A working class socialist viewpoint by…
Alan Maki, a union, peace, environmental and civil
rights activist; retired member of
UNITE-HERE Local 17 (Minneapolis,
MN).
I offer this for
discussion about Peace, Equality,
Full Employment, Universal Health Care and Protection of
our Living Environment.
This is my response to the
invitation extended by the AFL-CIO to all people and organizations to comment
on its White Paper, “Prosperity Economics, Building An Economy For All”
by Jacob S. Hacker and Nate Loewentheil, intended to create discussion about
the direction of organized labor and the kind of country we all want to live in
where peace, social and economic justice for working people prevails.
Democracy---
as well as social, economic and environmental justice--- requires no less than
a full and broad discussion of these important concerns and issues.
I agree with the concept of “prosperity economics” by “building an
economy that works for everyone.” There are several very basic facts left
out of this “White Paper” and it is very hazy, vague and nebulous as to what
our concrete and specific goals and objectives are to be and what kind of
movement and struggle it will take for the working class--- organized and
unorganized together--- to create a prosperity economics for us all.
The
“White Paper” does not clearly
articulate our main enemy: Wall Street. The “White Paper” doesn’t reflect the fact that we, as working people,
are engaged in a social, political and economic struggle for power with the
intent to replace Wall Street’s dominance over every aspect of our lives--- in our schools, at work and in our communities.
Let’s
state right up front that workers create all wealth but workers have had no say
in how this wealth is distributed and used. This needs to change. Democracy requires
no less if we are going to end poverty.
Let’s
also put it right out there before the American people that militarism and wars
are squandering the wealth of our Nation to such a large extent we don’t have
the resources to solve our many domestic problems. These dirty imperialist wars
are killing our jobs and our standard of living just like they
kill people.
Militarism and
wars are a major contributing factor to the world-wide collapsing capitalist
economy. No nation can continue to endlessly use the wealth of its nation to
prepare for wars and to fight wars. This is sheer social and economic insanity.
Wall
Street’s greedy drive for profits results in wars which exacerbates our
problems. We pay; the Wall Street merchants of death and destruction profit.
Detroit
goes broke; the rest of our cities are sure to follow as Wall Street wallows in
profits; a bunch of greedy pigs feeding at the public trough who tell us there
is no money for health care, housing, and education.
Working
people go without adequate health care; insurance and pharmaceutical companies
get fabulously wealthy. Earlier retirement and shorter work-weeks/longer
vacations with no cut in pay would create jobs and would keep us healthier,
too.
Our
public institutions like public education fall apart, crumble and collapse just
like our roads, highways and bridges because we are constantly feeding a war
machine intended to fight never-ending wars waged to protect Wall Street’s
assets and profits.
We don’t need, and can’t afford, over 800 foreign military
bases dotting the globe.
Prosperity for all begins with the recognition peace is required to
achieve full employment.
Full
employment is about the government seeing to it that jobs are created for all
at real living wages. How can it be forty-million people are living in poverty
with so many people working? Any school child can figure out if you pay people
poverty wages they are going to be poor. It is about putting people to work by
creating massive universal social programs like National Public Health Care,
not job destroying fake health care reforms offered by Democrats and
Republicans as detrimental to our health and jobs as wars without providing
real health care reform while pushing the price of health care up instead of
its stated intent to push prices down.
Eliminating
militarism and wars eliminates the largest carbon footprint contributing to
global warming and climate change as the Military Industrial Complex wastes our
precious resources in a huge, monstrous complex that ruins our environment---
power generation, mining, manufacturing, the resources like oil and gas
required to fight wars. Preparation for war, and war itself, creates a mammoth
sized carbon footprint destroying our living environment while creating massive
joblessness and poverty and ill health for our people as our air, water and
land gets polluted.
The Wall Street selected politicians talk about “jobs, jobs, jobs” when their
hidden agenda is really “profits, profits, profits” and “war, war, and more
war.”
The
time has come to make politicians legislatively responsible for full employment
and peace because prosperity economics requires: peace and full employment--- a
healthy people and a healthy environment.
Therefore,
I propose that a central goal of the American labor and working class movement
needs to be the building of an economy for all that is inseparably linked to
peace and full employment which must include:
A
Minimum Wage tied to all cost of living factors indexed to inflation. Jobs or a
living income for all.
National
Public Health Care. Protect, defend and expand Social Security programs.
Legislation
prohibiting lockouts and scabbing. Repeal of “At-Will Employment”
legislation--- the primary obstacle to worker empowerment and union organizing.
End racism... Enforcement of Affirmative Action.
Price
controls are needed for food, housing, gas, home heating fuels and electricity.
A
healthy economy means a healthy living environment and a healthy planet. We
need a quality of life index.
Peace and disarmament along with fare-free public transportation will go a long
way in ending global warning and climate change.
We need a “people’s lobby” bringing together everyone to fight for peace, for
needed reforms and to defend democracy.
Red-baiting and anti-Communism are
pernicious poisons to our democracy.
The
two-party system is a trap for working people. We must free ourselves from the
Democrats and Republicans. A working class based people’s party is required if
we are going to have a prosperity economics that works for all of us. We can
learn a thing or two about health care and politics from our Canadian Brothers
and Sisters.
We
are now at a crossroads.
We
will have a capitalist economy that serves Wall Street or we will have a socialist economy that
works for the rest of us--- we can’t have both just like we can’t have both war
and full employment.
I encourage the use of the proposed Full Employment Act of 1945
pushed by the CIO unions and authored by liberal Texas Congressman Wright
Patman and the associated hearing testimonies to broaden this discussion:
I
also call to your attention the excellent Op-Ed piece by Bob Herbert, “LosingOur Way,” his last piece in the New York Times (March 25, 2011), which
declares:
“The U.S. has not just misplaced its
priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it
so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find
adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its
way entirely.”
I ask: What ever happened to William Winpisinger’s “Rebuild America Act” and the “peace
dividend?” The
AFL-CIO should bring back to life its Committee on Conversion--- from military production to producing for human needs;
swords into plowshares is what was advocated by the late International Association
of Machinist’s President, William Winpisinger. Where is this advocacy for peace
and reordering our Nation’s priorities now?
Our
livelihoods and our survival require we explore the socialist alternative to
capitalism. Thank you for allowing me to share with you my critique of the
AFL-CIO’s “White Paper.”
We
must approach reforms from a class conscious working class perspective. For
example, real health care reform must entail struggling for a National Public
Health Care System:
Publicly funded.
Publicly administered.
Publicly delivered.
Just like public education.
Instead of over 800 U.S.
military bases scattered across the globe we should be funding neighborhood and
community health care centers providing free health care for everyone all over
our own country.
Trump must be defeated and it will take a massive anti-monopoly electoral
coalition to accomplish this. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi
Gabbard along with their supporters and others working outside of the two Wall Street parties must find a way to work together for the
betterment of our society. The Democratic Party is corrupt with its party hacks
intent on preventing working people from having a say in the decision-making
process… it will take a new party for the name of Sanders, Warren or Gabbard to
appear on the General Election ballot in 2020.
What we need is some kind of anti-monopoly electoral coalition... something like "The New Broom Coalition to sweep Washington clean."
Pay
for all the reforms we need with a Peace Dividend and taxes on the wealthy and
their corporations.
In addition to real health care reform through a National Public Health Care
System, we need…
Real
Social Security reform… a real living income for all Social Security
recipients- $2,700.00 a month for everyone paid for with an increased payroll
tax on employers.
A National Public Child Care System free for all just like public education.
Real living wages for all workers based on the actual cost-of-living will
provide a decent standard-of-living for all workers.
A moratorium on all student debt and call off the private collection agencies
as we find a way to cancel all student debt.
Let’s
bring the struggle for a new kind of politics into our communities, our
workplaces and the public square,,, the politics and economics of livelihood.
The
working class, with no small amount of help from Mother Nature, creates ALL
wealth… the exploitation of labor and the rape of Mother Nature must end if we
want a socially and economically just society.
We
are going to have to explore the socialist alternative to capitalism… the
choice is socialism or extinction.
Capitalism
is Wall Street’s system; socialism is the worker’s system.
In
solidarity and struggle… For peace, equality, full employment,
universal health care, ending racism and protection of the environment.
Alan L. Maki
Check out my blog: Thoughts From Podunk http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/
E-mail:
red_finn@live.com
Phone: 512-517-2708
Education.
Organization.
Unity.
Action.
We need working class study
clubs and political action committees all across this country.
Something to think about:
If all these politicians who
admonish us to be satisfied with “incremental reforms” coming in “baby steps”
had been actively implementing such reforms over the years we would not be
faced with the need for the kind of big reforms now required to solve our
massive problems.
Socialism is about the working class struggle for peace, social and economic justice which includes the public ownership of the mines, mills and factories along with the banking, energy, transportation and communication industries. People before profits!
Suggested reading:
“Why Socialism?” by Albert
Einstein:
“Politics In My Lifetime” by
Elmer Benson:
"Climate Change and the Military-Industrial Complex" by Alan Maki
