The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal – A review

 

© 2008 J. Patrick O’Connor

Published by Lawrence Hill Books

 

Today the name Mumia Abu Jamal is known throughout the world.  He is known for being an outstanding journalist who was unjustly incarcerated for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. 

 

J. Patrick O’Connor book The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal gives the world a blow-by-blow analysis of the facts that underscore the argument that the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office worked diligently to manufacture evidence against Mumia Abu Jamal.  O’Connor also shows how Mumia’s so-called trial was nothing more than an inquisition.  However, before we look at the framing of Mumia Abu Jamal, I believe it is useful to look at his life story.

 

Mumia Abu Jamal

 

Mumia Abu Jamal understood the shortcomings of the so-called justice system at an early age.  At the age of fifteen Mumia made a less than prudent decision to attend a rally in support of George Wallace for President.  Mumia and his friends answered the chants of “Segregation forever,” with their chant of “Black power.”  Mumia and his friends were beaten, and when the police intervened they continued the assault on Mumia and his friends. 

 

Mumia was arrested for assaulting a police officer.  At his trial the judge said that Mumia’s face assaulted the fist of the police officer and dismissed the case.

 

With this background Mumia became a news reporter and journalist.  Unlike other journalists, Mumia made it a practice of exposing police brutality.  This stance of Mumia put him in conflict with his employers in the media, as well as the government.  The F.B.I. had a seven-hundred page file on Mumia.  However, even the F.B.I. acknowledged in 1974 that Mumia “has not displayed a propensity for violence.”

 

In fact, those people who knew Mumia said that he was the type of person who would try to calm down tense situations.  Even in prison, the journalist Chuck Stone reported that Mumia was friendly with the prison guards.

 

Mumia was such a well-respected journalist, he became the president of the Black journalists of Philadelphia.  Unlike the so-called journalists on news programs like 60 Minutes, Mumia was not paid a salary of millions of dollars per year.  To the contrary, he was fired from his job because of his style of reporting and needed to supplement his income by driving a taxi cab.      

 

 

The so-called case against Mumia

 

The murder of Daniel Faulkner happened on December 9, 1981 on the corner of 13^th and Locust Street in Philadelphia.  Anyone who even passed by that area at during those years could see that this was a center for prostitution and drug dealing.  Clearly, this state of affairs could only take place with the support of the Philadelphia Police Department.

 

In fact, the F.B.I. had been investigating the sixth district of the police for six months prior to the murder of Officer Faulkner.  The F.B.I. found that police officials and officers had been receiving kickbacks from pimps, prostitutes, and bar owners.  Many of the officers who were involved in the prosecution of Mumia were convicted of receiving kickbacks.

 

The incident that led to the murder of Officer Faulkner started when Faulkner pulled over Wesley Cook, Mumia’s brother, while he was driving his Volkswagen.  We need to understand that Faulkner made a decision that it was more important to stop Wesley Cook than to deal with the prostitution and drug dealing that he knew was going on every night.

 

Faulkner then beat Wesley Cook so badly that blood was pouring out of Cook’s head.  Several witnesses testified to the fact that Mumia, who happened to be there at the time, ran across the street, but had no gun in his hands.  O’Connor argues that when officer Faulkner saw a black man with dreadlocks running towards him he pulled out his gun and shot Mumia.  The bullet that entered Mumia’s body was a near perfect shot at his chest and had a downward trajectory.            

 

At this point Robert Harkins, who first reported the murder to the police, testified that Officer Faulkner grabbed a man who spun Faulkner around and threw him on the ground.  Faulkner’s pants were ripped at the knee and this supported Harkins testimony.  Then Harkins heard three shots.  The first hit Faulkner from less than 12 inches away, while he was on his knees.  The next shots hit Faulkner after he turned over and struck him in the head.

 

Kenneth Freeman was the man who O’Connor believes was the shooter.  Freeman was Wesley Cook’s best friend and he was in Cook’s car at the time of the shooting.  Freeman had an Afro hairstyle, unlike the dreadlocks worn by Mumia.  Witnesses testified that the man who shot Faulkner had an Afro hairstyle.  O’Connor argues that the motive for the murder might have been the fact that Faulkner had beaten Wesley Cook and then attempted to murder Mumia Abu Jamal.

 

Kenneth Freeman died in 1985 and his naked body was found bound and gagged in a vacant lot in Philadelphia hours after the bombing of the MOVE home at Osage Avenue.  This police had the audacity to rule Freeman’s death to be a heart attack.  He was thirty-one years old

 

From this story, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s advanced the following scenario.  They argued that Mumia ran across the street with a gun.  They argued that Mumia then fired the gun hitting Faulkner in the back.  Then, somehow Faulkner took his pistol out of his holster.  Since Faulkner’s gun was defective, he needed to take an extra step to fire the gun.  Then, the D.A. argued that Faulkner fired a near perfect shot hitting Mumia in the chest as he was falling down backwards from the bullet wound to his back.

 

One obvious problem with this story is that the bullet wound to Mumia’s chest had a downward trajectory.  This would mean that Faulkner would have had to jump up after he was shot in the back.  This argument is patently absurd, but this was the story the D.A. presented to the jury that convicted Mumia of murder.

 

Cynthia White was a prostitute and the only witness that testified to the version of the D.A.’s story.  Anthony Jackson, who a judge assigned to defending Mumia, established that White had given three stories to the D.A.  Each story came closer to the story the D.A. presented at trial.

 

Twenty years after Mumia’s conviction Yvette Williams, who shared a jail cell with Cynthia White, signed an affidavit stating that: “Cynthia White told me the police were making her lie and say Mr. Jamal shoot Officer Faulkner when she really did not see who did it.”

 

Two other witnesses came forward and testified that they were coerced by the police to testify against Mumia. 

 

Several police officers testified at the trial that they heard Mumia confess to the murder of Faulkner and this became compelling evidence in the case.  However, these officers only made statements about the alleged confession months after Officer Faulkner’s murder.  These statements were made after Anthony Jackson sued the Philadelphia Police Department for brutalizing Mumia while he was in police custody.

 

However, two of the officers who were with Mumia the entire time of his arrest wrote down that they never heard him say anything.  The presiding Judge Albert Sabo would not allow one of these police officers to testify because he was presumably out of town.  In fact, this officer was only minutes away from the courtroom.

 

What does this frame-up say about the so-called justice system?

 

J. Patrick O’Connor argued that Mumia as well as the lawyer Anthony Jackson might have conducted themselves differently at trial and this might have made a difference in the verdict.  While this argument might have some merit, I believe O’Connor is missing an important point. 

 

The conviction of Mumia Abu Jamal has been appealed and the appellate court did not overturn the verdict.  Therefore something is happening that goes beyond the lack of an effective defense at the trial.     

                    

In the United States, defendants are supposed to be presumed to be innocent until they are proven to be guilty.  If the so-called justice system conspires to coerce witnesses to testify against someone, there is no way that guilt can be proven. 

 

Anyone who lives in the United States has a better chance of going to prison than citizens of any other nation in the world.  In Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow, she argues that Black men have an incarceration rate that is way out of proportion to the crimes committed by Blacks.  This has been documented, but the courts see no problem with this state of affairs.

 

When we look at the facts surrounding the frame-up of Mumia Abu Jamal, it becomes clear that the entire criminal justice system in the United States needs to be replaced.  As Malcolm X once said, “Either we will all be free or no one will be free.”  While we can all support the demand for a new trial for Mumia, I believe a better demand would be, Free Mumia Abu Jamal Now! 

Donald Harris, the father of Kamala Harris, exposed her hypocrisy

The other evening, I was listening to a YouTube broadcasted interview with the socialist Dr. Richard Wolff. While I don’t agree with all of Wolff’s opinions, I’ve found him worth listening to.

In that interview the Democratic Party nominee for Vice-President, Kamala Harris, was mentioned. Wolff said that he knew and worked with Harris’ father Donald Harris, and said he was a competent economist. This statement perked my interest and I Googled the name Donald Harris.

As it turns out, Richard Wolff was probably a student of Donald Harris when he was attended Stanford University. In the exchange below, we might see why Kamala Harris has a bit of a frosty relationship with her father.

A reporter asked Kamala Harris if she was opposed to legalizing marijuana. Harris answered this question with the following words:

“half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?”

That statement was too much for Donald Harris and he responded with these words”    

“My dear departed grandmothers, as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics.

Later in the essay, he added, “Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.”

Whenever I consider the name Kamala Harris, I will think of that quotation.

Kamala Harris: “When We Vote, Things Change,” or do they?

 

By Steve Halpern

 

The other evening, instead of viewing the stark raving lunacy of the so-called Democratic Party Convention, I viewed an Amazon documentary about the life of the socialist Eugene Debs titled American Socialist. Clearly, there were problems with this film, but it succeeded in giving viewers a glimmer of who Eugene Victor Debs was.

 

Debs was a labor leader who ran for President several times representing the Socialist Party. Many felt that merely listening to Debs speak was a liberating experience. We are all alienated from the capitalist world where we have no control over the fruits of our labor. When Debs spoke, he became one with his audience and exposed the madness workers are exposed to every day.

 

Then, he showed how the defenders of capitalism work diligently to take the wealth we produce. As his audience began to understand the reality we experience, he showed how we have the capacity to transform the world. His speeches were so powerful, the primary way his presidential campaign raised money was by charging a small fee to attend his speeches. Debs argued that it’s better to vote for who you want and loose, than vote for who you don’t want and win.  

 

In the year 1918, the United States ordered young people to go to war and participate in the world-wide holocaust called the First World War. Woodrow Wilson was the Democratic Party politician who promised that he would keep the United States out of the war. However, bankers in the United States had outstanding loans to the European powers, who were ordering young men to murder the young men who lived in Germany.

 

So, Wilson sent the ship the Lusitania to Europe loaded with armaments for his allies. Also, on board the Lusitania were passengers who might have been unaware of the armaments on board. A German U-boat sank the Lusitania, and this gave Wilson the excuse he needed to betray his campaign pledge of keeping the United States out of the war.         

 

Because many working people wanted no part of this war, Wilson needed to go on an all-out war drive to stamp out any opposition. In other words, Wilson felt that money for Wall Street bankers was more important than the lives of young workers in this country.

 

At that time, a doctor in Kansas was writing about the fact that he observed a pandemic that was spreading across the region. Wilson was indifferent to this, and ordered thousands of soldiers to be grouped together in barracks, on railcars, and in ships. These were the perfect environments to spread the 1918 pandemic known as the Spanish Flu. Eventually about 675,000 people in this country died in this pandemic and millions died in the rest of the world.

 

Even when the war was nearly over, Wilson ordered thousands more troops to be sent to Europe when there was no question that the pandemic was spreading like a wildfire. Those ships that transported the soldiers became floating coffins for many of those on board.

 

Eugene Debs couldn’t bear seeing young workers from all over the world murdering each other without doing something about it. He gave a speech in Canton, Ohio in 1918 against the war. In that speech, he contrasted the drive to war, to the child labor in this country. He argued that the history of the United States was being written in the blood and bones of children, and that the Junkers of Germany are no different from their counterparts in the United States.

 

The United States government then flagrantly violated the free speech Amendment to the Constitution and placed Debs on trial for giving that speech. Debs argued that he wasn’t the one who was on trial, but the Constitution of the United States. While he served his three-year prison sentence, Debs ran for President of the United States and won close to one million votes.  

 

Throughout the First World War women in this country didn’t have the right to vote. The suffragette, Alice Paul, organized a demonstration in front of the White House protesting the war. These demonstrators challenged Woodrow Wilson’s absurd statement that this was a “war for democracy.” Alice Paul argued that democracy is not possible when women don’t have the right to vote.

 

Because of the intensity of the war drive, the police arrested the women who demonstrated in front of the White House. The suffragettes protested their imprisonment by going on a hunger strike. Prison guards then restrained Alice Paul and inserted a tube into her throat to force feed her. These were the conditions imposed on women by a Democratic Party President to prevent them from having the right to vote.

 

The right to vote

 

When we look at this history, we might question Democratic Party representative Hillary Clinton’s words the other evening when she stated: “It took decades of suffragists marching, picketing, and going to jail to push us closer to a perfect union.” Thinking about those words, we might also think about the Democratic Party President Woodrow Wilson who ran the government that inserted a tube into Alice Paul’s throat in order to force feed her. Why did Wilson approve of this? There can be only one reason. He felt that money for Wall Street bankers was more important than giving women the right to vote.

 

We might also think about Fannie Lou Hammer. A plantation owner in the state of Mississippi fired Hammer because she attempted to register to vote. The police then arrested her and she was viciously beaten while in prison.

 

Hammer then led an African American delegation to the Democratic Party Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. We might consider that the Constitution argues that when a state prevents people from voting, that state needs to be denied representation in the federal government. Hammer and her delegation attempted to enforce this part of the Constitution and gain representation for the Black people who had been denied voting rights in Mississippi.

 

The news media, in effect, served the interests of the racists of Mississippi, and prevented Fannie Lou Hammer’s speech from being televised. However, as a result of the sustained civil rights movement, the government was forced to give Black people the right to vote. Today that right continues to be compromised.

 

Do things change when we vote?

 

So, we might summarize all the events that forced the government to give people the right to vote in this country. There was the revolution of the thirteen colonies that freed this country from British feudalism and colonialism. There was the Civil War that ended chattel slavery. There were the suffragette and civil rights movements. Understanding this history, it is only logical to ardently defend the right to vote.

 

I happen to be sixty-seven years old. I’ve seen Presidents come and go from both parties. My experience is that nothing changed in my life when there was a change of the Presidency. However, for the past fifty years there has been a slow but steady deterioration in the standard of living for workers. So, the question is: Why vote?

 

When we look at the titanic battles that took place to give people the right to vote, we see that this is a powerful idea. Workers want to feel that we have at least some control over who heads the government. Without the right to vote, people would feel completely powerless. However, when we see the limitations of voting, we begin to see that in order to bring about a truly democratic nation, we need to have a completely different political economic system.

 

So, why is it that politicians aren’t able to feed hungry people in this country when about 30% of the available food is thrown out? The revolutionary, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin argued that if capitalism were to feed people, it wouldn’t be capitalism.

 

For me, the problem is that we do what we are told when we go to work every day. However, after work we go home, and capitalists have control of the wealth we produced. Although workers produce all wealth, we have absolutely no control over the vast amount of wealth we produce. This is the essence of the problem with capitalism, and why there can be no genuine democracy with this system.       

 

When we study the reality of capitalism, we see that those who have power are involved in a course that can only lead to total disaster. Routinely, they need to be completely obsessed with cutting costs, selling more and more commodities, and going into astronomical debt. These are the forces that created the crisis we’re experiencing today. However, the question remains: Why isn’t the government, the media, or the educational system raising any of these issues?

 

To begin to answer this question we might look at the history of the United States government during the twentieth century. In the early years of the 20^th century, the U.S. government joined forces with fourteen nations in an effort to militarily overthrow the revolutionary government in the Soviet Union. Then, the government sent the socialist Eugene Debs to prison for three years for giving a speech against U.S. participation in the First World War.

 

Then, the government sent eighteen members of the Socialist Workers Party to prison for their opposition to U.S. participation in the Second World War. After that war, members of the Communist Party and others were blacklisted, and some went to prison because of their socialist views.

 

The United States went to war against Korea and Vietnam in an effort supposedly to fight against communism. Then, President Kennedy threatened the world with nuclear annihilation in response to aid the revolutionary socialist government of Cuba received from the Soviet Union. To this day, the U.S. government has maintained its sixty-year trade embargo against Cuba. This is in spite of the fact that today Cuba is sending its doctors all over the world to battle against the pandemic.

 

So, when we think of this entire history, one thing becomes clear. One of the top priorities of the United States government during the entire twentieth century has been to viciously suppress anyone who advanced the cause of human needs before profits. Yes, but how have they been able to get away with this for so long?

 

When we enter a library, we see a literal sea of books where only a tiny percentage of those books challenge capitalism in any way. Dr. Richard Wolf is an economist who spent a decade studying in the universities of Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. He says that during all those years he had only one professor who was critical of the capitalist system, and even mentioned the name Karl Marx.

 

When we think of the mainstream news media, do we ever see even one article arguing that it is wrong to prevent workers from having control over the wealth we produce? Do we ever see even one article arguing that it might be a good idea to give workers the right to democratically decide if and when we go to war? Thinking about those questions, we also might ask: How have people who have power been able to maintain capitalism when this system routinely compromises the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population?

 

Back in the 1930s there was a depression in this country. Before the depression, workers routinely lived in poverty and the depression made things a lot worse. In those days, communists argued that the only way for workers to ultimately advance was to organize unions and go on strike. This was the only way employers would ever improve working conditions.

 

Millions of workers became convinced of that perspective and unions carried out struggles that forced employers to grant significant concessions. The Civil Rights movement also erupted and forced the government to do away with the Jim Crow laws that denied Black people citizenship rights in this country. So, by the 1970s the standard of living for workers had reached its zenith.

 

Then, because corporations are driven to maximize profits, they began to move factories to nations where wages are between $1 and $10 per day. This, in part, explains the phenomenal economic growth of China where about 260 million people became industrial workers.

 

So, the huge amount of surplus derived from the labor of workers all over the world was turned into the skyscrapers that sprouted in all the major cities. Those skyscrapers housed the enterprises of banking, insurance, advertising, corporate law, as well as the headquarters of corporations. None of these enterprises directly produced the goods and services we all need and want that include: housing, transportation, communication, food, clothing, health care, education, and exposure to the cultural activities of music, art, dance, literature, theater, sports, and dancing.

 

However, for literally decades workers no longer felt that their only way to advance was through unions. Now, they felt that families could support a college education for their children. The idea was that a college diploma was the ticket to a home in suburban communities where relatively comfortable lives were a real possibility.

 

However, the pandemic made something crystal clear to an entire generation of young people. The idea that a college education is a ticket to a better life is over. Now people are seeing how we need to demonstrate in the streets in order to force the government to change their policies of favoring corporate profit. That sentiment exploded with the demonstrations demanding that the police officers who murdered George Floyd be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

 

So, when the Democratic Party Vice-Presidential nominee, Kamala Harris claims that: “When we vote, things change,” we can respond with a different message. We are going to build a movement that will move this country in an entirely different direction, from the political course of the Democratic and Republican Parties. That course will make human needs and not corporate profit the fundamental priorities.

 

This course has an entirely different political legacy. We can cite the many names in our history that have advanced this same goal. There was Frederick Douglass, Ida Wells, Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Malcolm X, Fidel Castro, Celia Sanchez, Ernesto Che Guevara, and Nelson Mandela. Learning the political legacy of all these leaders will give us more confidence that a better world is indeed possible.

Gene Debs Understood the Root Cause of Our Problems

 

He was born in Terre Haute, Indiana

a town where rail road workers lived.

He became fascinated with their stories

and at age 14 he dropped out of school to work on the rail lines.

 

He was the kind of person who

always helped a neighbor.

When the Brotherhood of Railworkers came to town,

they made Gene Debs their secretary.

 

Because of his popularity

he ran for political office and won.

Unsatisfied with his effectiveness at this job

he edited the Brotherhood’s Magazine full time.

 

There was a different Brotherhood for each craft,

and many unskilled rail workers could not join.

Debs saw that one union was needed to organize all rail workers,

and helped form the American Railway Union.

 

Pullman was a town outside of Chicago

that was the headquarters of the Pullman Palace Car Company,

that was owned by George M. Pullman,

who worked rail workers to death.

 

The wages at Pullman didn’t provide

a family with enough food to live.

Therefore workers were tied to the town by a debt.

When conditions became intolerable they asked the A.R.U. to organize a strike.

 

Gene Debs was reluctant about the strike,

but once called, he gave it one-hundred and ten percent.

Because Pullman was so powerful,

appeals were made for all rail workers to join the battle.

 

Although this strategy was logical,

and there was a real chance of victory,

most other unions failed to give their solidarity,

and Pullman blacklisted the strikers throughout the industry.

 

For his crime of attempting to win food for working people,

Gene Debs was sent to prison.

The charge was violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

A law designed to protect the public from corporate greed.

 

Debs said: “There is something wrong in this country;

the judicial nets are so adjusted as to catch the minnows

and let the whales slip through and the federal judge is as far removed

from the common people as if he inhabited another planet.”[1]

 

At the age of forty, Gene Debs began to understand

that the methods he used were insufficient to advance the cause of working people.

He saw that the entire government needed to be replaced

and became a socialist. He said,

 

“You do not need the capitalist. 

He could not exist an instant without you. 

You would just begin to live without him. 

You do everything and he has everything;

and some of you imagine that if it were not for him

you would have no work. 

As a matter of fact,

he does not employ you at all;

you employ him to take from you what you produce,

and he faithfully sticks to his task. 

If you can stand it, he can;

and if you don’t change this relation,

I am sure he won’t. 

You make the automobile,

he rides in it. 

If it were not for you,

he would walk;

and if it were not for him, you would ride.”

 

Throughout his life he opposed wars

that supported capitalist greed.

When war erupted against the people of Mexico

Debs said:

 

“You never had a country to fight for

and never will have so much as an inch of one

as long as you are fool enough to make a target of your bodies

for the profit and glory of your masters.

 

“Let the capitalists do their own fighting

and furnish their own corpses

and there will never be another war

on the face of the earth.”

 

When the U.S. government supported World War I

activists who spoke against this holocaust of workers

were sent to prison and many of Debs friends

buckled to the pressure and supported the war.

 

Gene Debs could have retired at this point in his life

with the reputation of a great labor leader.

But he could not fathom living in a world

where working people murdered one another while he just sat by. 

 

In Canton, Ohio Gene Debs gave one

of the most important speeches in the history of the United States.

He showed exactly what soldiers

were asked to fight for,

 

“They tell us that we live in a great free republic;

that our institutions are democratic;

that we are a free and self-governing people. 

This is too much, even for a joke. 

But it is not a subject for levity;

it is an exceedingly serious matter.”

 

“Why, the other day, by a vote of five to four

a kind of craps game

come seven, come’leven

they declared the child labor law unconstitutional

a law secured after twenty years of education and agitation

on the part of all kinds of people. 

And yet, by a majority of one, the Supreme Court,

a body of corporation lawyers, with just one exception,

wiped that law from the statute books,

and this in our so-called democracy,

so that we may continue to grind the flesh and blood and bones

of puny little children into profits for the Junkers of Wall Street. 

And this in a country that boasts

of fighting to make the world safe for democracy! 

The history of this country is being written in the blood

of the childhood the industrial lords have murdered.”

 

For these and other words Gene Debs

served three years in a Federal Penitentiary.

As a prisoner he ran for President of the United States.

As prisioner number 9653 he received almost one million votes.

 

During this time he learned

that the wealth of the United States

could be used to provide real opportunities

to those sentenced to prison.

 

“What incentive would there be for a man to steal

when he could acquire a happy living so much more easily

and reputably by doing his share of the community work? 

He would have to be a perverted product of capitalism indeed

who would rather steal than serve in such a community. 

Men do not shrink from work, but from slavery. 

The man who works primarily for the benefit of another

does so only under compulsion,

and work so done is the very essence of slavery.[2]

 

A share of the community work or slavery?

Gene Debs felt that the struggle for a new world

was worth the work of a lifetime.

For all those who choose to fight to make this a better world,

you won’t find a better speaker of the truth than Gene Debs.

 

---

[1]Debs, Eugene V. Eugene V. Debs Speaks P. 51, 52

[2]Debs, Eugene V. Eugene V. Debs Speaks P. 317

Capitalism: the Pandemic, the Depression, and Alienation

 

By Steve Halpern

 

The pandemic has exposed aspects of the capitalist system that most of us don’t usually think about. Why would the government give trillions of dollars to corporations while fifty million workers are unemployed, and hospitals have been in dire need of supplies? Why did the government invest $1.5 trillion in the F-15 fighter bomber, when they knew funds needed to be invested in public health? While the state of Pennsylvania and Cuba have similar populations, Pennsylvania has had over 7,000 COVID-19 deaths, while Cuba has had only 87 COVID-19 deaths. Why?

 

In order to begin to answer these questions we need to look at the capitalist system and how it functions. Karl Marx studied this question by looking at the way prices of commodities are determined. He argued that first there is constant capital that consists of all the machinery and buildings used to produce a commodity.

 

Then, there is what he called variable capital that consists of all the labor needed to produce a commodity. Marx used the term variable capital to distinguish this investment from constant capital. This is because while constant capital needs to be paid for in full, the labor of human beings can be discarded whenever a capitalist chooses. This means that for the fifty million workers who are now unemployed, their employers are under no obligation to support those workers. This is in spite of the fact that the laid off workers were necessary for the capitalists to profit.

 

Then, there is the somewhat controversial surplus capital. This is where Marx is different from pro-capitalist economists. Surplus capital consists of all the costs of capitalists not included in constant and variable capital. This includes profits, education, health care, banking, insurance, advertising, taxes, corporate law firms, and stock brokerage houses. Clearly, we are all agreed that education and health care are necessary. The controversy is about the other enterprises involved in surplus value.

 

Economists who support capitalism argue that what Marx refers to as surplus value is the service sector of the economy. They argue that profits, banking, insurance, corporate law, taxes, and stock brokerage houses all contribute to the common goal that keeps the economy running. Clearly this sector of the economy has grown considerably since the time of Marx. However, I believe Marx would argue that these enterprises do not serve the interests of the working class, but consistently work to undermine the interests of the vast majority of the population.

 

Banks and insurance companies merely move money from one place to another. Workers are the ones who provide the goods and services we all need and want. Advertising agencies merely promote commodities and attempt to create an environment that Marx called commodity fetishism. This drive is an attempt to make workers obsessed with purchasing commodities we might not need or want. Corporate law firms and the government merely serve the interests of corporations. This is becoming more and more clear every day.

 

So, when we add constant capital to variable capital, to surplus capital we get the average price of commodities. Looking at this formula, we see that money used for surplus capital might not be needed. This would mean that the prices we pay are too high, and that we might all be working fewer hours to attain the goods and services we all need and want.

 

If we look at our problems from this perspective, all that might be necessary is to have a polite discussion with capitalists arguing that it might be a good idea to redistribute wealth. As Vladimir Illyich Lenin argued: If capitalism fed hungry people, it wouldn’t be capitalism. The question is: Why?

 

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels gave us a clue to this problem in their Communist Manifesto. They argued that in capitalism there is a disease humanity never knew before in history. They called this the disease of overproduction. This means that before capitalism, people used to celebrate when they had an overabundance of commodities. However, with capitalism, when there are more commodities than consumers are buying, capitalists eliminate jobs.

 

Today, capitalists have argued that they have eliminated jobs because of the pandemic. This isn’t entirely true. There are many workers who would do the essential jobs, if they knew that employers were doing everything in their power to create a safe working environment. This isn’t happening. Why?

 

Marx noticed that in his day employers were driven to purchase more and more expensive machinery in order to make workers more productive. Failure to do this would make capitalists helpless to compete with their competitors. As capitalists spent more money on this machinery, they found that they would receive a declining percent of profit on their investments. In order to counteract this trend, capitalists relied more and more on loans from banks. Eventually banks began to dominate almost all corporations.

 

So, capitalists not only needed to purchase machinery, they also needed to pay interest to banks. Because this became increasingly risky, capitalists also purchased insurance. With all these expenses, capitalists needed to sell more and more commodities. This explains why advertising is funded to the tune of about $200 billion per year.

 

Then, we can say that this massive funding to keep corporations profitable might appear to be insensitive, given the conditions of dire poverty all over the world. This is why corporations routinely pay lobbyists to ensure that government officials always support the drive to maximize profits all over the world. High priced lawyers are also necessary to give the appearance that the ruthless drive for profit is legal.

 

Understanding this reality, we see that capitalist greed is only a natural outcome of a system driven to maximize profits. When there is a capitalist obsession to drive down costs, sell increasing numbers of commodities, as well as going into astronomical debt, there can only be one ultimate result. That is a complete economic collapse. We are beginning to see this collapse today.

 

In somewhat normal times, capitalist economists look at the supply and demand, as well as the occasional crisis that will result because of the natural functioning of the system. Today, those economists look at the increasing or decreasing death toll of the pandemic, to determine if and when the economy will reopen.

 

We might consider that the economy never fully recovered from the crash of 2008. The federal government merely printed trillions of dollars and gave that money to banks. They called this quantitative easing. Well, today the pandemic has compounded the crisis and there is no end in sight.

 

Capitalism and alienation

 

So, the working class all over the world not only creates all profits, but we also create all the wealth that finances the entire service sector of the economy. However, we have no control over all that wealth we produce. Yet, the government claims we live in a democracy. In the twelve years I attended public schools, every day my teachers asked me to stand up, place my hand on my heart, and pledge allegiance to the flag they claimed represented “liberty and justice for all.”

 

Understanding this reality, we can see why Marx argued that it is normal for workers to feel alienated, given the fact that we have no control over the wealth we produce. In my day to day life, I see this alienation in the profanity people use on a regular basis. This was especially true in the years when I worked in factories, where the wealth of the world is produced.

 

Clearly, there are many words in the English language. However, many people in all classes feel the need to use profanity because we become enraged at aspects of the environment we experience. Clearly, one of the reasons for this rage comes from the fact that workers have no control of the wealth we create.

 

James Baldwin argued that Black people almost always have feelings of rage. Baldwin also argued that much of the wealth in this country came from the institutionalized discrimination against Black people in employment, housing, health care, education, and with routine police brutality. Yet, as I mentioned, the government claims there is “liberty and justice for all.”

 

Clearly, the pro-capitalist press has had numerous articles about ways to deal with the pandemic. However, none of those articles mention the fact that workers are normally alienated because we have no control over the wealth we produce.

 

This means that employers expect workers to risk our lives at alienating jobs so they can maximize profits on their investments. These are some of the reasons why masses of people from all over the world have been protesting the effects of the crisis of capitalism.

 

Cuba and the pandemic

 

As I mentioned, the nation of Cuba has a tiny percentage of COVID-19 deaths, as compared to this country. Yet, while this country has enormous resources, Cuba is a relatively underdeveloped. When we see how capitalism works, we can begin to see how a socialist political economic system can have a profoundly different response to fighting the effects of the pandemic.

 

Today, Cuba has about three times more doctors per capita as the United States. During the first weeks of the pandemic, Cuban doctors, nurses, and medical students visited literally everyone on the island to determine who had COVID-19 symptoms. I am unaware of any pro-capitalist media source in this country that even suggested that this might be a possibility here.

 

Cuba also developed their interferon drug Alpha 2B. This drug stimulates the immunological system to fight COVID-19. This drug has been effective in preventing COVID-19 patients from getting pneumonia. Alpha 2B is being manufactured in China and is being sold all over the world. The United States is not purchasing Alpha-2B because of the trade embargo against Cuba. While Cuban researchers have studied interferon for over thirty years, the pharmaceutical companies of the United States haven’t been doing this research because they didn’t think it would be profitable.

 

Cuba has also sent its doctors all over the world to aid in the fight against the pandemic.

 

Conclusion

 

When we see the contrast in how the socialist and capitalist systems are dealing with the pandemic, there is one inescapable conclusion. In order to deal effectively with the pandemic, we need a completely different political economic system.

 

A worker’s government in this country would make it their top priority to ensure that the needs of literally everyone are provided for. This government would do everything in its power to create safe work environments. Then, it would ask for volunteers to carry out the essential tasks. However, we might ask the question, if work was voluntary, why would anyone choose to work?

 

The point here is that if workers began to have real control over the wealth we produce, then a new attitude would eventually become the norm. Instead of producing for the wealth of an employer, we would be working to ensure that everyone has the means to live a fruitful life. Under those conditions the alienation people feel towards work would wither away.

 

Today demonstrations are erupting all over the world demanding safe working environments and an end to institutionalized racial discrimination. These demonstrations have the clear potential to grow into a movement that puts in place a government that makes human needs and not profits its top priority. As Malcolm X once said: “Either we will all be free, or no one will be free.”