Vol. 76/No. 36      October 8, 2012

Among the most striking features of bourgeois politics in the 2012 election race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney—in which the pundits all say the economy and jobs are the number one issue—is that neither of the bosses’ parties has any plan that could actually alleviate the high unemployment that plagues the working class.

Since the historic crisis of production and trade deepened with the economic contraction in 2008, joblessness has soared and remained high—higher than official government statistics claim and devastatingly high for youth and workers who are Black.

The capitalist rulers have no solution to their crisis. Their only “plan” is that being carried out by Federal Reserve Chairman “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke: print $40 billion a month and throw it to the banks. But this won’t create a single job.

The one thing the bosses all agree on is to make our class pay for their crisis with attacks on our wages, working conditions and social and political rights.

Meanwhile, joblessness promotes competition among workers for jobs, used as a lever by the bosses to tear up union contracts and squeeze higher returns from our labor.

The working class, labor, socialist campaign of James Harris for president and Maura DeLuca for vice president puts forward an action program of immediate demands for workers to fight around that can put us in a stronger position to forge solidarity and more effectively stand up to the bosses’ assaults.

Among these demands, the SWP campaign calls for a massive government-funded jobs program to put millions to work at union-scale wages to build homes, schools, hospitals, child care centers, roads, bridges and public transportation—things that workers need.

Through various struggles, like the fight for jobs, we can gain experience, combativity and self-confidence and discuss how we can best organize to fight against the root cause of the assaults on our class and its allies—the capitalist system itself.
 
 
Related articles:
‘Fight for public works program to create jobs’
Romney ‘47%’ talk stirs up bourgeois debate over role of government  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home