Q&A: The Threat of Default Was a Crisis for Wall Street, Not Workers

• Kanya D'Almeida interviews DEIRDRE GRISWOLD, editor of Workers World newspaper (new york)
• Wednesday, August 03, 2011
• Inter Press Service

With nothing on paper regarding tax increases, the bill promises to raise the borrowing limit into 2013, demands spending cuts of 900 billion dollars over the next decade and authorises a congressional committee to deliberate on a further 1.5 trillion dollars in cuts by November.

While the media has been rife with reports of rattled international financial markets and bankers' fears of an impending crash, very little has been said about the U.S. working class, who will likely shoulder the lion's share of the cuts.

IPS Washington correspondent Kanya D'Almeida talked with Deirdre Griswold, editor of the Workers World newspaper, a weekly founded in 1959, about the far-reaching ripple effects of the budget 'agreement' on labour in the U.S.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How is the budget agreement going to affect the working class in the U.S.? A: It's going to hit the working class very hard, especially those who work in the public sector, the state departments, municipalities and local governments. Millions of workers who provide much-needed services are going to suffer because this deal means more cutbacks than have been taking place already.

The kinds of programmes that were won by workers' struggles during the Great Depression, such as Social Security and Medicare, will be on the chopping block in the second phase of the deal.

This threat of default was only a crisis for Wall Street and those holding government debt, who demand their interest be paid before anything else. The workers have their own crises, like unemployment, declining wages and a lack of healthcare coverage.

But the far right faction of the Republican Party, the Tea Party — that cannot yet be called fascist but that are certainly extreme and ignorant — imposed an agenda for which it was willing to hold the federal government hostage to get its demands for spending cuts met.

As far as the workers were concerned, the administration should have let the default happen if it meant saving jobs, health care, Social Security and other social programs that the working class rely on for their very survival.

Q: What does the new bill say about politics and labour in the U.S.? A: Workers' organisations seeking redress from the problems created by capitalism, who had pinned their hopes on the Democratic Party, have now realised that the administration they thought would fight for their rights has let them down enormously.

This proves that when there is a big crisis within the capitalist system, you will find that the Democratic Party is as closely tied to Wall Street as the Republican Party is.

During this whole budget 'crisis', the Democratic administration capitulated to a programme designed very much by the far right of the Republican Party. They accepted concessions such as no increased taxes for the wealthy, even though taxes on the rich in the U.S. are the lowest of any developed country in the world.

Q: What does this mean for the future of organised labour in the U.S.? A: Workers in this country haven't had an independent voice ever since the unions began a policy of supporting the Democratic Party during the administration of [former President] Franklin Roosevelt.

The labour movement in the U.S. has to realise two things. First, that only independent action, such as the kind we've seen in Wisconsin, will have any impact on politicians' decisions and actions. And second, with the globalisation of the capitalist world economy, workers can no longer look for purely U.S.-based local solutions to exploitation of labour.

Workers in the U.S. are being pitted against workers of the world in every industry from agriculture to manufacturing to information technology.

Q: What lessons does the budget deal offer in terms of building the labour movement? A: Well, for one it addresses the problem of transnational finance capital.

Unions in this country have approached the problem of outsourcing in a very narrow, almost chauvinistic way by espousing the 'buy American' rhetoric. But big corporate leaders — despite their patriotic posturing — will go wherever they can to make a bigger profit, no matter how badly these decisions destroy livelihoods and jobs in the U.S.

Another thing that is essential to the evolution of the consciousness of the working class movement here in the U.S. is to recognise the wealth of knowledge of global struggles that immigrants bring. Immigrants are not infected with the same limited, even racist idea of the world that is predominant in the U.S.

I think that big changes are fermenting in the U.S. and they are coming from a growing awareness that capitalism is global and is exploiting people around the world. Workers here are beginning to realise and acknowledge that they have to fight transnational corporations, that alienating workers in other parts of the world will only slow the struggle down.

This latest example of the budget crisis will accelerate this climate, because the old idea that the political structure in this country would somehow work in favour of the average Joe taxpayer has crumbled.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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