The current court proceedings over pensions in Detroit highlight another important dimension of class struggle in advanced capitalist societies. Pensions are in essence "deferred wages" which ensure that workers are able to maintain themselves and their families once past the age in which they are actively engaged in productive labor. Pension funds are pools of "deferred wages" that in modern capitalist countries are typically invested in an effort to secure either interest from bonds or dividends from stocks, which in both cases amounts to a share of redistributed surplus value. A critical question for the working class is who controls these vast sums of money that are combined and for what purpose. The resolution of this question constitutes an increasingly important indicator of the balance of forces in the class struggle between labor and capital. As a result, the ideological maturity as well as the militancy of the organized working class is reflected in its attitude to this question. This is because the struggle over pensions necessarily draws the working class into discussions of long-term planning for society as a whole. This kind of discussion has serious implications as it opens the real possibility of a working-class vision for the reorganization of society that reflects a different set of priorities than those imposed by capital. At present, the norm in advanced capitalist countries is that the ruling class controls pension funds through financial institutions. In the case of both public and private pension schemes, financial institutions administer the funds of workers with the same objectives. The primary difference between the two consists in the increased oversight of public plans, which are supposed to have a legally sanctioned "defined benefit" as opposed to private plans such as the riskier 401ks that are tied to the ups and downs of the stock market. While some sectors of the ruling class oppose public pensions on the grounds that state guarantees of a lifetime defined benefit represent a burden on the "public" coffers, from the standpoint of finance capital, there is little difference between the public and private pensions. For example, in New York State, where the average public-sector retiree receives a pension of about $19,000 annually, there are over $160 billion in assets currently invested from the state's pension fund. Literally hundreds of millions of dollars from this fund go to finance capital (e.g. Goldman Sachs, Blackstone Group, etc.) in the form of fees every year. The sad truth is that finance capital invests the lion's share of the pension fund in many of the very same companies that exploit workers and sponsor anti-labor public policies. What emerges is a scenario in which the savings of the working class are appropriated by finance capital. In addition to the obvious transfer of wealth, this constitutes a powerful ideological weapon used against labor as its future security appears to be tied to the survival of capitalism as a system. Through these pension funds, workers only appear to assume the role of "investors." They obviously hold no real decision-making power with respect to how this capital is invested. The incredible growth of pension funds, which some calculate to exceed $20 trillion and are considered by many to be the largest institutional investors in the world today, is evidence of the scale of wealth transfer from labor to capital that is taking place. This wealth, rather than meeting the needs of the vast majority, continues to enrich a minority.

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And so a good portion of the aristocracy of labor, an ephermal condition like the middle class to which it is bogusly assigned, bites the dust. How could this happen to such a once powerful enitity? Well, as described above, that's just how capitalism works. Though there might have been a fight instead of abject resignation, had there been someone around to warn the workers of the likely inevitibility of this course, but the leftist organizers and leaders had been banished from the field. Capitalists make war on workers on all fronts, socialist states and their own workers too. Once the external workers threat was was removed the capitalist were free to accelerate their war on US workers, and so they have with a vengence.

I had not given much thought to the place of pensions in the struggle but the way they are arranged is begging for abuse, as we know the capitalist's motto is that 'possession is 9/10 of the law. Might be mistaken but isn't this arrangement part of Taft-Hartley?