Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Resolution on Work Among the Unemployed(1931)-COMPLETE

[Reproduced in it's entirety, the following text is taken from The Communist, the theoretical journal of the Communist Party USA. It was published in September 1931, and represents the most coherent overview of the entire range of activities undertaken by the communists to organize among the unemployed in the years 1930-1933. -Ed.]

The following resolution was adopted by the 13th Plenum of the Communist Party, U.S.A. on the report of comrade Satchel.


1. Unemployment, already greater that at any time during the present economic crisis, continues to grow as a consequence of the still growing depth of the crisis and increasing rationalization, making work among the unemployed more than ever a "central and urgent task." The increase of part time employment and the growth of strikes against the sharpening wage cutting offensive of the capitalists, continually broadens the basis for, and makes more urgent the development of joint action of the employed and unemployed.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

2010 Mass Strike in South Africa DIGEST

THE 2010 MASS STRIKE IN THE STATE SECTOR, SOUTH AFRICA (2010)
by Ian Bekker and Lucien van der Walt

DIGEST PRODUCED FOR TUSG.ORG

Recently, around 1.3 million state sector workers went on strike for four weeks against attempts to impose neoliberal austerity measures. The strike took place just weeks after South Africa’s government spent billions on hosting the FIFA World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world. It was the biggest state sector strike in recent history, dwarfing even the month-long mass strike of 2007, involving unions affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), as well as eleven non-COSATU unions linked together in the Independent Labour Caucus (ILC), a loose alliance.

The strike was all the more remarkable given that COSATU, the largest union centre, is part of a Tripartite Alliance with the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party in South Africa. (The third leg of the Alliance is the South African Communist Party, SACP, many of whose leaders serve as key figures in the ANC government, but also as union leaders.) In striking against the state-as-employer, the federation inevitably had to confront the ANC-as-government, on the eve of the ANC’s September 2010 National General Council (NGC).

Thursday, February 10, 2011

More on the Food Economy

To the editor:

I was excited to see Mark Bittman draw attention to the plight of workers in the food supply-chain, who "labor in difficult, even deplorable, conditions." Yet, in reading further, I discovered that he seems to think these bad conditions end when food leaves the farm or the packinghouse. The continuing growth of low-wage jobs handling food in restaurants, supermarkets, and "big box" stores refutes this.

Bittman's bias towards home food production - indeed, the fourth idea in his "manifesto" is to "encourage and subsidize home cooking" - both ignores the prevailing trend in production of meals and blinds him to badly-needed reforms. His bias is perhaps understandable (he is, after all, an author of recipes for the home cook), but to pose a return to home production of food is as a solution is both unrealistic - because increased time devoted to home cooking would almost certainly mean a reduction of job hours, family income, and national productivity - and utopian - because it simply "wishes away" the reality of low-wage jobs in foodservice and retail.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Krug Fug

comment on: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/the-kitchen-test/

This observation totally ignores *who* prepares food and *where* it is prepared. As recently as the '90s, the U.S. passed the tipping point where more meals were produced outside the home than within it. I'd call that a pretty big change, perhaps not quite on par with the movement from an agrarian to industrial society (when considered alone), but a significant index of our change to a "service" economy.

While technology (even in professional kitchens) has been quite stagnant - blame wage suppression on the retardation of labor-saving innovations - both quantitative changes (consider the huge amount of time went into producing food in the home, even with 1950s technologies) and qualitative changes (we have not yet "re-aligned" the nutritional content of commercially produced foodstuffs) continue to have a major impact on the way we live.

Considered in this context, everything from the obesity "epidemic" to the role of women in the labor force is implicated.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

RT Reports from the Economic Front: China And The Jobs Issue

by Martin Hart-Landsberg

originally published at: http://media.lclark.edu/content/hart-landsberg/2011/01/21/china-and-the-jobs-issue/

CONDENSED FOR TUSG.ORG

The President of China, Hu Jintao, just completed a visit to the U.S. and, not surprisingly, many people used the occasion to raise the jobs issue.

The connection between jobs and China is usually made is as follows: China is an unfair trader. Its state policies, including subsidies and labor repression, are a major reason for the destruction of our manufacturing sector and jobs. The U.S. continues to run an enormous trade deficit with China, a deficit that dwarfs any other bilateral deficit, and for this reason, the U.S. economy continues to suffer from high unemployment, i.e. a "jobs deficit."

This nation-state framing encourages us to see U.S. workers in direct competition with Chinese workers, with their gains largely coming at our expense. Unfortunately, this framing misleads more than it helps to clarify current economic dynamics. It is also followed [by most economists] to a counterproductive response: force China to quicken its embrace of market forces so that its economy will become more like ours.

A more accurate framing would start from the fact that contemporary capitalist dynamics have led to the creation of a regional production network in East Asia, with China serving as the region’s final assembly base for exports to the U.S.