As the US economy slips deeper in to crisis, the corporate mass media is intensifying its ideological offensive against workers and the middle class. The San Francisco Chronicle serving the city and the wider Bay Area does not go a day without major headlines preparing us for the cuts that are “inevitable.” The inevitability of the cuts is something that must be drummed in to our consciousness and, due to the failure of the Union leaders to counter this ideological offensive; it has an influence far greater than it should. “Bracing For Deep Cuts In Health Care”, one front-page headline exclaims (1).

The accompanying article then lays out the scenario for the San Francisco health department and the proposed cuts that will be necessary to escape disaster. The Health at Home program that serves 350 chronically ill low-income patients will close eliminating 13 nursing positions. Also proposed is the closing of the Workers’ Compensation and oral surgery clinics at SF General as well as the shutting down of a 24 hour drop in center and referral service for the homeless.

Facing a $20 billion deficit, the state is threatening massive cuts, and education, social services and public sector workers are all on the chopping block. But, as is always the case, those that will sacrifice the most will be the aged, the poor, the mentally ill; some of the more vulnerable and least organized among us. The mentally ill are always a good target and their services will be cut along with in-home aid to gunshot victims. Big business politicians must figure they have some relief here as the US prison population is now the highest in the world with 1 in 100 in jail. The mentally ill can find a good home there while boosting the profits of the prison construction industry.

During times of economic crisis and class polarization it becomes harder for the ruling class to maintain the lie that we are all in this together, that we are “one nation” etc. and that our enemies are all foreigners. They are compelled by events to reveal their inherent hostility to the working class as they shift a crisis of their own making on tour backs. There have been big protests in response to the proposed cuts. High school students have walked out of school and city council, school board and health commission meetings have faced angry public sector workers and members of the community. But they all have a defensive strategy.

But the danger of such developments is clear. As anger grows and political activity increases, there is a natural tendency for workers to unite, to seek class allies, and to overcome race and gender barriers; the real enemy, the system itself and the capitalist class that perpetrate it become les obscured.

But the politicians (Republicans and Democrats) that sit on the various school and city boards have learned from the private sector. Vallejo, a city 30 miles east of San Francisco declared bankruptcy last week, a move that the council hopes will allow them to void Labor contracts with city workers. The airline, steel and auto bosses have all used the same tactic. When faced with Labor contracts that restrict their ability to extract concessions from workers, the employers declare bankruptcy (even if they are not bankrupt like Delphi corp) and then get one of their judges to void contracts. This strategy has worked in Vallejo as this morning’s Chronicle reports that three public sector Unions have offered concessions totaling $10 million. The proposal is so generous it doesn’t even ask that the losses be re-couped in the future. This is a gift to the employers as municipality after municipality will follow this open season on public sector jobs and services..

In San Francisco, Gary Newsome, the incredibly dashing mayor, another Labor backed Democrat, is asking the Union leaders to open contracts to help reduce that city’s deficit. Newsome has consistently been supported by the heads of organized Labor as have many of the politicians now crying crocodile tears as they orchestrate cuts in social services and jobs. Newsome has already eliminated some 300 vacant positions according to the San Francisco Chronicle (2) The employers differentiate eliminating jobs for future generations (vacant positions) as opposed to what they call “warm bodies” and use it as a selling point to get the Union leaders on board.

It doesn’t take much to get the Union leaders on board mind you. In response to the Mayor’s call to open contracts ahead of time so they can extract some concessions, Tim Paulson, head of the San Francisco Labor Council, a “progressive” council according to some reports, lets it be known that there’ll be no trouble from organized labor. “If there are no layoffs, we are more than willing to work with the mayor on those issues” he tells the Chronicle. (3). This announcement has a purpose. It assures the employers that Newsome represents, from the multi-millionaire developers like Senator Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum, to the hedge fund managers, that there will be no organized offensive on the part of Labor to prevent them from shifting the burden of their crisis on to the shoulders of workers and the middle class; there will be no call for the rich to pay for this crisis. There will be no strikes, no mass protests or occupations, no steps taken to unite public sector workers and those who receive public services.

It also tells any worker reading it, especially Union members, that there is nothing that can be done. The only alternative from a major official of Organized Labor in San Francisco is that things will be worse if Union members, those that pay the salaries of Labor leaders, don’t give up more of their hard earned cash. Ron Lind, another Union official earning over $120,000 a year while he negotiated away his members wages and benefits told the employers during the five month grocery strike that ended in defeat, ”We could have gone for a bigger wage increase, but it would have had to come out of our health-care benefits plan…….” In a statement meant to ensure the employers that the Union leadership was sympathetic to their cause he announced in the press in the midst of the strike and as a criticism of the employer’s excessive aggression, that, “We want to make changes with a scalpel, not a chain saw.” Workers aren’t stupid; most of us can read a bit.

The Union leaders believe that there is a fixed amount of money and that their job is to distribute it among their members. The idea of leading a struggle to wrest concessions from the employers is a terrifying thought for them as a rank and file filled with confidence and on the offensive would also have a tremendous influence on the working class as a whole. This would threaten the comfortable relationship the Union heirarchy have worked so hard to build with the employers and the Democratic Party; one based on labor peace and free market policies.

But there is tremendous anger beneath the surface of US society that has no organized form of expression. The big business press is filled with articles about the dangers of the present situation where working people are being thrown out of their homes, losing their jobs, can’t get decent medical attention. Today Only 42% of the middle class (in the US this means workers) believe rich people get their money through hard work and ambition while 47% believe its through connections and family ties. I would argue that the figures are much higher than that, that most of us agree that nothing is truer than the old adage, “it’s not what you know but who you know.”

Keeping a roof over our heads sucks the life out of many Americans as some pay as much as 75% of their income on rent or mortgage costs. In 1970, people tended to pay twice their family income for a home; now they pay five times. These pressures along with working longer hours with fewer vacations and social services leaves US workers and the middle class in a constant state of insecurity.

The press reports this week on the alarming increase in the rate of veteran’s suicides; this will add to the anger and disgust that exists. Veterans are now committing suicide at a rate of 18 a day in the US, the SF Chronicle reports. (4). The politicians respond only when the abuse and their role can be ignored no longer. It has been discovered that Ira Katz, a VA official wrote “shh” atop an email dealing with suicide attempts among veterans and as the Chronicle reports, “disputed the statistics in public testimony while confirming them in internal documents. (5) The political system is corrupt and rotten to the core and workers know it. It has been tolerated during good times but we are in a new era. And workers still have no candidate in the coming elections.

And as workers living standards decline, social services cut and the disabled, sick and poor are savaged by the system, the rich continue to thrive and wealth becomes ever more concentrated in the hands of a few. We are not in economic hard times; there is no shortage of money in society. Those that own capital are simply refusing to let it go.
The problem is that this huge pool of wealth which is created by the labor of working people, is not owned by us. And like the owner of any commodity, the owner of capital, the capitalist, can do with it whatever he or she pleases. In economic hard times when profit taking has high risk, throwing money in to circulation poses too many dangers for too little return so they look for safe havens and social spending isn’t one of them. It is no accident that the price of gold and oil has reached new heights.

As Democrats and their allies atop the Labor movement scramble to help the rich keep their wealth at our expense, the wealthy gorge themselves. In their serious journals like the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and other publications of theirs they are more open about the system that they govern. The world is “awash with cash” is a frequent term they use to describe the financial state of affairs among their kind.

Business Week wrote in its May 19th issue that companies like “Microsoft, Apple, and Pfizer have hundreds of billions of dollars at their disposal.” “Companies in the Standard and Poors 500 stock index hold near record amounts of cash.”, the article adds.

Commenting on the nature of the present crisis in the Financial Times crisis Gillian Tett reminds the class she represents that they will get through this, that it is an inherent part of the system and that all will be well in the end. History shows this and it is a positive thing to recognize it. “Better still” she adds, “…one factor that might hasten such healing is that by many measures the global financial system is still cash rich. Never mind the bulging coffers of sovereign wealth funds; there also huge pockets of money sitting in the mainstream pension funds and with other mainstream western asset managers right now.” (6)

So even if we leave aside the $15 billion taken home by the top 25 Wall Street hedge fund managers in 2006, the billions in the pockets of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet whose combined wealth equals that of 600 million of the world’s people, or the estimated $12 trillion (about one fourth of world GDP) stashed away in offshore accounts avoiding taxes, or even the modest multi million dollar homes of Gates, Larry Ellison or Oprah Winfrey, there is clearly plenty of money in society; we just have to go after it.

We cannot rely on the Democrats it is clear. During the Carter years, not one important piece of legislation favorable to Labor was passed, at a time when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency. Carter met with business leaders when he came to office and stated, “Anything that reasonably encroaches on your effectiveness, I hope you’ll let my cabinet or myself know; I’ll do the best I can to comply with your request.” Carter blocked labor’s efforts to stop the two-gate strike breaking policy in construction. He used the Taft Hartley law against the miners in 1978 and he cut capital gains taxes and began de-regulation of the transport and airline industries.

Both Carter and Clinton were more aggressive de-regulators than Reagan. And what of Clinton? Liberals danced in the streets when Clinton got elected. He played the saxophone and liked jazz. He went to black churches and hung out with them; he made many promises but broke them. Despite controlling both houses and the Presidency in Clinton’s first two years, workers got nothing. Clinton kicked poor people off welfare. He threw them in to competition with unionized public workers through various welfare-to-work schemes that Union leaders failed to combat. He pushed through NAFTA that devastated many US communities and threw one million Mexican farmers off the land and in to poverty, many of whom are now faced with violence by US vigilantes as they are forced, as economic migrants, to head north for work.

Al Gore told an AFL-CIO convention during the nineties that, “ As employers and Unions, as neighbors and friends, we can help each other by creating family-friendly workplaces and creating strong communities where neighbors can rely on each other in times of need.” How nice! However at the same time, Gore re-assured his real friends in an interview in Business Week, the newsletter of big business: "In one year we downsized by 100,000 employees. We have locked in place plans to eliminate another 200,000 workers. That's a bold start." (6) The Democrats boasted in a Business Week interview in 1996 that, “Our strategy is to continue to reduce regulations that hamper business form being competitive…”

During the nineties when profits reached a 40-year high working people made little gain. Some gains were made, particularly with regards to the low waged and chronically unemployed, but these were market driven. So despite one of the most favorable periods in decades, there was no attempt on the part of organized labor’s leadership to go on the offensive or even take back some of the losses that occurred over the previous ten or twenty years. There were some major strikes like the Staley strike in Decatur but like those in the eighties, the heads of the AFL-CIO refused to mobilize the potential power of their members to ensure a victory.

So it is also abundantly clear that the heads of organized labor will not use their position to organize a generalized response to this offensive of capital. Perhaps the biggest obstacle, strengthened by the passivity of the Labor leadership and years of concessions and defeats, is the view held by many workers that we cannot win. The idea of confronting the forces against us presents such a daunting task that all roads will be tried to avoid it.

But it cannot be avoided; the employers will not stop. Driven by the thirst for profit and the competitive nature of the system, now decidedly a global one, their offensive will escalate. A worker I was talking with the other day described how disgusted he was with his Union leadership and agreed with much of what I said about the situation. But he said that although he could “get on board” he had difficulty “starting something”
This is part of the problem. We have to recognize that we have to “start something” ourselves. We can’t rely on the Democrats. We can’t rely on the Labor leaders who have proven where their loyalties lie. We cannot rely on so-called “professionals” and academics to come to our rescue although we do have allies in these communities. We have to act and we have to act on our own behalf and with a direct action fight to win strategy.

We can achieve victories with such an approach. We can build a movement with demands like a $15 an hour minimum wage, free health care, free public transit, free education and housing for all. This is not utopia, the resources are there; the capital is there, the labor is there. When they attack us we must take the offensive to them. In any struggle we cannot limit our demands to our immediate needs but include demands like those above in order to draw all sections of the working class in to the offensive.

When politicians threaten to close libraries, schools, or raise taxes on homeowners, workers or small business to pay for a crisis we didn’t create, we can mobilize to picket their homes, leaflet their neighborhoods, their children’s schools. We can occupy public buildings, mortgage company offices against foreclosures etc. In other words, we can let them know that we will not passively accept this offensive; we will not allow the economy to function in the usual way. In this way a united movement can be built that can throw back this offensive of capital and as it grows challenge the laws that are made by millionaires to protect their interests at our expense. This movement can challenge and eventually have the power to violate anti-Union laws and oppressive injunctions handed out by their judges. The mood for such a movement exists.

As campaigns of resistance like these grow, candidates based on them can run for office with great success independent of the twin parties of capital and with a program that demands what people need, not what big business deems acceptable,. This is how a mass based working class political party could develop, rooted firmly in the working class and our communities

We have no choice but to fight; we can’t hope someone else will step forward. Leaving it to others was a never a good policy and it’s even more disastrous now.

(1) SF Chronicle, 3-3-08
(2) SF Chronicle 4-23-08
(3) Ibid
(4) SF Chronicle 5-12-08
(5) Ibid
(6) Financial Tines: 3-18-08
(7) BW 1-23-95