What Strategy to Fight Global Capitalism?

Contribution to the OWC discussion by Ralph Schoenman, author, past executor director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and member of the coordinating committee of the International Committee Against Repression (ICAR)

[Note: Ralph Schoenman, a longstanding fighter for trade union and democratic rights, was a panelist in the OWC's workshop on the "Struggle Against Racism and Oppression and in Defense of Democratic Rights." He submitted the article below as a contribution to the OWC report-back discussion, not having had the opportunity to deliver a presentation to the plenary session because of time constraints.]

[Note: I believe this was associated with the Open World Conference in Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights, which met at least on 13 February ????—KAR]

By RALPH SCHOENMAN

    The Open World Conference in Defense of Trade Union Independence and Democratic Rights (OWC) aims at building an international fightback by workers and their unions against the onslaught of global capital.
     
We all know how powerful are the multinational corporations who operate in every country. What we must keep in mind as we raise our voices in defense of working people—the vast and overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of our planet—is that the great corporate conglomerates have captured the state in each and every one of our respective countries.
     
Whatever the forms of nominal governance, the real power is hidden and concentrated in the hands of a tiny oligarchy of the ruling rich. This is true whether our countries are run by a family dictatorship, as in Indonesia or Nigeria, or whether there are nominal forms of representation, as in the United States.
     
Regardless of the façade, in each and every one of our countries, the real power remains in the hands of the few.
     
In the United States, the New York Times estimated recently that one- half of one percent of the population in the United States owns more than the rest of the population combined. The top executives of eight companies, reported the Times on February 15, 1998, own personally $15 billion of their companies' equity.
     
No matter what yardstick we use, the powerful few run the show. The government administers the state and the rich purchase it. The state itself is their private instrument used to police the planet and to subsidize control over planetary resources and cheap labor by the corporations and the banks.
     
"Rich Control More of U.S. Wealth As Debts Grow for Poor," reads one headline in the New York Times. The article reports an in-depth study prepared by the University of Michigan which shows that wealth has become more concentrated than ever before since 1990.

Features of capitalism
     
Unionists and activists are mobilizing internationally against the sweatshops and starvation wages, which are the main feature of conditions of work in the global economy.
     
For every worker laboring from dawn to dusk in a condition of near slavery, there are vast numbers who have no work at all. These conditions are the result of political and economic policies. They are not natural phenomena. They are the inexorable workings of a capitalist economy in which profits depend upon a perpetual war on the earnings of the workers whose labor produces all wealth.
     
Thousands upon thousands mobilized on this International Day of Action because we want an end to the misery and exploitation which define the waking hours of billions of human beings.
     
We attribute this to the "trade" policies of global corporations, and while we are right to decry the results, it is important to examine what passes for trade in the global economy.
     
The notion of "trade" presupposes co-equals sitting down together to exchange things of value. It would be far more accurate to say that the policies of the global corporations who run the economies of our countries involve theft: theft of natural resources and theft of the labor of working people.
     
The global corporations design policies which they call "trade agreements"—such as NAFTA, Maastricht or the MAI. These are not trade agreements. These are strategic assaults upon the resources of the planet and the living standards of its inhabitants.
     
Take NAFTA. Since its imposition, the global corporations centered in the United States eliminated nearly a half million jobs. The wages of Mexican workers in the manufacturing sector have fallen 40 percent within Mexico and are one-eleventh of what had been paid for equivalent work to workers in the U.S.
     
Much work, however, has been concentrated along the border where U.S. companies produce goods for the U.S. market. At the Zenith plant in Reynosa, workers are paid 69 cents per hour.
     
Not only wages have been under siege. Social services have been assailed. Healthcare has deteriorated drastically. The cost of food and clothing has soared. The housing stock has dwindled to a fraction of its previous meager supply.

Are social clauses a solution?
     
Some contend that the introduction of social clauses—that is, environmental and labor clauses—into such pacts as NAFTA, Maastricht and the MAI would soften the impact of these agreements by providing protections for workers and the environment.
     
There is no evidence that such protections are feasible or that corporate rulers would agree to them. The essence of NAFTA, Maastricht and the MAI is the restructuring of work so that work becomes precarious and workers wholly vulnerable to corporate dictate. Job security, a living wage, social benefits, safe working conditions, and eight-hour day and independent union representation are precisely those gains of the workers' movement which these pacts target for elimination.
     
Even if some palliative passages were incorporated into these strategic corporate plans, NAFTA, Maastricht and the MAI were designed to dislocate and atomize workers. Such presumed protective clauses would be subject to the interpretation and implementation of the corporations themselves.
     
Moreover, whether the labor and environmental clauses are in the form of side agreements or whether they are within the body of the agreements themselves, there is no mechanism of enforcement on which the workers can rely.
     
Workers are being removed systematically from secure employment under NAFTA. Manufacturing jobs are offered on the basis of reduced wages and increased hours and, in large measure, are being replaced by sweatshop pass-through work. It should be clear, therefore, to all worker activists that such protective social clauses are incompatible with the entire dynamic of global capitalism today. Reliance on the bosses to implement protective language will prove to be an exercise in futility.
     
We cannot defend our interests by supplicating corporate rulers to be "good citizens" or to be nice and refrain from exploiting working people. Our demand must be for the right to independent trade unions and the protection of worker rights so that the power of global capital can be confronted by workers on an international scale.
     
The agreements are not about trade. They are designed to render workers disposable, replaceable and without the capacity to organize collectively in their own interests.
     
Corporate capital is driven to this course because capitalism cannot sustain profits in the present era without deepening exploitation to levels not seen since the onset of the industrial revolution. This cannot be achieved without dislocating and fragmenting the organization of workers and undermining them as a cohesive class. Wherever workers have wrested gains, these gains and the organization of working people are under siege.

One-sided class warfare
     
NAFTA—as President Clinton has repeated ad nauseam—is the model which is to be imposed on the entire continent.
     
Does this super-exploitation translate into benefits for workers in the United States? Quite the opposite. Full-time work is being eliminated in the United States and replaced with part-time, precarious work precisely so the corporations can pay wages of 69 cents an hour.
     
Is this a "trade" measure or a form of warfare—class warfare against the workers of Mexico and the United States?
     
Can we attribute this solely to "trade" agreements such as NAFTA or to the MAI? While these schemes are part of the arsenal of class warfare, it is essential for us to keep in mind that they are weapons in a brutal conflict and we must never lose sight of the war and who wages it.
     
Today we speak of the global corporations. A few years ago we called them multinationals and a few years before that we spoke and wrote about the Tri-Lateral Commission instead of about NAFTA and the MAI.
     
Yet, no matter the instrument through which exploitation is both managed and planned, it is the control of the state by concentrated capital which makes it possible.
     
Nor does it matter which of the two political parties financed by capital holds office. It is office without power because the two parties are the one big property party with separate names.

True face of imperialism
     
Woodrow Wilson spoke of "making the world safe for democracy," but when addressing the manufacturers of the United States, his message was clear:
     
"If," Wilson stated, "we do not impose our enterprise abroad, we cannot have any liberty at all in this country, for it will be a luxury which we cannot afford. Our industry is at the point where it collapses unless it finds control of a world market because our home market is no longer sufficient. We must have foreign domination." (cited in Against the Crime of Silence: Proceedings of the International Tribunal on U.S. War Crimes in Indochina, Editor John Duffett, New York, 1968)
     
Herbert Hoover expressed the core policy of the rule of capital in parallel terms:

   "Foreign control is more important for us to ensure the stable and normal functioning of our capitalist economy. It assumes a greater importance than home consumption." (Ibid.)

      These were the identical preoccupations of Franklin Roosevelt and of the New Deal. Roosevelt's President of the National Industrial Conference Board, Virgil Jordan, put it like this on December 10, 1940:

   "Whatever the outcome of the war, we have taken the road of imperialism on an economic plane as on all other planes of life. Yes, some fear this word imperialism so well known and, to some, menacing. Most people prefer to mask this under the more vague expression, 'defense of the Western Hemisphere;' but we are destined by our need, by our capacity by the exigencies of rule in our own society to follow this road.
  
"We have no choice but to continue as we have during the past century which began with the seizure of the continent and proceeded to the annexation of Cuba and the Philippines. This empire must see its possibilities throughout the southern part of this hemisphere and west of the Pacific. The scepter must fall in the hands of the United States." (Ibid.)

      Those who voted for Franklin Roosevelt did not give their knowing sanction to the seizure of countries and the imposition of empire. The CIO in that day was opposed to such things, even as the AFL-CIO today opposes NAFTA and the MAI.
     
The imperialism celebrated by Virgil Jordan was only possible because the support by organized labor for the Democratic Party demobilized working people and prevented them from forging their own political party to defend our interests. The "no-strike" pledges exacted by the Roosevelt administration permitted these policies to be carried out unopposed.

The gap widens
     
Today, as the U.S. Census Bureau Report confirms, "the gap between the affluent few and everyone else is wider than it has been since the end of World War Two." As the New York Times (6/19/96) commented, "each indicator has shown a pronounced increase in the gap between the incomes of the wealthy and those of the poor and the working class."
     
We suffer from greater poverty and deprivation than we did in this country a half century ago.
     
The U.S. Census Bureau Report reveals that during the first two years of the Clinton administration, the share of national income claimed by the top 5% grew at a faster rate than in the previous eight years of the Reagan administration combined.
     
The Census Bureau Report concluded that "the widening disparity in the fortunes of American workers is becoming an entrenched fixture of the country's economy."
     
How does this work? Forbes reveals that the top corporate rulers control $3.2 trillion in business assets alone. They own 50% of all common stock in America and 45% of all fixed non-residential private capital in the United States.
     
The conservative Cato Institute calculates that in every sector of our economy the giant corporations are subsidized by the Federal Government. Congress finances 125 subsidy programs for the largest corporations at a net cost of $85 billion per year, not including tax breaks. The top 17 corporations paid no federal income tax for a period of ten years. When we add in the tax breaks, that is a subsidy of over $100 billion—half the Federal deficit.
     
In agriculture, agro-conglomerates receive $31.3 billion in government subsidies and $2.9 billion in tax rebates. Energy corporations are subsidized to the tune of $15.3 billion. Transportation conglomerates receive $30.6 billion. Aerospace and high tech get $16.7 billion in subsidy. In construction, the major corporations receive $17.4 billion. Financial services—banks, brokerage houses and the great centers of stock and bond speculation—receive $42.3 billion, with tax breaks of $60.4 billion. Commodity credit subsidies are $9.81 billion.
     
These are not government programs. These are handouts to the corporate oligarchy which owns the government and finances both political parties with the proceeds.
     
This is why 60 cents of every tax dollar go to the Pentagon and less than a dime to health care. This is how 3 cents get allocated to housing and much of that housing for the affluent. This is why 2 cents go to education and most of that channeled to the schools of the affluent. This is what permits 1 cent to be allocated to generate employment.
     
While they do this, a child dies of poverty every 50 minutes in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of children are homeless each night. One in every five children goes to bed hungry and cold, without heat, running water and electricity in the rat-infested cages which pass for shelter in our inner cities.
     
The policies which transfer jobs to the global sweatshops have precise and measurable consequences, described by CNN on March 20. Ten million children will die each year from contaminated water in the countries from which the greatest profits are generated. One-fifth of the world's population lacks potable water. The World Health Organization estimates that over the next two decades, 70 million people will die from a form of tuberculosis which is curable by a simple administration of an antibiotic, and one billion people will be infected.
     
While the health of the workers of the world is in crisis mode, what of the compensation reaped by the health conglomerates and their corporate controllers?
     
Richard L. Scott of Columbia HCA received $265.5 million in one year. Peter Nicholson of Boston Scientific Corporation got $231.1 million. David Jones of Humana, Inc. obtained $194.4 million. Leon C. Hirsch of U.S. Surgical Company was paid $105.8 million.
     
This was just the salary. Leonard Abramson of U.S. Health Care received stock options of $11.4 million, but outright stock holdings of $783.9 million His total compensation package was $805,122,045. The total federal spending on AIDS was $1.4 billion—half of the value of the stockholdings of the top ten health industry executives.
     
These payments are across the board among corporate conglomerates, as documented in the Special Report in Business Week (April 20, 1998).

Working class independence
     
The power of global capital can only be challenged by a fightback on a global scale. Unless we organize ourselves in the workplace and politically in every country and build an international party of working people, we shall never escape the control of global capital.
     
We need organization and political parties independent of capital if we are to devise our own programs and fight for the power to implement them.
     
To achieve independent class organization, we must build labor parties that can break the capitalist monopoly over the political process. Without this, working people will be led repeatedly into an impasse, helpless and passive tools of the political instruments of their class enemy.
     
Let us join together in discussing how we can break with the political parties of  capital in every country: with the Democrats no less than the Republicans in the United States, with the parties administering the policies of the IMF everywhere.
     
Let us join together in building that party of working people. As the anthem of the workers' movement proclaims, it is the final battle and, for humanity's sake, we must wage it to win.

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