Imagine you’re in a good job with good pay and benefits. One day you fall on the job. The injuries are so severe you are in a coma and lose your shinbone, which is replaced by a metal rod. You require continued medical care and other benefits to maintain your home and family. Then imagine that the insurance company refuses to pay for your medical treatments and other benefits. When you apply for Social Security Disability you are refused. You end up on the street, disabled, homeless and sleeping in below zero temperatures.
“I’m out here because I got hurt on the job fixing police and fire communication systems. Now I get abused, beaten, robbed and harassed by Philadelphia police on a constant basis. I’ve had water thrown on me in freezing cold weathers by the cops.My blankets and sleeping bag were taken by the cops. That’s what they do to us out here. They’ve sent me out here to die . . . I’m cheaper dead than alive.”This is the story of John. (See link to video on this page.)
When one man’s tragedy becomes the fate of millions, aren’t we really talking about class oppression? The cheapening of human life to the extreme of needless death on the street is becoming an all too common experience. The electronic economic revolution under capitalist society is the root cause. All sectors of the economy are transforming into industries in need of little or no human labor. The system will not support labor it does not need.
This process is creating a new section of workers, a new class, employed and unemployed, ranging from minimum wage, part-time, temporary workers to the dispossessed, destitute and homeless. While the ruling class reports record profits, these workers, one-sixth of the population, live below the poverty line and are getting poorer. Nearly half of the American population is just above the poverty line and sinking. Under such conditions, the ruling class can no longer continue to hide the reality of class.
The American ruling class has been masters of divide and conquer for centuries. Billionaire Warren Buffett has called it “class war” and proclaims that his “side is winning.” The strategy in class war, as in any other kind of war, is to weaken the enemy, dividing and isolating them. Their division of the working class into white, Black, Latino, undocumented and countless other identities serves that purpose.
In spite of this, the conditions for class unity are maturing. Automation is economically pushing society toward an irrepressible conflict. Commonly shared poverty and the permanent denial of the necessities of life by the owning class are giving rise to common demands. Whether you are Black and protesting in Ferguson or white, on welfare in Appalachia, the demand is the same for food, housing, health care, etc. None of these demands can be met without a cooperative society where social production is owned publicly and distributed according to need. The next step in that direction is for the new section of workers to become conscious of themselves as members of a class and unite on that basis.
