What We Stand For – Demands and Strategy to Fight the Crisis

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Crash your car into a wall and your insurance premiums will probably go up. Crash the financial markets and you’ll likely get a bonus. While Goldman Sachs executives are enjoying their end-of-the-year bonuses and big business and the corporate media are pointing to all the “encouraging” signs of a recovery, the reality for working people is like a whole different world.

Jobs, wages, benefits, housing, health care, education and other social programs are all targets of the slash and burn policies and attacks on living standards by the ruling class. Mass unemployment and underemployment is expected to continue for years. There will be downward pressure on wages and benefits alongside massive budget cuts to social services. In fact, the “return to profitability” has come only because of the government bailouts and aggressive “cost control” – i.e., layoffs, cuts, lower wages, intensified working conditions, and so on.

Even this “recovery” may be short-lived, as economists are now speculating about the possibility of a “double-dip” recession when stimulus money dries up and newly-inflated asset bubbles burst. This is because none of the underlying problems of the crisis have been solved, and another economic fallout would only intensify the attacks on the working class.

But more and more, ordinary working people are beginning to ask: “Why should we pay for a crisis we didn’t create?” There are signs that people all over the country are becoming fed up. For the first time in over 30 years, United Auto Workers at Ford voted down concessions in a contract modification this past October.

There may continue to be more setbacks for workers and youth in the next while, but the attempt by autoworkers to draw a line in the sand is a glimpse into the future as working people increasingly look to push back against the ferocious attacks that we face. We should take inspiration from the teachers, students, parents and other workers in California who are actively organizing against the massive budget cuts across the state.

The Role of the Program
We are confronted not simply with an economic crisis and a threat to living standards but also environmental crisis and the possibility of ecological catastrophe which threatens the planet and the whole of humankind. Violence and war are ongoing symptoms of a society in decay.

The question we face is how can we begin to fight back? There is growing frustration with the Democrats, as once-glimmering hopes dissolve in the wake of failed health care reform and the announcement of the escalation in the Afghanistan War. However, the situation can even play into the hands of Republicans and right-wingers if no alternative is presented.

We need to figure out how we can organize a working-class resistance to the crisis. Developing a fighting program is crucial. The program is how we articulate what we are fighting for, and it is connected to our strategy and organizing. In order to unite working people in common struggle, we have to put forward demands and slogans which relate to workers’ common interests and consciousness. If we see our problems as rooted in capitalism and the very way in which society is organized, then our program must push up against the limits of the system and point towards a clear alternative.

In the pages of Justice newspaper, a publication of Socialist Alternative, you will find news and analysis from a working-class perspective. But we also try to provide a strategy and program for basic struggles and the building of a mass movement to fight back – a movement we aim to be a part of.

We recently took the time to rework the “What We Stand For” column, normally found on page two, and we now present it in sections in this article. This is by no means our full program, but we are explaining a framework for developing a program to fight back.


Bail Out Workers, Not Wall Street

  • Create living-wage union jobs for all the unemployed through a massive public works program to develop mass transit, renewable energy, infrastructure, health care, education, and affordable housing.
  • Free, high quality health care for all. Replace the failed for-profit insurance companies with a publicly-funded, single-payer system as a step towards fully socialized medicine.
  • No budget cuts to education and social services! Full funding for all community needs. The federal government should bail out states to prevent cuts and layoffs. A massive increase in taxes on the rich and big business, not working people.
  • Raise the federal minimum wage to $12.50/hour, adjusted annually for cost of living increases and regional differences, as a step towards a living wage for all.
  • A minimum guaranteed weekly income of $500/week for the unemployed, disabled, stay-at-home parents, the elderly, and others unable to work.
  • Stop home foreclosures and evictions. For public ownership and democratic control of the major banks.
  • No more layoffs! Take bankrupt and failing companies into public ownership and retool them for socially necessary green production.
  • Free, high quality public education for all from pre-school through college. Full funding for schools to dramatically lower teacher-student ratios. Stop the focus on high stakes testing and the drive to privatize public education.
  • Repeal all anti-union laws like Taft-Hartley. For democratic unions run by the rank-and-file to fight for better pay, working conditions, and social services. Full-time union officials should be regularly elected and receive the average wage of those they represent.
  • For a guaranteed living-wage pension.
  • Shorten the workweek with no loss in pay and benefits – share out the work with the unemployed and create new jobs.

This first section deals mainly with defending and furthering workers’ economic interests. Unemployment is a burning issue not only for the millions without work but for people in general. This massive and growing pool of reserve labor is a giant stick the bosses use to beat concessions out of workers, like lower wages and speed-ups.

We call for a massive public works program to create living-wage union jobs for all the unemployed. This type of public works program is not on the agenda in Washington, but we cannot limit ourselves to what often is referred to as being “realistic.” We have to point to what is necessary. We refuse to accept that workers and their families should pay for the pain and cuts demanded to save this failing capitalist system. If this system can’t provide for our needs, we need to fight to change it.

Many of the struggles in the next period will not pose the question of fundamental change in the first instance. The starting point will be more basic struggles to defend wages, conditions, and services. While fighting around these issues, we also seek to generalize the experience of the working class, raising demands that are based on the idea that all working people deserve decent, living-wage jobs and a high standard of living.

As the crisis deepens the issues are posed more sharply. Workers must fight to keep their jobs and oppose layoffs. We don’t accept the argument of failing companies that they have no choice but to let workers go. If management says the company is bankrupt, then we say don’t leave the company in the hands of the private ownership who bankrupted it in the first place. Protect jobs by bringing these companies into public ownership and run them democratically by the workers for the benefit of the majority.

More and more, we will see layoffs and other attacks counterposed to cuts in social services. Public sector workers are coming under attack and the politicians claim there have to be deeper cuts if the workers don’t make concessions.

This is an attempt to deflect the blame while pitting workers against each other. We do not accept that either one section of the working class must pay or another will. We say no cuts! There should be a federal government bailout for states and the rich should pay for this crisis. We call for a massive increase in taxes on the rich and big business, not working people.

They will claim that increased taxes on big business will cause disinvestment, force companies to lay off more workers or raise the costs of their products. Again we reject the idea that the burden must fall on our shoulders. They cannot hold our jobs hostage for the ransom of lower taxes. If the drive for profits always means that workers have to pay, then we must challenge this system which is based on the cruel logic of profit-making.

Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in the health care system. We call for free, high quality health care for all through a publicly-funded single-payer system as a step towards fully socialized medicine. Health care should be a right as well as education. We call for free, high quality public education for all.

Working people will need their own organizations to mobilize into action around these demands. Unions are basic defense organizations of workers, if run democratically by the membership and based on a fighting strategy. We oppose anti-union laws while calling for measures to make our unions more democratic.

Money for Jobs and Education, Not War

  • End the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Bring all the troops home now!
  • Slash the military budget.
  • Repeal the Patriot Act and other attacks on democratic rights.

Environmental Sustainability

  • Fight global warming – Massive public investment in renewable energy and efficiency technologies to rapidly replace fossil fuels.
  • A major expansion of public transportation to provide low fare, high-speed, and accessible mass transit.
  • Public ownership of the big energy companies. All workers in polluting industries should be guaranteed retraining and new, living-wage jobs in socially-useful, green production.

The second and third sections of the “What We Stand For” column deal briefly with the questions of war and the environment. We call for an immediate end to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which are wars fought not in the interests of ordinary working people and poor in this country or in the Middle East. With Obama’s recent announcement of sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan it is crucial that we take this up, calling for troops to come home now while explaining the need to be funding jobs, education, and health care not endless war and occupation.

The recent international climate meeting in Copenhagen is another demonstration of the dire threat that global warming and environmental destruction pose for the whole planet. But there is no market solution to this problem which was created by big corporations’ insatiable drive for profit with little regard for the environmental destruction they cause.

We need massive public investment in renewable energy to rapidly replace fossil fuels and a major expansion of public transportation. This must be done through taking the big energy companies into public ownership.

Equal Rights for All

  • Fight discrimination on the grounds of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, age, and all other forms of prejudice. Equal pay for equal work.
  • End police brutality and the institutional racism of the criminal justice system. Invest in rehabilitation, job training, and living-wage jobs, not prisons! Abolish the death penalty.
  • Full legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrant workers.
  • Fight sexual harassment, violence against women, and all forms of sexism.
  • For a woman’s right to choose when and whether to have children. Defend abortion rights. Full reproductive rights, including affordable, accessible birth control, sex education, paid maternity and paternity leave, and high-quality, affordable child care.
  • Equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, including same-sex marriage.

This section is about fighting discrimination on the grounds of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, age, and all other forms of prejudice. Inequality and discrimination are built into the system. This is a fundamental way the ruling elite can find scapegoats and keep different sections of the working class divided.

One of the demands, for example, calls for full legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrant workers. Already, we are seeing a populist tone taken up by the right wing where they look to scapegoat immigrants for economic insecurity caused by capitalism.

Native-born workers and immigrants are pitted against each other, but it is the bosses’ constant drive for profit that pushes down wages and conditions, and they use the marginalized situation of undocumented immigrants as leverage. It is in the interests of all workers to fight for full legalization and other basic rights, in an effort to build broader working-class unity against the attacks coming down on workers in general.

Break with the Two Parties of Big Business

  • For a mass workers’ party drawing together workers, young people, and activists from workplace, community, civil rights, environmental, and antiwar campaigns, to provide a fighting, political alternative to the pro-big-business parties.
  • Unions and other social movement organizations should stop funding and supporting the Democratic and Republican Parties and instead organize independent, left-wing, anti-corporate candidates and coalitions as a first step toward building a workers’ party.

Socialism and Internationalism

  • Capitalism produces poverty, inequality, environmental destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this system.
  • Repeal NAFTA, CAFTA, and other “free trade” agreements which mean job losses and a race to the bottom for workers and the environment.
  • Solidarity with the struggles of workers and the oppressed internationally – An injury to one is an injury to all.
  • Take into public ownership the top 500 corporations and banks that dominate the U.S. economy, and run them under the democratic management of elected representatives of the workers and the broader public. Compensation to be paid on the basis of proven need to small investors, not millionaires.
  • A democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people and the environment. For a socialist United States and a socialist world!

The last two sections deal with organization, international solidarity, and providing a clear alternative to global capitalism. Workers need a vehicle in order to raise and fight for their demands. Unions are key, but they are based on the workplace and don’t directly represent all sections of the working class, like the unemployed, youth, or the unpaid labor of domestic work.

An independent political voice for the working class is needed. It is becoming increasingly clear that this voice is not to be found in either the Republican or Democratic Parties. Obama and the Democrats have been focused on bailing out the banks and continuing the wars overseas while breaking most of their promises to ordinary working people.

We call for a mass workers’ party drawing together workers, young people, and activists from workplace, community, civil rights, environmental, and antiwar campaigns, to provide a fighting, political alternative to the pro-big business parties.

A new party based on the interests of working people will not be created automatically but must be consciously built. Political independence is not merely an electoral aim but must be linked to building struggle and a mass movement.

The goal of this movement must be to defend the interests of working people and the poor – i.e. the overwhelming majority – in this country and around the world. By taking up the issues that we face on a daily basis we cannot avoid the broader questions about how society is organized. In a globally integrated economy, the struggles of working people are interconnected.

International trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA are part of a worldwide race to the bottom for workers and the environment. We call for solidarity with the struggles of workers and the oppressed internationally.

Capitalism produces poverty, inequality, environmental destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this system. This struggle must provide a clear alternative to the destructive system of capitalism. Only a democratic socialist plan for the economy can bring working people out of this crisis, so we call for a socialist United States and a socialist world.

To build the movement for socialism, we must actively take up the day-to-day issues that working people face. We must fight for all basic reforms under capitalism because it this basic struggle which can raise the confidence of working people in the strength of their own collective action. By organizing these struggles around general demands which unite working people, we come up against the limits of what capitalism can provide, and we are pushed towards the need for a more fundamental transformation of society.

If you agree with the demands and ideas in the “What We Stand For” column and the general method of struggle against capitalism and in favor of socialism, then we encourage you to consider joining the movement for socialism today.

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