G.M. in crisis – a workers’ response is necessary!

The long-lived giant of the American auto industry – General Motors – headquartered in Detroit, Michigan (where half of the shutdown will take place, and has the highest rate of unemployment in the US) has not survived the world’s economic crisis and filed for bankruptcy on June 1, 2009.

General Motors Corporation is the world’s second largest auto maker after Toyota, and its downfall will be, following Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, and World Com Inc, the fourth largest bankruptcy in US history.

GM filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the federal court of Manhattan, New York reporting $173 billion in debts and $82 billion in assets, while planning to reemerge as a smaller GM, producing only four brands: GMC, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and Buick.

Forthcoming factory closures will take place in Michigan, Virginia, Delaware, Ohio, and Tennessee in the course of few years; going from 47 plants to 33 by 2012.  Reminiscent of the Great Depression, this will result in 20,000 job losses and 2,600 closed dealerships shattering countless lives.

This is a corporation that manufactures trucks and cars in 34 countries, employs approximately 266,000 workers worldwide, and was leader of the global sales for 77 consecutive years from 1931 to 2007.

In April 2009, GM received US$ 16.4 billion in loans from the U.S. Treasury department on top of $3 billion from the Canadian government for General Motors in Canada – also owned by GM.

“I am absolutely confident that if well managed, a new GM will emerge that can provide a new generation of Americans a chance to live out their dreams…” Obama said on Monday, June 1, to push forward the pumping of another US $30 billion into GM, once the iconic symbol of corporate America.  This is in addition to another US $20 billion it already received to reorganize its business.

The downfall of the GM Corporation is not and cannot be seen as an isolated occurrence or mismanagement of one company. Behind this is the whole system of capitalism, which is now in a serious fight to destroy excess capital accumulated over the past several decades, and, with it, the restoration of greater profitability rates across the board.

At this historical moment, all the workers of the world must come to realize through systematic propaganda work that, “not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons – the modern working class – the proletarians”.1

What the workers undergo in this economic crisis, and in the aftermath of every downfall, results in further assaults on standards of living, job losses, and growing competition within the class itself to the benefit of the capitalists.  This further marginalizes and disaffects the natural militancy of the class, and surrenders them further by cutting their wages, benefits, and, most importantly, their resistance to stand together as a class that has nothing to lose except its chains, and gain a world of power, utilizing unity and knowledge to change and end this decaying and rotten system of exploitation and repression.

This is what the capitalists have in store for the working class and the urban poor, but that could be reversed and turned against them if only a party existed to coordinate their actions to wage war against the exploiters.  “All previous historical movements were the movements of the minorities…the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air”.2

Every member of the working class should act upon the momentum to demand that not one more penny of theirs be paid out to these failing machines; this giant bankruptcy is indicative of the bankruptcy of the system itself. For more than 100 years, GM was allowed to produce giant profits that it then passed out to its shareholders; however, they were not sharing the wealth with the workers on the production line.  When things were going well for GM, the bosses got filthy rich.  Now that it’s failing the workers are expected to pay for it.  But why should they?  Should the workers contribute 50 billion to save a company that will go back to the same old story of paying the workers as little as they can get away with while keeping the profits that the workers are producing?  No!

The workers must not be afraid to stand up for their rights.  We support the workers of GM in every way possible, so that they have the full capabilities to defend themselves.  If they take it over, all of the working class should support them in this battle. The working class must not let itself pay for the failures of the capitalist system; a system that enslaves them; whether it is with bail-out money, lay-offs, benefit reductions, or wage freezes/reductions.

Leon Trotsky’s words on a distant economic crisis still hold true today. “In today’s defensive economic struggles unfolding on the basis of the crisis, the Communists must participate most actively in all the trade unions, in all the strikes and demonstrations, and in all kinds of movements, always maintaining their inner ties unbroken in their work, and always stepping to the forefront as the most resolute and best disciplined wing of the working class. Depending upon the course of the crisis and the shifts in the political situation, the defensive economic struggle may become extended, embracing ever newer layers among the working class, among the population and among the army of the unemployed; and on becoming transformed at a certain stage into a revolutionary offensive struggle, it may be crowned with victory. It is precisely to this end that our efforts must be directed.”3

In the event that GM gets another $30 billion, and tens of thousands lose their jobs as factories close, the laid-off workers should occupy the shut-down factories.  The “lucky” ones that get to keep their jobs should support their laid-off brothers and sisters in every way possible, including solidarity strikes.   For the hundreds of thousands depending on GM for benefits and their pensions the workers must not accept one dollar in reductions; moreover, the workers of GM must strike for these demands as well. Not only should the workers of GM strike in solidarity with their ex-coworkers, they must also strike in the event of any reduction to their own wages and benefits.

The only way to save GM that would also benefit every one of the workers is a complete nationalization of GM under total workers’ control.  The workers can run GM effectively to not only produce more fuel efficient and less costly cars, but to set an example to the rest of the capitalists:  “We will not pay one more dollar to bail you out!”  The class-conscious workers can run this company to provide for all, not to make a select handful of execs and politicians rich.  We say to the workers: No bailouts at all for these failing companies; take them under your own control.  If the workers are afraid of the effects that the collapse of these companies would have on them, then they must take these business over under workers’ control.  The workers cannot depend on the “benevolent heads of business” to save them, and  it is not the workers’ responsibility to save this company that has been paying for their enslavement or to pay to hold up the system in which they are enslaved.

1-Karl Marx – Communist Manifesto – 1848

2-Karl Marx – Communist Manifesto – 1848

3-Leon Trotsky – Report on the World Economic Crisis and the New Tasks of the Communist International – 1921