Crisis of US Capitalism or the Crisis of the US Wage and Salaried Worker? by James Petras www.dissidentvoice.org July 18, 2006
Introduction Progressive, leftist, radical and even a few 'Bearish' Wall Street pundits have been arguing for years about the coming collapse, decline or demise of US capitalism. No amount of continued growth of billionaires, millionaires and multimillionaires, record earnings by investment houses and double digit profit growth of major corporations can convince our doomsayers to re-think their prophecies. Nothing has discredited the US left more than its apocalyptic visions of the Big Fall, in the face of robust growth. Given the 'long term' or imprecise time frame and a ritualistic litany of profound structural weaknesses, their predictions are swallowed and regurgitated in the progressive media, websites and blogs where they are spread to a dubious public. While the Left preaches 'the crisis and end' of US capitalism, most workers are complaining about the bigger take of their bosses, their intensified exploitation leading to rising productivity, their extended work day and work year because of cuts in vacation, sick time and holidays. For too many years, the Left has premised an 'awakening' and presumable shift to the left by the working and middle classes on the 'Collapse of Capitalism' (COC). In fact this argument has ignored several crucial issues, which I will discuss. The COC has not taken place because business, banking and the government have shifted the entire burden of adapting US capitalism to the demands of the market onto the back of the wage and salaried workers. What is called the 'Crisis of Capitalism' is in reality the 'Crisis of Labor', by which I mean several things: 1) the relative and absolute decline in living standards -- evident in the elimination of a) corporate-funded pension plans and the increase in worker payments to pension plans; b) the elimination or reduction in payments to health plans and the increased deductions from workers wages to pay for health, or the loss of any health coverage; c) the double-digit growth in the costs for energy, health, education and medicines which are not calculated in the consumer price index, used as a marker to estimate wage, social security and pension payments and d) the rising tide of 'give backs' by sclerotic, over-paid (six-digit) trade union executives, which decrease living standards and increase profits for the corporations. The deregulation of environmental, workplace and consumer protection agencies has led to health problems and loss of income for wageworkers but greater profits for the corporate beneficiaries. The central thesis of this paper is that the correct focus for a radical revival is in the intensification and extension of exploitation of labor, the environment and consumers by corporate capital, which enables the US corporate economy to continue growing and overcoming any momentary down-turn. Predictions of US capital collapse are built on a specious set of arguments, which are easily turned on their head and which misdirect our attention from the real tasks of joining the struggle at the workplace, the environment and in the sites of consumption. full: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July06/Petras18.htm -- www.marxmail.org
