>Bill writes:
>On Fri, June 26, 1998 at 12:22:02 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes:
>>I know the righteous thing to do is to support the Flint strikers, but
>>there was a comment in one of the papers the other day from a Wall
Street
>>analyst who said something like, "In this world you can't sustain $44
an
>>hour jobs assembling wire harnesses." Really, how can you?
>
>As Michael Moore said last night to Ted "The Hair, The Hair" Koppel,
>with $26 billion (?) in profits over the past 5 (?) years?
>
>
>Bill
>
Yes, how about cutting profits in an overall program for public ownership and control of the basic means of production, such as the auto industry ? There's been enough historical trial and error with expropriating the expropriators to get it right this time. The monopoly private corporations are totalitarian regimes under the illusion that their production is private and not social as an excuse for private, elitist appropriation of the product. As yet another new historic level of monopolization is suggested by Daimler-Chrysler-(Nissan ?)in auto and other industries, the socialization of production is bursting with begging for socialization of appropriation to replace private appropriation.
Autoworkers are not overpaid. They are exploited at a higher rate than 18th Century industrial workers. Other workers' pay would best be raised, and the rich expropriated. U.S. experience with democracy, even with all of the anti-democracy mixed in, will help us to succeed beyond the Soviet experience. American masses have still some tradition and elementary expectation of self-governance,which revived and advanced is capable running the whole show, workers' or Peoples' collective ownership and ultimate control of the socially fundamental enterprises. Yes, I have that much faith in their potential,even though they carry their light under a basket a lot these days. They have the brains, skills, technical capabilities,with new organization and with a little help from radical technical experts and intellectuals, economists and engineers, to run a big complex enterprise through elected representatives. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie may be replaced. Its necessity for "growth" is obsolete.
It's not just righteous to support the Flint strikers, it is economically the most rational and efficient course, but it can't be done without enormous struggle.
Charles Brown
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