Occupations point the way for mass labor fightback

Scan page 1

VOL. 29, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2011 WWW.SOCIALISTACTION.ORG U.S. / CANADA $1 Tony Savino / Socialist Action By THE EDITORS Socialist Action welcomes the Occupy movement as a hopeful sign that the working-class fightback against the economic crisis, which is decades overdue, may finally be taking off. We salute the bravery and persistence of the Occupations in the face of police repression, media lies, and politician slanders and attempts at cooptation.

As with similar mass encampments in the Arab world and in Europe, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) began with unemployed or super-exploited young workers, and quickly forged ties with virtually the entire labor move­ ment. Formal endorsement has come from almost every major union—even those who are at this very moment giving up concessions to their employers, some grudg­ ingly, some eagerly because of their mistaken belief in the need for “partnership” and “shared sacrifice” in this crisis.

It is just those notions that OWS is blowing apart, and as a result OWS is setting an example for militant work­ ers looking to fight their own battles and to link up with others. As a corollary of its rejection of “shared sacri­ fice,” OWS insists on its political independence of the Democratic and Republican parties—both of which are imposing drastic cutbacks and giving away trillions to the banks.

The Occupy movement has focused on the banks, on finance capital, partly because the economic crisis ap­ peared to stem from bankers’ theft, corruption, largesse from politicians, and overlending via mortgages to prop up their profits. Most participants are not as yet familiar with the Marxist economic analysis, which Socialist Ac­ tion newspaper has outlined in past issues, tracing these financial trends back to the longer-term crisis of capital, Don Ryan / AP a crisis of profitability rooted in production of surplus Occupy News & Views value in manufacturing and service industries.

It is this profitability crisis, an inability to make prof­ its through the core industries of an advanced capital­ (see pages 3, 6, and 7) ist economy on a global scale, that created trillions of dollars that could not be invested elsewhere and so was channeled either into financial speculation, or into Kathy Willens / AP propping up consumer debt to artificially stimulate the economy.

This distinction is crucial for several reasons. One, to explain why OWS does not share common goals with the right-wing populists, who like past fascist movements use demagogic anti-bank rhetoric while denouncing unions and supporting the profit system. Two, because understanding the links between finance and other forms of capital makes clear that it is the economic sys­ tem which is our enemy, not corrupt individual finan­ ciers or even entire banks (much less the Federal Re­ serve, a favorite hobby-horse of the right wing).

This understanding of the system and its ruling class as a whole is crucial for making alliances with all their victims, from the homeowner threatened with foreclo­ sure to the autoworker toiling away for lower wages in a shop, to the farmworker risking her life every day in tomato fields.

The pro-labor, anti-capitalist consciousness of the overwhelming majority of OWS participants is shown in (continued on page 7, in “Are the police on our side?”)

Scan page 2

Chiang Ying-ying / AP

----- pull-quotes -----

INSIDE SOCIALIST ACTION: Occupy Taiwan! — 2 OWS New York — 3 Socialist view on See page 5

U.S. military to Africa — 4 SlutWalks discussions on tactics — 9 Canada news — 10 Reform or revolution? — 6 Alabama anti-immigrant law — 11