We wish to lay out here in broad terms our political line and purpose. These lines are a few months late, but the struggle against police brutality over the summer required our immediate attention and an explanation of our politics and goals was left unaddressed.

In the early days of the pandemic, rapidly changing social conditions caused many people to question a society that threw millions out of work, threatened to evict them from their homes in the midst of the pandemic, and struggled to provide any serious relief while the very wealthy saw their net worth increase. Despite this, as increasingly desperate people looked for understanding and solutions, the broad left was able only to muster statements and slogans which, fair to say, did not find an audience among the working class or offer an explanation for the current state of the world.

We began our project from the perspective that, owing to the intensely fragmented nature of the left, there is no socialist movement of any significance. The severely weakened labor movement, its capture by the Democratic party, and the increasingly atomized nature of the working class led us further to the conclusion that there is no independent working class movement. As Lenin argued in “The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement”, the socialist movement without a working class movement leads to the isolation and neutralization of intellectuals and activists, leaving the workers engaged in solely economic (i.e., trade union) struggle. On the other hand, the labor movement separated from socialism leads the workers away from the ultimate aims and necessary tasks of the labor movement. In the absence of both elements, workers and socialist activists can only appeal to the State for partial concessions. In our view, the most pressing need is to raise the political and class consciousness of the workers and clarify the political and economic tasks that lay ahead for the newly developing workers movement.

As part of this program we must acknowledge the existence of numerous socialist and communist micro-sects. In our view, the isolation of these micro-sects, not only from the working class but from each other, has led to a sterile and ineffective intellectual and theoretical environment. Largely absent are polemical articles and debates about the questions facing the working class and socialist movements. Instead, these questions are decided internally and presented to the working class to accept or deny. Discussions are held largely behind closed doors rather than fought out openly and often lead to splits.

Here again we take our cues from Lenin. In his “Draft Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra and Zarya”, while discussing the tasks necessary for Russian Marxists to found the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party on a firm basis, he said, “In the first place, it is necessary to develop a common Party literature…it must discuss the questions of the movement as a whole…it must express all shades of opinion and views prevailing among Russian Social-Democrats, not as isolated workers but as comrades united in the ranks of a single organization by a common program and a common struggle…”

We recognize that important political differences exist between Russia in 1900 and the US in 2020. Russian Marxists at the time were organizing into a single organization with a common program, while today the socialist movement in the US comprises multiple micro-organizations with individual political programs and little motive to work together. We must also state that in the same document Lenin warned against the limitation of specifically local Party literature, a limitation that we are aware of in our own work.

Despite the differences, however, there are similarities. The Russian movement was divided into local reading or propaganda circles. Lenin and his collaborators were attempting to unite these local organizations into a single unified party. Today, there is a need in the US for the emergence of a Socialist movement that unites the various micro-sects into a unified party.

While we are certainly not Lenin, we share his view that various opinions must be represented in order build a unified movement. And though we, as the Editorial Board, maintain a distinct political line, we also believe that the growth of the left in theory, practice, and influence among the working class is through serious, but cordial, public polemics between the various tendencies within the Socialist movement and the broader left.

The growth of the left in Lancaster over the summer is a positive step, but as a movement we still face urgent questions. In our view these questions can only be answered through spirited discussion among the various groups in the movement. These conversations also serve to build connections among the groups and even contribute some level of tactical unity for the movement. Our primary goal, however, is to clarify in concert with comrades and potential comrades the political aims and tasks of the left. This project cannot be an end in itself, but rather a step toward the development of an all-US Socialist project. This is the task we must set for ourselves.

By J. Steelman

As the street protests cool off for the moment, the question is posed to the new abolitionist movement–that is, prison abolition and police abolition: where does the movement go from here? Over the past 5 years of BLM activity there has been a consistent analysis that the oppression faced by people of color is systemic in nature rather than a reflection of the personal failings of white people. This analysis was affirmed during the summer protests by the demand to Defund the Police as well as the demands that emanated from CHOP/CHAZ. This analysis, prevalent as it is, fails to explain adequately the underlying nature of current society and by what means is this society will be transformed into a society without police or prisons.

In broad terms most activists would agree that a new society would provide living wages for all, universal healthcare, guaranteed access to jobs, housing, food, a green economy, open borders, greater democracy both at the national and local level, equality between the races and genders, including the LBGT community, greater economic equality and a robust social safety net. This was largely the vision promoted by Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 Presidential campaigns, taken up by a number of abolitionist groups, whether in part or in full. This is evidenced by the Defund the Police camp wanting to redirect the police budget to fund social programs, something the Abolish the Police camp views as a necessary step toward full abolition. It is clear to nearly everyone in the movement that our society falls well short of the conditions needed to abolish police and prisons.

Many parts of the Left, regardless of political tendency, identify the main source of society’s ills in capitalism, with an emphasis on the greed and avarice of the CEOs of the biggest corporations, generally personified in Jeff Bezos. Of course greed plays a role but it is the laws of capitalist competition that reduce the living standards of the workers to the bare minimum. In either case, the left correctly identifies capitalism as the cause of the misery and poverty of the working class. It is these conditions, which lead to the need for police and prisons, and that must be abolished in order to abolish the police and prisons. Irrespective of tendency, the methods for alleviating these conditions is State intervention, to make the distribution of wealth “fair” and thus relieve the working class of its misery.

The problem with stating the question of social change only in terms of poverty and misery, conditions we also seek to abolish, is that the solution inevitably becomes the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor; yet regardless of the means used to carry this out, a change in the distribution of wealth leaves the mode by which wealth is produced wholly untouched, and it is not distributions, but the capitalist mode of production that is the source of poverty and misery for the working class.

Every mode of production is founded on specific relations. The capitalist mode is founded on the relation of wage-labor to capital. The wage-labor relation inherent to capitalism is exploitative regardless of the greed of an individual or company. The capitalist system regards labor-power as a commodity like any other. Assume for instance that a worker’s wages are equal to their cost of living; during the workday they would add value equal to their wages to the products or services they produce. However, as a commodity a worker’s labor-power belongs to the capitalist for the whole working day. If the worker produces value equal to their wages in 4 hours, the capitalist can work them for the full 8-hours forcing the worker to produce twice the value of their wages. This difference, the value produced by the worker but pocketed by the capitalist, is surplus value, which is realized on the market as profit.

The poverty and misery of the working class are expressions of this relationship and it is this relationship that must be abolished in order to abolish poverty and misery.

The specific relationship between capitalist and wage-worker also contains within it, in embryonic form, the whole contradiction of capitalist production. Namely, the antagonism between socialized production involving the global working class and the private appropriation of profit by a handful of capitalists. Any attempt to abolish poverty and misery on the basis of the capitalist mode of production will inevitably be undermined, not due to the greed or avarice of the capitalist class, but on the basis of the capitalism itself.

Under capitalism, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is the driver of economic crises. Profit, the surplus value realized in the market, is divided up between different sections of the capitalist class, commercial profit, interest, ground rent, etc. Taxes paid to the State is also included in the distribution of profits. The rate of profit fell from a high point in 1952 through the 1970s when the oil shocks caused an economic crisis. In order to boost the rate of profit, the capitalist class and the State began a process of upward redistribution, that is redistributing wealth to the capitalists in order to raise the rate of profit. The strategy was two-fold. On the one hand breaking up the unions made it easier to impose reduction in wages or at least fend off demands for wage increases. On the other hand, the State cut taxes, primarily to the capitalist class but the effects of those tax cuts also reached the small capitalists and even the top strata of the working class. As a result of the tax cuts, the social safety net was also cut. The efforts of the capitalist State was not able to increase the rate of profit since the 1970s. Even after the 2008-2009 financial crisis the economy has not fully recovered, and that already weak recovery was interrupted by the recent pandemic and associated economic crisis. The social welfare State of the 1950s through the 1970s, even as black workers still faced Jim Crow laws and were excluded from many of the State programs, was the result of the post-World War II economic boom. There hasn’t been a boom on that scale since. Today, with the rate of profit remaining low, it is unlikely that we will see a return to the Welfare State of the 1950s and 1960s.

Ultimately, State intervention in the economy will always run into the problem of the falling rate of profit and crisis. Europe, UK, and even Scandinavia, are neoliberalizing, albeit far slower than the US. Further, wages and profit are inversely related, as wages go up profits fall, relatively speaking. Rising wages further the rate of profit to fall, which led to the crushing of the unions in the 1980s. It should be noted here that the policies of neoliberalism were a response to an economic crisis and not specifically driven by an individual ideological motivation. In fact, both capitalist parties have embraced neoliberalism. Competition between workers for jobs also drives down wages. Unions are able to control competition within workplaces or industries, however, the tendency for wages to fall to the minimum still exists and exerts itself in times of crisis. It would be a mistake to think that the New Deal policies of the 1930s-1960s can be reasserted by fiat, that the collapse of the Democratic Socialism in the US was the result of a few greedy people asserting their political power over society.

Having briefly explored the economic basis for capitalist society we turn to the relationship between that economic foundation and the police. The connection between the economics of capitalism and the police lies in the nature of the modern State. The State is an organ of class domination, namely of capital over labor. It exists to manage a society in crisis, the crisis of capitalism. The modern State apparatus broadly comprises the government, administrative bureaucracy and the police and army. In the US, the executive branch is made up of the president and everything they have control over; the bureaucracy and the military. It is this executive that carries on most of the work of governing the country. This became crystal clear when President Trump and the bureaucracy enacted a number of measures including the continuation of UC extension and the CDC halted evictions until 2021. The legislative branch, trapped in deadlock, took vacation without passing any form of relief, and the executive took action. The bureaucracy, unelected as it is, may seem to stand above society, a neutral administration mediating conflict. In reality, its origin is the class conflict that gave rise to it and thus it remains the executive strictly of the capitalist class.

The Welfare State is only one form of social control exercised against the poor and working class, brought about by the crisis of capitalism and to ensure the continuation of capitalism. The other components of the executive of a modern state, the police and the military, are also forms of social control, more obvious forms to be sure. The rapid rise in incarceration rates took place in the mid-1980s as unemployment was on the rise. Social conditions engendered by unemployment and poverty, are ripe for criminal, or perhaps “criminal” behavior. The social role of the police is to maintain social order for the continuation of capitalism. Incarceration becomes tool for the maintenance of the surplus population. It’s not surprising that Law and Order presidents tend to follow periods of social unrest; Nixon in 1968, Reagan in 1980, and Trump in 2016.

All that has been said here demonstrates that, given the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the social safety net which existed in the 1950s and 1960s (not to mention the high wages) is not coming back. To whatever degree it might, its existence will be short-lived for economic, not simply political or ideological, reasons. The path to a new society, then, must be through the abolition of the capitalist world order, not its reform. And not just in one or two countries; capitalism is global and the struggle against it must be global as well.

Socialism arises as a reflection of the contradictions in capitalism and the need to overcome them. The struggle for higher wages reflects the demand that the workers receive the full value they produced through their labor. Further, only the working class is situated to abolish the wage relationship precisely because they own no property in the capitalist sense. All previous revolutions have only changed who secures dominance over this or that form of property. The working class, having no property of its own, can seize the means of production in the name of society as a whole and immediately work to overturn capitalist relations of production, abolish wage-labor, and create new relations of production. The immensity of the means of production that exist today and the science and technology applied to production are exponentially more powerful than even 100 years ago. The productive capacity exists to provide everyone in the world, not just with the bare necessities, but with nearly all their wants and needs. Under capitalism, a system driven by profit, those means of production cannot be unleashed to their full potential. They are put into motion only insofar as they produce, by way of the labor-power of wage workers, profit for the capitalist. When production outstrips demand, the capitalist mode of production lurches to a halt, and millions of workers are thrown out of work. Abolishing private property, taking over the means of production by society as a whole will free them from the contradictions of capitalism and allow for the full development of our productive forces for the benefit of the whole of society.

It must be emphasized that only the working class can emancipate itself. In the course of its struggle for power, the working class must become conscious of itself as the working class and organize along class lines, both in the economic sphere as unions and in the political sphere as a Socialist Party. Class struggles are political struggles and political struggles are struggles for State power; thus, the working class cannot look to the capitalist state to carry out its program. The capitalist State is an enemy of the working class. For this reason, the working class’s relation to the State and to the capitalist class must be a negative one. That is, it must be based on restricting the power and scope of the capitalist State’s authority over society. Positive demands on the capitalist State, demands that the State carry out active programs to support the working class, lead inevitably to the working class and its party becoming complicit in the management of capitalism and ties the working class movement to the State.

The State as an organ of class domination, is not neutral ground to be contested, but a class enemy to be exposed and resisted at every turn. There is no liberation in the capitalist state.

In order to build the society we want, a society free from police and prisons, the capitalist mode of production, as well as the State must be overthrown.

By S. Callaghan

From the time we begin to understand the world around us, capitalist society teaches us to look at communism through the capitalist lens and interpret communist ideas in ways that serve capitalism. It’s fair to say that since it first challenged capitalism, communism has been defined—and distorted—by its enemies. Let’s set some of this right.

One of the most frequent examples is the term private property. Under capitalism, this covers everything with an individual or corporation as its legal owner regardless of size, value, or function in society. Communism, on the other hand, distinguishes between two very different forms of property, private property and personal property.

Communism limits the term private property to things that produce wealth, like farms, factories, and mines. Communists also refer to these things as the means of production. Whoever controls the means of production controls society and the economy.

The other type of property, personal property, includes the things we use to conduct our everyday lives, from clothing, housewares, and tools to our homes and automobiles. Capitalists distort this critical distinction between types of property to scare working people into thinking communists want to take away our homes and personal possessions, right down to everyone’s toothbrush. Capitalists also blur the distinction so working-class people will look at private property (something owned only by the rich few) with the same regard we understandably have for our personal belongings.

This is similar to how the word capitalist is used. To communists, capitalists are the small group of people who own the means of production and use it to protect and increase their personal wealth. They want working people to think the word capitalist applies to everyone who participates in the capitalist system (not just the people at the “top”) and fool us into thinking their interests are identical to ours. Unlike the capitalist who profits from our labor, we have no choice: participate in the system or die.

In truth, communism seeks a society where what is now private property serves the public, the overwhelming majority. In doing so, communism doesn’t just leave your personal property alone, it protects your personal property so you can use and enjoy it without the necessity of laboring endlessly for the owners of private property.

Because capitalists own the means of production and thus control society, they are also known as the ruling class. Despite the carefully cultivated image of democracy that capitalist countries universally lay claim to, the ruling class regards everything in terms of personal wealth and power. Under capitalism, it’s their job to organize society to expand their wealth and power.

The proletariat is the huge class of wage-earners, the class with no capital and no control over the means of production, thus having no choice but to sell their labor. Proletarians work for the ruling class regardless of personal well-being. This is not a bug, but a feature of capitalism. Without a program of worker exploitation enforced by state violence and the threat of poverty, the capitalist system cannot exist. Capitalism requires the ruling class to exploit the proletariat because the ruling class cannot be supported any other way.

This brings us to surplus value, one of the principal mechanisms capitalists use to profit from working class labor. Surplus value is simply the difference between the value you create though your work and what your employer charges for your work. This is also mandated by capitalism since the capitalist cannot take a profit otherwise. Surplus value is why capitalists and their hired hands always push us to work harder and faster, so we produce more value for them. The capitalist simply pockets the difference without any increase in wages.

One result is that working-class people are effectively forced to bid against each other to see who will take the lowest wages for the privilege of putting money into the capitalist’s pocket. Capitalism trains us to police each other for their benefit while making us fight each other for the crumbs they brush off the table.

Finally, one of the most misunderstood terms, Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Capitalists like to scare people by emphasizing the word dictatorship. What this really refers to is the stage between the end of capitalist society and the beginning of communist society, one finally free from coercion and need. During the intermediate stage the state will still exist, but we in the working class run it for own benefit. But because no revolution can immediately and completely purge society of all capitalist influence, including inevitable violent attempts by the former ruling class to retake power, the working class will use the dictatorship of the proletariat to protect and solidify the revolution. This means the hegemony of the working class, the overwhelming dominance of wage earners over capital. Nothing less will keep us from returning to the system we have now, a dictatorship of the ruling class that puts us all at the mercy of capitalism. A Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a society run by and for the working-class majority, one that will not allow capitalists to take it back.

On Sunday, September 13^th, Ricardo Munoz was shot and killed by a Lancaster Police Officer after his family had reached out for help in handling a mental health crisis. Soon after, the Lancaster Police Department invaded the neighborhood along with other law enforcement agencies, including State Troopers. As a distraught community descended on the scene demanding answers, the police assumed their usual “thin blue line, us-versus-them” demeanor. 

In the ensuing hours demonstrators were met with silence as Ricardo Munoz’s body still lay where he fell with no coroner on site. As demands for answers fell on deaf ears, grief turned to anger. As Martin Luther King, Jr once remarked, “the riot is the language of the unheard”, and so it was on Sunday. The demonstration moved downtown to the police station, where instead of answers, the community was met with riot cops. Protesters demanded to know how a call for help ended in the death of a friend, a neighbor, a brother, a son. 

Lancaster police answered with bull horns and chemical agents, including what appeared to be 40mm rubber-tipped tear gas projectiles and CS gas grenades, designed to cause a burning sensation so intense that protesters cannot keep their eyes open while causing irritation of the lungs severe enough to produce profuse coughing, disorientation, and difficulty breathing. 

When the tear gas dissipated and the fires burned out, eight protesters had been arrested, charged with arson, rioting, and vandalism. The windows of the police station and Post Office had been broken, as well as the windows of a few local businesses. In the 24hrs following, five more people were arrested on similar charges. Six of the initial eight had their bail set at $1 million, an outrageous decision by Magisterial Judge Bruce Roth. Progressive organizations in Lancaster and around the country quickly denounced the excessive bail, which Lt Governor Fetterman called “unconstitutional”. Eventually, the defendants had bail reduced to between $25,000 to $100,000 depending on their individual charges (LNP 9/16). As of this writing nine of the thirteen people arrested are out on bail. The remaining three adults remain in prison waiting to post bail and the minor’s case is being handled in juvenile’s court. 

The excessively high bail set for demonstrators is a clear attempt to intimidate progressive elements in the city, to crush the growing political movement demanding that police and city officials be held accountable for their actions. Lancaster City has been a Democratic stronghold for decades, yet the very same Democrats who are lamenting the egregious bail amounts are at the same time decrying the “violence”, blaming outside agitators for the damage. While it is true that some people arrested on Sunday night were from out of town, the events of that night were a long time in the making. Even before the pandemic set in, people in Lancaster City were struggling to make ends meet. Rising housing prices, stagnant wages, low-wage jobs, and of course police brutality have weighed heavily on city residents for decades. 

The demonstrations that rocked the city–and the world–this summer are symptomatic of the conditions created by the pandemic, economic crisis, and racial injustice. Ever greater sections of the working class are finding themselves thrown out of their homes and their jobs, more and more abandoned by local, state, and federal politicians. While some relief was available to some of the working class, it was never more than temporary. The eviction moratoriums only keep people housed until the moratorium ends, and then back rent comes due. It’s still too early to tell the extent of the job loss in the county, but we can expect many jobs won’t return, and those that do will find pay cuts or freezes, and either forced overtime or shorter hours, depending on the job. In any case, it’s the working class who bears the burden of the crisis. 

This is not an accident. 

The recent history of Lancaster, like many cities around the country, proves that the Democrats represent the capitalist class as much as the Republicans. The apparent polarization within US society is, in essence, a struggle between competing factions of capitalists. The true “sin” of the protesters on Sunday night was not “violence” (something the capitalist class visits on People of Color every day), but the desecration of the holiest of holy relics in capitalist society, private property. 

The police are free to deploy munitions banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention for use in international conflicts (CS Gas), use pepper spray on protesters demanding police reform, and tase individuals attempting to comply with contradictory orders, but damage to private property is a line that cannot be crossed. 

Even as the bail amounts were lowered, the decision to levy $1 million bail at all must be viewed as a part of a larger effort to undermine a growing progressive political movement not only in Lancaster, but across the country. In 2017, after the protests at the Inauguration, the federal government arrested 234 people on vandalism and rioting charges carrying a possible 60 year sentence. The State got zero courtroom convictions and dropped the charges. 

The same year, bills were introduced into the PA senate that would create a special category of felony criminal trespass for protesting at pipelines, fracking rigs, and other places considered “critical infrastructure”. Luckily that bill was killed in the House in 2017 and never made it to a floor vote. Lancaster’s very own state senator Scott Martin proposed a bill in 2017 as well, one that would make protesters pay “government expense” for responding to their demonstrations if they were convicted of any felony or misdemeanor. This bill also went nowhere. More recently, protesters were snatched off the street in Portland after the George Floyd protests, tactics that are being deployed in Lancaster right now. Representatives from Green Dreamz, a local civil rights organization stated police jumped out of a van, held a small group at gunpoint and arrested Kathryn Patterson and Taylor Enterline. While the Lancaster Police says they only used one unmarked car to make arrests, the aggressive nature of the arrests is worrying. 

The DA, magisterial justices, and police are all part of the same armed wing of State power, with the police specifically purposed to maintain the social conditions necessary for capital to produce profits. They “protect and serve” capital, not the people. Social unrest interrupts the process of production regardless of the source and therefore interrupts the production of profit. The police have historically been used to break strikes; we now see the same tactics in how they are attempting to break Black Lives Matter. 

The State thinks it can crush the resistance of the poor and working class, but as long as the fundamental conditions of their suffering exist, the resistance of the people will continue. Capitalism creates immense material wealth side by side with suffering and misery for workers, constraining them under the system of wage labor which renders them employable only insofar as their labor increases their employer’s profits, and when their labor is no longer necessary, tosses them out on the street. 

A movement is rising. As long as housing prices rise while wages remain stagnant, as long as people are unemployed in a world of plenty for the ruling class, as long as resistance to state power results in state violence, resistance to the capitalist class will remain. The poor and working class are rising from their slumber and slowly shaking off the cobwebs. The people in the street, especially the young people, have proven they are willing to withstand any injustice in order to change society. The heroic action of those arrested confronting State violence during the George Floyd Protests in late May and early June, the March for Human Rights and Against Police Terror in early August, and most recently in the protests of last weekend have set us an example. In the words of Karl Marx “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!” 

Drop the charges!

End cash bail!

Release all political prisoners!

On September 7 the United States celebrates Labor Day, which originated from the labor movement of the early 1880’s as a day to celebrate workers. In 1885, before the holiday was adopted officially, the union movement led by the AFL put forward the demand for the 8-hour workday to become effective May 1, 1886, and coordinated strikes to enforce the demand.

On May 4^th a demonstration took place in Chicago’s Haymarket Square; it was the day after Chicago police killed one labor demonstrator and injured several others. During the demonstration, an unknown individual threw a bomb at the police who had advanced on the speakers’ podium, guns loaded, to force demonstrators to leave the square.  Police opened fire on the crowd, killing 4 strikers and injuring at least 100. Though it was unknown who threw the bomb, eight anarchists were arrested and four were eventually hanged.

The Haymarket Affair, as it was known, cemented May 1 as International Workers Day. In 1887, Grover Cleveland, fearing that celebrating Labor Day on May 1 would bolster anarchists and socialists, publicly supported instead a September Labor Day. In 1894, this became the official holiday, showing the state’s willingness to recognize labor only if that recognition is bled of any threat to capital.

The coronavirus pandemic has made it clear to many that, then as now, the working class can only rely on itself to defend its interests, which now serve only as pawns in the political games of the two capitalist parties. This is true under normal conditions of course, but the pandemic has torn away the veil for many workers in the US. We work hard our entire lives, together with workers of all countries, producing the whole of the value in society, the fruits of our labor pocketed by the capitalists while we struggle to survive. When the inevitable crisis comes, it is the working class who shoulders the burden. While we are buried under the weight of unemployment, evictions, and hunger, the Republicans and Democrats use our suffering to score points, to prove who are the better managers of capitalism. Our wages, our homes, our jobs, gone while politicians take their summer break.

As a result of post-industrial capitalist organization, the weakness of trade unions, and the lack of workers’ social and political organizations, the working class has been rendered nearly helpless. Labor has become an interest group, an NGO of sorts that, like all the others, must beg the capitalist political parties for recognition. Whether workers vote or not, labor is dependent on them to uphold labor’s interests. Yet both parties, Republicans and Democrats, are parties of capitalism, their interests diametrically opposed to the interests of the working class.

Workers want higher wages, but an increase is wages is only possible through decrease in profits. Under capitalism, the owners of property must make a profit if they wish to remain capitalists; because of competition they must make the most profit possible. In order to increase profits, wages are reduced to a minimum. The immediate reaction to this state of affairs is the organization of trade unions to win higher wages, job protections, and benefits such as health care, etc. The union struggle, while important for teaching class solidarity and showing workers their strength is, however, a defensive struggle. It takes place within the confines of the capitalist mode of production, and as such is subject to the laws of political economy. Given that reality, the working class, in its struggle against the bosses, will inevitably come up against the power of the state, both the police and the bureaucracy. Hence, the working class struggle must be a political struggle. And political struggles are only political struggles if they are a struggle for power.

To wage a struggle for political power the working class must be organized–by itself and for itself–into a political party for the defense of its own interests. As mentioned above, the interests of the working class can only be realized through the abolition of the capitalist mode of production. As such, a working class political party must necessarily be a socialist party. Without a party, without a socialist program, the working class will remain but one of many pressure groups begging to be heard by the capitalist political parties.

On Labor Day, and every day, we remember those workers who fought and bled and died for what few rights workers have. In their spirit we appeal to the working class today: Build the Worker’s Party.

-Editorial Board of The Workers’ Gazette

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The Housing Crisis

by J. Steelman

Since the start of the pandemic, the housing crisis has taken on a new dimension. Previously, the housing crisis was defined largely by homelessness and gentrification, today an eviction wave is looming. Of course, all the conditions of the former still exist and will certainly be exacerbated by present crisis. Thus far throughout the pandemic 90+% of renters (NMHC.org) have been able to pay all or part of their rent by the end of the month. The Federal Unemployment Compensation extension has been key to helping people make their rent and the biweekly schedule of payments is likely the cause of payments being spread out over the month. Even with the additional help, late payments and partial payments are still grounds for evictions. [read more]

~~~

Automation

By A. Barns

Humans are making rapid strides in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). Both have the potential to reduce working hours, make jobs safer, increase energy efficiency, etc. But there are many potential problems—chief among them being unemployment and the use of AI to control human destiny in ways we may not want.

While the capitalist system has developed these technologies to their current state, it can never truly free human beings from work using robotics, nor allow AI to alleviate, rather than enslave, the human species. If we want more advanced machines to help us, we must ditch the profit motive in exchange for rational economic planning carried out by a government of the working people. [read more]

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Universal Basic Income and Its Pitfalls

by S. Callaghan

Universal Basic Income has become a popular subject on the left as the capitalist economy falters under the pandemic. As Marxists, we know there can be no discussion of Universal Basic Income without rooting it firmly in a class analysis. Certainly, the bourgeoisie will do so. The only way UBI will exist in a capitalist economy is if the bourgeoisie believes it to be in their interest.  If serious leftists are to advocate for UBI, we must demonstrate how it serves the long-term interests of the working class when the ruling class believes the opposite. [read more]

by J. Steelman

Since the start of the pandemic, the housing crisis has taken on a new dimension. Previously, the housing crisis was defined largely by homelessness and gentrification, today an eviction wave is looming. Of course, all the conditions of the former still exist and will certainly be exacerbated by present crisis. Thus far throughout the pandemic 90+% of renters (NMHC.org) have been able to pay all or part of their rent by the end of the month. The Federal Unemployment Compensation extension has been key to helping people make their rent and the biweekly schedule of payments is likely the cause of payments being spread out over the month. Even with the additional help, late payments and partial payments are still grounds for eviction. The failure of Congress to pass a comprehensive relief bill before their recess means that even if a bill is agreed upon as soon as they are back in session it will be mid to late September before any financial assistance makes its way to households.

In the interim, President Trump issued an executive order that continues the Federal Unemployment Compensation extension, but at a rate of $300 per week, half as much as the previous $600 per week. This means that more and more families will struggle to make their rent or mortgage payments. The executive order also failed to adequately address the coming wave of evictions. It was reported that Trump extended the eviction moratorium of the CARES act. Instead the Order only states that the Department of Health and Human Services and CDC “shall consider whether any measures temporarily halting residential evictions of any tenants for failure to pay rent are reasonably necessary to prevent the further spread of COVID-19…” (Executive Order on Fighting the Spread of COVID-19 by Providing Assistance to Renters and Homeowners). The executive order further goes on to state that the Treasury and Department of Housing and Urban Development will identify available Federal funds to provide temporary financial assistance to renters and homeowners. Which is a far cry from a moratorium on evictions.

On 8/25, Governor Wolf stated that he did not have the authority to extend the Pennsylvania state moratorium on evictions which is set to expire on 8/31. Already landlords are sending out Notices to Quit and preparing to file eviction lawsuits on 9/1. Pennsylvania has established a $150 million program to help people who have lost their job as well as those who have seen their incomes drop at least 30% pay their rent. LNP reports that many landlords refuse to participate in the program which caps the monthly amount the State will pay out at $750, which is well under the average price of rent (LNP 8/18 “Is PA on the verge of a wave of evictions”). While the eviction crisis today is especially acute, it stems from the same conditions that gives rise to the other aspects of the housing crisis.

In response to the various manifestations of the housing crisis, activists have proposed various fixes or solutions. From housing the homeless by government order, to legal mandates for affordable housing, to rent control, public housing, to canceling rent for the duration of the pandemic/economic crisis. The common thread that runs through all of these demands is the underlying principle that “Housing is a Human Right”. It is precisely this principle we wish to take up.

We should state from the outset that we are fighting for a society where the principle “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” can be fully realized. That means that housing as well as all other products produced by society would be distributed according to need. However, framing the housing question in terms of rights obscures the issue and gets us no closer to a solution. Firstly, rights are always conditioned by the economic mode of production. Under capitalism, the right to assemble is constricted by the right to private property. Likewise the right to free press is constricted, even in the age of the internet, by the capital necessary to run a cable TV station or large scale printing operation. Everywhere, even in the most democratic countries, democratic or legal rights are constrained by the economic condition of production (The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky – Lenin page 20 and 22).

Secondly, rights are largely legal constructs, that is are recognized within an existing legal framework, a legal framework that has arisen on the basis of a given economic system, in this case the capitalist system. Under capitalism, the capitalist has the right to exploit the worker and “the house owner, in his capacity as a capitalist, has not only the right but by reason of competition, to a certain extent also the duty of ruthlessly making as much out of his property in house rent as he possibly can (The Housing Question – Engels pg 42). That we may not recognize these rights as legitimate doesn’t change the fact that these rights are upheld by capitalist society. Thirdly, in the case that housing is a human right and the house owner has the right to obtain as much rent as possible, how is this contradiction solved? Between equal rights, force decides (Capital Vol 1 – Marx page 344). How then should we understand the housing question? On the basis of social conditions as they are, that is on the basis of political economy.

Housing is a commodity, that is houses are produced for sale, not for the immediate use by the builder or land-owner. As a commodity it is subject to the same economic laws as all other commodities in general and landed property in particular (The Housing Question – Engels page 20). The price of any commodity, including housing, is determined by its cost of production, that is by the labor-time (both past and present labor-time) necessary for its production, however, it is by no means equal to its cost of production (Wage Labor and Capital – Marx page 25).

Thus the price of housing, or what is the same thing, rent, is determined by the building and maintenance costs, the value of the land, and the relation of supply and demand (The Housing Question – Engels page 20). This price is realized with the sale of the commodity. Different commodities can be consumed in different lengths of time which makes it possible to rent, or sell the commodity piece-meal.  Instead of receiving the full price of the house immediately the house-owner instead receives the price over time (ibid page 78-79). The rent paid by the tenant covers the interest on the building costs, repairs, the average of bad debts and unpaid rents, covers occasional periods when the house is vacant, pays off the building capital which is invested in the house, as well as paying ground-rent (ibid page 20). Interest and ground-rent are but two forms of surplus-value, the value created by the worker above and beyond their wages.

All surplus-value is created in the production process and is afterwards divided up among the whole capitalist class, (we will take up the issue of ground-rent and interest and their relationship to surplus-value in a future article) including the land-owner or house-owner (ibid page 27). While commodities have been produced under previous modes of production, it has always been the exception. Under the capitalism commodity production is the rule. Capitalists set in motion wage workers (living labor) and machines (dead labor) to produce a given commodity. Despite the vast cooperation of the working class to produce the goods and services society needs to reproduce itself, the capitalists remain the exclusive owners of the commodities produced. Housing, as a commodity, being subject to the laws of commodity exchange, can only be solved by abolishing commodity production, that is to say the solution to the housing crisis “lies in the abolition of the capitalist mode of production and the appropriation of all the means of subsistence and instruments of labor by the working class itself (ibid page 71).

An objection may be raised that while abolishing capitalism is all well and good, the crisis must be addressed in the here and now. While we won’t specifically address individual policies at the moment, since there are many, we can address some common themes. On the one hand, there are those who advocate for more funds for public housing, including raising taxes on large corporations and the “1%”. The state, as the “organized collective power of the possessing classes” (ibid page 65), has proven itself incapable, unwilling, or both, to provide sufficient numbers of public housing units. In fact, from 1992 to 2012 US housing officials got rid of or tore down 285,000 public housing units, and only replaced about 1/6 (BBC news report quoted from Breaking the Chains “Not just rich people and cafes: toward a socialist understanding of gentrification”). Furthermore, taxes are derived from the same surplus-value the capitalists extract from the working class. Meaning the continued exploitation of the working class as a whole.

Some more radical proposals demand that the State nationalize all housing and distribute it either freely or more commonly at a set percentage of income. Since commodity prices are determined by their cost of production in labor-time, wages, as the price of labor-power is also determined by its cost of production. This cost of production includes cost of food, housing, clothing etc. While there are certain requirements to sustaining human-life, the value of labor-power, is also socially determined. Today, we would consider cell phones, internet access, among other things as necessary to the reproduction of the worker as an individual as well as raising the next generation of workers. The general reduction of the cost of rent or eliminating rent altogether, lowers the cost of producing an individual worker and their family. This will result in a decrease in wages approximately equal to the average housing cost in a given area (The Housing Question – Engels page 46). While it is true that the workers would still have a house, the secondary consequences of housing as a universal right would negatively affect the working class. For instance the supply of land would be severely restricted, while the overall demand for non-housing land, would still remain around the same, and in some cases we could expect it to rise since previously housing units could be bought and demolished to make way for restaurants, shops, or even factories. The increased cost of land would further raise prices as cost of production increased. Decreasing wages also has the effect of increasing the power of capital over the working class. Eliminating ground-rent and interest has no bearing on the overall total amount of surplus-value produced, since they are only distributions of that surplus-value.

Decreasing wages, however, means increasing profits for the remainder of the capitalist class, since wages and profits are inversely proportional (Value, Price, and Profit – Marx page 49). Even though, in this case the workers standard of living would remain the same, they would nevertheless find their social position fall relative to the capitalists, or in other words, even though the worker financial situation remained the same, the result would be increasing inequality between the capitalists and the workers (ibid page 51).

Of course, this does not mean that we should sit on our hands and watch as our families, friends, and neighbors are thrown out onto the street. It only means that the housing crisis has been going on since at least 1872 when Engels wrote The Housing Question. In each iteration of the housing crisis the particulars were different, but the underlying foundations of the crisis were the same. The housing crisis today is especially acute due to the dual crises: the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis. The immediate struggle against evictions, while necessary, must be combined with a broader struggle against capitalism. Whether a tsunami of evictions occurs, an extension of the eviction moratorium, or even a rent cancellation law, we can expect numbers of small-time landlords to fail and a furious escalation of gentrification. Given that the drive of capitalist production, by way of competition, is to obtain as much profit as possible, it makes sense that “affordable housing” while still profitable, is passed over, especially in “developing” cities in favor of luxury apartments or condos.

In the current moment, preventing evictions is the task facing the working class movement as it relates to the housing question. That struggle takes many forms: from organizing tenants in multi-family units for rent strikes, to organizing the community to struggle for protections such as eviction moratoriums, payment plans, or canceling the rent, to blockading eviction court proceedings or evictions themselves, to rehousing those people who have been evicted. We must remain clear-sighted about the nature of the struggle against evictions. While this is a strictly defensive struggle, the organizations forged during this crisis can, under more favorable conditions, begin the struggle to overthrow the capitalist mode of production.

Housing must be understood on the basis of political economy. However, we realize that the slogan “Housing as a Human Right” is a symptom of the contradiction within capitalist society, namely the contradiction between social production and private appropriation. The working class can only rely on itself for protection from the tyranny of the capitalist class and must organize in mass organizations encompassing the broadest layers of the class. The housing question can only be solved by abolishing private property and the expropriation of the capitalist class is only possible through class struggle.

By A. Barns

Humans are making rapid strides in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). Both have the potential to reduce working hours, make jobs safer, increase energy efficiency, etc. But there are many potential problems—chief among them being unemployment and the use of AI to control human destiny in ways we may not want.

While the capitalist system has developed these technologies to their current state, it can never truly free human beings from work using robotics, nor allow AI to alleviate, rather than enslave, the human species. If we want more advanced machines to help us, we must ditch the profit motive in exchange for rational economic planning carried out by a government of the working people.

Capitalism and technology

Capitalists develop the productive forces, including robots and AI, to compete profitably with their peers. New technology is introduced to the workplace to facilitate competition.

All economic activity requires human labor time, and the time can be used more efficiently if the work is mechanized. Although not all companies will introduce new technologies immediately, and will often focus first on disciplining or training their workers, if a company has the spare cash to automate an aspect of production, they will. This necessarily results in layoffs, as capitalists will cut costs by replacing the laborer where they can.

For example, a single industrial forklift can perform the same amount of work with one laborer that once took 20 or more laborers in the same time. Time is how labor is measured under capitalism and how the majority of workers are paid. If one worker can be as efficient as 20 used to be, then that will be more profitable, and thus, capitalists will gravitate towards technological development.

Competing capitalists are able to stay in competition only by providing ever-cheaper commodities at greater scales of production (to capture more market share). This is the capitalist’s incentive to exploit labor in a more efficient way, resulting in tighter control of workers’ time (more stressful work), and new technologies on the job (layoffs).

The expansion of technology in capitalist industrial processes is mirrored by the expansion of consumer-side technology with the introduction of new products like microwaves and smart phones. A side effect of this process, however, is that workers’ personal lives can be overburdened, rather than liberated, with technology.

For example, although the introduction of motor vehicles was an improvement in personal mobility, it also results in workers being capable of working further and further way from home than before their introduction, which is good for capitalists. Cars become simply the machine that takes you to work, and workers are never compensated for their commute. Never mind the financial burden this often generates, or the many fatal accidents. Motor vehicles also resulted in a society dependent on fossil fuels, perpetuating the wars that the ruling class has led us into, and the climate crisis that the ruling class tries to obfuscate.

The introduction of new technology will always present potential challenges, but capitalism as a social system is unconcerned with fixing problems unless they are problems of profitability (for example, stopping striking workers). All cars that run on fossil fuels could easily be replaced with electric cars, but such a large project would not be profitable for oil companies. And as an even better solution, cars could be replaced with cleaner, safer mass transit (giving new employment to autoworkers) that would most benefit the poorest and help mitigate climate change. But this would upset the very profitable automobile industry.

Technology and labor

As technology replaces the laborer, in principle, this can mean the reduction of work—more free time, more productivity—or different, better work. Yet under the competitive market system of capitalism, more productivity has meant the same working hours, and sometimes more intense work for fewer laborers.

In our forklift example, the displacement of 19 workers means the one now has to do the same work as 20, whereas the 19 others now have no work. The total workload could be reduced for all persons while still offering meaningful employment to all. Again hypothetically, the forklift should reduce a 10-hour day of labor for 20 persons, into a three-hour day for 20 persons.

While there is a certain truth to the notion that technological development creates more jobs, since new industries (or branches of industry) offer new labor needs, the interim between employment and re-employment in a capitalist system is dehumanizing. All human needs are marketized under capitalism, and if you don’t have the money then you are going to starve (or otherwise be depraved of needs like housing, health care, entertainment, a car to get to work, etc). Meanwhile, the unemployed part of the population serves as a pressure on employed workers to accept lower standards of work and compensation. Unless there is a revolution, the same cycle of needless unemployment will repeat itself.

However, if all industries had a system of democratic planning based on fair compensation to displaced workers, useless jobs could be eliminated but employment (or livelihood) still guaranteed. There is no real reason why new technologies, including completely automated processes, should result in unemployment or money problems.

Take for example, truck drivers. This is a demographic that is particularly vulnerable to automation, considering the recent inroads that car companies are making towards self-driving vehicles. Consider that under modern capitalism, should a company decide to save on wages by automating some or all of its fleets, there could be hundreds, even thousands out of work. These workers would have to peddle their skills at another company, possibly for lower wages (this new employer now has to compete with the company that has automated trucks, and will drive a hard bargain).

But with socially planned production, this problem disappears. If the workers had direct ownership and control of their company, the drivers might decide to introduce the new machines in order to significantly cut their time on the job while earning the same pay. That could grant them more time with the family, with a hobby, or on self-improvement. Or, the extra manpower could be turned into extra construction vehicle operators for whatever public works the community deems best for its benefit, since this is an easily transferable skill.

Working times for all can be reduced drastically in this way. If workers in a given industry are automated away, it can be done gradually and with a mind to re-organize the work towards those industries that cannot so easily be automated. If a forklift can perform the same work with one laborer that once took 20, perhaps 10 workers could proceed to a job that does not yet have that forklift, reducing two shifts lasting 10 hours to two shifts lasting five. Under a socially planned economy, all of these workers would be paid the same as if the forklift never existed.

The control of the robots by the working class can free all of us from the constraints of the jobs we are accustomed too, giving us more freedom both in spare time and also to decide how to use our commonly produced wealth. This is the combination of socialism and automation, and can only be accomplished once the capitalist class is overthrown by a revolution and the workers take power over the state and society.

Artificial Intelligence and the Internet

As numerous privacy scandals with social media sites such as Facebook show, human data is both vulnerable and profitable. Our personalities, likes, wants, and interests are up for sale. The more dependent we become on the internet, the less privacy we collectively have.

Worse still, this data can be used against us to serve us ads or other online content specifically catered to our biases and blind spots. Thus politically powerful people can use these tools to manipulate our worldview. The ill effects of disinformation during an election year should be obvious. This includes the millions spent on digital campaigning that only sets the bar for candidacy higher and higher in monetary terms, obliterating democracy.

This becomes even more problematic when algorithms decide for us what we see and hear online, and corporations like YouTube (owned by Google) keep their inner workings a secret to the public. Of course, algorithms and also artificial intelligence are not spontaneous things; they are created by humans with human biases. What values are algorithms promoting? The values of its creators! How can an AI know racism is wrong if its not programmed to know? Can you imagine the nightmare that policing would become if they started using AI to “track criminals”?

Like automobiles, microwaves, and cell phones, the internet is a technological outgrowth of capitalist technological development. Naturally, under capitalism, it will be used to exploit and track working people, rather than free them from the constraints of work. Often, the internet can be used to speed up or facilitate the movement of commodities, and corporations like Amazon have succeeded because of this. As discussed above, Amazon is like any corporation and uses human labor power, measured in time. Online ordering of products reflects Amazon’s use of technology to increase efficiency and profits. They will use data-mining and other privacy breaking methods wherever they can.

The scientific potential that humans could gain from the data that is collected online is immense. But great power requires great oversight. Data, if democratically controlled and given with consent could offer ways to understand ourselves better, rather than control us.

The collection of data is a class issue. Why on Earth it is okay for the capitalist to trawl a catalog of our habits for their benefit, and yet the capitalist has complete right to privacy of their transactions and meetings? Why should a politician in the pocket of Wall St. be allowed privacy in their campaign meetings while using our personal data to decide whom to profile? Our personal data is collected and sold like a commodity—why should this information be behind a pay wall only the dictatorship of the rich can overcome?

We should be mindful of the sheer power of AI. Imagine if advanced general AI were under the control of persons only interested in making a profit? Imagine if it were under the control of the police! Real AI (not a “non-player-character” in a video game, which has very weak AI) would think far too fast for humans, in ways we couldn’t easily predict.

The danger of AI is not its potential for malevolence, but rather its effectiveness. AI is not so much a mind as it is a force of nature. The introduction of AI to the algorithms that decide what we see online, and also predict our behavior for better marketing of products, is wildly dangerous. The only reason it is used like this is because we live under capitalism, and not because it is the only way to use the technology. Working people deserve to control how this information comes to their screens and why.

As we live under capitalism, capitalists, new and old, will seek to use the space of the internet as a new vector for profitability. This is done primarily in two ways: first, by predicting consumer behavior (and advertising to us), and also by turning information into a commodity, making it profitable to sell data to companies, political campaigns, or even governments. While the surveillance state and the creation of the internet are not solely the responsibility of corporations, state-funded RnD has a large role to play in its creation; there is a great deal of permeability between the capitalist usage of the internet and the police-state.

Our robot friends under socialism

The historical task of the capitalist was to develop the technology that we now possess. The time of their proper rule is over. The historical task of the worker is to seize the technology for human benefit and abolish class distinctions. The market is an obsolete social tool, and robots and humanity will only reach their full collective potential in a planned economic model.

AI and the internet show us the potential to use collective human and robot intelligence to solve our problems, enhance our scientific understandings, and make life better. We must not squander this potential.

Robots entering the workforce can be combined with the elimination of useless or outdated jobs and a guarantee of work to all persons, including fulfilling people’s needs in the intervals between work. This will reduce working times for all and free up most of our weeks for activities of our choosing.

AI and mass data collection should be controlled by the working class. People must trust that they can access information without being watched. With full consent of data use, and full transparency of all activities of data science, human intelligence will explode by both increasing general knowledge and by mixing computational speed and precision with human flexibility and creativity. This can only be accomplished with the abolition of market anarchy and class society by establishing socialism, and this can only be done with a revolution led by the working class.

by S. Callaghan

Universal Basic Income has become a popular subject on the left as the capitalist economy falters under the pandemic. As Marxists, we know there can be no discussion of Universal Basic Income without rooting it firmly in a class analysis. Certainly, the bourgeoisie will do so. The only way UBI will exist in a capitalist economy is if the bourgeoisie believes it to be in their interest.  If serious leftists are to advocate for UBI, we must demonstrate how it serves the long-term interests of the working class when the ruling class believes the opposite.

UBI cannot be considered in a mythical context where it supplies a reliable income equal to a living wage, nor in any context that assumes the bourgeoisie’s legislative hirelings would allow it to exist if UBI fails to increase profits or secure continuing profitability. At present, there is no discernible discussion of UBI among the ruling class except occasionally as a block grant-style replacement for “entitlements”, programs that already offer shockingly low benefits for the working class. UBI would simply constitute a new way to distribute these paltry benefits, which exist only to stave off unrest, benefits derived purely from the ruling class’s own cost benefit analysis.

UBI is no less subject to reduction and contingency than the benefit system it would replace; in fact, it would be more so. In the United States, the multiplicity of benefit programs (Social Security, SSI, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, TANF, WIC, Food Stamps, Unemployment Compensation, and Workers’ Compensation), each with its own set of beneficiaries and interest groups among the public and the bourgeoisie, makes these benefits legislatively more complex and difficult  than UBI to reduce or eliminate.

UBI on the scale possible in a capitalist economy will reduce what little pressure exists to organize the economy for jobs, effectively becoming a way to pacify a reserve army of labor that will grow as automation grows. There is no discussion among capitalists of using UBI as a path to a broad reduction in working hours while maintaining a healthy standard of living for the working class. It relieves pressure on employers to raise wages for those who remain at work while, inevitably, growing the reserve army of labor and worsening the precariousness it was supposed to improve.

Further, UBI separates the working class from work, gradually divorcing more and more workers from their role in the processes of production and distribution, thus from one of the few sources of working-class power. Under capitalism, UBI will be designed to pacify the working class, not to protect it, normalizing the worker’s dependence on the crumbs the bourgeoisie brush from their table as jobs–and working class power–gradually disappear.

Given these conditions, the most productive course is not to pursue UBI, but to demand full employment with reduced hours across the board and no reduction in wages using all power the working class has at its disposal.

Still, we must acknowledge that UBI has support in many quarters of the left. Growing support among neo-liberals, too, makes some form of UBI look more likely, if not imminent. What is the correct course for the left to take if the pro-capital version of UBI becomes a possibility?

As always, the correct course is to subject conditions to class-based analysis and push them by whatever means possible toward increased working-class power. If workers broadly support UBI, we should support it, too, while pointing out the pitfalls and pressing relentlessly, on the left and in society at large, for full employment, shorter hours, and higher pay. Unlike capitalist UBI, these demands enhance worker power and are much harder to reverse. Despite the enthusiasm many comrades feel for UBI as a vehicle for class struggle, we should rather support UBI as a way to alleviate some of the misery facing the working class, especially the misery of workers who provide the unpaid labor of housekeeping, child care, and elder care in the home, labor that falls overwhelmingly on working class women. While no substitute for full employment and reduced hours with higher pay, this element of UBI could prove progressive.

UBI in any likely form will be designed by the ruling class to protect ruling class interests; this is inevitable. The workers must never allow UBI to short-circuit the demand for full-employment, reduced hours, and increased pay. We should further resolve that, should a broad left coalition decide to support UBI, we will support it, too, if only to alleviate somewhat the suffering of the working class while warning of UBI’s dangers and pushing it in the most progressive direction possible. If UBI exists, class struggle must push it in a progressive direction lest it become a capitalist Trojan Horse.

by C. Martin

In the early 1930’s on the West Coast of the United States, the longshoremen and the sailors, who make the shipping trade possible, were working under grueling conditions for low pay. The longshoremen made on average $40 a month, while able seamen and ordinary seamen made roughly $53 and $36 a month respectively. Both longshoremen and sailors faced extended unemployment between jobs, but when work was found they were forced to work long hours. The longshoremen could be forced to work shifts up to 36 hours straight, and the sailors would work up to 16 hours a day.

Neither the longshoremen or the sailors had adequate union protection against these injustices. The longshoremen were channeled into the gangster-controlled Blue Book Union. Through this “union” they had to use payoffs and bribes to gain work. The sailors were mostly unorganized, except for the small and corrupt International Seaman’s Union, and the even smaller militant Marine Workers Industrial Union that was part of the Trade Union Unity League.

The inhumane conditions mentioned above, along with the legal right for workers to organize through the recently passed National Industrial Recovery Act, led the longshoremen to flock into the International Longshoreman Association (ILA). The bosses, violating the law which they consider sacred only when it benefits them, refused to negotiate with the union and fired four rank and file militants.  In response, the longshoremen and the sailors went out on strike up and down the West Coast 35,000 strong on May 9^th, 1934. The longshoremen demanded a $1/hour wage, a six hour day, a thirty hour work week, and the creation of a union hall to remove hiring decisions from the gangsters in the Blue Book Union.

However, the bosses had nothing to negotiate; only a communist insurrection to put down. The press supported them by launching a slander campaign to paint the workers as Disney villains. Consider this “gem” from the San Francisco Chronicle, headlined “Red Army Marching on City”:

“… the communist army planned the destruction of railroad and highway facilities to paralyze transportation and later, communication, while San Francisco and the Bay Area were made a focal point in a red struggle for control of government.”

Joseph Ryan, the opportunist and mob-connected ILA president, tried to scuttle the strike by signing an agreement with the bosses over the heads of the workers. When they told him to go pound sand, he also joined in the chorus of accusing the strikers of being communists.

On July 3^rd, the police attacked the picket line at the Embarcadero pier in San Francisco and a vicious fight ensued for four hours. The police attacked with their guns, batons, and tear gas while the strikers fought back with bricks and their fists. The next day saw a truce on the July 4^th holiday, with the fighting picking up where it left off on July 5^th. That day, known as Bloody Thursday, saw other workers and students come to the picket line to reinforce the besieged strikers.

The police wrecked the headquarters of the ILA, and hundreds were badly wounded and two strikers were killed. The two slain men were Howard Sperry, a longshoreman, and Nick Bordoise, a member of the cook’s union and the local Communist Party. By the end of Bloody Thursday 2,000 National Guardsmen were called out and it appeared that the strike was lost.

However, that very night the people of San Francisco began stirring. 35,000 people marched at the funeral for the two slain men. Then, beginning with the Painter’s Union Local 1158, local after local were calling for a general strike. They were ignoring the frantic cries of “Red” by the mainstream business press and William Green, the president of the American Federation of Labor. All but two of the city’s union locals, around 160 locals with a membership of 127,000, walked out on the morning of July 16^th.

Many of the unions in San Francisco were run by corrupt and opportunist labor leaders, who comprised a majority of the General Strike Committee. They did not want the workers to go on a general strike but they went along to get along in order to not be swept away by the wave of the rank and file.

This rank and file wave led to the city being completely shut down – nothing moved without the blessing of the General Strike Committee. While the bosses owned everything, they were nothing without their workers. Not a single gear or machine ran. The bosses responded to their impotence by bringing in 3,000 additional National Guardsmen and hiring vigilantes to wreck, among other things, union halls, bookstores, the headquarters of the local communist party and other worker organizations, and even a soup kitchen run by the ILA. In one amusing incident, the police pathetically arrested 500 homeless people and accused them of being communist conspirators. Still nothing moved regardless of all force the bosses unleashed.

After slowly whittling the general strike away, the corrupt union officials succeeded in ending the general strike after four days with only the longshoremen and sailors continuing on. The workers considered it a victory though, as the bosses did not dare to use vigilantes, the police or the National Guard to assault the picket line again. Soon after the longshoremen and sailors returned to work on July 30^th, the longshoremen won wages of 95 cents an hour, $1.40 an hour for overtime, a six hour day, a thirty hour week, and the union hall. The sailors won the recognition of the International Seaman’s Union, but they didn’t gain much as it was a sell out organization in the pockets of the bosses.

So what does this event tell me? It tells me something that the wealthy know all too well. It is something that we workers sometimes don’t even realize ‒  that their power and wealth rests on our backs. They are nothing without us. Why do you think the wealthy constantly try to convince us that they love us? Why do you think they use racism to divide us? Why do you think they have built a massive security apparatus to spy on us including the NSA? Why do you think they have wiped out of our collective memory the history of labor movement? They are terrified of us and what we think. They know we have the power to drag the Koch Brothers out of their mansions, and turn those mansions into homeless shelters.

by J. Steelman

As the Covid-19 shut downs are slowly being lifted around the US and the rest of the world, we are beginning to see the economic toll the virus has taken. The unemployment numbers are still influx due to the reopening of the economy and as shuttered businesses begin to bring back their workers. However, the future looks grim for the working class. Millions of people will likely remain jobless even after the economy opens completely. The Wall Street Journal reported that US retail chains have already announced 5,300 permanent closures and are on track to close as many as 25,000 stores this year (WSJ 7/17/20). Early into the US lock down Hertz car rental company, announced it was filing for bankruptcy. American Airlines Group and United Airlines Group both expect cuts to staff in October when the Federal Assistance is set to expire. The Marriott hotel chain has announced that it is closing a number of locations around the world and expect to layoff tens of thousands of employees. Top officials at the Federal Reserve predict that the US faces a long, slow recovery and that they are concerned about the possibility of a double-dip in economic activity (WSJ 7/15/20). The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan expects the unemployment rate to fall to between 9% and 10% by the end of the year, a far cry from the 3.6% official (U-3) unemployment rate in the US at the beginning of the year. What does this all mean? Crises are inherent to capitalism. The drive for profit inevitably leads to overproduction and crisis. The crisis today, while triggered by the pandemic, is no different. The outcome of economic crises is the mass destitution of the working class. Today, in order to understand how to fight the bosses attempts to shift the burden of the crisis on the the backs of the working class, we must ask: What is unemployment? How does it arise? And What can we do to fight it?

Before getting into the causes of unemployment we have to establish some definitions. The US government, as well as other governments, though for the time being we will stick to the US, tracks what is called “official unemployment” figures. These numbers, formally known as the U-3 Unemployment Statistics, are the ones used in official government statements, as well as in popular media. To be by definition “unemployed”, an individual must be out of work, currently available for work, and actively looking for a job (BLS.gov). In contrast, the unofficial unemployment rate, formally known as the U-6 Unemployment Statistics, accounts not only for those “officially unemployed” but also those who have stopped looking for work, as well as those who are underemployed (wanting full time hours but only working part time). There are two broad categories of unemployment, voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary unemployment occurs when a person voluntarily quits their job to find another job. Involuntary unemployment occurs when a person is terminated from work against their will ie fired or laid off. Further, there are four subcategories of unemployment that economists look at:

• Frictional Unemployment – occurs when people are moving between jobs and are searching for work.
• Seasonal Unemployment – occurs when the demand for workers varies over the course of the year
• Structural Unemployment – occurs when there is a skills mismatch in the labor market or technological changes allow production to remain at current level with less workers
• Cyclical Unemployment – occurs with the business cycle.

For now, we are going to focus on cyclical and structural unemployment because these categories of unemployment relate directly to the current crisis. While the immediate cause of the crisis was the pandemic, the underlying contradictions in the economy have been exacerbated and we are now in a full fledged capitalist crisis. However, the crisis isn’t the only driver of unemployment. The technological advancements made by capitalism allow fewer workers to produce the same or an even greater number of goods and services thus creating a permanent reserve army of labor, that is a permanent surplus population. Though, in the short term the cause of the increased unemployed population is due to the economic crisis, the crisis itself can lead to a situation where capitalists rely on greater constant capital, or technology, to cheapen the cost of goods and undersell their competition, thereby relegating more workers to the permanent reserve army of labor. This reserve army of labor as Marx and Engels (See The Housing Question by Engels or Wage Labor and Capital by Marx for a more in-depth discussion of the “reserve army of labor”) called it, provides a ready work force for Capital during an economic boom, when production is at its peak, only to be thrown back on the street once their labor power ceases to be profitable. But this reserve army of labor also provides a valuable asset to Capital in the class struggle with Labor. The increased competition between the unemployed and the employed workers for jobs drives down wages. At the same time, the unemployed workers are recruited as scabs to break strikes.

As touched on above, cyclical unemployment is due to the boom-bust cycle of capitalist production. As the economy booms, production is carried on at a higher rate, in order for capitalists to realize greater profit. Capitalist production is carried on for the express purpose of exchange, that is items are produced to sell. Workers, having no product to sell, can only sell their labor power. Wages, the price of the commodity of labor power, are directly related, though not always equal to, the cost to reproduce the worker, that is keep them alive and in working condition, as well as the physical reproduction of the working class in general, the raising of children. Worker’s wages are determined by the market before they even begin work. In the course of production, they produce good worth far more than their wages. This additional value Marx called surplus value. This value is can only be realized through exchange. As all capitalists are attempting to sell the most items and to realize the highest amount of profit, production outstrips demand and the prices drop. This is the mechanism by which capitalist crises occur and the reason why they are inherent to capitalism. In 2019, the US economy was finally shaking off the last of the Great Recession, unemployment (U-3 numbers) was around 3.5% and wages were beginning to move upward, all signs of a booming economy. It was only a matter of time until in the pursuit of profit, production outstripped demand leading to a crisis. In this case, the course of events was accelerated by the pandemic. In either case, the workers who had be brought back into the production process, their labor no longer profitable, find themselves thrown back out on to the street, once again superfluous. In time the market will clear, commodity prices begin to rise, the economy begins to pick up, faster and faster until once it again it is moving at a breakneck pace only to be wrecked again by an internal logic. And so it goes.

The crisis facing capitalism today is two fold. First, the health crisis that capitalism was woefully inadequate at addressing, and secondly an economic crisis, created in part due to the Coronavirus lock downs. Currently (as of July 2) 17.8 million people (approximately 11% are unemployed according to official numbers (BLS.gov). The U-6 Unemployment rate (broadest definition of unemployed) was approximately 18% in June. We are only now getting a glimpse at the true extent of the crisis as the economy is beginning to open back up. We have already seen millions of jobs return but we can be sure that millions more will remain unemployed. Further, the re-opening of the economy both in the US and around the world will not be without complications. The US is already seeing new spikes in Covid-19 infections which could prompt another round of lock downs. Even if the lock downs don’t return, declining consumer confidence that the virus is being addressed adequately will further derail an already vulnerable economy. But even as potential treatments and vaccines are currently in the works, the end of Coronavirus is not the end of unemployment in the short term, nor the long term. The economic crisis will roll on, in time the market will clear, and production will ramp up again, only to crash once more.

Of course the economic crisis doesn’t just effect those workers who have lost their jobs. Increases in unemployment allow capitalists to demand workers still employed take pay cuts. Workers who fight back against loss in wages or benefits may find themselves unemployed and another worker taking their place. Further, in order to lower production costs and recoup lost profits, workers may find themselves doing the work of two, three, or more workers. In this way, the bosses, who are ultimately responsible for the economic crisis, seek to shift the burden of the crisis on to the backs of the workers. So far, nearly all workers displaced by Covid-19 have been able to receive Unemployment Insurance plus the Federal Government added $600/week on top of State UI. However, even UI, as helpful as it can be, is partially carried by the workers themselves. That is, the bosses have been able to force the working class to pay for its own involuntary unemployment insurance. By the end of July, the $600/week federal addition to State unemployment will end and workers will go back to receiving only a portion of their wages in Unemployment Insurance.

What recourse to workers have in the face of the current crisis? Are we destined to just ride the waves of economic turmoil until the market clears and production ramps up again? Historically, workers have formed labor unions to fight against wage and benefit cuts as well as job losses in some cases. Unemployed councils were formed in the 1930s to organize those who had been thrown out of work to fight for Unemployment Insurance and to help provide some relief for those in need. Today, Labor Unions are weak but over the last few years victorious strikes by Teachers Union have sparked interest in labor unions. In the midst of the lock down Amazon Warehouse workers, as well as other essential workers, were staging walk-outs and pickets demanding safe work conditions and PPE. These struggles can be expanded to all sections of the working class. Struggles against wage and benefit cuts, hour cuts, speed up, and layoffs all require participation of the whole workforce in a given workplace. This crisis contains the potential for the re-emergence of a fighting labor movement. On the other hand, there is talk of re-forming Unemployed Councils to organize the Unemployed and fight for demands that benefit the unemployed workers. In the past, these councils helped workers navigate the benefits system, providing food and material support, fighting evictions, and fighting for real relief from the government. Today, these councils while fighting for the rights of the unemployed, must also seek to unite the employed and unemployed. As discussed above, the unemployed are used by the capitalists against the employed, and the employed are forced to work longer hours, or to do the work previously done by a number of workers while millions of people are idle. By organizing both the unemployed and the employed workers together, the Unemployed Councils can undercut the bosses offensive on the working class. The primary demands of the working class movement, whether organized in unions or in workers councils, or both, must be 1. Unemployment Insurance covering full wages for all workers regardless of citizenship status, paid for by the bosses and the state, and the abolition of the regressive payroll taxes, and 2. 5-hour work day/5 day work week with no loss in pay. The first demand undermines the need for workers to take scab jobs and relieves the tension between the employed and unemployed. The second demand, relieves the the employed workers from working forced overtime or taking on additional responsibilities while millions of others are out of work. Further, shortening the work day with no loss in pay creates job openings that can bring many unemployed workers back into the work force.

We fully believe these demands can be won under capitalism as they do not directly threaten the rule of capital, but only seek to limit its oppression and exploitation of the working class. They cannot, however, be won simply by appealing to the State. The State, as the organized ruling class, will seek to resolve the crisis in ways that are beneficial to Capital at the expense of the workers. In the 1930’s, the Unemployed Councils and the Communist Party USA supported a demand for UI covering full wages for all unemployed workers, including black workers and agricultural workers, paid for by the state and administered through a committee of workers which was included in the Worker’s Bill submitted by Farmer-Labor Party congressional delegates. Instead, we got the unemployment bill that we have today, which shifts the responsibility on to the workers shoulders. Worker’s must fight against every relief bill that seeks to burden them with resolving the crisis and instead raise the above demands. Only a sustained struggle by the working class will bring victory. In order to wage this struggle, it is necessary that the workers organize themselves into unions and unemployed councils, and that we strive for the closest unity between the employed and unemployed workers.

These demands, as necessary as they are, are ultimately insufficient for solving the problem of unemployment, which, as we have attempted to demonstrate above, is inherent in the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism in turn rests firmly on private property in the means of production (factories, machines, retail stores, etc) and means of subsistence (housing, food, etc). Worker’s having no commodities themselves to sell, must sell their labor-power to the capitalists in exchange for the means of subsistence, and they can only find employment so long as their labor produces profit (See Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels). Only the expropriation of private property in the means of production and subsistence in the name of all of society, by the working class organized as the ruling class and the abolition of the wage system can unemployment also be abolished. The overthrow of the capitalist mode of production is the historical task of the working class, the only revolutionary class by virtue of its position the production process, namely as a class with out property to protect. This task requires the conscious activity of the working class, and that class-consciousness can only be built in the struggle against the capitalists and the State. The struggle for Unemployment Insurance and the 5-hour Day/5-day Work Week is a part of the class struggle, a struggle that must find its logical conclusion in the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production.