George Floyd and the Government’s Flagrant Violations of their Laws

By Steve Halpern

I listened to the triple guilty verdicts of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. Then, I listened to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris speak in support of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that is waiting for passage in the Congress. 

Listening to Biden and Harris’ appeals for support made me think of the long history of the United States government’s flagrant violations of their own laws. So, when we think of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, we might also think about that long history of the U.S. government’s refusal to enforce their own laws.

400 violated treaties, and chattel slavery in a nation that claims to represent “liberty and justice for all”

We can begin with about 400 treaties the United States violated with respect to Native Americans. A treaty is different than a law. Treaties are not adjudicated in civil courts of law. Treaties are international agreements between sovereign nations. 

A violation of a treaty is an act of war. When a nation violates a treaty, this is a message to the world that this nation is not to be trusted. Native Americans concluded, that this long history of broken treaties means that the government in this country speaks with a “forked tongue.”   

The United States became a nation because of a political revolution that won independence from Britain. The Declaration of Independence stated that we are all “created equal” and have certain “inalienable rights.” 

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and lived a relatively comfortable life because he owned slaves. So, while the revolutionaries in this country spoke of the idea of equality, they also profited from slavery and the genocide against Native Americans.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln argued that those who died in the Battle of Gettysburg did not “die in vain.” Lincoln also signed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that outlawed slavery, except in cases of penal servitude. 

Routine discrimination replaces slavery

Then, after the Civil War, governments in the former slave states adopted the Black Codes that effectively reimposed slavery. The federal government responded to the Black Codes with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments that established equal protection, as well as voting rights for all male citizens. The government also adopted a Civil Rights Act that clarified what equal protection meant in actuality.

Then, the federal government removed the Union Army from the former slave states. After determined resistance, forces loyal to white supremacist organizations overthrew the reconstruction governments. 

Then, the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act. This was followed by a series of Supreme Court decisions that effectively reversed the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Jim Crow segregation became the law and Black people effectively lost citizenship rights in this country.

So, while everyone in the federal government and Supreme Court takes an oath to defend the Constitution, every member of the government went along with these flagrant violations of the Constitution.

Then, President Franklyn Roosevelt ordered about 110,000 Japanese citizens of this country to be placed in concentration camps. This was another flagrant violation of all kinds of laws.

In the 1950s, the Supreme Court ruled in their Brown v. Board of Education decision. This decision declared that segregation with respect to education is illegal. However, today per-student educational funding in affluent suburban communities is significantly higher than educational funding in the urban cities. We might keep in mind that most of the income in this country comes from the cities and not the suburbs.   

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s merely demanded that Black people deserve the rights they are supposed to have under the Constitution. It took years of tenacious struggle before the government passed another Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. These laws were merely redundancies of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. 

Those laws effectively did away with the legalized discrimination of Jim Crow segregation. However, institutionalized discrimination continued.

As a result, beginning in 1965, literally hundreds of cities exploded in open rebellion against routine police brutality directed at the Black community. These rebellions continued until about 1969. 

The government responded to those rebellions by ordering out the National Guard, who proceeded to murder scores of Black people in those cities. This all unfolded while the President ordered the military to murder millions of people in Southeast Asia. 

While those horror stories went on, I was going to public schools where my teachers asked me to stand up every day and “pledge allegiance” to a flag they claimed represented, “liberty and justice for all.” 

These were the same years when the United States experienced a relative economic upturn in the economy. The unions carried out tenacious battles during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s that forced employers to grant significant concessions. As a result, there was a general improvement in the standard of living, at the same time as the government ordered soldiers to murder people all over the world.

The occupiers of the Black communities and Vietnam

However, by the 1970s President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. This was the signal for corporations to begin moving their factories to nations where workers are paid between one and ten dollars per day. Corporations also began to include stock market investments as a part of the gross national product. This gave the appearance that the economy continued to grow, while millions of manufacturing jobs were being eliminated.

So, when we look at this long history, I believe we can conclude that the legal system in this country is designed to favor the super-rich and their drive to maximize profits. This reality makes it clear that there is a distinct difference between what politicians say and what they do.

We all go to jobs every day and do what we are told to do. Employers have a stubborn habit of demanding that we do more. We do all of this and receive more or less in terms of a salary. All of these efforts are about pursuing one objective. That is the corporate drive to maximize profits. 

As a result, today there are tens of millions of people in this country who do not have enough food to eat. At the same time, politicians have no problem with allowing about 2,000 people to have billions of dollars in assets. 

So, when we think of the essence of who capitalist politicians are, this is it. While they bemoan the fact that the police have murdered thousands, they ardently support the system that sentences billions of people throughout the world to lives of abject poverty.

The writer James Baldwin compared the war against the people of Southeast Asia to the war against African Americans in this country. He felt that in Vietnam the armed forces of the United States occupied that country. In a similar way, he felt that the police occupy the Back communities here. In both cases, the communities view the armed forces as occupiers. In both cases, the armed forces view the inhabitants of those communities as their enemy. This is the fundamental problem that won’t go away with another ineffective law.

Today, there are no George Floyds in Cuba. This is because a revolution erupted on that island and a government that was friendly to Washington was thrown out. A new government replaced the old police force that murdered thousands of people on the island.

This history demonstrates clearly that the police, as well as the legal system, can not be reformed. The laws in this country are designed to support corporate power. As long as that system exists, there will continue to be poverty, discrimination, murders by the police, and war. 

Last summer demonstrations erupted all over the world, protesting murders by the police in this country. In my opinion, those demonstrations began to change the political climate in this country. One result of this changed climate was the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. 

The history of this country makes a clear argument that when people mobilize in protests against actions by the government and corporations, those demonstrations can be effective. On the other hand, this same history demonstrates that the legal system in this country is designed to favor the super-rich. Laws that defend the interests of working people have been flagrantly violated by the government that claims to represent “liberty and justice for all.”

What would a rational vision of the future look like?

Looking Back From 2101 is my novel that imagines what a socialist future world would look like

By Steve Halpern

This past year, people throughout the world experienced a significant change in our lives. Most of us were completely unprepared for the fact that we would need to wear facemasks, and work to isolate ourselves from the potentially fatal disease of COVID-19. 

Then, we began to see how the government was completely unprepared for this profound crisis. Hospitals were in short supply of protective equipment and ventilators. We all searched for facemasks that were initially hard to find. 

However, we also know that there was another pandemic that occurred in 1918. Epidemiologists, as well as many others were aware of that event. They warned that another pandemic would be inevitable. However, for over 100 years, the government made a concerted effort to support investments that would in no way protect us from the pandemic we just experienced. The following is a list of some of those investments.

1. Banks received trillions of dollars in investments. Yet those banks do not directly produce any of the goods and services we all need and want.

2. Insurance companies claim that they are “health care providers.” Yet those same insurance companies have a record of maximizing their profits by finding ways of minimizing payments for health care.

3. Advertising agencies are funded at a rate of about $200 billion every year. While corporations view advertising as a necessity, workers would prefer to do away with all advertising.

4. Today, there are about two-thousand billionaires in the world. Capitalist governments don’t have a problem with allowing these people to have more than they could ever use, while hundreds of millions don’t have enough food to eat.

5. Trillions of dollars have been spent for the so-called “Defense Department.” This astronomical amount of money was allegedly spent to keep us safe. However, today we can say that COVID-19 was responsible for more deaths in this country, than the Second World War. Included in this massive spending is money to maintain about 3,000 nuclear weapons capable of destroying all human life throughout the planet.

So, when politicians argue that they have been doing everything in their power to battle the pandemic, the above facts expose their lies. 

A catastrophic downturn of the economy?

Recently, I listened to a 60 Minutes interview with the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powel. Powel expects a significant growth in the economy of the United States in this next year. However, Powel also acknowledged that there is a small possibility of a “catastrophic” downturn. 

So, we need to ask the question: Why in the world would there be a “catastrophic” downturn to the economy? Certainly, there are sufficient workers who are ready, willing, and able to work to provide for the needs of everyone. Today, there are sufficient materials, not only to provide for all, but also to work towards eliminating poverty in the world. So, what is the problem?

We live in the world of capitalist economic relations. This system has the potential to produce massive amounts of commodities. However, when those commodities go to market, they need to be sold for a profit. So, when there aren’t enough consumers to purchase commodities, capitalists shut down production. These are the conditions Jerome Powel talked about when he spoke about the potential for a catastrophic crisis. 

In other words, in the capitalist world, overproduction ironically is the reason for catastrophe. I learned that lesson when a job I had at an automotive manufacturing plant was eliminated. The reason given for the elimination of about 2,500 jobs was “excess capacity.” This is another way of saying that too many commodities on the market is the reason for economic crisis.

What kind of government will we need?

Saying all of this, we can conclude that we need a completely different political economic system. I say this because the fundamental reason for the problems with the economy and the pandemic stem from the corporate drive for profits. 

A worker’s government would make a priority of human needs over profits. That kind of government would make it a central priority to prepare for future pandemics. A worker’s government wouldn’t just talk about the word “democracy.” That kind of government would make it their priority of doing away with poverty throughout the world.

However, when we talk about the future, there is another point we need to make. In thirty to fifty years, the world will run out of oil. Literally every corporation in the world relies on a continuous supply of oil for all of their profits. Without gasoline most workers wouldn’t be able to go to their jobs, and corporations wouldn’t be able to transport commodities. 

So, we can say that the end of the word supply of oil will mean unimaginable difficulties for future generations. We have seen how the government in this country was completely unprepared for the pandemic. We see how government officials today are, in effect, indifferent to the fact that the world is running out of oil. 

So, now that I’ve attempted to identify some of our most pressing problems, it is time to look at some possible solutions. In order to do this, I think we need to look outside of the political parameters the so-called news media writes about.

With the emergence of the capitalist system a new class emerged called the working class. This class produces all the goods and services we need and want. However, while workers receive a salary, capitalists control the wealth we produce. Those capitalists use that wealth to sustain their enormous wealth. They do this while working relentlessly to cut their costs, and thereby compromise the interests of the working class all over the world.

Understanding this reality, we can say that we need a more profound change than merely replacing one capitalist politician with another. We need to replace the capitalist class in a similar way that the capitalists replaced the rule of the feudal monarchies of kings and queens. So, who would the new leaders of the government be?

Those leaders would be members of the international working class that produces all wealth. These are nurse’s aids, sanitation workers, construction workers, farm workers, meat packers, housekeepers, as well as all kinds of factory production workers. These workers have different priorities from capitalists. How could these workers run a government differently from capitalists?

First, we can say that while the oil resources of the world are limited, nations throughout the world have the capacity to feed everyone. Yet today there are over 800 million people who do not have enough food to eat.

The pandemic has been one of the lead stories every day in the news for the past year. However, according to estimates by the United Nations, about 29,000 children die every day of preventable diseases. 

One of the causes of these diseases is the fact that many of the world’s children do not have the resources to wear shoes. So, parasites enter the feet of children and many eventually die of diarrhea. The problem is that capitalist governments throughout the world carry out policies that, in effect, ensure that there is a holocaust of children literally every day. The press rarely, if ever, mentions this fact.

Clearly, a government of working people would make it the top priority to ensure that all these children have what is necessary to live long and rewarding lives. The resources have been available for a long time to make this dream a reality.

Available oil reserves will last for about 30 years

However, while there are sufficient amounts of food to feed the world, energy resources are limited. This reality has been a direct consequence of government policy that supports corporate power.

The initial system of transportation in this country, after the horse, was rail. Rail transport is the most fuel-efficient system. With rail, passengers board trains, and travel to their destinations without needing to think about traffic jams, insurance, maintenance, or fuel prices. While there are over 30,000 automobile fatalities on the roads every year, railcar transport can be much safer. Given these realities, I believe it is an absolute necessity to expand railcar transport, as well as to greatly reduce automotive transport.

We can also see how much of the residential housing built over the past fifty years were suburban homes that have one, two, or three car garages. What good are the cars in those garages when the world’s supply of fuel is running out? 

Clearly, today no one has the answers to all the questions for how humanity will deal with the dwindling supplies of oil. My opinion is that a rational future would mean that there will be communities where large numbers of people will learn to live together. Those communities would work to be self-sufficient with respect to food production, health care, and education. How would this happen?

Today, I believe we need to face the fact that the enterprises housed in the skyscrapers of cities do not directly contribute to the needs of working people. These enterprises include banking, insurance, advertising, and corporate law. However, those massive skyscrapers could be converted to indoor farms capable of producing food all year round.

So, instead of importing food from all over the world, those skyscrapers could provide large amounts of food. Clearly, we can see how this idea is completely inconceivable when thinking within the confines of the capitalist system. However, we need to think of the world in terms of how the needs of people can be met, while the world is running out of oil.

For a new world that respects the human dignity for all

Today, we all work to provide for the needs of our families. Given the reality of the world in the future, my opinion is that we need to develop different goals. In the communities of the future people will need to work together to ensure that everyone has the means to live. While this will entail a lot of work, the amount of work required to provide for our needs might be considerably less than the work we do today. 

In the future, humanity will see that we can no longer sustain banks, insurance companies, advertising agencies, or individuals who own tens of billions of dollars. If we are to survive as a human race, we will need to ensure that everyone is treated with the human dignity the working class of the world deserves.               

Saying this, we can also say that one of the routine aspects of capitalism is discrimination. There is discrimination against Black people, Latinos, women, immigrants, and Native Americans. So, we need to ask the question: Why would these communities support a worker’s government, if that government fails to deal with the question of discrimination?

Black people want to be able to safely walk the streets and to have access to excellent an education, as well as health care. Women don’t want to be discriminated against on the job, and then have the primary responsibility of caring for children. Immigrants would like to have the option of returning to the land of their birth, and have the resources to live. Native Americans would like to have real control over the land where they live and not need to worry about government interference. A worker’s government would make all these goals their priority.

Throughout the history of the United States, the government has argued that citizens of this country have interests that are opposed to the interests of other countries. A worker’s government would work to cooperate with all the nations in the world. 

After all, don’t workers throughout the world have the same interests? Don’t we all want food to eat, clothes to wear, a decent place to live, and access to education and health care? So, why not work with our international working class to accomplish these goals? 

Thinking about what a future world might look like, we can also think about the norms of the human race for thousands of years. Native Americans routinely lived in communal societies. In that world, the work of women was appreciated, and equality of the sexes was the norm. Leaders routinely were relatively poor because they were responsible for providing for those who had difficulty providing for themselves. 

The future world will have technological advances that our Native American ancestors couldn’t even imagine. We have the potential to educate large numbers of doctors and educators who will be capable of providing health care and education throughout our lifetimes. There will be large numbers of engineers who can design homes, factories, transportation facilities, hospitals, universities, theaters, and restaurants that can meet the needs of the entire human race. We also have the potential to accomplish all these tasks while working in harmony with the environment.

I’m writing this blog in an attempt to look at the possibilities for the future. Clearly, there is another future that is also possible. In that future increasing numbers of people will not have food to eat, a place to live, health care or education. What we learned from the horror of fascist Germany might also be our future. This is indeed possible if capitalism continues to exist at a time when oil resources are running out.

So, I think we need to start talking about what kind of world we want to live in. The working class of the world has a long history of resistance to repression. My opinion is that we need to go beyond resisting repression, and think about putting in place a government that will advance the interests of the working class of the world.

As Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued in their Communist Manifesto, “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.”

The Workers at Amazon and the Ford Motor Company

With the recent defeat of the union election of Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, I believe it is useful to look at a bit of history. In the year 1941, the workers who toiled for the Ford Motor Company went on strike. This strike forced Ford to recognize the union, and this was an essential step in making the United Auto Workers union a national force to be reconned with.

When we look at the union election at Amazon and the 1941 strike against the Ford Motor Company, there are important similarities and differences. Among the similarities were the CEO’s of both corporations. These is Jeffrey Bezos and there was Henry Ford who were among the most powerful capitalists of their day. 

While Bezos profited from online marketing, Ford profited from mass automotive production on the assembly line. Certainly, these advancements were only possible because of the thousands of workers who made these advancements a reality.

At Amazon in 2021, and Ford during the year 1941, workers toiled at a furious pace for long hours at relatively low pay. In both events, the discrimination against African American workers was a central issue. In both events, there were determined efforts that supported and opposed union recognition. So, in order to better see how these efforts were similar and different, we need to look at a bit of history.

Background to the 1941 strike against Ford

In the period between the years 1877 and 1934 there were many titanic strikes, These strikes attempted to improve the miserable conditions workers routinely faced. At that time, workers toiled at life-threatening jobs, for long hours, at a rate of pay that oftentimes did not provide sufficient food for families. 

Then, in the year 1934, in the midst of the depression, there were three strikes that began to transform the labor movement. These were the San Francisco Long Shore Strike, the strike against the Auto-Light Corporation in Toledo, Ohio, and the Teamsters strike in Minneapolis, Minnesota. These strikes were followed by the 1937 sit-down strike against General Motors.

So, while there were clear weaknesses in the labor union leadership, there was a growing acceptance among workers that belonging to a union was the clear path to a better future. However, in order to achieve the kind of unity required to win union recognition, the union needed to advance the interests of all workers.

In those days, millions of workers from all over the world were inspired because of the Russian Revolution. While employers refused to treat workers as human beings, the Russian Revolution took power away from the employing class. A worker’s government began to transform the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Employers also learned that they could lose all their enormous power, if workers became organized in a sustained movement. 

At the time of the 1941 strike against Ford, there was the Great Migration of African American workers away from the states where Jim Crow segregation was the law. While Black people had some rights in the northern states, they continued to experience systematic discrimination. 

Henry Ford had a problem finding workers who would carry out the horrendous work of doing the same task all day long at a furious pace. Because of this problem that Ford actively recruited Black workers to do the worst jobs.

Ford established relationships with Black preachers in the Detroit area. These preachers acted as a kind of hiring hall for Black people who wanted to get a relatively better paycheck from the Ford Motor Company. Ford employed about 10,000 Black workers and this was about 10% of his total labor force.

During the attempt to organize workers at Ford, a banquet was held for 300 people, sponsored by Donald J. Marshall, director of colored personnel for the Ford Motor Company. Marshall argued: “The Negro will regret the day if he helps turn the Ford shop over to the CIO.” (Congress of Industrial Organizations was the union federation that the United Auto Workers Union belonged to). Well, the UAW won union recognition and the Black workers at Ford did not regret the fact that they received significant wage increases because of their support for the union. 

Background to the organizing drive at Amazon

From the end of the Second World War until the first years of the 1970s, the standard of living in the United States improved for most working people. However, this improvement in living standards took place while tens of millions of people continued to live in dire poverty. The union battles supporting workers rights were the primary reason for this relative improvement.

Bessemer, where the organizing drive took place is just outside of Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham used to be a manufacturing center concentrated in steel production and mining. Capitalists derived profits from the workers in those industries largely because of the vicious discrimination enforced by Jim Crow segregation. In fact, the civil rights movement began when Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

Then, beginning in the 1970s, the dollar was taken off the gold standard. This step was one of the reasons why corporations began moving their factories to nations where workers are paid between one and ten dollars per day. I’m writing this blog wearing a t-shirt made in Bangladesh where workers wages are about one dollar per day.  

This move by corporations exposed a basic flaw in the politics of the union officials in this country. Those officials have routinely allied with government officials in the democratic party. They do not see that those government officials have a long history of ardent support of corporate interests. For this reason, the unions need to organize a labor party, and this has never happened in this country.

In the past, unions pressured corporations by striking and withholding the productive labor of workers. In this new environment, union officials routinely worked at attempting to convince corporations that they needed to stay in this country. Well, with the loss of millions of union jobs, that strategy has proven to be ineffective. As a result, there have been few labor battles over the past fifty years where workers won significant concessions.

So, when we look at this overall history, we might think of some of the reasons why the Amazon workers in Bessemer were distrustful of unions. Thousands of jobs had been eliminated in that area without a fightback by the unions. Then, Amazon opened their facility and workers had the ability to earn a living. 

Yes, those warehouse jobs are horrendous, but a job is better than no job. The record of the unions hasn’t been very good for a long time. So, it becomes clear that the environment that autoworkers faced in their strike against the Ford Motor Company was entirely different from the environment that Amazon workers face today.

We can also say that many of the workers who voted against the union were white collar workers who are employed at this facility. These workers also have demanding jobs, but the environment where they work is entirely different.

The challenges of the labor movement today

Another difference between the labor battles at Ford and Amazon was the tremendous support Amazon workers received from all over the world. I was one of those who demonstrated in Philadelphia in support of the Amazon organizing drive. Similar demonstrations took place all over the world. There was even a strike against Amazon in Italy.

These demonstrations, as well as the Amazon organizing drive, reflect the beginnings of a changing consciousness in this country. For the past fifty years, literally tens of millions of people had the resources to move to homes in suburban communities. There, many of the residents of these communities had two cars, many of the household conveniences, many had the resources to travel, and their children usually attended college.

During these same years, there were tens of millions of people who do not have enough food to eat. About 500,000 people are homeless. The United States has more prisoners than any other nation in the world. In the course of the pandemic, tens of millions of people became unemployed. Many of these people might be evicted from their homes when the moratorium on evictions is lifted.

Then, we know that in the capitalist system there is a continual drive to sell more and more commodities. The capitalists also demand lower production costs, as well as increased productivity. They advance this drive by investing about $200 billion in advertising every year. Yet, in this last year, the U.S. economy actually got smaller. Many corporations went out of business, and others have only been able to survive because of the billions of dollars in charity they receive from the government. 

However, while the economy is shrinking and the government has a $25 trillion debt, there is a massive construction boom. The government has handed out checks of $1,400 and has plans for more stimulus money. So, while the economy is shrinking, the government has been busy printing massive amounts of money and throwing it at the economy.

Looking at this overall picture, we can see why young people are apprehensive about their future. Many young people demonstrated last summer protesting the police murders of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and many others.     

We can also say that today the world is much more globalized than it was in the 1940s. Clearly imperialism has been a central part of the capitalist system for hundreds of years. However, today the world is much more interconnected than it was eighty years ago. This means that we are not only workers who live in the United States. We are also members of the working class of the world.

The United States has become a largely service centered economy. When we look at the cities, we see skyscrapers that house the enterprises of finance, insurance, advertising, corporate law, as well as corporate headquarters. 

None of those enterprises directly produce the goods and services we all need and want. These include, food, clothing, housing, education, health care, transportation, communication, and exposure to culture. Yet when we pay for any commodity, we are also paying for services that contribute absolutely nothing to the value of the commodity we are buying.

So, when we begin to see this overall reality, we can also see how the labor movement needs to develop a new vision. Young people have good reason to be apprehensive about the future. However, the international working class has the potential to transform the politics and economics of the world.

The resources have existed for a long time to eliminate poverty. We have the real potential to organize the world in a way where literally everyone is working to make this a better and more rewarding place to live.

So, when we think of this temporary setback for the Amazon workers, we might also think about how the international capitalist system is in deep crisis. Working people have the potential to free ourselves from this crisis, and build a world where we can begin to see what genuine freedom is all about.

Labor’s Giant Step – Twenty years of the C.I.O.

By Art Preis

Pioneer Publishers 1964, Pathfinder Press 1972

Reviewed by Steven Halpern

Growing up and experiencing the so-called educational system and news media in this country means that we are routinely barraged a number of ideas. These ideas include the argument that we live in a democracy where everyone has equal rights. In fact, teachers in the schools routinely ask students to stand up every day, place their hands on their hearts, and pledge allegiance to a flag they claim represents, “liberty and justice for all.”

As we become adults, we begin to see serious problems with these ideas. Why do some people have tens of billions of dollars, while others don’t have enough food to eat or a place to live? 

Karl Marx believed that the very core of what capitalism is consists of the basic contradiction between the employer and the employee. Because this is the core of what capitalism is, the educational system, the media, the government, and certainly all corporations are all driven to rationalize this basic division of humanity. 

There are many political activists who have organized to protest against police brutality, racist discrimination, the destruction of the environment, horrendous working conditions, and war. I believe that Marx would argue that the root cause of all these problems comes from fundamental contradiction between employers and employees. 

Today, Bernie Sanders argues that we need an “Economic Bill of Rights.” Sanders also argues that this is nothing new in the following statement: “Over eighty years ago, Franklyn Delano Roosevelt helped create a government that made transformative progress in protecting the needs of working families.”

Thinking about that statement, we might ask the question: If Roosevelt made “transformative progress in protecting the needs of working families,” why are there tens of millions of people in this country who don’t have enough food to eat? We can see part of the answer to that question in Art Preis’s book Labor’s Giant Step. 

This book is a history of the labor union federation called the Congress of Industrial Organizations known as the CIO. Preis was a reporter for The Militant newspaper and was a witness to many of the events that shaped the building of the CIO.

The emergence of capitalism and the CIO

We might consider that the capitalist system came about because a class of capitalists overturned feudal property relations. In feudalism serfs farmed the land. They sustained themselves with a portion of the crops produced on the land of the lord. The lord received the bulk of the produce. The serf usually didn’t even have permission to leave the manor during his or her lifetimes.

Then, there were the craft guilds. We see this today in Japan where there are small shops that produce specialty items of wood, ceramics, metals, or textiles. These craft guilds have limited production and were primarily concerned with selling their wares to the royal families.

Today, craft workers in Japan might drive to their shops in automobiles and have cell phones in their pockets. Those automobiles and cell phones are produced because of the combined efforts of thousands of relatively skilled and unskilled workers. When we see the difference between the craft worker and the industrial worker, we also see an emerging difference between feudalism and capitalism.

With capitalism the working class emerges. Masses of workers toil in large factories where huge amounts of commodities are produced on a regular basis. This is a completely different atmosphere from the relatively small craft guilds. However, as with feudalism, the needs of humanity are not the priority. In the capitalist system, the drive to maximize profits becomes the top priority. 

The first labor federation in the United States was the American Federation of Labor. This federation worked to promote unions of the relatively skilled craft workers. A basic problem of the AFL was that it ignored the masses of relatively unskilled production workers.

From the years, 1877 to the year 1934 there were many titanic strikes in this country. Most of those strikes ended in defeats for the workers. Then, in the year 1934, there were three strikes that signified a watershed in the history of the labor movement in this country. These were the San Francisco longshore strike, the Toledo-Auto Light strike, and the teamsters strike in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

John L. Lewis was the President of the Mine Workers Union. Lewis viewed those strikes and understood that there were the beginnings of a mass movement to organize workers. Workers were responding to conditions of mass unemployment, starvation wages, extremely dangerous working conditions, and employers who viewed workers as their personal slaves.

Responding to this new reality, Lewis worked with other union leaders to form the Congress of Industrial Unions or the CIO. Because industrial workers composed the heart of the working class at that time, the CIO, even with all its many limitations, became a “giant step” in the history of the labor movement.

One of the transforming battles of the labor movement was the 1937 sit-down strike against General Motors. Preis called this strike the “Gettysburg” of the CIO. In this strike the workers stopped working and sat down at their jobs and refused to leave. The General Motors corporation work with the government in a determined effort to dislodge the workers from the factory. Those efforts failed and the union won a decisive victory. 

Another of the big battles in the development of the CIO was the 1941 strike against the Ford Motor Company. Ford pioneered the assembly line that transformed the skilled work of building cars into the furious work of doing the same task all day long. 

In order to get workers to do this horrendous work, Ford recruited Black workers and gave them the worst jobs. At that time, there was a “Great Migration” where Black workers moved to industrialized areas like Detroit, in order to escape the slave-like conditions in the states where Jim Crow segregation was the law. So, if the United Auto Workers Union of the CIO was to organize these workers, the union needed to take a stand against racist discrimination.

As a result, Black and white workers stopped work, sat down in the plant, and refused to leave. Their supporters found way of supplying the sit-down strikers with the supplies they needed. The government and the company made another attempt to dislodge the workers from the plant, but failed again in their efforts. This is how the UAW won union recognition from the Ford Company.

This history shows how President Roosevelt was no friend of labor. Roosevelt did sign the Wagner Act that allowed for collective bargaining between unions and corporations. Workers won this right on their own with the strikes of the 1930s and 40s. While the right to strike is seen as a fundamental right all over the world, Roosevelt mobilized about 40,000 National Guard troops to break strikes. He also threatened to draft any worker into the armed forces who went on strike during World War II.

President Roosevelt also supported legislation for unemployment insurance and social security. We might consider that these payments came from deductions made in taxes on workers salaries. Those payments would be considerably less than similar payments in other developed nations. At that time, unemployment and social security payments ran from two to ten dollars per week.

We also should not forget that President Roosevelt sent 110,000 Japanese into concentration camps in this country in full violation of the Constitution. Roosevelt also had the support of the Jim Crow politicians who routinely denied Black people of citizenship rights in this country. 

The trade union bureaucracy

A basic problem of the labor movement at this time was the politics of union officials Phillip Murray, Sidney Hillman, and William Greene. These officials felt that the best that workers could do would be to get a relatively good contract from employers. They all had faith in the politics of President Franklyn Delano Roosevelt. 

Roosevelt invited these officials to meetings at the White House. Roosevelt offered them a cup of coffee, and thanked them for attending the meeting. That is about all Roosevelt would ever give to these officials. However, Roosevelt was effective in convincing these same leaders to accept wage freezes while corporations gouged out super-profits. He also put a considerable amount of pressure on these officials to refrain from calling strikes.

The Communist Party of this country has a slightly different history. In its early years, Communist Party members and supporters were in the leadership of several important strikes. Harry Bridges was the central leader of the 1934 maritime strike on the West Coast. Because of this record, there was a time when there might have been about one million supporters of the Communist Party.  

Initially the Communist Party opposed the United States participation in the Second World War. That stance followed the politics of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who was always opposed to imperialist wars. 

However, the Communist Party had been corrupted by the politics of Joseph Stalin who murdered most of the leaders of the Russian Revolution. So, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Communist Party reversed their political orientation and became ardent supporters of President Roosevelt’s war drive. This meant that Communist Party members supported the wage freeze imposed on workers.

The Communist Party also supported the felony charges against 18 members of the Socialist Workers Party for their opposition to U.S. participation in the Second World War. The government argued that these SWP members were in violation of the Smith Act, a law that flagrantly violated the free speech Amendment to the Constitution. Years later, members of the Communist Party were also charged with violating the Smith Act. At that time, the SWP supported the clear frame-up of those Communist Party members. 

A basic problem to this approach, was the inflationary prices during the war. This meant that the wages of workers effectively declined to the point where working families had difficulty feeding their families.      

At that time, all the work in all the basic industries was extremely dangerous. There were about two to three thousand deaths in the mines every year. That number did not include the hundreds of thousands of miners who would eventually die of the dreaded disease of black lung from inhaling coal dust.

During those years, the Roosevelt Administration was in a pro-war frenzy. They put enormous pressure on the miners not to strike. However, for the miners, the threat of being drafted into the military was no more a threat to their lives than going into the mines. John L. Lewis understood this, and argued that “you can’t mine coal with bayonets.” The miners won considerable concessions because of their strike against corporations and the threats from the government.

The same government that threatened the mine workers union, awarded lucrative defense contracts to the industrial corporations, where they gouged out super-profits.  In other words, Roosevelt wasn’t just going to war against Germany and Japan, he also went to war against the working class in this country. 

After the war, Harry S. Truman became the President. 1946 marked the beginning of a strike wage in this country. Truman, like Roosevelt did everything in his power to compromise the interests of labor.

However, workers were tired of the wage freeze and the war. They were willing to engage in a tenacious struggle to win better wages and working conditions. Walter Reuther initially supported the post-World War II strike wave. At that time, the Communist Party continued to support the government and opposed strike actions. Although the Communist Party had considerable influence in the labor movement at that time, they became an obstacle to advancing the rights of workers. Under these conditions Walter Reuther became President of the United Auto Workers Union. The UAW was one of the unions in the CIO.

Then, there was a seemingly obvious contradiction in the labor movement. The number of strikes in this country mushroomed. However, union officials continued to support the government in trying to accept deals that thwarted the goals of these strikes.

The government adopted the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act. This law allowed for effective government control of union activities, and was a direct attack on the very existence of unions. After the union officials gave ardent support to capitalist politicians during the war, this was their ultimate reward. 

Although President Truman didn’t formally support Taft-Hartley, he enacted many of its provisions. Truman also ordered the fire-bombing of about 67 Japanese cities at a time when the Japanese government was open for peace negotiations. Then, he ordered the use of atomic bombs to hasten the end of the war before the Soviet Union’s Red Army was prepared to battle the Japanese.

President Truman also used his influence to postpone a 1953 steelworkers strike in the midst of the war against Korea. That war cost the lives of about four million people from Korea and China. Most of the buildings in North Korea were destroyed. 

For all these reasons, Art Preis consistently argued that the labor movement urgently needed to break from their support of the Democratic Party and promote a Labor Party. The long record of the Democratic Party has been consistent in its vicious opposition to the interests of labor. A labor party would have the potential of working to use the government to force real concessions for workers. This strategy has had limited success in Europe.   

My experience

I happened to be a member of the United Auto Workers Union for fourteen years. I also worked in a non-union auto-manufacturing shop for seven years. I can testify to the fact that while the conditions I experienced were horrendous, those conditions were considerably better than the conditions autoworkers faced in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. None of my coworkers had to struggle to feed their families. I can also testify that the conditions in the union shop where I worked were significantly better than in the nonunion shop. 

My generation of autoworkers had different challenges. My union President once said to me that in the old days, the union worked to shut the factory down to force concessions from the company. He argued that in the present environment, the union was working to keep the factory open. In fact, after many jobs were eliminated through automation, the factory finally closed and eliminated about 2,500 jobs.

Today most of the factories in this country are located in either the Southeast or the Midwest. While the Northeast of this country was once a center for manufacturing, today most of those factories have closed. While the city of Detroit, Michigan was once another center for manufacturing, many areas of that city now resemble a ghost town.

In the past, capitalists worked to cut their costs by going to war against unions. Today, while they continue to be at war with unions, they have also moved their factories to nations where wages are between one and ten dollars per day. 

Today there are at least three massive ports in China that transport commodities all over the world. Automated cranes lift containers and place them on supertankers twenty-four hours a day and seven days per week. 

However, while China has become the center of manufacturing in the world and millions of jobs left this country, something else has unfolded. The economy of the United States has become centered on service industries. Today, Amazon and Walmart are the largest employers. While I’m writing this blog, Amazon workers are voting for union recognition in the Bessemer, Alabama facility. 

While millions of manufacturing jobs left this country, tens of millions of people have moved into suburban homes, with perhaps two cars in the garage, and children who have college education. This reality reflects the fact that in the 1970s a typical college education could be purchased at $200 per semester. Today, that same education costs about $10,000 per semester.

So, for about fifty years between 1970 and 2020, there were very few successful strikes by labor. Many people felt that they could improve their lives with a college education. However, with the pandemic of 2020, masses of people began to understand that the future of the capitalist system in this country will be extremely precarious. 

Young people in this country and around the world demonstrated in the streets this past summer against racist murders by the police. There appears to be a sense in the air that young people are demanding profound change. 

Because of this new atmosphere, I believe that Art Preis’s book Labor’s Giant Step will give those who are now demanding change an insight into the kind of politics that we will need. Corporations and their government are incapable of resolving the enormous problems we face today. Preis ultimately argued that we need a political movement that organizes to establish a political party and a government that will make the needs of workers its top priority.