Liberals’ Green New Deal is trap for working class
Modeled on Roosevelt’s WWII attacks on unions
One feature of capitalist politics in the U.S. is the entry of a layer of self-proclaimed socialists — like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who see their mission to rebrand the Democratic Party to better ensnarl workers and to reform and defend capitalist rule while “helping” the working class.
Millions of workers today are looking for something different, as they face an economic and social crisis resulting from the punishing impact of the pro-imperialist, pro-war and pro-business policies of both parties that have boosted profits.
Ocasio-Cortez promotes a “Green New Deal,” backed by many of the Democrats running for president, as the central vehicle to accomplish this. She says, “We are facing a national crisis,” a catastrophe from fossil fuels and “climate change,” that requires a massive strengthening of the capitalist state to address it. And, she adds, the massive mobilization it would mount would create jobs.
But for working people the main question about the plan is not the “green” description in its title, but its model — former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, which subordinated workers’ interests to “national unity” in order to turn all the country’s resources to the victory of U.S. capital in the second imperialist world war.
Ocasio-Cortez churns out stories of Roosevelt, the New Deal and World War II as the high watermark of U.S. capitalist rule. It’s a lie. The truth can be found in the pages of the Militant for those years, from the Northwest Organizer, the paper of the militant SWP-led Teamsters union in Minnesota, and in books like Labor’s Giant Step by Art Preis.
Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal demands an “economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal,” which was preparation for the imperialist war. While Roosevelt and his backers said their aim was to “fight fascism,” in fact the rulers’ goal was for Washington to replace both its allies and enemies as top imperialist dog worldwide, the better to allow U.S. bankers and bosses to reap superprofits. And to accomplish this, Roosevelt planned to strangle the labor movement.
“When FDR called on America to build 185,000 planes to fight World War 2, every business leader, CEO, and general laughed at him,” the “talking points” for the Green New Deal Ocasio-Cortez released says. “At the time, the U.S. had produced 3,000 planes in the last year. By the end of the war, we produced 300,000 planes. That’s what we are capable of if we have real leadership.”
But “we” did no such thing. There is no “we” — like all capitalist countries, the U.S. is class divided, and government policies aim to advance the interests of the ruling families and make the working people pay.
Roosevelt’s labor conscription bill
Without explaining it, Ocasio-Cortez points to what the Democrats’ New Deal had in store for the working class and their unions. She says her proposals “build on FDR’s second bill of rights.”
That was in Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union address, which came on the heels of the 1943 United Mine Workers strike — called in defiance of the federal no-strike “pledge” — and the Democratic administration’s unsuccessful effort to defeat the miners. In that speech, Roosevelt demanded Congress enact a compulsory labor conscription bill (a “national service plan,” he genteelly called it).
“A national service law — which for the duration of the war, will prevent strikes,” Roosevelt said, “and, with appropriate exceptions, will make available for war production or any other essential service every able-bodied adult in this nation.”
The “exceptions” were intended for his class and their enablers.
Ocasio-Cortez sugarcoats the U.S. rulers’ anti-labor imperialist war polices. The Green New Deal states that Roosevelt’s war moves “created the greatest middle class that the United States has ever seen.”
The plan’s authors cite Washington’s massive war expenditures today, and bailouts extended to banks “too big to fail” in 2008, as examples of how the funds for the Green New Deal can be raised, “[T]he same way we paid for World War II and all our current wars.”
Their praise for the U.S. rulers’ victory in the second imperialist war to divide up the world for exploitation ignores the crimes inflicted on millions of people by the U.S. war machine, including the systematic firebombing of civilians in German and Japanese cities and the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Do we need a bigger government?
The Green New Deal scheme is aimed at strengthening and expanding the capitalist state, building in more weapons to defend capitalist rule. It contains a series of reforms and concessions to make life more palatable for workers and family farmers who face the carnage from the crisis of capital today. The meritocrats proposing it see working people as needing their help to “do the right thing.”
Like Roosevelt’s New Deal, Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats today view workers and farmers as the objects of government policies to be administered, rather than people who are not only capable of fighting to change the conditions the bosses and their governments impose on us, but to transform themselves through that fight to take political power.
The capitalist rulers are incapable of finding a way to reverse the crisis of their system today. Democrats present a false account of the New Deal to convince working people that something can be done to lessen the abuses we face by better “managing” the capitalist economy.
But it is only by relying on workers own capacities to struggle together against those who exploit us — the same bosses who degrade both labor and the environment — that working people can chart a course forward.
Replacing capitalist rule with workers power can make possible “social relations that are based on human solidarity and serve our interaction with and protection of the natural sources of all well-being and culture,” explains the SWP resolution “The Stewardship of Nature Also Falls to the Working Class: In Defense of Land and Labor,” published in New International no. 14. “What more powerful reason for workers, farmers and youth to commit their lives and futures to advancing the historic line of march of the international working class.”
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Roosevelt's War Labor Curbs
Excerpt:
....As Roosevelt summoned the nation after Pearl Harbor for his military crusade to attain the "Four Freedoms"-especially "freedom from want" all over the globe, the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a mid-April 1942 report, revealed truly shocking facts about "freedom from want" here at home.
Over 25 per cent of all employed workers in December 1941 earned less than $20 a week. Over 50 per cent earned less than $30 a week. Only 13 per cent of income earners in industry, including supervisory and executive employees, earned as much as $50 a week, a sum below the minimum decency and comfort standard of living fixed by the government itself.
Pearl Harbor accelerated the speed of rising living costs. By the end of January 1942, the CIO leaders felt impelled by rank-and file discontent to initiate a drive for industry-wide wage increases. Meeting in New York City on January 26, the CIO National Executive Board issued a call to all affiliated unions to demand "substantial wage increases." President Murray said that by March 1942 living costs including taxes would be 20 per cent above the January 1941 level. This would wipe out all 1941 wage gains and impose an actual ten per cent general wage cut.
To quiet the growing demands for wage increases, Congress passed and Roosevelt signed the War-Time Price Control Bill. This bill, giving the Office of Price Administration power to fix prices of consumer goods, was designed actually to give a legal cover to price gouging. Roosevelt himself had to admit, as he signed the bill, that he had "doubts as to the wisdom and adequacy of certain sections of the Act." On January 30, OPA, headed by Leon Henderson, issued a statement saying it expected "nothing sweeping or radical" from the measure but hoped it might have at least a "psychological" effect on manufacturers and merchants. The January 28 New York Times quite candidly denounced the bill as "a thoroughly bungled and discreditable job, a mere mockery of its own declared purposes."
The "declared purposes" of this price control law were to prevent a general rise in prices; fix maximum prices that might legally be charged for certain goods; and to set up agencies for policing prices. The real purpose was to provide a basis for the claim that prices were being controlled and, therefore, wages must be controlled. The prices of war goods sold to the government were fixed by the corporations themselves, acting through their "representatives" in the war procurement divisions. As for retail prices of civilian goods, it would have taken a vast army even to begin to police the millions of daily transactions. Price control was a fraud.
This was pretty much the belief of the industrial workers. For instance, United Automobile Workers delegates from 90 General Motors plants met in Detroit on February 7, 1942, and adopted demands for a dollar-a-day pay increase and the union shop.
Motivating the wage demand, Walter Reuther, then GM director for the UAW, pointed out that the auto workers were "worse off than they were a year ago" despite the 10-cent hourly boost in the previous spring.
The GM workers' major demands followed those the United Steelworkers had made on four of the Little Steel corporations: Bethlehem, Republic, Inland, and Youngstown Sheet and Tube. Murray had immediately shunted the Little Steel demands into the hands of the War Labor Board. The UAW leaders followed suit with the GM proposals. Murray's move indicated what he really had in mind when he had promised at the CIO National Executive Board meeting to "fight" for "substantial wage increases" and union security.
On February 23, in a radio address, Roosevelt explained his program. He stressed "the one thought for us here at home to keep uppermost ….uninterrupted production. I stress that word uninterrupted." He urged "three high purposes for every American": (1) "We shall not stop work for a single day. If any dispute arises we shall keep on working while the dispute is solved by mediation, conciliation or arbitration until the war is won"; (2) "We shall not demand special gains or special privileges or special advantages for any group or occupation"; (3) "We shall give up conveniences and modify the routine of our lives if our country asks us to." One "high purpose" Roosevelt did not mention, as virtually every newspaper noted at the time, was the limitation or elimination of war profits. The CIO leaders seemed not to notice the clear antilabor implications of Roosevelt's "three high purposes." Murray had complained that" certain government and industry officials" were conducting a "premeditated publicity campaign" seeking to "prejudice the public mind, and, if possible, the War Labor Board" against the steel union's demands. The chief culprit whom Murray carefully refrained from naming was Roosevelt. The pro-Big Business press was not so shy. The old New York Sun, a traditional Republican fixture on the tables of the Wall Streeters, had to admit on February 24:
"In his speech last night, the President placed the emphasis definitely upon labor ....this did more probably to brighten the atmosphere in Washington today than anything else he said in his speech last night."
Roosevelt followed his February 23 radio speech with a series of more specific demands and commands, designed not only to freeze wages but to force the unions to surrender contractual conditions already won and enjoyed.
His first move was against premium pay for work on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. Union contracts customarily provided for time and a half on Saturdays and double time wage rates for working Sundays or holidays. General Motors initiated the attack on contractual standards when it refused to continue paying double time for Sunday work. This was the first issue submitted to the War Labor Board by the UAW.
Donald Nelson, newly-named head of the War Production Board which had supplanted the Office of Production Management, appearing on March 24 before the House Naval Affairs Committee, stated the Roosevelt administration's position on premium pay. Nelson said that if the unions did not agree within 30 days to give up premium pay for week ends and holidays which did not fall on the sixth and seventh consecutive days of work, the administration would press for a law to compel such surrender. As one New York daily put it, this was a "velvet-gloved ultimatum" to labor.
The top union officials of the CIO and AFL yielded immediately, and without consultation with the ranks. They agreed to abrogate premium-pay clauses in hundreds of newly signed contracts.
This giveaway of their hard-won rights did not go down easily with the workers. Resentment was so rife among the auto workers that the UAW leaders had to call a special national delegated convention in Detroit to cram the decision down the workers' throats.
The most significant aspect of this convention was the united front of the top leaders Thomas, Addes, Frankensteen, Reuther, and the Stalinists against the ranks. The fight lasted for two days. Every trick was employed to break down or confuse the opposition. The resolution to give up premium pay contained a section on "Equality of Sacrifice" so worded as to give the false impression that sacrifice of premium pay would be conditional on measures by the government to eliminate war profits.
One of these measures was described in a letter to the convention from Roosevelt. He promised: "It is the intention of the government to renegotiate contracts with the employers wherever necessary to insure that the savings from relinquishment of double or premium time go not to the employer but the nation."
In this same letter, he said that premium pay "in wartime ... puts a brake upon production. It causes factories to close on Sundays and holidays." This implied that the employers could not afford to pay overtime and premium rates. But when he spoke of the need to "renegotiate contracts," he made it plain that the corporations were being reimbursed by the government for every cent of overtime and premium wages.
In the end, with 150 courageous delegates standing on their feet to vote opposition openly, the UAW resolution to give up premium pay was adopted. Just before the vote was taken, Roosevelt's letter was reread to the convention and Frankensteen bellowed into the microphone: "Are you going to tell the President of the United States to go to hell ?"
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Labor's Giant Step: The First Twenty Years of the CIO: 1936–55.
By Art Preis
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