The Philly Streets and City Wide News

On the Marc Steiner Show, Marc continues his conversation with Bill Fletcher, who explains how the global economy creates the need for a broad movement of and for workers

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21 thoughts on “The History of Race and Labor in the USA (2/2)”

stop complaining about the current and show me a plan for the future or STFU!

Such an excellent discussion of the major issues facing us.

Scapegoating trump as zombies…!? You start off wrong just there. And shows your own mental hang up…. and commitment even though it's totally wrong heard. Even though zombies exist a single season of TWD teaches that zombies AINT YOUR MAIN PROBLEM!!

No way you're going to raise the wages of some Bangladeshi to that of a USA workers

There ARE very evil people. People that take millions from others' labour, people who have income to support hundreds of people but won't do it, people who would not pay taxes but would rather have people die in illnesses and live in poverty. People who do not care that their country is killing masses of people in military conflicts or by embargo, people who plan wars, destabilization of governments. I'm not religious, but when Bible claims Jesus said rich people have difficulties to get into the heaven, that statement carries fundamental truth: it's evil to be rich when other people suffer in poverty.

So, the goal is to raise the global minimum wage and worker conditions instead of building community communes that are self-sufficient and don't rely on multi-national corporations? This doesn't make sense to me. And maybe that's why good people (although somewhat misguided) support an inapt and pedantic leader like Trump. Not because they're evil. Rather they're desperate and the only solution the left offers is a global minimum wage. Cognitive retardation at it's finest.

Where Bernie made the big mistake is not joining forces with the Green Party. Given the choice between a candidate who advocated health care for everybody and free college our 1% would rather have an unfit, unstable Trump than Sanders, Sanders would have cost them too much money on lost dividends, and a Socialist – unthinkable. Would the blacks have rallied around Sanders, hell no. Racism works both ways. We had eight years of a black president, a president bought and paid for by the establishment, a black president who not only got the black but also the progressive white votes but didn't do a darn thing for the 99%, white, black, latino and else.

Bill Fletcher asserts he thinks the Russians were "involved". "Involved" in what? In making Bernie lose to Hillary? He should be reminded that there is not a single shred of evidence to corroborate his assertion of Russian involvement. There is nothing but assertions being bandied about. But there is tons of evidence of the DNC and the Obama administration committing ballot rigging during the primaries, thus forcing a candidate on the electorate who is so hated and so despised she even lost to an orange reality show buffoon.
The Democratic party establishment then cooked up the Russia involvement lie to deflect attention from their own criminal behaviour and prevent a reasonable discussion about who is really responsible for Trump winning the presidency.
If Fletcher continues to toe the Corporate Democratic Party line, he won't need the 25 percent Zombies among the electorate to torpedo his cause – he does it himself.

The problem of evil inside humans is addressed once more, this time from a lighter stand point, as it was admitted that people turned evil, not that they're inherently so. However it should have had a little more time in digging it out, in order to show its roots. Aren't them a part of the system itself, I mean, aren't the evil characters people become a direct consequence of the system – which, by the way, is not exactly 'neoliberalism', but capitalism struggling to becoming as much efficient as fair (although by its nature it be impotent to do this)? In short, when are we going to start to describe more precisely this phenomenon that comes out of the willing to trade (by exchanging, because it's possible to trade by sharing too), and of its development in using the idea of money to ease transactions? As every problem with our current (and with any one) economic system boils down to values (i.e., ethics, morals), be them a priori – inherent in human nature – or derived from (caused by) the system, the exhaustive understanding of its mechanics is crucial for making any statement about it, and also for people to develop a better sense of generalization, becoming able to infer from a more general argumentation what specifically is of their interest. (and that may have been Sanders' biggest problem, I mean, the inability people have to weave their own stories from one more general, more encompassing.

His analysis of the Sanders campaign is delusional. I don't imagine it's true, but if people of color supported Clinton because Sanders narrative wasn't sufficiently explicit about the plight of Puerto Ricans and Native Americans, I'd say that's their problem. Bill Fletcher's embrace of the "basket of deplorables" argument is dangerous.

Marx and doing a deep dive on Marx’s “The Fraction on Machines.” Normally there wouldn’t be this type of urgency but I feel the system is getting ready to collapse in September or October; at the very latest early next year and knowledge is a great tool to have in collapse. We’re at the point now where there will be a Climate event that will shake us into reality but even if that doesn’t happen we’re in a perfect storm for collapse. Democracy has been hijacked; Charles Koch and the Billionaire donor class have seized control of the levers of power. This was done in Kansas and in Chile with disastrous results now it’s being done here. Capitalism in this country can’t be changed through regulation anymore.

US Capitalism is at the end of a fifty year cycle and as Paul Mason’s book points out this is the last cycle for Capitalism. The cycles are based on economics, labour, technology and energy. With the economy you can pin point to exact years and exact actions that lead to a down swing. This year in March China opened up its Oil futures market and with the new US trade policy against China this could possibly lead to the petro-Yuan challenging the petro-dollar. The one thing that has helped usher in new cycles for Capitalism in the past was the power of organized labour but now that power is gone. Marx talks about this in his “Fraction on the Machines”; labour has been incorporated into fixed Capital by the Machine. Capitalism’s need to become more profitable alters the means of production which leads to division of labour and this leads to mechanization. Capitalism also consumes a lot of energy to keep growing; the Car industry alone uses enormous amounts of energy to make cars that get us from point A to B. We no longer have the luxury to manufacture endless amounts of cars so they can define who we are. The true fight though is against the “Myth” that rich Slave Owners tried to install into the psyche of the US a long time ago and that is the right of ownership and “Property.” The question that gets answered with collapse will be “is there a such thing as a Social being or are we all just individuals on our own.”