Social Unrest Has Arrived

A a number of occasions I have written about social unrest. Now its breaking out all over the world. Karl Marx might have observed that capitalism, in its regular economic upheavals is once again going to solve the crisis on the backs of the working class. What has changed since Marx’s time is whose backs are going to pay for this latest big rip-off? The rip-off artists are known as Madoff speculators, Bear Stearns, Citi Corp Goldman Sachs or any one of the big Hedge fund artists. Yes, we hardly know these days who exactly constitutes the capitalists or the “working class?” Do we include all those millions of white collar people sitting in front of computer screens? Is the new ruling class the Gates, the Zuckerburgh’s? Who? However in the meantime the social unrest factor is spreading across the globe.

Look at the protests in Britain. So far they were primarily students furious at the proposed increase of college tuition. What of the street demonstrations in France, Greece? This of course is only the beginning as all the “advanced capitalist countries” begin to figure out how to pay for the big party of the nineties. That's when we all went on the biggest credit binge in history. Buying mountains of stuff that most people couldn’t come close to affording. That's when your house was your big poker chip. You could burrow against it. You could buy and sell it doubling your money and it was all so easy. And for a little while it made lots of people feel oh so happy that WE GOT IT ALL. Then the bubble burst and very suddenly we are back in the same old dump of a recession. Or depression depending on who you are talking to.

Capitalism is not nearly as scared of social unrest now as it was back in the 1930s. That’s primarily because all that threatens now is a move to shift the distribution of wealth. Back in the 30s the capitalists were scared of a socialist revolution. That’s why I have often told how FDR with the aid of the left saved capitalism from its own abuses.

My years in the Labor Movement were precisely in those times of great social unrest. You bet workers were angry about the unfair distribution of capitalism’s goodies. With our regular use of social unrest we were able to create a world of tolerable working conditions for millions of workers. The Unions in those days had some really dynamic leaders like the head of the Miners John L. Lewis. In a very early new organizers meeting he growled at a roomful of us young whipper snappers. “They’ll be many times when you feel there’s no hope, your up against it don’t have an idea what to do. Then create a crisis.” Soon after the end of the war that’s exactly what we did in Stamford Conn.

Yale & Towne Lock company had been out on strike for months. Strikers morale was eroding. Ahaa! Time to create a crisis. We managed a general Strike in Stanford and man did the rulers ever take notice. We were threatening the system. Workers got a sense of power that they had never experienced. And man did they love it. The strike was settled. I learned from that experience why the idea of the General Strike had been wiped off the map of ways to strengthen working class power. The union leadership in cahoots with the owners of industry realized early on that the experience of the general strike was far to dangerous to the system. That was social unrest that could lead to revolution. Taken off the books.

Okay so now we come to President Obamas Commission on the deficit. They have issued a preliminary report, “for discussion.” The argument that has quickly emerged is who is going to pay for the big party that is now over? Here a lot will depend on the social unrest factor. If the argument boils down too a conversation of do we or don’t we expand the Bush tax cuts nothing much will happen. If the changes in SS and Medicare don’t get anybody mad and out on the streets the working class is going to pay through the nose. We are back to the social unrest factor. To the degree there is a protest movement out there to defend the basic interests of the average wage earner that will determine how much the cost of the crisis will be paid for by that very same wage earner. Keep an eye on the social unrest factor. It will determine the outcome as well as the future of the programs under consideration for cuts, cuts, cuts.