By Richard Mellor in California
The Facts For Working People website has regular weekly Zoom discussions covering events in the world around us. We do this in order to get some idea of what the future holds as the capitalist offensive continues. Last week the issue of the Indian general strike came up.
The state censorship of the mass media in the US is very strong, more than in most advanced capitalist economies. I always like to point out that the first victim of US imperialist power is the US working class itself and the capitalist media in the US plays a huge role in the isolation of the US population from the rest of the world.
In this ten-minute video, Professor Richard Wolff, a US Marxist economist, stresses the importance of the Indian general strike; not just the numbers, as some 250 million people were involved, but the organization and preparation that brought it about. The unions working together, the unity of the urban workers and the rural farmers, and so on. We all know that if a terrorist had driven a car in to a crowd of schoolchildren or thrown an explosive device in to a market, the US mass media would have made sure we got all the grizzly details of yet another act of desperation and despair, from people who hate the US especially.
Many different religions and traditions
As Wolff points out, India is a huge country, and it has many different cultures and religions. It has a history of a caste system and religious sectarianism, largely a product of British colonialism and its divide and rule policies, similar to those it used in Ireland before Indian occupation.
Some comrades and readers of this blog have asked about the Indian events, as we see so little if anything at all in our media. Wolff is correct to give this historic strike the importance he does. Beyond that, he links it to the struggles in Poland and of women against the US-backed regime there. In France, the workers forced the cocky Macron and his government to back off an attempt to make it illegal to film police attacking protestors. There is also Nigeria, Chile, and so forth.
The issue of the US comes up and the assault and the response to it here. How Trump has been very successful in dividing workers along racial, religious and nationalist lines, as a means of diverting attention from the economic crisis of US capitalism that is at the root of poverty, climate catastrophe, and so forth.
‘Something is rearing its head’
The point is made that across the world, “something is rearing its head and saying no”. This is an important point to make, as the mass media and the two capitalist parties, Democrats and Republicans, that have a dictatorship over US political life that is thankfully coming to a close, will certainly not make it. That something is the international working class. Urban, rural and also indigenous communities are in motion. As I stated in a recent commentary on this blog, the world is on fire.
The point is made that the US has many “obstacles to overcome” that are peculiar to our situation. And that may be true. But the biggest obstacle with regard to organized labour is our own leadership. This is true, not only in the US, but throughout the world. It is why the huge struggles taking place internationally are at this point contained within the borders of the nation state when they are global in nature and are against the same forces.
The struggle against the bosses or the capitalist class is one thing, the internal struggle against the leaders of one’s own organizations, whether economic ones like unions or political parties, is a much more complicated one and, tragically, this struggle is also avoided by most if not all of the so-called socialist groupings, of which there are many. Some self-styled socialist organizations use the excuse that they are building a “Revolutionary Party” a gathering of cadres that the masses will magically turn to at some point, despite them never having fought for reforms in the workplace where the “rubber meets the road”.
Organised labour will be convulsed
This is an excuse for doing nothing, other than avoiding the internal conflict that is inevitable for any person or group appealing to workers for our allegiance, on the basis that they have the right program for change. Others hide their political views, in order to enter the bureaucracy, thinking the leadership they claim to oppose won’t notice it and they end up becoming part of the problem or dropping out altogether. I met many of them in my years active in the trade unions in the US.
I am not of the view that the trade union leadership cannot be moved, so therefore it is pointless to wage an open campaign against them from within organized labour. I am convinced that what we are witnessing in India will occur here in the US and it will not be pretty. Organised labour will also be convulsed internally, as the crisis of capitalism continues and at some point, the present pro-market bunch will be confronted by revolt from below.
Leaders accept capitalism
It is the worldview of the present leadership that is the obstacle and why they refuse to mobilize the power that slumbers in the lap of organized labour, to use a famous phrase. They accept capitalism, they see no alternative to it; anyone that has this view will not be able to make any serious changes. Mobilizing the power of the working class can only lead to chaos so instead they seek labour peace. We see examples of this everywhere.
The privileged white South African, Elon Musk, whose wealth was ripped from the backs of the Black South African working class and those workers at his father’s emerald mine in Zambia, is opening a Tesla factory in Germany and is upsetting the leaders of the powerful IG Metall trade union. The response from the some leaders of IG Metall says it all: Musk mustn’t see negotiations and wage accords as ”the work of the devil”, says one in a statement, but as, Business weeks writes, “an essential component of peaceful labour relations” Richard Wolff does a good job in this video and it’s important to watch it and share it with other workers.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original can be found here.
December 16, 2020
