Power to the People in Time of Crisis

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

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"Without effective labor
power, the moneyed classes win every battle."

There can be no meaningful discussion of the current
financial meltdown that does not revolve around fundamental questions of power
- who has it, and who doesn't? Politics in the United States - sadly, often
including Left politics - has deteriorated to the point that questions of
power, as in Power to the People, aren't even part of the conversation. Yet the
power of the Lords of Capital to do as they please, to treat the national and
world economies as their private playthings and property, is what brought us
the meltdown. Only a great shift in power relationships, seizing it from the
financial oligarchy to empower the great majority, can hope to bring even a
semblance of stability and relief to the people as a whole.

It is proper that progressives point to the vast gap in the
size of the bankers' bailout - already hovering around $8 trillion - and the funds
to be spent on general economic recovery, which will almost certainly amount to
less than $1 trillion. But even more important than the raw numbers of dollars
spent, is the relative power relationship between the people and the
money-players, between labor and parasitical finance capital. If the end result
of draining the last drops of the national wealth, is to put the speculator
Humpty Dumptys back on the controlling heights of power, then the whole
exercise is worst than a waste - it is simply a continuity of theft on a
previously unimagined scale.

Even at this early stage of response to the financial
disaster, it becomes clear that the incoming Obama administration intends not
only to bail the banking parasites out of a crisis of their own making, but to
preserve their power to drag the national and world economies back into hell,
once again. What else can explain the fact that Obama's economic team is a
bankers' club, totally dominated by full spectrum perpetrators of economic
crime? It is already quite clear that Barack Obama is stacking the recovery
deck in favor of speculators and pirates.

"Obama's economic
team is a bankers' club, totally dominated by full spectrum perpetrators of
economic crime."

So, how are the countervailing powers of labor and the
popular majority to be strengthened in this attempt at economic recovery? Don't
look to Obama for an answer. As labor journalist Steve Early wrote in Tuesday's
issue of Counterpunch,
Obama's designated chief-of-staff, the dreadful Rahm Emanuel, has backed off
from a White House commitment to knocking down obstacles to union organizing
through the Employee Free Choice Act, now before Congress. If the legislation
fails, organized labor will shrink into irrelevance - a non-player in the
national power game. Without effective labor power, the moneyed classes win
every battle, which means crisis with no end. Union power is essential to
economic recovery.

In the same way, people's power must be brought to bear on
the bankers whose primary function appears to be the creation of chaos and
social insecurity. In Chicago, fifteen aldermen are demanding the city withdraw its business
from Bank of America for forcing the shutdown of a 200-person window and door
factory. Bank of America has sucked up 25 billion of the people's dollars, but
refuses to extend credit to keep workers on the payroll. Just as activists
forced the disinvestment in U.S. corporations that did business with racist
South Africa in the 1980s, the people can use their dollars like a whip to
punish the bankers for their behavior.

Economic recovery is impossible without the vigorous
exercise of people's political power.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted
at [email protected].

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