Capitalism = Mental Illness = Profits

by Richard Mellor
Afscme local 444, retired

America is not known as a human friendly society.   It is money friendly, but that doesn’t mean human friendly. It is an extremely fast paced society that will leave you behind very quickly.  It doesn’t matter if you are a war hero, a Vietnam veteran, have worked steadily all your life contributing to the wealth of society---if you have no money in this country, you’re on your own baby,

A friend from Sweden who had spent considerable time here described the difference between the two societies this way: “In Sweden, if you fall on hard times there is this safety net that catches you, prevents you from falling all the way to the bottom.  In the US, not only do fall all the way to the bottom, then they stomp on you with their feet.” He showed by example twisting his heel in the dirt like he was stubbing out a lit cigarette. You can be homeless, broke, go from what appears to be a comfortable middle class life in short notice. Whatever you do, don’t get sick. Ion many ways, we get the worst bang for the buck when it comes to public and social services.

We are not a happy society. It is a stressful existence the rat race, and as public services and jobs, which tend to be somewhat more humane are privatized, the insecurity and fear of losing everything will intensify.

A recent Gallup Poll found that 70% of Americans hate their jobs Bruce Levine writes at AlterNet pointing out that US society “…has become increasingly alienating, isolating and insane, and earning a buck means more degrees, compliance, ass-kissing, shit-eating, and inauthenticity.” And this has resulted in a huge increase in mental illness; what he refers to as an “epidemic”.

Levine quotes Marcia Angell who wrote a piece in the New York Review of Books:

“The tally of those who are so disabled by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times between 1987 and 2007—from 1 in 184 Americans to 1 in 76. For children, the rise is even more startling—a thirty-five-fold increase in the same two decades.”

And here’s another interesting statistic:

In 2011, the  U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that antidepressant use in the United States has increased nearly 400% in the last two decades, making antidepressants the most frequently used class of medications by Americans ages 18-44 years. By 2008, 23% of women ages 40–59 years were taking antidepressants.

The CDC, on May 3, 2013, reportedthat the suicide rate among Americans ages 35–64 years increased 28.4% between 1999 and 2010 (from 13.7 suicides per 100,000 population in 1999 to 17.6 per 100,000 in 2010).

  

This should come as no surprise given the insecurity and ever-present fear of falling through the cracks wears people down.  The intense ideological war aimed at convincing Americans that life is what you make it, that the rich all pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and that the individual is in control of their own destiny has a very powerful influence on thinking.  Day in day out we are bombarded with ads in the media selling us something, more than any other country in the world we live in a twenty four hour marketplace.  My mother used to complain about paying for a TV back home until she got a taste of US TV, 200 channels, nothing to watch.  Ads every three or four minutes during late night movies and sometimes the same ad repeated. How insulting.  It’s not that Americans have gotten used to it. We kid ourselves that it doesn’t affect us, that we just ignore it. But it does, it contributes to the alienation that exists in US society although there is a strong urge to deny it. If one believes one can get what one wants in society, it’s up to you and you alone, when you fail, you blame yourself with devastating consequences.

As I have pointed out before, another major factor is the view that there’s nothing we can do about it.  “It is what it is” is a common phrase or “You can’t change city hall”and similar resignations.  There is reason for this as there has not been a mass movement in this country for years.  The Occupy Movement received tremendous support from many layers of society but didn’t know what to do with it. The trade Union leaders are pretty much absent form people’s lives and if given any thought at all are distrusted, even hated, down there with Congress when it comes to popularity contests.

There is nothing worse than victimhood.  We all know the feeling when we stand up to a bully or our abusers even if it costs us a black eye.  But US workers have seen wages, benefits and working conditions that took decades to win stripped from us by the capitalist offensive. We have lost homes, jobs and witnessed increased surveillance and interference in our private lives as the TV blasts out 24 hours a day messages contradicting this objective reality adding to our frustration.  We can’t travel to half the countries of the world because of the actions of our government murdering and slaughtering people from Pakistan to Yemen and if not directly involved in such practices, supporting ruthless dictators who do their dirty work for them.

There is no significant objective force in US society that the masses feel they can turn to. As I have pointed out, the heads of the Labor Movement with 12 million members, a huge budget and full time staff not to mention physical structures, could transform this situation but instead appeal to the very politicians whose policies are at the root of this crisis.  In the absence of a real mass movement that can challenge the offensive of capital, drive it back and organize an offensive of our own, millions of Americans simply bury their heads in the sand, party themselves to death or escape in to mental oblivion to avoid the pain.  But inequality is on the rise, the bosses will not stop in their efforts to place the US workers and middle class on rations and at some point the eruption will come. It will be messy and confused and contradictory but come it will.

You can read Levine’s piece here.“Why Life in America Can Literally Drive You Insane”

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Syria's future uncertain as the Great Game is played out

It is hard from the outside to determine with any certainty what will happen in Syria as the nation state begins to unravel and as the great powers jockey for position.  Although some socialists do support the opposition and some support the regime, it seems to me that socialists cannot support either side in this conflict.  In the absence, or what seems to be the absence of the organized working class to any extent, either further destabalization appears likely or the partition of the country; Kurd, Shia, Sunni, and there is also a Christian minority.  The whole region is extremely volatile with 15 million Kurds in Turkey, and increased unrest within that country.  Global capitalism heads from crisis to crisis.  The Israel Palestinian peace talks will come to nought as the Palestinians find themselves outmatched in a room with the Zionists and their US backers.  RM

 

We republish this commentary from the Maan News agency for our readers' interest.

Regime, rebels seek to split Syria

Published today 11:52

 

BEIRUT (AFP) -- The regime's new victory in Homs and rebel advances in the north and south of Syria are signs that both sides are looking to make headway before much-touted peace talks.

"Having consolidated its victory in Homs, the regime controls all the area stretching from Damascus to the coast," says analyst Karim Bitar of the French Institute of International and Strategic Relations.

"The rebels control the north and the Euphrates valley area (Aleppo, Raqa and Deir Ezzor), while the Kurds, who are growing increasingly autonomous, hold the northeast," Bitar told AFP.

The Syrian government announced Monday the capture of Khaldiyeh, a key rebel district in Homs, Syria's third city and a symbol of the revolt against President Bashar Assad.

The fall of Khaldiyeh came after a month-long offensive and more than a year into a suffocating siege of the neighborhood.

It was the second win for Assad's regime in two months, after the army, with the help of fighters from Lebanon's powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah, captured in June the rebel bastion of Qusayr.

The rebels have also scored their own victories in recent weeks.

Last Monday, they seized control of Khan al-Assal, the regime's last bastion in the west of Aleppo province near the Turkish border, after reportedly killing 150 loyalist troops.

Opposition fighters have also made significant gains in the southern province of Daraa -- known as the cradle of the uprising against Assad which is now in its third year -- despite massive regime bombardments.

Meanwhile, the Kurds, who constitute some 15 percent of Syria's population, strive to carve out an autonomous state in the north, amid concern from Turkey across the border.

"These positions will not likely develop in the near future and are already quite clear ahead of the Geneva 2 summit", Bitar said of the peace conference proposed by the United States and Russia.

"But the longer it takes for the summit to convene, the more a united Syrian state will be under threat.

"We are already seeing different legal systems, flags, and local economies and political bodies in place," across the country, he added.

Nevertheless, he said, it was not clear "what incentives could be offered through negotiations to the different parties, in order to convince them to give up their gains and go back to working under the umbrella of national unity".

Analysts say neither the regime nor the rebels are making military gains significant enough to give either side a real victory.

"We should see things for what they are: there is an impasse and each army or rebel advance is no more than a Pyrrhic victory" with a devastating cost for the victor, said Khattar Abou Diab

"Capturing a few square kilometers (miles) doesn't solve anything," said the analyst, a Middle East expert at Paris Sud university.

According to him "the West is stopping the regime from winning, while Russia, China and Iran are doing the same with the opposition.

"There will never be a victor, or a vanquished," he told AFP.

"The Syrian conflict has become a three-stage rocket -- one local, one regional and another international," he said, adding that the US and Russia hold the highest traction.

Despite US Secretary of State John Kerry's optimism, the Geneva summit appears difficult to convene because of major disagreements over the purpose of the talks and who would take part.

Abou Diab said a "global deal" was needed between Moscow and Washington, including the personal engagement of US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for a solution to be reached.

The Syria conflict, he warned, "will determine the fate of the Middle East for the coming years, if not decades."

Meanwhile, Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "both sides think they can advance on the ground. It is an illusion".

"I don't think the states arming the rebels really think they can create a balance of forces on the ground. They're looking for partition," Abdel Rahman told AFP.

In the Old City of Homs, still under rebel control despite massive bombardment, anti-regime activist Abu Bilal voiced bitterness.

"They're all playing with us, the treacherous United States by standing with the ( exiled opposition) National Coalition, and Russia by siding with the regime. In the end, we are the losers."

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What Needs to be Added to My SF Chron op ed piece on BART struggle

by Jack Gerson

Today's San Francisco Chronicle is running an opinion piece by me on the BART struggle  (it's on the op ed page, page A8 -- if you're an online subscriber, you can read it at sfchronicle.com, and I'm including the full text at the end of this post). I wrote the piece to try to get facts out and build Thursday's BART support rally (5pm at Oakland's Ogawa Plaza). But more needs to be said than could be said in those 451 words.

The op ed piece opens with a paragraph on Wisconsin. But while Wisconsin was a massive upsurge, the fact is that the Wisconsin workers lost. The union leadership – including the state president of the Wisconsin teachers’ union, the head of the Madison-area labor council (Kevin Gundlach’s predecessor as head of the South Central Labor Counci), and most of the rest – told  protestors to clear the streets and go petition to recall Republican state legislators and campaign for their Democratic opponents.

As the opinion piece says, ILWU Local 10 did shut down all Bay Area ports in solidarity with Madison on April 4, 2011. That graphic statement of solidarity resounded around the country. But much as another one-day port shutdown during the next BART strike would be welcome, it alone won’t be sufficient. More than one day will be needed, and more militant labor-community solidarity will be needed. That won't happen by putting faith in Democratic Party politicians and going back to business as usual, as happened in Wisconsin. How can we win? I don't have a blueprint, but I do have some thoughts:

First: a very big turnout by rank and file workers  and community at Thursday’s rally can be an important first step. So I think that it is important to really work at mobilizing for the rally. It’s important to get the word to rank and file workers, and to get it out to the whole working class community – employed, unemployed, and underemployed – and explain why the BART strike is in all of our interest. That’s what the op ed piece tried to do.

But that rally will just be blowing off steam unless the rank and file of key unions insist that their unions honor the picket lines in a next BART strike -- especially ATU 192, the AC Transit bus drivers. ATU 192 really ought to walk out with BART workers. 

There simply is no excuse for not honoring the lines.  Rank and file of AFSCME 3993, a smaller BART worker local, just set the example for that: they removed their president as their chief negotiator because she had told them to cross picket lines during the 4-day BART strike, and yesterday she resigned as their president. That's real rank and file solidarity, and that together with mass community support is what will be needed to win the BART struggle. In fact what's needed is a coordinated strike by all the BART unions as well as the AC Transit unions, and a joint strike committee to facilitate coordination and cooperation and to maximize the control of the strike by rank and file transit workers.

Further, the BART unions really need to embrace demands in the interest of the whole community -- employed, unemployed, and underemployed -- starting with free transit and more service to low-income communities. As my op Ed piece explains, the money for that is there, from the developers and corporations that rake in super profits from BART expansion raising their property values while paying virtually nothing in additional taxes and zero to BART.  This really is about the attacks on all of us. And that means that the strike committees need to work closely with the community and incorporate community militancy and militants directly into the strike.

A working class surge can stop austerity in its tracks right here in the Bay Area. That will have to come most of all from the rank and file, who in the unions and in the communities need to be prepared to do what AFSCME 3993 did -- hold their leaders accountable and throw them out when they act like sellouts. And more: they have to construct rank and file organizations -- caucuses, in the unions -- ready to lead in action. Joint strike committees are essential to  a winning strike, and they ought to provide a basis for real class struggle caucuses emerging from the strike that work with and embrace classwide social issues as well as union struggles.

Here's the text of my SF Chronicle op ed piece:

Labor makes a stand - first in Wisconsin, now BART

Jack Gerson

Two years ago, Wisconsin public workers and services were under assault. Hundreds of thousands of workers converged on the state capital, Madison, to fight austerity cuts proposed by Gov. Scott Walker.

The International Longshore Workers Union Local 10 shut down Bay Area ports in solidarity with the Wisconsin struggle. Now BART workers and the Bay Area are in the crosshairs of the national labor struggle, and Wisconsin South Central Labor Council President Kevin Gundlach has pledged solidarity with BART workers.

The BART unions' temporary work agreement ends Sunday night and a new strike is likely. During the BART strike in early July, media coverage suggested these were "greedy workers" making life miserable for the public and jeopardizing the economy. That's not what I found.

Workers told me, "We're fighting for all of us, to say 'No more cuts.' "

I'm convinced they are.

Four years ago, the unions agreed to wage and hiring freezes that saved BART about $100 million. Compared to 2009, BART has fewer workers; work-related injuries have increased. Those concessions were made in bad times. Now times are good (BART projects a $125 million-a-year surplus for 10 years). But management demands more concessions, seeking cuts to pensions, health care and compensation. BART management wants to jeopardize rider safety by cutting vehicle safety inspectors.

BART unions want a three-year contract with better safety conditions, no more cuts to pensions or health care and modest pay increases to keep them on par with the Bay Area's cost of living. The money's there, more than enough to improve safety and increase pay. Even a modest levy on developers and corporations, whose property values soar when BART expands, could reduce or eliminate fares.

Transit strikes make getting around a pain in the neck. But who's causing the pain? BART spent $399,000 on negotiator Thomas Hock, who has provoked strikes in several cities.

Wall Street and banks want to privatize and squeeze profits out of everything Americans have won through generations of struggle. We must fight back.

It will take solidarity from AC Transit and port workers, City College of San Francisco workers, teachers and students, city and county workers, nurses and postal workers, the unemployed and the underemployed. All of us.

The Bay Area has a proud tradition of labor and community unity going back to the 1934 general strike. The rank-and-file of AFSCME 3993, angered by their president, who directed them to cross BART strikers' picket lines, removed her as their chief negotiator in the BART dispute.

Let's turn the tide on austerity. Business depends on BART to deliver their workers and their customers. If BART workers shut it down and win a decent contract, it'll be a victory for us all.

Rally to support BART workers

Who: Called by Amalgamated Transit Union Locals 1555 and 192, Service Employees International Union 1021, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 3993, International Longshore Workers Union 10

Where: Frank Ogawa Plaza, at Broadway and 14th St., Oakland

When: 5 p.m., Thursday

Jack Gerson, a retired Oakland public schoolteacher, lives in Oakland and rides BART.

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Global capitalism: The global search for value

by Michael Roberts

In my view, we are now in a Long Depression, centred in the advanced capitalist economies but also affecting the emerging capitalist economies.  The latter do better because they still have ample supplies of cheap labour available to exploit (well, at least some larger emerging economies do).   So absolute surplus value can be increased without Marx’s law of profitability applying too strongly.  What do I mean by that?

Well, capitalists are permanently engaged in the search for value, or more specifically, surplus value.  They can get that globally by drawing more of the population into capitalist production. The big issue is how much longer capitalism can continue to appropriate value from human labour power when the workforce globally can no longer expand sufficiently.

Ironically, the UK’s right-wing City paper City Am put it from the perspective of capital: “People, not commodities, land or even capital, are the ultimate resource of an economy, as the US academic Julian Simon famously put it. Without talented, motivated, skilled and educated individuals, nothing is possible; capital itself is a product of labour.  Human ingenuity is able to overcome everything. Malthusians who dream of a shrinking population and who reflexively believe that every country is over-populated are wrong. This is always a lesson that nations suffering from shrinking populations relearn at great cost: all the productivity growth in the world is rarely enough to compensate for the psychological and actual effect of a declining population.”

More important, more people means more potential value to be appropriated by capital.  But getting more value and surplus value through extending the size of the workforce is increasingly difficult or even impossible in many advanced capitalist economies.

Instead, in these economies, capitalists must try and raise surplus value though the intensity of work and through more mechanisation and technology that saves labour i.e relative surplus value.  But that, as Marx explained, brings into operation the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and the ultimate barrier to further accumulation and growth in value (see my post on http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/crisis-or-breakdown/).

Indeed the crisis in the south of the Eurozone is creating permanent damage to these economies: it is not just that their GDPs are shrinking, but there is an exodus of the workforce. The number of Greek and Spanish residents moving to other EU countries has doubled since 2007, reaching 39,000 and 72,000 respectively in 2011, according to new figures on immigration published by the OECD.  In contrast, Germany saw a 73% cent increase in Greek immigrants between 2011 and 2012, almost 50% for Spanish and Portuguese and 35% for Italians.

Japan is also suffering from the lack of expansion of its workforce.  In the short term GDP per capita growth in Japan looks better than its GDP growth so that US GDP per capita growth in recent years is little better than Japan.  Indeed on a per capita basis, the US has been stagnant since 2008 and Japan has risen slightly.

But longer term, this is bad news for Japan as its debt burden will mount and its working population to dependents will decline.  This is a growth and debt time bomb.  The move to crisis may be slow because Japan has huge reserves of FX reserves and foreign assets built up over decades so it has lots of funds to fall back on.  Japan’s net international investment position is 56% in the positive while the US is 19% in the negative.  Also its debt is mostly owned by its own citizens (only 7% by foreigners) while US government debt is 40% owned by foreigners.  However, the US dollar is still the world’s reserve currency, giving the US considerable leeway in funding its deficits and debt.  Japan’s banks and government are so intertwined that they will both go down together.  In the 1990s, the banks were bailed out by government; currently the banks are bailing out the government.  Next time, they both go down together.

George Magnus (Economic insights by George Magnus, 19 June, Demographics: from dividend to drag) recently pointed out that the support ratio in the US and Europe in the early 2000s was similar to that of Japan ten years earlier. It shows that from about  2016, the decline in China’s support ratio starts to speed up, so that by 2050, it will have fewer workers per older citizen than the US. It also includes India, by way of comparison, as the representative of the bulk of emerging markets and developing countries. India’s support ratio is predicted to grind lower but even by 2050, it will still be only the same as that in Western countries in the 1990s.  From the 1960s onwards – a little earlier in Japan – the total support ratio rose everywhere and more or less continuously, until about 1990 in Japan, and 2005-2010 in the US and Europe.  Japan’s support ratio is now approaching 1.5 workers per older citizen, and is predicted to carry on falling to parity in the middle of the century. The US and Europe are predicted to follow Japan, though support ratios are not expected to fall as far.

China and other emerging economies have not yet reached the point where the working population is no longer rising and the expansion of absolute surplus value is restricted – the so-called Lewis turning point (see my post, http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/chinas-transition-new-leaders-old-policies/).  But China is not far away.  In the meantime, China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years — a massive of expansion of labour power into production.  The broad trend began decades ago. In the early 1980s, about 80% of Chinese lived in the countryside but only 47% today, plus an additional 17% that works in cities but is classified as rural.

And there are still huge reserves of labour as yet untapped, particularly in Africa.  The latest UN population projections for the world’s economies show that Africa is expected to dominate population growth over the next 90 years as populations in many of the world’s developed economies and China shrink.  Africa’s population is expected to more than quadruple over just 90 years,  while Asia will continue to grow, but peak about 50 years from now then start declining.  Europe will continue to shrink. South America’s population will rise until about 2050, at which point it will begin its own gradual population decline. North America will continue to grow at a slow, sustainable rate, surpassing South America’s overall population around 2070. 

China’s population is soon expected to go into decline , whereas India’s is expected to grow strongly for another 50 years, and the US’ and Indonesia’s populations are projected to grow steadily. Nigeria’s population is expected to explode eight-fold this century.

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Mos Def's principled act in support of Guantanamo inmates' cruel treatment

A lot of you may have seen this already but it is Mos Def who agreed to have himself force fed as the hunger strikers in Guantanamo Bay concentration camp are twice a day. The hunger strike doesn't receive the mass media coverage it should in the US as controlled and censored as US media is. You have to hand it to him for his commitment to justice.

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Marxist Economics: Heinrich: a small rejoinder

by Michael Roberts

The debate in the comments section of this blog over the proper response to the misrepresentation by Michael Heinrich of Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall has got lively (see my previous posts, http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/returning-to-heinrich/ and http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/returning-to-heinrich/).  Some of the best Marxist economists in the world (Kliman, Freeman, Carchedi, Lebowitz) have pitched in and the debate continues.  I have not really intervened in the debate so far, but I thought it might be appropriate to add a short post now as a small rejoinder to some of the questions and differences raised so far.

I  think, understandably, that Professors Kliman and Freeman are concerned that none of us defenders of Marx’s law fall into the trap set by Heinrich who claims that supporters of the law are ‘fundamentalists’ and are trying to ‘prove’ Marx’s law by mathematics or by logic and that can’t be done.  Heinrich says at one point that Marx spent a lot of time with mathematical formulations to ‘prove’ his law but gave up.  But I am concerned (and I think Professor Carchedi is) that Professor Kliman’s formulation that the law ‘explains’ but does not ‘predict’ is in danger of conceding to Heinrich that the law is ‘indeterminate’, namely that it is the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, rise and stay the same as circumstances permit.  That is no law, as Heinrich says.  But perhaps our differences here are just a matter of wording when Professor Kliman says that if the law was confirmed in the past then it is likely to be confirmed in the future and that is good enough proof?  Or is he still making the law ‘indeterminate’ by this formulation?  That is what worries me.

Let me put it this way.  For the purposes of the debate, I think Marx’s law is similar to the law of gravity.  In other words, if we see an apple come off a tree, we can predict that it will fall to the ground, but counteracting factors could intervene and the apple could get lodged in the tree or wind could blow it sideways for some time.   But that would change nothing about the law of gravity and moreover our prediction that this apple and others would eventually fall to the ground.  Eventually, the wind would subside and the apple would fall.  Later there would be no wind and all the apples would fall, although there could be significant periods when no apples would fall.  This does not make the law of gravity indeterminate.  It would only be indeterminate if it was decided that the power of the wind was just as strong as gravity and also should be incorporated into the law of gravity.  This is Heinrich’s main point: that a rising rate of surplus value is really a necessary part of Marx’s law, contrary to Marx’s view, and has equal power or weight in determining the direction of the rate of profit and therefore the law is indeterminate.

Marx says that the strength of the law, namely the tendency of the organic composition of capital to rise as capitalism expands the productive forces, is greater than the counteracting factors over time, in the same way that gravity exerts its downward pull on the apple and over time counteracting factors like wind will not prevail in stopping the apple falling.  In this sense, the law is ‘unidirectional and irreversible’, like the law of gravity.  The law of gravity does not say the apple will fall, rise or stay where it is depending on the circumstances, but predicts that it will fall.  If, in reality, it does not fall but rises, that is because of the intervention of counteracting factors that are not part of the law as such.

Wind is not part of the law of gravity and a rising rate of surplus value is not part of the law of profitability (as such).  We can show that this is the case for Marx’s law by starting with some assumptions that are realistic (the law of value operates and the organic composition of capital rises).  On those assumptions, the rate of profit will fall.  Then we can show that there are limits in reality for counteracting factors like a rising rate of surplus value to outstrip a rising organic composition of capital indefinitely, just like the wind cannot indefinitely triumph over the law of gravity.  Thus the law is based on the reality of capitalist development and the class struggle, just as the law of gravity is based on realistic assumptions about the universe.

Moreover, it does not take hundreds of years before the wind gives way and the apple falls and before the law overcomes the counteracting factors and the rate of profit falls.  If that were the case, it would be a pretty useless for our lifetime needs, like knowing that the moon will leave the earth’s orbit in 1.5 bn years and then the earth will start to wobble uncontrollably and life would become extinct.  That is a prediction with not much immediate practical use.

In contrast, empirical evidence shows that the law of profitability operates over much shorter periods.  We can show that the law is confirmed empirically on numerous occasions.  There has been a secular decline in the rate of profit in the US since 1947.  Sure, there are periods when the US rate of profit rose.  In my view, the US rate of profit rose from 1982 to 1997, but the law tells me that this will not last and the rate of profit will eventually start to fall. Heinrich says you cannot know such a thing because the law is indeterminate.

What do Professors Kliman and Freeman say on  this point?  I’m not sure: they seem to say that, as the law is not ‘unidirectional and irreversible’, presumably you can have no idea if the US rate of profit will fall over the next decade or not until it has happened.  But then they say that as it has been shown to fall in the past, so it is likely to do so in the future.  I’m not sure that this interpretation of the law (even if it is Marx’s, as Professor Kliman claims) is a very powerful ‘explanation’ (to use their words) of the law.  Ironically, Professor Kliman has spent much diligent and careful time arguing that the US rate of profit did NOT rise after 1982 and there has been a persistent fall in the US rate of profit since 1947.  And Professor Freeman has recently presented a paper to ‘correct’ the evidence that the UK rate of profit rose after the mid-1970s, claiming that it continued to fall.  If they are right, would that not support the view that the law is ‘unidirectional and irreversible’ in the sense above, and not indeterminate, as Heinrich argues?  Perhaps the professors should make a study of periods when the rate of profit has risen and explain why.   Does the rate of profit only rise when there is a slump and the value of capital employed is sharply destroyed?  Does it not rise sometimes in periods of boom?  If so, can the law explain or even predict these periods?

And that brings me to another possible difference, at least in the debate between Marxists trying to refute Heinrich’s bastardisation.  Does the law just show how there are crises in capitalism, booms and slumps, driven by the up and down movement of the rate of profit; or does it go further and say that IN A WORLD ECONOMY, where capitalism is exhausting all sources of value creation, the rate of profit will fall secularly to new lows and thus make it more and more difficult for capitalism to develop the productive forces?  In other words, the law shows why capitalism will come up against the ultimate barrier, namely capital itself, and so is a transient mode of production like other earlier class-based systems.  It will increasingly descend into stagnation, decay and chaos unless the progressive class, the proletariat, takes over.  If the law is just one of explaining recurrent booms and slumps in capitalism, that would suggest that capitalism could go on forever expanding the productive forces, albeit with waste, inequality and injustice.  If it is more than that, then it provides support for the view that capitalism is not eternal.

In summary, can we reach an agreement in this debate? Let me pose some statements that could have yes or no answers.
1 ) The law is not indeterminate; instead it argues that the rate of profit WILL fall over time, like the law of gravity that the apple will fall if it breaks from the tree.
2) The law is not a fake mathematical ‘proof’ as claimed by Heinrich, but, based on reasonable realistic and relevant assumptions, it predicts that the rate of profit will fall over time.
3) The law is not a law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, rise or stay the same, depending on various counteracting factors that come into play.  If the latter do, the rate of profit may rise, but eventually (and not in a hundred years), the counteracting factors cannot hold sway.
4) There is empirical evidence to back up the law, contrary to Heinrich.
5) The law goes further than just predicting booms and slumps, but also predicts capitalism’s eventual demise (in the sense of not taking the productive forces forward).

These are the questions for yes and no answers that may help you to know where you stand.  My answers are yes to all these statements.

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A BART Strike can be won with other unions and the communities and usher in a new era.

The power of labor. Let's put it to good use

by Richard Mellor

Afscme local 444, retired

 "Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table." George Schultz

I went to a meeting at the ATU hall a couple of nights ago.  It was a meeting called by ATU local 1555 for the purpose of building solidarity between unions and the community as the 30- day cooling off period that halted the 4 and a half day strike of BART workers will be up in a week or so.

An official from ATU 1555 spoke of the $100 million in concessions workers have already given but as is usually the case, the more willingly we make concessions the more aggressively the bosses come back for more originally demanding a 12% pay cut and the elimination of important work rules after years of a hiring freeze and no raises.

An attack on BART workers is an attack on all workers was the message which is true. The bosses are attacking a unionized section of the working class with relatively decent wages and benefits compared to many of our class brothers and sisters, as defeating BART workers is but a stepping stone to further attacks on the less organized sections of the class, the youth, the poor, the disabled. BART, or transit workers in general occupy an important position as workers in that stoppages in mass transit have a serious impact on economic activity and therefore profits. The bosses don’t care about disrupting the travel plans of the public going to visit friends, relatives, or to do a little shopping, if they did they wouldn’t savage public services including mass transit, they would expand on it and make it affordable. Profits are made through the labor process, in the workplace. Getting workers (Labor power) to work is crucial if profit is to be made.

We must “Let the public hear our message” the ATU official said to those of us present before moving on to the logistics of organizing the solidarity rally. Fortunately, someone from the floor asked what the union’s message to the public was and shouldn’t we discuss this before logistical questions.  Moist of us in attendance were there to help get the public to the rally, surely, what we are offering the public is the meat of the matter.

The official was a bit reluctant as it would open up a “philosophical” discussion he said could take a long time, but those in attendance clearly thought this was important and 20 minutes was allotted for us to hear what the actual message to the public was, a message that is designed to counter the massive propaganda against the Transit workers in the mass media and win the public to our side.

Unfortunately there was very little coming from the Union leadership that anyone could tell the public that would encourage them to become active in and drawn to the BART workers struggle as their own.  Appealing to someone in a $10 an hour job with no benefits to actively support BART workers meaning supporting a strike with all the disruption and sacrifice that entails, merely on the basis that it’s an attack on all of us is too abstract.  Let’s say the community gets involved and the Union leadership manages on the basis of this support to halt some of the most damaging concessions at the table and decides to settle; what is there for the community?  The community would feel betrayed.

Union approach
The strike deadline is approaching but there is still time to build something through this solidarity rally that could have a real affect on the balance of class forces and open up an offensive of our own. I do not think that the BART workers and ATU 1555 can defeat the bosses alone, no union can. I would like to share my thoughts on this:

I think the first thing the leadership of ATU 1555 should do is call for a mass meeting between all the BART locals, AFSCME and SEIU to prepare for a strike at the end of the cooling off period and for the purpose of forming a joint strike committee.  Included in this call should be ATU’s sister local ATU 192 that represents AC transit workers, the drivers that operate the bus system. This local could have legally struck with the BART workers but the leadership chose not to.  I have already stated that I think this was a mistake and hurt both parties. City of Oakland workers should also be invited to participate in joint strike committee; they are also represented by SEIU 1021 that represents BART station Agents and janitorial staff. The workers that operate the buses that transport severely disabled people are paid less with fewer benefits than operators at AC Transit and San Francisco's MUNI. Their outfit is owned by the firm that the union buster brought in to negotiate BART's contract works for.  They are Teamsters and should be brought in to this campaign in order to bring their wages and benefits in to line with ATU and SEIU members or all will be driven to the lower level. We can defeat this offensive but not alone.

Local 1555 should make sure that this call is made public through press releases regardless of the reaction of the leadership of the other unions. Let the public and the members of other unions, especially those included in the call read about this in the media. There are also other public sector unions in contract talks and a serious approach like this will get an echo among many rank and file members tired of years of concessions.

We are negotiating in the working public’s interest.

I was a rank and file negotiator for my local, AFSCME 444 EBMUD blue collar workers in 1997 (read an assessment of that negotiations we wrote at the time here) We formed a solidarity committee and at the table one of our demands was for 50 union jobs as opposed to the company’s phony community training ventures, part-time work with no benefits and lower wages to make board members look good. This program undermined union pay and benefits and rarely led to full time jobs.  In addition we had as a proposal a demand for a shorter workweek, we never dropped that demand but I think we left on the table a proposal to reduce the workweek 2 and a half hours. 

In the first meeting the company’s negotiators told us that we couldn’t demand jobs, that hiring was management’s business. We told them in no uncertain terms that they don’t tell us what to demand; we demand what we need as workers and what the communities we serve need as communities of workers. In our rallies and public events we always made jobs for the community an issue.  The solidarity committee leafleted the welfare offices, the unemployment office, and other public sector workplaces like the Berkeley city workers yard and the city of Oakland corporation yard on Enterprise Way.  We got a good contract that year although the solidarity committee was unable to bring in huge numbers of members of other locals and members of the community.  This was due to resources and not a failed approach.  The heads of the Bay Area labor movement through the labor councils should be doing this in every dispute rather than spending members’ hard earned money getting Democrats elected to boards and political office who immediately turn on us in the interests of “shared sacrifice”.

In every dispute, especially involving public sector unions, the proposals at the table cannot be limited only to issues that affect the members of that local. We have an obligation to negotiate for the public as well. 

Coming out of a mass meeting and formation of a joint strike committee the transit unions should go on the offensive and place new demands on the table demands that relate to their own members, but also that affect the public. A solidarity campaign can then leaflet areas and institutions where these potential allies can be found, Here are some examples I think would draw the public in to this struggle, not just as passive supporters but as activists with representatives on the joint strike committee.

·      Free transportation for all senior citizens

·      Half fare for the unemployed and all those on public assistance, welfare etc.

·      Increased and free transportation for the disabled.

·      A massive increase in bus routes and in areas where seniors live shorter distance between stops.

·      Job training programs in conjunction with the unions to be set up in each community

These are just a couple of simple examples. We have numerous articles on this blog about the need for jobs and a massive infrastructure spending project to be paid for by ending all wars and occupations, $10 billion year incomes for those people who clip coupons for a living like hedge fund managers and other speculators and directing capital in to social needs.

There is no shortage of money in society; it is not our job to nickel and dime one section of the working class in order to give a few minor concessions to another. This is the bosses’ strategy that divides us and weakens us.  We do not believe it is our job to scramble around finding ways to divvy up an ever-dwindling pie they offer us. We have the money and we know where we need to put it. The Berkeley Express had a very good article about the massive increase in corporate property values since the BART rail system, a public project, was installed. It points out that BART’s 2013 budget shows that 57% of the agency’s funding comes from fares, and 30% of it from sales tax in Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties. Property taxes account for less than 5%.  Taxes funding BART are regressive. These billions of dollars of increased property values are not taxed appropriately.  We published the Express piece here

A strong, committed and united working class can make some gains and transform the national mood a process that can lead to further victories and increased political awareness.   One of the greatest obstacles we have to overcome is the view in US society that we can’t win, that we can’t change what is. This is the bosses’ message and it is one that is unfortunately adopted by the heads or organized labor from the top down.

I am not raising these issues simply to point fingers.  But to raise what I genuinely believe is a way forward, a way to throw back the capitalist offensive and begin one of our own.  The concession will not stop as the crisis of their system and global competition is forcing the US capitalist class to drive us back to conditions that existed before the great uprising that led to the CIO in the 1930’s and the Civil Rights movement that followed it.

To make appeals to the public for support against the lies and propaganda of the bosses, we have to have something concrete to offer as opposed to generalities and abstract slogans about unity and how we are all under attack etc.  A call for solidarity is a good thing but solidarity around what?  Some of us are under attack more severely than others and would think they’d died and gone to heaven to get a job at a public utility. If we don’t want to have the bosses’ give them our jobs, we need to be in the forefront of the battle for jobs for all, a $20 an hour minimum wage, health care, education etc. 

Finally and of extreme importance is the responsibility of the union leaderships in this struggle. These leaderships control the unions and structures through which we, the union members have to function. They control the apparatus that has considerable resources; twelve million members, a full time apparatus and financial and other resources. Presidents of the United States do not attend National Union Conventions because there is no power there; they attend to ensure that this potential power is kept subdued. These union leaderships have to lead. It is up to them to organize in the unions at all levels, in the workplaces, in the communities, in the schools and colleges to build a movement to fight for the demands we outline above. While making sure that these leaderships are pressed to take this action all union activists and members should simultaneously be building activist and fighting caucuses where they work and study. Experience shows that the union leaderships do not take militant action unless they are forced to from below in a way that threatens their positions, power and privileges.

The union leadership at the highest levels should be speaking out most emphatically against racism and the ongoing murder of black youth by the police and racist thugs like Zimmerman.  A defender of Zimmerman threw in my face the black on black crime in the urban ghettos (a good piece on that here) which is in itself an issue.  But what is the cause of this?  It is poverty, police brutality, lack of opportunity and generations on unemployment and welfare, not enough to die on and not enough to live on. It is the disgraceful incarceration of black males disenfranchising them permanently from society even when they get out. It is the product of a racist war on a whole section of our society, a divide and rule strategy to weaken us all. It is not a black thing. If the conditions that existed in this community exited in society as a whole the experts would declare a national state of emergency and we are moving closer to that scenario.  The economic war against all of us is the cause of the crisis in society and the intensified crisis among the poor and racially oppressed.

"Brethren we conjure you...not to believe a word of what is being said about your interests and those of your employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in a nature of things, hostile and irreconcilable.  Then do not look to them for relief...Our salvation must, through the blessing of God, come from ourselves.  It is useless to expect it from those whom our labors enrich." * 

* 1840's appeal from New England laborers to their fellows to abandon the idea that the employers/capitalists would solve working people's problems.  Philip Foner History of the Labor Movement Vol. 1 p192

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Police murders and militarization of US society a threat to all workers

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

While things have no doubt changed since I lived in Europe over 40 years ago, one stark difference between there and the US is the power and role of the police. Here in the US, they can kill without recourse, this is particularly so when it comes to black folks, and young black men in particular.  Those who regret their lives are disrupted or their baseball game delayed because a freeway is blocked or some unruly people (more often than not white middle class youth) smash some windows, should consider that the racist cop who rained a barrage of racial epithets on Oscar Grant, the young black worker killed by Transit police, was fired due to these protests. 

The cop that shot Oscar Grant in the back as he lay on the ground surrounded by police would never have gone to jail at all had it not been for the street protests. George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the murder of Trayvon martin shows that the courts cannot be relied on to protect black youth.  The courts unfortunately cannot be relied upon to protect the rights of any worker as they are institutions designed to protect and further the interests of capital.

I saw three youngsters on a double decker in London last year getting in to it with two unarmed cops. They were not behaving properly I thought so myself, but the cops also didn’t approach them correctly.  Still, the youngsters gave the cops what for and as they were descending the upper deck for their stop one of them looks at the cops sitting in the back and called them “Baboons”.  The cops up and chased them and the last scene I saw was them giving a stern talking to the kids at the bus stop. I thought to myself, “They deal with cops here in the US like that they could be dead.” They got a bit too close to them and if a cop’s threatened here they can kill you no problem.  The same with the London riots last year.  Had they happened here, there’d be a lot more dead bodies.

You only have to watch US TV to see that we are a very violent society, young children see guns and shootings on TV daily and it’s portrayed in a way that it appears as natural as can be when we know that for a normal person, simply getting in to a tense and heated confrontation with another person is upsetting never mind killing them.

Last week, Reuters reported on the differences between the power of the police in Europe and here in the US.  According to Der Spiegel, the total number of bullets German police used in all of 2011 was 85.  Police in most other industrial countries are trained to avoid shooting with “fatal intent” whereas here in the US, “lethal force” is more often than not the norm. Of those 85 bullets fired by German cops in 2011, “…49 were warnings shots, 36 were aimed at criminal suspects, 15 people were injured, and 6 were killed”, Der Spiegel adds.

In the US, cops have to file a report every time they use their weapon in the line of duty but there are no statistics “readily available” according to RT.  But we have some idea of how things are from daily events.  Bruce Springsteen made a song “American Skin 41 shots to highlight the death of the New Yorker Amadou Diallo who was shot 41 times by cops while siting outside his apartment.  A 19 year old was killed by LA cops last month after being shot 90 times.  “The same month,” the New York Post reports, “…New York police fired at a suspected murderer 84 times.  While the man was wounded, “the punk incredibly survived,”.

Crime has declined in the US perhaps due to the incarceration of close to three million people mostly for petty crimes, people that capitalism has abandoned. But in the aftermath of 911 and the rise of the Occupy Movement as part of the rising opposition to US capitalism’s efforts to put the working class on rations, US society has become increasingly militarized beefing up the police and special fascist type units as well as using drones and massive surveillance methods to root out dissent. According to USA Today, “instances of excessive force or “other tactics to violate victims civil rights” increased by 25 per cent from 2001 to 2007.”

Other examples from RT

In another 2006 six case, plain clothes and undercover New York police shot at Sean Bell more than 50 times a day before his wedding. Bell was killed, and three of his friends were critically injured. The case was widely compared to that of Diallo.

The phenomenon is so common in America that the term ‘contagious shooting’ – the idea that cops reflexively open fire because others are doing so – has entered the national vocabulary.

Perhaps one incident that spurred experts to coin the term was a 1995 Bronx robbery where officers fired an incredible 125 shots at a suspect who did not even fire back. “They were shooting to the echo of their own gunfire,” a former police official told The New York Times.  

One officer told the daily in 2006 that “the only reason to be shooting in New York City is that you or someone else is going to be killed and it’s going to be imminent,” and thus you fire as many shots as necessary to “extinguish the threat.”

Ironically, one officer even said, “until we have some substitute for a firearm, there will always be a situation where more rounds are fired than in other situations.”

You get a lot of support for this macho culture from trolls that have found themselves a safe place in the Internet culture where they can play cop and more often than not espouse racist and anti-worker views. But beefed up police forces have never made life safer for the working class.  The police as well as troops have been used historically to break strikes, sometimes with the most brutal results. The social role of the police makes them naturally the enemy of workers and organized Labor as their entire existence is based on defending laws that are made by the capitalist class in the interests of the capitalist class.  Troops, as workers in uniform are somewhat different when used in this capacity, and much more likely to be won over when workers are on strike or in open struggle against the bosses and the police.. The police can be neutralized at best by the united power of the working class in action; they are not workers in the same way.

Recently cops shot a man's dog after the arrested him as he was on a public sidewalk videoing their actions.  Apparently he didn't turn the music down in his car quick enough.  The dog tried to defend its master so the cops shot it.  It is on film at the end of this commentary but it is a disturbing scene so be warned animal and human lovers, the dog appears to suffer.

In the recent labor disputes here in the Bay Area where we saw a four and a half day strike by BART (mass transit) workers, the issue of safety on the job and as well as the safety of passengers is an issue. This is an issue or all public employees (and some private like UPS drivers for example) especially teachers, transit and utility workers as well as USPS employees.  I worked in areas where youth unemployment was as high as 30% or more and crime was rampant.  For teachers, all the ills of capitalist society are brought in to the classroom. But the answer to these real problems from organized labor and workers as a whole is training programs run by the Unions in every community and a massive investment in social infrastructure, education, transportation and real public housing, not beefing up the state security forces.

Jobs and more jobs is the key.  Increased militarization of society and more police will be used against unionized workers as we are forced to strike to defend ourselves against the capitalist offensive.  We are not exempt from police violence, we never have been.  By defending our communities and especially the poorer communities, many of them communities of color, we can build a united and powerful movement to fight back against the austerity agenda of the 1%.

 We need this united movement for there is plenty of bullets for the rest of us if the 1% feels their interests are threatened.  US police will not only use plenty of bullets to halt our offensive, the Germans will abandon their tolerance for German workers and ammo consumption will skyrocket there too.

Let’s not fool ourselves. Let’s remember which sections of society are our natural allies and which are our natural enemies.

This what the occupation of America's urban areas really means.

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