Capitalism's New Global Crisis Reveals the Todayness of Marx I

ps. •sV3? w «-•%. 1 1 flu *! i>«\-'i 95¾ -¾ ,»• ri?->r<"» •» &ra Vol. 43 — No. 6 JULY 1998 5(ty Profit never Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives. 1998-1999 enough, so GM picks fight Capitalism's new global crisis by Felix Martin, Labor Editor reveals the todayness of Marx The strike June 5 by 3,400 union workers at a General Motors' stamping plant in Flint, Michigan News and Letters Committees publishes the quickly began to be felt elsewhere, as parts shortages Draft of its Perspectives Thesis each year soon forced closure of five GM assembly plants. directly in the pages of News & Letters. As part It's about time the workers begin to fight before there of the preparation for our upcoming national is no one left to fight. In the 1970's GM employed 77,000 gathering, we urge your participation in our auto workers in Flint, but today there are only 33,000 discussion around this thesis because our age left and an additional 11,000 more are expected to go is in such total crisis that no revolutionary the next few years. GM wants to invest more in automa organization can allow any separation between tion in the Flint plant but will not unless the union theory and practice, workers and intellectuals, allows work rule changes that will "improve output." "inside" and "outside," philosophy and organi That would allow GM to get rid of more jobs. zation. We are raising questions and ask you to One rule GM wants to eliminate allows workers, help in working out the answers. when working harder on their own, to meet a daily pro duction quota in less than eight hours but get paid for eight hours. In other words,- good old generous motors wants a full 8 hours to get the daily quota out, so they Introduction: can add more production to the quota and get rid of jobs. By June 12, GM closed production plants in Pontiac, Mich, and Fort Wayne, Ind. where its full size Chevrolet The post-Cold War and GMC pickup trucks are made. GM says those plants produce their bread and butter vehicles-big sellers and big profits. GM said it makes at least $5,000 profit on nuclear peril each unit. I have known GM for years, if they say they We live at a time when everything seems imbued are making $5,000 profit, you can bet it's lots more. with its opposite. At the very moment when a mass Since I retired from GM, cars and trucks sell for more movement in Indonesia forced Asia's longest-ruling now, after GM eliminated more than a third of the jobs dictator from power, the detonation of nuclear tests over the last 15 years. Remember when you could buy a by India and Pakistan has brought us to the brink GM car for $2500 and GM told the public the reason of military conflagration. New and potentially revo they were so high was labor cost? How little labor cost is lutionary challenges are arising at the same time as in each car today, but GM wants $20,000 to $30,000 for new threats to the existence of civilization. each car. What's driving up the cost today is profits. The India-Pakistan nuclear tests do not simply On page 3, Flint workers speak for themselves. confirm old realities. In India the Hindu fundamen talist Bharatiya Juanta Party (BJP) is anxious to Workers on strike at General Motors' metal stamping plant in develop a nuclear arsenal, as well as make use of Flint, Mich. (See page 3 for more). Black World simmering conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir, as a way to broaden its shaky base of support. The The U.S. is instead embarking on a new stage of opposition to the BJP was expressed in a statement by nuclear weapons development. This was seen on March Makings of a the National Alliance of People's Movements, an associa 25 when it conducted a "subcritical" nuclear test code- tion of 200 grassroots and environmental movements in named Stagecoach. Though the test was supposedly to India, which denounced the nuclear tests on the grounds monitor the reliability of plutordum in aging warheads, it Black Radical that real national "glory would have been the availabili was really part of a $45 billion program to modernize the ty of clean drinking water, housing, employment, health 1 U.S. nuclear arsenal. As one arms expert put it, "A real Congress services and opportunities for education." Pakistan's scientific and technical revolution is going on in nuclear rulers have meanwhile made it clear that they will use weapons design."2 nuclear weapons to prevent another defeat at the hands by Lou Turner What drives this nuclear arms build-up? In large of Indian forces should war break out over Kashmir. Over part, it is capital's werewolf hunger for self-expan ...the deeper I enter into the cultures and political circles 1.5 billion people how live in an area threatened by sion. The arms industry remains highly profitable the surer I am that the great danger that threatens Africa nuclear catastrophe. and Clinton has no intention of getting in its way. is the absence of ideology. The ramifications of this go beyond India-Pakistan. This is reflected in his refusal to roll back —Frantz Fanon, Summer 1960 India's test irritated China, which is spending vast Stagecoach and other new arms programs on the amounts on new nuclear weapons of its own. Pakistan's grounds that it would crimp the profits of arms We met in Chicago for three days, June 19-21, some two test caused jitters in Iran which is sure to accelerate its contractors. This likewise defines Clinton's trip to thousand of us, grounding, as Walter Rodney would say, effort to obtain nuclear weapons. Even more ominous China, which is not about curbing nuclear with our brothers and sisters, with what we called the developments loom in Russia, which has an increasingly weapons but "furthering trade" and "opening up "radical tradition," with the very idea that there was unstable nuclear arsenal. Only a little over a year ago the business opportunities" in this heartland of child ground on which to meet to seriously discuss the unten head of a nuclear complex in Chelyabinsk, V. Nechai, labor and sweatshops. able reality of being Black in late twentieth century killed himself because he lacked the money to pay his America. At no time has the naked pursuit of corporate profit employees and could through the instrumentality of state power been so total Almost two years in the making, the Black Radical not assure the safety a determinant of U.S. foreign policy. This has led to the Congress (BRC), or "Brie" upside the head of capitalism, of the plant's opera growing nuclear proliferation, of which we have seen only was, with the help of some spontaneous media attention tions. the beginning. and a provocative website opened to an array of ongoing The engine of Clearly, the notion that the nuclear peril came to an debates (www.blackradicalcongress.com), an important today's nuclear prolif end with the end of the Cold War was a hollow illusion. moment in post-LA rebellion Black America. In short, the eration, however, is The Cold War may be over, but the insane logic of capital Black left "represented." the U.S. It was no accumulation which helped drive it is as alive and dan In a piece in Social Text written right after the 1992 Los secret that China gerous as ever. Angeles rebellion, Mike Davis asked if given the influence supplied blueprints to Today's situation may be even more dangerous than of the "Farrakhan view of the world, its prejudices, its Pakistan for a before since the one thing the U.S. and USSR were deter emphasis on black capitalism, and so on...whether there's nuclear bomb and mined not to permit during the Cold War was small or going to be a black left that can engage Farrakhan with advice On how to medium-sized powers deciding the timing of the nuclear any seriousness in the eyes of the home boys and girls"? make one small holocaust for them. With only one superpower left, it now This, of course, brings us to Fanon's grave concern enough to fit on a becomes harder for the U.S. to control nuclear prolifera about the absence of ideology. It and the organization missile. Yet the U.S. tion, even if it wanted to. The post-Cold War era has also question are, and have been from the start, the most seri did nothing to stop seen a proliferation of longstanding conflicts between ous issue confronting the BRC. Though the two, ideology this. At the same regional powers which sends its rulers thirsting for and organization, are inseparable, serious effort has gone time, Clinton pushed nuclear arms. Thomas Graham, formerly of the Arms into working out the latter in lieu of the former. At ener ahead with NATO's Control and Disarmament Agency, recently said, "We are getic workshops and caucuses at the Congress, however, Kashmir: Near the disputed at perhaps the most dangerous period since the begin there was no lack of discussion and debate of ideological expansion, even India-Pakistan border, a woman though it came at the ning of the nuclear age, with the possible exception of the issues. Indeed, by its very working existence the BRC rep Cuban missile crisis." resented an ideological response to the "Farrakhan view sits amidst devastation.

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