Letters of February 25

Fighting Fears and Slumlords
At first, when the idea of leading a discussion/workshop was introduced to my partner and myself, we were very hesitant about saying yes. I personally have problems with public speaking in every way, shape, or form. I usually start sweating and have sudden onsets of stomach aches. At times I even shut down and stop speaking — that’s how bad it would get. But something different happened the day of the workshop.
When we were leading it felt nervous at first. Then it really hit me that I’m in a room full of people who are supportive and generous; they won’t judge me whether I do a good or bad job leading. This made it easier. Everyone was so welcoming and the whole day I didn’t feel one inch of nervousness.
Leading the discussion went smooth! We all shared our opinions and feelings on portions of PLP’s Smash Racism pamphlet that stood out. When the workshop was over, we went over to the slumlord’s office and held a rally. Overall, I thought the rally was very touching and that it is extremely relevant to everything we talk about, from capitalism down to fascism.
I feel like we got mixed responses from the people who were walking around. I paid close attention to a lot of people’s facial expressions. Some were very supportive, while others looked confused. Some may have felt like we were intruding into their neighborhood; who knows. We felt that the day was very successful and if we continue to spread a message that change needs to happen, more people will join us. As more people become aware the better because their eyes will start to open towards the bigger picture.
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Racist Unemployment Built into Capitalism
[C]apitalistic accumulation itself … constantly produces, and produces in the direct ratio of its own energy and extent, a relatively redundant population of workers … It is the absolute interest of every capitalist to press a given quantity of labor out of a smaller, rather than a greater number of labourers, if the cost is about the same … The more extended the scale of production, the stronger this motive (Capital, Karl Marx, Ch. 25, Section 3)
The comradely criticism voiced in a letter in CHALLENGE (1/28) raises an important question: Is unemployment an unintended consequence of the “independent” workings and decisions of many individual companies, each one trying to maximize its profits at the expense of the others? Is this phenomenon the result of “planned action on the [capitalist] class level”? Or is it the inevitable result of the inner workings of the capitalist system itself?
Karl Marx’s investigation of capitalism disclosed that capital is composed of two items — constant capital which is the “means of production” (factories, mines, tools, machinery) and variable capital which is the wages paid to “living labor power” (what each worker sells to a boss in order to live). The accumulation of capital requires more investment in labor power. Simply, bosses must keep paying wages in order to continue to profit from workers’ labor. However, Marx concluded that the long-term tendency in capitalism is for a larger share of profits to be reinvested in upgraded “means of production” and a smaller share reinvested in the wages paid to workers.
There are a number of reasons for this. As stated in the January 28 letter, the byword of capitalism is competition. Each individual boss accumulates capital (i.e., profits from workers’ labor). But each boss is also trying to snatch a greater share of the market for the items sold by his/her individual company. To gain an edge, one boss will introduce machinery or technology that the competition does not have. But soon after one boss makes that change, all the other bosses are forced to do the same in order to stay in business. Over time, a greater percentage of profits tends to get invested in more advanced equipment, requiring fewer workers.
On the other side of the equation, the bosses are constantly forcing workers to produce more for less money. This is done through layoffs of some workers, and speed-up, overtime and even wage-cuts for those remaining. This is a constant trend of capitalism at all times (the number of those applying for unemployment benefits in the U.S. in a typical week is rarely below 300,000). This process accelerates dramatically in periods of crisis.
(The latest Great Recession produced a true unemployment rate of 23 percent in the U.S., when including workers not counted by government statistics as unemployed: those who’ve given up looking for non-existent jobs; those working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs; and those who’ve been unemployed for more than a year, among other uncounted factors, totaling nearly 30 million unemployed. See Shadowstats.com)
So, in the long run, a lesser percentage of profits is invested in wages, even if the average wage stays more or less the same.
As Marx pointed out, these trends result in the creation of an unemployed “reserve army of labor.” Further, the specter of unemployment “forces [those working] to submit to overwork and to subjugation under the dictates of capital.”
In the U.S. and elsewhere, because of racism, the unemployed are disproportionately Black and Latin. No matter whether the economy is in recession or recovery, the percentage of jobless Black workers tends to be double that of white workers. Latin workers’ unemployment is also higher than that of white workers.
During periods of “recovery” from crises, some, but not all, of the unemployed are rehired, frequently at lower wages and/or with worse working conditions. For example, in the U.S. auto industry some rehired workers now are paid $12-14 an hour in “non-core” jobs, one-half of previous rates (this is an industry where Black employment was decimated starting in the late 1970s). With each new crisis, the number of unemployed workers, hungry for any job at any wage, swells (see media stories since the 2008 crash where thousands of workers lined up to apply for very few jobs).
So, is racist unemployment a conscious “policy” of the capitalist class? Perhaps not in the same way that imperialist military action is. But the need for unemployment is built into the capitalist system itself. Capitalists, and the think tanks that serve their class, are conscious of this need, in the sense that they understand the need to lay off when profits are threatened. They further understand the role mass unemployment plays in keeping wages lower in industry. And frequently they use racism to pit the employed against the unemployed.
In short, while unemployment appears to be the “unintended” consequence of the business decisions of individual bosses, it is essential to the growth of profits for the capitalist class as a whole.
The union leaders’ call to “save the middle class,” now echoed by Obama, describes the time when a few more workers — mostly white — had some job security and the chance for a decent retirement. But they are still subject to the ravages of capitalist crises — mass unemployment and wage-cuts — as remaining members of the working class, and by no means are “middle class.”
Communists must fight racist unemployment tooth and nail now, while constantly pointing out that only communist revolution, which abolishes the bosses’ system of wage slavery and profits, will forever end its scourge.
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