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| Ray Stevenson |
Somebody of a philosophical turn of mind once mused "if all of the workers of the world could meet for as long as necessary, openly and freely communicating with each other on all the problems and trial/s they faced, and considering in detail how everyone's life could be made free of such problems and tragedies and by making sure that all the real facts were honestly before them… in time they would arrive at genuine and real solutions. Since they are all experts at what they do best, they could then return to work and produce whatever was needed by anybody. That would allow everybody to live longer, happier lives of security and dignity, free from competitive and violent conflict. They would find the means to be in harmony with Nature... in other words, they would become truly, completely, human in ways that were never before achieved... each in their own individual way."
It is likely their first decision would be to stop working for some unknown controlling investor, that always dictated how they could live. They would certainly initiate plans for total and complete cooperation and harmony in their working lives and in their social, national and international relations. They might even invite former investors to come and work with them. Ridding themselves of cutthroat competition, fear and war would be highest priority because repeated and centuries-long experience with hundreds of millions killed, crippled, mutilated, has taught workers and peoples (and now deeply ingrained in historical memory) that these are top priority, primary weapons of their "masters". Today competition, fear and war are essential to "guarantee" limitless "capital accumulation" for the TNCs (Transnational Corporations) in a "globalized" world. Since workers are very practical and sensible, such ideas and actions would result from our "all-in" workers "unlimited" meeting. Centuries of inhuman sacrifice, patience and discipline under the rule of the "Masters" could lead to no other result.
But having said that, we can immediately hear rising in unearthly yowls of anguish, hate and fear, the voices of TNC corporate "owners" and their "bought-and-paid for" lackeys of media, political life etc.
"What lunatic nonsense is this... what subversive communist insanity have we here? Only fools and criminally minded do not appreciate and understand that capitalism is immortal, that capitalist competition feeds the world... that without our very own capitalist system garbed in the holy robes of eternity the world would either disappear, disintegrate... or worse... capitalism saves... so harbor not such sacrilegious notions from hell! etc. etc. without end.
Of course we are prepared to admit that the "philosophical" notion of an "all-in" limitless workers meeting is not on the agenda for next week... or even next year. The "idea" of ridding the world's peoples of corporate-driven, historically unmatched plunder under TNC "globalized rule" has not yet "gripped the minds" sufficiently of enough workers and people "to become a material force for necessary fundamental change"... with the proud exception of Cuba, and possibly in a somewhat lesser degree in China, North Korea and Vietnam. That is why the TNCs seek endlessly and unerringly the destruction of these Socialist systems... just as they were temporarily "successful" in the USSR. But nobody should delude themselves that fundamental revolutionary ideas of ridding societies of the crippling ills of TNC "globalization" are not growing like well-fertilized mushrooms everywhere in our "Global Village." That is a process growing in TNC "soil," in their created material world, that no tonnage of bombs or firepower can destroy or throw into the hellhole jails and concentration camps they have erected.
Mass actions by peoples everywhere... from East Timor to Colombia to Seattle, Davos, Prague, Washington, Toronto or wherever... are erupting and grow precisely from the horrific material world that is the product of TNC capitalism. Given the misnomer of "neo-liberalism." the TNC "New World Order" (apart from uneven growth of massive oppression of people and despoiling of vast national terrain) has failed to produce even an iota of anything either "liberal" or "new." Instead their whole blood-stained mess is of the texture and vintage of the worst barbarisms, duplicities and horrors of past histories.
A prime item of the many "bibles" (perhaps "handbooks") of the growing new TNC cult of "misinformation" comes from the outpourings of Francis Fukuyama, not surprisingly a former member of the U.S. State Department Planning Staff, and more recently a "consultant" to the U.S. TNC arms manufacturer Rand Corporation. His book "The End of History And the Last Man," published early in the last decade has been trumpeted as a kind of "holy grail" of the highest possible intellectual achievement of all time. Very interestingly, none other then Edouard Shevernadze (who plotted and conspired with Mikhail Gorbachev, Texas oilman and Republican U.S. President George Bush and his then Secretary of State, Republican oil tycoon James Baker, to dismantle the USSR) lavished highest, fawning praise on the book. Of course the corrupt, "globalized" result of the co-conspiracy was to open the doors to overt unlimited takeover of huge Soviet oil resources in the Caucasus with untrammeled "rights" given to Standard Oil Chevron. It rates as one of histories dirtiest deals and sell-outs. The infamous "thievery" or "deal" was exposed, front page in the New York Times August 15, 1991. Of course they (NYT) approved... not surprisingly. This TNC "journal" might properly be labeled as "Globalized World Champion" of all TNC journals of noxious "misinformation". They understand very well the "class struggle" and what types of bankrupt intellectual garbage (or news) is required to maintain the "landless (proletariat) peasants in bondage". What they cannot either understand or change are the intolerable results of violent, all-embracing negative, terrible consequences for the vast majority by their class plundering wars arid suicidal "privatized" assaults on the world and its people.
What the "ideologues" do is blind public perceptions of reality so the real rulers will "prosper" and/or control. Created is a state of confused anarchy, or rule by whip, the "garrote" and the gun... experienced all too frequently in our "global" village.
For the workers the ongoing class struggle can only be successful in our "new" millennium of unipolar oppression and exploitation if carried into life fully and necessarily back-grounded by knowledge and understanding of TNC powers, strategic and tactical designs and activities. To fail in this would mean handing new powers and "victories" to the exploiters and agony to all people in devastating defeats.
Fortunately and inevitably counter forces are developing across the world. At the workers trade union level an international meeting of union organizations from twenty-one countries took place in Saint-Adele, Quebec, Canada recently. It brought together leaders from the pulp and paper industry on a worldwide scale. According to an account carried in the November 4th, 2000 edition of the "Peoples Weekly World" (the newspaper published by the U.S. Communist Party) the 21 unions agreed to join forces "to better cope with increasing globalization trends in their industry." It is no surprise that little if any information was given of this seminal event by the TNC press of North America. In reality such action is a completely biased and "unethical" (???) censorship of public information by the "ideological gunslingers" of the TNC-controlled media and public press.
A leader of one participating union from Finland at the Quebec meeting is quoted in the PWW as saying: "As unions we are always stronger united together than we are acting separately. (We) here have taken a major step forward in forging global union networks that can now provide... practical solidarity that our members need" The meeting was convened by the International Federation of Chemical Energy, Mine & General Workers Union (ICEM), an umbrella group for more than twenty million workers internationally. The General Secretary of ICEM, Fred Higgs said… "the growing globalization and concentration of wealth and power and market share by fewer and fewer companies... necessitate global unions and ICEM is ready to play that role." (emphasis added - RLS).
That is something more than "a straw in the wind" indicator... it might be seen as an "opening" gust of gales and hurricanes of trade union and working class resistance and opposition to the mindless TNC challenge to humanity. At another level a recent edition (October 29, 2000) of "Contact", an information bulletin from the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) reports under the headline "Norwegian Union Strikes In Support of Canadian Members at Falconbridge" that the "Norwegian Chemical Workers Union, NKIF-Local 40, has voted over 90% in favour of declaring a sympathy strike in support of CAW members, Local 598 at Falcon-bridge (nickel mine) in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada starting November 12th. The Norwegian workers are also employed by Falconbridge and refine materials from Sudbury..." (all bracketed words added - RLS). Again, the mass "media masters" did not publish a single word of this international solidarity event… for reasons not difficult to understand when it is very well known that "Falconbridge Nickel Mines" is a TNC giant. Additionally "Contact" informs that the Norwegian workers "will send material financial aid" and apply other public pressures to force the nickel giant to drop its demands for concessions from the Union and settle the several months old dispute. The "concessions" carry the appearance of International Monetary Fund dictatorial edicts in the "globalized" assault on labour as does the proposed anti-labour "strangulation" legislation in Ontario, Canada.
A small correction to CAW's "Contact" Editor, however, is in order. The Norwegian workers action is described as "unprecedented". The true beginnings of current solidarity dates back to 1963, thirty-seven years ago as this is written. Local 598 was then an affiliate of the Mine Mill & Smelter Workers of Canada, having been organized originally during World 'War II by that Union. In 1963 a delegation of Falconbridge workers and National Union officers went to Kristiaxsand, Norway to establish fraternal bonds of mutual assistance as between the nationally and geographically widely separated Falconbridge workers. In the same year Eric Nelson, President of the Refinery Workers Union, led a delegation to the Mine Mill national (Canadian) convention in Sudbury. Ties were first established, firmly and in solidarity. As a former member of the Mine-Mill Canadian National Executive Board, today's activity is very gratifying. But today's splendid solidarity action bearing such magnificent results on intercontinental mutual support bears witness to a "new" worker relation that stands on the cutting edge of accomplishing new trade union powers and rights in battles yet to come with the TNCs. As suggested before, the fullest, most radiant blooming of these "new' powers will come neither easily, or because somebody appealed for them. They will only arise out of the material world we inhabit in the most stubborn... and probably prolonged struggles of a worldwide class nature. Undoubtedly there are those who believe (perhaps even (but not always) with great honesty) that other forms of peace and advancement for the people, and the working class exist in prolonged reforming of TNC capitalism. History and the painful, agonizing experience of past years, together with even the most cursory examination of the overt character and deeds of TNC power today, lends little, or NO credibility to such notions. That does not imply that the struggle for "reform" should be abandoned. But to accept "reform" as the "ultimate" that will bring new, fundamental economic, social, political... or cultural transformation is a road that is phony and is false. History surely has underlined that fact. The noxious "system" of monopoly capitalist exploitation has now far outlived any useful, or possible positive advances of fulfillment for either humanity's most cherished hopes for stable life, or the eco-system and future that can sustain it. History tells us that when any socio-political-economic system (or arrangement) pervades and controls all life, the time has come for it to be swept aside and new systems (or arrangement) devised and erected that will serve the real needs and interests of the majority in every phase of continuing life.
But much dross, illusions spawned by deliberately created falsehoods (a la "Big Lie" techniques) are imbedded in our "common heritage" psychologically among masses of people. It is these mental and emotional psychoses that Engels labeled as "muck" affecting all who lived in class societies that require reexamination, and where necessary should be cast away. Included would be the diseases of racism, chauvinism, the perpetual arrogance of the "ultra right" political forces et al. It is upon such "rotten fruit" that TNC braintrusters feast in order to promote "divisions of labour… setting worker against worker, sex against sex, nation against nation, The central purpose is to pave the way to even greater control as well as hard forms of corruption (both old and new) leading to deeper exploitation and profiteering.
For the upper echelons of top earning workers in the highly industrialized countries there has come to exist (as was the case before, and first in England) the growth of immobilizing opportunism. The problems of forging mutual international bonds of solidarity between those top-level people and workers in the neocolonial, low paid and deprived world looms with huge impediment... not to be easily resolved.
What common bonds of interest and solidarity are there (as an example) between a $50 to $60 thousand dollars a year miner working in the Inco nickel mines of Sudbury and the miner toiling for wages less than 5% in Inco lateritic nickel mines on the other side of the world on Salwesi Island of Indonesia under the totally corrupted murderous and CIA installed Government of the vicious, venal Suharto? The hard facts are that the description just laid out is in every sense reality... except for the recent popularly supported overthrow of the U.S. CIA installed dictator. Perhaps even more astounding is the fact that the pound of nickel produced in either Sudbury or Salwesi sells for the same price on the world markets, while the relative "labour cost" hovers at 100-to-1 ratios. TNC INCO laughs more and more loudly all the way to the bank. Actually these mostly U.S. banks finance all Inco activities wherever they take place. Control of the workers lives is exercised in degrees approaching, and most often ending as 100% total. At root that control rests upon the "division of labour" previously underlined in these series of articles.
Is this situation isolated?
Hardly!!! In fact it is very essential to control exercised by TNC power. It is also designed to maintain "forever" (???) what has been since the downfall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics an ever-accelerating pace of economic exploitation and control in the "unipolar, globalized" world we inhabit. If the $60,000 dollar a year worker ignores or fails to come to grips with that situation, more cheaply produced nickel from Salwesi may cost him his job. It can also be said he stands on the side of the "status quo" as a. pillar of reaction against the brave and agonizing efforts of the vast majority of people in the world to reach and find ways to cast out TNC imposed miseries.
But the problems of the growth of an upper-crust opportunism among a section of organized workers are not the sole measure of international relations between workers. It would be folly to suggest these rest upon strictly "economic" factors alone... as the TNC "masters" know very well. But the ideological and cultural basis of such opportunism grows from the economic expansion of the TNCs. Without fail, this process is coupled with political, military, cultural... and even moral and religious offensives on the psyches of masses of people. During World War II Herr Goebbels of Nazi "Big Lie" infamy called his end of Nazi government "The Ministry of Propaganda" carrying out full fledged, monstrously deceptive leading "psychological warfare." It is not too much to suggest all his unsavory, pernicious and lying Nazi activity did not die with him in his Headquarter Berlin bunker early in May of 1945. His Nazi Government's victims had by that time swollen to more than 50 millions of humans. For confirmation of thought that the "Big Lie" lives on in the service of TNCs New World Order we may review the ghastly mind-twisting propaganda of our current or recent world coverage of wars, incursions... or simply the destruction and annihilation of masses of peoples... whether in Vietnam, Laos, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Palestine, Iraq, Guatemala, Grenada, Yugoslavia… or wherever the unheroic "spin doctors" and "masters of deceit" are assigned to enlighten the world of the "heroics" of TNC war and depredation... followed always by massive capitalist investments to "accumulate more capital".
The limited and incomplete analysis I have sought to lay before the reader in this and preceding articles I freely admit... even proclaim... is not an "easy read". Unquestionably it will be challenged on grounds of being "incomplete," biased and/or subjective and insufficient research or collective discussion. To such charges or criticisms I plead guilty... a thousand times over. My personal "subjective" bias I can only say flows from a long lifetime as a worker and of the closest association and shoulder-to-shoulder struggles with working people. The case rests. You and coming days will be the judge.
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