The class struggle in 2011.

by: Bill Applehans Tuesday 22 November 2011

tags: , ,

The class struggle in 2011.

Unlike the establishment's opposition to the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements all those years ago, official opposition to the Occupy Movement is and will become even more entrenched and hardened.

Back then the opposing sides had wiggle-room for compromise in spite of the seemingly irreconcilable positions. The eventual "reconciliations" ended the movements.

Today, wiggle-room is all but absent.

Over the past 30 years the banks and corporations have changed the US economy from a manufacturing one to one built on investment and speculation. The massive off-shoring of factories and jobs has redefined the employment possibilities of the US workforce.

The calls and demands for jobs are resisted by the corporate sponsored Republicans not only because they want to hurt Obama's re-election but because those jobs no longer exist. They have been sent somewhere else.

When, for generations, the US was a producer of goods, 5% unemployment was generally considered a "full" employment rate. The rate 'normally" hovered around that figure. Labor and business coexisted, more or less. The nation rolled along having enough wiggle-room to remove the sharpest edges of conflict.

In today's world of global economics, national boundaries have disappeared. The banks, corporations and the 1% are "citizens" of the world. They work, live and play anywhere and everywhere they choose. The rest of us have been left behind - the operative phrase being "have been" not "are being."

It is in the context of that new order that reducing the unemployment rate is being so relentlessly resisted, ie - how do they undo 30 years of undoing.
The movers and shakers of that new order want to see the current unemployment and underemployment rates of 9, 10, and 11% accepted as the norm. And so too lower wages and fewer benefits.

In addition to the above, the Occupy Movement is also seen by these modern day robber barons as a threat to their efforts to privatize federal and state agencies like police and fire firefighters departments, the US Post Office and other public workers - the next phase of their 30 year plan.

So these are the battle lines as I see them today compared to back in the day. The resistance will continue and intensify.

But Occupy will grow, mature and adapt when it must: it will do so because Occupy is not about a place but because it is an idea whose time has come. And because even at this early stage it knows it must.

 

Post your comment

Comments are moderated. See guidelines here.

Comments

  • Continuing the position of yesterday- This universality(the resistance of the unified peoples to war, money and civil/social injustice, and the counter-revolution of political repression) is the essence of Karl Marx's, Lenin's and especially W.E.B. Du Bois's (in U. S. conditions) theory of social action: simultaneously, the methodology of the exploited and the oppressed changes along with the conditions of the oppressed and exploited to make a new change for advance, which is the essence of the class struggle.
    As Communists, we have no interest short of the interests of the whole exploited and oppressed workers; no goals beyond their goals either because we are them and they are us.

    Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 11/27/2011 7:06am (12 years ago)

  • Maybe the most pronounced features of the three, the Anti-War the Civil Rights and the Occupy movements is their interconnectedness.
    This is not only between one another, but probably most importantly, within one another.
    For instance, MLK demonstrated the internal inseparability of the three, opposing the racism of war, the trampling of civil rights in anti-communism, and the liberation and assertion of the direct action of sitting-in, marching-on and shutting down of occupying.
    These actions were urged to be done in massive numbers. This showed that ALL God's children, sons and daughters-and especially God's Angels-were involved in the cleansing actions of righteous revolution and real peace, which was anti-violence and anti-war in action.
    This essence of all, the three of Anti-War or Peace, Civil Rights, and Occupy, continue in Occupy and especially the growth of the movement-with its all peoples universality.

    Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 11/26/2011 5:20am (12 years ago)

RSS feed for comments on this page | RSS feed for all comments