Thinking about Mike Yates' essay on the UAW, and how extraordinarily depressing it was. Part of the problem of mobilizing any group of working people is their own lack of understanding of what the realities are for them. They see themselves as powerless.
The two things Washington and Wall Street fear the most is soaring unemployment and plummeting consumption. I advocate we start thinking about ways to artificially create conditions that do just that by withholding labor on a broad scale. We, the working class make our labor scarce. We do this with strikes, slowdowns, walk outs, sick ins, and accompany these with demands for higher wages, single payer healthcare, shorter work weeks, shorter work days, and demand a national level social safety net for us. Scarcity drives up the price of labor. We make our demands, or else we shut down the economy.
I advocate the auto workers reject the whole bullshit corp-government bailout plans for the industrial economy, expect bankruptcy and start planning to take over plants. This is in effect the same as refusing to leave a foreclosed house, then blocking the police from doing evictions. You get a place to live for free. If squatter culture got to be a fad, you bet the banks and executive branch would start improving their behavior in a hurry. I would guess the rest of Wall Street and Washington would also change their tune.
When we start thinking about ways to gain power and acting or at least writing about it, then you see where this is leading? This is how it starts. It starts by thinking. Break the chains of the mind first, then the body will follow.
This follows from the logic of power hierarchies. Those at the bottom do in fact support every tier above them. Pull out enough pieces from the bottom layers and the pyramid collapses.
I just finished reading the story of Chrysler this Sunday afternoon. Occupy the plants, Monday morning. Stop the asset sale. Save the plant. There are no assets to sell if the occupation stops the moving company from taking away the equipment and inventory. If somebody can hold an occupation a month, you can bet Obama will somehow, `find' a better solution. He is ordering the bankruptcy. What is he going to do about an occupied plant? Order in the National Guard? There are not enough guards without pulling units out of Iraq. What if Michigan state employees went out on sympathy strike for Chrysler workers? That might even wake up GM and Toyota work forces.
The possible consequences of occupying even one US auto plant are all good. The only bad consequence would be if workers lost their jobs. Well, they are going to lose their jobs if they don't occupy the work place.
How many occupations do we think it would take before the Chinese decided to cash US bonds? Meanwhile, think about the effect on international labor.
CG