Wage slaves who have the illusion that their problems can be solved through electing reformist politicians must remember that the nature of capitalism is not to allow mass needs preference over corporate profits. Demands for services change in social conditions will be vigorously opposed by the ruling class—Koch brothers, Wall Street and all the others.
The capitalist-designed electoral system is used to corrupt elected representatives of both parties. Even my hero President Franklin Roosevelt, who purported to assure labor the right to organize trade unions and to bargain collectively with bosses, but it was a hollow promise. In the practice he continued to use the deferral government as a strikebreaker agency, simply using subtler methods than previously used for such purposes.
The year 1934 was a hard fought year for labor, but they won while even taking on the National Guard in Toledo, Ohio. May 1934, labor fought the Guard with bare fists and rocks in the 6,000 Auto-lite strike and fought back the strikebreakers. In that same year, San Francisco Longshore men won their fight and the Minneapolis truck drivers won their fight without the backing of elected people of both parties, and we still are not getting any help at this time for the money people still rule our parties.
Remember Karl Rover, referred to as President George W. Bush’s brain, he tried to steal the 2008 election for Mitt Romney, found he was outsmarted by Anonymous, so he has turned his sites and money on the wage slaves. Hiding behind the American Action Forum funded by Rove’s super PAC (political-action committee) Crossroads GPS, and the Empire Center, Rove is attacking Democratic candidates and those supporting the Fight for $15, spending millions to cheat the cheated.
Not surprising, Rove is also using Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to convince people to turn against the low-wage workers. He’s using the tired old lie that raising the lowest wages will cost jobs and stifle job creation thereby hurting everyone. History has repeatedly proven this to be false as raising the minimum wage increases the living standards and promotes jobs creation—the more money in circulation, the more jobs needed to meet demands.
There are roughly 38,000,000 hourly or minimum wage workers, this number includes the 3.3 million workers earning at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. If these workers earned an additional $5 an hour, it could conceivably pump $380,000,000 into the U.S. economy each pay day.
However, in the 2016 election, there is a movement with a leader who is beholden to no one, but his followers and he will protect his proletarians to beat back austerity, and to get single payer healthcare, free education, sick leave for all, protection of the environment, taking on climate change deniers, and increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Senator Bernie Sanders’ money comes from us—the 47 percent giving $30 to $40 donations. He does not owe Wall Street, hedge funders or the 400 families that make up the 1 percent.
Sanders is who we need. Let’s follow the lead of other countries in electing a person who knows us and what we need and is willing to put us first. If we miss this opportunity, we could end up like the Middle East unless we get on the same page of history and understand what is at stake here, which is the lives of our families and democracy as we hope it to be and not an oligarchy of the corporations.
We will still have to hit the streets to win for no one person can do this alone and this is probably why not much for labor has happened in the past seven years. We should still be in the Occupy mode.
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…