By Richard Mellor in California
“The opportunity to use active-duty forces in a law and enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort.” US Defence Secretary Mark Esper.
Mark Esper is a little smarter than the sexual predator in the White House who happens to be his boss. For this daring challenge to Trump’s authority, Esper almost became one of the latest victims of Trump’s famous TV phrase, “You’re Fired”.
An understandable hatred of Trump should not trick us in to dropping our guard and forgetting that what has forced actions and statements from representatives of power in the US. Even billionaires that own and control the mighty National Football League (NFL) have admitted they were wrong to punish athletes for protesting racism and police violence in the US and particularly Colin Kaepernick who kicked it all off when he ‘took the knee’. This is the same NFL that dragged its feet when it came to recognizing the horrific brain damage inflicted on the athletes that are a key source of their profits.
That cretin Elon Musk
The US ruling class; the bankers, the oil magnates, the retail and tech billionaires, and that privileged cretin Elon Musk, whose wealth comes from the backs of the black working class in South Africa and the Zambians who worked in his dad’s emerald mine, are in a bit of a crisis. There is clearly a division among them, and it is a united powerful movement initiated by the black working class that is the cause of it. What might take decades, if it happens at all, is before our eyes after weeks of a developing mass movement.
Every real movement worth a dozen programmes
Karl Marx, wrote to his friend Wilhelm Bracke, that “Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs”. And the events of the past few weeks as the patience of black America has reached its apex, gives credibility to that view.
What working class, youth and all oppressed people must grasp is what Mark Esper means by “a matter of last resort.” He is no fool. Bringing the US military into the mix is a dangerous move that could get out of hand very quickly and unlike Trump, he thinks longer term.
Leaving aside special neo-fascist forces that are reserved for extreme social unrest, the military is comprised of working-class youth who see the military as the only chance of getting an education, a trade, even a home. And the US military is also about 40% minorities. The military is different to the police; they are, as I was once told, workers in uniform.
If we were to see a national general strike, the first in US history, and workers took over the factories and the means of communication, radio stations, air waves (common in coups and revolutions), along with the universities (capitalist think tanks), transportation, the docks and so on, Mark Esper’s “last Resort” would have arrived. Trump and an overconfident section of the capitalist class are premature and are playing with fire.
Esper is a former lobbyist
But who is Mark Esper? He’s the US Secretary of Defence, of course, and was also a former lobbyist for defence industries (still is really). He has no doubt made millions for himself and possibly billions for his clients, whose trade is death and destruction, warmongers all. Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Caspar Weinberger of Bechtel fame, were other war criminals who occupied this position in various US administrations.
So let’s keep our finger on the pulse and our eyes on the prize and not be conned by Esper’s apparent commitment to ‘democracy and justice’.
43% of city expenditure on the police
On a completely different note, I have on occasion made public statements about my opposition to any taxes on workers and the middle class. I am talking about once a year or so, when city councils or school boards (or the federal government, for that matter) support ballot measures or legislation that increases property or other taxes to pay for social services like public education that they want to privatize, and other social necessities for ordinary folks.
In the wake of the discussion about defunding the police and the role of the police in general I was in a meeting with members of my community recently and the issue of raising taxes came up and there was a strong opposition to it if the increased revenue was used to fund the police. I think 43% of my city’s expenditure is on police. In Los Angeles, I believe, it is over 50%. I commented that I am opposed to raising taxes on workers and the middle class, period.
Some people have a problem with this. This is not uncommon. “We have to do something.” is the normal response to my raising this issue. “Are you against public education?”, someone once asked me.
Of course not, was my reply. But I don’t want to support a band-aid every year that doesn’t stop the general decline and eats further into the disposable income of the working class. Also, if taxes are raised on all property holders, the large landlords, those who make a lifetime living out of it, will simply raise the rents of their victims. It’s just like price increases or anything else, the capitalist will get away with what the law allows.
We can build a public education system that is second to none, one that actually works, but we can only do that by helping to build a broad, working class, direct-action movement that can win it. While relatively financially secure liberals will, the vast majority of people won’t join or support a movement that takes food from their table. It’s class interests that people react to in the main, not moral appeals to do the right thing. The events of the past weeks show how right I am, and I don’t want to go backwards.
Our expectations have been too low
Our expectations up to now have been too low. We must demand and fight for what we need as workers and as human beings, not what is acceptable to Wall Street, the labour hierarchy or their friends in the Democratic Party. We know the money is there, there are some 54 billionaires in California, for example. The misnamed US defence budget has a lot of it. Not long ago it was estimated some $26 trillion of private capital is in offshore accounts, free from taxation.
Just a small example of why we need to go after the source of the money we need, rather than taxing ourselves and small community businesses. There is a strange animal called the US Global Jets Exchange-traded Fund. All I can tell you is that this fund, “provides investors access to the global airline industry, including airline operators and manufacturers from all over the world.”, according to the latest edition of Business Week. It’s a sort of vehicle, a portal that allows owners of capital a means through which they can invest capital in order to accumulate more capital. In layperson’s terms; getting money without working. In this example it is the airline industry.
According to Bloomberg Business Week this fund just “passed $1 billion in assets”. A little over two months ago, in March of this year, US Global Jet had just $33 million in assets. “It has had 64 days of cash inflows”, says Business Week because “..day traders were looking to, ‘catch the bottom’ in airline stocks.”
$33 million to $1 billion in two months; go do the math. Some folks out there have lots of money they never worked for, never “earned”; we just have to go get it.
And alongside this cheerful news, Peets coffee, a prominent West Coast coffee shop, seen as the alternative to the corporate Starbucks, attracted $2.3 billion from investors in its recent IPO, as they think the company is a likely source of profits. I reiterate, some sections of society have a lot of money.
We need to draw the right conclusions
Draw the right conclusions form recent events. Racism is harmful to the interests of all workers and it is the beginnings of a united working-class movement that is terrifying the 1% (old term now, I know) and bringing some minor reforms. We have a global movement that is being drawn together by the centuries-old struggle of black America for freedom. Here in the US we must not miss this opportunity to build a national movement out of which an independent working class political party can arise.
What will help this process along is if the rank and file of organized labour overcame the obstacle of its present leadership and join this historic movement in the streets of the US and around the world.
We create the wealth. We just don’t own it.
Richard Mellor is editor of the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The above article and others can be found here.
June 13, 2020
