A Workers’ Action Program to: Meet the Economic Crisis
2008Andrew Pollack 2008-09The page as the paper published it (Wayback Machine) →
From the paper's own web edition, recovered from the Internet Archive: the text as the paper put it online, not machine-read. The printed issue of September 2008 is not held.
by Andrew Pollack / September 2008
The liberals propose to tweak the Wall Street Bailout on behalf of the amorphous “taxpayers” living on a mythical “Main Street.” Revolutionary socialists, in contrast, start from the needs of flesh-and-blood workers, and rely on their class power to challenge ruling class attacks.
For that reason our Action Program for this crisis begins with a call to the real, existing organizations of the working class: the trade unions and allied organizations.
We call on the leaders of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win federations, and of independent unions, to call an Emergency Congress of Labor at which representatives of the working class can draw up a set of demands and vote on a strategy to win them. Such a Congress should make sure there is representation from the most embattled segments of the class, such as immigrant workers, oppressed nationalities and women, retirees, the disabled, etc. We therefore encourage that the Congress be open to representatives of immigrant workers’ centers, the NAACP, NOW, and similar organizations.
At this Congress, Socialist Action would ally with class-struggle militants to push for adoption of the following demands:
Not a cent to bail out the bankers! Nationalize the entire banking system under the control of capitalism’s victims, not its agents! Open the capitalists’ books so we can determine what has been stolen, hidden or squandered at our expense! Make the banks, corporations and the ruling class pay the full price of the crisis!
No to mortgage foreclosures! Reduce present mortgage payments in proportion to the capitalist-caused decline in value!
As the crisis affects not only the financial sector, but spills over into, and is itself in turn caused or reinforced by, simultaneous crises in manufacturing, soaring inflation, and a global climate crisis, we demand worker’s control of the monopoly corporations in manufacturing and mining, energy, and transportation. We call for the election of committees of workers to run these industries – workers who represent the millions whose pensions have been eliminated or are on the line and whose jobs and healthcare have been disappeared.
Jobs for all at top union wages! Reduce the workweek to 30 hours with no cut in pay to provide jobs for all!
Restore and guarantee all pensions! For a real Social Security system that pays pensions at union wage levels! Eliminate the private health insurers and providers, and merge Medicare and Medicaid into a free, universal, and public health system that covers all needed services without charge!
Bring all the troops home now from Iraq, Afghanistan, and every other country where they’re stationed, and spend the trillions for war instead on rebuilding the nation’s inner cities, schools and hospitals. One hundred percent tax on the war industries!
Finally, the bipartisan support for bailing out the ruling class shows once again that workers need our own political organ: Break with the twin parties of capital! For a Labor Party based on a fighting union movement and all the oppressed and exploited!