From the American Left
History blog-Wednesday, June 17, 2009
With Unemployment Rising- The Call "30 For 40"-
Now More Than Ever- The Transitional Socialist Program
Guest Commentary
Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the
masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now
more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of
pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or
better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here
those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of
concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic
afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist
system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and
methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the
politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics
of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism,
the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges
stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The
Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as
slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick.
Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume
an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a
sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an
automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat
cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into
chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society.
The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a
society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a
society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at
every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the
time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a
sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations
should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual
responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among
all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is
defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the
old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the
movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the
present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the
“unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in
addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically
denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal”
collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding
the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of
life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of
the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands
inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish.
“Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the
relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of
this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers
will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
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