Date: Mon, 11 Apr 1994 22:04:18 -0700
To: jdav@netcom.com
Subject: Rally Comrades (new online pubs)
[This is the first electronic edition of RALLY, COMRADES! It is
being sent to you as a subscriber to the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online
Edition). It's intent is to assess the current political and
economic conditions, and map out the tasks of revolutionaries at
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April, 1994 Electronic Edition Vol. 13, No. 2
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INDEX TO Volume 13, Number 2
1. VOUCHERS AIM TO DESTROY OUR RIGHT TO AN EDUCATION
2. ALABAMA: FIGHT FOR EQUAL AND QUALITY EDUCATION LINKED TO TAX
REFORM
3. SPREADING ECONOMIC CRISIS SETS THE STAGE FOR NEW UPRISINGS
(Report from the Political Committee of the NOC)
4. GETTING TO THE SOURCE: WHERE HAVE THE JOBS GONE? (regular
column)
******************************************************************
1. VOUCHERS AIM TO DESTROY OUR RIGHT TO AN EDUCATION
******************************************************************
By Steven Miller
In November 1993, California voters overwhelmingly defeated a
voucher initiative. If the measure had passed, parents would have
been given a voucher for part of the cost of their children's
education to be used at either public or private schools. This
initiative was the first large, statewide effort to eliminate
public education. It won't be the last.
In the guise of giving parents "choice" and "better access to good
schools," voucher programs would divert money from public schools
to private ones. This would gut the already meager funding for
schools and kill public education.
Vouchers are part of a complete overhaul of national education
policy being organized by the capitalist class to match the
electronic age.
The so-called "voucher movement" is organized nationally from the
top down by hit men like former U.S. Housing Secretary Jack Kemp,
Sen. Robert Dole (R.-Kansas) and two former secretaries of
education in the Reagan Cabinet, Lamar Alexander and William
Bennett. These men sent their own children to expensive private
schools. Now they claim to have all the answers to the problems of
public education!
Voucher proponents exploit the genuine dissatisfaction which
working class families have with the public schools. For most
families, public education is the only chance their children will
ever have to prepare for a job and thus avoid homelessness.
Today, electronic technology no longer requires a work force on
the scale of the industrial era. Economists predict that
electronic labor-replacing technology will take the jobs of up to
25 million workers in the 1990s. The daily press is full of calls
for reorganizing a "leaner, meaner government." These policies
translate into a war on the poor. This is the social context for
the privatization of education. Why should capitalists pay to
educate people they won't ever be able to exploit?
The United States was the first country to establish free public
education. It is now becoming the first to dismantle it. Education
is restructured every time a leap in technology transforms the
labor market. The very nature of the tools requires education to
train workers to use them productively.
David Kearns, a former chief executive officer of Xerox and a
major spokesman for education reform, described the changes this
way:
"At the end of World War II, a Navy cruiser had 1,700 men on it.
The average educational level to run the ship was perhaps eighth
grade. Today, a cruiser has 700 men and women on it, and the
average educational level is about two years beyond high school.
That's American business. It's exactly the same."
Kearns doesn't mention what happened to the 1,000 people who got
laid off!
With electronics, the work force under capitalism polarizes into
two groups -- a small elite of highly trained technicians who
design and repair the machinery and the great mass of workers who
don't even have to know how to read or add. The electronic market
thus requires two separate and vastly unequal educational systems.
One is for the "talented tenth" -- the few elite students who will
become the engineers of the 21st century. The other acts as a
warehouse for the millions of children who are becoming
marginalized and will never work. This second system already
exists in the central cities. It just needs to be separated from
the first.
The voucher scheme emerged in this context. Just months after the
1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing "separate but equal"
schools, Milton Friedman, an extreme right-wing economist,
proposed that every family be given a voucher to cover the cost of
a child's education. Families could choose any school, public or
private, as long as it met rudimentary conditions set by the
government. (Friedman compared these conditions to the sanitary
inspection of a restaurant.)
The first "choice" programs were instituted in Prince Edward
County, Virginia, where schools were closed for five years. School
boards gave white families vouchers to attend private, segregated
academies. In other parts of the South, "freedom of choice"
programs meant that African American families were simply given a
voucher and told to go ahead and integrate a school. These public
school "choice" programs were outlawed by the Supreme Court in
1968.
In recent years, school funding has been shifting from local
communities to the state level. Most urban school districts are
polarizing into a few elite schools on one side and the great
majority of schools, which amount to little more than holding pens
for young people, on the other.
The mostly rich, mainly white suburbs are not about to tax
themselves to subsidize schools in the cities, increasingly made
up of students who are poor, black and brown. Vouchers would be a
way to subsidize individual schools while banning efforts to
equalize the schools.
Voucher advocates argue that schools are unresponsive to parents
and cannot change, that parents need a "choice." They don't
mention that public schools have been underfunded for decades.
They claim that by creating a "market" for education, vouchers
would allow competition to determine which schools will succeed
and fail. They don't usually mention that, under market
conditions, enterprises which fail are closed. The idea that
competition will create a nation of small, effective schools is a
myth.
Under capitalism, the market is an unregulated mechanism which
concentrates money, resources and power into the hands of a few.
The few voucher or school "choice" programs that have already been
put into effect take control away from parents. A school that
provides top-quality education will be overwhelmed with
applicants, receiving far more than it can accept. These schools
then have the choice of selecting the students they want, using
examinations, credit checks, and past records to hand-pick
students best suited to help achieve the school's goals. Since
making a profit is paramount, these schools tend to drop slow
learners, students who come late or the ones with "bad attitudes."
Most of the California schools that would have accepted vouchers
already demand that students have grade-level skills before
applying. A voucher program would mean transferring money and
resources to wealthier schools, draining money from poorer
schools. Voucher programs do not provide anywhere near the cost of
high-quality private schools, where tuition usually averages more
than $10,000. But in the market, you get what you pay for. Let the
buyer beware!
Vouchers will not help neighborhood schools; they will end them.
Since vouchers would privatize education and eliminate public
controls, they would legalize virtually all forms of
discrimination, including religious and racial discrimination.
Private schools can teach whatever they want.
The creation of an education market will have very immediate
benefits for the capitalists. They can finance suburban education
with very little change, while separating the urban school
districts. Affluent parents can rid themselves of the tax burdens
of educating other people's children as well as the costs of
school safety and legal safeguards. The budgets of central city
educational systems run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
Vouchers would open school budgets and local governments to
unregulated looting by private corporations on a scale only
dreamed of by the junk bond kings. The electronic labor market
under capitalism only requires schools for about 10 percent of the
children -- and that's about all that will be financed.
The capitalists are blaming public schools for the social problems
they themselves have created. Now they call on us to give up the
right to an equal, quality public education and public ownership
of the schools in exchange for another quick-fix scheme.
If public education is a right, then the government must be
compelled to recognize and finance it. The existing system of
education under capitalism deserves to be indicted and condemned.
Let's change the system in order to guarantee our rights, not end
them.
Any attempt to improve the situation in the schools must be part
of an overall program to guarantee jobs, decent health care and
adequate and affordable housing and to oppose the criminalization
of the youth. Right in step with vouchers come new schemes to use
ever more blatant forms of police control against young people.
In the 21st century, education will mean the ability to work with
abstractions, develop system thinking, experiment and collaborate
in production teams. The industrial system of public education has
outlived its time. Public education cannot go back to that.
Electronics will force changes in any system of education, whether
public or private. The question is which children will be educated
and who will make the decisions.
Post-industrial education offers the chance for our peoples to
develop the enthusiastic love for learning and cooperation that
every child brings to the first day of kindergarten. The fight is
on. The fight for equal, quality education for all children is
part of the fight of our class to survive.
[Steven Miller is a teacher in a public high school and co-chair
of the NOC Public Education Committee.]
******************************************************************
2. ALABAMA: FIGHT FOR EQUAL AND QUALITY EDUCATION LINKED TO TAX
REFORM
******************************************************************
By Tonny Algood
On March 31, 1993, Alabama Circuit Judge Eugene Reese ruled that
the method of funding public education in the state was not only
inequitable but inadequate. He ruled that this was in violation of
the state's constitution, which provides for an adequate public
education for all children in Alabama.
This historic ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by several
poor school districts (the Alabama Coalition for Equity), the
Alabama Civil Liberties Union, and a group representing disabled
students. During the hearing, the disparities between poor and
wealthy districts were exposed. For example, one North Alabama
school system spends $1,800 per student annually, while a wealthy
Jefferson County school district spends $5,100 per pupil.
It was also pointed out that there were entire school systems in
the state where the highest math taught in high school was first-
year algebra. One school had no microscopes for science class; the
teacher showed students a photograph of a microscope! Many schools
are faced with a loss of accreditation due to overcrowded
classrooms, inadequate textbooks, too few library books, etc.
Judge Reese set a September 1994 deadline for the Alabama
Legislature to provide adequate and equitable funding for public
schools. If the Legislature fails to act, the courts will
intervene as they had to do in 1955 when school desegregation was
ordered.
Judge Reese's ruling has given some strength to groups who have
fought for quality public education for all children in Alabama.
In many ways, the struggle taking place around public education in
Alabama is a reflection of what is happening throughout the
country. It comes at a time when society is restructuring around
the technology used for production. Society is becoming polarized
along class lines. As the number of high-paying jobs decreases due
to the increased use of computers and robots in production, the
tax base also decreases. Those services, such as public education,
that depend on taxes for funding find themselves with less and
less funds to operate.
In Alabama, schools are funded by property taxes. Local districts
can vote to increase property taxes to fund local schools above
the level provided by the state. Wealthier districts, such as the
one in Jefferson County, have been able to fund their schools at a
higher level.
Alabama is known to have one of the most regressive tax systems in
the country. Sales taxes that hit poor people hardest are high,
while property taxes are low. This is due to the fact that,
historically, the plantation owners, and today the big timber
companies have led the fight to keep property taxes low.
It is hard to convince people who are paying nine to 10 percent
sales taxes to vote to increase property taxes. Those with the
least ties to production are seen as expendable when it comes to
their need for education, housing, health care and food. Our
economic system is not set up to provide these services for that
growing section of the population no longer needed for production.
After World War II, when industries wanted to relocate to or
expand in the South to take advantage of a non-union labor force
being displaced by the mechanization of farming, public education
in Alabama improved. Schools were desegregated; vocational
training schools and union colleges flourished. Today, public
schools in Alabama are more racially integrated than public
schools in Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and
California.
However, industry no longer requires the large numbers of educated
workers that were required for production 20 or 30 years ago. It
needs a smaller number of workers, but with higher skills than the
public schools in Alabama are able to provide. This is why we are
seeing two different positions come forward to fight for education
reform. One group is led predominantly by business interests. They
do not want to see public schools fail completely, but they also
do not want to see their taxes increase to provide adequate and
equitable funding for all students in public schools.
On the other side is a growing movement led by the Coalition of
Alabamians to Reform Education (CARE), which is made up of
organizations like the Alabama New South Coalition, Alabama Arise
and the Twenty-First Century Youth Project. They are not only
leading the fight for an equal, quality education for every
student in Alabama public schools, but are also demanding that
this be done by taxing the propertied interests to pay for the
needed reforms.
When the Alabama Senate recently passed an education reform bill
in response to Judge Reese's ruling, it was this coalition that
fought for the passage of 12 amendments to protect the interests
of poor children. However, the bill, which passed the Senate 33-3,
carries with it a $1 billion price tag, with no adequate means of
funding. Education reform has passed the Legislature before, but
died later due to lack of funding. And this being an election
year, the Legislature will not vote for tax reform to fund
education.
However, this same legislature last year voted to pass what has
become known as the "Mercedes Bill." This law will help to finance
new or expanding industries through tax breaks. It allows
companies to forego paying state income taxes for up to 25 years
and instead use the money to pay off existing debts. It also makes
it easier to exempt companies from paying property taxes. In 1993,
Mobile County already had $1.5 billion in business property exempt
from taxes. In addition to the exemptions given Mercedes Benz to
locate in Alabama, other companies will be allowed the same
exemptions.
This bill allows companies to insure their profits during
restructuring around the new technology at the expense of workers
who must make up the difference or go without needed services that
these taxes would otherwise be used to fund. To add insult to
injury, the Mercedes law will allow companies to take up to five
percent of what would be an employee's state income tax
withholding to use to pay off the company's debt!
The next fight around education reform in Alabama will again be
around tax reform. During the Civil Rights Commemorative March in
Selma this year, the theme was "The Ballot and the Book, Vote Our
Children." The struggle in Alabama is becoming one for the future
of our children. The struggle to force the companies and large
land-owners to pay for education reform and other needed services
must be supported. Those people wanting to participate in this
movement should join those forces that are on the front line in
this battle.
[Tonny Algood is the former president of Local 18 of the
Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America. He
is a member of the Alabama New South Coalition and on the National
Council of the NOC.]
******************************************************************
3. SPREADING ECONOMIC CRISIS SETS THE STAGE FOR NEW UPRISINGS
Report from the Political Committee of the NOC
******************************************************************
Comrades, a year of struggles and growth has passed since the
formation of our National Organizing Committee. A year in the life
of an organization is not a long time. During this time, we have
accumulated a considerable amount of experience. If we are to
consolidate our work and keep on course, it is necessary to sum up
this experience in order to evaluate the growing new relationship
of class forces.
Our tactical approach is to rely on and exacerbate the spontaneous
movement as the basis for building and consolidating the NOC. This
tactic arises from the theoretical conclusion that for the first
time, the spontaneous movement is the revolutionary (not the
insurrectionary) movement. Our theoretical conclusion is that
building the revolutionary movement concretely means building the
spontaneous movement.
Why is this so? Because this spontaneous movement, different from
all such movements in history, does not have a choice of political
directions. This spontaneous movement is an objective communist
movement. Its goals, reflecting the development of the means of
production, are for the distribution of the material and cultural
wealth of society according to need. Therefore, for the first time
in history, this spontaneous movement is the foundation upon which
the subjective, insurrectionary, or communist political movement
must stand. The dialectical unity of the subjective and objective
movement is the key to the revolution. This concept is radically
new in revolutionary theory and must be studied and thoroughly
mastered if the tactics flowing from it are to be correctly
applied.
Our fundamental tactic has been to guide the objective process
through its current stage of development. This calls for a clear
understanding of the line of march. These are two different but
interconnected processes. One, the stage of development, is just
that. For example, the first stage of the revolution is the
political awakening of the class. This stage is indispensable and
if it is not gone through, the process dies.
The line of march is the route of getting through this stage. For
example, the first position to be won along that route is the
formation of an organization of revolutionaries and the creation
of a press that has the goal of politically shaking up the class.
The second major step along the line of march -- and this is what
we are grappling with now -- is learning to utilize the
organization of revolutionaries and the press to accomplish the
goal of "shaking up the proletariat."
What is the situation now? The qualitative changes in the
productive forces are accelerating. This brings about ever greater
polarization of wealth and poverty. On the one hand, wealth is
concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. On the other hand, poverty
is spreading out to formerly secure sections of society.
The Chicago Tribune of Sept. 27, 1993 stated: "The Census Bureau's
release of last year's official income and poverty statistics
Thursday yielded a grim portrait of young and middle-aged families
losing ground to economic stagnation in every region of the
country, especially in the Northeast and West."
The combination of the shrinking of the market and the greater
efficiency of the means of production has created an unheard-of
competition between individual capitalists, monopolies, cartels,
nations and trading blocs. The evolving concept of "re-
engineering" is a reflection of this development. It is forcing
whole new sectors of the working class into a position where they
have to -- sooner or later, have to -- make a social response to
these changes.
We were correct in describing the Los Angeles uprising as the
response of the displaced unskilled and semi-skilled workers to
being forced into permanent unemployment. There was a time lag of
several years between the actual permanent layoffs and the social
response. During that period and the period since then, layoffs
have continued and ever wider sectors of the class have been
affected. Society today is more restless than ever.
We cannot predict exactly when, but inevitably there will be
uprisings taking place within sectors of society that formerly
were the basis of the country's political stability. The NOC must
position and prepare itself for these uprisings.
How do we do this? First, we must describe where we are in the
current social struggle and why.
The cadre who formed the NOC were either from, or for a long time
had carried out agitation within, the social sector that was the
first to be laid off and pushed into permanent unemployment. This
sector was, in the major cities, overwhelmingly black and brown.
The new means of production naturally progressed from simple to
complex operations. Consequently, the workers in the simple or
unskilled sector of industry were the first to be replaced. This
was the sector where, for historical reasons, the blacks and
browns were concentrated. Not understanding the dialectics of
history, sociologists invented the term "underclass" and applied
it to this new class of structurally and permanently unemployed or
under-employed workers.
We learned a long time ago not to assume that just because a
number of people are doing the same thing that they are all doing
it for the same reason. We are finding out that some of the cadre
have worked among the black and brown workers because they were
the core of the most oppressed and exploited. There were some who
worked among the most exploited and oppressed because they were
black and brown. This did not make much difference so long as
conditions did not allow for the outward expansion of our
agitation. One of the negative results of this period was our
inability to create an African American Liberation Committee. We
could not do it because our work in the economic stratum of the
permanently unemployed overlaid and intertwined with our African
American liberation work. Increasingly, that is no longer true.
The economic revolution has changed the concept of the "most
exploited and oppressed." Today, that emphasis is linked to the
formation of the new class. We can no longer be satisfied with
activity only at that point where the economic struggle of the
most exploited intersects with the national liberation movement.
Theoretical inquiry alerts the comrades to changes in a process.
Theory tells us that the shift of the cutting edge of the
revolution from national liberation to class is just about
complete in all countries. It is complete in the legal sense here.
Any further progress on the part of the oppressed peoples is going
to come from a revolution -- the reorganization of society -- not
from reforming the legal system of the country. Battle lines are
being re-drawn; forces that under one condition were remote
reserves are now being thrown into the forefront of the struggle.
The importance of this moment can be understood only if our
comrades and friends take the subjective element -- color -- out
of the objective process -- the class struggle. To consider the
subjective factor, color, in theoretical inquiry is just as
harmful as disregarding it in political analysis. The underlying
determining forces in social evolution are objective. The politics
of how it gets there depends upon subjective factors.
Let us take the example of the African American in Southern
agriculture prior to the invention of the mechanical cotton
picker. Since cotton was an item of international commerce, the
sharecropper in Mississippi, the serf in Egypt and the peasant in
India engaging in cotton culture lived on about the same economic
level. Their mutual competition guaranteed that. In each of these
countries a subjective factor was used politically to keep them
down and impotent. In one instance the factor was religion, in
another color. The advent of the mechanical cotton picker, which
objectively was a more efficient means of production, put an end
to their deplorable condition.
In this country, the fight against the political and economic
conditions brought about by sharecropping was couched in racial
rather than economic terms. All the strategies evolving from the
racial point of view failed so long as the productive forces did
not change. With the change in the productive forces, changed
economic conditions allowed for the victory of the freedom
movement. It would be very, very wrong to start from the
proposition that this was, finally, a victory of the African
American. It was a victory for the development of the means of
production in cotton culture. This and this alone allowed for the
subjective -- the political victory of the civil rights movement,
which fought it out on the basis of the color factor and not on
the basis of the economic foundation.
In much the same way, we must theoretically understand the
decisive moment of history we are entering. Years of describing
economic phenomena in racial terms has disoriented the thinking of
the Left. Some organizations are still calling for all-black unity
as the political foundation for equality. Others are proposing
that all whites enjoy an economic bribery at the expense of all
blacks. As a great thinker wrote some 500 years before Christ,
"Nothing endures but change." What was or appeared to be under
certain circumstances is giving way to change. When the economic
base of politics changes, the politics must change. That change
may be ever so slow or contorted, but it must come.
The economic foundation for all-white unity was created by African
American slavery. This foundation was undercut by the
mechanization of Southern agriculture. It was further undercut by
the development of the multinational corporation and is now being
liquidated by the shift to high technology in production. The
economists and bourgeois sociologists are constantly warning the
ruling class of the inevitable political consequences of the
spread of poverty into that sector of the class that provides the
ruling class its political stability.
The Chicago Tribune editorial of Dec. 1, 1993 (among a number of
recent articles) joined in sounding the alarm:
"If Americans think the black underclass is a strain on the social
system, [social scientist Charles] Murray says, wait till they see
what results from a far bigger white underclass."
In a relatively short time, America is going to hear from that
section of the new proletariat that has never faced the problems
of national oppression. The changes in mass psychology leading to
such an event are taking place underground, so to speak. They
become apparent only at the time of quite dramatic events. Are we
organizationally positioned or politically prepared for such an
event? No, we are not, nor could we be until conditions began to
change. These changes are taking place. The ruling class is taking
the necessary steps to position itself for the inevitable events.
We absolutely must do the same.
What must we do? First, we must be ideologically clear as to the
nature of the developing social motion. The NOC has grown to the
extent that it positioned itself where social oppression and
economic exploitation intersect and then dug deep. That was a good
place and way to begin. The problem is that digging deep is a
defensive strategy and the class is moving into an offensive
position.
Sections of the working class that were secure against the
cyclical crisis are being attacked by the economic revolution. No
one is safe. The people of a whole new geographic area -- the Rust
Belt -- are only now beginning to awaken to the understanding that
the government is not going to help them and that their deepening
poverty is permanent unless they do something about it.
We have established firm base areas. We must now move outward to
organize, educate and propagandize this new emerging social force.
We cannot accomplish this if we proceed from the "black worker,
white worker" concept. We must proceed from the scientifically,
objectively substantiated, abstract understanding of the
historical motion of a class. In specific social activity,
certainly, color is bound to play a role. We disregard this
reality at our peril.
The point is, it is time to declare war on the ideology of the
1960s that began by proposing that the white workers were
inherently reactionary and that ended up proposing a white working
class and a black working class.
We have not and must not change our basic tactic in the struggle
for outward motion. That tactic is to carry out the struggle for
political unity (unity in the social struggle) where economic
equality exists. Any other tactic ends up calling for unity on a
moral basis. We must never forget the fundamental law of politics:
No one can for long cling to a political morality that contradicts
their economic wellbeing.
We must develop a tactical doctrine of entering these new areas of
struggle. To begin with, we must reassert the time-honored slogan
of "all for each and each for all." No matter where the attacks
against our class brothers and sisters take place, we must go
there with our agitation. We must carry this agitation into other
areas that are open to us. The dialectic of this process must be
the most careful planning followed by the most militant activity.
History is turning favorably toward the revolution. The turn will
not come easily. Ideologically, the muck of ages must be cleared
away. That can only be done by brave revolutionaries locked in
hard and consistent struggle -- but today it can be done.
As so often happens in history, the success of a great social
movement depends, at a critical juncture, upon the capabilities of
a small but determined force. History will not find us lacking.
Comrades, with pride in our NOC, with confidence in ourselves and
our science, with clarity in our mission and its historic
importance, let us militantly set about the work we must do.
******************************************************************
4. GETTING TO THE SOURCE: WHERE HAVE THE JOBS GONE?
A column about the underlying causes of the problems we face
******************************************************************
[This is the first in a series of articles on the program of the
National Organizing Committee. The "program of action and
education" is the basis around which we can build.]
The first paragraph of the program reads:
"This is an era of revolutionary change. Electronic technology is
replacing human labor with computers and robots. Human labor is
becoming worthless to a system that values only what it can
exploit. The economic revolution is turning millions of people in
this country into economic refugees."
Where have the jobs gone? This most serious question is the key to
understanding what's going on in the world today as well as what
is going to happen. The world and the things that happen in the
world are very complex. The first thing the people who control us
have to do is to convince us, the little people, that we cannot
understand the real world because they are the people who rule.
We, the little people, made the world. We can understand it. We do
have to put aside the pat slogans and examine the process we all
have gone through.
First, what is a job? There was work before there were jobs. A job
includes work, but it is more.
I get a job when some employer agrees to purchase my labor power.
He buys me for 40 hours and pays me what I'm worth. What am I
worth? They figure my worth the same way they figure the worth of
anything else for sale. I'm worth what it costs to make me. And
what is that? The cost of the bacon and beans, the clothing,
medical care, the education and so on that went into making me.
If the cost of producing me goes up, then I can sell myself for
more. If it goes down, I'm worth less. Now what has happened?
Let's take any industry -- let's take the dress-making industry.
When that industry was broken up into the steps of pattern-making,
cutting, sewing, and pressing, educating a person for any of those
tasks became less complicated and cost very little. It wasn't very
heavy work, so food costs were low. Housing? That also was low.
Therefore, the cost of creating the average textile worker was
low. Consequently, the pay was low, but it was a job. They needed
people to do this work. The cost of the average dress was also low
which meant the person who wore the dress didn't have to be paid
much in order to buy it.
Then came the time of so-called improvements in the dress-making
industry. First came improvements to cut labor time, to have the
worker do more in less time. At that point jobs began to
disappear. One worker could suddenly do two workers' work. Then
the pay was cut in half, or one was fired.
But still, there was work to be done and an expanding economy
found some kind of work for most, although the real wages -- the
rent and potato wage system -- began to fall. Today, real wages
are lower than they were in 1965.
Then came the computer and the robot. Today, they can and do make
dresses by feeding the information into a computer -- color, size,
etc. The robot does the rest. Not a human hand touches the
material being made. The computer and robot don't need food,
shelter and clothing. Suddenly, the jobs disappear in textiles
because of a combination of robots and concentrating three or four
jobs in the hands of one person.
Since the cost of production of the robot is smaller than the cost
of a human, taking into account the amount of work each does, the
labor and the laborer become worthless. This is why you have this
new terrible thing -- absolute poverty. The poverty-stricken are
worthless. Nobody wants to, or can, buy their ability to work. It
is worthless compared to the productivity and costs of a robot.
The problem now is: Since the computer doesn't dress up, who is to
buy what is produced?
You know this country is in crisis. This is what is behind the
crisis. The economy -- that is, the way things are produced and
distributed -- is the foundation for the society and the political
system. It is not possible to change the foundation and not change
the society and political system. This is where the jobs have gone
and why this country is heading into some kind of revolution.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
For More Information ...
For a basic explanation of the wages system:
_Wage Labor and Capital_ by Karl Marx. (Available in libraries.)
For more information on the effect of electronics on society:
_Entering an Epoch of Social Revolution_ by Nelson Peery.
(Available from Workers Press, P.O. Box 3705, Chicago, IL 60654,
$3.00 per copy.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The National Education Committee of the National Organizing
Committee welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions on
this column. Please write to us at: National Education Committee,
NOC, P.O. Box 477113, Chicago, IL 60647.
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