Same Old Capitalism

I hate to admit this but for a very long time I, together with many old lefties, thought that the old capitalism I had fought with had become at least somewhat benign. Let me see if I can explain? Back in the ‘30ies when things were “going to hell in a hand-basket,” we were able to wring enormous concessions from the system. Yes, we were accused by our Trotskyite competitors of being reformists who were busy making the system work instead of destroying it. I do admit to that.

There were a long list of changes that we helped bring about. I was happily busy in the Labor Movement organizing workers to deal with the rawhide kinds of exploitation that robbed them of any kind of a decent standard of living. People worked in sweatshop conditions; no living wage, no overtime pay, indiscriminate firing, merciless speed up, and robbed of all dignity and respect for what they were producing. Wow, how the young militant Labor Movement changed all that. We created that great new “Middle Class” of Americans who now own their own homes, drive fancy SUV’s, and go on Caribbean or Disney vacations. For me the epiphany what we had accomplished came when I happened to be in Venice in the late ‘70ies. There was a bus with an identification that said ”Coventry.” Upon inquiring I was told these were Steel Workers from Coventry, England enjoying a holiday in Venice.

I remember how that news effected me. I sat down on a waterfront bench with tears in my eyes. The symbolism was overwhelming. Venice was a place that aristocrats or the artsy folks went to enjoy the opera and singing Gondoliers. I thought, “My God, the working class has made it.” They could also enjoy this great island of the west’s richest culture. I kept thinking, I wish my class conscious Papa were here to see this. He would have great difficulty believing that we could have achieved this kind of change in a few decades,

I guess you could call that period from the late ‘30ies through the ‘50ies as the “Golden Age of Capitalism.” Then what happened? Welcome to “The Age of Globalization.” It was presented as just an expansion of the capitalist goodies to the rest of the world called the “Third World.” When you think about it, even that’s phony. What are we the first world? And where’s the second and the poverty stricken old colonial world, is that the third? What really happened here was the old “ruling class.” (That’s what we used to call them.) They decided to pack up in Detroit, Ohio, Michigan, and move their factories to Mexico, VietNam, Indonesia, China, Guatemala and so forth; so as to get back to their old profit making ways and away from those stifling unions. Suddenly that new found middle class was disappearing into the third world of no unions, no limits on profits, and no reasons to share in the goodies. So the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.

All the time the profiteers were bellyaching that the government was interfering with their sacred market. With the help of Ayn Rand, they had convinced the hair-brained that the individual can do no harm. Just keep the government away and let the Madoff’s of the world do their stuff.

Then one night last week Kate and I are watching “The Card Game” on Frontline and available on www.pbs.org. Here was yet another story of how the Banks were royally screwing the poor through their credit card manipulations. Give them “Free Checking.” Then run up one kind of hidden fee after another until the poor credit card holders can’t pay off their debts if they paid for the rest of their lives. After watching Frontline, Kate and I both looked at our credit card bills and found fees we never knew were there and ongoing “protection fees” we never asked for.

It dawned on me that if you add this to the mortgage scam, in which people were sold on buying houses they could not afford any more than I can dance like Fred Astaire. My God, I thought, capitalism is alive and well doing the same old stuff they did back when I was on a soapbox complaining about how they were screwing workers in the factory. Once they moved the factories off-shore, they figured out how to screw those of us who are still here through all the new scams from home mortgages to credit card usury and, most magnificent of all, how to go bust and have the government bail them out. Wow! Is capitalism alive and well? You tell me.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.