Franklin Roosevelt once said, “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself.” If all of us, the 99 percent, would adhere to this sentiment by Roosevelt we would take away about 90 percent of the anti-workers’ playbook. Whenever the oligarchies want to stop or destroy a movement, program or an idea which would advance the good of the working people, they use fear, such as the everlasting attacks on healthcare, Medicare, and the never-ending battle against Social Security and unions. All of which perpetuates dignity and freedom for the wage slaves.
Just think what our lives would be like without these things. We would literally be at the total mercy of the 1 percent. Our young people would not be able to see a future and our wage slaves would soon sink into despair and this would be what the 1 percent would think would be a victory; but in reality it would be a death sentence to capitalism as we know it today. Fear and despair does not motivate people to work harder, study harder or embark on raising a family. Young people are being misled about Social Security by the likes of the libertarians, such as Ron and Rand Paul, and the fear these two drum up in the young the more the young resent the elderly, which is what the libertarians want.
If the anti-worker GOP wins in the fear propaganda, what do they win—total control of the fearful, non-motivated workers in a constant state of despair, which would be the death of the American worker ethic? The oligarchies would have just killed the goose that lays the golden egg. Why would the wage slaves fall for the GOP’s old tactics of fear mongering when fear is just a word? It is not a thing or an object. Fear is just a word. It is nothing unless you believe in what they say might or could possibly happen, and it is usually just a bunch of bullshit, which a lot of our wage slaves, and, yes, union members, fall for.
The answer is to educate yourself. Learn to look at both sides of an issue, read the history of the labor movement in this country for the fear and manipulation has all been played and done many times before. The people always win, but the longer we wait, the larger the fight. “Fear is an untrustworthy advisory,” as Ralph H. Blum points out.
Fear should not stop us. Fear is usually from not knowing the enemy. Learn about your enemy and learn about yourself and you will win most all fights, as the Art of War teaches us.
There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...
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