Reply #78: Lou Dobbs is a reactionary, but so are most Democrats on these issues [View All]

[alcibiades_mystery]

The American working class - which, until the post-War period, was as radical as the working class elsewhere - was essentially bribed for 45 years. The vaunted "higher standard of living" was the fruit of this bribe from the capitalist class. It wasn't a gift. It was a calculated and necessary expense, first, because the US was the seat of consumption, and second, because it was the bulwark against an international worker's uprising. It has become unnecessary now. Why?

1) Cheaper shipping and information goods mean that the location of labor is relatively unimportant with respect to consumption. You don't need to locate a working class with a consuming class. That this leads to a crisis of overproduction is clear enough, but the crisis of overproduction is and always has been the bane of free market economies. Marx was right about that. We didn't escape from the basic tendency of capitalist systems for 45 or 50 years. We merely deferred it, or found temporary counteracting tendencies (credit, production innovations, etc.; don't forget that the much ballyhoo'ed "just in time" production model was designed precisely to prevent this tendency from manifesting itself, as it always does and always will).

2) You no longer have an organized international worker's movement, however much that concept was bastardized and abused by state socialism. As such, you no longer need the bulwark or the bribe.

So the bribe has been rescinded, and now the bribe-takers are crying about it (that's us). But the bribe was very specific. It said: we'll provide you with a higher standard of living so long as you avoid international working class solidarity. No alliances with other workers! None! That was the deal we, the so-called "middle class," struck with the capitalists. It's over. We're back to maximum use of surplus value: outsourcing, cheap labor, fuck your standard of living, the chains of the credit economy, fast collapsing around us. So what does Lou Dobbs' say?

"More bribe! More bribe! No alliances with other workers! No international working class solidarity!"

And this passes as "progressivism" to fools and liars. Because Dobbs apparently takes the side of the workers against the corporations, a magic trick, a feint, a con and a scam. Lou Dobbs, like Pat Buchanan before him, has found a way to make support for the true goals of corporate capitalism (maintenance of working class fragmentation, prevention of a true, free-moving labor market that could demand high wages) appear in the shape of a pro-worker argument. It's a fucking lie, just like every lie the capitalists have used to set worker against worker, divide and conquer, kill solidarity at every turn, be3cause only solidarity wins the day. Now the capitalists get to have it both ways: they move to the cheapest labor possible while having the very labor movement they are crushing rally behind their arguments. There's your fucking hero, Lou Dobbs. Divider of workers, maintainer of working class fragmentation, supposedly sneering at the "elite," while pushing forth the means to maintain and extend elitism. The jokes on you, worker. Ya been took. Again.

Why does it work? Because real working class solidarity requires sacrifice. In our case it means relinquishing the bribe, not getting all nostalgically misty-eyed for it, which is the sentiment that Dobbs plays on.