Workers’ Revolution in America: Approaching Zero Hour

[McCamy Taylor]

Today I read a little gem written in 1926 by Heinz Neuman, called Marx and Engels on Revolution in America . In the journal below, I will quote from this text which quotes liberally from the writings of Engels, but I encourage you to read the whole work (which is quite short) yourself. Here is a link:

http://www.archive.org/stream/marxengelsonrevo00neum/marxengelsonrevo00neum_djvu.txt

If you have ever wondered why the United States has lagged behind Western Europe in work hours, health care, maternity leave and other issues affecting workers, Engels provided some thought provoking answers back in the 19th century. He also spelled out the conditions under which the workers of the United States would stop being complacent and start their own revolution.

From the looks of things, we are fast approaching the right combination of conditions.

“When the Americans once
begin, they will do so with an energy and virulence,
in comparison with which we in Europe will be chil-
dren."

Engels letter to Schlueter, dated March 30,
1892

I. Whose Fault Is It When You Lose Your Job? Your Fault or the Job’s Fault?



This article, linked in DU today caught my eye.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ildwrFjwHYjvJPX2edZgBnNb8EEQD94TAHM82

Angry laid-off workers occupy factory in Chicago

CHICAGO (AP) — Workers laid off from their jobs at a Chicago factory have occupied the building and are demanding assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay that they say they are owed.
About 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors began staging the sit-in in shifts this week after learning the plant was closing Friday.
Leah Fried (LAY'-uh FREED'), an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, says Republic failed to give 60 days' notice required by law.
Chicago police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak says police are aware of the situation and are patrolling the area.

It was the word angry in the title of the short piece that made me do a double take. The author chose that word, which says a lot. It implies a workers’ revolution in itself, coming as it does at a time of recession when people are talking about a second Great Depression.

The funny thing is that most people who were out of work during the first Great Depression were not angry. They were ashamed .

http://www.studsterkel.org/htimes.php

“That there are some who were untouched or, indeed, did rather well isn’t exactly news. This has been true of all disasters. The great many were wounded, in one manner or another. It left upon them an ‘invisible scar’….The suddenly-idle hands blamed themselves, rather than society. True, there were hunger marches and protestations to City Hall and Washington, but the millions experienced a private kind of shame when the pink slip came. No matter that others suffered the same fate, the inner voice whispered, ‘I’m a failure.’”

“True there was a sharing among many of the dispossessed, but, at close quarters, frustration became, at times, violence, and violence turned inward. Thus, sons and fathers fell away, one from the other. And the mother, seeking work, said nothing. Outside forces, except to the more articulate and political rebels, were in some vague way responsible, but not really. It was a personal guilt.”
Studs Terkel intro to Hard Times

Knowing what we know now about “banksters”----investors who manipulated the system for personal gain----mega-rich people like J.P. Morgan Jr. who paid no taxes while the nation starved and other crimes of the elite it seems incredible that there was no workers’ revolution. A number of people whom Terkel interviewed in his books are proud of the fact that the Great Depression in America was peaceful, and they speculate that were the same thing to happen now, the reaction of modern workers would not be the same. People nowadays would not tolerate the hardship and deprivation with the same stoic It must be my own fault attitude.

How was the United States different back then? In a letter written in 1886, Engels describes the U.S.:

“For America after all
was the ideal of all the bourgeoisie: a country rich, vast,
expanding with purely bourgeois institutions unleav-
ened by feudal remnants or monarchial traditions and
without a permanent and hereditary proletariat. Here
every one could become, if not a capitalist, at all events
an independent man, producing or trading, with his
own means, for his own account. And because there
were not, as yet, classes with opposing interests, our —
and your — bourgeois thought that America stood above
class antagonisms and struggles.”
Engels

A belief system like this was (and is) easier to swallow if you were a white, male adult citizen Protestant who was protected, even favored by the laws of the land. If you happened to be female, nonwhite, non English speaking then you were a little bit more skeptical of the American Dream. But as long as a large chunk of the U.S work force believed that they could become a member of the capital owning class at any time, they did not think of themselves as enemies of their bosses. We see remnants of this same attitude today, especially in the South.

In the 1930s, if you still bought the myth that America was the land of opportunity and you were broke and out of a job and there was no internet on which to share stories anonymously, then it was only natural to assume that you were no good and your suffering was all your own fault. Especially considering the nation’s strong Puritan strain of Protestantism which taught that material wealth was a sign of God’s grace and physical suffering was a sign of an inferior character (Weber wrote especially eloquently on this topic).

We have come a long way since 1930. Fewer people believe in that kind of Old Time Religion and fewer still believe that this country offers a level playing field that allows anyone to get rich if he just works hard enough. In the past few years, we have seen the Savings & Loan scandals, Enron and now the mortgage meltdown. We known that big business makes its money the new fashioned way---it steals it.

II. Divide and Conquer: Sarah Palin vs. Mother Jones

"The movement in America, just at this moment, is
I believe best seen from across the ocean. On the
spot personal bickerings and local disputes must ob-
scure much of the grandeur of it. And THE ONLY
THING that could really delay its march would be the
consolidation of these differences into established
sects.”
Engels letter to Mrs. Wischnewetsky dated January 27,
1887

Employers and business leaders in the United States must have been reading their Engels and Marx. For the past one hundred years, they have become experts at the art of Divide and Conquer. They have turned every conceivable difference into a “sect”, with the weight of law to enforce the differences. After the Civil War, they were quick to establish Jim Crow laws so that American Blacks would form a permanent low wage work force that could be exploited to dilute the power of unions and redirect workers’ anger away from the bosses towards fellow workers.

They played each successive wave of immigrant off against the next with groups like the KKK and Bill Frist's GOP Congress.

“(Y)our bourgeoisie understands even better than the Austrian
government, how to play off one nationality against
another.”
Engel

Women were denied the vote and other equal rights, which kept their wages low and meant that they were also divided from the main unions. The only union that did not fall for this Divide and Conquer scam, the Industrial Workers of the World or the Wobblies, a group which accepted women and minorities, was routinely harassed, indicted, framed and finally persecuted to near extinction by the law acting on behalf of special interests who favored unions that discriminated (Divide and Conquer). You can read more about the IWW here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World

For over a century, the American employer class successfully prevented workers from uniting by convincing them that their fellow workers of other racial and ethnic groups were the enemy. The election of Barack Obama threatened to upset this game, since his presidency could heal rifts between groups which had been leery of forming a united front before. If the white, Black and Latino workers who selected Obama also decided to put their clout together and form one giant union, the nation’s employers would be shit out of luck—especially under an Obama administration.

That was where Sarah Palin came in. Her job was to convince working class whites that they would be better off joining the KKK or the American Nazi Party than considering a shoulder to shoulder march with their fellow workers who happened to have brown complexions. The recent increase in membership in the KKK is a testament to her success as a Divide and Conquer cheerleader for America’s business community.

However, Sarah Palin’s time has come and gone. President-elect Barack Obama has only just begun to serve. A whole generation of Americans is about to learn---in the only way that they can, according to Engels, through experience ---that Black folks are not scary.

III. Songs of Innocence and Experience

And standing on the altar high,
"Lo, what a fiend is here! said he:
"One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery."
William Blake “Little Boy Lost”
Songs of Experience

In the Neuman pamphlet linked above, Engels writes about the British and American (especially the latter) propensity to discount theory and ideology and insist that only knowledge acquired from experience is accurate, a property that is not shared by most Europeans, such as the Germans, French and Russians, who are willing to embrace communist workers’ theory as part of a workers’ movement. Engels suggests that this anti-theoretical characteristic of the U.S. derives from its relatively recent history and the fact that it began as a democracy, without any prior revered traditions.

While Engels does not expand upon the notion, the Romantic movement was in full flower during the early days of the United States, and one of its tenets was personal experience and validation over traditions which come from outside the individual. These include theological, political and moral belief systems which might come into conflict with personal values. For the Romantics---and for Americans, who have always valued their rugged individualism----the deeply personal trumps the impersonal. Nothing is more personal than experience, except perhaps for emotion.

Engels describes the results on American labor:

"But just now it is doubly necessary for us to
have a few people who are thoroughly versed In
THEORY and well-tested TACTICS ... for the
Americans are for good historical reasons far behind
in all theoretical questions, have taken over no med-
iaeval institutions from Europe, but have taken
masses of mediaeval tradition, English common
(feudal) law, superstition, spiritualism, in short, all
the nonsense which did not directly hurt business and
which is now very useful for stupefying the masses.
And if THEORETICALLY CLEAR FIGHTERS are
available, who can predict for them the consequence
of their own mistakes… many mis-
takes can be avoided and the process can be consid-
erably shortened." (Letter to Sorge dated November 29, 1886).

Back in 1930, American workers were still in a state of innocence. They had seen nothing like the Great Depression before. They had no idea how long it would last or how devastating the damage to their lives or families would be. Since we are, by nature, an optimistic people, the unemployed kept riding the rails, following up leads about jobs, hoping that tomorrow would bring the end of the hard times with a paycheck. As if that would solve the country's ills.

In 2008, the American worker knows that what we are witnessing today---half a million more out of work last month, 40 plus million Americans without health insurance----could get much, much worse. All that natural optimism is tempered by experience. They did not vote for hope in the fall elections. They voted for solutions . Solutions that include health care reform, a balanced budget, checks and balances on banks and a whole host of measures that the business community does not like at all.

Americans did something they rarely do. They voted with their brains. The internet will help keep this trend alive, since it makes an easy forum for dispensing knowledge in a way that all people can understand it. This is the reason why internet censorship has become such a high priority among the right wing Republicans. The internet is for the modern worker's revolution in the U.S. what the printing press was for people like Tom Paine in the original American Revolution.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 89)

". . . whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 88) Thomas Jefferson

IV. Go West, Young Man

"Land is the basis of speculation, and the American
possibility of and craze for speculation is the chief in-
fluence of the bourgeoisie. Only when we have a gen-
eration of native-born workers who have nothing more
to expect from speculation, will we have firm ground
under our feet in America." (Letter to Sorge dated
January 6, 1892.)

Not long ago, you could still homestead in Alaska. I don’t know if that is possible anymore. I kind of doubt it. Nowadays, the only way to escape from your problems is to join the military and under Bush, even that option was eliminated, due to the quagmire in Iraq.

Engels pointed to the abundance of free land as another obstacle to an American workers’ revolution in the 19th century. If a factory worker got fed up, and if he was the kind of industrious, intelligent fellow who could organize a union, he could also quit his job, head west, get some land and start a ranch. This provided a release valve for workers’ discontent well into this century.

Times have changed. All the free land is gone. The game is over, and if your playing piece landed on a square marked factory worker at the last roll of the dice, chances are that is where you will stay. And so will your kids, assuming that the factory does not move to Mexico, and they are not forced to work at Burger King.

That is going to breed a lot of discontent, and no matter how many state lotteries they dream up, people are still going to grumble.

V. Bread and Circuses---Oops, No Time for the Circus. Gotta Get to My Second Job.



The last factor that keeps the American worker complacent, according to Neuman, is their relatively high wage compared to those of workers in other countries on the world. This remained true up until the 1970s, when the United States was a pretty nice place to live if you were working class. Then, real wages began to go down, bottoming out at 86% of 1973 wages in 1995 and recovering slightly by 2000, even though people’s expenditures had risen by 66%.

http://www.nikutai-to-kageboushi.com/discourse/uspovrty.html

We all know how people have managed to keep up with the increased expenses. Two income families. People working two jobs. Kids who never see their parents or who see only one parent at a time as the couple work different shifts so that they can split the job of child care and save money.

Welcome to the American dream.

Now, subtract the job that pays the most money---they are not going to ship the job flipping burgers overseas to India---and you have a real crisis on your hands. And Americans who would never dream of getting political for its own sake---politics is a dirty word to many workers in the U.S.---will fight like dogs if their familys’ security is at stake.

"Just as all preaching is of no avail in England,
until the actual necessity is at hand, so too in America. And this necessity is present in America and is
being realized” (Engels letter to Sorge
dated April 29, 1886).

VI. Summary: Signs of Zero Hour

According to Engels, the American worker will be slow to act, but once he (she)does, the action will be something to watch. I guess the accuracy of his predictions about the Russian Revolution must have scared the shit out of some American capitalists, because they have been working overtime for almost a century trying to derail the U.S. workers’ rights movement. They have called labor leaders commies and crooks and cowards and murderers. They have lynched them and framed them. They have bought them. And they have duped workers into believing that other workers are the problem, not the employers who lie, cheat and steal to squeeze every nickel and dime from each transaction.

The signs that we are approaching Zero Hour include

1. Sudden specter of unemployment and poverty for the American worker
2. No hope for improvement in the lot of the American worker
3. Experience with a similar economic crisis in the past—one which the business community was powerless to solve (witness the appeals for government bailouts)
4. Decline in adherence to Puritan dogma (except among members of the religious right. Evangelicals are Puritans. Now you know why the business controlled Republican Party loves these guys)
5. Most important of all--- unity --- improvement in relations between whites, Blacks, Latinos as well as men and women (we desperately need a wage parity law), young and old and every other artificial distinction that the employer class has used to Divide and Conquer the American Worker.

Expect to see the business community commit most of its resources to undermining number five in the next few years. The GOP backed effort to divide Clinton and Obama supporters was about more than winning the election by splitting votes, and Obama's choice of Clinton for SOS has long term ramifications for his economic policy as well as foreign policy. Sarah Palin and her type will continue to spread their "The Blacks and Mexicans are stealing your wealth!" message of fear and hate to any poor suckers willing to listen. Paid agitators may even resort to old style tactics----lynch a few minorities here, start a few "race riots" there---in an attempt to revive old fears.

Because keeping us sectioned by race, gender and age has worked to the advantage of employers for a long time and worker solidarity scares them more than anything. The diverse Obama cabinet which spans all races, gender, ethnicity and ideology is the most serious threat of all to a system which has deprived us of decent health care, decent family life, decent education, decent work conditions, decent environment and fair elections.

Vive la revolution!

[onethatcares]

1. and so it begins.

when many can't feed their families, or keep a roof over their heads, they're going to wonder what happened. They're going to see the wall street fat cats and the industry CEOs living the high life and then the revolution will start. There are many more in this land than in 1930 and as stated, the internet is a wonderful tool.

Peace.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

2. This is how you do it.

A very brief excerpt from a very long article in this months New Yorker about Naomi Klein;

Klein and Lewis concluded that their only hope of spending a long stretch together was to do a joint project, and they decided to make a film. They were tired of being against things all the time, and they were always being asked what they would suggest as an alternative, so they started travelling, looking for something that they could feel good about. They settled on Argentina, and ended up making “The Take,” a moving documentary about a group of laid-off workers who broke into their shuttered factory and started it up again as a collective

Full article here:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/08/081208fa_fact_macfarquhar

[antimatter98]

3. Thank you for this diary. n/t

[bertman]

4. Revolution: a fundamental change in power or organizational structures

that takes place in a relatively short span of time.

While I'm not exactly enamored of a so-called "workers' paradise", I am sick to death of this orgy of debauchery masquerading as free-market capitalism.

Time for a change. A big change.

Excellent post, McCamy.

Recommended and kicked.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Well, Dr. Taylor, you've done it again.

Another of your superbly on-target essays.

Marx & Engels need a bit of modernization, as any 19th century theorist would, but I believe the time has come to dig them out again. Them and Keynes.

[Odin2005]

6. Not to nit-pick, but the "shame" issue was mostly an early Depression thing.

By 1934 or there abouts shame started being replaced by anger, which is why the US made a very sudden lurch to the left in the period from 1934 to 1936. Before then FDR positioned himself as a Centrist, after 1934 he followed the rest of the country to the left.

The crucial thing about the early Depression is that it burned off the shame factor.

[johnlucas]

49. And this is exactly why people should never quiet their protests

All those talking about "Obama's not even in office yet." "STFU with your whining." "We'll always tear down our own, won't we?" don't even understand history.

The 4th Branch of Government is The People. It is and has always been the unspoken unspecified element of any government.
The voice of The People will turn the direction of a Presidency if it's strong enough.
Nothing gets so many disparate groups ready to speak out forcefully in one direction than the end of their financial security.

There is no need for "centrism" and bipartisan measures. This thing is about to get bad, bad...really really bad (Shamone!).
Soon even so-called diehard Republican citizens will be calling out for the same civilization protections that Liberals have always advocated. And it will be because of Maslow's Pyramid. It's hard to hold on to a bunch of bullshit ideologies when your ass (and/or your family's ass) is facing starvation. When their comfort, luxuries, and means become lacking people can change their tunes really quickly. It might take some more time than others but when that survival instinct kicks in and they see the difficulty in maintaining things, they will change.

Some in the change will implode on themselves (depression, suicide, etc.) and others will explode (violence, homicide, etc.). And there the seeds will be set for revolution. And the reality is revolution does not always lead to a better tomorrow. Things can possibly get worse after a revolution as another tyrant rises up in the chaos. You can see so many examples of this in just the past 200 years.

To prevent this outcome people need to speak out and challenge Obama and force him to make the proper CHANGE in society that will keep all this together. He has a chance to become the G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) if his policies can repair what Bush and decades/centuries of destructive ideologies have broken.

FDR was forced to put in those socialist programs because if he didn't The People would have made the Civil War era look like Play-Doh. He did it to preserve the country much like Lincoln did what he did to preserve the country back then.
They killed French King Louis XVI & Queen Marie Antoinette on RUMORS of callousness to The People's needs. They killed Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu because when people were hungry in long foodlines to find empty food banks he was on TV entering establishments with sumptuous mouthwatering meals.

The Iraq War couldn't unite enough folks because their asses weren't personally on the line. Some people simply don't care as much about others and the war might as well have been a show on TV. They're in climate controlled housing in a relatively safe neighborhood eating food and worrying about stretchmarks, a little pudge on the belly, & varicose veins. No connection to bombs overhead killing your entire family in a flash. Just ain't real to them since they don't have to live that everyday.

But you can bet your bottom dollar they can understand no means to gain money and access to food.
The so-called Conservatives lost. It's time to finally do what's right for a Change.
John Lucas

[malaise]

7. Great post

I started a thread about the protest - And so it Begins.

[Alcibiades]

8. Error

you've already recommended that thread.

I've spent some time looking for the signs of the apocalypse of capitalism: I seem to get my hopes up every recession. Still, one of the great signs of the end times foretold by Marx and Engels is to be found in Volume III of Capital (the one Engels had to edit most heavily). It is this: that the increasing crisis of capitalism will be evidenced in the propensity of finance capital to become embroiled in an ever greater degree with ponzi schemes, frauds and swindles.

From Chapter 15:

"If the rate of profit falls, there follows, on the one hand, an exertion of capital in order that the individual capitalists, through improved methods, etc., may depress the value of their individual commodity below the social average value and thereby realise an extra profit at the prevailing market-price. On the other hand, there appears swindling and a general promotion of swindling by recourse to frenzied ventures with new methods of production, new investments of capital, new adventures, all for the sake of securing a shred of extra profit which is independent of the general average and rises above it."

From Chapter 27 (Marx is here writing on the subject of what we today call public corporations)

"This is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-dissolving contradiction, which prima facie represents a mere phase of transition to a new form of production. It manifests itself as such a contradiction in its effects. It establishes a monopoly in certain spheres and thereby requires state interference. It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property."

Of course, the high-flying folks on Wall Street have escalated their fraudulent activities to even more ethereal heights than even Marx's fertile imagination could envision.

[Hannah Bell]

52. prescient quotes.

[eridani]

9. Solidarity across racial, ethnic and other barriers is key here

"Yes we can" depends on whether
working people stand together...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxMxSovjDB0

[undergroundpanther]

10. One word

Another word



The capitalist then comes to the market in the capacity, if not of an absolutely free agent, at least that of an infinitely freer agent than the worker. What happens in the market is a meeting between a drive for lucre and starvation, between master and slave.

Juridically they are both equal; but economically the worker is the serf of the capitalist, even before the market transaction has been concluded whereby the worker sells his person and his liberty for a given time. The worker is in the position of a serf because this terrible threat of starvation which daily hangs over his head and over his family, will force him to accept any conditions imposed by the gainful calculations of the capitalist, the industrialist, the employer.

And once the contract has been negotiated, the serfdom of the workers is doubly increased; or to put it better, before the contract has been negotiated, goaded by hunger, he is only potentially a serf; after it is negotiated he becomes a serf in fact. Because what merchandise has he sold to his employer? It is his labor, his personal services, the productive forces of his body, mind, and spirit that are found in him and are inseparable from his person - it is therefore himself. From then on, the employer will watch over him, either directly or by means of overseers; everyday during working hours and under controlled conditions, the employer will be the owner of his actions and movements. When he is told: "Do this," the worker is obligated to do it; or he is told: "Go there," he must go. Is this not what is called a serf?

M. Karl Marx, the illustrious leader of German Communism, justly observed in his magnificent work Das Kapital2 that if the contract freely entered into by the vendors of money -in the form of wages - and the vendors of their own labor -that is, between the employer and the workers - were concluded not for a definite and limited term only, but for one's whole life, it would constitute real slavery. Concluded for a term only and reserving to the worker the right to quit his employer, this contract constitutes a sort of voluntary and transitory serfdom. Yes, transitory and voluntary from the juridical point of view, but nowise from the point of view of economic possibility. The worker always has the right to leave his employer, but has he the means to do so? And if he does quit him, is it in order to lead a free existence, in which he will have no master but himself? No, he does it in order to sell himself to another employer. He is driven to it by the same hunger which forced him to sell himself to the first employer. Thus the worker's liberty, so much exalted by the economists, jurists, and bourgeois republicans, is only a theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible realization, and consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an utter falsehood. The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom -voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory in the economic sense - broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery. http://thumbjig.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html


In other words working as wage slave DOES NOT make anyone but THE RICH exploiters of wage slave labor~ free. Inequality is the issue.

[Zuni]

48. this was more than one word

just saying :shrug:

[Blue-Jay]

55. One word.

Wordy.

[rhett o rick]

11. The American middle class is not quite dead. But must rise quickly and cast off the tyrannical

yoke placed by the aristocratic rulers. Congress no longer represents the middle class. They are all rich and members of the ruling class. Some may have some sympathy but most know where their allegiances lie.

The current bailouts at the rates being given away will quickly kill the middle class. The aristocrats are stealing our money by the trillions. When they are done, we will no longer own America.

[snot]

12. Bec., now we have LIVED THROUGH the 'ganda, etc. --

we made the sacrifices.
we bot the line that each employee needed to be their own "entrepreneur," and not look to a benevolent gov't or employer to look out for our healthcare or retirement or anything else.
i don't believe we all spent, on credit or otherwise, like there was no tomorrow -- at least, that's not what i or anyone else i know did; i and a lot of others worked hard and saved.
and have just seen the retirement we spent a lifetime saving toward destroyed.
the people who spent on credit like their was no tomorrow were the ones spending others' money.
we fattened ourselves through our own labor, and now we're being slaughtered.

[ColbertWatcher]

13. Bravo! k+r, n/t

[Number_Six]

14. Part of FDR's motives...

...were a fear of exactly that, a worker's revolt. Roosevelt pushed so hard to get the reforms into place that it triggered a revolt, alright...by the very rich elitists who were raking in the dough because of such.

The Business Revolt was easily crushed, but a nationwide worker's revolt? Hoo shit.

And it may come, yes. God help the Rethugs if it does!

[old mark]

16. Years ago I had a little talk against some RW jerk

about FDR. I told him thet Roosevelt saved the US from becoming a fascist dictarorship. There were so many very militant personalities and organizations in those days, many on national radio, many in Congress.

We could just as easily had our Hitler instead of FDR.

I think we have just come pretty close to that again, and it's not over yet.

mark

[Greyhound]

30. It was General Butler that saved us and the politicians let them all off,

just as they are going to let this cabal off.

(I believe it was called the "business plot")

[Joe the Liberal]

15. Very good read K&R

:kick:

[formercia]

17. Agrarian to Industrial to Service Sector economies

There were severe Depressions prior to the Depression of the 1930's but it was the first to be extensively documented and studied. This gives us a reference to judge our own situation by.

When the US was primarily an agrarian society, depressions affected the city folk and Industrial workers most. Farmers and farm workers suffered but in most cases, they had enough to eat and a place to live.

The Dust Bowl was an example of the opposite, but that was in part due to poor agricultural practices brought on by high commodity prices during WWI and the resulting destruction of windbreaks and the farming of marginal land in seeking quick profits.

[barbtries]

18. count me in

great post.

[mckara]

19. Enjoyed Your Essay and Forwarded It to Some Friends

You may enjoy reading several essays by historian Frederick Jackson Turner. His work influenced political decision-making in the late nineteenth century, and offered greater insight to American versions of social unrest and their remedies. Turner's arguments influenced changing our foreign policies from isolationism to imperialism because of its purification of democracy. Democratic values that led to collectively organizing the actions of common citizens. Most Americans have misconceptions of our social development and progress.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/TURNER

[sarcasmo]

20. The time has come for the Workers Solidarity Party.

[1776Forever]

21. Today, Sunday on Chris Matthews all the talking heads could say is "It's the counsumers fault"

Blame the people - it is their fault that millions of jobs are going overseas AND it is the BIG 3's fault that they are going under. Really? Let's look at this a minute with the context in the post - it was NOT the worker's demand that millions of jobs have been removed to overseas corporations that took the middle class with it! It was the Republican Congress that gave tax breaks for Hummers and didn't want the big cars to go away. Just look at Rush Limbaugh rants about keeping BIG cars and this about the tax break from Congress:

Buy a Hummer, Get a $25,000 Tax Break
Some Members of Congress Are Moving to Close the Tax Loophole; Auto Dealers Want to Keep It
By MARCUS BARAM
June 28, 2007

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=3326593

Shed a tear for luxury SUV owners.
hummer
(ABCNEWS)

Because they're on the verge of losing a perk that comes with purchasing a Hummer or a Cadillac Escalade -- getting a $25,000 tax deduction.

It's one of the many loopholes buried within the fine print of the tax code: Business owners who purchase heavy luxury SUVs, those weighing over 6,000 pounds, get to take deductions up to $25,000.

Now some members of Congress are pushing to close the so-called Hummer Tax Loophole. Led by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., the Ways and Means Committee passed an energy bill last week that is expected on the House floor next month.

"We're allowing people to buy a huge expensive gas guzzler and get a benefit that was never intended for them," Blumenauer told ABCNEWS.com.

He explains that the provision in the tax code was originally intended to allow farmers and small-business owners to recover the cost of buying trucks and heavy-duty working vehicles. "But that was before the explosion of huge SUVs like Cadillac Escalades and now we're providing a tax break for a luxury car."

Blumenauer said that the new bill includes provisions for legitimate business use by exempting farm vehicles, vans, flatbed trucks and school buses from the closure of the loophole. He predicts that the provision will give back to the government about $750 million over five years, which will be used to promote conservation and alternative energy.

............

How damn stupid does the MSM think we are out here? Duh! Give us JOBS! It was and is GREED that took us where we are, now let's save what we have of our country and move on! If you haven't been to a big city lately all it takes is a drive around the middle class neighborhoods to scare the heck out of you! Nothing but rows and rows of empty homes! Ghost town America - Bush's true legacy!

Tears Fall From The Statue of Liberty



http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tears-fall-from-the-statue-of-liberty/

Oh America.
Can’t you hear her?
Your mother is crying.
She mourns her lost sons and daughters who blood lies sacrificed on some other distant shore.
She weeps for the lonely, lovelost souls whose crumpled bodies line streets and litter shop doorways.
She cries for her poor, pallid, patriots who can no longer taste the ‘all you can eat buffet’ or order ‘coffee to go’.
Oh America.
Can’t you hear her?
Your mother is calling.
She asks that you turn down your cable TV, switch off your cell phones and listen to your hearts.
She begs you not to let arrogance blind you to those who exist beyond the shopping malls and who have no more credit rating.
She pleads that in your disposable existence you do not throw away the world.
Oh America.
Can’t you hear her?
Your mother is silent.
She loves you and waits for your answer.

Teedy Holmes

[Omaha Steve]

22. I've been off line for most of the last 2 days

Great post. K&R!

[warren pease]

23. Two more raised middle fingers for the viewing pleasure of our elite sons of bitches & massuhs...

This keeps up and there's going to be serious money to be made by contractors who specialize in designing, building, equipping and maintaining the world's finest, most luxuriously appointed selection of custom undisclosed locations and bunkers.

Most of those with the money to buy one of these custom Xanadus got their fortunes the traditional way -- they inherited them. The rest -- generously known as "entrepreneurs" because "thieving bastards, subhuman vultures and nouveau slave traders" sounds so harsh -- made theirs the other traditional way -- they stole it.

Finally, the peasants they stole it from are getting a little pissed off at how things are turning out. The continuous screwing of the lower classes by the rich has become so obvious and widespread, even a few authority figures have defected to the side of the proles -- temporarily, at any rate.

From the NY Times a couple of months ago:

Sheriff in Chicago Ends Evictions in Foreclosures

By JOHN LELAND

October 8, 2008


Law enforcement officers in Chicago will no longer evict residents from foreclosed properties, Sheriff Thomas J. Dart of Cook County announced Wednesday.

The department was on pace to conduct 4,700 foreclosures this year, nearly triple the number from two years ago, Sheriff Dart said.

Housing advocates said that they thought the measure was the first of its kind, but that in recent years, several sheriffs and judges around the country had taken other steps to slow foreclosure proceedings, like requiring lenders to produce titles proving they owned the properties in question. In Philadelphia this year, Sheriff John D. Green temporarily suspended sales of foreclosed properties.

The rest is right here. Unfortunately, it looks like Philadelphia sheriff Green has decided to support the interests of those who can buy, sell, hire and fire him a hundred times over.

Still, the idea's out there and the problems of the peasant class are spreading to demographics that now include people from nearly all walks of life.

It's up to local activists to keep shoving it in the faces of city councils and county boards of supes, demanding that local law enforcement "protect and serve" the community rather than the criminal class that uses them as nothing more than bargain priced repo men.


wp

[AntiFascist]

24. Excellent take on Palin...

the reason she enjoys so much support by Republicans is precisely because she can divide (and conquer) disadvantaged whites. Her popularity will be a continuing threat that we can easily defeat.

Any American worker revolution should embrace competetive capitalism where the workers take more control of their employing companies, or form new companies where this is possible. There is no division between bourgeoisie and proletariat when the workers are their own bosses. This is the secret that the business class doesn't want known.

[defendandprotect]

25. Thanks for the opportunity ...

to scan about 3/4 of this ... and I think the issue of unity has always been

perplexing in America. And, therefore, we have lost so much -- perhaps even

the planet--?

Certainly, Susan B. Anthony hoped for a new political party based on the

joining together of Women & Labor. I still find the shunning of women

by labor to be wholly ridiculous.

I'm also constantly frustrated that all liberal/progressive groups don't

come together but seem to each be competing for funds.

Propaganda -- Capitalism next to godliness and democracy -- as once taught

in our schools has kept Americans, IMO, from understanding the truth of

this evil system -- and as someone else recently pointed out, the average

person doesn't have the capability of completely understanding this evil.

For the scale of it, you have to come back to a full grasp of our earliest

history on this continent. The theft of the land, the brutality, viciousness

of the conquerors -- all the way to genocide. The enslavement of Africans.

The role religion played -- Vatican -- in giving license to this violence.

The ruling class has always taken power by violence and trickery. There is

no other way in which to enslave and dominate populations.

Hopefully many here have awakened to the reality that election stealing by

computer didn't begin in 2000 but much earlier. Pretty much right after

the '63 coup on JFK they began to bring in the large computer counters used

by media to report candidates' totals. Immediately there were odd breakdowns

and numbers that would jump ahead and then be reversed -- and vice versa.

Some did begin to look at computers as far back as late 1960's...

http://www.constitution.org/vote/votescam__.htm

[QueenOfCalifornia]

26. John Steinbeck

understood this. His writing on the topic was as if had reached into the guts of the people of the time and pulled out their very souls. I recall a wonderful quote from Grapes of Wrath:

"Whenever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there . . . . I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'-I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build-why, I'll be there." Tom Joad, Chapter 28

And this too:

Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep those two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate-"We lost our land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. Chapter 14

A big K&R for this OP!

[Kablooie]

27. We have the advantage of having a President who is not from the 'ruling class' and hopefully...

... will lead the government to make the necessary changes instead of having people in the street creating violence to achieve the same ends.

[MedleyMisty]

28. Excellent, except for the last sentence

Do you see any people from the factory worker/fast food worker class in the Cabinet? If not, how can it be a unity that is threatening to the established order of class rule?

I interact with people every day who still believe that nothing can determine where you end up except for some nebulous idea of your personal ability and that the daughter of a McDonald's manager and the daughter of the Bank of the America CEO have the exact same chance of future financial wealth.

Of course, most of the people that I interact with are rich white people on the internet who are invested in pretending that they got their advantages fairly, so....

[Greyhound]

31. Very good point. It is irksome that so many refuse to accept that they got what they have

primarily due to luck. Lucky birth, lucky opportunity, lucky contact, etc.

[russspeakeasy]

29. This is how countries build their armed forces..

It happens each 20-25 years...start a war...kill em off.,
deplete  the enlistments, then let the economy go to hell so
the only jobs for low or middle income people are in the
military...

[Waiting For Everyman]

32. and on your last line... deprived of a secure roof over our heads too.

This system is taking EVERYTHING from people now. And in huge numbers. People should be secure in their homes and about their pensions. All the years of work already done are being wiped out retroactively. That is no longer just an unlevel playing field, it is armed robbery by the state for the benefit of the banks.

And those foreclosures and bankruptcies, and just plain inability to pay everything demanded, are permanently blackballing more and more people out of the economy, which by now is so many people that consumer demand is imploding and taking what remains of the JOBS here... those that weren't already outsourced by now.

All this, to avoid paying the $8 minimum wage, which SHOULD BE $19 per hour right now. In order to save the economy, wages should be forced up, not down even more by competition with slave labor. And this - deflated wages on one hand and overpriced debt on the other, along with predatory foreclosure, bankruptcy, and collection practices - is destroying the entire economy including even the banksters. Workers cannot even afford to stand up for their rights in court anymore, with attorneys charging $500 per hour, while they make $8.

The playing field is beyond unlevel now. It's gone. If the new government doesn't fix this income/debt dissonance and fast, the people will HAVE TO.

Thanks for a terrific OP! :thumbsup: I couldn't agree more, we need some major solidarity right now.

[Raksha]

33. K & R - absolutely superb essay!

It never ceases to amaze me how much I learn from DU, and what absolutely brilliant people we have here. You're one of the the very best too...I've bookmarked your essays before.

[colsohlibgal]

34. Maybe.....

In the end there may have to be an uprising, and I concur we may be much closer to something like this than ever - as we could well be on the precipice of an enormous economic collapse.

[BrklynLiberal]

35. Today we know this is NOT OUR fault. We can be angry because we know

this has happened due to the greed of the CEOs and highly paid traders who speculated and gambled and let the few who had power and money ride roughshod over the rest of us.
The Fascist Corporatism imploded in on itself,when it became a house of cards with nothing to support the foundation.
It reminds me of the French Revolution...it was the nobles and the royalty that paid the price for what was done to the rest of society.

[Greyhound]

38. Really big picture, there. n/t

[Ken Burch]

39. If you're going to post that picture, I'm going to post these lyrics

(from Les Mis, of course)

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Courfeyrac:
Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free!

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you give all you can give
So that our banner may advance
Some will fall and some will live
Will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs
Will water the meadows of France!

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

[BrklynLiberal]

41. Perfect.

[99 Percent Sure]

36. Excellent treatise! n/t

[liberal N proud]

37. Thanks

[EV_Ares]

40. Excellent read, thanks for the posting. Some day unless someone

starts paying attention to the middle class again along with the workers of this country, a revolution in some form will occur.

Enough is enough.

Bail out the CEOs & Wall Street who are mostly the cause of this collapse after they have got their money and are now at the trough for more.

The hell with the workers of the auto industry. Yeah, fire the CEOs but the companies could be taken over and jobs saved in another way.

Bail out the banks with our money who now are turning around and screwing the consumer again with higher rates, etc and using our money to buy other banks.

What about us?

[Nederland]

42. Not. Gonna. Happen.

Socialism will never happen in America. Capitalism will never happen in America. This debate has been over since the fall of the Soviet Union, and both sides lost. The present and future is in mixed economies. The only real remaining debate is whether or not health care should be in the public or private sphere, and that debate will be ended shortly after Obama takes office.

The Socialists and the Libertarians have one giant thing in common: a failure to realize the debate is over.

[elleng]

45. Please explain

mixed economies.

Thanks.

[Nederland]

50. Mixed Economies

Mixed Economies are economies that have elements of both Socialism and Capitalism. Let's begin by defining socialism as state or collective ownership of the means of production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism). Using this definition, we can see that most 1st world economies range from being 28% government controlled (US) to around 50% government controlled (Sweden). In other words, nobody has a 100% socialist system and nobody has a 100% capitalist system. You can see just how similar all the world's economies are when you adjust for health care activity. In the US, about 14% of GDP is health care spending, so socializing that would result in an economy that is 42% government controlled--or about the same as as France.

As you can see, except for health care, there really is little difference anymore, except in people's minds.

[AntiFascist]

51. The problem right now is socialism for the wealthy...

this will continue to happen until Bush is out of office. Obama is not likely to want to live up to his right-wing label of 'Marxist', but FDR was not a Marxist.

[Jakes Progress]

43. I'm reminded of the letter in "Swing Vote"

where the writer said he and his wife worked two jobs and couldn't get by. The question was how was that possible in the richest country in the world.

Corporationists count on people being stupid enough to hate what is good for the country.

[mentalslavery]

44. So nice to see people write about marx and engels in an

accurate way. Here's the link to put in your browser of the pdf of Revolution in America

http://ia310824.us.archive.org/0/items/marxengelsonrevo00neum/marxengelsonrevo00neum.pdf

this passage was written from. Its an easier read than the one the author put up. I must commend the author on an insightful passage that reflects a good understand of marx and engels. Engels gets left out too much. He was marx's muse.

[leftstreet]

53. Thanks for posting the link!

:thumbsup:

[pberq]

46. Kick!!

Excellent job!

Also glad to see PE Obama speaking up for the workers at Republic

[f the letter]

47. This is great.

Passed on to some friends.. very nice

[gtar100]

54. Never in my adult life has "union" meant such power as it does now

This gives me great hope.

And I agree 100% - we didn't elect Obama for hope. We elected him for solutions. Hope got him elected. Solutions will keep in office.

As for Palin (and her type) that are spreading the racism and stoking fear of minorities, well they have a hard lesson to learn coming up. Progressives, myself included, will no longer sit silent. Good people know and we are many. They will not rule the day like they had in the past. I'm so sick of their shit making such a mess of this world. I will not let them get away with being the only voice in the room. Come hell or high water, this world deserves better than what it's got now.