For The Frontline Defenders Of The
Working Class!-Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up!”-Build The Resistance-A Program
By the American Left History blog staff
[Sometimes and the period we are in
of late, over the last several years, a period of cold civil war in the United
States, is one of those times, we have to come up with some programmatic
statements in order to help the process of clarification about the immediate
and future tasks of the Left. To what
the later Peter Paul Markin, forever known as the Scribe, called in his old
hard-core working class growing up neighborhood days “seeking the newer world”
which he unfortunately by his untimely early death was not able to help create
although for a while he tried, tried like hell to do in his best days and which
a number of us, his old comrades both from corner boy days and later have been
trying to continue. The following is a draft, and only a draft, of what we
collectively have come up with to help orient the newfound and promising
Resistance that has sprung up in the era of one Donald J. Trump, his henchmen
and his hangers-on to reverse the one-sided class war we have been on the brunt
side of and of the cultural wars we have been fighting rear-guard action
against for about the last forty years. Josh Breslin for the American Left History blog staff. ]
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to
the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment,
and those who have just plain quit looking for work was as high in the American
labor force as it is just tentatively recovering from of late, although it is
admittedly down from the Great Recession 2008 highs. Thirty hours work for
forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. Socially
productive work not make-shift stuff although we would support an vast expansion
of public works to fix the broken down infrastructure in need of serious and immediate
repair. his is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more
equitable distribution of available work.
The
basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and
maritime unions’ plans as a result of battles like the General Strike in San
Francisco in the 1934, is that the work would be divided up through local
representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a
giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler
task now than when it was when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast
increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers,
target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work.
Without
the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social
surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work
at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The
only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no
capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40”
–with the no reduction in pay proviso, although many low –end employers are
even now under the “cover” of the flawed Obamacare reducing hours WITH loss of
pay-so that to establish this work system as a norm it will, in the end, be
necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.
Organize the
unorganized
is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of
the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows,
just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some
of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as
new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a
massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to
globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that
desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the
service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that
have become a dominant aspect of the American economy. Support the recent
militant efforts, including the old tactic of civil disobedience, by service
unions and groups of fast-food workers to increase the minimum socially
acceptable wage in their Fight For 15.
Organize the South-this low wage area,
this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading
off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among
black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A
corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to
keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being
resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments.
Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.
Organize Wal-Mart- millions of
workers, thousands of company-owned trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A
victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement
just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. The
key here is to organize the truckers and distribution workers the place where
the whole thing comes together. We have seen mostly unsuccessful organizing of individual
retail stores. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone
once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that
organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.
Defend the right of
public and private workers to unionize.
Simple-No
more defeats like in Wisconsin in 2011, no more attacks on collective
bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards,
arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections like the unsuccessful one
against Governor Scoot Walker in Wisconsin in the aftermath of the huge defeat
of public workers in Wisconsin funds and talents which could have been used to
reorganize the public workers for union struggles ahead. Unions must keep their
independent from government interference. Period.
*
Defend the independence of the working
classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates.
In 2008, 2012, and 2016 labor, organized labor, spent over well over 700 million
dollars respectively trying to elect Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats
(mainly). The “no show, no go” results speak for themselves as the gap between
the rich and poor has risen even more in this period. For those bogus efforts rather
than the serious labor organizing among low wage workers, the unorganized, the
South and Wal-Mart the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The
idea in those elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of
labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back give backs should put
paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that
is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement since they
have been very generous with own paychecks. The old norm in need of revival is that
the bureaucrats at all levels should receive no more than the pay of the average
skilled worker they represent.
The
hard reality today is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class
struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration,
arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife,
strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. One of most egregious recent examples
that we can recall- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks
in the summer of 2011 when they had the company on the run and the subsequent
announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have
worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the
1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war.
The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments for
bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor when
the deal went down from Bush to Obama to Trump on down.
This
does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the
contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead.
Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing
Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on
the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio (also think,
think hard, about having to go that far back to get a positive example). That
type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not
on recall elections against individual reactionaries, like the Scoot-Walker
recall effort in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle (and which was
overwhelmingly unsuccessful to boot-while the number of unionized public
workers has dwindled to a precious few).
*End the endless
wars!-
As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reached its
final stages back in 2011, the draw- down of non-mercenary forces anyway, we
argued that we must recognize that we anti-warriors had failed, and failed
rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our
opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless
American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in previously in Libya and now
in Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Chad and other proxy wars) continue now with a new
stage against ISIS (Islamic State) in Iraq and other Middle East states we had
better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to
have any effect on the U.S. troop escalation we know is coming before that
fight is over. No War With North Korea, Iran!
Out of Syria! Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East! Stop The Bombing
Campaigns! Defend The Palestinian People! And as always after 16 long years, since
2001 for the forgetful Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied
Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!
U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands
Off North Korea!-
American (and world) imperialists have periodically ratcheted up their
propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude
to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq
and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import.
We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on
other occasions, and call for the defense of North Korea and Iran against the
American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior
partners on this issue, Israel and Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea) in North Korea
or Iran is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially
here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for
non-intervention but for defense of North Korea and Iran. We will, believe me
we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic
fundamentalists in Iran and the Kim regime in North Korea in our own way in our
own time.
U.S. Hands Off The
World! And Keep Them Off!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American
imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, have their hands on in
this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.
Down With The War
Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I
German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that in 1915
in the heat of war and paid the price unlike other party leaders who were
pledged to stop the war budgets and reneged on that promise by going to prison.
The jailhouse the only play for an honest representative of the working class
under those conditions. The litmus test for every political candidate must be
first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now no new funding in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea preparations, Iran preparations, China
preparations, etc. you get our drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn
imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution
may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.
*Fight for a social agenda for working
people! Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any
rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is
the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of
the prime concerns of workers states like Cuba, whatever their other political
problems, has been to place health care and education front and center and to
provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education
for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of
Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections
central to their programs. Be clear Obamacare is not our program and has been
shown to be totally inadequate and wasteful however we will defend that program
against those like Trump and the majority of his Republican ilk r his who wish
to dismantle it and leave millions once again uninsured and denied basic health
benefits.
Free, quality higher
education for all!
Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker
control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!
This
would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to
increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the
simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being
placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is
getting tough for the middle-class as well.
Moreover
the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have
better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students from
broken homes and minority homes in the wilderness. Take the resources of the
private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from
the government (take from the military budget if you want to find the money
quickly to do the job right), get rid of the top heavy and useless college
administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus
workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.
Forgive student debt! The latest reports
indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion plus dollars,
give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses
has gone up dramatically while low-cost aid has not kept pace. What has
happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society,
and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast in
some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for
much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!
Stop housing
foreclosures and aid underwater mortgages now! Although the worst
of the 2008 crunch has abated there are still plenty of problems and so this
demand is still timely if not desperately timely like in the recent past. Hey,
everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe,
clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of
the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing
crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble had also
burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot
application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as
well.
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back.
Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value,
the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists.
Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of
society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that
at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and
other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a
fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show
there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out
fast, they will muddle through, again.
Take
the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda.
Socialism is the only
serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally
and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one
of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that
we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.
Build
a workers’ party that fights for a workers government to unite all the
oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without
as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent
working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our
leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers
party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government
to begin the transition to socialism, to the next level of human progress on a
world-wide scale.
As
Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):
“We
do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human
race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of
man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for
instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man.
Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken
on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are
convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with
these.”
Emblazon on our red
banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics
Get up, stand up: stand up for your
rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your
rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your
rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the
fight!
Preacher man, don't tell me,
Heaven is under the earth.
I know you don't know
What life is really worth.
It's not all that glitters is gold;
'Alf the story has never been told:
So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your
rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the
fight!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your
rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the
fight!
Most people think, Great god will
come from the skies,
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.
And make everybody feel high.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:
And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!
You stand up for your rights. jah!
Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )
Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up!
)
Don't give up the fight! (life is
your right! )
Get up, stand up! (so we can't give
up the fight! )
Stand up for your rights! (lord,
lord! )
Get up, stand up! (keep on
struggling on! )
Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )
We sick an' tired of-a your
ism-skism game -
Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a
Jesus' name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty god is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can't fool all the people
all the time.
So now we see the light (what you
gonna do?),
We gonna stand up for our rights!
(yeah, yeah, yeah! )
So you better: Get up, stand up! (in
the morning! git it up! )
Stand up for your rights! (stand up
for our rights! )
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! (don't give
it up, don't give it up! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up!
)
Stand up for your rights! (get up,
stand up! )
Get up, stand up! (... )
Don't give up the fight! (get up,
stand up! )
*************
A special word about Bob Marley whose song above
inspired us to update and present out programmatic ideas:
We Don’t Want Your Ism-Skism Thing- Dreadlocks
Delight- “One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley And The Wailers”- A CD Review
One Love: The Very Best of Bob
Marley And The Wailers, Bob Marley And The Wailers, UTV Records, 2001
Admit it, back in the late seventies
and early eighties we all had our reggae minutes, at least a minute anyway. And
the center of that minute, almost of necessity, had to be a run-in with the
world of Bob Marley and the Wailers, probably I Shot The Sheriff. Some
of us stuck with that music and moved on to its step-child be-bop, hip-hop when
that moved on the scene. Others like me just took it as a world music cultural
moment and put the records (you know records, those black vinyl things, right?)
away after a while. And that was that.
Well not quite. A few year back, back in 2011 the Occupy movement, the people risen, had done a very funny musical thing, at least funny to my ears when I heard it. They, along with the old labor song, Solidarity Forever, and, of course Brother Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land , had resurrected Bob Marley’s up-from-under fight song, Get Up, Stand Up to fortify the sisters and brothers against the American imperial monster beating down on all of us and most directly under the police baton and tear gas canister. And that seems, somehow, eminently right in the monster age of one Donald J. Trump, his henchman, and his hangers-on. More germane here it has gotten me to dust off those old records and give Brother Marley another hear. And you should too if you have been remiss of late with such great songs as (aside from those mentioned already) No Woman, No Cry, Jamming, One Love/People Get Ready (ya, the old Chambers Brother tune), and Buffalo Soldier. And stand up and fight too.
Well not quite. A few year back, back in 2011 the Occupy movement, the people risen, had done a very funny musical thing, at least funny to my ears when I heard it. They, along with the old labor song, Solidarity Forever, and, of course Brother Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land , had resurrected Bob Marley’s up-from-under fight song, Get Up, Stand Up to fortify the sisters and brothers against the American imperial monster beating down on all of us and most directly under the police baton and tear gas canister. And that seems, somehow, eminently right in the monster age of one Donald J. Trump, his henchman, and his hangers-on. More germane here it has gotten me to dust off those old records and give Brother Marley another hear. And you should too if you have been remiss of late with such great songs as (aside from those mentioned already) No Woman, No Cry, Jamming, One Love/People Get Ready (ya, the old Chambers Brother tune), and Buffalo Soldier. And stand up and fight too.
Originally posted 10th February 2012
