FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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Workers wave goodbye to their jobs as the last Boeing C-17 military cargo plane takes off from Long Beach, CA, on Nov. 29. The plant, which had employed more than 2000 workers, will shut down at the end of this year.
SEATTLE, WA—When does a production boom signal an emerging crisis of overproduction, layoffs, wage cuts and insecurity? Always under capitalism, but now more than ever. Only communist production can end these endless crises.
Aerospace was supposed to be one of the few industries unaffected by the global crisis. It doesn’t look like that is going to last much longer.
In October, Delta Airlines chief executive Richard Anderson warned of an oversupply of jetliners. In November, sales plummeted at the Dubai Air show “as the industry lost confidence” (Wall Street Journal, 11/8). Future Chinese production will make oversupply problems even worse.
A production boom would be good news under communism, not a harbinger of crisis. We could put the extra airliners to good use: say, to promote international contact between workers all around the world.
If we had excess production capacity, we could shift to producing other necessities. Excess productive capacity would never result in attacks on the workers who make the planes—as it must under capitalism.
Capitalist Answer to Crisis: Racist Attacks
Boeing employment peaked in 1998. Back then, it made 564 planes a year, about 217 workers per plane. This year it aims to make 760 planes, using only 109 workers a plane.
Boeing has been able to do this by speeding-up employees, automating and by shifting production to lower-wage areas and subcontractors. They are gutting the Boeing workforce in the Seattle area.
In 2013, Washington State gave aerospace companies $8.7 billion “to preserve good jobs.” Since then, Boeing has shed 3,000 jobs despite production increases.
Much of these billions go to subcontractors. According to the Seattle Times, most blue-collar subcontractor workers in Washington earn between $10-$15 an hour.
Subcontractors are centers of racist super-exploitation. Blue-collar black and Latino workers in these plants make barely a third of what Boeing employees do.
Black and Latin workers are hit the hardest, but the wages of white workers in these plants (as well as those employed directly by Boeing) are also driven down. That’s true for Washington state workers, Los Angeles workers, those in the Southeast US and around the world.
The bosses created racism to maintain their power, to divide and super-exploit the workers of the world. That is the way Boeing rakes in maximum profits and keeps us from seeing that we are one class with the same interest, to fight for communism.
Under communism, there will be no racist or sexist wage differentials because there will be no wages. Everything will be distributed according to need. “Share and share alike” is our motto.
Furthermore, workers will meet and consult, no matter what particular factory they work in. We can then take advantage of the practical and political experience of our class. Working in one kind of plant or another will no longer define our lifestyle and worth.
Ironically, the Boeing bosses will gain less from each plane sold because there are now fewer workers to exploit in the production of each jet (see box). They must sell more planes if they hope to get the same return on investment.
Airbus must do the same. Eventually the market can’t absorb the increased production, intensifying the crises further. …along with sharper racist attacks!
Workers Must Answer Overproduction by Mobilizing for Communism
Under communism, we won’t be attacked because of production overcapacity. We won’t worry that the market won’t be able to absorb “extra” goods because there won’t be a market.
The capitalist market only “demands” what workers can pay for. Communist production will not be contingent on sales. We’ll gear production to our collective needs, not to the ability to pay.
We can then organize production logically. We won’t be driven by the need to get more profit because there will be no profits. Eventually there will be abundance, but no overproduction crisis.
The Boeing union railroaded through a 13-year contract that slashes wages and eliminates defined pensions. These concessions didn’t even slow down the racist shift to runaway shops and subcontracting. The union decries the unfairness of it all, but they don’t have a strategy that can even diminish the attacks.
We need a strategy that does what trade unionism is incapable of. We need a strategy to mobilize the masses for communism. That is the strategy of the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP)—now and in the future.
The bosses respond to overproduction by attacking us. Help the working class respond by joining the ICWP. Together we will make communist production the order of the day.
Overproduction Built into Capitalism
Capitalist crises of overproduction are inevitable. The latest that started in 2008 is global and unrelenting.
Capitalists can’t survive without exploiting the working class. The key to exploitation is the thievery of surplus value from workers’ labor. This surplus is the difference between the value workers produce and what they are paid.
For example, we at Boeing get paid only the equivalent of the value we produce in the first two hours of the workday. The rest (surplus value) goes to the bosses to pay for their factories, machines, etc. (sometimes called the means of production), their obscene salaries and profits.
Meanwhile, Boeing must constantly automate and subcontract to find ways to do more with fewer workers. If they didn’t, competitors, like Airbus, would undercut the company’s prices and drive them out of business.
The hard truth of capitalist production is that the bosses can only steal surplus value from active workers. With fewer workers producing each jet, there is less surplus to be had.
Boeing must sell more planes if it is to maintain its return on the investment in plants and machinery. So must Airbus.
Pretty soon you have too many bosses chasing a limited market. The inevitable crisis starts and the racist attacks on the working class intensify.