“We don’t negotiate with hostage-takers.” That’s what we always hear when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. If you negotiate with hostage-takers, the logic goes, it only encourages more hostage-taking. Compromising in the short term leads to larger “national security” problems in the long run.
 In other countries workers have begun to fight back. Above, workers march in Greece. |
But on the biggest “security” concern facing millions of working-class people in this country—that is, the economic crisis—President Obama has taken a very different approach. By his own admission, Republicans in Congress are functioning as “hostage takers” with their pledge to block all legislation unless Bush’s tax cuts for the rich are extended, and “the American people are the hostages.” But in this case, the Obama administration has not only negotiated with the hostage-takers, but complied with their demands.
Of course, in real-life situations people are frequently compelled to comply with the demands of hostage takers. “I will give you my money and in return you set me and your other prisoners free.” Not a happy choice but an understandable decision.
Even though the Democrats command large majorities still in both houses of Congress, they act like the Republicans in the Senate have an equivalent power. They bow before Republican demands and then whine about it later.
What we need now is real leadership from the millions-strong labor movement. Is it not time for the country’s working class to utilize its vast power, to “take hostages” so to speak, to defend the lives and jobs of working people? Unlike the Republican fat cats in the Senate whose “power” is a myth, based on legislative maneuvering, tens of millions of workers can shut this country down if their interests are constantly being trampled on by the politicians of both parties.
We should stop accepting the tip-toeing by the Democrats who claim to be afraid of upsetting the so-called hostage-takers. Why should we be “hostages” when we can fight back and win?
How long will we allow the dictatorship of the banks?
For the last 35 years in particular, the banks have leveraged their financial clout to hold public spending hostage, and the economy more generally. They tell governments, from the municipal to the federal level, that they must cut social spending, lower corporate taxes, and make timely payments on all their debts if they wish to remain “credit-worthy” and “business-friendly.”
The same goes even for the private sector. The banks determine if a business is worthy of investment and has “growth potential” based not only on its quarterly profits, but on whether it can increase profits by further attacking workers’ wages and hard-earned benefits.
Of course, the corporate politicians and executives agree with this program and benefit from it. If anything, it gives them a way to go to working-class people and say, “We don’t want to make cuts, but these are the laws of the market.”
The Republicans’ economic plan “The Pledge to America” shows what they have in store for working people. Their program promises a future of dramatic cuts to social programs, unfettered Wall Street domination, and growing inequality.
Contrary to popular belief, the Democratic establishment does have a vision too. The thing is, it is the same vision. A bipartisan commission supported by the White House, as well as the Domenici-Rivlin plan authored by Democratic policy “experts,” both aim to make workers bear the burden of the economic crisis. They both include raising the retirement age. They propose reducing capital and marginal tax rates on the rich beyond even Bush’s cuts. Meanwhile, both include a host of new sales and consumer taxes.
In short, these three economic programs being pushed by the capitalist parties could be published together under the title “Put All the Money in the Bag: Strategies to Take Working People Hostage for the 21st Century.”
If we are always the hostages—facing doomsday scenarios unless we accept wage cuts, tuition hikes, and Social Security privatization—the future will be one of concession after concession, a race to the bottom. The hostage-takers will just keep doing the same thing, because, after all, it works.
So what do we do? The Republicans and Democrats are currently recommending poor and working people adopt the logic of their captors. They want us to think that what is good for our captors is good for us. We are supposed to recognize this hostage situation as a fact of life, and learn to love it.
But there are other options. We say it is time for workers to stop being hostages of the system, and to start “taking hostages” instead. In country after country, workers and students have begun to fight back and exercise their real power in society with strikes and shutdowns. We need that here. The banks take the economy hostage by withholding capital. We can take it hostage by withholding labor. Their capital strikes can be met powerfully with labor strikes.
Labor loses nothing by dramatic action that it is not already losing through inaction. For those who are worried about labor losing a spot at the negotiating table, we issue a reminder: They do negotiate with hostage-takers.
