minimum program

Minimum Program

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Even modest reforms once achieved must be defended. The more ambitious the accomplishments the more likely the reactionaries will fight to repeal them. Raises are lost often by rising prices of consumer goods. Civil rights legislation is reinterpreted to lessen their impact. Success in a progressive struggle requires us to push ever further towards our ultimate goals or else gains are soon lost. Employment is a dependency on the employer who exist for profits i.e. exploitation of the workers.

Always reforms only come about during times when discontent is on the rise and threatens the profits of the affluent and the security of the influential. Revolutionaries can take advantage of this by not only supporting reform movements, but by using these victories to secure struggles for further demands. With each victory the relationship between the producers of wealth and the owners of that wealth is altered. Workers get stronger in relation to the capitalists through reform. Said another way, there is increasing control over job sites and communities by those who create the large quantity of resources necessary for the wealth of the bankers, speculation advisers, and tycoons. The capitalist, financiers, investment brokers, and industrialist have no wealth without the labor and spending of working people. However, with each victory comes push back by those who own the wealth. It is more then fighting to keep what we have gained. Left to his own devises the capitalist continue to lead us into one economic crisis after another. Through overproduction, irresponsible speculations with our hard earned capital, and a direct attack on the incomes of the laborers, the capitalist steals the wealth of labor and creates yet another economic crisis through stupidity. 

Democracy is ever the aspiration and the fortitude. Yet it is constantly turned into a cartoon caricature of make-believe. The deception of democracy is what keeps the exploited docile.

Before the existing government as we know becomes more democratic, more direct participation both at the work place and in the communities we live in becomes a way of life. Production for needs and even desire is seen as the obvious way to produce things. Profit is at that time becomes either theft or just reward depending on two things.  First how much is enough; inequality comes about when some one does not have enough to live a healthy and comfortable life. Second how is the profit shared? For example a cooperative belong equality to all the employees of a firm. If it is true that socialism will lead to communism and this will lead to the withering of government, as we know it, then democracy will outlive the State, as it has existed up until then.

That may be utopian, but as a long-term goal it serves as a road map for reform. However, wages and benefits are always important issues. But, with each reform victory the power of workers, professionals and the self-employed is strengthened. This is important as more and more say in the day-to-day operations of the firm must meet the approval of the collective employees. The employees must see past the division of labor and competing interests, to embrace industrial unionism not just one firm or industry, but labor in general. The old saying “an injury to one is an injury to all”. Democracy becomes a continuous gala of evolving conquest and never a completed project. During very long struggle a coalition between wageworkers, professionals, self-employed, intellectuals, small farmers and small business must be formed. There are real differences between the needs of each group; therefore any alliance form will always remain delicate, provisional and in need of incessant renegotiation and understanding. 

All working people are workers, citizens, and consumers. Thus any councils set up along the lines of participatory democracy would require representatives from those three bodies. In addition civil rights and environmental concerns need to be represented. A true economic foundation that will be humane and sustainable is embedded in social responsibilities and concern for a greater good and community well being. Not profit, but over all welfare of the community. We have a narrow interpretation of a market economy that lets investors off the hook for their self-indulgent narcissism, avarice, and faith in an economic system that will breed poverty, exploitation and despair. An immoral economy that has always failed with out continual big government intervention because it does not work and that it can be repaired is the lie we are forced to swallow. In the private sector bureaucracy is even more recalcitrant than the public sector because of its lack of accountability. Ever deal with private insurance? Even though I am a fan of the public sector and think it should be greatly expanded. Bring back the WPA. To the public employees social needs are more central to the economic concerns of the people than profit. Work is driven by concerns for social responsibility and community protections.  Having said that I imagine that the issue should be democracy not bureaucracy. Private investments should be carried out with public responsibilities being most important. The first concern should always be would it provide good jobs with good wages and benefits. Secondly will it provide the general public with affordable, safe, and reliable goods and services? Profits then and only then should be considered. What is needed is a radical and militant rank and file run unions, with in your face shop stewards, Civil rights advocacy groups, civil libertarians, environmentalists, feminists, consumer groups, community rights and client rights action groups as a real power to be dealt with in managing the economy. True economic democracy requires no less.

Production of goods and services in the private sector is the employment of workers at a rate to insure a profit. The direct motive of employment and production is that profit. In the public sector the motive, its bottom line, is service. The public sector provides those goods and service essential to the community. Because the inspiration is public service rather than profits it is cheaper and more efficient to support the public sector as is. Out sourcing only complicates the issue without providing any real benefits. In the long run it costs the public more and the over all quality of the services declines. Most public servants understand this and choose to work in the public sector because they care about the public they serve. With recent history in mind where major international investors speculated irresponsibly on high return and unsafe speculation for quick returns on investment without creating jobs or any long-term benefits to society. They gambled and lost only to be saved by big government, driving the global economy into the toilet. So why are we as a nation beating up on public employees while openly supporting the criminals that ruined the economy?

The conflict between consumers and workers remains. But, because every worker is also a consumer the conflict is between capitalist and both the consumer as well as the worker. Without the capitalist the conflict is between the worker and consumer who are the same person thus we negotiate as both producer and consumer. What is class struggle in one setting becomes an attempt to generate everyday civility or congenial empathy in the other. Until then wages and benefits of group of employees should compete with another.

Source: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution

Source: Leon Trotsky: The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution

Source: Peter Kropotkin: The Conquest of Bread

Source: Karl Kautsky: The Labor Revolution

Morris Hillquit: Socialism in Theory and Practice