Class Analysis
Rising Income Inequality in the US: Divisive, Depressing, and Dangerous
The gap between annual incomes of the top 10 per cent of US citizens and what the other 90 per cent gets has been widening sharply for the last 30 years. The nation's economic development has been increasingly divisive. Professor Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley, a leading expert, summarizes the facts on his website, from which the graph below is gratefully taken. This graph shows how the top 10 per cent of income earners in the US took home, after the 1970s, an ever more outsized share of the total national income.
Taking Over the Enterprise
We are overdue for a new strategy. Labor and the Left are at low points in long declines. One cause has been adherence to a failed strategy. We need to acknowledge that reality and answer two linked questions. First, what part of getting into this situation was our own doing? Second, what changes in labor’s and the Left’s strategy could revive the two groups and rebuild their coalition into a powerful political force? To answer the first question: labor’s and the Left’s strategic attitude toward capitalism undermined both partners and their coalition.
Labor Movement?
The 2010 Statistical Abstract of the United States (and especially Tables 574 to 650), published by the US Census Bureau, provides many statistics that can update understanding of today's working class and possibilities of its movement. The Abstract counts 154 million people as members of the US labor force in 2008. Of these, 129 million were wage and salary earners (the rest were self-employed), and roughly 15-20 million held managerial or supervisory positions.
Why No Government Jobs Program?
From the official beginning of the current economic crisis in December 2007 to the present, the number of unemployed workers has risen roughly from 7 to 15 million members of the US labor force. But there is no government program directly to hire these millions of the unemployed. The Bush and Obama administrations quickly and boldly addressed the crisis by socializing a major part of the credit system, replacing or guaranteeing private debts with a ballooning US government debt.Tony Walker WLTH radio show
Published on October 16, 2009AUDIORichard and Tony discuss the American workers' roles in the economic crisis on the Tony Walker WLTH radio show.
Class and Monopoly
Robert Pollin, Editor. Capitalism, Socialism, and Radical Political Economy: Essays in Honor of Howard J. Sherman. Cheltenham, UK and Northhampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishers, 2000, pages 154-176. Monopoly refers to a power or political process, whereas class refers to economic processes. This paper offers a systematic examination of the diverse possible relationships between monopoly power and class structure. The conceptual differentiation of power from class is central to the logic of our argument (Resnick and Wolff 1987, especially chapter 3).State Capitalism versus Communism: What Happened in the USSR and the PRC?
Since 1917 analysts have debated what kind of economic system existed in the USSR and the PRC. They mostly juxtaposed `socialism' there to `capitalism' in Western Europe and the USA. The two sides were defined chiefly in terms of private versus state property and markets versus planning. We challenge this debate by means of Marx's focus on the organization of surplus labor. That is, we distinguish capitalism, socialism, and communism according to how these systems differently organize the surplus.Class War
US workers' real wages (money wages adjusted for the prices workers actually pay) have not risen from their levels in the 1970s. Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data confirm that real wages continued to stagnate through 2009. Across the same 30-year period, the productivity of labor kept rising: the average worker produced ever more output for the average employer to sell. Thus, capitalists' revenues rose relative to workers' wages.
Capitalism & Its Discontents
We begin with production and wealth. They grew fast in the US over the last 25 years, as capitalism’s boosters (from Bush on down) constantly celebrate. Yet polls show most people in the US to be unhappy—and wisely so—about the economy now and fearful about tomorrow. Real wages and salaries (i.e., adjusted for the prices people pay) in the US stopped their historic 150-year rise in the 1970s and have fallen since. Meanwhile, those same workers’ productivity rose; they produced ever more but got no more for doing so.
Marxism and Environmentalism
An immediate problem faces any discussion of environmentalism and Marxism today. The first topic is popular across many different political perspectives; it engages journalists; and it "concerns" the general population. The second topic has become once again unpopular; journalists treat it as an object of obituary; few seem "concerned" about it. Yet, to ignore Marxism today makes no more sense than ignoring environmentalism did for most of the twentieth century.
Anti-Slavery and Anti-Capitalism
When Marx referred to workers in capitalism as “wage-slaves” he meant more than a striking phrase. For him, the analogy between slavery and capitalism offered a powerful contribution to anti-capitalist movements. The clue to that contribution lies in the Communist Manifesto’s summary of what differentiated communists from other leftists: the latter seek to raise wages, the former to abolish the wage system.
