Nina-Bytes: No Fools on this Drive

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

Win for Workers Across America: Amazon Union Victory Inspires Progressives

Hey folks, apparently everything is coming up Milhouse; at least for American workers trying to organize against the corporate giants, that is. 

It turns out that the Starbucks Workers United organizational effort isn’t the only good news on the docket last week. As I mentioned in a late update to yesterday's post, roughly eight thousand workers at a Staten Island Amazon Warehouse have united behind organizer Chris Smalls to form the Amazon Labor Union; becoming the first group of workers to defeat Amazon’s infamous union busting tactics. Although the ALU’s model of organizing differs from the Starbucks Workers United model, the principles behind the campaigns, and the people-power they’re conducted with reveal these movements to be brothers from another mother.

To call this a mere upset, doesn't do what Smalls and his compatriots have accomplished here proper justice. These folks just chin checked Jeff Bezos and celebrated by clowning him on the news afterwards. To get a better idea of what this means for labor and some portions of the left, let's look at this April 1st, 2022 summary by Brett Wilkins on Common Dreams. Inside we find a round-up of left-leaning voices and organizations praising the workers, and noting that Amazon's brutal corporate exploitation has rendered the organizing iron hot as hell. Here's an example: 

"Varshini Prakash, executive director of the youth-led climate group Sunrise Movement, cheered Friday's "win for workers across America," while hailing "worker victories at giant corporations like Amazon and Starbucks" as "part of a growing wave of activism that is paving the way for a more just economy."

While this certainly is a "watershed moment" for modern American labor, and that is something to celebrate, I personally couldn't help but notice one of the comments Smalls himself made about the union's victory. Namely, "this is the catalyst for the revolution." Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying eight thousand Amazon warehouse workers organizing into a union, means the revolution is on its way automatically; and I doubt that's what Smalls meant either. What I am saying however, is that learning how to organize a union against corporate power, makes it easier to organize against capitalist power.

Furthermore, when you get right down to it, the solution to virtually every pressing problem in the Pig Empire, from imperialism, to the rise of fascism, and especially including climate crisis, is to organize the larger labor class towards the ultimate destruction of capitalism. How are you going to overthrow the ruling class, if you can't even organize a union to check the tyranny of your employer? No, a union isn't a revolution, and neither really, is democratic socialism; but you don't get there, without organized and empowered workers acting as one to protect their class interests against capitalist predation.  

Six years ago, I saw the doomed campaign of an independent democratic socialist Senator from Vermont, birth a whole new generation of young people further left than he was, and proud to call themselves socialists. Two summers ago, I saw outrage at murderpig violence against (primarily) Black men, transform into an American uprising that lasted a whole season. At the end of last week, I saw a man that Amazon fired and underestimated, turn the tables on arguably the most powerful corporation on earth. You know, the funny thing about an avalanche is that it always starts as a snowball or two, rolling down a hill.

My advice to the ruling classes in the Pig Empire is to sleep well; while you can.

 nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Film Sessions: A Cheater's Week with Professor Richard Wolff

 

Editor's note: Film Sessions is a weekly feature here on Media Madness in which I share, analyze and expand on a relevant video created by someone on the left wing of Youtube.

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As I mentioned in my most recent journal, I'm currently up to my eyeballs trying to put together a flurry of Biden-centric articles about American politics, just to establish a baseline understanding with my readers as we pivot into a new (yet familiar) era of neoliberal authoritarianism. What I neglected to bring up in that post however, is that I'm also battling a head cold, getting my research notes together for a new episode of the No Fugazi Podcast with my co-host Nick Galea, and trying to finish a tedious but necessary cross-posting project on my main website, ninaillingworth.com. In other words, despite working twenty-one out of twenty-five days this month already, I'm behind my own schedule and I have little hope of actually finishing everything I wanted to do in January on time.

Still, like a fool, I insist on trying my best, and so for this week's Film Session blog, I'd like to return to a man who needs no introduction (in part because I introduced him quite thoroughly only two weeks ago) - Marxist economist, Richard D. Wolff. The twist here is that I'm going to post two short videos starring professor Wolff, one from his YouTube channel, and one from the Gravel Institute. In return, it is my hope that you'll forgive me for keeping my analysis brief, and skimping a bit on the additional resources this time; after all, many of them will be repeats from my last post about Richard Wolff's work.

First up, we're going to stick with our Biden-centric theme and examine an eight minute, "Wolff Responds" video called "What Biden's Immediate Economic Program Should Be." 

The first thing I want to note is that I told you that I agree with most, but not all of the things Wolff says in our last article about him, and that kind of applies here in a very odd way. Because the professor put the word "immediate" in the title of his video, and yet his presentation doesn't start with, or even mention the absurdly obvious need to literally pay Americans to stay home until we can put Captain Trips (coronavirus) in a shallow grave, I unfortunately have to cry foul here. The fact of the matter is that the number one crisis, social, economic, or political, facing pretty much every person in the labor class the world over right now, is stopping Covid-19, and until that happens, some of the good ideas Wolff does suggest in this video, simply don't matter - and in fact, one of them, a federal jobs program, would be a colossally bad idea "immediately" in light of the struggle against the virus as it stands today.

Frankly however, I've watched enough of professor Wolff's videos, debates and lectures to know that he's not a heartless eugenicist who doesn't care if workers die, and in fact his three big suggestions for Biden in this video would all be important parts of an agenda to help people survive the fallout from coronavirus after we've got it under control. In other words, the real problem with Wolff's video essay might literally just be that he put "immediate" in the title, and he forgot to say "once it's safe to even go back to work" somewhere in the presentation.

With that understood, what are those three suggestions? Keeping in mind that Wolff is clearly focused on things Biden could in fact accomplish in office, he wants the administration to pursue a massive federal jobs program to fight unemployment, significantly increase taxes on the wealthy and corporations to help pay for a recovery, and end the trade spat and saber rattling with China before it turns into a real war that's bad for everyone, the labor class included. 

To be clear, nothing Wolff is calling for in this video is really all that radical and I suspect that's very much on purpose given his feelings about Palooka Joe's economic team. A federal jobs program is a big part of how we got out of the Great Depression, rich people have so much money they're inflating speculative asset bubbles all over our economy, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out any money we spend on f*cking with China, is money we can't spend on a post-Covid recovery. And yet, I think we all know that our capitalist overlords will refuse, and call these simple and achievable measures extreme.  

To that I say? Bullsh*t. If you remember back in the Spring when America was being lead by a reality TV show fascist who tried to pretend Covid wasn't even real, even quasi-mainstream observers were talking about coronavirus signaling the end of capitalism as we know it; and yet today, as the bodies climb even higher and the crisis (both social, and economic) deepens, those same folks would call professor Wolff' suggestions here too extreme? Hell no; Biden asked the country to give Democrats control of the Senate so he could fight Covid-19 and restore the economy. Well he now has the House, the Senate and the Oval Office - it's time to stop pretending a mask mandate on federal property is a real solution and put the people's money, where Palooka Joe's mouth has been. Check out the video with professor Wolff below:

What Biden's Immediate Economic Program Should Be

Our second video in this "Cheater's Week" edition of Film Sessions once again comes to us from The Gravel Institute, which is showing promising signs of an ongoing collaboration with professor Wolff that has me really exciting. It's called "How Capitalism Exploits You." 

I chose this video to round out our discussion this week because once again, I think Wolff and the Gravel crew have managed to produce a (very short) feature that successfully attacks the "common sense" right wing ideologies that underpin the work of propaganda outlets like PragerU. In this case, the bogus reactionary idea that finds its way into Wolff's crosshairs is the belief that your boss is doing you a favor by employing you, and as such has a morally supportable right to profit from your labor. Not so says Wolff; capitalism is by its very nature about theft and exploitation - theft from who? You. 

Ultimately, given that I specifically said you'd be better off using your time on Youtube teaching Marxist concepts, than debunking PragerU one video at a time, and this video is quite literally five minutes of Marxist labor theory, I feel obligated to include it here today:

How Capitalism Exploits You

Additional Resources

The Gravel Institute Youtube Channel

Richard D. Wolff Youtube Channel

 Democracy at Work Youtube Channel

Richard D. Wolff (.com)

Yes, Socialism Would Handle Coronavirus Better Than Capitalism

Coronavirus, Unemployment & a Federal Jobs Program

A Full-Blown Cold War With China Could Be Disastrous

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”