' pensions, and now, voters in San Diego and San Jose, the nation's eighth- and 10th- largest cities, overwhelmingly approved ballot measures last week to cut municipal retirement benefits - and not just for future hires but for current employees. Pension benefits were set when the stock market was booming and investments seemed to deliver nothing but gains. It was widely assumed at the time that investment returns would cover most of the cost of people’s pensions but now with the recession the expected investment gains have fallen far short. When the stock-market good times return, will those benefits be returned? We doubt it. Politicians and economists claim we are all living beyond our means. We are told of the need to tighten our belts. Austerity is being enforced because we are being told some have been taking too much - retiring too early and expecting over-generous pensions from employers. Pensions, however, are deferred pay. Workers are being asked to cut the wages of other workers. Why on earth are economists taken seriously when they keep getting things wrong? Economists exhibit not only a lack of foresight but an astonishing lack of hindsight. We are silenced by some jargon double-speak and a lot of bogus maths. Once again, workers are paying the cost for the economic crash and the rich, ruling class are using fear and envy to divide the working class. Nor is it solely a Republican-driven agenda. San Jose mayor is a Democrat. California's governor, Jerry Brown, another Democrat, has also been pushing to reduce pension costs.

 In the UK, the capitalist class and its functionaries in government have now managed to vilify plain ordinary working people as elitist fat cats. Teachers, council workers and other public employees,  basically, people who earn above the minimum wage and with previously guaranteed pension rights have suddenly become what depresses the economy and the reason to raise taxes. It’s a lie that these workers have it easy, and it’s a lie that they are the reason behind stagnant wage levels and dwindling job prospects. Struggling workers often seek out an identifiable villain, someone who is holding them back from success and if the business interests can present themselves as an enemy of that villain, they divert attention from themselves. Those struggling to pay their energy bills, to pay the Council Tax and to save for retirement are easily going to be led to resent of those who are accused of having things “too easy”.  Economists tell us that money must be made from schools, from hospitals and from caring for our elderly. This is what some might call the dictatorship of economists. Socialists point to the real villain: An increasingly greedy corporate culture that stops at nothing in its quest to consolidate power and wealth. There is a 99% in this country yet right now, many vote in the interest of the 1% because they have been swayed to turn against their neighbours and friends.

Whenever union benefits ­— particularly those of public-sector unions — are brought up, the question is always along the lines of  “We don’t get that, so why should they?”

 The question we should be asking is, “They get that, so why don’t we?”

Work is intrinsic to the human condition. It is essential not just to our survival but to our progress as a species. Now the job system is inseparable from the tyranny of the 1 percent.  Our political discourse is dominated by mostly empty rhetoric of vigorous various party promises that particular government “policies” will deliver jobs, create jobs, produce jobs. Whatever the question or problem, there is always someone available to say the answer is jobs. The whole day-to-day management of work is a full-time job of its own. Management, unions, “human resources” professionals and many others spend their “working” hours pre-occupied with the nitty-gritty of who gets promoted , who gets disciplined, who gets a raise, who gets the overtime, and who gets hired and  who gets fired. 

 There is class warfare because the social wealth has to be divided, and there is no objective way to do so. The war can be active or passive, the sides can have a truce, one side can temporarily be resigned to its lot or be held in check through force, but the conflict never ends. There is no way that this or any number of other social questions can be resolved without being formulated in terms of class struggle or class warfare. Between equal rights force decides. There is only so much to go around, and the efforts of one group or the other to assert a claim to a larger share is called class warfare. Who's side are you on? As long as the 1% keep the 99% at odds with each other, nothing will ever really change.