Socialists Appeal to Worried Auto Workers

Earlier this week Blogger Brian Christianson at Free Will raised the question: Could General Motors Go Broke? The financial failure of a large corporation would not be unprecedented but unlike Enron or Global Crossing, the problems at General Motors appear to be the result of making open ended financial commitments to employees.

True believing socialists, of course, have jumped all over this situation because it so clearly fits the 19th century template of the world from which their class conflict theory arose.

Political Issues Facing US Auto Workers: Representatives of the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party participated in a meeting of auto workers in Kokomo, Indiana on November 15. The meeting was called to oppose the drastic job- and wage-cutting demands of US auto parts manufacturer Delphi Corporation. It was attended by some two hundred workers, including Delphi, General Motors and other auto workers from Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin.

General Motors, the world’s largest automaker, recently slashed billions of dollars in medical benefits for its active and retired workers, and is expected to announce a restructuring plan next month that will include the shutdown of several plants and the elimination of 25,000 jobs. Many industry analysts are predicting that GM will follow Delphi into bankruptcy court.

Jerry Isaacs, a Socialist Activist, makes the case to worried Auto Workers that neither their Unions nor the Democratic Party are worthy of worker support.

He explained that the UAW bureaucracy had long used anticommunism to drive out its opponents, including the socialist and left-wing pioneers who had built the UAW in the 1930s. He said the working class had to take the auto industry and the whole economy out of the hands of the capitalist class and put it under the democratic control of the working class. … “We have to break free of the straightjacket of these old, bureaucratized unions and break with the Democratic Party, which serves the interests of big business,” he said.

The aggregate interests that constitute the Democratic Party are up for grabs and there are a lot of potential voters ripe for capture by the right message.