Will the Obama stimulus plan simply concentrate on "Middle America" and create jobs for "them" while ignoring the roughly 40% of the working class that constitutes the poorest workers? I am not against middle America, but they are not the only suffering section of America. The expansion of the food stamp program, housing (section 8) and shelters for the homeless is urgently needed. Most certainly libraries and schools and the public education sector needed to be expanded, rather than shut down. American communism/Marxism remains a middle class movement in my mind, until it becomes one of the most vocal champions of the cause of welfare; or what in front of our eyes is crystallizing as the most poverty stricken sections of American society; the real proletariat in America. This section of America is visible, growing and no longer can be portrayed as simply black. Statistically, the welfare roll is one third white, brown and black. The tradition of focusing on the organized sector of the labor movement, specifically those workers in heavy industry - auto, rubber, steel, airplane production, construction, transport including dock workers, etc., reveals American communism as a middle class movement once one compares the wages of these workers to the wages of the majority of America's working class. To be a communist and within Marxism and state the obvious is of course to be charged with all kinds of deviations, anti-Leninism and face all kinds of ideological charges; that one is really hostile to communism and anti-Marxism; doesn't understand that under socialism only "parasites" don't have a 9-5, and so on. At the extreme, one is charged with wanting to give "parasites" a "free ride." Generally any concept of historical accumulation of labor and wealth is tossed out of the window and the worse of bourgeois ideology promoting jobs as a solution, becomes the banner of the middle class communists. As if everyone is to become "workers." But with facts being stubborn things to ignore, to champion the concept of the industrial proletariat in America, or what was in fact not the industrial proletariat as some abstractions but the unionized workers; as the leading edge to be won to the cause of communism and the means to achieve communism in America, has proven itself in real life to be bankrupt. This is not to suggest that any section of the working class should be ignored, but given our history, without the defense of the bottom of the social ladder - (the poorest proletarians), the upper rungs of the ladder cannot be defended. If capital pushes sections of the working class lower and lower then common sense would suggest defense of the bottom rung and fighting for a floor beneath which no group of workers can fall. During the late 1950's and early 1960's, when dad was laid off from Ford Motor Company, our family qualified for welfare and government food - "called commodities." We lived in the Jefferies Project's at the time and also qualified for a housing allowance. One can subscribe to a theory of bribery of the working class as the reason for the passivity and hostility of these formerly bribed workers to communism and the plight of the less paid workers. Subscribing to such an outlook merely proves the obvious; that these workers were in fact not the cutting edge of the social movement to achieve communism. The point is, welfare and the welfare system in America and the reluctance of communists to vocally support this system and its expansion, cannot be justified if one really fights on the side of the poor. What explains American communism/Marxism refusal to be the most vocal champions of welfare is their middle class ideology. Full employment is impossible under capitalism, according to Marxism. The problem is that too much of American Marxism does not support the right of the individual to be lazy or the right of the individual not to aspire to a 9 - 5 job. Although 90% of the real people on welfare and who benefit from it are children, these children are thrown under the ideological bus in favor of ideological prostitution on behave of the middle class and the better paid workers, who felt the solution to welfare was "to get a job." During president elect campaign, I do not recall any comments about welfare one way or another, which might not be a bad thing given the historic attitude towards the most poverty stricken in America. Welfare must be fought for and not simply jobs. In the last period some fought for Jobs or income but defined income as primarily unemployment compensation, while the individual stayed in line for a Job. Full employment should mean employment for those looking for work/jobs. Doctrines of communism generally do not require a specific labor contribution as the basis or precondition for gaining access to socially necessary means of life. The assumption is that people will contribute their labor in millions of different way once society is unfettered by capital and bourgeois ideology. Further, society has evolved to a point of a permanent glut - abundance of labor. Even trying to put everyone to work would be destructive to society.
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