Click on title to link to the Transitional Program of The Fourth International (1938) for some ideas and slogans appropraite for today's struggle against the capitalist vultures.
Commentary
Renegade Eye in commenting on an entry posted here on March 17, 2009 entitled “In “Honor Of AIG- Poster Child For Modern Capitalism” makes a good point about the easily fired up outrage over the giving of bonuses to some pretty unsavory and incompetent executives in light of AIG’s need for a federal taxpayer bailout. The mindset behind this scheme, however, to speak nothing of the general irrationality of capitalism, is only the tip of the iceberg, and not a particularly revealing one, about the nature of modern finance capitalism.
There is a deep plebeian populist streak in American history (not class, at least not in America) that periodically comes out when some egregious actions, such as AIG’s, hit a “hot” button. And, of course, there are no points to be lost by bourgeois politicians (or for that matter, Marxist working class politicians) for ganging up on a few unpopular (for the moment, where was the outrage when stocks were high and house values were rising) overpaid, underachieving Wall Street types. Easy targets, to be sure.
One should be aware though that using the “populist” card does not always accrue to the progressive side. A generation or so ago ex-Governor George Wallace of Alabama was able to gather considerable forces (and cash) for the times around opposition to so-called “pointy-headed liberals” who were allegedly trying to socially engineer society to their liking. Read: keep black and other minorities at the back of the bus. This is the audience that forms the conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh’s audience today. Some of the backlash on the home mortgage crisis has that same quality.
The question asked by these “populists": why did people (blacks and other minorities, mainly, without saying so directly for the most part) who had poor credit, no work history etc. line up hungrily to get a piece of the American dream by purchasing a home (and by the way increase the value, at the time, of the people asking the question)? From our perspective we need to cut across this with a program that deals with jobs and benefits for all, work on points that undermine class/racial/ ethnic and sexual solidarity through a workers party that fights for a workers government. That is a whole of difference from what the bourgeois politicians are feigning their outrage about.
A last point to remember as well. Echoing Renegade it is not nearly good enough to just carp about the “excesses” of capitalism but to do away with it. Every leading politician from President Barack Obama to House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank is crying foul. However, the underlying premise behind their “bailout” plans from the beginning to the present is that financial operations such as AIG are too big to fail. It would send the whole system into a tailspin. This latest crisis of capitalism very graphically brings up the key point that there are no “impossible” situations for the capitalists. They will continue to rule until they are “pushed out”. And that will not be pleasant, if history is any judge. But that is our job. As a first step we must fight under the banner of creating a workers party that fights for a workers government!
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