Category: USA

Posted on

The end of the dream for the US Century

Edward Duncan


When US imperialism succeeded in overthrowing Socialism in the USSR, its pundits crowed that it was “the end of history”. There could be no further changes in the nature of society: capitalism was clearly the ultimate end of social development.

Alas for such rose-coloured fantasies: they lasted only long enough for history to blink. Then the struggle of the working people and the poor took over once again. The exploited will always fight for their rights regardless of what the pundits of capitalism declare.

A clearly baffled Gorbachev was roundly repudiated in Russian elections, the Russian people preferring former KGB officer, Putin, who at least seemed to know what he was doing. (Gorby’s co-conspirator Schevardnadze, who had dumped Gorby to become President of Georgia, was in turn dumped by the Georgians. Gorby is seldom heard of any more, Schevardnadze never. Capitalism will doubtless write touching but meaningless obituaries for both of them in due course.)

Meanwhile, the US capitalists’ dream of the 21st century being “the American Century” has steadily lost ground. We are not yet halfway through it and yet it is obvious that if it is anyone’s century it is China’s.

As Raûl Antonio Capote wrote in Granma as far back as last December, “It is no secret that the People’s Republic of China, with its booming economy, is on its way to becoming the world’s number one power by 2030, and Russia is not far behind.”

That is a prospect that must surely terrify the habitues of Donald Trump’s Oval Office. Almost equally alarming to rational folk, however, is the risk to the world’s people posed by the intemperate actions of a frightened nuclear super-power.

As Capote put it in December, “Now the empire is like a wild beast flailing around with its claws in the air. Its machinery of destruction and subversion is working overtime. Worse yet is that this machinery is directed by a group of troglodytes, dinosaurs anchored in the time of gunboat diplomacy, which they learned about in comics and television series – not history books.

“These powerful cavemen are profoundly ignorant, their vision of the world has been built in the closed environment of fundamentalist opinion; they don’t even know their own country.

And what of the Democrats’ futile attempt to impeach Trump, to remove him without causing too much disturbance to the status quo? Capote describes them as a “lesser evil” challenging the Trumpites, “not because they consider them a real danger to US interests, to the future of the empire.”

No, they bet on impeachment of the property tycoon President as a way to save themselves. “It is a desperate measure because they know the country has deep internal problems, in the economy and in its structure as a nation, and a crisis could lead to disaster.” This was written before the Covid 19 crisis.

South and Central America have seen recent moves by Washington’s agents to oust progressive governments in Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia and more. Capote is unfased: “They are facing the people’s wrath, the history they have tried to erase with money and weapons.”

Waxing lyrical, he becomes poetic: “Returning are the immortal spirits of our liberating soldiers, the warriors of our original peoples, the ‘indians’ of the highlands, Sandino’s troops, Che’s men, who sit in their saddles and grease their rifles.

“They are Bolivars’ guards that are ready to weather the storm and triumph. Yes, now.”

Posted on

Shorter hours and the USA

I took a straw poll recently among an admittedly small selection of employees at Gosford Hospital (nurses, pink ladies, etc). The question I posed was simple: who works the longer hours – Australian workers or workers in the richest capitalist country on Earth, the USA? There was some initial hesitation on the part of some participants while they thought about it, but the answer was always the same: American workers, no question about it. And they were right.

Despite all the propaganda that US movies and television shows – not to mention political leaders – pump out about the privilege of living in the most powerful country in the world, it is common knowledge among working people that their counterparts in “God’s own country” get a very raw deal.

Not only do they put in more time on the job than workers in any other developed industrial country (and they certainly do that!), their health care system is a sick joke (no pun intended – it’s just a fact) and their lack of affordable housing is a scandal. Homelessness is rife. Even people who have jobs are living in their cars because they cannot afford an actual roof over their heads. And most American workers even those who have jobs – don’t get paid annual leave or paid public holidays!

As I have commented on before: the outskirts of every town and city in the US are surrounded by acres of trailer homes, inhabited by folk the “American dream” has passed by. In any other country they would be called what they are: shanty towns, slums for the poor.

But things could be changing: as Dean Baker reported in the US on-line journal Truthout lastmonth, “This week New York’s city council will begin to consider a measure put forward by Mayor Bill de Blasio that would guarantee workers in the city at least 10 days of paid time off per year. This proposal is an important step toward bringing the United States inline with the other rich countries in guaranteeing its workers some amount of paid vacation.

“As a new report from Adewale Maye at the USA’s Center for Economic Research shows, the United States is very much an outlier from its peer countries in not guaranteeing its workers any paid vacation days or holidays. Countries in the European Union all guarantee workers at least four weeks of paid vacation (it’s a condition of EU membership). Many provide five weeks, in addition to an average of 10 paid holidays.” But American workers get zip.

The USA’s next-door neighbour, Canada “guarantees workers 10 days of paid vacation in addition to nine paid holidays. Even Japan, which has a reputation as being a workaholic country, guarantees workers 10 paid vacation days and 15 paid holidays. The 10 days of paid time off proposed by de Blasio would still be at the bottom of the list among wealthy countries, but it would at least be a step in the right direction,” says Dean Baker.

It certainly would, and it is something that US workers through their unions have campaigned for for many years, but they have usually traded such “luxuries” as paid holidays for something that in America is an absolute necessity: getting a health or dental plan in their employment contract.

No wonder bosses in Australia – and their political parties, notably the Libs – are so keen to see a US-style “health care” system introduced here!

As for the actual number of hours worked each week, this used to be similar in the US to other developed countries. “If we go back to 1970, the average [American] worker put in somewhat more time than people in Denmark and the Netherlands, but less than people in France, Finland, and much less than workers in Japan.

“However, over the next five decades, the average length of the work year fell sharply in all of these countries, while just edging down by 5.0 percent in the United States. As a result, workers in the United States now put in more time than workers in any other wealthy country, including Japan,” notes Dean Baker.

In earlier years in the United States, when unions were much stronger than they are today, they negotiated employment contracts with bosses in which high-cost elements like health care insurance and pension benefits were provided primarily by the employer. Employers responded by requiring workers to put in more hours each year rather than allowing for shorter hours and hiring more workers, because – as Marx showed years ago – the longer hours workers can be made to work, the higher a boss’s profit from each worker.

However, the decline in union membership and strength in recent decades has seen a corresponding decline in the number of employers willing to pay their employees’ health insurance.

Workers know that they should share in any gains from higher productivity because it is their labour that creates the products and services in the first place. They are entitled to receive more leisure and a shorter working day as business profits and productivity go up. “Of course,” says Baker, “the big problem of the last four decades is that most workers [in the US] have not gotten their share of productivity growth at all.” This is a situation employers wish to see continue, and one way of achieving that is increased reliance on automation and the use of robots.

Of course, replacing workers with robots may boost profits but who will buy your products? Increasing productivity should mean shorter working hours, something employers regard as anathema. However, in Germany, the Netherlands and some other European countries with strong economies and also strong unions, workers already put in 20 percent fewer hours each year than in the United States.

Many US companies are shifting their businesses to low wage countries, to gain immediate benefits in lower overheads. But also because they know that in the longer term, workers in the US will not tolerate being exploited like this for ever.