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John Throne looks at a book by an ex-Republican strategist on
the discontent accumulating in the US today.
ARLIER THIS YEAR an economic forecaster
at one of the world's best known universities
made the following statement: "If I look ahead 10 or 20 years I can see growth resuming but we have dug a hole so deep that the mother of all recoveries won't get us out for a while" Yet this is not a university in Moscow or Leningrad nor another bleak assessment of the economic prospects for the ex-USSR. The forecast is from the University of California in Los Angeles and
the economy is that of the state of California.
From the gold rush 150 years ago up until 1990, when the 1980s boom ended and the collapse of Stalinism set in train cuts in military spending, California was the golden state. Its gold, natural resources, climate, and its location facing toward the Pacific, combined to attract a continuous inflow of immigrants with the Californian dream, the apex of the American dream, in their sights. In 1992 for the first time in the history of the
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state, more people left With this development new era.
This is basically the conclusion drawn in his new book Boiling Point by Kevin Phillips, former chief political analyst for the 1968 Nixon presidential campaign who today sits as a member of the political strategists panel of The Wall Street Journal. On the first page Phillips writes: "America has reached boiling point. In 1964 a mere 29% had told poll-takers that government was run for the benefit of a few big interests... By 1992 the proportion of Americans who felt that goverment favoured the rich and powerful had reached 80%" He quotes Harvard economic historian Claudia Goldin whose research has found "inequality at its highest since the great levelling of wages and wealth during the New Deal and World War Two" '. While he makes no mention of the fact that this 'great levelling resulted from the movement of the US working class begun by the great strikes of 1934 and carried on through the 1936-37 sit-ins, and this is a major flaw in his book, Phillips provides statistic after statistic and quote after quote which shows the American dream of the post-war decades is over and that a powerful mood for change is surging up below the surface.
Between 1929 and 1945 the share of US national income going to the richest 1% of the population fell from 13% to 7%. By 1990 the share of the top 1% had risen again to 13%. Private production workers average weekly earnings were $315 in 1975 but only $264 by 1989 (in 1982 prices).
Between 1973 and 1992 wages overall fell by 19% while productivity rose by 24%. Between 1979-87 the average US worker worked 95 hours a year more, had one third less vacation time, while leisure time fell from 26.2 hours to 17.7 hours per week.
the US
state than capitalism
moved in.
entered a
writes to warn his class without arming the orking class theoretically.
He
Phillips's book gives page after page of such statistics showing the class • class polaristation that is developing and the mood of anger and demand for change that exists. It leads him to conclude: "In the US and Europe alike, popular fear of downward mobility has been one of history's proven sources of political radicalism, both cultural and economic. As we have seen, polarisation and anger among ordinary citizens of previous great economic powers who saw themselves losing ground, led to food and tax riots and finally revolution". . He quotes columnist Max Lerner as saying: "The 1990s may prove to be the decade when the explosive anger breaks out openly and plays havoc with party loyalties".
14 • USA
President Roosevelt.
Phillips stresses the political symptoms of the building revolt such as the 19 million votes for Perot and the 62% of votes cast against Bush. However other powerful signs of the coming class upheaval and rising working class struggle in the US, in the main omitted by Phillips, are the Los Angeles uprising of 1992, the largest urban uprising in US history, and the three largest demonstrations in US history, the 350,000-500,000 AFI-CIO march in 1991, the 600,000 | on the womens march in 1992 and the march of one million in early 1993 organised by gay, lesbian, womens, civil rights and community organisations.
HILLIP'S BOOK IS worth reading for the
P statistics and quotations that it provides.
However, when he seeks to go into history, class analysis and political perspectives, he is totally at sea. This flows from his class position as a strategist for US capitalism. He writes, as he is trained to do, to warn his class of the dangers without arming the working class theoretically. As a result his entire thrust is that it is the squeezing of the 'middle class' that is the problem and the middle class includes all except the top 1-5% wealth holders and the bottom 5-10% in extreme poverty.
The working class as an independent class and the source of opposition and change is written out of Phillips's history. He makes great play of populist movements in US history but he lumps all changes in mood and opposition movements in this category. The populist movement of the 1890s was the desperate attempt by the ruined urban and rural small property holders, a historically out-dated class, to prevent their destruction at
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the hands of developing monopoly the form of the 'Robber Barons.
The beginnings of the independent movement of the working class at this time - the rise of the American Federation of Labour, the Wobblies' (IWW), Debs and the Socialist Party - are ignored. But this was the first movement of the new progressive class, as opposed to the cry of rage from the doomed middle classes. The levelling of wealth, as he puts it, in the late-1930s and 1940s, he does not attribute to the independent movement of the working class spearheaded by the rise of the CIO.
In passing Phillips provides the figures to disprove Lassalle's Iron Law of Wages', that is that there is no point in striking for more economic gains as wage increases will be taken back by price increases. This is basically the conception of the AFL-CIO leaders and most trade union leaders today. The modern version is that increased wages will lead to workplaces being moved abroad or jobs going non-union. As already mentioned above the movement of the working class in the US reduced the share of wealth going to the top 1% from 13% to 7%. The top income tax was raised to 94% by 1944 as the Roosevelt goverment squeezed its own class in order to save capitalism in the face of economic crisis and rising working class militancy.
Incidently this 94% top income tax rate is three times the present rate. It shows that there is a certain basis for a limited New Deal administration in the US in the future as most strategic-thinking elements of the ruling class would be prepared to make a few concessions in order to keep the rising working class movement under control.
These facts also show that even though concessions can be won at times by big movements, as long as the capitalist class own and control the economy, when the movement of the working class ebbs and the economy enters into crisis these concessions will be taken back. This confirms the analysis of Marxism that only when the ownership of the dominant sections of the economy are taken out of the hands of the capitalist class and put under the ownership and control of the working class can inequality and exploitation be ended.
capitalism
HERE ARE MANY other interesting items
in Phillips's book. For example he quotes
Don Lacey, editor of the newsletter Workpace Trends, an information sheet for US employers in relation to the assault on workers wages and conditions. Lacey says in justification of the attacks against the working class: "This not just a recession. This is the end of a 40-year boom. Everything we consider to be a normal workplace relationship is not, it is a post-war boom relationship". This confirms the argument of Marxism that union leaders must recognise that the new economic situation makes it impossible for US bosses, from their point of view, to go back to
the ways of the 1950s and 1960s, and old methods of the trade union leaders to defeat after defeat.
Phillips's conclusion about a rising tide of revolt building in the US is correct. There has been a major shift in consciousness over the past three years alone. During the 1980s the general mood was that things were not going so well, but this was accompanied with a widespread hope that this was only temporary and things would work out. However, now there is a deeply held and throughly widespread consciousness that US society is in a fundamental crisis, that the traditional political parties and leaders are incapable of fixing things, and that people are going to have to take
This is a change of great action themselves.
significance with repercussions for the entire globe.
that now
the lead
not just Th
is is
a recession.
the end of a O-year boom.
US capitalism is now the world's largest debtor. It was its largest creditor in 1980. Total debt in society is $12 trillion today comapared to $2 trillion in 1980. There is no longer an avenue for escape to the west and south west as the developments in California show. The south and west and the old mainly rural racist south have been industrialised. The hinterlands of Atlanta, Georgia, the Carolinas, northern Florida, northern Alabama and southern Tennessee now have 27% of their workforces in manufacturing while the national average is 17%.
A Minneapolis teamster recently gave his opinion of the situation in the US. "You cannot fix it (the US economy and society). The whole thing has to be thrown out and started again. I'm ready for revolution". This statement combines a realisation of the crisis as well as the pragmatism, and weakness of tradition, in US society. It indicates the enormous movements for change that lie ahead and which will unfold at US tempo, that is, in great explosive bursts. This Minneapolis teamster's analysis and conclusion is far superior to that of Phillips. Nevertheless, it is worth reading Phillips's Boiling Point for the statistics and quotes it provides and its confirmation of the crises and struggles facing US capitalism from the pen of one of its own strategists.
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