Workers World, Vol. 17, No. 11, March 14, 1975
March 10 – The depth and severity of the capitalist economic crisis will inevitably transform the entire pattern of contemporary international relations to the extreme detriment of American finance-capital.
Nothing so much symbolizes this as the imminent collapse of the Cambodian puppet regime today, and of the Thieu mercenaries tomorrow. The Southeast Asia misadventures of Pentagon diplomacy are merely the most dramatic expression of the swiftly changing world relationships which have their deepest roots in the general decline of American capitalism.
From general decline to immediate crisis
What the current economic crisis contributes to the general decline is a highly volatile and vastly accelerated tempo. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the crisis will bring to the fore all those fundamental class antagonisms which appear dormant in a period of capitalist economic upsurge but are in reality merely maturing.
In spite of any or all attempts by the bourgeois media to suppress or divert it, public attention is now irresistibly focused on the economic growth and development in the socialist countries as against capitalist decline. In the struggle between the two antagonistic social systems, this weakens capitalism and strengthens the popular appeal of socialism.
Capitalist crisis in the neo-colonies
Just as inexorably, the capitalist economic crisis will intensify the class struggle in every country based on the bourgeois mode of production. Nor will this be confined, as is sometimes erroneously believed, to the imperialist countries. Even more so will the ravages of the capitalist crisis accentuate the internal class struggle in all the underdeveloped and neo-colonial countries, where the class struggle had been pushed into the background by early initiatives of the national bourgeoisie in the field of progressive bourgeois nationalization and mild measures of land reform.
Inevitably it will push even the most craven puppets of U.S. imperialism to take on a more aggressive posture. But to no avail. Everywhere the fortunes of monopoly capitalism will come under fierce attack by the masses. It matters not whether it is today in the Middle East or tomorrow in Africa or Latin America, the fabulous fortunes of U.S. imperialist booty are under rising attack and in peril of being lost altogether.
Efforts to salvage imperialist fortunes by military means are always possible. But this, in turn, can only transform an accelerated retreat into a full-scale military and social catastrophe for the ruling class, abroad as well as at home – as in Indochina today.
Stem from internal contradictions
Foreign policy is only an extension of domestic policy, and the problems of the U.S. ruling class abroad are merely the external form of the acute economic contradictions at hoe. The latter have been very slow to assert themselves politically with full force.
Often this is simply explained as a result of the general backwardness of the American working class, the privileged status of the white section of it, and the existence of a large and formidable racist labor bureaucracy, which holds the labor movement in tow. This is all too true. But frequently this indubitable feature of contemporary American life is regarded as somehow fixed and immovable in a world full of convulsive and revolutionary changes.
It is true that in this country, where everything moves faster than in any other part of the world, consciousness lags far behind the enormous changes in the material conditions of life.
Lag of consciousness
Nowhere is this more true than in the relation between the sharp deterioration of the condition of the working class and in the political consciousness required to overcome it. But tardiness in the development of political consciousness has often been compensated for historically by volcanic social explosions which go far beyond the confines of private property.
It took over five years from the collapse of the stock market in October 1929 to the great sit-downs of 1935 and 1936, but when they came they shook the citadel of world capitalism to its foundations and inaugurated the greatest social changes in American history since the Civil War.
The labor bureaucracy of the early thirties was stone deaf to the welled-up anger of millions of workers and unemployed as the economic crisis deepened and millions were driven into starvation.
Has the archaic and stultified character of the trade union bureaucracy changed any in these 40-odd years? Certainly the personnel have. Their methods have become more sophisticated as their salaries and privileges have become more unscrupulous.
But are they any more responsive to the deep resentment and widespread discontent that is daily accumulating, becoming more and more unendurable without any meaningful relief in sight?
If Senator Humphrey – that illustrious liberal who during the Johnson period became a great reactionary and war hawk and is now once again a liberal – now says there are 10 to 11 million unemployed, then surely there must be many more.
Response of labor bureaucracy
But how are the hierarchy and trustees of labor’s well-being reacting to this extraordinary phenomenon? Aside from the monotonous repetition of the platitudes and demagogy propelled by the Humphreys, Kennedys, Jacksons, et al, there is not a single original idea emanating from the bureaucracy.
Even in matters which pose the most direct challenge to the working class, and where the interests of the bureaucracy are themselves most immediately involved, they exhibit a state of almost complete paralysis. Consider, for example, the case of the workers on the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad. For weeks it was rumored that company officials were desperately pushing a plan for a thinly concealed across-the-board wage cut covering the 10,000 workers on the line.
If they succeeded, it would be the first time since the thirties that the ruling class had been able to inflict a direct frontal attack on the living standards of a substantial group of unionized workers in a key industry by means of a wage cut. Its significance would be enormous. It might turn out to be a testing ground for a huge assault by the large monopolies.
It is inconceivable that this would not be understood by even the dullest of the hierarchy.
One would think that the least the labor leadership could do would be to sound the alarm; send out an admonition to the officials of the 17 unions of the railroads, recommending they hold out against the extortionate demands of the railroad barons, and pledging solidarity.
Nothing like this was done. Not even the customary press release. Nor was there any attempt by the trade union leadership as a whole to employ their combined legislative capacity to pressure “labor’s friends” in Congress to introduce a simple amendment to the pending railroad bill. The bill, which was to bail out the railroads, could have been amended to also prohibit the railroads from laying off any workers, or from seeking modifications of the union contract to suit the railroads.
Again, nothing was done. Thus the bosses were able to pierce the fragile united front of the unions against any direct wage cut (as distinct from the indirect cuts through inflation). The lesson was not lost on the ruling class.
Rash of wage cuts
There has since been a rash of small plant-wide wage cuts and the capitalist press has begun a series of analytical studies showing (they hope) that a new and significant trend in wage patterns is at last discernible (New York Times, Sunday, March 9, business section).
Can one really and truly expect the bureaucracy to be aware of the gravity of the situation for the millions of unemployed when it could not attend to even such an important incipient danger as that facing the Chicago railroad workers?
Sold on Keynesian economics
The truth of the matter is that the labor bureaucracy, in addition to having a parasitic social character, is also a captive of the economic and political preconceptions of the ruling class molded in an era that has ended. While these preconceptions are not of their own making, having been bequeathed to them by the Keynesian economists, they have fitted in rather neatly with the bureaucracy’s ideas.
A number of the Keynesians who have earned substantial pay as union advisers have taught the union leaders, over a period of several imperialist wars and military interventions, that the capitalist economic cycle is dead, and that while in between the wars and interventions there may be slight dips in employment, nevertheless the upward curve of capitalist production is a permanent feature of the economy.
Of course, such a spurious doctrine clearly deprives the union leadership of any perspective, and leaves the union membership disarmed when the capitalist crisis breaks out in full force. Thus the union leadership at the present time finds itself in a state of utter confusion, fragmented and divided. Each union bureaucrat plays the role of a satrap of a feudal duchy, rather than leader of an integral part of an organized workers’ organization which could command the allegiance of the most numerous, if not strongest, industrial working class in the capitalist world.
Judging by the rhetoric of these labor lieutenants of American capitalism, it is hard to believe that any of them are aware that they are on the eve of their greatest crisis since the split from the AFL and the formation of the CIO. There seems to be no realization at all that their day-to-day tactics are based on an outmoded strategic conception of the labor movement.
They do not realize (certainly their public pronouncements give no hint of it) that their entire strategy is based on a presumed upward curve of capitalist production. Their strategy is for a time when the working class objectively, if not subjectively, is on the offensive. This enabled them in the past to obtain such concessions as were within the limits of a policy of class collaboration.
A policy of paralysis
However, the acute economic crisis, on top of the general decline, has but the working class objectively in a defensive position, even though subjectively the workers have become more militant and aggressive. This glaring contradiction between the strategic conceptions of the trade union hierarchy and the objective conditions of the working class spells out a policy of complete paralysis.
A clearer example of a conflict between material conditions and prevailing conceptions could scarcely be conceived.
Under the old false and dogmatic conception inherited from the ruling class, the labor bureaucracy could on occasion make do by a policy of restricting the working class role in the political struggle to a few well-heeled and well-paid legislative lobbyists, who would court “labor friends” to do right by labor, while the trade union bureaucracy attended to negotiating union contracts. This has now become wholly untenable, if it ever was valid at all.
In the throes of an acute economic crisis, when the workers are objectively on the defensive, the full, independent, political and economic mobilization of the workers on a class basis is absolutely indispensable to meet the rapacious offensive of monopoly capital. To do otherwise – that is, to follow the old discredited pattern of legislative lobbing and reliance on labor’s “friends” in the capitalist parties – is to restrict the workers to weapons like bows and arrows in a class war where the enemy employs missiles, tanks, and bombers.
The widening gulf
The gulf that now separates the leaders from the ranks is not yet as wide as it was in the years between 1929 and 1935-36, but it is approaching that.
When consciousness lags too far behind the swift changes in the material conditions of life, then a social cataclysm becomes inevitable as a compensating factor for the historical imbalance between consciousness and material conditions.
In the arena of the American class struggle, where the dynamism of huge and uninterrupted technological strides imparts an extreme instability in all social relations, such a social cataclysm has the potential not only of driving the lethargic labor bureaucracy out of its seat of power, but of sweeping away the class relations of exploitation.
Last updated: 11 May 2026