The Silence of the Wolves
By David Glenn Cox


There is a phrase that the media likes to use in their flirtations with reality. The phrase is the “jobless recovery.” It makes me angry enough to punch someone because it is a diminution of the millions of Americans that need jobs for basic survival.

It is saying that if we can stem the flooding to just third class and steerage decks then the problem is solved. As long as the first class and the promenade decks are clear, all will be well. The grand design is to alter the focus and draw the eye from the wreckage of the American economy. Not a half a mile from here are two large and empty used car lots, and directly across the street is a shiny new title loan building. Some politician is taking credit for creating those title loan jobs when they are societal parasites, legal loan sharks that don’t add but subtract from the economy.

I read the following line in an article about the new unemployment numbers: “At the same time, the report did underscore that the economy is on the mend and pulling out of the deepest recession since the 1930s.” Except that there was no recession in the 1930s; there was a full-blown depression. And rather than ignoring it or putting flowers over it the administration of that time responded to it.

“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.”
(FDR)

Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Employers kept Americans’ working hours near a record low in August, signaling that economic growth is poised to reward companies with added profits while postponing any recovery in the job market.

“More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.”
(FDR)

Here in Atlanta the grocery store chains of Kroger and Publix have begun to quietly close less profitable locations. It says one thing about the economy when FootLocker closes stores, but it says quite another when grocery stores begin to lock their doors.

The sanitized unemployment numbers are at 9.7%, unsanitized closer to 16%; the number of hours worked per week has fallen to an all time record low of just 33 hours. The number of part time workers rose to the highest level in over fifty years. The media scions cheer because the number of job losses in August has slowed to just 216,000; that is hailed as good news. Ignoring that true good news would be the addition of 216,000, or even just one new job. Even the ranks of temporary workers is beginning to fall, which is reflected in back-to-school retail sales figures being down.

“It’s disappointing and it tells us that we are not quite there yet,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York who used to work at the Federal Reserve. “It’s great for business and terrible for households,” Feroli said.

“Ian Morris, chief U.S. economist at HSBC Securities USA Inc., projects the economy will expand at a 4 percent to 6 percent pace this quarter, and says that means worker productivity may exceed the second quarter’s 6.6 percent jump, which was the biggest gain in almost six years.

“This is set to flow straight into the corporate bottom line,” he said in an e-mail to clients. "That indicates the 'strong' earnings for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in the three months to June will continue this quarter," he said.”

This figure of productivity is the measure of how much work you do versus how much profit they earn. The equation of worker earnings being reflected in the company profits is considered archaic and obsolete in the modern economics.

“Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.” (FDR)

I am beginning to wonder if this whole health care debate has been nothing but a brush fire to distract us from noticing that the economy is sliding and not recovering. It is becoming a vortex, a giant black hole. Without jobs there can be no recovery, and falling wages and shorter hours means less purchasing power and an increase of speed around the drain. I see universities advertising programs for bachelors' and advanced degrees, but zero job growth means zero jobs. There is no more need for an engineer with a master’s degree than there is a shipping clerk if the company builds nothing.

The profit numbers are a temporary aberration as the economy collapses in on itself. Falling wages and shorter hours mean higher profits today but inevitably lead to a dead end.

“Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.” (FDR)

What does our current government have to say? (cricket sounds) What does Congress have to say about this? (cricket sounds) The Obama administration passed a stimulus package that was 40% tax cuts so as far as they are concerned they are done with us. Wait two years and we’ll see, was the answer from the White House, but two years is too long to wait. These are people and not numbers; they need something done and done now!

“This Nation asks for action, and action now.” (FDR)

Our current administration finds itself in a crisis mode over healthcare reform. Despite a public mandate it has begun to back up and admit defeat in the face of difficulties and I begin to ask myself which is worse. A man with bad ideas who works to force them into law, or a man with good ideas who is unwilling to fight for those principles? A man who would rather win nothing than to risk losing anything, for what good is his victory if we lose out in the end? Contrast the two leadership styles.

“I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

"But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” (FDR)

In other words, I’ll do it with you, I’ll do it without you, or I’ll do it by myself. FDR called those of his era “The Forgotten Men,” and in this era we are not forgotten but ignored and marginalized by the media. Made to feel that we are alone in our suffering, but as our numbers continue to grow it will become ever harder to maintain the big lie.

“What we must do is this: revise our tariff on the basis of a reciprocal exchange of goods, allowing other Nations to buy and to pay for our goods by sending us such of their goods as will not seriously throw any of our industries out of balance, and incidentally making impossible in this country the continuance of pure monopolies which cause us to pay excessive prices for many of the necessities of life.

“Such objectives as these three, restoring farmers' buying power, relief to the small banks and home-owners and a reconstructed tariff policy, are only a part of ten or a dozen vital factors. But they seem to be beyond the concern of a national administration which can think in terms only of the top of the social and economic structure. It has sought temporary relief from the top down rather than permanent relief from the bottom up. It has totally failed to plan ahead in a comprehensive way. It has waited until something has cracked and then at the last moment has sought to prevent total collapse.” (FDR)

but the next question on the test is where things get interesting: outline for us how legislative change of ANY measure is going to fix this. WITHOUT making things up about how corporations all the sudden become benevolent or altruistic or deferential to the "will of the people"

If you can't do that, if no one can, then the next question is to go back and explain the moral of your FDR parable in light of that admission

"Here in Atlanta the grocery store chains of Kroger and Publix have begun to quietly close less profitable locations. It says one thing about the economy when FootLocker closes stores, but it says quite another when grocery stores begin to lock their doors."

This is a major concern that maybe should be its own thread. How are the poor to get to the more "profitable" stores?

This leads me to another question: How much of a role should profit play in food? like health care a human need...Actually what kind of realistic role does profit play at all?

There are only two ways of modifying of government. One through a long planned well-funded campaign of a splinter party revolt. Which is what the Liberals tried unsuccessfully in 1948, or fear.


FDR didn’t just fall from the sky; he was forever in flux. In 1932 the country was coming apart with riots in the streets. On the other side was an well-entrenched business oligarchy that seriously attempted a take over of the government. What drove FDR was a sense of fear.

We have to succeed or we’re finished, two counties in Europe all ready Fascist.
The Communist Party the fastest growing political party in America so FDR had plenty to fear. Huey Long was trying to pull FDR left and the Supreme Court was protecting the status qou.

FDR and the New Deal tried a lot of things that did not work but they erred in the act of trying to do something. Fixing the economy was the Apollo Moon Mission of the administration because they felt they had no alternative. Our job is to make them feel that way again.

Are you honestly saying "If the rich fear us enough, maybe they will throw us a few table scraps to induce us to go back to our miserable jobs and bleak existences?"

Dave, how does anything that you write square up with the continued existence of the business oligarchy? You must see the contradiction.

You must also be aware that FDR never did manage to "fix" the economy..

What you have written is a concession speech..you want to recreate the conditions that drove FDR to make some reforms..if that is so effective then why are we here now 70 years later talking about a reprise?

until you eliminate that motive, you'll never have people be placed as the priority

Dear Kid,

I had this response all written out and hit the wrong button on my computer and deleted it. (Memo to self, always answer in word then copy and paste)

The oligarchy has been with us since before Feudal times. It is a political impossibility to destroy it. The attempts by the French revolutionaries to eliminate the royalist class left the government without functionaries to operate it. Just as Stalin’s purges took the good with the bad. I have no fear of a tiger in a cage and a huge elephant can be made to do menial work if he knows you’ll rip his nuts off otherwise.

We asked the question at the time, what did more to change America’s civil rights laws? Martin Luther King or riots in major cities across the country costing hundreds of millions of dollars? To the rational and intellectually honest it was King’s reasoned arguments but to Capitalists and insurance companies???

These people live in a paranoid bubble already as Woody Guthrie said, “I never met a rich man who wasn’t afraid that I was going to take something from him.”

This system provided good paying jobs and a rising middle class for almost fifty years so lets not be so quick to replace the machine with the unknown until we are sure that it cannot be repaired. Our goal must be to put the tiger in the box and that is not as hard as might be expected.

They are afraid of us to begin with, we out number them a thousand to one. It wasn’t politicians that ended the Vietnam war but 100,000 demonstrators surrounding the pentagon. As a child the children in my Mother’s neighborhood played a game called “Rock” whenever anyone would yell “New Car” the children rocked it! My father was ordered to break the windows on a rental house that had evicted the tenants until the landlord lost the house.

Kidnappings, bank robberies, riots, kids breaking windows until the oligarchs had had enough. They wanted stability and were willing to pay the price for it. The Kings power is up close the Queens power is from a distance. Fear of losing the Queen changes the nature of the game.

"We asked the question at the time, what did more to change America’s civil rights laws? Martin Luther King or riots in major cities across the country costing hundreds of millions of dollars? To the rational and intellectually honest it was King’s reasoned arguments but to Capitalists and insurance companies???"

Hopefully, I'm rational and intellectually honest, and I never asked that question. It was, equally, both. King's reasoned arguments made sense to me. So, did the rage of working class African-Americans. It was never a debate about whose tactics made the most sense. It's some whacky revisionism about non-violence as a moral imperative.

so eliminating the motive becomes a major project...

was not which tatics made more sense but which ones instilled fear into the power structure. If you are a rich capitalist landlord or insurance CEO which would worry you more?

I honor non-violence but from a historical view of the 1930's the threat or percieved threat of violence was a source of motivation for The New Deal.

you've more or less been mouting a "radical" defense of the capitalist power structure. I am very tempted to link you to some good material that refutes any such pretensions..that source material being your own essays..

We are back in the realm of reforming human nature with this. Eliminating the motive is not merely a major project, it is an impossible project and a fool's errand. Gentrified people like to reduce politics to personal feelings and attitudes, because they can then imagine that they themselves are superior - "I have eliminated greed in my own personal life, if only everyone would do that all of our problems would be solved" - and this trick enables them to avoid the struggle - deny that the struggle even exists - and continue to enjoy their relative comfort and status (or the hope of achieving relative comfort and status, or even merely the illusion that they are on the "winning team" of those with wealth and power.)

These "come to Jesus" calls for morally transforming people bear a close resemblance to the pitch of the tent revival preacher and have no legitimate place in left wing politics. They are clever defenses of the ruling class, disguised as something else.

I don't know if people are prepared now to dig in and talk powerfully and incisively about any of this, or if we are just going to dick around like a bunch of students in the college dormitory musing about the state of the world and comparing different ideas on "what to do about the Hottentots."

Identification with the ruling class permeates all of the discussions and goes mostly unchallenged. For example, the worship of FDR, JFK, and Obama is based on their sophistication, erudition and style - they act and speak the way that people think princes should speak and act, they symbolize a kinder more gentle ruling class. The reason Bush was so unpopular with liberals was because he seemed to be a buffoon, a poser, a lightweight in terms of fashion and style and mental ability, a lower class person who did not deserve to be in an upper class position. Of course, that was also the reason that working class people were attracted to him (and to Palin) - he seemed to be "one of us." Thinking that reforming human nature is the job inevitably leads us to aligning with princes who seem to be examples of this reformation, and this means ignoring conditions and that is a defense of the existing social structure and of the ruling class.

No, it's which ones bring you closer to winning.

The material cost of a moment in history may be motive for some sector of capitalists. The larger view is that anything that mobilizes people to question the legitimacy of their rulers scares them.

The Civil Rights Movement was much bigger than MLK. He was a great inspirational force, and at times helped mobilize tens and hundreds of thousands of people. Many of these people were not followers of his approach to non-violence, but came to the same meeting halls. The threat of violence wasn't just paranoia on the part of ruling class, it was very real presence in the movement.

So, again I say both to the extent they each resulted in mobilizing large numbers of people. The material cost of a few burning urban neighborhoods was an inconvenience, the real threat was from the rejection of the "rule of law", that they represented.

most of us do not even recognize it unless it is extremely blatant. We have got to be more attuned to this brainwashing and more severe in our responses to it. Thanks for pointing this out - again!

What the ruling class fears is being overthrown and losing their power. You are proposing that we somehow convince the ruling class that there is a danger of that, but them argue against anything that would lead to there actually being any danger of that. The only way that your program would work is if there were someone else somewhere who genuinely was serious about overthrowing the ruling class and was fighting and taking all the the risks, while you then reap the rewards without having done the work or taken the risks.

It is not the "threat of violence" that is the issue, it is the threat of a transfer of power.

I am so tired of hearing about how difficult it all is, how much time it will take, how complicated it is. What is lacking is the will. Of course it is all difficult when we are not even seriously trying, have yet to begin. It is fear that keeps people from starting, and confusion, not the complexity, difficulties or the time that would be required. What good is it to understand class struggle if we are unwilling to live it? Life is not a college course where the reward comes in the form of the approval of an authority figure based on our intellectual understanding of the material.

capacities, the same experience - everyone isn't as intelligent as everyone else. We all travel at the best speed we can. I for one tend to be a little on the lazy side and move passed things that don't strike me right away. I am not the sharpest blade in the box, but I am trying to get sharper.

I don't think that we can deal with the various levels of understanding that any group is likely to display by dismissing all those who are not above a certain level. There are many forms of elitism and all of them must be guarded against...

"Life is not a college course where the reward comes in the form of the approval of an authority figure based on our intellectual understanding of the material."

A pat on the head for grasping the complexities acknowledged through dialectical analysis, but a screeching diatribe for suggesting any type of collective action.


:wtf:

Or just, you know, analyzing it.

:rolleyes:

It seems all they want to do is talk, Anax has commented on this himself. It is not prevarication so much(well, depending upon the flavor we're talking about)but a tendency to emulate the old man and engage in painstaking exactness.

I'm the 1st to admit that I'm not too sharp on this economic and philosophy stuff but if it increases our understanding and therefore our effectiveness it's all to the good. If I don't get some of this stuff, particularly the philosophy, I ain't gonna sweat it. I'm a Darwinian and thus a materialists so at least I get to 1st base.

Relearning history has been more important to me, and what history tells me is that we got a long row to hoe. Not to happy with that revelation, given my environmental tendencies I want capitalism smashed yesterday, time is very short for much. But it ain't gonna happen so the best we can do is roll up our sleeves and get to work.

is that his seeming lack of sophistication was a political ruse...

but please know that my comment was sardonic...if not cynical...a winkie just didn't cut it...

Fixing the economy was the Apollo Moon Mission of the administration because they felt they had no alternative. Our job is to make them feel that way again.


The oligarchy has been with us since before Feudal times. It is a political impossibility to destroy it. The attempts by the French revolutionaries to eliminate the royalist class left the government without functionaries to operate it. Just as Stalin’s purges took the good with the bad. I have no fear of a tiger in a cage and a huge elephant can be made to do menial work if he knows you’ll rip his nuts off otherwise.


This system provided good paying jobs and a rising middle class for almost fifty years so lets not be so quick to replace the machine with the unknown until we are sure that it cannot be repaired. Our goal must be to put the tiger in the box and that is not as hard as might be expected.


Kidnappings, bank robberies, riots, kids breaking windows until the oligarchs had had enough. They wanted stability and were willing to pay the price for it.

I was being gentle above, and you're not stupid