By Richard Mellor in California, member of Democratic Socialists of America.
I love how the politicians and the class they represent use language. The General Motors bosses, and their team members in the leadership of the UAW (and the AFL-CIO), want a “pathway to” this or that issue that is crucial to their members and working people.
The UAW leadership in the present GM strike, after failing to wage a serious effort to stop stratification and unity/solidarity destroying wage tiers and differentials because they adopted the disastrous ‘Team Concept’ philosophy, are now up in arms about the tier system and the treatment of temps. They want GM to offer “a pathway to permanency”.
Why a pathway? Because the only viable alternative other than the status quo, is to immediately make folks equal and the auto bosses will not do that without massive pressure.
It’s not as if the UAW leadership doesn’t know that a “pathway” means a long and winding road, but they have to appease GM; they don’t want to be too aggressive or appear to be telling the auto bosses how to run the company.
Contenders for the Democratic nomination
And Nancy Pelosi, bless her little millionaire capitalist heart, wants a “pathway to health care for all.” This is the same strategy from the capitalist politicians and we know top union officials get much of their language from them like, “growing the union” a business term.
The “pathway” tactic will hopefully de-fang some of the extremists out there that believe health care should be a human right in a civilized society and when people are broken or sick they can get the best care a modern society can provide. Pelosi is under pressure from this capitalist party’s left wing and especially from Elizabeth Warren who has called for Medicare for All and is a real contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. Warren, who is to the left of Bernie Sanders, does not describe herself as a socialist at all: she believes in capitalism with rules. And what is Pelosi’s “pathway”? Well Obamacare, don’t you know.
You see, Barack Obama is the consummate capitalist politician. He is educated, a brilliant speaker, knowing when to look you in the eye, when to look away, when to pause for a moment of silence to let the information sink in. He knows when to laugh and he knows what a tactical ploy like a pathway is; it can calm the storm for a bit.
He got away with a lot, like the slaughter of Libyans and the destruction of their country, leaving, with Hillary Clinton’s urging, a broken state and a fractured population, let alone the re-emergence of human slavery.
I recall after the crash, when Obama was placing some curbs on Wall Street in the midst of a national outrage after the Great Recession, a sheer hatred of the bankers. It was one of those moments that could have transformed the balance of class forces in society, if the working class in the US had a leadership that was not committed to capitalism and the idea that the market is the answer to all things and there is no alternative to it.
Rescuing capitalism from the abyss
After rescuing capitalism from the abyss, through the injection of taxpayer money and ‘socialist’ measures to the tune of a trillion dollars or more, the Wall Street parasites were getting some $18 billion in bonuses. More astute sections of the capitalist class were concerned that social unrest could result at such reckless spitting in the face of the US workers and middle class. At a time like that!
Around the same time, John Thain, the former Merrill Lynch executive, forced out of Bank of America, paid $1.2 million to refurbish his office, including spending $87,000 on an area rug and $35,000 on a toilet.
President Obama feigned anger and concern at the excesses of his class brethren, stating on January 2009 that the $18 billion in bonuses are “..the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful”. He also appealed to his class to show, “some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility.”
He clarified his remarks, making it clear he has no problem with them swindling the working class in general, “There will be time for them to make profits” he assured them. “..there will be time for them to get bonuses…….now’s not that time. And that’s the message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geitner to send to them.”
Obama was a very sharp representative of US capitalism. He was good to them.
September 28, 2019
This is from the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original article can be found here.
