Will the Dream of Debs, written by Jack London, ever come true? I think that it could happen or some version of it will occur. The dream was the Holy Grail of labor, which is a general strike over all of the United State.
Step one was that labor stock pile enough food and necessities to outlast the 1 percent; sort of like what the Mormons teach their followers to do: stock pile food for a year. Then the union members have to save enough money to pay their bills for when union go on strike. In the past, strikes were usually lost because members ran out of food and money.
The unions would have to be self-sufficient to shut down everything at once or to do a rolling strike planned to take place at different places to stay ahead of the corporations trying to neutralize the efforts of the strike, such as tying up the docks. Then tying up the trucks, shutting off the fuel at the refineries, followed by the railroads and power plants, and with the communication we have today, this could be achieved.
The goal is to obtain a living wage for all who wish to work, along with healthcare, pensions and a safe working environment. We have planted the seed, now we need to start to prepare. It might take some time and we need not to try to hide what we are planning, in fact, we should tell the 1 percent to read Jack London’s “The Dream of Debs,” it is only Page 31 pages. This book shows labor has nothing to hide, except the times and places of these planned operations. Like the “Art of War” says, we will pick the time and place.
Labor has nothing to lose for the “Iron Heel’ (another Jack London book) is already standing on the necks of the “have nots.” In the dream, the only flaw was leaving behind the “have nots.” If labor engages in a general strike or rolling strikes without warning and wins, we will then represent all of the 99 percent. And we will know where the opposition is and the 99 percent can beat the 1 percent no matter how much money they have.
To change the abundance of labor in the world is to put more money in the pockets of the laborer to buy the products their fellow workers are making. Otherwise, when there are more products than money, there is slump in the economy. Austerity policies, low wages and automation (robots) were also of concern in the 1950s when Henry Ford II, CEO of Ford, took Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers Union, on a tour of a new engine plant.
Ford gestured to a fleet of new machines and said, “Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” The union leader turned to Ford and said, “Henry, how are you going to get robots to buy your cars?”
This type of change in the labor has created a new type of working class that swings from task to task in order to make ends meet while enduring the loss of labor rights and bargaining rights. They are called “precariat” workers, a group of workers who live on the verge of collapse due to the instability of the nature of their job…